Obsidian Worlds

by Jason Werbeloff

Jason froze. Stared at the door to the spare room.

  Harold wasn’t sure what to think at first. He knew some of the men liked it rough. All sorts of noises came from that room when Nicholas or Jason had clients.

  “I says get off me,” shouted Nicholas.

  Jason’s face was ashen. He didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

  That was enough for Harold. The old man got to his feet. A knife? Kitchen was too far away. He needed a weapon. Something. Anything.

  “I says don’t.” Nicholas’s voice had softened to a plea. “Mista, don’t.”

  Harold’s heart thud-thud-thudded against his ribcage as he grabbed the vase. Fanny’s vase.

  One moment he was standing beside the table, reaching for the vase. The next … he was opening the bedroom door. He stood over the lanky man.

  “Get off him. Now.”

  The man sat astride the boy. His hands were frantic, clawing at Nicholas’s face. At his chest.

  “Off,” cried Harold.

  Time turned to treacle. He watched every malevolent twitch in the man’s triceps as he grappled with the boy. And then Harold’s gnarled hands lifted the vase above the man’s head. He noticed the way the sunlight caught the grooves of the ornament. Fanny. He remembered her laugh. The fuchsia scent of her shampoo when she stepped out the shower. He could almost feel her fingerprints on the glass as he brought it down with all the force his octogenarian frame could muster.

  BANG!

  The brute fell off Nicholas, his eyes clouding over even before he hit the carpet.

  Nicholas sprang from the bed. Covered himself. Glared at the unconscious body on the floor. He looked to Harold, who was panting. Clutching his side.

  There was a sorrow in Nicholas’s inky eyes. As though someone had doused the flame in him – that spark that should never leave a child. Harold had seen that look decades ago. In the eyes of the boys who’d served with him under Uncle Sam’s banner. But they weren’t boys when the war was done with them. They weren’t men either.

  “I veto them from now on,” Harold wheezed. “Nobody comes through that door without … ” He coughed. “… without my say-so.”

  Nicholas nodded.

  *

  The days passed quickly after the Incident. Kept Harold busy, the boys did. Their business was open from breakfast to midnight, except for siesta – Harold insisted on a siesta. He suggested they stop altogether. They had more jewelry, cars, money, and watches than they could barter. But the boys weren’t interested. “Gurls gotta grind,” Nicholas would say.

  So the men continued to arrive. Men. And more men. After a while, they all looked the same. Thin, fat, hairy, and smooth – they all fused into a single, never-ending, insatiable phallus.

  “Looking for the blonde,” said a man with a beard longer than Jesus’. He’d arrived just after the afternoon break.

  “He’ll be right out,” said Jason. “Sit down a moment.”

  Harold put on the kettle.

  The Beard glared at his watch. Stroked his bald head. “Time’s short,” he said around a piece of gum. He eyeballed Jason’s shorts. “We could have a go if you like?”

  Jason shook his head. “We only have one room between us. And Nick’s busy in there.”

  “Hope you like your green tea with jasmine?” Harold placed the tray with unsteady hands on the mother of pearl coffee table. Fanny had inherited it from her mother.

  The Beard shifted in the antique chair. Shielded his face from the last shards of sunlight piercing the lounge window.

  “That’s right,” cooed a muffled voice from the other side of the spare room. “Just like that.”

  The Beard uncrossed his legs. Tapped his watch. “How much longer?”

  “He’ll be out soon,” said Harold, and poured the tea. “Sugar or honey?”

  “Yes!” shouted the voice from the spare room. “Oh, yes.”

  The Beard looked from Jason to Harold. “What kind of operation you running here?”

  “If you don’t like it, you can leave,” said Jason.

  “Yeah, kid. Think I’ll do that. Not even a week left. No time to wait.” He knocked over the teacup as he hustled from the apartment.

  Harold sighed. Glanced at the stained Persian carpet. “We need more space.”

  “Expand our operation,” said Jason, mopping up the tea.

  It came to Harold then. “I have just the place.”

  It hadn’t taken long to jimmy the lock on his neighbor’s apartment door. He’d never liked Cyril much. Some highflying Republican with a wife who’d headed the failed conservative marriage campaign. Besides that, he’d never liked the man’s taste in neckties. Pinstriped. Politically correct.

  “No offense, Mista, but THIS place is da shit.”

  “They renovated last year,” said Harold.

  “Whewee!” whistled Nicholas. “Dat crystal’s so damned bright you could jerk off to your reflection.”

  “Love that couch,” said Jason.

  “This bedroom’s mine.”

  “There’re more than enough to go around,” said Harold.

  *

  Harold watched the clock. Watched the second hand swing in its orbit. The minute-hand inched ever further. How slowly time passes when you became aware of it, he thought. How quickly in the company of his boys. Maybe that’s what they did for him … distract him. Maybe that’s all anyone ever did for someone else?

  And now it was the almost the end.

  Trrrinnng

  “I’ll get it,” Jason called out from the master bedroom. “Just cleaning up.”

  “No need,” said Harold. His knees cracked as he rose. The legs of his army uniform whipped around his legs as he strode to the door.

  “Thank you for joining our apocalypse party.” He straightened his bowtie.

  “The pleasure is mine,” said the patron. “I’ve heard great things.” The man bowed.

  “They’re all true,” said Harold. “Right this way.”

  The man stepped inside. The boys had redecorated. Stargazer lilies and fuchsia cascaded along the walls, their spicy scent bathing the entrance hall.

  Jason sauntered into view. “Hey there.” He wore a silk toga, and nothing underneath. The man ogled the boy’s naked butt with hungry eyes. His graying moustache twitched.

  “Shall we get going?” asked Jason.

  “Ten minutes till the end,” said Harold. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  Jason grinned. “Let’s fuck through the apocalypse,” he squealed, and pulled the man into the only empty bedroom.

  That’s that, thought Harold. Both bedrooms occupied. Happy customers. He smirked as he left his neighbor’s apartment – Cyril and his homophobic wife would’ve loved what the boys had done with the place.

  He shut the door. Shuffled the ten feet to his own apartment. Unlocked the two bolts for the last time, and sat at the dining room table. His feet were heavy on the parquet floor.

  “Oh Fanny,” he said. “What would you have thought of all this?”

  He touched the watermark on the oak tabletop where Fanny’s vase had sat. An emptiness in the center of the table. He touched her absence.

  There was a knock at the door. “Wanted to thank you, Mista,” said Nicholas. He crept inside with his hand hidden behind his back.

  “For what, boy?”

  Nicholas held out a vase of roses. Fresh roses. “Me and the boys, we doesn’t know what we’d done without you.” Pride swelled Nicholas’s cheeks.

  Harold’s heart stopped. He reached out to touch the vase. His fingertips caressed the glass. It was the very same. Fanny’s vase. He felt the occasional edge where the glue was less than perfect. But he could hardly tell it had been a pile of broken glass not long ago.

  “Your wife would’ve thought you was a good man,” said Nicholas. The boy placed the vase on its watermark. “And your son would’ve too.”

  A tear that had lingered in Harold’s eye too many nights trickled down his cheek. “Jesse would’ve liked
you boys,” said the old man.

  The jeweled watch on Nicholas’s arm let out a beep. “A minute left.” Nicholas took a sharp breath. “What happened to da kid?”

  “He … he ran away after he told us. I wasn’t … I didn’t ...”

  Nicholas took the shaking man’s hand. “You here now, Mista.”

  The sky flared to life in the dining room window, glowing brighter every second.

  “Don’t look,” said Harold.

  The boy gripped the old man’s hand tighter. Buried his head in the old man’s jacket.

  The light was almost too bright to see by now. But before the flash scorched his retinas, Harold caught a glimpse of the roses.

  Orange. Fanny’s favorite.

  Bleed Me Silicone

  My first memory is of the inside of a cardboard box. The material is gray and slightly rough to the touch. It smells of fluorescent light and ancient canyon floors.

  I savor the feeling of being lifted from the shelf – rubbed and jostled against the almost-smooth interior of the box, as I’m carried through the aisles. My new owner places me on the till. The other products and I have talked about this day. Wondered when our time would come. The time to be purchased.

  “Would you like a packet for that, ma’am?” the teller asks. I recognize his voice. He does stock-take on Sundays.

  “Umm … yes,” says a nervous voice. Nervous, but forgiving. I like her already.

  The crinkle-swoosh of plastic competes with the sound of a radio. Sunlight perforates the miniscule holes in the edges of the cardboard that encloses me. I feel warmth for the first time. She drives me home.

  The roof of the box opens, and I’m out. In the world. Her face is just as I’d imagined. Elfin and freckled. No frown lines. Her eyes are intense as they follow my instructions.

  I tingle at the touch of her fingers. Delicate, careful. Fleshy and warm. Her lips curl into a smile, before she places me at the back of a dark shelf. The other lubes at the store told me this would happen. Life’s not all action for us. But when our owners take us for a night out of the closet, the world comes alive. Or that’s what the other lubes say.

  There aren’t many voices in her apartment. I wait patiently at the back of the closet, as the weeks and months pass. Just when I think she’s forgotten me, one warm evening the door of the apartment opens. A man sits on the creaky springs of the bed.

  “Are you ready?” His voice is young. Excited.

  “Yes,” she says. I know she’s trying not to sound nervous, like she did that day at the store when she purchased me.

  And then it begins.

  I come out of the closet that night. She pops my lid, and tears my seal. Air! He squeezes me, and she moans. He squeezes me again, and they laugh. I bathe in their sound. Their giggles and their pillow talk. Their delicious, wet, punctuated kisses. I don’t mind the sticky fingerprints on my sides.

  I am happy.

  He comes again the next night. And the next.

  “Where did you get this stuff?” he asks, while they lie together, panting.

  “Isn’t it great?”

  He reads my instructions. He has long, curly hair that he tosses from his eyes. Amber eyes. “Huh,” says Curly, placing me on the nightstand, “love this stuff.”

  I’m so proud, I could burst.

  Curly visits often after that. I live beside the bed now. I’ve become thinner as my insides deplete. I don’t mind, though. I’d give them all of me if they’d have me. To hear their laughter.

  But one night, he isn’t there. And I hear something I haven’t heard her do. She cries. Long, heaved sobs into the pillow. She pinches me with two, splayed fingertips, and places me at the back of the closet again.

  I’m not used to the darkness, but over the months that pass, I acclimatize to the obsidian musk. She cries less each day. The sobs grow softer, and shorter. Eventually, they stop. But all this while, there are no other voices.

  Until there is. A voice, deeper than hers, deeper than the teller’s or Curly’s, seeps into the room. Although it’s deep, it’s quiet. He hisses his s’s. Spits his t’s.

  “Don’t fightt itt,” he whispers.

  “I … I don’t think –”

  “Shhhh … I never asked you to think. Lie down.”

  “Please don’t –”

  “You know you want itt. Shhhh … don’t cry.”

  She mumbles something. Words lost behind a hand. I can’t make them out through the closet door. But I know these words aren’t like the pillow talk with Curly. The sounds that reach me are different.

  “Shhhh,” he whispers. “Tell me you want itt.”

  I want to scream, but of course I can’t. I want to boil over. But I can’t. My silicone heart bleeds. My voice is as silent as hers.

  There are other voices in the room in the days after Whispers visited. Women’s voices. Lined with sympathy and suspicion. After they leave, she cries, but not like she did after Curly left. These cries are choked. Violent. Late at night, she breathes too quickly, and can’t hold the tears within her elfin frame. When she opens the closet to reach for a shirt, for a towel, or a tissue, I see flashes of her swollen cheeks. Her droopy eyes. Now, she has frown lines.

  I don’t hear a man’s voice for what seems like forever. I’m not moved from the back of the shelf. There are no giggles or pillow talk anymore.

  Until one day, it changes.

  He says little. She says nothing. Her fingers shake as she seizes me from the closet.

  Once he leaves, she returns me to the dark. The silence is cold. But after a while, I hear the scratching of pen to paper. Scratching and scratching.

  Another night. Another man. Her eyes are less swollen now. After he leaves, she scratches at her pad. Scratches and scratches.

  I don’t see any of the men twice. There are many. There is no pillow talk. No laughter. But her brow isn’t as crumpled as it was after Whispers left.

  Something feels different tonight. Something different in the way the bedroom door opens. Different in the way they step into the room. A prolonged creak in the floorboards.

  “Thank you for letting me in,” he says. It’s not Curly. It’s not the teller, nor Whispers. Nor any of the one-night men. But his voice sounds familiar in a way that soothes my silicone heart. Something gentle. Something strong.

  She doesn’t reach for me that night. Nor the next. But when she does, her fingers aren’t shaky. She doesn’t giggle like she did with Curly. And sometimes she weeps. But when she does, Gentle passes a hand through her wavy hair, and kisses her freckles.

  He squeezes me. And she moans. He squeezes me again, and she cries. But Gentle doesn’t muffle her the way Whispers did.

  Nights pass, and I live on the nightstand again. Little of me remains. I am almost empty now. I feel my age in the creak of my lid. In the dust that clings to my tacky sides. But I am happy.

  “I’ll get some more lube,” says Gentle, as he tosses me to the bin. “I think we’ll need it.”

  She laughs.

  The last drop of silicone drips from my spout.

  Dinner with Flexi

  “Delishhhisss!”

  Mammary gland sauce sprays from between John’s gapped front teeth, spattering my silicone skin.

  I’ve been in this business a while. Eight years. And I’ve found that almost all human men love their meat basted in mammary sauce. It’s a delicacy, there being hardly any women left to milk, and the few that do remain are generally butchered for food. Keeping a woman alive long enough to milk her requires time, patience and resources that only the very wealthiest men can afford. John can afford it. He’s a General in the Ministry.

  Eye contact. It’s essential for client satisfaction, according to The Manual. But in the split-second that John blinks, I throw my gaze to the corner of the room.

  He’s brought her this time. His personal sex bot. She sits, immobile on a polycarbonate chair at the door, watching. He likes it when she watches. But she’s not watc
hing him. She’s watching me. Something fiery; something dangerous blazes in her cybernetic eyes. Indigo eyes.

  John hardly slows his thrusts as he tears a bloody chunk of forearm from the bone with his yellowing incisors – he likes it rare. I buy the meat and mammary sauce from the butcher on the thirty-sixth floor. A-grade, premium cut woman. I service some of the wealthiest men in the district, and they expect only the best.

  John’s face screws into ever-tightening convolutions of ecstasy as he masticates the meat, and heaves his hips against mine. My perineal sensor detects the tap-tap-tap of his pendulous scrotum.

  I lie in missionary position, and watch his dripping, saucy grin. His shoulders are broad, hairy as the bear-skin rug that covers the concrete floor beneath the bed. But the dark hair is difficult to distinguish from the grime-caked skin beneath. He moves from his hips, constrained pleasure rippling along the length of his torso.

  I feel her eyes heavy on my cheeks.

  I’m programmed to observe him. To track his gaze. To monitor the dilations of his pupils as his penis thickens. Hardens. But his eyelids clench shut, like the dried figs he likes to eat for dessert.

  The Manual states that human men enjoy the session less when their eyes are closed. Behavioral protocol dictates that I reestablish eye contact.

  “A drink, John?” I ask. But not before stealing a glance at her. At Indigo. The bot. The porcelain whites of her corneas are striking around her indigo irises. Arresting.

  “Yeahhh,” says John.

  I squeeze my artificial sphincter to reward his eye contact. It’s a barely perceptible contraction. He’d never know unless I told him. Which I don’t. Of course I don’t. The Manual specifies that men prefer little speech during the meal.

  The initial sip of the draft galvanizes his pace. I tighten to meet his oncoming orgasm. “Ohh!” he grunts. “Ohhhh.” His lower lip is thick and lumpy as he cries to the ceiling.

  I glance at her. In the corner. Can a sex bot feel shame? Betrayal? I’ve never loved enough to know. But her pallid face, her stagnant, stenciled lips sing a thousand lonely songs.

  I check my internal chronometer. Twenty-three minutes, forty-six seconds since the meal started. There’s time for dessert before my next client arrives. The Manual states that client sessions should extend no longer than half an hour. But dessert maximizes client satisfaction.