Mirror laughs. A casual motion of the wrist, a swish and flick. Fire touches Janelle’s throat and the pain takes hold a second later. The little girl clutches her voice box as the fireants thrash under her skin. Janelle can’t see it, but Bax’s purple glyph has awoken – the shine of it glows through her thin skin like a torch behind a thumb. Janelle doubles over and coughs hard, coughs hard again and tastes lemons as the charm pours from her mouth. Soupy, thick mess past teeth. All gone, dribbled down to the grass. The protective spell burns a hole in the earth, the perfume wafting up to the stars. Mirror laughs and calls, ‘That’s what Bax is usin’ for protection? Schoolboy charms? He’s got a lot to learn. Now…’
Mirror picks up her sword, wielding it like a thing with no weight. Janelle hears the whoosh of metal and air as it comes to rest over Mirror’s shoulder before the creature pops off the fence, lands and faces Janelle. Panic growls in the little girl’s stomach and she begs, ‘This isn’t right! Getting revenge like this isn’t what we want, and it doesn’t make anything better! Please, please, don’t take anyone else’s life.’
‘Oh now. You don’ really believe that. I know you. Everythin’ I have in here, you have in there.’ Points to heart.
Janelle fights back: ‘And every desire I have, you have. You’re just covering that up too! I don’t want you to kill them.’
Mirror shrugs and her eyes glint in moon’s bloody light. ‘Don’ care. You know about the Law of Twins, Janny?’
Mirror approaches, Janelle staggers upright but backs away towards the house. What can she do? If she runs now, Mirror will kill her instantly. Can she call Dani, can she scream for help? Who would help a ghostly girl in the middle of nowhere on a Monday night like tonight? She is effectively invisible. Mirror opens her mouth and says in a voice that tumbles out in forced eloquence, ‘There’s a well-known law in science fiction that states if two fakes are generated from a whole, or two twins are born, one will ultimately fight for supremacy and deny the other of power or life. So, consider this not as murder, Janelle, but a rightful restoration of the whole. My timeline will set and erase yours; the fact of the murders will become truth. An’, really, you’ve had that white girl voice fo’ too long. It sickens me, it really does!’
Mirror laughs; Janelle smacks hard into the cool plaster of her home.
‘You fake ass bitch wit chour pretty words and your white girl attitude. I’m gon enjoy rippin’ your throat out.’
The blade creates a fury through the air, the point cutting up just before Janelle’s neck. She cries out, spilling sapphires down her cheeks as the tip of the blade digs under her skin.
‘See you round, little slut.’
Gasping strokes, scissors cutting sinews.
That same pain, that same agony and injustice. Her throat is slit open once more. Just a fraction. Rubies fly! Mirror pulls the tip back and Janelle falls to her feet, cupping the gems as they collapse from her neck. She tries to catch them, fails to contain the flow.
She looks up, heart racing. Incredulous. Such pain. She is going to die. Who is this girl, that she has the right to smile like that as she takes a life? Why doesn’t she just finish the job? Why? Maybe she enjoys seeing the pain. Maybe she enjoys all the pain in her life. Maybe there is more suffering in store for Janelle before she dies…
Who is that enormous shadow, that great shape hulking fast over the fence…?
Janelle stifles her wound and watches. The gargantuan thing cuts through the yard faster than anything Janelle has seen in her life. Mirror senses the change, turns and brings her weightless sword up into a parry. Blunt noises exchange, like the thud of rope on glass. And as the little girl sits there with a hole in her neck, she watches the play of an enormous blur battling furious with a Mirror girl very much on the defensive. The two dance and dance across the grass but Mirror is definitely losing this battle. She cries out! Drops the sword soundlessly to earth. Her arm is bound with a length of what looks like garden hose, and her attacker has slowed down enough so Janelle can make out enormous…Hugo. Giant Hugo, black, furious Hugo, weaving the hose around Mirror’s right arm, looping and looping. Quick as lightning, he twirls the girl around and yanks the length of hose sharp in the wrong direction. A glorious crack! Mirror screams in pain and Hugo kicks the back of her knees and sends her to the ground.
But Mirror regains her feet almost instantly, springing upright and sliding something ruby dark across the length of hose, cutting herself free. She holds the dagger fierce before her, hissing like a wildcat cornered. Hugo straightens and bellows, ‘Get the fuck outta here! Now!’
Words of deep power – Janelle feels their effect touch her heart in a sour way. Mirror throws the dagger at Hugo with her working arm but the man catches the rocket between his fingers. And the girl is gone, big sword collected, scampering past the side of the house, bungling past the trashcans, away into silence.
The backyard turns very quiet.
Janelle croaks for help. Hugo rushes to her side, which means Janelle blinks and he is kneeling before her with a hand on her shoulder. His voice is crazed. ‘Did she hurt you? You ok?’
Janelle points to her throat and touches the wound, only to discover there is no wound, just a little depression where the incision was made. Pulling her fingers away, she sees some sticky purple residue, perhaps the last bitter stain of Bax’s charm. Her pain is gone now. She breathes a sigh of relief and adrenaline turns to body to air. Girl allows herself to be helped upright by her savior from next door. Hugo steps back and scrapes a few rubies across the concrete with his shoe. Janelle explains quickly, ‘D-Don’t touch those gems. Get your shoe off quickly, it’s going to catch fire.’
Hugo indeed acts quickly. In an eyeblink his right shoe is off and away over by the trashcans. They watch together as the material starts to smolder and crumble with fresh fire.
‘Huh,’ is all the big guy has to say.
Jan catches his attention, says, ‘Thank you for saving my life. Y-You’re full of surprises, Hugo.’
No response in the quiet dark. Janelle thinks she might laugh. ’Where did you learn to move like that?’
The man crosses his arms and says in his grumbly low voice, ‘Sold my soul to a monster. I think I got the better end o’ the deal.’ Such a blasé attitude for something so strange. Unrealities seem to congregate together, don’t they, for the soul-less…Hugo looks around the yard once more, maybe checking for Mirror or her strange clockwork sword. No, she collected it, remember? With his voice directed out to the yard, he says, ‘Go inside, girl. She won’t bother you no more.’
Janelle doesn’t complain. At the door: ‘Thank you, once again.’
‘You ruined my practice session, you know? Try not to get into trouble with things like that.’
The man throws her a look with those terrible white eyes and waddles off back to his side of the fence, leaping over the wood with ease. How comical, seeing such a big man move like that.
There is nothing funny about what had just happened. Janelle tries not to laugh with relief.
Girl locks herself inside her room, finds her bed and shakes and cries. Not strictly from fear or the emotion, although those press heavy on her heart. Rather, this – she still has her precious voice. Mirror had not taken away her most valued possession. On her bedside dresser glows a single ruby – her fire, her painful memory from before. Janelle watches it glint in the low light of night. All of that anger and bitterness, contained and locked away. Poor ruby.
Janelle laughs sad, eternally thankful.
For no matter what Mirror says, she is not her.
Met-ro-nome
See that dancer on the stage shaking her hips like a li’l old metronome? A mess of green and red light across her shirtless body, moving silky like a tiger as her hips swerve in time to the music. Hungry eyes watch with thousands in their fingers, ready to buy. The girl takes to the front and wobbles. Another underage girl joins her and they dance together like two cranes, like two pieces of a
broken sky rescuing a young black girl from certain death. Heavy dance music soundtracks their fluid bodies, their polework and solo moves on the long stage. All those eyes. So much love.
Janelle misses it. The rush and thrill of the music, being in the company of the men who like to press how much of a brilliant dancer she is. Was. Does she even miss the sex? That same attention. No…?
Peeping from the backstage, little Janelle soaks up the dance floor. Saturday nights were always rabid busy and tonight is really no exception. Bax definitely needs to hire more girls – there will not be enough to go around. Lucky for him the country is spiraling into decline and debt and so, yes indeed, there will be fresh children aplenty to fall into the sweet honeytrap of prostitution and, even better, a never-ending stream of clients wishing to pay for the privilege of young sex because it takes their mind off the bills, off the hopelessness, off the futility. Just for a second. Open your mouth, little miss. Oh yes. There will be untold multiples of Danis and Baxes, each waiting to scrape out a living from the brew of poverty’s many desires.
A man buys one of the dancer children. She’s new. He is a regular; Janelle recognizes his face. Off they go to the back rooms. Janelle closes the curtain and returns to work.
The racquet works like this (in theory, assuming the following events unfold over the course of a few weeks): Janelle sits in Bax’s office and watches sad movies. Gem type is dependent on the timbre of the movie, so we have The Notebook for sapphires, Crash for emeralds, Cloud Atlas for tourmaline, or any other movie that can elicit an emotional response to which young Janelle can cry out jewels. Coughing them up also works for when the feelings don’t generate tear responses, so the majority of science fiction produces diamonds while Disney Pixar produces opals. Tonight she’s watching a documentary on how the solar system works – Dr. Brian Cox narrates how all matter in the universe is comprised of supanova blood, and Janelle bawls her eyes out because she’s never heard that beautiful fact before. She is made of stars! A solar furnace to meteor to earth to a young prostitute. Even if the universe is purposeless, it makes nice things to look at.
Imagine that, little slut. You are a star.
The jewels flow but she makes sure that nobody touches them aside from herself. Four diamonds this time – she scoops them into a clear petri dish and hands it to one of the shadows, who cradles the dish tight and carries it to the next room. There, Dani sits at a table, all clad in a scary filter mask and apron that makes her look like one of Satan’s minions. Dani, also wearing a set of particularly dashing blue nitrile gloves, sprays an edge, waits, then picks up one of Jan’s jewels and completes a thin layer of epoxy (polyurethane) all around the gem. Gems are then dried under a blacklight (ultraviolet light) and handed to Bax, who plays with the jewel until satisfied that, yes, his fingers are not melting off. Good on him for taking the responsibility of such a dangerous job.
Bax then fences the jewels on the gray market through a contact. Gems go out, cash comes in. No further questions.
Janelle looks through her first pay packet, counting the money. Ten thousand, fifteen thousand, eighteen thousand. That’s more than a week’s worth of rent and food! And the best part is that Dani still gets to take her home after work.
Dani appears from her work room and sits in beside the girl on Bax’s luscious couches. A faint smell of epoxy touches her white shirt. Jan pauses Contact. Dani swings an arm around the young creature.
‘Good work day, I think, young Janelle. Bax says we’ll only be doing this once a week, so that’ll free up more of your time.’
‘I want to stay here, though.’
‘Sure, you’d be more than welcome to come back, so long as you don’t dance. Otherwise that monster will come and try and eat you or something. Maybe you could water the plants in this sulky office. I don’t think Bax has ever taken care of these things.’
Janelle opens her mouth, but Bax’s office door crashes open and silences the entire room. Whoosh and bang. The shadows vanish. Into the gloom come two creatures: a minder like Dani mother-goosing a young girl. Janelle recognizes her straight away as the young dancer from earlier. All the exuberance has left her and she is a walking, clattering mess, teary and shaky, eyes looking to a million and one places. She’s not wearing anything from the waist up, just a pair of panties that never used to be spotted like that. A towel for modesty. Did she come through the club or one of Bax’s secret corridors? The girl’s minder addresses Dani, saying, ‘We got a blanket or somethin’ round here?’
Dani shakes her head but fetches her jacket and instructs the young girl to sit beside Janelle before she wraps the heavy black leather over her young shoulders. Dani throws a look to Janelle that says, ‘Keep her calm while I talk with the minder,’ and the two adults walk out of the circle of light into the shadows to discuss.
See how she shakes, this poor little thing. A nice shade of brown, the kind of color that all men can enjoy. Not too black, you know? Mixed. Just like her. Hair all flow and frizz. Head bent way, way down, arms hugging each other tightly. Janelle rests her hand on the girl’s thigh and murmurs, ‘It’s ok, it only hurts when you first start. Every time after that it gets better and better, ok?’
The girl jerks her head to Janelle in sad clockwork motion like a machine half-broken. Murmurs back, ‘He hurt me so much. I ask him to stop...’
Janelle sighs deep and rearranges herself on the couch so she’s sitting on her legs, facing the creature. She knows what to say. The words flow from her heart. No, it’s not a sudden lightbulbesque type of revelation. Rather, the quick crystallization of this situation. All that surrounds it – all the details and possibilities. And all that needs to be done. She thinks she can make sense of it. Dialing up her tone, Janelle summons all the quiet authority she can and proceeds to dole out her advice. First, with a question.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Frankie.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twelve.’
‘Me too. Shit Stack?’
‘Naw.’
‘Frankie, I’m Janelle. I need to ask you: do you need this job? Do you really need to work here?’
Frankie nods and wipes mucous from her nose, explains, ‘Brother’s goin’ to jail. My other brother the only one workin’. We relied on the drug money from Mike to pay rent. We caynt survive…’
Janelle nods, sad. Here’s where it gets tough.
‘You have to put up with it, Frankie. Everything. No matter what the men do to you, no matter what they ask. You do it. Every single thing. You can work them and suggest them and ask if they want to do something else because you’re not sure about it, but if they pull their money away then you’re a liability for Bax. You know what that means? You lose the club money. Bax doesn’t work a charity and none of the girls here will help you with your pay. You’re here to work. If you want the good pay, you do your job, otherwise you’ll just be a dancer people look at but can’t buy. Holding out only works if the men know they can get you eventually.’
‘I-I thought it’d be easy. But it hurt so much.’
‘I know. I know, Frankie, I know it does.’ Arm around the shoulder; Frankie crumbles under her touch. Cries that wrack her chest. Janelle continues, ‘But you can’t do this again. You can’t break down and leave a client. Once is fine, twice is not ok. You need to understand why.’
Janelle cups the girl under her beautiful chin and turns her, face to face. Horror in those eyes. Absolute horror.
‘You need to understand why. Because Bax has a list of girls already lined up as replacements. People like Dani and your minder probably have their eyes on lots of other girls who work on the factories and streets. You are replaceable. You are not special. All over Stallwind and Everden and Rend, thousands of girls will cut off an arm to be in your position, to earn the money you earn. But if you don’t earn money for Bax, then Bax finds another girl who is willing.’
Absolute horror. Tears so heavy.
‘So if you l
ove your brothers, if you want to live and put food on the table for the one remaining, if you want to live and not go to the Shit Stacks where the men’ll beat up your brother and rape you night after night and the officers will exchange good behavior reports for blowjobs, where you can only buy government food and government clothes and watch government internet broadcasts – if you don’t want that, then you will work. You will open your legs and let them come in. You will open your mouth and let them come in. If they pay, they can touch your hair. If they pay, they can slap you up a little bit. Not too much. If they pay, they can touch you wherever they want. When they hurt you, you bury it deep, you don’t let yourself feel anything but what they want you to feel. And at the end of the night, you can have a bath with the other girls and wash yourself clean and get the drugs you need to keep healthy. And you will get paid very, very well. And you can keep dancing up on that stage. You’re a good dancer. Better than me, I think. I loved watching you dance.’
Janelle stops crying and finishes, ‘That’s what you have to do. Otherwise, you are dead.’
Janelle understands now. She understands it all. And this knowledge – piecing together her year’s worth of experience – has rendered the sordid truth.
Child wipes the obsidian from her eyes before Frankie can notice. Two minders reappear from the shadows with stern faces. Dani lingers a little behind. Jan senses their decision and shuffles down the couch, breathing herself back to calm. Watches on.
Minder places hands on Frankie’s shoulders and says to the child, ‘You’re not cut out for this work, girl. You’re an amazing dancer but I don’t want you to get hurt like this. Come on, I’ll take you home.’
After Hope Dies Page 11
