[story] gloves
May. 30th, 2009 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ib_archiveauthor: Erin K. Bartuska
email: madrinamedrosa [at] gmail.com
artist: calliope s (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
coffeebased)
email: coffeebased [at] gmail.com
"We're glad to have you back, Miss Lennox."
She tugged the leather gloves on; they were black, and fastened with a little snap at the wrist. The man who was speaking to her stood facing the window, silhouetted in sunlight. "I hope you won't mind the gloves," he continued. "They will make everyone a little more comfortable. Not everyone at the day office understands what you are."
"What I do," she corrected him, as he turned around to face her.
"Right." He tugged at his tie. "What you do."
The apartment she left behind looked sad and dusty. She had replaced the broken pane in the front window, and the torn screen. The new owner of the car was going to pick it up from her on Monday; she wouldn't need it in the city. The cat, too, had a new home.
Her palms were sweaty, now, as she crossed the bridge. When she left the city, she swore she'd never come back. But she was crossing the familiar water, the boundary line, the invisible perimeter. Panic gripped her and she tightened her hands on the steering wheel, forced herself to return her attention to the cars around her.
All too soon she was pulling up to the building that would be her home, for the next while at least. She opened the curtains that had been left behind by the previous tenant and the bright sunlight fell on her skin. The memory of the hot asphalt gripped her and the small room suddenly felt claustrophobic. As abruptly as she'd entered the apartment, she went out.
There was a street vendor around the corner and she bought some lemonade, carefully counting out the coins. It was weak and oversweet, but it tasted like home. She could have no home. That was her secret.
The streets flowed under her feet like water, for a while, and when it started to grow dim, she headed towards the center of the city, ignoring her aching calves and feet. She might not have a home, but, oh, yes, she had a job to do.
This was the ugly thing about her work: she'd been born to do it. Like the city, she could not escape it. They could pay her, or they could not. They could enter it in neat little figures in spreadsheets, but they went home at the end of the day, and she did not, because there was nowhere that she could go and leave it behind.
There was no touch in which she could not feel it, the beating of hearts that moved unlike her own. She was not dead, just other. She could not feel what they felt.
Whenever they asked her, she told them that she could not remember the first time. This was a lie. She'd touched the boy's arm, and known what he wanted to do to her, and she could not even cry out. He fell and did not get up.
What she'd give for a heart that beat, a heart that could still.
She'd spent all day in the sun, the first day that she was there. In the sun, she could pretend there was no night.
The first one of the evening went down in an alley. She checked his pulse, dusted off her hands. Before she put the gloves back on, she tagged his toe for the morgue, and noted down the location in her little book.
"You've got quite a knack for this," said her handler, surprised. She looked at him impassively. He was just a kid, the freckles on his nose fading after his recent promotion from desk work. "You're really good."
"It's what I do," she told him. "Pick up your bag, and let's go."
Good was not a label she applied to herself. She was no faster or quicker than a human, and slower than others. There were none like her that she knew of.
They killed what was other, unless it was useful.
She killed what was other, when it turned up.
She looked at the kid in the streetlights. His hair was rumpled, as if he'd rolled out of bed on the way to their meeting place. He probably had. Stupid kid. For a moment, she felt a flash of affection for him. In the same way, she'd been fond of her cat. Too simple to know the difference. Too simple to see her. Too innocent to need to die.
He'd been safe, unlike the woman-other under her hands.
The kid was watching her again. He didn't look up at her, just at the body slumping against her now. She did her thing, wiped the sweat off her brow. Not from exertion; they never ran. It was merely hot out, like any other summer night.
"Don't feel a thing, do you?"
She shrugged with practiced callousness. "It doesn't matter."
It didn't, of course. No way to change it. The ones who died came to her whether she liked or not; she drew them in like a moth to a flame. They touched her; they fell. The men in the office liked to think of her as a tool for the light, an aberrance, a blessing. She hadn't the heart to tell them that there was no fire in her, no stirring. Only an empty fog.
Out came the notebook, and she penciled the kill in. The notebook fit comfortably in her back pocket.
The feeling of comfort disturbed her, so she moved on to the next one.
The kid always got tired out by the end of the night. Some didn't take to switching the schedule well. It didn't matter much to her. Sometimes she slept, sometimes she didn't. She never felt awake, so she never felt tired, either.
In climbing down a fire escape one night, the kid lost his footing; she caught him, gloves off. Their eyes locked and her mouth went dry. She felt the beating of his heart as if it were her blood pumping through unused veins. It took her a moment to let go.
"You should be more careful," she said, meaningfully looking down at the ground.
He was silent, and she lifted her gaze to his face. It was ashen beneath the familiarly rumpled hair. "Could you have killed me?" he asked, slowly.
Funny how it could still sting, after all this time. She knelt to pick up the gloves. "No." She sighed. "I could never hurt you."
The kid put his hand on her shoulder, and she flinched. But he did not release her. "Could you make me come to you? Like they do?"
His pulse beat in her ears. "I don't think you understand," she said. "I don't make them do anything at all."
She felt nauseous, and sat down. Never mind whose fire escape this was. She was dizzy. There had been too many tonight. It took something out of her. "What?" He was still standing.
"They came to me. I quit. They broke into my house, while I was sleeping, to touch me," she tried to unclench her teeth, "to die."
She had never said it aloud before.
"I'm sorry, Katy."
"You wouldn't understand," she said bitterly, thinking of the cat she'd rolled over to protect in the dark of the night.
Before she'd left, she had tried to die. It was just too hard. She couldn't drown, couldn't poison herself, had no blood to bleed. It was quite possible that she could be taken out by fire, but that was too difficult to arrange. There was no other of her kind.
It wasn't just the job that drove her to it. Too many years of the one who wouldn't die, couldn't die at her hand. She tried to forget that. He'd tried so hard to use her to turn a profit, but no profit could come from her hands, only death, only ugly things.
The men at the office had taken her in, but that was more of a curse than it was a blessing. They should have put her down. But there was no one to put her down.
She wished that she had been born mindless and hungry with gnashing teeth. It would have been better. Someone could have culled or exorcised that, rather than wrapping it up like a present from the gods.
She didn't even believe in them.
"Why did you go in to this line of work?" she asked the kid that night. They kept a careful distance since the incident on the fire escape. The air had grown cooler.
He scuffed his toe on the concrete. "My brother was killed. Three years ago." He looked off down the street, at the flickering lights that never dimmed. "Human. They got him, eventually. Maybe one of you."
"There's no one like me."
The kid looked embarrassed. "Sorry, I didn't mean-"
She held up a hand. "It's ok."
In a way, she understood it. To her, the kid was just another one of them, dumb and ignorant as a little lamb. He was the same as the ones who had picked out her gloves, as if safety were an issue. As if they needed protection from her. Stupid.
She tugged off her right glove, and then her left one. Wordlessly, she turned to her left, and touched the man passing by on the wrist.
There was nothing left in her to feel.
After that night, the kid opened his mouth and couldn't shut it. He just didn't get it, truly did not understand. That he tried so hard made it worse. "What's it like?" he'd ask her.
It wasn't like anything. She couldn't tell him that, though. "It's my job," she said.
She called it her job, thought about it as her job, because any time she acknowledged that it was what she was, through and through, she started planning where to build the bonfire again. It wasn't as if she hadn't tried. But there was nothing for her but this. No matter how many days she spent sitting in the sun and drinking lemonade, it still couldn't be burnt out.
If they could have cut this out with her entrails, she'd have let them.
After a while, the kid got angry. She couldn't blame him. The job was not particularly glamorous. She was no white knight. She had no family to fight for.
"You don't understand," she said over and over.
Her family was all gone now. The woman from whose womb she came had left, the man that had sired her was gone, somehow. He was the one who'd tried to sell her. He was the one who'd given her to that boy, so many years ago.
He'd have thrown her in the fire just to see if it killed her.
There was no point in trying to pretend anymore. The ones who died would crawl in through her windows, break down her doors to get to her. No meaning in it, no reason.
"Maybe you should handle someone else," she said finally. Tagged the man, slipped her gloves back on.
The kid looked as if he'd been shot. "What?"
She hastily continued. "Don't you want to be with someone who's in the business of justice? Takes care of people like the one who killed your brother?"
"No. No!" His fists were tightened into little balls. "That's what you do! That's what I want to do!"
"You're so young." She reached out and tucked a lock of too-long hair behind his ear with her gloved hands. "I am no arbiter. I just show up."
Hurt flashed in his eyes, but he said nothing more, just sulkily slung his bag back onto his shoulder.
The sky had lightened to a thin grey. All Saints' Day was dawning, and it had been a busy night.
She leaned against the building, tired. Her hands trembled, dampening the lining of their little leather shields. Absently, she played with the spare tag she'd stuck in her front pocket earlier.
A man approached her, stumbling across the street. His eyes were greedy and eager, and she started to fumble with the gloves.
The kid got to him first. "You bastard," he hissed. "You're going to die."
The man just pushed him to the side. They were always like this. He was still a few yards away.
"Don't you hear me?" the kid yelled. "Leave her alone!"
Didn't he understand that there was no other way?
The man continued toward her, and she got the glove off at last. She had time for one more, she had to.
But he stopped a few feet short of her. He fell.
The kid was behind him. He had the knife from the bag.
She stared at the kid a long time, at his messy brown hair matte under the early dawn light. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice shaking. "It's just not fair." Already he was starting toward her.
"Hush now," she said, knowing that he couldn't hear her. "Hush."
She kissed him on the forehead, and touched his cheek.
the end
email: madrinamedrosa [at] gmail.com
artist: calliope s (
coffeebased)email: coffeebased [at] gmail.com
"We're glad to have you back, Miss Lennox."
She tugged the leather gloves on; they were black, and fastened with a little snap at the wrist. The man who was speaking to her stood facing the window, silhouetted in sunlight. "I hope you won't mind the gloves," he continued. "They will make everyone a little more comfortable. Not everyone at the day office understands what you are."
"What I do," she corrected him, as he turned around to face her.
"Right." He tugged at his tie. "What you do."
The apartment she left behind looked sad and dusty. She had replaced the broken pane in the front window, and the torn screen. The new owner of the car was going to pick it up from her on Monday; she wouldn't need it in the city. The cat, too, had a new home.
Her palms were sweaty, now, as she crossed the bridge. When she left the city, she swore she'd never come back. But she was crossing the familiar water, the boundary line, the invisible perimeter. Panic gripped her and she tightened her hands on the steering wheel, forced herself to return her attention to the cars around her.
All too soon she was pulling up to the building that would be her home, for the next while at least. She opened the curtains that had been left behind by the previous tenant and the bright sunlight fell on her skin. The memory of the hot asphalt gripped her and the small room suddenly felt claustrophobic. As abruptly as she'd entered the apartment, she went out.
There was a street vendor around the corner and she bought some lemonade, carefully counting out the coins. It was weak and oversweet, but it tasted like home. She could have no home. That was her secret.
The streets flowed under her feet like water, for a while, and when it started to grow dim, she headed towards the center of the city, ignoring her aching calves and feet. She might not have a home, but, oh, yes, she had a job to do.
This was the ugly thing about her work: she'd been born to do it. Like the city, she could not escape it. They could pay her, or they could not. They could enter it in neat little figures in spreadsheets, but they went home at the end of the day, and she did not, because there was nowhere that she could go and leave it behind.
There was no touch in which she could not feel it, the beating of hearts that moved unlike her own. She was not dead, just other. She could not feel what they felt.
Whenever they asked her, she told them that she could not remember the first time. This was a lie. She'd touched the boy's arm, and known what he wanted to do to her, and she could not even cry out. He fell and did not get up.
What she'd give for a heart that beat, a heart that could still.
She'd spent all day in the sun, the first day that she was there. In the sun, she could pretend there was no night.
The first one of the evening went down in an alley. She checked his pulse, dusted off her hands. Before she put the gloves back on, she tagged his toe for the morgue, and noted down the location in her little book.
"You've got quite a knack for this," said her handler, surprised. She looked at him impassively. He was just a kid, the freckles on his nose fading after his recent promotion from desk work. "You're really good."
"It's what I do," she told him. "Pick up your bag, and let's go."
Good was not a label she applied to herself. She was no faster or quicker than a human, and slower than others. There were none like her that she knew of.
They killed what was other, unless it was useful.
She killed what was other, when it turned up.
She looked at the kid in the streetlights. His hair was rumpled, as if he'd rolled out of bed on the way to their meeting place. He probably had. Stupid kid. For a moment, she felt a flash of affection for him. In the same way, she'd been fond of her cat. Too simple to know the difference. Too simple to see her. Too innocent to need to die.
He'd been safe, unlike the woman-other under her hands.
The kid was watching her again. He didn't look up at her, just at the body slumping against her now. She did her thing, wiped the sweat off her brow. Not from exertion; they never ran. It was merely hot out, like any other summer night.
"Don't feel a thing, do you?"
She shrugged with practiced callousness. "It doesn't matter."
It didn't, of course. No way to change it. The ones who died came to her whether she liked or not; she drew them in like a moth to a flame. They touched her; they fell. The men in the office liked to think of her as a tool for the light, an aberrance, a blessing. She hadn't the heart to tell them that there was no fire in her, no stirring. Only an empty fog.
Out came the notebook, and she penciled the kill in. The notebook fit comfortably in her back pocket.
The feeling of comfort disturbed her, so she moved on to the next one.
The kid always got tired out by the end of the night. Some didn't take to switching the schedule well. It didn't matter much to her. Sometimes she slept, sometimes she didn't. She never felt awake, so she never felt tired, either.
In climbing down a fire escape one night, the kid lost his footing; she caught him, gloves off. Their eyes locked and her mouth went dry. She felt the beating of his heart as if it were her blood pumping through unused veins. It took her a moment to let go.
"You should be more careful," she said, meaningfully looking down at the ground.
He was silent, and she lifted her gaze to his face. It was ashen beneath the familiarly rumpled hair. "Could you have killed me?" he asked, slowly.
Funny how it could still sting, after all this time. She knelt to pick up the gloves. "No." She sighed. "I could never hurt you."
The kid put his hand on her shoulder, and she flinched. But he did not release her. "Could you make me come to you? Like they do?"
His pulse beat in her ears. "I don't think you understand," she said. "I don't make them do anything at all."
She felt nauseous, and sat down. Never mind whose fire escape this was. She was dizzy. There had been too many tonight. It took something out of her. "What?" He was still standing.
"They came to me. I quit. They broke into my house, while I was sleeping, to touch me," she tried to unclench her teeth, "to die."
She had never said it aloud before.
"I'm sorry, Katy."
"You wouldn't understand," she said bitterly, thinking of the cat she'd rolled over to protect in the dark of the night.
Before she'd left, she had tried to die. It was just too hard. She couldn't drown, couldn't poison herself, had no blood to bleed. It was quite possible that she could be taken out by fire, but that was too difficult to arrange. There was no other of her kind.
It wasn't just the job that drove her to it. Too many years of the one who wouldn't die, couldn't die at her hand. She tried to forget that. He'd tried so hard to use her to turn a profit, but no profit could come from her hands, only death, only ugly things.
The men at the office had taken her in, but that was more of a curse than it was a blessing. They should have put her down. But there was no one to put her down.
She wished that she had been born mindless and hungry with gnashing teeth. It would have been better. Someone could have culled or exorcised that, rather than wrapping it up like a present from the gods.
She didn't even believe in them.
"Why did you go in to this line of work?" she asked the kid that night. They kept a careful distance since the incident on the fire escape. The air had grown cooler.
He scuffed his toe on the concrete. "My brother was killed. Three years ago." He looked off down the street, at the flickering lights that never dimmed. "Human. They got him, eventually. Maybe one of you."
"There's no one like me."
The kid looked embarrassed. "Sorry, I didn't mean-"
She held up a hand. "It's ok."
In a way, she understood it. To her, the kid was just another one of them, dumb and ignorant as a little lamb. He was the same as the ones who had picked out her gloves, as if safety were an issue. As if they needed protection from her. Stupid.
She tugged off her right glove, and then her left one. Wordlessly, she turned to her left, and touched the man passing by on the wrist.
There was nothing left in her to feel.
After that night, the kid opened his mouth and couldn't shut it. He just didn't get it, truly did not understand. That he tried so hard made it worse. "What's it like?" he'd ask her.
It wasn't like anything. She couldn't tell him that, though. "It's my job," she said.
She called it her job, thought about it as her job, because any time she acknowledged that it was what she was, through and through, she started planning where to build the bonfire again. It wasn't as if she hadn't tried. But there was nothing for her but this. No matter how many days she spent sitting in the sun and drinking lemonade, it still couldn't be burnt out.
If they could have cut this out with her entrails, she'd have let them.
After a while, the kid got angry. She couldn't blame him. The job was not particularly glamorous. She was no white knight. She had no family to fight for.
"You don't understand," she said over and over.
Her family was all gone now. The woman from whose womb she came had left, the man that had sired her was gone, somehow. He was the one who'd tried to sell her. He was the one who'd given her to that boy, so many years ago.
He'd have thrown her in the fire just to see if it killed her.
There was no point in trying to pretend anymore. The ones who died would crawl in through her windows, break down her doors to get to her. No meaning in it, no reason.
"Maybe you should handle someone else," she said finally. Tagged the man, slipped her gloves back on.
The kid looked as if he'd been shot. "What?"
She hastily continued. "Don't you want to be with someone who's in the business of justice? Takes care of people like the one who killed your brother?"
"No. No!" His fists were tightened into little balls. "That's what you do! That's what I want to do!"
"You're so young." She reached out and tucked a lock of too-long hair behind his ear with her gloved hands. "I am no arbiter. I just show up."
Hurt flashed in his eyes, but he said nothing more, just sulkily slung his bag back onto his shoulder.
The sky had lightened to a thin grey. All Saints' Day was dawning, and it had been a busy night.
She leaned against the building, tired. Her hands trembled, dampening the lining of their little leather shields. Absently, she played with the spare tag she'd stuck in her front pocket earlier.
A man approached her, stumbling across the street. His eyes were greedy and eager, and she started to fumble with the gloves.
The kid got to him first. "You bastard," he hissed. "You're going to die."
The man just pushed him to the side. They were always like this. He was still a few yards away.
"Don't you hear me?" the kid yelled. "Leave her alone!"
Didn't he understand that there was no other way?
The man continued toward her, and she got the glove off at last. She had time for one more, she had to.
But he stopped a few feet short of her. He fell.
The kid was behind him. He had the knife from the bag.
She stared at the kid a long time, at his messy brown hair matte under the early dawn light. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice shaking. "It's just not fair." Already he was starting toward her.
"Hush now," she said, knowing that he couldn't hear her. "Hush."
She kissed him on the forehead, and touched his cheek.
the end
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 02:20 am (UTC)And the art is also awesome.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-12 12:01 am (UTC)The art is gorgeous, too. I love how intricate and detailed it is; it seems to fit the story really well.
Awesome job, both of you!
louis vuitton bag
Date: 2011-02-11 10:22 pm (UTC)