Skin Nation

by Joni Bing

  ****

  I spent the first few minutes after dinner alone with my new comfort. To be honest, I used to hate reading, but after living in a commune without a thing to do, reading suddenly became this friend that I just couldn't lose once I got hooked. Funny how real friends seem that way. How you can't imagine a second without them once you meet their acquaintance until they leave your life again.

  “Hey.”

  I looked up and a transparent image of a handgun entered my thoughts in Z's headspace where he stood in the doorway.

  “Z.”

  “Just thought I'd check on you.”

  “For what? I'm fine.”

  He shrugged.

  I pressed my back more onto the wall I leaned on in my room and held the VERX close to my eyes, hiding every inch of a smile that could give me away. By then, I had read the first two pages of the first title and found out what VERX stood for: Visual Electronic Reader Xferior. I skimmed the next page in the story and when I looked up, Z still stood in the doorway.

  “You wanna read next?”

  “Oh no, I'm good,” he said evenly. He moved away from the doorway, but still kept his distance from me in front of the room.

  I shrugged coolly and read a few more pages. The story actually wasn't too bad. It was kind of set up like a diary. It was about this girl who lived with these strangers and they were hiding out together and...then I realized this was me. This was my life.

  “Has it gotten good?”

  I looked over and there he leaned beside me. My stomach quivered when I saw our shoulders inches from touching. The pressure from standing so close to him intensified when he leaned closer as if to read part of the story.

  “Yeah...actually...”

  Without warning, he took my face, and we were off. I thought about Josh and my heart burned like someone had slapped me. Still, I didn't hold back. I couldn't. I had a plan to play out. Feelings to resolve. Thoughts to solve. Like, how someone so cold and brutal and possibly sexist could kiss so learned and passionately without a heart to make it possible, and how I could make this be our first kiss of many. Without warning, he let me go and stepped back a few steps with a mischievous smirk.

  “You didn't pull back?”

  “What made you think I would?”

  He smirked and kissed me again. I felt us drift near the lamp and opened my left eye to a view of the small box dresser it sat upon. I smiled and felt him move back.

  “We keep'n this a secret?” I asked him.

  He nodded and leaned in so close that I saw the green and gold tints in his eyes. “Yeah, I like secrets.”

  I smiled more, trying not to shake from excitement. “Good, 'cause I've got one,” I leaned in slow and watched him close his eyes when our lips met. I reached into my back pocket and wrapped a finger around the trigger.

  “What's the secret?” he smirked. He brushed his cheek against mine and I wondered why I hadn't already unlocked the safety on the gun.

  “Right...you're taking your last breath.”

  Z moved back and he ran out the second I cocked the gun and shot at the door, barely grazing his right ear. I didn't have to wait for a scream because the moment the bullet made contact with him, Z screamed “You crazy bitch!” at the top of his lungs as he made a break for it from the room, which made me laugh just as loud. Then, I heard a door open outside my room.

  “What happened?”

  “Your freakin' Lady, that's who!”

  “Whoa, Z, calm down-”

  “Where were you idiots just now? You didn't hear the gun? You didn't think to come help me?!” Z boomed.

  I stepped to the doorway and leaned against it to watch Z yell at Reno and Mar. Stifling my laughter in that moment was one of the most difficult parts of the prank that I had to fulfill.

  “Hey, man, it was your bet,” Reno laughed with his hands in defensive mode.

  “Shouldn't expect people to come to your rescue, Z. Heroes fight their own fight, and take responsibility when they go too far,” Lary said, shaking his head disappointedly.

  Z looked incredulously between the four standing in the perimeter around where he stood between the sitting room and Lary's room, and when he finally looked behind him at where I continued to stand, I responded with the most psychotic face that I could compose without laughing. Lary cut eye contact with Z to look over at me and smirked. “Bleu.”

  I cocked the gun and walked slowly toward Z who everyone closed into a tighter circle. He tried to hide it as best he could, but I still saw his body trembling, becoming goose-bumped and cold. I remembered how I felt during the moments in time when my body reacted the same way. I felt at anxious peace, or trapped in a box between life and death, or...nothing at all. It all depended on the situation, but how I felt after always stayed the same. Relief. Relief that I wasn't really in love, that time isn't fixed, and that I could still feel something.

  In that moment, I realized good, bad, or indifferent, that every soul deserved that feeling. At the same time, I didn't want to chicken out before Lary gave the signal. I didn't want to fit my gender's stereotype. I inched closer and before I put Z in a headlock like we planned, Z closed his eyes. All of us looked around, unsure whether to finish out the plan. We were all just so surprised. We couldn't believe that Z seriously thought we were going to kill him. He really thought I was going to kill him, and everyone would get a thrill out of seeing him sincerely fear for his life. Then again it was what we planned to do. It was what I planned to think about all night until I could find sleep after it was over.

  It was bad enough that people like professionals and Requesters existed, and now I was acting just like them; bloodthirsty without a valid cause, and foolish. I just couldn't. As crazy vengeful as I tried to make myself, I couldn't. After noticing my hesitation, Reno tackled Z to the ground by his waist, and everyone else laughed, screaming Gotcha. The boys piled on top of him one after the other, pulling on his wavy nape length brown hair, and I stood there witnessing the entire scene, finally feeling somewhat better, at least to the extent where I could laugh again.

  Z rose from the ground as everyone continued laughing and when things got quiet and everyone's laughter died, he looked around at all of us with the most skin chilling dead face I ever laid eyes on. Our contact froze me in place and a negative energy I can't really explain surged through me like electricity. He must've known his effect on me because I was the one he stared through the longest. Then, without a word, he left for his room. The four of us looked around and suddenly I didn't know how tonight would end.