The Music of Razors

by Cameron Rogers

  He looked right at her. “The person with the most power in a relationship is the person who cares least. If I hadn’t ccc-cared you wuh-wuh-wouldn’t have left because it would have meant leaving empty-handed.” He relaxed a little, point made. “People feel loss more than gain. Self-interest is the great motivator.”

  This was killing both of them, this back-and-forthing, this more-than-friends, less-than-lovers relationship. The only time they ever got this hostile with each other was when they got too close to the one sensitive topic they had: each other.

  But she couldn’t stay mad. Not with Suni.

  Oolric raised his head from Suni’s knee and looked out the window. He stood, stretched, and dug his claws into Suni’s leg. Suni yelped and brushed the cat away, almost spilling his wine. Oolric ambled lazily toward the sofa bed.

  Suni wiped droplets off his leg. “Shit. So how’s Walter?”

  “Same as always.”

  “You should spend more time with him.”

  Hope stopped herself from telling him that it wasn’t any of his damn business. Instead she watched the cat standing, paws up on the sill, looking through the glass at something in the yard.

  Outside, Walter watched as Hope watched the cat watching him.

  Five years had passed since he’d taken the Anxietoscope from Tub in that brown river. In that time he’d come to an agreement with the instrument, decided upon a plan with its shattered intelligence, and left it buried beneath two feet of earth a block from Hope’s home. Almost immediately she had begun to dig holes. Eventually she had found the shining silver box; a box Walter made from a scrap of himself, it would tell Hope all she needed to know about the Anxietoscope. He could feel it thrumming on the bed, inside Hope’s backpack. It had taken five years but finally Hope had found it, homed in on its call. It was inevitable.

  Walter had never been permitted to touch the tools in his time with Henry and now Walter fully understood why: Henry had been conditioning him. Henry had to be sure Walter was deaf to instinct, senseless to anything the tools might try to tell him. Henry had to establish himself as the absolute certainty at the center of Walter’s new universe.

  And he had failed.

  “I don’t believe that’s your take on a successful relationship. You don’t need to care less. You’re strong. If you want something, you go after it. You didn’t let your mother stop you becoming an artist and you don’t let people like Kristian stop you being friends with me. I mean, you are the same person who hid in luggage and flew to Canada when he was ten, right?”

  “British Columbia,” he mumbled.

  “I’ve got the newspaper clippings. About how you had to call your mother from Customs. About how no one could work out how you managed to get that far. You’re smart, Suni. You’ll become something amazing once you get out of this crapped-out school and crapped-out town. People like you always do. And I’ll be able to say I knew you.”

  Suni didn’t say anything. He was shading the tip of his index finger with the flat of a charcoal stick.

  “You’re too modest,” Hope said. “You know that.”

  Suni sniffed, rubbed his nose, changed the subject. “Ever wuh-wondered why I followed you from school to school?”

  Hope’s brain locked. “You didn’t. You switched because Kristian switched and the art depart—”

  “Oh come on! I can do art an-nnn-nnn-ywhere. One school’s the same as an-nnn-other. Yeah, me and Kristian were fuh-fff-friends then but I wouldn’t have changed schools on his account.”

  “But…”

  “There’s not a lot of people like us, Hope.”

  Hope didn’t say anything. It wasn’t the first time he’d said something like that. Then it occurred to her: “You didn’t even know me at our first school. You transferred from private to public school without knowing me at all. That’s how we first met.”

  Suni didn’t say anything. He didn’t look away, either. It was creeping her out a little. “What? What is it? Are you trying to tell me you were drawn to me by the call of lerrve?”

  Suni just scowled into his glass, obviously wishing he had more wine. “I shouldn’t have said anything. And nn-nuh-now I’ve pushed you even farther away with that stupid journal idea.” Exasperated, he shoved back against his bed, staring at the ceiling. “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”

  She didn’t know what to say. They’d been through all this before. It was a conversation with no resolution. She raised her empty glass to the candles. She couldn’t look at him just yet. “That which does not kill us makes us stranger,” she said.

  Suni pushed his empty glass away with a single finger, watched it catch on the carpet and tip over. A drop flew free, sank into the weave, and disappeared. Traffic hissed and shushed distantly, out on one of the main roads, past the parks and houses. “That which does not kill us leaves us fuh-fucking wounded, and that’s about it.”

  It was quiet for a while after that. Hope wasn’t sure if what she was listening to outside was the breeze or distant traffic. Then she said, “Do you trust me?”

  FOURTEEN

  HUNGRY

  HOPE UNWRAPPED HER COAT FROM AROUND THE BOX and placed it on the spare bed beneath the window. Amber candlelight danced off its brilliant surfaces and writhing figures, lighting the room like an undersea cave. Like a dream vision.

  “I found it,” Hope told him. “I dug it up.”

  “You’re kidding,” Suni said. He ran a finger along one radiant edge.

  “I wouldn’t…,” Hope cautioned, but it was too late. With a sudden intake of breath Suni snatched his hand back.

  “It jjj-juh-juh-just…”

  Hope nodded. “It does that.” She reached down and touched the lid. “Wait till you see what’s inside.”

  She opened it, and there it lay, a bauble of pure reflective silver tipped with a delicately curved needle-thin talon, resting on a crumpled bed of soft muslin. The thorned thimble rose three inches into the air and stopped, rotating slowly above its dun-colored bed, showing itself to be beautiful in candlelight.

  “I don’t think sss-sss-someone would have just buh-bbb-buried this.”

  “It’s called an Anxietoscope,” Hope said, fixated by the play of light across shifting and turning mercury. “Hey…you okay?”

  Suni’s face was bloodless. “How’s it floating like that?” he asked, trying to sound calm. “Mmm-muh-mmm-magnets or something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s it for?”

  Hope rubbed her hands on the legs of her jeans, still looking at it. She shrugged.

  “And you just fff-found this? Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she repeated, wondering what the problem was. “Why?”

  Suni tried to shrug, and failed. “Have you ttt-ttt-tried it on?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. I was a little scared.”

  “But you know what it does,” Suni urged. “Yuh-yuh-yyy-you listened to the box.”

  “Yeah.”

  With slow deliberation, as if about to grab a snake by the head, Hope reached out with open fingers and claimed the thimble. It came without resistance and with practically no tactility or weight. The only way Hope sensed she was holding something was through resistance to her grip. The Anxietoscope wasn’t cold. It was as warm as she was. It looked like metal but felt like…nothing.

  Walter stood in the yard, watching.

  The thimble sighed a tone, soft and clear…and Hope got a headful of…

  She sat down on the bed.

  She held the ’scope out to Suni. “Touch this, would you?”

  Suni stretched out a finger, placed it on the thimble. “What now?”

  “You didn’t get that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Weird.”

  Walter balled his fists. It was as he expected: Hope wasn’t getting anything from it.

  “What was it?”

  Hope shook her head. “I don’t know. Just a…headachy,
jumbled kind of…salad. I guess. Lots of light and violence. Or something.”

  “Well, that sounds promising.”

  “I’m going to try it on.”

  “Naturally.”

  Glancing up for one final look of confirmation from Suni, she slipped it over the index finger of her right hand.

  Perfect fit: a gleaming joint tipped with a fine barb. All eyes on it, waiting. Her fingers were splayed in the air before her, the tip of her finger sheathed in hooked silver. “It feels weird. Like it’s…”

  Suni stepped back. “Jesus.” The Anxietoscope liquefied, running over the first and second joints of Hope’s finger. Suni’s hands came up, stopping just short of snatching it off. “What’s it doing? Are you okay?”

  Hope nodded, eyes still on it. “Yeah…yeah…,” she said, distracted. “It kind of tickles.”

  Suni seemed unsure, eyeing it distrustfully as it spread down Hope’s palm and began creeping against gravity, up her remaining fingers and thumb. “You sure?”

  Hope nodded, watching. As it slid up and over each finger, neat and tight but not constrictive, it petered into another fine, hooked barb. When the work was done Hope’s hand was quicksilver-sheathed and all fingers taloned. Multiple reflections of her own face, distorted or inverted, stared back from the mounds and creases of her palm. A sliver of silver, a mercury needle, subtly curved from the tip of each finger and thumb. Hope was grinning, flexing and turning her hand. “Wow.” She laughed.

  Suni swallowed, drily. “So…now what?”

  Hope ran her eyes over her hand and asked again: “Do you trust me?”

  “Why?”

  “Do you?”

  “I guh-guess. Why?”

  “I think this might be able to help you.”

  “Come again?”

  Hope chewed her bottom lip for a moment, second thoughts wrestling for first position. “Turn around,” she said.

  “No!”

  “Just…just trust me.”

  “No way! Not till you tell me what you’re guh-gonna do with that thing.”

  “If I tell you, you won’t do it.”

  “Well I’m definitely not doing it now.”

  Hope held the ’scope-hand like a surgeon in gloves: fingers up, palm toward her, keeping it away from herself and everything else, neutral until needed.

  To be used in the direct examination of a subject’s fears, the box had said. The Anxietoscope allows core fears to be localized with exactitude and removed for closer study…

  “It might stop you hurting. So we can stay friends.” God, that sounded so warped when she said it out loud. “Don’t you want that?”

  Suni tried reasoning. “Hope, that thing looks lethal. Maybe you should jjj-just take it off.”

  He didn’t trust her. He thought she was going to harm him. She could tell. It hurt.

  She moved her hand, feeling the ’scope, idly running the thumb-claw up and down the other claws, one by one, like a mantis cleaning its mandibles.

  “Hope,” Suni said again. “Take it off till we work it out.”

  “Suni…do you think I’d ever do anything…?”

  He sat down. “No, of course not,” he said plaintively. “But it was enough jjj-just having you put the damn thing on. And those things look sharp.”

  “This can help. I know it can.”

  “Are you kidding? How is that guh-guh-gonna help mmm-mmmmmm-me with you? How? We don’t even know wuh-www-what it is! Look at it!”

  She sighed and ran her other hand through her shock of cropped hair, groaning in frustration to the cobwebs overhead. “Will you at least let me run this thing over you and see if it wants to do anything?”

  Suni eyed it distrustfully, like he wanted to scuttle back on the unmade bed, away from the silver thing on the end of his friend’s arm. But she could tell he didn’t want to refuse her, either. He still held out hope that someday they’d go back to what they had been. It made her insides twist that she was using that as leverage now. God, she didn’t even know what she was doing! She wasn’t even entirely sure what this thing was, and here she was with it on her hand like some kind of taloned parasite, and she with half a gut full of wine. Maybe he had a point: maybe she should just take it off.

  “Did you ever stop to think maybe someone’s out there looking for that thing?”

  Hope shrugged. “Maybe. But it was buried.”

  “Whoever owned it probably knew how to use it. What kind of person do you think that is?”

  “Look. I won’t touch you. I just want to see if it wants to do anything. Work it out that way.”

  “‘It’?”

  “It knows what it needs to do.” She saw the look on his face and laughed. “It’s okay.”

  Suni was looking for assurance, or a change of heart, found neither, and gave in. “All right. Buh-but don’t touch me with it, okay?”

  Hope nodded and stepped over to him.

  “Hope…” He was all eyes and vulnerable, like a kid in a dentist’s chair. “Think about what I said, okay? Think about what might happen if someone comes looking for it.”

  Hope crouched before him and started at his feet. Slowly she ran the Anxietoscope up Suni’s leg, an inch or so out from the worn denim of his jeans, across his waist, and down the other leg. She traveled back up, fingers flexing, trying to coax something from the ’scope, some kind of sense of what she was supposed to do with it. She moved up toward his chest…

  “Um…,” she said.

  Suni glared at her. “‘Um’? What the hhh-huh-hell is ‘um’?”

  “Relax. It wants to go higher. I’m holding it where it is, but it wants to go higher. I can feel it.”

  “Then don’t. Actually, Hope, I really thhh-think you should just tuh-take it off.”

  “Maybe we should go higher.”

  Suni stared at her. “Hope, tuh-tuh-ttt-take it off. You don’t know what it does.”

  “So let’s see if we can get a better idea. I don’t have to do what it wants.”

  “What it www-wants? Hope, what did the box say about it?”

  “Well, I—”

  The Anxietoscope shot upward, yanking Hope after it—tearing at shoulder muscles, pulling at joints. Suni flinched as all four fingers and thumb shot into his head, toppling him backward, and Hope—her fingers still locked inside his skull—was drawn up over him, face shoved to the musky cloth of his T-shirt where the thin muscles of his stomach spasmed against her cheek. Dresser and candles crashed sideways in her vision.

  This sense of Nothingness washing over her was not unfamiliar. This had happened to her before, not so long ago. The numb state of being trapped within the meat of your body while the world outside collapsed; being dimly aware of your inability to do anything but stare out the windows of your eyes and watch it all happen.

  Her hand was in Suni’s head, silver fingers buried up to the second knuckle. She knew death; she had been here, too.

  Her hand was electric and pulsing. It was like she was thirstier than she had ever been for something she never knew she needed, and the ’scope was taking care of that need. She found she couldn’t stop herself, and the ’scope preferred it that way.

  Upstairs a door slammed. Hope heard a woman yelling in a language she recognized as Japanese. Her arm relaxed and went slack, fingers trailing down Suni’s face until the silver hand rested over him like a funeral mask. Fast footsteps on the inside stairs, then a pounding at the door. Hope rolled off Suni, onto her back, and could see the sliding wooden door shaking as someone thumped it over and over again. A high chattering voice demanding something she couldn’t understand.

  And then, as if she had imagined everything, Suni was standing up, hair tangled and loosened from the black band that held it back, strands sticking up at odd angles like a diffuse halo, walking for the door.

  Distant and disassociated, Hope was turning more important things over in her mind. She took a moment to roll off and behind the bed. Lying in the darkness against the w
all, she found herself alone and examined what she had harvested from the stuff of her friend’s soul.

  She woke to sunlight filtered in slits through the bamboo blinds, burning red through her eyelids. She was lying on the spare bed, tangled in a stale sheet. In that waking instant she remembered everything. Suni wasn’t there, and the sliding door leading to the internal stairs, and the yard beyond them, was open. She was no longer wearing the ’scope.

  She got up and quickly walked to the backyard, refilled with the adrenaline of the night before. She’d seen her fingers slide bloodlessly in through Suni’s forehead and face. But he’d gotten up, hadn’t he? Someone had been banging at the door. Where was the ’scope? She had had horrible dreams. By her watch it was ten in the morning. She’d missed school.

  The backyard was a flowering patch of deep green, a sloping stretch that led to the shallow high-grassed gully behind the house. A stand of banana trees was off to the right, a tall pine towering just next to them. The smells of damp earth and growing things. Suni was sitting in the middle of it all, a mug of coffee in his hand and his hair left loose. She knelt beside him and took his face in her hands. “Are you okay?” He was unblemished—no cuts, no wounds. Nothing. Not so much as a bruise. “Tell me you’re okay, Suni.”

  He nodded, gently taking her hands away. “I’m fine.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it’d do that,” she said weakly.

  “It’s okay.” A hidden bird somewhere down in the gully whip-whipped a high sonic that didn’t echo as it shot out of the gully.

  She couldn’t take her eyes from his face. Something had to be wrong. He couldn’t be sitting there calm as could be. That in itself had to be a symptom of what she’d done. Her hand had gone in through his face for Christ’s sake. You don’t just wake up and drink coffee after something like that. You don’t…

  Suni looked concerned. He reached for her hand.

  “Hey,” she said, taking her hand away before he could touch it, pinching the bridge of her nose, rubbing the sleep away. She tasted like glue, felt like shit. “Guess we’re not going to school today, huh?” And sounded like a man. She needed coffee.