by Otter Lieffe
Ash was struck with nausea and she could feel herself spinning. The shouts of men began to fade as the world itself, colours and smells and sounds, began to fade away from her.
It's always like this, she told herself. I'm going back.
* * *
And suddenly she was back in the arms of her beloved friend, back in the dry heat of a summer's evening. She could hear crows calling to each other somewhere in the trees above her head. She could smell mint tea. She was home.
“Are you okay, hon?” asked Pinar as she steadied her friend and helped her sit down.
“I…my god…”
“Take your time coming back,” said Pinar, pouring some tea and passing her a cup. “There's no rush.”
Ash stared into the darkening forest and cradled the cup with both hands. Her heart was still pounding and her shoulders ached. How much more of this can I take?
Her nervous system still overwhelmed, she felt sick from the stench of garbage, the smell of her own fear. Her body was dry, but she could still taste the dirty rain inside her mouth. Her muscles cried with exhaustion. Finally, Pinar's voice brought her back to the present.
“Let me take that.” She gently retrieved the cup and set it down. Ash saw that her hands were shaking so much she had spilled half the tea over the table.
“Sorry…” she said weakly.
“When were you? Do you need to lie down?”
“I was in the City. We were both there. It was the night of the exile, the night we were driven out.” Her eyes welled with tears. “Pin, why can't I just forget for heaven's sake?”
Pinar held Ash's shaking hands between her own.
“I'm sorry hon.”
Ash was crying.
“I fucking hate that place.”
* * *
At some point in history, that great urban mass, lying along the storm-battered coast was known by another name, but for as long as Ash could remember, it had been called the City, or in State propaganda, “The Gem of Europe.” For decades, it had become known as a centre for immigration with a strong economy built from the hard work of Syrian refugees and Spanish migrant workers, its rich culture formed by the people who lived, worked and studied within its ancient walls. It quickly became a magnet for queer, disabled and activist cultures and Ash and Pinar were among those who came to the City during that time.
But it was too good to be true, thought Ash sadly, lost again in her memories.
It had been a Sunday. She could remember because Sunday was the day Pinar went to the market down in the square to sell her herbs and, when she had the energy, Ash would come down with her and offer short massage sessions to the public. If the weather was good, they would make enough credits to get them through the next week. Or else people would exchange food for their services, or a promise to help out with work in Pinar’s herb garden, or Ash’s clinic. The economy was already sliding out of control and barter had become a mainstream form of survival.
The weather was perfect that day. Ash remembered the warmth of the sun on her back as both of them had worked hard in the market. She was content to be busy and just glad to have something to do—barely a day went by when she didn’t feel bored or restless. Here, she could help out with people’s aches and pains while also getting some food in the cupboards. She didn’t need much more than that.
This was the 2020’s and the global economy was already slipping into an unprecedented crisis. Food and access to medication was a problem for everyone and there were food shortages every week at the local stores. But the worst was yet to come. As a result of the crisis, the majority of countries began centralising into massive federations and the rest broke into warring city states. In the City, local government and big business had fused years before into a single entity, known simply as the State.
And their “Gem of Europe” quickly became hell on earth for the likes of us.
After years of welfare cuts, austerity and vigilance, anti-State riots became a daily sight in the City. The State was soon forced to break off trade with its more liberal neighbours and militarised itself against them.
That sunny Sunday had been a sign of things to come. Late in the afternoon, as Pinar and Ash were finishing up for the day, the square had been suddenly engulfed by a food riot quickly followed by what appeared to be all the troopers and all the tear gas the State had to spare.
Pinar had stood wide-eyed as their stall was engulfed by protesters and tear gas canisters began to rain down around them. An academic and a pacifist, she had never seen anything like it before and stood frozen, rooted in the square.
This wasn’t Ash’s first riot and certainly not her first taste of teargas. She got them moving, scooping up Pinar’s precious herbs in one arm and within minutes they were back in their apartment watching from the window.
“Fuck,” cursed Pinar as they watched another wave of troopers flooding into the square to beat the hungry rioters. “We have to do something.”
“There’s nothing for us to do,” Ash’s voice was perfectly calm. “We didn’t organise this and we don’t know anyone involved, the risks are too great. We have our part to do when it’s over.”
An hour later and they were back in the square treating people for shock and taking some of the injured back upstairs to rest in the apartment. Their clinic was born that day and as riots and protests became ever more frequent in the City, Ash, and her restless hands, were kept busy for many years.
As the riots and social movements that grew out of them threatened the very existence of the State, its leaders soon realised that they needed to find a new enemy for the people to blame, someone to distract attention from their own oppressive governance. As it turned out, the queer communities, the trans and gender non-conforming folks, immigrants and disabled people who had formerly made the City so popular—and rich—as a cultural centre of diversity, would also make the perfect scapegoat. What happened next had destroyed Ash and Pinar's world.
“Are you with me?” asked Pinar. “Are you…here?”
Ash looked up from the knot of wood on the table she'd been staring at.
“Sorry. I was miles away.”
She looked down again and started poking her spoon into the remains of soup in the bowl in front of her.
Thirty-five miles to be precise.
“Were you journeying?”
“Just remembering.”
“Talk to me if you want to,” said Pinar softly.
“I don’t know, Pin.” Ash paused and picked at a splinter of wood on the table. “I just can't help wondering what would have happened if we hadn't escaped in time. What would have happened to us if we hadn't gotten out?”
“But we did get out. We survived, Ash. And we're here now, we're safe.”
“Except when I'm not! Except when I’m back there again, afraid for my life again!” She stared for a moment into Pinar’s wide eyes, holding her eye contact and breathing hard. Finally the intensity of her feelings passed and she looked down and started picking at the table again. “You'll never really understand.”
Pinar knew better than to respond. She stood up quietly and went inside. For a while she stared at the packed shelves of dried roots and leaves and branches and jars of seeds that filled two walls. Nothing she could say would make her friend feel better. I'll let the herbs do their work.
She reached for the jars of chamomile, passionflower and lavender and as calmly as she could, Pinar started measuring a dose into a teapot.
She hated conflict and she hated to be shouted at. But she forgave Ash as she had always forgiven her. It seemed that her friend was going through a special kind of hell. Much of her past had been traumatic enough the first time without having to relive it. It had taken years for Pinar to even accept the truth of her friend's 'journeying' as she called it, and now all she could do was support her the best she could. But it's never enough.
“I'll make some tea!” Pinar called cheerfully throug
h the window to her friend. “Tea always helps!”
Ash didn't respond. Pinar could see she was staring at the table again.
Chapter three
Danny was so thirsty he thought he might collapse if he didn't sit down. Dripping with sweat and naked except for his squeaky rubber underwear, he ignored the applauding crowd and walked over to the bar. He perched himself on a barstool and took a long swig from the 'mineral water' in front of him. Even bottled water was getting rare these days and he could see that despite its ridiculous price tag, it was an old bottle that had been refilled, probably multiple times.
And that's as good as the State gives even its favourite workers, he thought to himself. He nearly emptied the bottle in one go.
Danny had been dancing the pole without a break for nearly two hours straight and as he sat on the stool, he could feel his traps, lats and calves twitching and burning. He ran his fingers over his buzz cut and his hand was totally wet. It wasn't usually this hot, or this busy. A new State squadron had arrived at the base down town last Sunday and since then he'd been working every night and most afternoons too.
He was used to the exercise and dancing was one of his great loves. He loved the rush of losing control, the high of being so deeply in his body that nothing else existed. Even dancing in front of this sleazy crowd didn't bother him anymore. Danny had almost learned to enjoy the attention. I really just need more breaks.
Fit as he was, he needed to rest between turns. But each time, as he left the stage to eat something, someone would approach the retinal scanner at the bar and buy themselves another hour. Within a minute, he was back up, spinning and grinding the stage. He had mastered the art of seeming to focus entirely on the new customer while also keeping half an eye on his uneaten food at the bar.
What can I do? It's a job. I can hardly complain.
Under the Peccatum Laws, homosexuality had become illegal again and most of the divergents like him, the queer folk as they'd been known in former times, had been driven away, some to their deaths. Here at least he had a place to stay and he was relatively safe as long as he kept providing his special services for the officers who, it seemed, could never get enough of him. With a body like his, he was born to be a security guard. He didn’t need to work out to stay fit, he could do nothing at all and would still have perfect abs. And he was handsome; his face was rugged, masculine. His blue eyes still sparkled even through his exhaustion.
Danny blamed it on his good genes.
His bracelet lit up, meaning another account had been charged and he was up again to dance. He gulped down the last of his warm, metallic water and climbed back up onto the stage to a roar of drunken applause. One more hour and then he could rest.
One more hour.
* * *
Danny was finally finished for the night. His last dance had been by far his best of the night—the DJ had played one of his favourite tracks and the solar powered decks had made it to the end of the evening for a change. He'd received good tips and now he was tucking into one of the more expensive menus at the bar surrounded by his clients and some of his co-workers.
“Long night, eh?” asked a voice.
Danny looked up from his meal. It was one of the other dancers—a young, white kid. He was good at his job although Danny thought he might be trying too hard and found him a little over-enthusiastic. He seemed to be barely out of his teens. What is he nineteen? Twenty? Then again everyone seems young these days.
Danny was only in his mid-thirties—and still looked like he was pushing twenty-nine, but he already felt like the grandpa of this bar. He was too tired to even remember this kid's name.
“Every night's a long night at this place,” he grumbled and continued eating.
“Still at least we had music this time,” said the kid. “My first night here, the solar panels died in the first half hour. I had to dance the whole evening to drunk people clapping. They couldn't even clap in time. Totally threw my rhythm off.”
“Yeah…” Danny said without conviction. He took a long swig of warm beer. After a night like this, he'd really rather just sit by himself.
“That Major's looking at you, you know? The old one with the tiny err…”
“—Yeah, yeah,” said Danny nodding. “I know him well. Not tonight though I have to get up early.”
“Work?”
Actually, Danny had a resistance meeting in the morning but, like everything in the resistance, it was a closely kept secret.
“Something like that.”
“Okay. Mind if I take him?”
“Knock yourself out. Make sure he tips though. His dick isn't the only thing small about him.”
The young dancer laughed.
Why do I even make these jokes? Danny wondered as he played with the condensation on his glass. Body shaming isn't funny even when it's about powerful men.
“Have a good night…L, is it?”
“That's my work name, yeah…” said Danny. He gulped down the last of his beer and got up to leave. “Have a good night, mate.”
“You too.”
Danny needed to sleep. The meeting tomorrow was planned for seven and he hated waking up early. Like all the sex workers in the resistance, he was expected to gather information from his unsuspecting customers that might prove useful to the movement. He hadn't learned anything particularly interesting this week, but he would go anyway. Being with the resistance was the one time of the week when Danny didn't feel like he was acting.
Danny stepped outside the bar and watched as some of his clients also left and disappeared into the shadows. The bar was an open secret, almost everything that happened inside was illegal.
He was feeling a bit wobbly. Dehydrated again. And the beer doesn’t help.
His apartment was just a few blocks away from the bar so putting one foot carefully in front of the other, he set off for home.
* * *
The evening was warm and the air over the park was perfectly still and thick with humidity. Nathalie was sweating with anticipation, she loved this part of the night.
Just like every Saturday evening, the park—a massive stretch of land out in the abandoned suburbs of the City—was full. Full of women and a scattering of men. Full of night time visitors moving slowly through the shadows, picking their way through the high grass and over fallen tombstones. Each one in search of company.
Nathalie had arrived twenty minutes before, but she still stood at the park's edge adjusting her blond ponytail for the tenth time and watching as shadows moved amongst the bushes. Her muscles were tensed to run, to escape.
What am I even doing here?
But she knew she couldn't leave without exploring what the park had to offer her tonight. It was always like this. Within an hour she'd have lost herself in a spontaneous chaos of mouths and flesh and the fingers of strangers inside her, but the beginning was always the hard part.
Just push through.
Nathalie rechecked her clothes—a dark red top that complimented her pale skin perfectly and accentuated her breasts, her tightest jeans to make the most of all those hours of running after tennis balls. Nodding to one of the security women who protected the park, she took a deep breath and stepped in to the high grass.
She joined the well-worn path and headed for her favourite place, the war monument. A hollow concrete monstrosity built to celebrate some forgotten war or another, it was almost completely dark inside and was usually busy the whole night through. Nathalie shuffled carefully into the narrow passageway and leaned against a wall to wait for her eyes to adjust. She could already hear a couple a little way down the passage breathing heavily. This is going to be a good night.
Her chest was tight and she could barely catch her breath in the moist air, thick with the smells of sex.
This is where I should be. I need this.
Nathalie knew that as certainly as a bullet to the heart, her work placement in the State's administration
centre was killing her. She worked, she slept and then she worked some more—just to afford to live. Her daily life, as it was, had stopped having any meaning and she was desperate. Even tennis, which she had played her whole life and was one of the few sports still popular since the crash, didn’t really make her feel anything. She gossiped with her tennis partners and played along, but she knew she was just going through the motions. Every day when she arrived to her placement and saw the pile of papers on her desk that needed sorting she wondered if maybe she wasn’t already dead.
But when she came here, to this sordid place on the edge of town, she began to feel alive again. Only here in the darkness, with a stranger's tongue in her mouth, did she know who she was. She had a purpose in the park. She had a mission.
A couple of brief minutes inside the war monument listening to the couple near her bringing each other to a subdued orgasm and Nathalie was already in the zone—her eyes were adjusting to the dark, her heart had calmed down and her sense of smell had sharpened. Like an animal on the prowl, she was ready for the hunt as she pushed off the wall and headed down the passageway into the unknown.
Chapter four
After dinner, Ash and Pinar sat outside the cabin drinking an infusion of hops and valerian and watching the darkening forest. A pair of owls were calling each other from across the valley.
“Are you feeling any better?” asked Pinar.
“A little.” Ash slurped noisily from her hot tea. “I'm still a bit freaked out. I mean, I know it was five years ago, but somehow, I managed to forget that night. Or at least to dull the memory a bit.”
“I wish I could do more.”
“It's fine, you do plenty for me.”
“I just wish I—”
Ash thumped her cup back down on the table.
“Let it drop, Pin. When I need help, I'll ask for it.”