by Otter Lieffe
Watching the ducks, Ash caught a glimpse of her reflection in the still water. Her stubbly beard, her long earrings sparkling in the sunlight. She had experienced this “camouflage as the other sex”, as she thought of it, for most of her life. I was in eclipse my entire life before I came here.
Out in the forest, she felt freer to be herself. And these ducks, this water, the sound of the wind blowing through the poplars behind her and Pinar of course, this was her family, her home.
What else could I need in the world?
* * *
I need more, thought Nathalie. I want all of her.
She was under Kit now. She felt herself pressed down between the strong body above and the weeds and the concrete below. They were surrounded on all sides by trees and bushes, but they both knew they were far from safe; the motorway valley was barely two hundred metres from the street. Nathalie tried to lift her head to check for passers-by, but Kit pushed it back down and kissed her again.
Those lips, she thought. I never want to kiss anyone else.
She lay her head back down and stopped resisting.
* * *
Nathalie ran up the stairs to the office.
She was late. She rushed in, red in the cheeks, her hair in knots.
I hope they don't notice, she thought looking at her workmates. She needn't have worried. No-one cared enough to say anything.
They look half dead, buried in their paperwork. I'm not like them though, not anymore. I'm alive again.
She put the empty flask and cup on the desk in front of her and stroked it tenderly with her finger. It still had some of Kit's bright lipstick on it.
K's so beautiful, so perfect. I already miss that intense stare. Her voice. Especially when she’s angry with me, I feel like I could die. And now I need to wait until tomorrow night before I can see her again.
Feeling herself descending into a bad mood, Nathalie picked up the first of a pile of papers she needed to work on that afternoon and began crossing out the prohibited words, most of which she knew by heart. The sex amongst the trees had been amazing, but now she just wanted more. She always wanted more. She pushed down too hard on the pencil and the lead broke with a loud crack smudging the document with graphite dust.
From his desk, B gave her a disapproving look and tutted. “Those are expensive you know,” he warned her. “Ever since the mineral scarcity of the 2010’s…”
Nathalie ignored him. I want more from K than she's giving me. I need all of her, I need…
Yes, Nathalie realised as she reached for the pencil sharpener. I need her to need me.
Chapter seventeen
Tonight, Danny had escaped the bar. A client he had seen regularly on and off for the last few years was in town and had sent a message that he wanted to book him for the night. They always met at his fancy hotel and ate something expensive on the balcony overlooking the sea, with candles and plenty of wine. Danny didn't even hesitate.
The first part was always the worst, though.
The client had been sucking Danny off for about twenty minutes already. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't good. There was supposed to be some vague role play happening, Danny was 'room service' desperate for a tip and willing to do anything to get it.
Including, apparently, receiving this horrible blow job.
The 'hotel guest' kept looking up and smiling like it was the greatest oral sex anyone had ever performed. Danny, ever the professional, smiled back and made all the right noises. He was good at playing the studly top, although today he was too hungry to really act his best.
This morning's meeting with the sex-work collective had gone on longer than he'd planned, and he'd barely had enough time to eat before cycling over to the hotel. He was imagining the fancy dinner they'd eat after all this was over. The balcony, the wine.
Concentrate, Danny. You're being paid very well for all this. Dinner will come soon.
“That's great!” he moaned in his most convincing pre-orgasm voice. “You're so damn good!”
I'm so damn hungry, he thought to himself. Surely this guy's mouth must be getting tired by now.
“Let's do you now, Sir,” Danny suggested, taking control.
The client rolled onto his back obediently and started pleasing himself. It was all over very fast and suddenly Danny's pleasure and unfinished orgasm were forgotten about entirely.
“That was amazing. Let's go again later!” Danny said as he sat, not too subtly, under the little bell which was used to call room service. “Are you hungry, handsome?”
“I could eat. Let's get something and move our little party to the balcony, what do you think?”
Danny was ringing the bell for the real room service before his client had even finished the sentence.
While they waited for their meal to be brought up, Danny and his client took a shower together. Somehow in the bathroom, this client always become very attentive and loved nothing more than to soap Danny all over, rubbing the suds over his muscled back and rinsing him off with decadently hot water. Danny found it sweet—strangely unsexual and intimate. He relaxed and even began to enjoy his client’s gentle kisses on the back of his neck as he ran the incredibly soft towels over his body. There was a knock at the door and, slipping on a perfectly white robe, the client went to bring them their meal.
Danny's client was rich and dinner, as always, was extremely good. He worked high up in the Life-Accounts department apparently and lived well despite decades of economic depression. The food—real beef and vegetables and not a single Nutrition product to be seen—was excellent and Danny ate and drank as much as he could without seeming rude.
This was always the best part of their nights together. It was romantic, in a way, sitting at the table, looking out over the sea. As always, the surf was thick with dirty foam and even from up on the tenth floor, Danny could see the pile of jellyfish carcasses a metre deep along the beach. Ever since the sea started heating up, and their natural predators were overfished, jelly populations had exploded. Danny couldn’t remember the last time he’d dared to get in the sea for a swim. There was a rumour that as everything else became scarcer, they had become the primary ingredient in Nutrition Snacks.
The food was perfect and there was more than they could possible eat. This client was always generous: Danny earned as much in one night with him as he did during an entire week of dancing. And the day after, he usually found a big tip put on his Life-Account.
Invariably, those tips would go towards buying materials for the resistance—to run the comedores, the soup kitchens, to keep the medical supplies being smuggled in from beyond the wall and to keep the underground education system in pencils and paper. At the end of the month, Danny would end up just as poor as ever—but at least he was doing his work, to survive and for the movement. And if he could convince his client to sleep, then he got to sleep in a really good bed for a night.
For all its problems, this is a pretty good job.
“This is delicious!” he said. He was probably over playing it a little, but actually the food was really good.
“It's fine,” replied the client poking at his steak. “The food's always pretty good at this place. Not amazing, but good enough.”
Danny didn't bother to disagree with him. This was the best thing he'd eaten in weeks.
“So how's the office?” he asked with his mouth full of meat.
Work was always an easy topic with this client. He loved to talk about his job, to complain about his workmates and the outdated technology that was holding the whole system together. He was an engineer with the department, or a technician, Danny could never remember the details. It was obviously something well paid at any rate.
As his client talked, Danny enjoyed his meal, nodding more or less at the right times and tutting in appropriate outrage when he thought he should. He realised he was getting a bit tipsy—after a long, hungry day, the wine was going to his head.
I should
probably slow down.
Although the client was easy to talk to and their conversations were always fairly relaxed, Danny had to be careful. There were a hundred personal things a resistance fighter couldn't talk to a State employee about.
If he knew almost anything real about me, I'd be in a State prison cell within the hour.
Danny had a whole identity invented for himself, a name, a fake family history, the whole thing. “L” was from les banlieues—the poverty-stricken suburbs of Paris. He was an edgy, bi-curious boxer, had worked as a security guard and had a long history of getting into trouble. In reality, Danny grew up in the centre of Brussels in a middle class, diplomatic family and had never been in a street fight in his life. The closest he’d ever been were the demonstrations he went to when he was younger and even that had felt like an orchestrated dance between the police and the protesters. Gentle and political, Danny was nothing like L, but sometimes, he told the story so often he almost started to believe it himself.
When he was with a client, he had to be careful not to use any of the forbidden words. Struggle, resist, rebel, queer—and a host of others—were considered too radical by the State and had been banned decades ago, replaced with more innocuous words such as ‘to make effort’, ‘to dispute’ and ‘to betray’. Queer, having passed through ‘LGBTQIA+’ at the turn of the century and ‘Sexual and gender divergents’ two decades later, now had no permissible equivalent that wasn’t a slur. As the linguists working in the State knew very well, without a vocabulary to express it, there could be no concept. By banning the very idea of queerness, they hoped that the people themselves would also disappear.
Danny used the forbidden words all the time in his political life, so he had to be careful to make the switch. He could relax here, but he was also at work. At the end of the day, this guy, as sweet—and generous—as he is, still works for the State.
Danny saw that somehow his glass was empty again and the client quickly refilled it for him.
I'm still drinking too fast. I should definitely slow down.
* * *
Sweating in his cell, the General was thirstier than he had ever been in his life. He hadn't eaten in days and he couldn't sleep. His body hurt in every place he could imagine feeling pain.
Six days and six nights.
Six days since armed soldiers had dragged him away from the base. Six nights since he had slept on a real bed that wasn't just a pile of filthy blankets on a prison cell floor.
The guards had beaten him when he arrived
—And the perverts loved every minute of it—
and the General hadn't eaten a thing except a couple of Nutrition bars since he got to this tiny, damp cell.
His toilet overflowed onto the floor and there were cockroaches hiding in the shadows. He could hear them crawling all over him as soon as the lights went out.
I'll die here. Like a rat in a cage.
The first two days had been easier. He had been fuelled by his own rage and had spent his hours composing mental lists of the people he blamed and the punishments they deserved. The recruit, the bathroom sex worker, the officers who'd set him up. He had hated them all as deeply as one human can hate another.
Then the anger had passed, and the self-loathing had started.
Why am I like this? he wondered. Why can't I resist all these dirty faggots?
Then suddenly he was overcome with rage again and wanted to hurt someone, kill someone, smash the people who did this to him like a rat under his boot. He missed the days when he could fuck whoever he wanted, when calling himself ‘gay’ hadn’t meant anything to anyone.
With nothing to do but wait out the hours, days, or weeks until the State decided what to do with him, he lay, oscillating from hating the world to hating himself with no grey area in between.
The General, now Prisoner 7485, curled up into a ball and stared at the wall. He'd been caught red-handed and knew there was no way out. Public execution might well be on the table. He wasn't scared of dying. Anything has to be better than living like this. Will it be the thirst that kills me? Or the hunger?
A guard rapped his baton against the cell door and woke Prisoner 7485 up from the feverish half-sleep he was in. He automatically curled up tighter on his pile of blanket and tried to hide.
I never want to see another person again.
But for the second time that day, armed guards came into his cell, dragged him to his feet and made him walk the five flights of stairs down to a massive underground hall where he was being forced to work. Conveyor belts and hand operated machines filled the room from wall to wall attended by prisoners in white paper suits. The Nutrition Factory.
For the last decade, most of the residents of the City had come to depend on the Nutrition Company for food and it was an open secret that the majority of the snacks, bars, and meals produced by the monopoly came from this underground factory staffed almost entirely by prisoners.
Along the back, he could see giant stacks of the boxed final product—sticky bars wrapped in paper with smiley faces stamped on every box. The nauseatingly sweet smell hit Prisoner 7485 like a wall as he entered the vast chamber.
It's like some fucked up combination of decaying bananas and mouldy laundry. The last thing in the world it smells like is food.
“You're on packaging again, prisoner.”
He just nodded and walked over to his spot at the end of the conveyor belt. This morning he had tried to resist, had refused to work and tried to escape back up to his cell. The guards, themselves long-term prisoners who earned rewards for keeping the factory running, had beat him for that and he soon learned his lesson. He got to work placing bars into boxes and tried not to think about food. Already the smell—or the hunger—was making him nauseous.
If I was still General, I'd have all these guards beaten, I'd fucking beat them myself, I'd take them outside and—
But, Prisoner 7485 realised sadly as he lifted another heavy box, pulling a muscle in his tired back. I'm not General anymore.
* * *
Danny was still eating and drinking. After devouring his own steak and most of what his client had left, room service brought up a massive bowl of fruit salad and even ice cream.
Where the hell, do they get this stuff? thought Danny as he took a banana and unpeeled it as slowly and seductively as he could. This was the first real banana he’d seen in many years, since the global monocultures of genetically identical plants were all but wiped out by a fungus and the world’s most popular fruit became one of the most expensive. He was so used to the artificial powdered banana substitute that, he noticed, the real thing didn’t really taste of much. What do I care? This sure as hell beats Nutrition bars.
After dinner, his client ordered another bottle of wine and when it arrived Danny poured himself a large glass.
“Would you like some?” he asked, offering the bottle.
“Maybe in a little while, I'm pretty tired,” said his client, pouring himself some water from a carafe instead.
Danny smiled. “I don't know how you can resist!” he said and then, just as fast, he realised his mistake.
What the hell am I saying? His heart was racing, and he looked to see if his client had noticed. He just stared back at him silently. Refrain, turn down, abstain. These were the alternatives; he knew them by heart after years of learning to carefully control his speech.
I forgot who I was talking to. A forbidden word! This guy works for the enemy—he is the enemy. I must be drunker than I realised. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Chapter eighteen
“I'm sorry,” Danny began. “I really don't know why I said that…”
His client was still silent. He emptied his glass and pushed his chair away from the table.
“You know? It's been a long time since I've heard that word.”
“I'm really sorry. I hope you don't think I'm…”
“What, resistance?” He signed the word with di
sgust. “Of course not! You're too sweet to be with those dogs.”
“Well, thanks…I…”
“But you know what?” said the client, glancing unconsciously towards the door. “It did kind of turn me on to hear you speak like a…dirty rebel.” He smiled as he signed another of the forbidden words. “Maybe you should say it again, L.”
Danny was surprised to see the sign on the well-manicured hands of this State worker.
I might have a way out here.
“Well,” he said, dropping his shoulders. “If you ask nicely…”
The client stood up and opened the glass door back into the hotel room. Reflected in the glass, the sky was just beginning to lighten in the east.
“It's nearly morning. Do you want to sleep?”
Danny was tired, but he was used to staying up all night. He shook his head.
“Good.” The client smiled. “Because you've given me an idea for a new role play.”
* * *
Pinar and Jason crossed the dry stream bed and the valley widened before them. The forest filled the horizon and the early sun was just rising over the valley cliff, casting a deep shadow over the meadow where they stood.
There was an enchanted air about the place and, without either of them noticing it, they were silent; their hands barely inches from each other as they walked. This was their second outing together, just the two of them, and they were enjoying each other's company.
Jason felt honoured to be shown around by Pinar.
She's practically a resistance legend, he thought to himself as he caught her smiling at him, her eyes emerald green in the morning sun. And they brought me back from the edge. I owe them both my life.
They walked in silence, both just enjoying the fresh air and the sounds of the morning. A high pitched kee-kee-kee echoed off the walls of the valley and Jason looked up to see a pair of kestrels flying by overhead and calling to each other.