Outlier

by Kyle Harris

  Chaz mentally ticked the box for MAJOR FUCKING MEGALOMANIAC.

  “So,” she said, “we’re subhuman. And we’re going straight to hell.”

  “You are,” he said. “And you will both come to understand that, through your damnation and suffering, God’s word is the only truth.”

  “Your own fucking daughter.” Chaz observed Pruitt’s hands on the table, out in the open. Knife on the right. “Do you even know what Libby did?” she asked. “She bought an old tanning salon, and she’s going to turn it into a homeless shelter. I bet that’s more fucking goodwill than you’ve ever done.”

  “Impossible. Where would she obtain that amount of money?”

  Chaz turned to Libby and took her hand, hoping the mention of the homeless shelter would invite her into the conversation. At the least, she could speak up and defend herself. Instead, she was staring at her food like she’d been staring at her drink in the club. Blinders up.

  “Even so,” said Pruitt, “God’s judgment is not a report card. One good deed does not expiate her sins. She will be banished from His kingdom and forever—”

  “Because she’s a lesbian.” Chaz’s legs were juddering like they were cold. No, not cold—anxious. She stared hard into Pruitt’s gray, lifeless eyes. “Libby could find a cure for cancer, or end world hunger, or find the fucking Fountain of Youth, but it wouldn’t matter to you, would it? All the good she does with her life doesn’t fucking matter.”

  “You misunderstand. A homosexual is a sinful abomination. A puppet of the Devil. Whatever charity it does is only deception and is irrelevant.”

  Chaz opened her mouth. And laughed. She laughed so hard she nearly cried. And when the bitch across the table demanded to know what was so funny, she laughed harder. She laughed until she couldn’t breathe.

  Because it was all. So. Fucking. Hilarious.

  Then she jumped up from her seat and pushed her foot against the underside of the dinner table. The whole thing capsized. Juliet screamed her head off and nearly tripped while scrambling out of the way. Dishes of food and ceramic plates and glassware tumbled and shattered; those that survived the initial fall were crushed under the wood tabletop when the thing slammed down.

  While Pruitt was distracted by the scene of devastation, Chaz made her move. The serrated stainless steel of the steak knife touched his neck. His head froze, and his eyes swiveled to look up at her.

  “Insult us again, and I cut your goddamn throat right where you sit, you motherfucker.” It was a growl. “Consider it a favor. Maybe you’ll meet God.”

  Juliet went hysterical: “Matthew! What do you want me to do? Sh-should I call the police? God, please don’t let him get hurt!”

  “No. That won’t be necessary.” Pruitt’s voice was calm. “This one won’t kill me.”

  Chaz smiled. “Now I’m tempted to call your bluff.”

  “You won’t,” he said. “Because killing me will not win any affection from my daughter.”

  Chaz felt a hand on her arm. It was Libby. She had been playing zombie before the family supper had come to a crashing end, but now her cheeks were streaked with tears.

  “Please,” she whimpered. “Don’t hurt him.”

  Chaz shut her eyes so she wouldn’t look at the crying face. Goddammit, Libby. The man that was her father was nothing but a monster. And still, she couldn’t watch him get what he deserved. She would rather be a punching bag for his bigotry than ever once stand up for herself.

  “Leave my home,” said Pruitt, quietly. “Before you bring more harm to me or my family.”

  Chaz dropped the steak knife into the pile of wreckage. She went for the door.

  Before leaving, she turned around and looked at what she had caused. “Thanks for the food, Mrs. P,” she said. “It was good. Also, fuck all of you.”

  She gave them the bird and walked out.

  It was after nine o’clock when she reached home. She momentarily wished the door was a hinge model so she could slam it shut. Instead, it skittered into place on its own and closed with an unsatisfyingly soft hiss.

  Chaz stamped the few steps across her tiny apartment. Her body, seemingly on autopilot, turned and dropped on the bed. With the same compulsory muscles, a hand reached into a coat pocket and pulled out her half-empty pack of cigarettes.

  Light. Suck. Inhale. Exhale.

  After a few moments of just her and the tobacco, she explored her emotions. Namely the one that seemed to be regret.

  I had a knife to his throat. I had a fucking knife to his throat, and I didn’t do it.

  That operation had a kink, though: if she had cut open Pruitt’s neck, she would’ve had to do Juliet the same way. Otherwise, she would have called the police. A grieving widow points out Pruitt’s murderer on surveillance, facial-rec makes the match, and Chaz would say sayonara to the outside world for twenty years. And even if Juliet had kept her marriage vows by joining her husband in death, what about Libby? She hadn’t seemed too thrilled about Daddy getting his throat slit.

  Suck. Inhale. Exhale.

  The world might be a better place without the Pruitts, but cold-blooded murder wasn’t the solution. And if she had—fuck! She just now remembered the assignment. Kennedy. Wallflower. After the scene over supper, no way the Pruitts were letting her back into that apartment. She wouldn’t be surprised if Libby never wanted to talk again. Putting a knife to her father’s throat was serious grounds for a breakup.

  Chaz shook her head. “Why did you have to be such a coward?”

  To foil any shortsighted impulse from her immediate future self, she turned off her tasker and dumped it into the bedside table drawer. The last thing she needed right now was a stupid, rash decision. Give it a day or two first. Let the emotions run their course. Then see where everything stood.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Great, she must have followed me.

  Chaz stubbed out her cigarette and got up. On the way to the door, she worked out a simple game plan: apologize first, explain herself, regain the girl’s trust. With any luck, she and Libby could still be friends. With any more luck, the job wasn’t totally blown to smithereens.

  After a deep breath, Chaz touched the wall terminal. The door rattled open.

  “Libby, I—”

  A hand fastened around her throat; a fist came swooping in toward her face. The hit came just below her eye. Pain exploded in her cheek.

  Chaz thrashed as the same fist pummeled her face with more follow-ups, tracking blows from her jaw up to her temple. In the middle of the relentless bashing, she remembered her legs. She kicked fast and blind. A few connected into hits, but the beating didn’t cease.

  In pro matches it was known as the kill box—the space immediately in front of a fighter. Once trapped there, it was easy pickings. The only factor stopping the loser from ending up with permanent brain damage was mercy. Her attacker must’ve had some; the assault ended with her still conscious. The world was spinning, and she felt herself starting to fall. There was blood in her mouth and running from her nose.

  “I should’ve fucking done it! I should’ve cut your fucking throat!”

  The double image of her attacker converged into Pruitt’s doughy face. “Did you know that the stinger, as it’s now commonly referred as, was derived from a plant and originally intended to be a muscle relaxant for sensory deprivation?” He forced her down. Her head smacked the vinyl floor, and everything spun out of focus again. “The advantages of instant paralysis have also found new employment among the vermin of this city.”

  Legs. She had to use her legs. But the bastard was using his weight to pin her down. Pain stabbed her in the thighs, near the linkups: any more force and she would rip the connections.

  Pruitt pulled out a dropper, halfway filled with a red liquid. “Shh. This will be easier if you relax.”

  “No! No!”

  He shoved the wounded side of her face into the floor. The pain felt like a hot knife slicing through her skin. He poised the
dropper above her eye. Trying to keep it shut did fuck all; he pulled down on her cheek and squeezed out a few drops. It stung like hell.

  “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

  A stinger acted fast. Rather than attacking the muscles individually, the psychoactive drug took aim on the switchboard inside the brain, altering the consciousness so there was an apparent disconnection of the motor cortex. In other words, the brain forgot that voluntary muscles existed.

  All it took was a minute, and her body was dead weight. She could still see and hear and feel everything that was happening, still breathe too, but she couldn’t talk or fight back.

  That’s why it was Crystal City’s most popular rape drug.

  “Better,” said Pruitt, putting away the dropper. “Now. You were exceptionally rude back at my home. I would demand an apology out of you. Since you cannot operate your tongue, I’ll forgive it.”

  She tried once more to move any part of her body. Nothing. All that seemed to work were her eyes and her jaw, which only moved enough to make her teeth chatter.

  He tilted her head, examining the injuries to the left side of her face. “I have asked the Lord to mend my ailment, so that I may beget another that His light will shine through. Whatever the path He has planned for me, I have faith in His infinite wisdom.” He stared into her eye. “You must have spoken to my brother to know about my impotence. He’s like you. A nonbeliever and a homosexual.” For the first time since she had met him, he laughed. “I am surrounded by these smirched creatures. But what I’ve come to cherish is my purity against these foul temptations, and that not everyone has the capacity to be taken by God. If they were, heaven would be a very crowded place, don’t you think? Eternal life for billions of people? Imagine.”

  He began removing her clothes, starting with her coat and her shoes.

  No! No! Get your fucking hands off me!

  After he’d tugged off her pants, he eyeballed her legs. “That would explain the sharp pain in my ribs.” He rubbed one side of his chest, grimacing. “I am struggling to understand how you could afford such expensive prostheses, especially with that mark on your wrist that declares you as a welfare rat. I bet it was not an honest acquisition. Because you cannot simply be a homosexual without exhibiting other testimonies of the Devil’s influence. While I may deplore Libby’s lifestyle, she could be far worse. She has not fallen as far as you seem to have.”

  Chaz clicked her teeth faster, concentrating on an ax appearing out of thin air and splitting his head open like a melon. No such luck.

  Pruitt proceeded with removing the rest of her clothes, the shirt then the underwear. Once she was naked, he ran his gaze up and down her body. “Look at you.” The words were laced with pity. “You were created by His grace and blessed by the spirit of Eve. And yet you have rejected beauty and femininity to become something grotesque.” His eyes locked on to hers again. “You think the hair in your armpits and on your belly makes you a boy? What about the underwear you were wearing—Does that make you a boy? Will surgery to alter your genitals and remove your breasts make you a boy?”

  Chaz thought of hawking a loogie right into his fucking face.

  “No, I don’t think so.” He stood up. “You are this abomination by choice, like all other transgenders. But there is good news: no one is too far down a path to refuse God. But it requires acceptance on your part. You must convince Him that you are capable of becoming a woman again.”

  Her teeth were still chattering.

  “What was it you said to me? Oh, yes. ‘Consider it a favor.’ That feeling is mutual.” He pressed the wall terminal to lock the apartment door open. Then he walked out without looking back.

  Next time I see your face, you’re dead.

  For a while it was quiet. The heater kicked off, and Chaz listened to her lungs breathe on their own. The quality of stingers was all over the board—depending on what that fuck had put in her eye, she could be here for a few more seconds or thirty long minutes. No way to know. Meanwhile, the blood from her nose was starting to solidify between her face and the floor. More pooled inside her cheek. Though the pain was severe, she tried not to think what would’ve happened if Pruitt had left her head face up—without being able to swallow, she might have choked on her own blood.

  There on that floor, she started to wonder if the money was worth it. One hundred thousand dollars could go a long way, but she wasn’t struggling. She had her looker job, she had errands for Okocha. She didn’t need that money. And Libby—fuck her. If she was fine and fucking dandy with her old man grinding her down into powder, so be it. She had been given a choice and refused. It wasn’t Chaz’s fault that—

  Footsteps. More than one set.

  She tried to move. Still nothing from her muscles.

  The footfalls came louder, echoing in the hallway outside her apartment. She waited for them to veer off, for a door to open and close. Never happened.

  When they stopped, Chaz was looking out of the corner of her eye. There were three men in the doorway. No, four. Based on their tattered threads, they looked like street dwellers.

  “Shit, that mofo was speakin’ truth,” said one. “Why ain’t she movin’? Is she drugged up? And check out those legs.”

  “Girl’s got a hair patch like a man.” Another, whistling.

  “You say that like you about to turn free pussy down. You’d go to the pussy buffet and say, ‘Catch ya later, I’m outta here. This shit’s too free.’”

  Laughter.

  “I’m jus’ sayin’. With her, I might have nightmares that it was gay, you know. She’s manly. Probably hiding a dick in that bush.”

  “Looks like she needs a dick. But if you’re so concerned about cooties, she’s got a mouth too.”

  I will burn you, thought Chaz, unable to do anything as the men surrounded her and unzipped their flies. Do you hear me, Pruitt, you fucking motherfucker? I will burn you alive and shit on your ashes!

  An Interview

  “I want to talk to you about the murder.”

  Rothschild was flaunting perfume today, strong enough to bust through the blanket odor of antiseptics. Woman like her, in her late forties, tits wilting and her fish-hole turning into a no-go radioactive zone, perfume was the only fucking thing she had left. Shit, even rape would boost her self-esteem—at least some fuck had thought sticking his dick inside her wasn’t a waste of time.

  Chaz liked to think of it as middle-aged vagina syndrome. Want relentless insecurity? Be a woman in her forties or fifties on the verge of menopause.

  “Are you listening?” There was a slight edge of irritation in Rothschild’s voice. “I said I would like to talk about the murder.”

  Chaz just smoked.

  “How many push-ups did you do this morning? And crunches?” Rothschild waited a moment. Then: “I’m pleased to see you’ve been keeping active—either in your cell or in our gym. Many girls see this place as an end. But it doesn’t have to be. Redemption starts the moment you set foot in here.”

  Eleven days. That’s how long it had been since the last cigarette. Chaz sucked deeply and forcefully, not wanting to let any nicotine go to waste. The fumes burned in her throat, and she coughed out the smoke.

  “A nasty remedy.” Rothschild’s contempt showed through in her little smile. “Treating yourself with something as ugly, or uglier, than what you are treating. I personally would take the sickness over lung cancer. Lesser of two evils.”

  Chaz’s eyes were drawn to the woman. She considered a fantasy of making Rothschild chug gasoline and swallow a lit cigarette. Would she burn from the inside out? That was the hypothesis.

  Wouldn’t be the first woman to give her life in the name of science. Duty to the pursuit of knowledge.

  Rothschild went on: “When you were brought here, I knew with no doubt you were going to be a skim. That’s what the administration calls people like you. Skims. Those watertight cases with mounds of evidence, when a trial isn’t needed for the judgment. You were in
possession of a firearm with matching fingerprints. The type of ammunition was the same as the bullet in the victim’s head. There was gunpowder residue on your clothes. And several witnesses confirmed a report of a single gunshot.” She pulled her tasker out and laid it on the table between them. “A hundred years ago, you might have been granted a trial in front of a judge. But so often the courtroom defenses become debates of narrative. It’s expensive theater. And usually pointless.”

  Chaz said nothing.

  The woman gave a sigh. “But something fresh has come to me. Something that may even absolve you of the crime, if you can believe it.” She pecked away on her tasker, launching a video. The paused image was from a CWS feed—easy to tell from the HUD, even when flipped around. “One of our technicians was able to repair the surveillance footage. You remember, don’t you? How suspicious it was that all the cameras that would have given us a visual of the murder recorded only corrupted files that night?”

  Rothschild spun the tasker around and initiated the video. Chaz watched the soundless playback. What drew her attention most were the large compression artifacts along lines of high contrast. CWS footage was always crisp; pixelation like that only happened during magnification. If the video was deliberately zoomed in, that meant other things had been cropped out.

  When the gunshot came, she looked away.

  “As you can see,” said Rothschild, after the video had ended, “the murderer was outside the frame, while you were clearly visible and not holding a firearm. I believe that compelling evidence like this can be exchanged for a pardon.”

  “That mean I’m free to go?” asked Chaz.

  “That depends.”

  “But you said I’m innocent.”

  “And I am the only corrections officer in possession of this video. If I submit it for review, you could go home by the end of the day.” A controlled pause. “But if I do that, I need something in return from you, Chaz. I need an agreement.”