Subject 12

by S. W. Douglas

"Alright," I said amenably. "I'm not too tired for some company quite yet."

  "Good," she said. I could have sworn I heard a note of hunger in her voice.

  The walk to my door was a little awkward, considering I was out of practice carrying someone who insisted on walking at the same time. By consensus I was given the same room I'd slept in before. It wasn't the usual guest room, I'd been told, but it was quiet in the mornings. I didn't know what kept the regular guest room from being quiet in the morning but I was glad I didn't have to find out. My plans had involved sleeping in. I glanced at Venom. Had being the operative word, apparently. I suddenly realized it was going to be some time before I got to sleep.

  The room had been rearranged just enough that it felt fresh. The bed was in the same place, but I had a chair so new the varnish still perfumed the air and a throw rug in the middle of the room that, while I hated the color, made a nice oasis in all the wood. The flowering plant on the windowsill had some plump-looking leaves that made me think that it had been chosen more for durability than any particular attractiveness or utility of the flowers. Those were an unimpressive orange that faded to a cream at the throat.

  I sat on the bed, not wanting to risk finding myself glued to the seat. Venom had excused herself to use the bathroom so I was, for the moment, alone. I considered locking the door but stopped myself for two reasons. First off, it wouldn't surprise me to find she had a key for every lock in the house. Secondly, and more importantly, I found myself looking forward to her company if she returned.

  Eighteen years, she'd said. I doubted it. A woman that attractive going that long made less sense than a fire-breathing ostrich. On the other hand, I'd seen a fire-breathing ostrich. Mad scientists did some weird things in the privacy of their hidden lairs and tended to let them loose when armed men come storming in to terminally cure their insanity.

  It had been long enough for me I couldn't put a number of days to it, but the last time was back when Magda had shared my bed. Hell, it'd been a while before that too, if I cared to remember.

  My birthday, actually.

  No wonder she'd wanted to do it so she wasn't facing me. If she didn't have to see me she could pretend...

  Damn her.

  I opened the window about halfway so some fresh air could get in, hoping it'd dispel the wrath of curing varnish, and stared out at the darkening landscape. This far north the day held on a lot longer than it did in the tropics, so even though the clock had read a rather late hour the sun was just nicely setting. I watched it for a few moments before closing the blind.

  Venom was attractive. There was no denying it or the pull I felt towards her, both physically and otherwise, or that it wasn't wholly a one-way street. Not that I had any clue why.

  The question was, then, why did I feel something more akin to fear than I did excitement over the thought of her and I...

  I unbuttoned the uniform shirt I'd commandeered and tossed it on the floor near the bed. The t-shirt underneath wasn't the most attractive navy blue I'd ever worn, but it was better than the ghastly green alternatives I'd found that would have fit. As practical as the Alpha Zulu uniform was, considering it was a slightly-modified US-issue Army Combat Uniform, the one thing it was not was intimate apparel. Anything with a ripstop weave coarse enough to rub away skin if something wasn't worn under it with a heavy load was, as far as I was concerned, instantly disqualified.

  It was at this point I wished dearly that the only pair of boxer shorts I'd found that would fit me had been something other than silk with the words "This Way To Heaven" printed below an arrow pointing at the button fly.

  At the time it hadn't seemed important. Now... Now it seemed really embarrassing.

  And at the same time, why should it? To be embarrassed indicated that I had a reason to, and the only reason I'd have to be embarrassed was if she saw it. It was an incredible presumption on my part that we'd be in a position for her to see my underwear. There were probably a dozen pair of nondescript underthings in just my size if I looked around; the perfect accompaniment to the clothing they'd provided for me. Probably either hand-tailored or expensive off-the-rack numbers I'd never have worn in my former life.

  On the other hand, I would never have picked silk boxer shorts like the ones I was wearing. I shook my head. It didn't really matter.

  I stared at the small containers of expensive cologne, aftershave, talcum powder (scented and unscented), pomade, various creams, unguents, and less-identifiable substances, and decided that I was so far out of my depth the nearby fish had lights on their faces and really big teeth. I brushed my hair hurriedly with a silver-backed brush and rubbed my face in the manner of men everywhere wishing they'd shaved sometime in the past twelve hours. My goatee had gotten a little ragged as well, not that I could remember trimming it since Reno.

  It did look good. Different, in any case, from what I'd been wearing for many years. Military life doesn't encourage freedom of expression in clothing or facial hair, but Alpha Zulu wasn't any better. Other than a funky little moustache that required daily grooming and a sense of style that was out of date during World War II, it was clean shaven or you were on report. I'd never indulged. I didn't want to look like a 1970's porn star.

  I'd kept myself clean-shaven for professional reasons rather than any aesthetic ones. For the same reason I'd kept my head almost shaved for the last twenty years of my life. Then I'd gone into hiding and hadn't bothered to do anything except shampoo when I could get a shower or a bath in. Some of the knots I'd cut out during my emergency grooming session in Reno could have moored cruise ships. But now, looking at a face a little older than I remembered it being, with a small beard I could see a few strands of gray in, and my hair showing a little gray at the temples, I could see that some of the differences had made an improvement.

  Just not in the eyes. Those looked a little haunted.

  I smiled and saw that the corners of my eyes crinkle. Crow's feet, they called them. Laugh lines. I'd been trained to see them as a sign that the smile was genuine, so it made me feel better. My sharpened vision allowed me to take account of all the little scars and creases that hadn't been there the last time I'd really looked at myself in a mirror. The ravages of time, as it were.

  The knock, when it came, startled me. Part of me had hoped it wasn't going to come. Another part had merely thought it wasn't.

  "Come in," I said quietly. I cleared my throat and said it again, louder.

  "Hey there," she said as she opened the door. Her voice slurred a little and I could almost smell the booze on her breath. Either there was a liquor cabinet in the bathroom or she'd gone back for more rather than emptying her bladder.

  "Hi," I replied, taking in the change of clothing. Whereas before she was wearing a comfortable-looking outfit suitable for working around and outside the house all day, now she was wearing a low-cut, black, lace-edged nightdress that even in the dim lighting showed off her tan lines. "You look good."

  "I feel pretty good," she said, stumbling into the room. "Just a lil' dizzy's all."

  I had to catch her when she stumbled again and started to fall.

  "You're drunk," I said quietly, sighing inwardly in both relief and, honestly, disappointment. Taking advantage of drunken women wasn't exactly my style.

  Of course, my "style" seemed to be fucking up anything resembling a relationship I cared to get myself into, but who was counting?

  "Yes," she said, trying to regain her footing and kicking me in the ankle. "But not so drunk I don't know what I'm doing."

  "And I'm not so drunk I can ignore how drunk you are," I said lamely, wishing I'd had a moment to think about what I was going to say first. "I don't want you hating me tomorrow."

  She laughed a little and pulled herself upright. Her fingernails dug into my shoulder painfully as she adjusted her weight. "I doubt you'll do anything worse than the last one did."

  "Oh yeah?" I put my arm around her back to help guide her into a chair that was upholstered rather
than reeking of curing varnish. "Don't be so sure. I'm rather out of practice."

  "Wanna bet?" She sagged into the chair and pasted a smile on her face so fake it made a plastic orange look juicy.

  "What's the bet, then?" I crossed my arms over my chest and took a step back so I wouldn't loom.

  "I tell you then you do me. Deal?"

  "I don't do drunk. Sorry. It's a personal rule of mine."

  "Oh for the love of!"

  She pushed past me as she got to her feet. I tried to resist but I wasn't expecting the sheer force of her shove. She grabbed the plant off the windowsill, turned it around a couple times, pulled off a leaf and one of the flowers, and replaced it with all the care of a drunken surgeon. She stared at the vegetation in her fingers for a moment then started to crush them together. I was about to ask her what she was doing when she stuck the mass in her mouth and started to chew. She closed her eyes and paused after a couple seconds. I watched, fascinated, as her head suddenly and violently jerked to the side four or five times. I reached for her to see if she was okay and her mouth popped open, a sizzling clump of something fell out, and with a deep breath in she exhaled what could only be described as an alcoholic vapor strong enough I was glad there were no open flames in sight.

  "What the?"

  She thrust her hand at me in a gesture I assumed meant I was to stay quiet. I waited and watched as she coughed and shook a few times, then retched.

  "I don't know why it always tastes like rubbing alcohol infused with essence of sweaty ass crack, but it does," she gasped, wiping some spittle from her chin when she could finally talk again. Her voice was rough compared to the usual silken tones. "Alright, I'm not drunk now. All the alcohol in my system is now curling some grass out the window."

  And some of the finish off the windowsill, I noticed, but wasn't going to comment.

  "I'd ask how you did that but I don't want to know. It looked unpleasant."

  "You have no fuckin' idea, buster. Now sit the fuck down and listen."

  "Yes ma'am."

  Let's take a moment to reflect on the fact that if I had tasted something similar in nature to what was just described to me --- to wit, rubbing alcohol infused with essence of ass crack --- I'd probably not like it. I might even, if pressed, feel sick to my stomach. To be totally candid, I might retch. Add in a sudden shock of sobriety and I'm not sure what the end result would be.

  In her case, it was vomit.

  "Sorry about that," she said, wiping more crap off her chin. At least this time she was using the towel I'd run to the bathroom to get. "I think I was a little more in the bottle than I'd thought." She groaned and sat down a small distance away from what I'd just wiped up. It was still wet. "It's kinda like having a hangover that lasts all morning but wrapped up in about fifteen seconds. The shock is a little much and, well, you saw the result."

  "You look like hell."

  "Thanks. A girl always likes to hear that from a guy. Go get me some water. There's a glass in the medicine cabinet over the sink in the bathroom."

  I got her a glass of cold water, having let it run until my finger nearly turned blue when I stuck it under the tap, and I brought the bottle of mouthwash I found next to the sink. Getting the taste out of my mouth when I puked wasn't easy, so I figured she probably wanted the help.

  A few minutes later we were both sitting on the rug, talking about the worst vomiting experiences of our lives. Apparently no matter what it was I'd eaten there was something worse from her pregnancy. I was feeling a little queasy after hearing her recount what she called the "famous ice cream and pickles with butterscotch incident".

  "I hate to say it, but I think I've killed the mood." She sniffed. "Though I think the smell of varnish and vomit probably killed things before I started with the extra-chunky descriptions."

  "I don't know as there was much mood to begin with, really. To be completely honest with you, however, telling me about trying to get pieces out of your nose wasn't the biggest turn-on I've heard in my life." I could feel the alcohol's depressant effects start to kick in and I yawned. "I think I may need a new room for the night."

  "Don't blame you. The smell of puke isn't one I like to fall asleep to." She got to her feet and put her hand to her head like it hurt. "Ow. I think I'm going to need more water. Tell you what. Why don't you come to my room? The bed's bigger than this one and there's a second one if you don't feel like sharing, if you'll recall."

  "Yeah. I think I'll take you up on that offer. This bed's comfortable, alright, but the smell is a bit much." I got up and stretched. "I can always come back tomorrow for a change of clothes, hey?"

  "Sure." She put her hand on my shoulder. "Just don't lie about there not being much mood. Your shirt is on the floor near the bed and not on you."

  Oops. "Right. Um... It's hot in here?"

  "That's the way to make a woman feel sexy. Ooh, baby, tell me how unwanted I am." She rolled her eyes and sighed.

  "Come on, stud, let's get out of here."

  I didn't exactly protest as she pulled me out the door.

  "You alright?" I asked, noticing how she looked paler than I remembered her being in my bedroom.

  "Yes." She paused as if to consider it for the first time. "Yes, I think so. It's just this isn't very easy for me."

  "I understand," I said, realizing I was being kind for no other reason to be kind. It felt weird. Warm, actually. Kind of good. But weird.

  "I don't think you do. Or at least you won't here in a minute. Damn it." She sat on the bigger bed and stared out the window. "I haven't told anyone this. I don't know why I'm telling you. No, that's a lie. I know exactly why I'm telling you. I also know why I'm not telling you yet. Don't give me that look," she said, not looking in my direction. "This is something I swore never to tell another living soul."

  I sat down next to her but not so close as to cause her discomfort. She stiffened anyway. I knew she would.

  "Sorry," she said after a second. "It's some bad memories and... Sorry. They're just close to the surface right now."

  "It's okay," I replied, shifting a little further away.

  "Something happened to me." She began and paused. "Eighteen years ago and nine months before Jessie was born."

  That was a rather odd time line to give. Oh. Oh shit.

  "I was dating Wildcard at the time, much to the annoyance of a lot of both the male and female population of the country." The bitter edge in her voice sharpened. "That included someone named Clockwork. You may have heard of him."

  Clockwork. No, the name didn't ring a bell. "No, I can't say as I have."

  "I'm not that surprised. He was a minor player in the Confederation for a few years, but that was almost twenty years ago. He did manage to hold a city to ransom once, but it was a small one in Yugoslavia and it was only for two weeks before he was stopped by a Russian super whose name was something unpronounceable. Well, Clockwork fled to the US afterwards and developed a thing for me. He claimed it was a combination of things, but in particular it was a picture of me in a rather revealing number I'd agreed to pose for as a morale booster to the troops in Vietnam. In any case, he became obsessed, as villains will, and in due time he'd set a rather nasty trap for me."

  I was getting an uncomfortable idea of what was coming next but I knew she needed to talk about it if she was ever going to deal with it. "I can only imagine."

  "I would hope not. For a low-level Confederation member, he certainly was good at setting traps. It's probably a good thing he got stopped when he did."

  "When was that?"

  She sighed. "About six months after he sprung the trap. A Guild member by the name of Trinity found him drunk in a bar somewhere in Tijuana and ripped both his arms off. She beat him to death with them."

  "I see."

  "He lured Wildcard and myself into a trap he'd arranged, tailored it perfectly to both of us, and sprang it when we were least expecting it.. I got dumped into a room almost totally filled with water and then gassed whe
n I came to the surface. He got dropped into a room covered in glue. No matter how much he stretched himself or how hard he struggled, he just got stuck tighter and tighter, so after a while he gave up and tried to think things out rather than stretch his way out. Unfortunately, Clockwork had planned things too well and he was trapped. I woke up a few hours later chained to a bed in what could only be described as a temple to me."

  "I'm sorry, but 'temple'? What do you mean?"

  She sighed. "Have you ever seen a movie or cartoon where the walls are all covered with pictures of someone? Sometimes even with a candle burning on an altar with like a discarded hairbrush or something? It was like that only it was real."

  "Ouch."

  "No, cold. The temperature was too low, the metal on my wrists felt like it'd been in a refrigerator, and I wasn't wearing what I'd been wearing when I'd fallen into the water. Silk negligee doesn't exactly hold in the warmth."

  "When you say chained you meant it, huh?"

  "You're damn right."

  "I take it he had something in mind?"

  "You could say that." She visibly stiffened. "He showed up about an hour later wearing a satin bathrobe and smoking a pipe. He fawned over me for a while, saying things I couldn't understand, and then he gassed me again. When I woke up this time I had a ball gag in my mouth, my hands were handcuffed to a metal bar sunk in concrete, and my feet were chained to another one. I was facing a TV monitor, and I was naked." She paused and took a long, shuddering breath as she wiped some nonexistent sweat off her forehead. "On the monitor was Wildcard on that damn web Clockwork had moved him to after the glue room, squirming around as the acid was dripped on his face. I tried to say something..." She trailed off for a moment. "I tried to say something but that ball stopped me. I had to watch as parts of my boyfriend were burned away. I screamed, I shouted, I fought, but I couldn't get out. And then, just when I started to cry, I felt a hand on my ass and..." She started crying.

  I risked putting my hand on her shoulder and she didn't pull away so I put my arm around her and leaned her against me as she sobbed. "I'm sorry," I said softly.