#lime green zipper pouch | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

the-uptake · 4 years

Text

Between You and Me

The Uptake, With Symbiotic Self-Indulgence. Book III, Chapter 11. Go to previous. TWs: Shaving, alcohol, drugging, hangovers of both kinds, bondage, epidemic, isolation, bombing survivorship mention, descriptions of lethal body horror. Bite the hand that feeds, tap the vein that bleeds...

________________________

Come third shift that night, the faint hum within the complex’s walls had faded, and only one wall of each apartment’s main room and bathroom illuminated its inhabitants’ way with the pale Wolfram phosphorescence accumulated during the second shift. If not for the potent, unfamiliar scent of vaguely sandalwood aftershave and the dark gold towels, Cecil could nearly have forgotten he stood shirtless in someone else’s bathroom. That, and he’d sooner be caught dead than own bathroom rugs.

His halo lay, turned off, on the counter beside the sink. The internal elements in its opalescent clear plastic emanated faint pulses. To his surprise, he found the tenant owned a rechargeable power bank. Possibly several, he supposed, considering the facility with which he located it in the fluorescent twilight. So as to let ‘Choly keep theirs to get through the night, the redhead gladly made use of the foot-long clear-housing device, so the aural aureole could maintain its juices that night well past the hour it normally flickered off altogether. Unlike the backup electrical source, his boyfriend wouldn’t have any need at the time for the clipper that he then produced from its case. He fished around in the like-new guard attachments, recalling that ‘Choly didn’t use any. When he snapped on the size two, an ebullient nerve jolted through him. He pulled the drain stopper, and leaned into the mirror to get to work.

As the chunks of two-inch hair fell to the counter, floor, and sink basin, the act felt more natural than he’d expected. He’d trimmed himself dozens of times over the years, and maintained his own facial hair, but he’d never buzzed off all his hair. If he’d ever seen a Leveler with their hair this short, they hid it beneath the translucent cranial plates which the Northeast US deemed especially fashionable. Full-scalp plating was unheard of, though: these functional successors to the fascinator always had either brightly colored, vee-reactive, or even fiber-optic extensions wefted through exposed sections, or the wearer’s natural hair pulled through it to be styled somewhat akin to how people used to style hair around combs and other such devices. The reverberations of the clippers on his scalp rendered the sound for him as would a deep bone conduction headset. He wondered how someone might even wear such an accessory without hair long enough to clip it into.

He set down the clippers to run his hands all over his work, and smeared around his chin and jaw with the heels of his palms. The length of what remained on his head now nearly matched that of his third-shift shadow. The more he stared at himself, the more his heart lightened. Content with the catharsis of self transgression, he moved to clean up after himself. With a lock of the longest hair from the top of his head in his fingers, he wondered whether ‘Choly would want it. He flinched at himself, but still tucked the sizable brassy chunk into the inner pouch of his toiletry bag regardless, unable to quit the habituation of such thoughts. He did his best without a broom and dust pan to corral the rest of the trimmings into the wastebasket.

Without building power, the plumbing lacked necessary pressure, so he instead used some of the tenant’s reserve water supply, from the interconnecting clear stackable units stashed in the bathtub, to shampoo and rinse his head in the sink.

Suspiciously well equipped for the unplugged shifts, he noted, of the tenant’s specialized furnishings. The sensation of scrubbing the fine clippings off his scalp with his fingernails got him whistle-humming softly with his mouth open. The small spigot on the side of it made it incredibly simple to measure out cupfuls to pour over his head as he held it over the basin. Having it in these units is so much handier than our repurposed leftovers bins. Maybe he’d help us get set up with something like this.

He tossed the borrowed towel into the hamper by the tub and put his unbuttoned gold dress shirt back on, then reconnected the four flexible ports of his halo and handshaked it. In the next room, he could hear struggling that had, from the labored nasal breathing, likely gone on for some time. He murmured dully to himself, put his glasses back on his face, and took his empty highball with him to investigate.

Though Jacob’s apartment had the same floor plan as Cecil and ‘Choly’s, the furnishings denied any meaningful confusion. The back third had an office area, the middle a series of utility shelves and an L-shaped workbench perpendicular to the wall, and the front a peculiarly spacious third of open floor with a single broad cabinet. Just as theirs, dozens of potted plants peppered the long, narrow quarters. Unlike theirs, rather than literary in nature, the grey-area verbot that peppered Jacob’s was technological and mechanical.

“Hope you don’t mind that I’ve let myself in, neighbor,” he remarked as he approached the upholstered swiveling desk chair from behind. “Decided I’d stay the night with you, to make sure you recovered right from the tranq. My brother and their friend helped me carry you over here before they headed out.”

Jacob stilled at Cecil’s voice, and stopped straining against the ropes that anchored him to his seat. He didn’t bother craning his head to look up over the back of the chair.

“I do still have both kidneys, right?” The snark received deadpan silence. “--Where’s Angel?”

“Powered off, in the front. I could teach you better encryption, if you want.”

Cecil casually refreshed his glass from the small lacquer dry bar in the very corner of the office space. He plunked a few cocktail cherries suspended in lime gelatin cubes from the zippered package, and splashed in whiskey, ginger ale, and some kind of Vek bitters. He sipped at his concoction until he netted one of the bright blue fruits in his mouth and twisted off the stem, and chewed before he spoke again.

“I appreciate your hospitality, really. These jellies are something else. I’m on my third Premier.” Cecil faced into the apartment, skirting eye contact, to lean his weight against the side of the desk. Behind him, rain had probably strafed the naked window for most of the evening already, and would definitely continue through the night. The stem went back in his cup, since he didn’t trust his ability to hit the waste bin two meters away. “Place’s nice, too. See you’ve greened it up. Did my brother do yours, too, like some kinduva traveling snake oil dealer?”

The blond let a slow breath escape flared nostrils, and an intermittent low whine corrugated his affect.

“What time is it? Can’t be super late. Glow’s still going. --Are you sure you wouldn’t rather a slice of confec? You seem like you could use some confec right now. Don’t strike me as the type to drink--”

“--About twenty-two. Not too long before first shift. Then it’s just the two of us. And I’ll be blind, drunk,and deaf.”

“It’s just you and me here?”

Inebriation had misinformed Cecil’s tongue, since he didn’t usually keep a continuous charge in the halo, but he couldn’t be bothered to correct himself. He worked at draining his glass, so he could earn the rest of the fruits that had glued themselves to the bottom of the crowded glass. He nudged the chair back a bit with his foot to slide over to sit on the desk and face him. He just stared blankly at the tall, thick blond while popping the prized garnishes in his mouth one at a time, removing the stems each time and letting them accumulate in the highball.

Jacob slouched when Cecil’s enjoyment of them seemed more like absent cud-chewing, and he shut his eyes, folding to the implicit staring contest.

“Are you all right, pal? Is that a stupid question? Is that okay to ask? --You know you can just eat the jellies without making a drink, right--”

Cecil sat the glass down on the bar, and gripped the edge of the desk, to swing his feet under it.

“I just shot you. You’re tied up, and I can’t let you go. And I can’t even look at my boyfriend right now. Do you even really need to ask?” His mouth scrunched and he glanced at the ceiling before resuming more agreeable eye contact. “Question of my own now, since you can clearly intuit some modicum of transparency: What made you a repairman?”

Jacob’s exhausted eyes stitched in a smile, and he shifted back in the chair.

“Cred’s never been the only currency. There’s lost potential in everything around us. Call it alchemy, in the most abstract sense. Mend and mod. Turn something into something else. In lieu of cred, people used to trade goods and services all the time, back in the day. The tradition never died. It just changed. Like everything else did.” He squinted again, his mouth becoming a wide thin line. “Look, I can’t turn on the poetic charm just like that. If you’re asking why a repairman’s decided to live in Tri-City, with everything like it is, I stayed behind because I knew there’d be survivors who’d still need the building to work right. Simple as that. Why’s it matter to you?”

“How altruistic of you. Of course it matters. You weren’t just fixing the garbage chutes. You were going through people’s trash. Just doesn’t add up to me, though, why you’d put yourself at risk to return something so patently thrown away.”

“Again with that box!” Jacob scoffed, the stress flickering out of his grin. “Would you have rather I just let that stuff get destroyed? Wait. You’re scared I’d tattle. Weak. You’d better freakin’ believe I wouldn’t bring police into the building. Your honey isn’t the only gremlin in this place, you know. I’m not gonna burn the whole house down just to smoke out one cockroach.”

“I know I can’t be the only one with a weapon. What’s stopping you from dealing with the... roaches... yourself?”

The subtext read louder than the text. Jacob knew why Cecil didn’t think he could untie him, but now he’d said it outright.

“You feel personally responsibly for Central, don’t you, librarian? That’s what all this is. You just can’t let it go.”

Cecil let out a broken laugh, and his eyes glassed up as he steeled a snivel.

“How can’t I? I should have been able to stop it. I was working a Level 7 server room when Central became a Roman candle. You snarked about my burn scars and all that shit, but surely from the look of me, you can tell how close I had to be to one of the payloads.” The ex-librarian couldn’t sit still anymore and paced. He quickly conflated the habit with his brother and sat back down on the desk, to lace and fold his hands in his lap with a sour, desperate face. “You know we’ve only got a localized Nikola-web here, repairman. Just what they’ll feed us, accept from us. Have you got an Underweb connection? Has anyone here?”

Jacob didn’t like not being able to watch Cecil pace, but he didn’t like it even more when the pacing halted so abruptly, only for the strung-out stocky little man to perch in front of him all over again. His eyes slowly widened as his brow raised, and he frowned thoughtfully.

“Now just what exactly would somebody like you need the Underweb for?”

The ginger nearly objected, but recognized he hadn’t been shut down. He shifted in place as he formed his narrative response.

“‘Choly needs medical stuff. But he’s scared of billing. It’s exciting to know he’s taken care of all that himself his whole life. You know Stalkers had two options with their medical needs. They either bartered with verbot to get care from this one clinic... or they didn’t. He’s been disabled since before he was a teen. He racked up an awful lot of debt with their lead doc. It got to where he couldn’t afford the emotional, sociological, or physical cost of enlisting the doc’s help.” He stilled himself by chewing at his spider bite studs, but his voice began to break. “He asked me this afternoon about a... maggot debridement kit. And Trylocaine saline. The bullet you asked about. He told me, he got shot in the leg. That night. It’s gotten so fucking infected. You think the 25-line garbage chute smelled bad? Just be glad you weren’t in the bathroom this morning helping him sop up the pus in the first place.”

The repairman huffed, eyeing the dry bar.

“So he wasn’t puffing up to scare me, by describing all the...” He realized he couldn’t gesticulate, and slouched in a sympathetic resignation. “The skin or whatever. Slag, though. Leather. Real leather,” he whooped. “And that much of it. It’s all kind of revolting, isn’t it?”

“Everything about him is so revolting that it’s charming. If there’s a way to keep him... keeping it. Oh, I don’t know.” He caught himself trying to stand to pace and burked the compulsion. “I just don’t understand why he threw it away, when he literally put years of blood and sweat into it.”

“Everybody’s got their own exchange rate, their own value of things. He might just not value the same things you do. Or at least, not in the same way. Whatever value that thing, and crafting it, has to him. Might be past tense. --Why’s it so important to you, that he keeps on like he has? You only just today found out about it, from the sound of it all.”

“Because this has been his ‘normal’ for the past four years!” he cried, throwing his hands up. “I can nearly forgive that he never told me, or showed me. He hasn’t had his hair bleached like that since we first met, and then he goes and does that the day after the bombing. And that tattoo. That triangle thing immortalized in the leather. I know he got it, a month after we started going steady, just to push my buttons.” He rubbed at his tattooed arms and couldn’t look at Jacob anymore, trembling deep in his lungs. “...I guess a part of me’s worried that he’s either trying to move to a time before he knew me. Or a time before he had to be nagged up over all this mess. It’s an understatement, that everything’s gone to shit since Central went dark, but everything really did feel right until that day. We managed. We worked. Like, it was all falling into place, not apart.”

Jacob barked a laugh, disquieted by his inability to unpack the brand of Cecil’s loyalty to ‘Choly.

“Geez, pal. Gonna sprain something, overthinking so hard. Mister Thorn’s on your side, and he’s going to guarantee your Ever After won’t be ending any time soon. Promise.” He got a bit lyrical as he drafted the laundry list. “Is leather working stuff all you think ‘Choly would need? The surgical stuff. I’ve got pharmaceutical connections. Wonder if Trylocaine’s enough...”

Cecil’s head picked up when he heard Jacob humoring him, and a hollow enchantment overwhelmed him at a loss for the spectrum of what the repairman must have had access to.

“I’m... not sure what you’re suggesting here,” he mumbled.

“All you’ve gotta be is specific. I can get it.”

“...And the cost?”

The repairman scoffed, in a wide-eyed detachment.

“The cost? You mean, what’s in it for me?” He thought it over a moment. “All depends on what it is, I guess.”

“What about Ketonamil?” Cecil blurted out, a little too intensely. Worried to have been mistaken for anger, he softly amended, “--Or at least, the stuff to make some?”

Cecil’s head rang in a complex grief, that the cyanogenic steroid was the first thing to fly out of his mouth. Maybe he felt more threatened than he thought by Jacob, in ways the tranq couldn’t adjust for. Or maybe he just wanted to gauge the repairman’s going prices. Jacob melted in a stunned, warm fascination.

“All this couch psychiatry mess has been fun, but if we’re going to continue to be neighbors, I really have got to work on how I keep letting you lot continue to surprise me with gems like this.” A wistful sigh escaped him, stuttering into discomfort. He wagged his head toward the reader on the square pad in the windowsill. “Yeah, I’ve got Underweb access. It should still have a charge. Parked it before third shift. If you... untie me... I could--”

“--Or,” Cecil asserted with a wild glare, gripping the man’s kneecap until he squirmed, then balance back to put the other hand on the device slightly behind himself. “You could just tell me your sequence so I can browse for myself.”

Cecil turned on the screen and waited. Maybe the liquor had loosened his inhibitions. He never got drunk. Was he a mean drunk? A talkative drunk? He’d disclosed to a near total stranger things he’d never come close to discussing with anyone close to him. He could see Jacob sweating.

“...Or that.”

Jacob told him the finger pattern design to draw through the symbols, and the lock screen shut off. He’d never been able to get the hang of ‘Choly’s rooted reader, and he’d purposefully left its updates off for years on top of that. The rooted user interface of the current model had so many more buttons to swipe among, and many menus necessitated the use of manually typing with the keyless entry pad that occupied the last third of the flat device. He didn’t ask Jacob to tell him how to use it, lest he risk inviting giving Jacob good reason to insist, If only you’d just untie me, I could show you myself, I’m no good at explaining things like that with words, et cetera, et cetera.

He’d figure it out himself.

The time in the corner indicated 22:52. If only you’d just untie me. The hypothetical request repeated itself in Cecil’s head. Did he really trust what Jacob told him, or was he being spoon-fed whatever might get him to free him? Though the wine key didn’t look like a reliable option, he pocketed it. Then he picked up the pronged Japanese bar spoon, and twiddled it between two fingers while he browsed with the other hand trying to locate the merchant apps. Apparently, its owner had the news Web app set to auto-load certain tiers of noteworthy news broadcasts. The screen split between three different pieces:

“Bloom Set to Ramp to Full Pandemic Status”

“Bloom Victims Now Sprouting Up on International Soil”

“New Developments in Bloom Survivor Procedures”

He skimmed the first, his brow sinking against his glasses. Something was effectively causing people to spontaneously turn inside out. He could recognize the “plant” and “insect” or“crustacean” traits the article described in the structures that jutted from and leafed out of the bodies knotted up in the apparent agony of such a gruesome death, even with only the photographs included of the casualties. His jaw tightened, recalling his brother mere hours ago making casual discussion over how Vekarix couldn’t graft an exoskeleton donor into a mammal’s genetic expression without lethal consequences. He boiled inside at the incredulity that Ben could be involved. The thylacine hybrid hadn’t seemed remotely out of sorts during the insect grafting discussion with ‘Choly. Had he been about to tell them all about this‘Bloom,’ only to have gotten interrupted by Jacob? By the Box?

The second article, he only skimmed, his ears ringing too much to focus. He gleaned victims had been found on both coastlines of the States, and in the past week cases had been discovered in Scandinavia and South Asia. Investigations had already been underway to pinpoint if a sole food supplier might have shipped out tainted stock, and pressure had intensified once the epidemic had crossed international waters. He spaced out a ways, despising the reality how disconnected from the outside world their apartment building was. Unplugged from reliable transportation, let alone utilities, including Web. Fed only what FEMA deemed suitable to funnel into their location-specific Nikola-based Web broadcasts. He stared at the photos, revolted fundamentally at what could only be some manner of genetic disease.

Speechless, the ex-librarian looked up, haunted, and turned around the reader to set it in Jacob’s lap to observe him.

“I’ve got to keep up on current events,” he lampshaded. “Sue me for having auto-load set on some stuff.”

“--You knew about this then?” Cecil snipped. “Have there been any in Tri yet?”

Jacob shrugged, and decided giving him his closest understanding of the crisis better served them both than instructing specific topic searches.

“Only a matter of time, I guess. They’ve started refining a cure. Made their first survivor announcement a few days ago. Nasty stuff. Comes in flare-ups. Seems to start just turning you green, but every episode after that just fucks you up sideways. Looking like the key to surviving it is catching it before‘crab phase’ or whatever the hell that explosion of sharp mangled guts is. Worst part is, it makes you complacent to the changes, or oblivious altogether. You don’t seek medical help. You stop eating, and seek light and water above all else. The first survivor only got there‘cause he stuck close enough to home his steady found him and took him somewhere.”

All the while, Cecil had stared at the reader screen, not Jacob.

“What... is it.”

“A virus, maybe? No one knows. It’s got to be genetic, ‘cause they reversed it with humanization serum. Look, if you wanna read up on it, that’s fine. I’m probably missing scientifical parts of this whole shebang. Use my reader all you want. I don’t care. Just lemme get up and piss, pal. You really are tormenting me at this point.”

Cecil finally folded, and crouched behind the chair to cut the knots with the wine key. By the time the ropes loosened off the chair, Jacob was already rounding the chair to gently knuckle-scrub the ex-librarian’s fresh buzz cut with a chuckle, and he strolled off to the bathroom. Cecil bundled up the rope, then sat to resume reading the news articles. Without all the bookshelves to dampen the sound, having the door open while he took care of his business echoed awfully. Cecil sneered, but appreciated that even though Jacob saved reserve water by not flushing until in the morning, he at least heard him wash his hands.

The third piece was almost totally in video broadcast. He started it, but couldn’t find the volume to turn it up, so he tapped at it until closed captioning started streaming. They interviewed a tall, older man with worn features and an angular nose, bespoken in layered burgundy and navy leisure suiting. The man had shoulder-length receding chartreuse hair, and blood-black sclera and fingernails. From his manicured brows and sideburns, he could tell it wasn’t a dye job. He grimaced as he skimmed the text.

Ivory Rasmussen. Prior already renown as the Confectioner responsible for Resin. Lives in Level 22, in the solar sector of still-crippled Tri-City, New Jersey.

He didn’t get anything more from the interview beyond the understanding they wanted to know what he felt, knowing his survival could mean a large-scale success in overcoming the pandemic globally. Except his insistence that, despite the global incidence, he discredited anyone who thus far considered the Bloom a pandemic of any kind. How dare Jacob simply shrug when a Tri-City native was the survivor in mention. When Jacob came up behind him and put a hand to his shoulder, he jerked to glower up at him, but softened immediately.

“Dude looks super wild. Am I right?” He patted the shoulder for emphasis.“Now how about that shopping list? Gotta get it before first shift. My receiver’s in a third shift sector, so their glow-time is in less than an hour now.”

“Leather crafting tools,” Cecil seethed. “Maggot debridement. Trylocaine. ...Antibiotics! And Ketonamil.”

At first, he’d just been sticking to what he’d thought was an accidental request, but certainty laced his voice now as though he hadn’t known he meant it the first time he’d said it before.

“And Ketonamil,” Jacob repeated. He sat on the edge of the desk and took the reader from him, flipping through with routine cynicism as he easily located every item requested. “Sorry for doing it for you. We’re just in a time crunch, is all.”

“You ordered the things!” Cecil nearly bolted up out of the chair. “But we hadn’t even negotiated what it’ll set me back yet!”

“Shh, shh,” he soothed, waving him to mentally sink back down in the chair. “Prices on delivery, neighbor. Prices on delivery.”

“But--”

“There a problem? No questions asked, why you want any of this stuff. I can conveniently forget anything you’ve said to me tonight, if you like. Doctor patient confidentiality, or whatever bullshit you want to call it. Services are the oldest human currency. I’ve got the means and the motivation. You won’t find both so easily in the same individual. Not in these parts. I’m not for anything too violent, I promise. I can already reassure you, I’ve never set a death in motion in providing any of these items in the past.”

“Up to, but not including,” the librarian jabbed dryly.

“Say, I wonder if we could find a genuine purpose for all that genuine leather,” he proposed aloud, stroking his short under-chin beard thoughtfully. “Something the little gremlin might like to keep.”

“He fancies himself an insect,” he corrected. Though the deprecating endearment nettled him, it worried him more that this endeavor might imperil his priceless object so quickly after he’d come into its possession. “I’m sure of it, that if you asked him, he’d consider the leather his chrysalis.”

“And just what do you think it’ll make him, if we can convince him to turn the stuff into something else?” The repairman offered the bag of cocktail jellies with a benevolent glance.

“Something that he might like,” Cecil repeated as he awed up at the taller man, accepting the cherries in a deferential entrapment.

“You still wanna fall back and keep an eye on me tonight?”

“I don’t think I could go home just yet.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

Cecil snorted, and popped another fruit in his mouth.

“Depends on your hourly rates, I guess.”

#biopunk #dystopian #cyberpunk #body horror #dystopia #the uptake #with symbiotic self indulgence #jacob thorn #george cecil #between you and me

1 note · View note