Business as Usual
Business as Usual
By: Tanner D.
My eyes dot frantically beneath electric light. Peering through the neon geometry of my hud overlay, I trace a path back to a frequently used audio file in my specks’ on board memory. A binaural beat. A beta wave around 30 hertz. The first of an entourage of aspects to compile my business face. My specks immediately interpret my double blink as the activation code for the file. In the space of a synapse, the micro-amps in the base of my synthetic skull drop the break-beat techno and employ the soft hum of a binaural pulse. I backtrack to my specks main screen to find the file on my contact. Got to make sure I am in the right place at the right time ya know? After all, the life of a hitman isn’t all blazing guns and explosions like you see in the movies. Yet in my case it happens like that more often than not.
I’d probably be dead by now from all this violence if it wasn’t for a particular ace up my sleeve, or should I say under my skin. I should be dead. But one life-changing story later and here I am with a body filled with so much techno-junk that I don’t think I’ll see death for a very long time. Even in my particular field. And be that as it may, I have also found it takes quite well to a large sum of abuse both externally and internally.
This brings me to my second and final phase of my business face. My hand slides into the chest pocket of my blazer with well tempered accuracy. It finds what it is looking for with ease. A baggy of pills. Everything I need to make the perfect cocktail. Abrums, Vamp, D-9s, and a few pharmaceuticals to ween off some unwanted effects by these fine drugs. As if having a teched-out super body wasn’t enough, I throw it into overdrive with these pills. The pharms first, then the D-9. I wait to drop the two Abrums in thirty seconds intervals and seal the deal with the Vamp. It all gets washed down with some Flavor 4 soda pop to boost the D-9s effect.
As I wait for the drugs to kick in, I finish up scanning through the file on the contact. I close all the windows in my hud and focus my eyes on a symbol in the overlay. A symbol aptly named “Business Time”. I double blink again and suddenly feel my body tingle. That’s how I know it’s on. Both the guns tucked under my arms let out a short vibration to let me know they are active now too. I stand with my eyes closed, take deep breaths and wait for a very distinct feeling.
Suddenly the feeling of a bubble inside me pops, exposing a new person. His eyes dazzled by the electric light pouring into his iris. The binaural frequency throttles his brain. He feels the electricity in his body. Now the Vamp hits hard, pushing him to feel faster than time itself. As he swiftly darts out of my shell he exposes himself true. Meet my business face.
He tools over the last vestiges of his former reality, wondering about the style in which he executed former contacts. Two dead and his gun’s four shots shy of a full clip. Not feeling that today. As he palms both his guns he thinks about all the exciting things that are about to happen. With one firm blow, his foot levels the door and he smiles.
How to Kill a Spider
How to Kill a Spider
By Chelsa H.
First notice the huge brown spider crawling across the ceiling while you are lying in bed with a good book. At first be too scared to move. Spiders have never really been your thing. Realize that if it falls off the celling, it will land on you and touching a spider gives you the chills.
Scream for your husband and jump off the bed into the safety of the bathroom doorway. Watch as he comes running in thinking you were screaming for an actual emergency and try to explain this is an emergency. Bat your eye lashes while he is telling you that you are worthless and good for nothing. Smile when he slides past you cowering in the doorway and grabs a wad of toilet paper heading for the toilet, gone forever with one flush.
Say “thank you dear” as the man you married mumbles something under his breath as he is walking out of the room, back to whatever he was in the middle of before this spider interrupted you. Curl back up in your bed and think to yourself you are not worthless, you are good at getting rid of spiders.
Paramour
Paramour
By Lindsay F.
Isabel ran her hands through his honeyed curls, arching her back a bit, drowning in a pool of ecstasy. The first moan had been feigned, for her nerves and self consciousness forbade her handing herself entirely over to Jasper’s charms. But the second bottle of Veuve Clicquot, now sweating on the nightstand, had begun to take hold. The next moan was quite legitimate, but interrupted by the chilling sound of the front gate at the end of the driveway. He was home. Several moments passed, Isabel stunned at her own plan. Lost under the sheets and between her thighs, Jasper hadn’t heard the car rolling over the loose gravel just outside the window. Isabel lay still for a moment, cold with fear. She’d planned this, after all- why the sudden shock?
Of course she hadn’t consulted Jasper. As powerful as he was, he’d always been terrified of consequences. It was true, she loved both men. The question as to which would make her happy was silly to her. She could obviously be happy with either Andon or Jasper. The issue was the degree of her happiness- and Jasper’s. And Andon’s, for that matter. What suddenly occurred to her, as if for the first time, was the pain she was about to inflict on her poor husband. Sweet, simple Andon. He’d never have suspected.
The sound of footsteps on the hard wood hallway floor sent Isabel’s heart pounding as though it would burst through her bare chest. It took only an instant after a plan that had taken days to change her fickle mind. In a sudden flurry of sheets and sticky, delicious sweat, she’d pushed Jasper from the bed, and signaled him to him underneath. Used to potential trouble, he did it with great ease, looked to her eyes in a shared second of panic, and was under the enormous bed in an instant. His toned, yet slim body just fit. Andon was right outside the door. In one graceful movement, Isabel stood, panting, and swept her sheer robe around her shoulders. She raced to the door, swallowed hard, and opened it just before Andon’s hand reached the antique knob.
“My love! I am so glad you’re home. You look absolutely famished! You simply must come with me to the kitchen, Gertrude has made the most spectacular dinner.”
Andon smiled at the goddess he was married to. How fortunate a man he was. He kissed her throat, naïve to the scent of another man all over her body. “Why are you so warm, darling?”
“Oh, yes, isn’t it hot? I tried our window but it seems to be jammed. No matter. Come, let’s go to the kitchen. I’m just starving, aren’t you?”
Andon nodded, grinned, tossed his small leather bag onto the bed from the doorway, and put his arms around his wife.
Just Fall and Miss the Ground
Just Fall and Miss the Ground
By Sean H.
As I fell out of the twelfth story window the ground rushed at me and I was hit by a force that threw me back up towards the heavens. I panicked for a moment, a moment I had not panicked before, but then, the wind rushing through my hair and my coat slapping and flapping behind me, I realized that, no matter what the reason, I was flying over the city, over and unaware people down below.
The human race evolved on the African plains millennia ago, no predators in the trees, no reason to look up, not worth the processing power. Robots, all of them. Heads on a pivot. Side to side. Except me… and that one there, she looked up; I could see her mouth the famous line under her breath.
“It’s a bird, it’s a plane.”
I was fucking Superman… and if she was willing she would soon be fucking Superman, but first I would have to figure out how to get down… or maneuver at all for that matter, without finishing what I had planned for earlier. Before.
But before what? What had happened? I mean really. Was I flying? Was I being abducted by aliens? Was I still alive? Was I lying on the pavement back at the bottom of that building, people milling about my crushed and decomposing corpse? Was this real life or was it just fantasy? For all I knew I was still standing in that building, looking out across the city and wondering “what if?” That would be almost worse somehow. Worse than being dead? Worse than being crazy?
I looked back to where the woman stood, still looking at me, and my whole body turned and started moving towards her. She was pretty this one. The kind of pretty you see on the cover of Jane Austen novels. Pale skin, dark, curly hair and this one had light blue eyes to set off her other features. She smiled when she saw I was coming back and my heart warmed.
I don’t even remember landing that first time, but I remember looking her in the eyes and without a word taking her for a ride over the city. No one looked up, African plains and robots and all. We couldn’t cared less.
Reality or Not
Reality or Not
By Dave C.
I run my hands through her long and lustrous hair. I kiss her forehead, her cheeks and then her neck. My tongue emerges to lick a roadway from her neck to her tiny earlobes and back again. After I nibble on her lobes for what seems eternity, I follow the straightest path to her beautiful face and those plump ripe red lips. I bite those lips that hold the taste of her and suddenly press forward for a strong deep kiss. The kiss is returned with equal fervor; we mingle our tongues and continue this way for many minutes.
We pull apart and both sets of eyes lock onto the other. We stare at each other and gently tease with the knowledge of what is yet to come. I press her down onto the bed and as I hover my tongue begins its downward journey along her well defined body. Chin, neck and oh those beautiful breasts. They are small but firm and afford me much pleasure. After paying them their rightful homage I resume my roadway of exploration.
In a sudden and unexpected move Cathy manages to flip me onto my back and begins her assault on my body. The suddenness and virtuosity of her onslaught caught me unaware and aroused me to a new intensity. We play at this back and forth power shifting until we are ready to explode. At that point we pull back and recharge ourselves. This game of pleasure/torture goes on for at least an hour until we can no longer wait for the ultimate joining of our bodies. Cathy rolls me onto my back again, mounts and losses herself screaming in wild abandon.
Later as we are relaxing, staring at the ceiling and letting our breath return to normal a loud clanging noise forces me into a sitting position. I turn toward the direction of the noise and looking me squarely in the face is my alarm clock demanding my attention.
Simultaneously through the locked door the dulcet of Cathy, our maid. “Sir, please wake up, remember, it’s your first day as a high school senior.”
At that I glance toward the pillow next to mine to find nothing.