Humorless Dancing

Mona spun in a circle, pink and blue hair spinning a step behind her. It draped across the scarred bridge of her nose. Hooked in the piercings on her lips, her brows, and her nose. Bright lights flashed across her skin. Blue illuminated the wild flash in her blown pupils and green irises. Red painted across her glossy lips. White trailed across the silver necklaces draped across her neck. Two lockets stuck on her clothes between what should have been cleavage but instead was nothing more than the rippled shadow of her ribcage.

The floor pressed in around her.

It felt good to lose control.

It felt good to be Gone.

The implant against her temple gushed and she could feel it, the blissful moment the serum slipped down her temple. Euphoria raced through her blood. Pounded in her throat. Closed tight hands around her belly. The serum soaked into her skin and matted her hair to her skin, giving her a glistening, sweaty sort of look. It wouldn't have done this if she hadn't popped so many pills.

The lights switched directions.

Mona hummed a rhythmless tune in her throat as she abandoned spinning in favor of swaying through the pack of undulating people.

There were few others in the city who were broken enough that the drugs didn't work and even fewer with broken implants. Mona had only met two others with broken implants. With suicide attempts. The drugs were supposed to keep them sedate. In the words of the ruling Doctor Heja, calm and without anxiety. But the implants didn’t work for some. They cause violent hallucinations, sleepless nights, and fear so deep people jumped from bridges to escape it.

Mona slipped into the invisible current twining through the mess of bodies.

The people suffered despite which Doctor they elected. The masses lived on. The serums changed but none worked on the Abhorrents. None kept them in line. But they were plugged up with implants anyway. So they had to find a way to fix it themselves. To deal with the side effects of drugs that never would have worked for them anyway.

They made Shooting Stations.

Pretty little places full of ugliness and pink pills that kept them hopped up enough to live another day.

All the Abhorrents were here from this sector of the city.

Mona was still an outlier.

The music pounded in her bones like a child slamming clenched fists against glass toy displays. It vibrated the pieces of her back into place. She couldn’t ever be like the others. Mona didn’t miss it. She had once but those days were long gone. As dead as her hope of abandoning Shooting Stations and dance floors.

A tremor of terror blew her pupils wide until the lights grew bright and fuzzy.

She slipped a sly hand into her pocket and pulled out a small, metallic canister. Two pale pink pills shook out onto her tongue and dissolved in a fizzing mix of berries and chemicals.

Her vision settled.

The room went dark again, broken up only by the strobing lights and butts of cigarettes.

It would always be this way.

A high at night to take away the terror of the next day. Two pills on the tongue to make the serum an effective drug. To raise her high enough that when she crashed she could sleep, work, live, and find the strength to walk back to the Shooting Station. To Astra. Mona closed her eyes and let her feet slide to a stop. The rhythm of the undulating bodies around her rocked her into a gentle swaying beat. She fell into the crowd.

Even amongst the Abhorrents, she was different.

She had jumped once.

Mona had hit cold water and lived to tell the tale.

All she got for it was a dislodged implant that leaked down her cheeks and tears constantly streaming down her face. It didn’t matter whether the serum worked or didn’t anymore. Everything brought her to the cusp of suicide. The taste of a cinnamon bagel covered in cream cheese. Red sunsets and blue midnights. The feel of soft carpet beneath her feet in winter. It all drove her deeper into the abyss.

Mona opened her eyes and spun again, slower and without a smile. The pills would hold her here in a state of limbo until the next night.

It was almost time to go.

Mona kept moving around the dirty wood floor. Her high, holographic pumps carved little lines in the old wood, whispering that she had been there. That she existed. She inhaled deeply, drawing in the coveted smell of happiness. Rubbing alcohol and blood. Mona distantly wondered how many people had tried to rip their implants out tonight. How many had failed. How many had died.

Suicide was never easy.

But it was never particularly hard either.

Not when the serums didn’t work.

There was incentive. Shadows chasing her down and nightmares curled up like a cat on her pillow waiting for her return. It was easy to hide her face in death when life chased her with a loaded gun. Mona pivoted sharply.

This was good though.

This was worth a fight.

A bit of the previous glory of the long night filled her again. Pink glowed on her cheeks and light returned to her eyes. The darkness was there, waiting, but the pills were stronger. The pills made the serum something nice. Something almost unbreakable.

Mona pivoted again and knocked hard into a man. Paused to examine his face. He was pale and covered in crisscrossing lines of black ink. Green eyes were dulled grey like a cold spring morning clinging to the slush of winter. She ran gloved fingers beneath the harsh angle of his jaw shadowed with hunger.

The humor left her face.

“Yours…” she whispered.

Serum leaked from his implant and down his cheeks coating him in a shimmering liquid and tears streamed from his eyes. He blinked lazily. More tears fell but they didn’t seem to bother him just like they didn’t seem to bother her.

His fingers came up to tap her device.

“Abhorrent,” he whispered back. “Where?”

“Jackson Street bridge,” Mona said, her voice turning high and reedy with the memory.

The man’s eyes brightened marginally then went dark. A thick hand brought Mona’s fingers back to his leaking implant.

“79th. Outside Heja’s office.”

Mona’s pale eyes scraped across the serious expression of the man as he ran the back of his knuckles across her skin. He wasn’t lying. There was a particular type of terror that only those with broken implants and suicide attempts under their belt wore. Something like realising they’d swallowed a coin.

“You are the first I’ve met,” he murmured, affectionately looking at the broken implant. “How long?”

“Four years.”

“Four years? Fucking hell.” The apple of his throat bobbed. “It’s…been eight months. I don’t know how you made it four years. Not even I’m going to make it through winter.”

“Summer is the worst.”

“Is it?” A nervous smile pulled at the corners of his mouth and Mona couldn't help but reach out and drag her gloves across them.

“The Patients are all happiest then. The serum works best with sunlight. And the sun, the sky… Haven’t you noticed? It’s a mockery. No, winter is far nicer. There are blankets and fires and it’s okay to sleep through the day. You’ve made it through the worst.”

Something relaxed on the man’s face and he lost ten years of his age. He was easily as young as her but far deeper in his suffering.

“I must have. To find you, that is.”

He was sweet in a sheepish way. That wasn’t normal in the Shooting Station. Especially not Astra which had a reputation as one of the more desperate Shooting Stations. He was quiet. Soft-spoken. That wasn’t really normal anywhere. Shyness was a trait of those the serum didn’t work right on and reckless extroversion was a sign of health. The man fidgeted slightly.

“Can I ask your name?”

“Sure,” Mona said, smiling back.

The man paused. His mouth opened in a shocked little “o” as he realised what happened then twisted into an earnest smile full of polished white teeth.

“What’s your name?”

“Mona. Yours?”

“Mel. Short for nothing.”

“Well, hello Mel-Short-For-Nothing.”

She scooted closer and wrapped her arms around him in a hug. A shudder moved through him. It must have been as long without physical contact for him as it had been for her. Abhorrents were outcasts and outcasts didn’t have family or friends to hug. They had their pain and the Shooting Stations and sometimes far worse. Sometimes they were caught at the illegal places, the Shooting Stations, and locked in blank hospital rooms until they were fixed or until they died.

Slowly his arms raised. Wrapped around her. Squeezed. He tucked his head against her.

“Astra closes at four, you know.”

“I know.” Another shiver moved through him. The thin arms squeezed more tightly. “Would another minute hurt?”

“No.” Mona reached up to cradle his head finding the pale white hair, short but shaggy, was soft as silk. Soft as snow. Soft as her bed had been as a child. “I sleep with my bed on the floor and a pile of blankets. Right next to a radiator. Sometimes I think it’ll catch fire.”

“It won’t.”

She grinned into his neck. There was such confidence in how he said it.

“I eat ice cream over a blanket and watch it melt from the heat.”

Mona could feel his heart beating between them, quick and strong. Someone plugged into the serum wouldn’t understand. Neither would the ones at the Shooting Station. Mona inhaled deeply. She wasn’t sure anyone else would understand but there was something indescribable about the experience for her since her implant had broken. Something…mundane.

“Transience.” Mel pulled back and looked her square in the eyes. “Everything is, isn’t it?”

“Everything,” she whispered, wetting her lips. “Would you…would you like to watch the ice cream melt with me? Tonight?”

Mel reached out and brushed a thumb against the sticky serum smeared against her temples.

“Absolutely.”