The Sucker Punch

While the weather grew miserable and the city turned sullen, a lone lightpost oscillated under the weight of the incessant rain. Kine stood in the downpour, her polycarbonate skin slick and cold, watching as his shadow inched closer with a hollow step.

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"You've been waiting, ah... I'm sorry I've kept you..."

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He offered a macerated apology in a voice far too mellifluous for the hour. Between the rapid blinks and the hard, nervous swallows, there was the unmistakable, pungent smell of his cologne that spiked her sensors; even as they tracked his rising cortisol levels, her mind was busy measuring the weight of his perfidy. Internal synapses whirred until the raw data finally coalesced into a bitter shot of stinging nettled truth. It was at this moment her eyes became prismatic and her lenses zoomed into focus.

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"I'm sorry for what I am about to say."

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"You don't have anything to say because I am here; I made it."

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"Are you here or are you hiding?" she countered. "Hiding is a sucker punch in a city with trees of no shadow."

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He let out a guttural guffaw that brought no mirth. "What?"

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"Are you really here, or are you hiding something?"

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"I am here and I am not; I'm an honest man."

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But her oscilloscope tracked the stars of his injury, and it was clear the lines were factitious and inconsistent. There was no partiality; her data was the numbers on a calculator, final like a scratch card, it was cold like all truths are. But his honesty was a failing experiment. Firing through every inch of her mind, she held the facts: his honesty was nothing more than a calculated trick.

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He was a macabre mess of grime, posing as a crow on a statue of health, he was what grime called itself.

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As his plans succumbed to entropy, he lost sight of the life he meant to build. He was meant to fall in love; now he was loving the fall. The rain kept falling and the city's gloom kept shading the moonlight.

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She walked without weight but with liquefied purpose, drawn towards the alleyway where a broken light bulb lay scattered like scintillating teeth.

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Cats fight.

Mice die.

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Underneath the shards, the chemiluminescence of a red black hole jiggled; it was a thick, dark symbol of revenge. Whether the deed had been executed or was yet to come, nothing was certain. She picked up a single shard of glass; through its refraction, the alleyway glittered like a goldmine. Her internal synapses let out an odd, digital screech as she dropped the shard, realizing that without the glass the goldmine was gone; in its place, the world looked like a predator.

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The city hungered. Beyond the alleyway, the world was a scabrous snap pic; the air was thick, the store ads were poison, and the memories were acid. Garbage bins sat piled high like rotting monuments while the crowds surged with a dangerous kinetic energy. Everyone had somewhere to go, but the ghost man was already gone, leaving the buzzing bug of a motorcycle behind.

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Her sensors shifted to a thermal overlay, turning the world into shades of neon moss-tinged light. The signal pulsed green; her logic confirmed this, the target was finally within reach. She turned right and crossed the road, pausing only to plug into the scintillating library walls to siphon their power, her eyes glowing as she calculated the bike's path.

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To her, the stiffness of the man was a mechanical error. Was he a slave to a skirt he wished to follow, or was he a victim of the dust he chose to line? He was under the influence of his will, or his will was under the influence of the dust.

A/N : 2026 is my year for getting out of my head and into the light. I am choosing to go for what I want and ignore that insidious voice telling me I am not good enough. I know now that if I put my heart into the story, and I put my back into the craft, I can achieve anything I set my mind to without the dust. Stay clean, stay here. Come back soon! 🤗❤️🙏🏾