“All right, Miss Roland … let’s go over this … one more time.”
The senior officer clears his throat and side-eyes his junior partner. The two exchange a sophomoric grin as the rock behind my sternum pulses frenetically.
“You say the two of you met at a poetry reading. She complimented your work, you shared pleasantries, cell numbers, makeup tips … and then what happened?” He nudges his partner and the lesser of the two dogs wags his tail eagerly.
I glare at the alpha, wondering if he can hear the sound of my molars grinding against each other in frustration. “We went back to my place,” I say again. “I told you that.”
“Right,” Officer Milkboner says, glancing at his notepad, which I can only assume contains a crude drawing of me and the violent criminal I’m trying to get him to catch locked in some cartoonish lesbian embrace. “Where she spent the night, is that correct?”
“How is that relevant?” I ask. Again. “And why am I still here and not at the hospital?” He jots something down that makes his sidekick giggle. “And why the hell am I handcuffed?!”
He ignores the rise in my voice. An incessant itch along my breastbone ventures into burning territory. I take a breath and calm myself with the thought of rubbing dog shit under the door handles of his cruiser when I get out of here.
If I get out of here.
“Standard procedure, Miss Roland,” he says, waving his beefy fingers in my direction. “Now, regarding your evening with the alleged thief—”
“Deranged psychopath,” I interject.
“Miss Roland, psychopathy isn’t a crime.”
“Isn’t it?” Boy Wonder chimes in.
“Maybe not,” I say. “But I’m pretty sure drugging people and harvesting their organs is.”
“Well yes, but I’m not certain that’s what … transpired … between you and … what did you say her name was?”
The back of my throat fills with bile and I swallow it, bitterly.
“Zelkora,” I say.
“That’s an unusual name,” he says, scratching the space where his chin should be with the business end of his ball point pen and leaving a mark. “Almost sounds made up.”
I resist rage-kicking the front of his desk. “All names are made up,” I say. The tightness in my chest rises to a distressing level. “And that is what transpired.”
“And remind me,” he baits, “what transpired between the two of you … exactly?” He leans forward, followed by his drooling lacky. The dark mechanism in my chest threatens to implode.
“I told you,” I say, tasting the words. “She drugged me and then she stole my—”
“Heart?” He smiles like a shit-eater. I resist breaking the business end of his nose with my forehead.
“Yes.”
He leans back in his chair and crosses his legs like it’s the first time he’s ever attempted the maneuver. “With all due respect, Miss Roland, this is hardly a good use of the police department’s time and resources.”
“I agree,” I say. “Which is why you should be out looking for this pers—this thing—before it gets to anyone else. They’re dangerous.”
“They?” He makes a disgusted face. “Is this person one of those … what do you call them … transies?”
A tendon on the side of my neck quivers reflexively.
“No,” I seethe. “In this case, “they” means there’s more than one of them.”
“More than one of whom?” He inserts the back end of the pen in his ear and twists it to relieve an itch. I wait for it to emerge on the other side.
“You’re wasting time,” I growl through clenched teeth, wringing my wrists futilely in the cuffs, the feeling of helplessness threatening to send me into a post traumatic panic. “If you’re not going to help me, then at least let me go to the hospital before I have a heart attack!”
“I’m not convinced you need a medical doctor, Miss Roland. But you might need a head doctor.”
“I’m not crazy!” I shout. “I have proof!”
“Proof of what?” He smiles condescendingly. “A broken heart?”
The whir of metallic gears between my CO2-deprived lungs shuttles me further into distress.
“PROOF THAT I DON’T HAVE ONE ANYMORE!” I stand up and the room tips on its axis. I drift to the left, and Baby Cop steadies me with one smooth, desk worker’s hand. I collapse helplessly back into the chair.
“Well unless that proof is tangible evidence of an actual crime, Miss Roland, I’m afraid it’s your word against Zappora’s—”
“Zelkora,” the puppy corrects him before I have to. The abomination in my chest purrs gratefully.
I lock eyes with the newbie and watch him squirm under the sudden attention. “I have proof,” I whisper, my eyes begging him to grow a pair.
“What proof?” he asks.
“With all due respect, Lieutenant, I don’t think—”
“I have a scar,” I say. The burning sensation returns with a vengeance, and I let out a tiny whimper of anguish. “Obviously,” I groan.
The rookie stands at attention. “Let me see it.”
“Uncuff me,” I demand.
“Miss Roland, with all due res—”
“Shut up,” I say. Daddy Cop’s eyes widen.
“You want proof? I have proof. Or maybe you’d rather just sit there and watch me die of heart failure while forcibly restrained in your office because you’re too pig-headed not to see how a family of alien organ harvesters roaming the streets outside your precinct might be worth an hour or two of your time.”
My new ally stifles an impressed chuckle and I resist winking in his direction. Mostly because the room is spinning and I’m not sure if he’s in it anymore.
A pair of pudgy, calloused hands removes my handcuffs. I have an intense urge to bolt. But I don’t have the stamina.
Not like I had last night with Zelkora. I’ve never felt so alive with anyone before. So full of blood. So human. Despite what dumb and dumber must believe, my encounter with Zelkora wasn’t purely sexual. It wasn’t sexual at all, really. Just … strange. And fuzzy now, in my memory.
I remember the poetry reading, the drinks, the pleasantries. I remember her lipstick, comically off the mark and yet she didn’t seem concerned when I pointed it out after she reapplied it abysmally in the ladies’ room.
She struggled with hand-to-mouth coordination, she’d said. All the women in her very large family did. Which is probably why most of her drinks didn’t make it into her system and why I was considerably more drunk than she was when we got back to my apartment.
We talked for a while, but I don’t remember what about.
Poetry? Love? Technology?
Marathons … maybe?
I passed out cold, and that’s when she did it.
I felt nothing. I couldn’t move or speak. But I heard, smelled, and saw everything.
The high-pitched squeal of the saw.
The smell of burnt flesh and wire.
The metallic tang of blood.
The sweat on her forehead, the sickening grin on her face, the gentle humming from her bubblegum-pink-stained lips as she tinkered inside me for what felt like hours.
Did she know I was awake? Did she care?
I wanted to scream. I tried to scream, but I was only half alive in my own skin. The humming began to work like a sedative and my eyelids flooded with lead. I fought them open long enough to see the fist-sized mass of writhing alien technology being lowered into my ribs. Three metallic clicks and a blinding pain across my torso shoved me out of consciousness.
The last thing I heard was Zelkora’s voice, distorted and deep, as though she’d lost the ability to speak like the irresistibly quirky woman I met in the coffee shop.
“Beautiful,” she said.
“Miss Roland?”
The office spins into focus. A distant clanging fills my ears.
“Yes.” My throat closes on the word. I gag over the taste of axel grease.
“The proof?”
“Proof?” My hands move to my chest. Heat radiates through my shirt as a cold sweat breaks out on my forehead and the small of my back. “I … have a scar …” my voice trembles and the urge to escape returns.
“You said that already,” the dumb man says. “We’ll need to see it … obviously.”
The clouds, blanketing my thoughts, part briefly as I make reluctant eye contact with each of my captors. I linger on the eyes of the kinder one. He pulls sheepishly at his collar and looks away. I make the request more for his sake than mine. I know he can’t stomach what he’s about to see.
“I’d be more comfortable with a woman for this,” I say truthfully. “Since I have to undress.”
The alpha groans impatiently, as if my asking for this basic courtesy is a threat to standard male-dominated procedure.
“I’ll get Judy,” the subordinate declares. He strides out of the office with authority. If I still had a heart, it would be breaking a little, knowing I won’t live to see him supplant his cock-headed superior.
“All right, Miss Roland,” the cock-head says, standing up with a considerable amount of effort. “I’ll start a report on your little … heart thief … while my secretary determines if you have evidence of anything outside of a tragic one-night stand.”
The slab of angered machinery behind my sternum seizes and rebounds. I resist spitting the jet-fuel on my tongue in his smug face. I nod gratefully to hide the expression of anguish as I re-ingest the caustic liquid.
“Can you give me a description of the suspect?” His pen and paper remain on the desk. He’s already at the door.
I open my mouth to answer, but my voice no longer functions. My stomach turns and my muscles clench over a wave of intense dread.
I try to communicate my paralysis to him through my eyes, but they refuse to produce the tears of terror I need them too.
He sighs. “Okay then. I’ll just tell my boys to be on the lookout for a lesbian with a human heart in her handbag. Good day, Miss Roland.”
“Them,” I manage over a strangled exhale.
“Right.” He waves his thick fingers dismissively. “Them.”
He leaves me alone and I plead with my body to get up and run. But it refuses.
My skin goes cold and clammy, save for the scorched swath just under the buttons of my shirt which have melted into the fabric.
No. They haven’t. I’m hallucinating.
Was I hallucinating last night?
Had all of it been a drug-induced dream?
Am I going completely crazy?!
The distant clanging in my ears has reached a deafening pitch. Surely, everyone in the next room can hear it.
I take a sharp breath, and my lungs allow it. I take another, slower and deeper, and close my eyes over the calming sensations it brings. The rush of oxygen through my blood. My blood, yes, still coursing through my veins as it always has. I breathe deeper and deeper until the use of my muscles returns. I wiggle my fingers and toes. Smile a little at the way they tingle in response to my brain, telling them what to do. I sigh heavily over an exhale and find my voice again. Tears of relief fill my eyes. I listen for the clanging, but it’s been replaced by the clicking of heeled footsteps, approaching in the hallway.
A soft knock at the door.
“Come in,” I say.
A petite brunette enters the office and closes the door behind her. “Miss Roland?” Her voice is high, sharp, and professional. “My name is Judy. I understand you have a scar you’d like me to have a look at.”
My cheeks flush with embarrassment. Oh god. Why had I been so adamant? So certain I’d been surgically violated by an alien I met at a poetry reading? It was all just a misunderstanding. I got too drunk, and I made a mistake. Surely, I can explain that to a fellow woman who’s probably had her share of bad dates.
Judy walks in front of the desk and sits herself directly in front of me. She crosses her arms, then her ankles. Her face rests comfortably in a tight-lipped scowl.
Or not.
“Well, I … um … I thought that I had …”
“Miss Roland,” she sighs, “the sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can go back to writing feminist poetry, and the sooner I can go back to waiting for my chauvinist boss to drop dead from heart failure.”
I consider laughing until I see she’s only half kidding. Still, the bond is set.
I reach for the buttons on my shirt and her eyes drift downward. I blush a little, remembering I’m not wearing a bra. Then the flutter of panic returns when I remember the reason why.
Pain.
My mind drifts away from my fingers, but they still move, as if possessed.
One button …
The squeal of the saw …
Two buttons …
Burnt flesh and wire …
Three buttons …
Lipstick, sweat, and blood …
Four buttons …
How did she clean up all the blood?
My shirt falls open and I stare shamefully at my own hands, twitching nervously in my lap.
“Hmm,” Judy hums softly.
My jaw tightens as she runs a delicate finger over the tortured flesh along my breastbone. I can’t bear to look at the source of the pain, so I look at her face instead.
I made a mistake.
Her lips curl into a menacing grin, revealing a row of lipstick-stained teeth.
Molten metal pulses eagerly behind my broken sternum. She leans in closer as my mind sprints desperately out of consciousness.
Over the din of clanging metal and the rush of tainted blood to my brain I hear her cough away the voice modulator in her throat.
“Beautiful,” she drones deeply. “Just beautiful.”
Yes, I did..... Enjoy it.
Love this .