Mel Valentine

this is how your dates go: she takes you out to a diner, and, at some point during dinner, she slips something in your drink.

sometimes she's brazen, like the first time: she stares you dead in the face as she squirts an eyedropper of something into your root beer, daring you to deviate from the plan. this what you want?, her eyebrows ask. this is how it's gonna go.

sometimes you don't even see her do it. you'll be nibbling the final corner of your diagonally sliced grilled cheese, about to ask if she actually dosed you. then the texture of the diner noise changes, as if sound could be wrapped in soft silk. the question dies on your lips.

however she does it, whatever she uses, she keeps getting your defenses down enough so that you can fuck her. it's not your fault that you can't manage at baseline. it's not her fault either. dysphoria is just a bitch like that.

it's so much easier to let yourself get that close, let her guide your girlcock into her neovag, when you're halfway out of your head. when your brain is busy elsewhere and you don't have to think about how artificial you both are.

this time you're fucking on the cold stone floor of her bathroom. she's under you. you're avoiding her eyes, instead watching the floor over her shoulder. the rippled patterns of the marble extrude themselves into peaks and canyons, the topography of a distant world.

an alien war machine crawls down one valley, beam cannons in its forward section glowing electric blue. as the far-away meat part of you thrusts again into her, you're down there in the metal oxide dust, watching turning joints, feeling the thump of its footfalls.

you don't know this model well enough to distinguish loaded artillery rocket tubes in its thorax from empties. is it repositioning for battle, or fleeing it?

"huh? don't stop, not now!"

you must have said that out loud. you try to explain. the words come out all at once, so you point.

she turns her head, hair fanning out a little further across the marble. then she stretches out a hand, a finger, locking her legs around your hips as she does.

the alien war machine hunkers low as a sudden dust storm bears down on it. then it leaps over your viewpoint, tracing a high arc in the low gravity. it hits the ground and picks up speed, dashing to cover further away than your optics can pick up.

"fuck, it's just a jumping spider, ignore it," she orders, reinforcing her demand with a squeeze of her legs.

a minute later, the signal breaks up. you're back in yourself, and sticky, and the marble tiles are just marble tiles again.

she holds you after, but not gently. fingernails sharp against your skin.

"not using this stuff again. it's no fun. i just need you nice and fuzzed, not totally out there."

"you could take it too," you mumble.

the government says this plan will increase the integration of vampiric persons into normal society. the national health service says their trial will help 'people with disordered hemosynthetic parasitism' manage their health and avoid poor, condition-derived choice.

everyone knows it's kinda bullshit.

the clinics are too far apart, the waiting lists too long, the supply too short and the subject of endless headlines about the bagfeeders stealing from our veins. (0.4% of daily donations, to be precise.)

and you're still basically disabled without RADE (risk-aware dietary enhancement), and taking it from a partner is just a call-out post and a lost mutual aid network waiting for a breakup.

you could do bloodwork. it'll even be not-yet illegal if you don't let them fuck you, which is only the most required part if you aren't a top 0.1% earner and still wanna make rent.

no. what everyone knows really is that it's not enough, and it's not supposed to be. they want you starving, barely able to get up in the evening, getting fired totally because you can't keep up and all these complaints which are totally valid.

they want you thinking about making those poor, condition-derived choices. so they can simper about how much they sympathise with your condition and how unsafe you must feel while they lock you up and cancel all their plans and trials for being ineffective.

so you're in their corridors, their halls. it's where they want you. cheap, and vulnerable, and needy. with the people who could make it better and won't. who'll enjoy you and feed you and toss you when the headlines get too close to finding out.

they will notice--when the right honourable member for croydon west fails to preside over PMQs.

they will notice--when the mail is shoving PARASITE PROSTITUTE EATS YOUR SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE down every tom-dick voter's thursday morning throat.

it takes an hour for you to move.

the cold bag of flesh sagging inside of you falling out and off the state bed. what little blood is left shows only as a shadow in the crimson carpet. you shove it in the closet, and are a whisper in its mirrored face.

would that were what eyes see too.

a hidden panel makes for an exit. a mosque across the river makes for a bed and the other kind of meal without questions. you think about what they'll have when they turn the tv and leave before it. security cameras aren't made with silver; your face isn't yours any more.

would that you could turn a bat and fly. instead for all your fullness you still feel the pit dug of decades, like you could throw both lords and commons into it and still be empty.

there's a house in brixton, the worst hour of your life away. someone had a baseball cap you steal, there's sunglasses in your bag; a mask is too much. your parasol will mark you out as disordered; you put on every bit of silver you can and bear the little sun you can, police vans whining past and strangers in the street you have to hope don't care.

the girl inside has never met you, you just know her from someone who does from someone who does from someone who does. she's fae, and like a sheep. velvet cheeks and square eyes and not out to the world like you are. none of the fae are--they see how bad it's gone for everyone except the old blood who fuck their own great-grandnieces at party fundraisers--so none of them are on a police registry with your address, or on a list passed over from palantir of your friends and their friends and all the addresses of their shitty, overpriced boxes.

you take off the silver, red marks on your warm skin. she has to go to work; she'll show you how to glamour when she's back.

something thunders distant on windrush square. you hear it from the shared garden, where a thin line of glittering chalk keeps you safe and unseen.

everyone here is the same, almost. she's called dolly--a joke which stuck a couple months ago. it comes with different needs, a different kind of struggle, and not a reason to care about yours.

she does. gets back from work and shows you the glamour she takes to it. like the chalk line, but takes away her and humanises instead. so long as you don't get too close.

she gives you her wrist, shaved down. does it before she injects in case it takes the hormones away because maybe that's how it works.

you walk outside and no-one stops you. you circle round the square, people shouting from concrete snakes. silver takes you far enough to find a carribbean shop. you don't know what to buy, dolly can't eat the same as you. you buy too much and have sex on an old carpet when she notices the regret.

you're not full. you're also not empty. the reflection in the mirror is strange; sunflower-print dungarees that were never marketably fuckable enough to pick for yourself.

there's police in the square. people push them from a memorial, there's cardboard in their hands. you try to go back to the shop; AFOs with Fs stand at each door to the market, and you can smell the silver bullets from too close to turn away.

you used your own fucking card.

drop it before you use it this time; bungle out the shop backwards right into someone. the glamour falters and you feel it like nails on half-dead nerve-ends.

someone else grabs your arm. the whole thing fails by time you're pulled into a kitchen. everyone looks and keeps moving as three different ipads chime out the demands of delivery apps. the boy who grabbed you, dreads in a net, asks what you're doing here.

(to eat. to be full.)

"you got a phone?" no. "i can call for you." you don't know her number.

where did they all come from. you try to run threat analysis. you need to find dolly. soft wool. hot skin. chalk to hide behind. there's only a crowd instead; officers up to the walls, the space between them long as a gun barrel.

across the gap. into the people, pulling you in before you're seen. flares burn and their smoke wafts on old, hand-sewn union banners. you must just be the excuse. drums and lungs. you don't need to breathe and it's suffocating.

a hand in the sky, pushed through a sea of flesh, from where you can't find. dolly. the tide pushes you back. if you had a voice she'd still never hear it. and a sheep won't herd this.

the tide crushes. your hand begs the sky for it to stop, and it burns. and everyone hears the scream. sees the smoke off your skin, black amongst the brick-red flares that stain every flag you would cling to.

and then everyone hears the shot.

the tide tries to pull but you end up on the rocks, a rifle pushed into your shoulder. a fleeting clack of secret hooves before they're gone.

she sends you letters.

everyone does.

enough that you're kept on remand, not in a hole to be lost forever.

a trial fails. crown prosecution services is allowed to try again. over and over. till the letters stop coming with the drops of blood you have to beg off nurses who come only to laugh at how can barely push off the floor.

they want their excuse for what's to come, and an example with it.

the group that organises the letters, and the blankets, and the small shark toy--is proscribed. it stops.

the last one left comes and the guard stomps on it before he kicks it through the thin slat into your hole.

half-crushed. your cold skin made even more pale by the puffed-out dust when you open it. a little bit left, wool-wrapped.

empty garden.

she watches the tv and hopes for nothing. hopes lune had listened to her and is gone where she means to be, not where someone with an island wants her.

HOME SECRETARY TO MAKE STATEMENT ON MISSING VAMPIRIC KILLER

empty cells and empty words. two courts and two houses bicker.

commons. lords.

seelie. unseelie.

maybe dolly hopes for a phone or door to ring, but it never does. every street-end near is manned now by men and their guns, and lune never got to know her number. should've been the first thing, but she was so tired.

empty bed.

she signs a petition. pushes a hand into a space that was only filled for a week. she's invited to speak at the low court for low, unseelie things. because courtiers fear the cameras and registers and guns. it's harder to hide every year. what will they do to us when they find out.

what will the humans do to us.

not lune.

if only chalk could hide a scream.

there might be a letter--to parliament. one to let the implication of what 258,321 newly-supernatural citizens will feel about all this. it's not quite solidarity.

the government says this plan will increase the integration of vampiric persons into normal society. the national health service says their trial will help 'people with disordered hemosynthetic parasitism' manage their health and avoid poor, condition-derived choice.

everyone knows it's kinda bullshit.

the clinics are too far apart, the waiting lists too long, the supply too short and the subject of endless headlines about the bagfeeders stealing from our veins. (0.4% of daily donations, to be precise.)

and you're still basically disabled without RADE (risk-aware dietary enhancement), and taking it from a partner is just a call-out post and a lost mutual aid network waiting for a breakup.

you could do bloodwork. it'll even be not-yet illegal if you don't let them fuck you, which is only the most required part if you aren't a top 0.1% earner and still wanna make rent.

no. what everyone knows really is that it's not enough, and it's not supposed to be. they want you starving, barely able to get up in the evening, getting fired totally because you can't keep up and all these complaints which are totally valid.

they want you thinking about making those poor, condition-derived choices. so they can simper about how much they sympathise with your condition and how unsafe you must feel while they lock you up and cancel all their plans and trials for being ineffective.

so you're in their corridors, their halls. it's where they want you. cheap, and vulnerable, and needy. with the people who could make it better and won't. who'll enjoy you and feed you and toss you when the headlines get too close to finding out.

they will notice--when the right honourable member for croydon west fails to preside over PMQs.

they will notice--when the mail is shoving PARASITE PROSTITUTE EATS YOUR SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE down every tom-dick voter's thursday morning throat.

it takes an hour for you to move.

the cold bag of flesh sagging inside of you falling out and off the state bed. what little blood is left shows only as a shadow in the crimson carpet. you shove it in the closet, and are a whisper in its mirrored face.

would that were what eyes see too.

a hidden panel makes for an exit. a mosque across the river makes for a bed and the other kind of meal without questions. you think about what they'll have when they turn the tv and leave before it. security cameras aren't made with silver; your face isn't yours any more.

would that you could turn a bat and fly. instead for all your fullness you still feel the pit dug of decades, like you could throw both lords and commons into it and still be empty.

there's a house in brixton, the worst hour of your life away. someone had a baseball cap you steal, there's sunglasses in your bag; a mask is too much. your parasol will mark you out as disordered; you put on every bit of silver you can and bear the little sun you can, police vans whining past and strangers in the street you have to hope don't care.

the girl inside has never met you, you just know her from someone who does from someone who does from someone who does. she's fae, and like a sheep. velvet cheeks and square eyes and not out to the world like you are. none of the fae are--they see how bad it's gone for everyone except the old blood who fuck their own great-grandnieces at party fundraisers--so none of them are on a police registry with your address, or on a list passed over from palantir of your friends and their friends and all the addresses of their shitty, overpriced boxes.

you take off the silver, red marks on your warm skin. she has to go to work; she'll show you how to glamour when she's back.

something thunders distant on windrush square. you hear it from the shared garden, where a thin line of glittering chalk keeps you safe and unseen.

everyone here is the same, almost. she's called dolly--a joke which stuck a couple months ago. it comes with different needs, a different kind of struggle, and not a reason to care about yours.

she does. gets back from work and shows you the glamour she takes to it. like the chalk line, but takes away her and humanises instead. so long as you don't get too close.

she gives you her wrist, shaved down. does it before she injects in case it takes the hormones away because maybe that's how it works.

you walk outside and no-one stops you. you circle round the square, people shouting from concrete snakes. silver takes you far enough to find a carribbean shop. you don't know what to buy, dolly can't eat the same as you. you buy too much and have sex on an old carpet when she notices the regret.

you're not full. you're also not empty. the reflection in the mirror is strange; sunflower-print dungarees that were never marketably fuckable enough to pick for yourself.

there's police in the square. people push them from a memorial, there's cardboard in their hands. you try to go back to the shop; AFOs with Fs stand at each door to the market, and you can smell the silver bullets from too close to turn away.

you used your own fucking card.

drop it before you use it this time; bungle out the shop backwards right into someone. the glamour falters and you feel it like nails on half-dead nerve-ends.

someone else grabs your arm. the whole thing fails by time you're pulled into a kitchen. everyone looks and keeps moving as three different ipads chime out the demands of delivery apps. the boy who grabbed you, dreads in a net, asks what you're doing here.

(to eat. to be full.)

"you got a phone?" no. "i can call for you." you don't know her number.

where did they all come from. you try to run threat analysis. you need to find dolly. soft wool. hot skin. chalk to hide behind. there's only a crowd instead; officers up to the walls, the space between them long as a gun barrel.

across the gap. into the people, pulling you in before you're seen. flares burn and their smoke wafts on old, hand-sewn union banners. you must just be the excuse. drums and lungs. you don't need to breathe and it's suffocating.

a hand in the sky, pushed through a sea of flesh, from where you can't find. dolly. the tide pushes you back. if you had a voice she'd still never hear it. and a sheep won't herd this.

the tide crushes. your hand begs the sky for it to stop, and it burns. and everyone hears the scream. sees the smoke off your skin, black amongst the brick-red flares that stain every flag you would cling to.

and then everyone hears the shot.

the tide tries to pull but you end up on the rocks, a rifle pushed into your shoulder. a fleeting clack of secret hooves before they're gone.

she sends you letters.

everyone does.

enough that you're kept on remand, not in a hole to be lost forever.

a trial fails. crown prosecution services is allowed to try again. over and over. till the letters stop coming with the drops of blood you have to beg off nurses who come only to laugh at how can barely push off the floor.

they want their excuse for what's to come, and an example with it.

the group that organises the letters, and the blankets, and the small shark toy--is proscribed. it stops.

the last one left comes and the guard stomps on it before he kicks it through the thin slat into your hole.

half-crushed. your cold skin made even more pale by the puffed-out dust when you open it. a little bit left, wool-wrapped.

you're new. you were a stationer, an orbital kid raised on scant oxygen, and you fuss about operational efficiency. "don't worry about it," everyone explained. "it's tradition." Command authorizes it every year. a company mechanic read you the bulletin for this local year. the bulletin says the same thing she did: it's a chain of tradition stretching centuries and thousands of light years back to a holiday on the motherwell. Old Terra herself.

"but why? what does it all mean? why rainbows? why glitter?"

"don't worry about it, kitten. nobody really knows."

"Handler!" you gasp. you didn't hear him come in. you're so lucky to have him here. he's always so busy, but if he's willing to make time for you despite your silly questions, maybe your secret goal isn't as unrealistic as it seems sometimes.

he gently ruffles your hair. "all we know is, for as long as mankind has been settling the scattered worlds, in the summer, we wear rainbows, and we say the words. it's a celebration of everything we have to be proud of. happy pride, kitten. just say it with me."

"happy pride," you say, smiling, as you fall into his warm and comforting lap and get comfortable with a bit of strategic wiggling.

you still don't know what the deal is, but if he doesn't care, you suppose you don't need to either. you'll pack your incendiaries and tracers with sparkly multi-hued foil bits and have the maintenance crew update your paint scheme, just like everyone else does. whatever gets you through your tour in his good graces so you can settle down to the real work: getting out of the cockpit, bearing the next generation of pilots, and raising them to someday work with handlers nearly as good as yours.