It was no secret that Desmond hated women. He hated everyone who didn't lick his pompous posterior, of course, but women were convenient because they allowed him to assign a label to his hate. He had a lot of labels for them: "the understudies," "the wash-ups," and "the generally more feeble, weak, docile, and all-around incompetent gender," to name a few. This revulsion had a wide variety of implications for his personal character--the vast majority of them distasteful--but an exhaustive list would far exceed any acceptable length. Desmond was very similar to an ocean, in that both contained a high-pressure abyss that far exceeded their apparent surface area.
It may come as a surprise, then, that when Desmond was designing his clone-child (as much as anything he did could be called "designing"), he'd suggested that Dr. Miranda (whom he grudgingly respected as a practitioner, if not as a woman), should make a girl instead of a boy. He did this because he believed completely that when she was old enough, she would "see sense and join the winning team herself." Plus, he thought that being a girl would keep her humble while she was young, and then unleash the fullest extent of her pride when she felt ready to cross over. She would need something to humble her; he'd demanded that she should be the "second-smartest, second-strongest, second-most beautiful person in the world,” only after himself.
This, of course, was a contradiction in terms, but Dr. Miranda had taken the spirit of his meaning and done the best she could with the genetic material she was given.
Desmond was vexed to discover that no matter how many sailor outfits he dressed her in, Desianna stubbornly remained a girl, and predictably, grew into a woman. Some of this might have been from a sense of pride; she had been born into her "team," and certainly wasn't going to trade sides just because she was told she couldn't win. She had inherited, among other things, Desmond's cockroach-like resilience to disease, irradiation, and being crushed. Apart from that, she felt "wrong" every time Desmond outfitted her with a dixie cup and a neckerchief. It was as though they carried their own ickiness, and transferred it to her as she wore them.
She spent most of her early adult life in her corner office in downtown Meadowville, missing calls from therapists and sleeping on the floor when her body collapsed from typing too many letters into her screen, for too long. There were two main reasons she typed these letters (and sometimes numbers). Most were dedicated to charities and the greedy, profit-guzzling machines that kept them running--none owned by Desmond. Occasionally, when she found time, she tried writing stories, but she never found enough time to make them as good as she wanted.
She was once again curled up on her bristly, coarse carpet, drifting between restless sleep and draining wake, when something strange happened. It was usually the ringing of the desk-phone that pulled her firmly into disgruntled consciousness, but this time, it was a knock at the door. Four of them, to be precise--they were firm, but Desianna felt they carried a certain hesitation, as well. She sometimes felt silly for ascribing character to something so simple as a knock, but it was something her mind did automatically. She hadn't discovered a way to turn it off, and her schedule didn't allow for much searching.
The first set of knocks was what pulled her into wakefulness, but it was the second that sprung her to action. There was a mirror just to the left of her desk; she took a comb from her drawer and repaired the damage the sleep had done to her hair as quickly as she could. She had too much hair to manage in such a short time--it almost reached her waist--but she did the best she could and hurried to the door just before her caller could knock a third time.
"Sorry for making you w--"
If not for the piercing, heart-twisting dread she felt when she recognized her visitor, she would have finished the sentence with "wait." Annalisse stood quietly in front of her, holding a platter of micro-pastries (which were legally distinct from mini-breads, and therefore acceptable in Desmond's eyes).
Annalisse didn't look surprised to receive such a curt greeting, but she did avert her eyes. "I came here to check on you. I know you're all alone out here, and so I thought--"
"I'm not going back to him," Desianna said, "so if you came to ask, you should just leave now."
The two of them stood in silence for a while, Desianna's eyes hardening more and more the longer Annalisse remained silent. Annalisse scanned her micro-pastries, as though one of them might hold the solution to her current predicament. Her eyes happened on an empty puff pastry shell--an unusual thing to make, and an even more unusual thing to enjoy, but Desianna had had strange tastes for as long as Annalisse had known her. An empty pastry shell was one with its purpose denied, one that was not allowed to support the more explosive flavors it could have contained. It had always seemed a sad thing to Annalisse, but if the only other option was to fill it with horseradish, perhaps it was for the best.
"Maybe we could talk about other things, then?" Annalisse ventured. "I won't say his name, promise."
"Desianna, it's a two-day commute to get here on my own, and you know how he gets if things aren't tailored just-so for him. I flew in this morning, and I'm flying out at five. He gave me two return tickets."
Desianna made to close the door, but Annalisse moved her foot forward just enough to prevent that. She did it quickly enough that Desianna could have stopped the door early if she wanted to, but she pushed Annalisse's foot right up to the threshold and squeezed a little instead.
"It was my idea," Annalisse said, prompting Desianna to squeeze harder. This didn't mean much to Annalisse, whose years of burns and cuts as a chef had granted her an incredible tolerance for pain. "I worry about you."
"Worry? About me? I've done nothing but good ever since I left that shithole town. My charities have helped a million people this week. Strutlington Magazine gave me 'Person of the Year', just in case you hadn't heard." With each achievement, Desianna pulled on the door again. "Better than him in every conceivable way, but somehow I'm the one you're worried about?" She was, in fact, better than him in every conceivable way, but so was everyone else in the world, so it was unclear why she held it up like it was special somehow.
"Actually," Annalisse said, finally starting to wince from the door's crushing force, "now that I see you in person, I realize I wasn't worried enough. When is the last time you ate?"
Desianna paused her tirade to consider the question. "Yesterday," she said, about half-sure of the statement's truth, "but that's to be expected, given that I've only just woken up."
"Two." Desianna's criteria for what constituted a meal were extremely lenient. A granola bar, for instance, was a meal in her mind, but for most humans, it only constituted a light snack. A fistful of raw spinach leaves might've been another example of a meal, but she didn't keep anything perishable in her office, so vegetables were a rare luxury for her. If she had eaten yesterday, it would've been somewhere between two graham crackers and four, which amounted to about two meals, by her estimation.
Annalisse eyed her with some well-deserved skepticism, but ultimately removed her foot from the door, which Desianna, destabilized by the topic of food, forgot to slam. "I'm going to leave these here," she said, placing the pastries on the ground just outside the range of the door's swing, "and if you want them, they're yours. If you feel like talking, I'm around town until 3, which is when I go to the airport. You still have my number?"
Desianna nodded slowly as her brain searched Annalisse's words, trying to find the trap.
"Then there you go. Take care of yourself, in case I don't see you again before I'm gone." Annalisse gave Desianna a sad smile and turned to walk away.
Desianna watched her go, peering out from behind the doorframe. Once she was sure she was alone, Desianna's eyes turned wonderingly to the platter of delights at her feet. She was such a strange person; nearly as prideful and spiteful as her father in many ways, but driven by those cruel impulses to do kind things. This made her confusing, and therefore a poor topic for discussion among the sensible.
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