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An interesting new exercise I came up with for training my voice through my transition. I switch quickly between my boy voice and my girl voice, and that lets me jump into one or the other really quickly. Good for vocal control, which is important both to a transition, and for voice acting.

Here are some practice scripts: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XNkiYo1dfnJ1QwJeWdyGD-dFzalpUcb1n6-YTocAyz4/edit?usp=sharing

Me, remembering I have two exams tomorrow: Oh, alright. Sounds good.

Dr. Glorbus: Yes, struggle all you want, but-- what?

Me: Yeah, I'm kinda done with this whole… "functioning in society" thing, you know? Actually, if I can just sink a little deeper, I won't be able to reach my phone. Don't want anyone asking why I didn't check my email.

Starts wriggling around so I sink faster

Dr. Glorbus: Dude, what are you doing?

Me: What? You were gonna, like, go destroy the world or something, right?

Dr. Glorbus: But how are you going to EAT if you're in the quicksand? Have you thought this through at all?

Me: Well, if whatever you're doing is about to destroy the world, I should be atomized in the blast. I'm not really worried about… getting hungry, you know?

Dr. Glorbus: …

Me: What?

Dr. Glorbus: So, if I destroy the world, I'd be doing… something… nice for you.

Me: Yeah, I guess. In, like, a weird sort of way, but… yeah?

Dr. Glorbus: But… I'd still be hurting a lot of OTHER people! Don't you care about them?

Me: What does that matter to you? I'm already IN the quicksand, dude; there's nothing I can do. A million years, remember? You won. Actually, what are you even still doing here? You won!

Dr. Glorbus: Yeah… yeah!

Me: You won!

Dr. Glorbus: I won!

Me: So what are you waiting here for? You won!

Dr. Glorbus: But… if I already won, I don't really… need to destroy the world, do I?

Me: Well, you'd better, otherwise what was all this for?

Dr. Glorbus: I think I just… I wanted something DIFFERENT, you know? I wanted someone to see me and, and to take a little bit of time out of their day. That's what you were doing, right? You didn't want things to end, so you tried to stop me. That's… that's hope, right there. Doing something good, just because.

Me, now laying back in the quicksand with my hands behind my head: Is it doing something good, or is it just self-preservation? I mean, I live here, dude. Obviously there's gonna be some part of me that doesn't want that to end. But… I don't know if this is something we ought to continue. Not the way we're doing it, at least.

Dr. Glorbus: Exactly. Exactly! That's exactly my point.

Me, my face the only thing left poking out of the quicksand: Well, you're here now, Dr. Glorbus. And look at you. All the power in the world, more than anyone else. You could be the one to pull the plug. Maybe no one would thank you, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. You'd be like a lifeguard, kicking everyone out of the pool.

Dr. Glorbus: You know what I'd do if I were REALLY evil?

Me: What?

One would be wrong. Unchecked HUNGER burns away at the mental frame; hollowing it from the inside outward until the muscles atrophy and the bones weaken. HUNGER demands sacrifice and attention, on pain of death. HUNGER demands that you warp yourself to FEED it.

They achieve this in different ways. Some grow sharp claws, ready to gouge the sweetest viscera from their opposition. Others spread tendrils far and wide, sucking dry vast plains until they are the only things left standing. Still more know the scents of food so well that they can pretend to be delicious, and lure in the unsuspecting. Now imagine Desmond, the HUNGRIEST of all, bedridden for two weeks. STARVING. 

***

“Annalisse,” Desmond shouted, pressing the call button at his bedside for the third time in the past two hours. “Annalisse!”

***

Annalisse, downstairs, heard the alert’s grating buzz, and found herself presented with a choice. Atop the stove was a delicate, creamy roux, which required constant stirring and careful observation for at least another ten minutes. If she overcooked it even a little, it would be completely ruined, and if she turned down the heat, the ingredients would separate. This roux was so finicky, in fact, that she had made sure everything else was stable before she started. She couldn’t afford to multitask at all.

Maybe if she’d had more of her wits about her—but she didn’t. She’d had one of her relapses last night. They’d been happening more often recently, in no small part due to Desmond’s condition. At this point, she felt largely resigned to her fate: endless toil by day, and slots-scorched, margarita-blasted bliss by midnight. She allowed her mind and body no quarter, because rest led to thoughts, and her thoughts never led anywhere good anymore.

The alert buzzed out again, and then again, sawing little bits off the ends of her patience as the noise grew more and more frantic. Desmond’s voice didn’t carry through the thick walls of her kitchen, but she knew it was there—waiting on the other side. The roux needed stirring.

“Please, God,” she whispered to nobody in particular, “get me out.”

***

Smells wafted in before the door opened. Desmond had stopped shouting after about five minutes, because his lungs had warned him that if they did any more strenuous work, they would take all the paid time off they’d accrued over decades of dedicated service and leave him dead where he laid. His buzzer finger was still moving, however, as though it was driven by a gas motor. It would have run out eventually. 

“It took you long enough,” he said, before he’d even seen Annalisse’s face behind the towering dishes on her tray. 

“Your food would have burnt,” she said, with a voice of such calm and reason that an uninformed observer wouldn’t realize that she’d spent eight of the last fifteen minutes weeping as she stirred, five staring silently at her knife cabinet, and the remaining two in transit.

“Excuses, Annalisse?” 

She stared at him just as quietly as she had her cabinet, before placing the platter gingerly on the bedside table—between Desmond’s hand and the call button. Warm tea, pillowy biscuits (not mini-breads), and a wonderful sausage roux—she would have made dinner food, but Desmond’s tastes seemed to have regressed somewhat in captivity. The labor of love on the tray stood in stark contrast to whatever lingered in her eyes.

Desmond might’ve been aware of that, but he also might’ve not. It certainly made no impact on his behavior. He leaned over and took a small plate from the tray, loaded it with two biscuits and a healthy serving of the roux, and used the dainty dinner fork on the side to take a bite. 

“Incredible work,” he said, smiling up at her. “There is a reason I hired you, after all.” 

Whatever impulses might’ve been building in Annalisse’s mind came to a screeching halt. Her expression shifted. 

“What?”

“I said, incredible work. You aren’t going to make me say it a third time, are you?”

Annalisse really felt like she ought to; this was the first compliment she’d received from the man in over a year. He owed her. But at the same time, it was probably dangerous to push her luck. Instead, she found a seat near the bed and sat down to watch him curiously as he ate. 

It didn’t matter to Desmond whether she watched him eat, so long as she didn’t annoy him. In fact, he was more inclined to encourage watching; he had the idea that his image had restorative properties for the soul. That was because he didn’t understand that souls were fixed from conception, and really only acted as expressions of an individual’s natural tendencies. The idea of “healing” a soul was predicated on the idea that a soul could be “injured”. 

“I’m sure you miss Desianna,” he said, looking up from his food after a few minutes, “don’t you?” 

Annalisse, who had already been unsure of what exactly was happening, now broke into full-on bewilderment. The only thing she could think to say in response was, “Don’t you?”

“I’m not sure why you’d ask me that.” Desmond went back to eating, and there was nothing in the room except for the occasional fork-clatters and lip-smackings once again, for a time.

“Why’d you ask me, then?”

Desmond grabbed a napkin from the tray and dabbed at his chin with slow, considered motions. If his motions weren’t considered, he risked pain. 

“You asked to go visit her,” he explained, “so you must miss her to some degree.”

 “I asked you because I was curious,” Annalisse said. “Why would you ask about something you already know?” 

“I want to know why she left,” Desmond said, even though he’d already had his answer a hundred times over. “It just doesn’t make any sense. You saw her office, as I understand it?”

Annalisse’s lips tightened, but Desmond’s eyes made it clear that this wasn’t a question she could avoid. “Yes,” she eventually relented. 

“And you saw her desk?” 

“Yes.”

“What sort of wood was it?”

Annalisse, as a chef, had only worked with wood in very limited capacities. To her, “wood” meant about the same as “spoon, rolling pin, or spatula.” She’d never bothered herself about what kinds of wood she’d worked with—let alone what kinds of wood other things were made out of. She knew almost nothing about the subject. Almost. 

Desmond quickly gathered this from the way she tilted her head in utter bemusement. “See, I don’t doubt that she’s fending for herself,” he said. “She’s got plenty of money, otherwise Strutlington wouldn’t have looked her way. I want to know if she’s using it right.”

“And so… the first thing you ask is… the kind of wood? On her desk?”

Desmond huffed in exasperation, and reached up to tap the head of his bedframe. “This. Do you see this?”

Annalisse walked up to where his hand was and took a good, long look at the wood. 

“Real mahogany,” he said. “Stately, expensive, and poised. Everything I buy is mahogany, because of what it represents. People look at mahogany, and they see strength, power, and influence. If Desianna’s decided to go with—say—oak, then she’s making an embarrassment of herself. She’s betrayed me deeply, but I won’t have her making stupid mistakes.”

“That’s nice and all,” Annalisse said, tracing the grain with her finger, “but isn’t this khaya? I saw it on one of my mom’s infomercials.”

***

The Great Mahogany Purge began five minutes later, when Desmond dialed the office of Homeshift Movers and requested that four or five able-bodied individuals hurry to his house. He lined them all up in a row at the foot of his bed, and ordered them to scour his house for wood. They were to bring everything to him, so that he could inspect it up close.

Once the room was empty, Annalisse nodded to Desmond in an attempt to excuse herself, and made for the door.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said, freezing her in place. “Since you’ve got such a proficient eye for khaya, you’re going to stay right here, with me, and we’re going to check every single piece of wood together. I won’t live in a house filled with false product.”

“But what about dinner—”

“Dinner will have to come late tonight. This is leagues more important.

***

Lazy-Eye-Larry didn’t mind the work of a mover. It was simple, for the most part, and generally very low-risk as long as he let his colleagues carry the expensive and fragile things. Everything was fragile and expensive here. The first room he checked had so much fine lace, tatted into so many intricate patterns, that he hardly felt safe even stepping inside. 

Thankfully, very little in the doily room was made of wood. The walls were made of wood, but he obviously couldn’t take those. Almost all the furniture was covered in plush fabrics, so it wouldn’t need to be moved, either—a real boon, considering that the room-spanning rug was also a massive, delicate doily. 

The only thing he saw that he definitely had to move was a wooden display case with clear glass doors and gold knobs. Inside, rows and rows of picture frames stood—empty of any faces or smiles. The only things they held were more doilies. They had once held something else, but it was doilies now. A loud crash sounded upstairs, and Lazy-Eye-Larry nearly fell right through the front of the case. 

***

“Next!”

Scattered chunks of what they thought might have been khaya littered the floor of Desmond’s room. It had taken them seven objects to find one that Desmond thought was suspicious. The mover who had done the smashing hurried back downstairs to find more wood, a grin spread so wide across her face that she looked positively silly. The next mover came up with a wooden door that he’d managed to unscrew from its hinges. It had to be held at an awkward angle; it was impossible to see the mover’s face.

Desmond leaned in close to the door and squinted, before turning to Annalisse with a scowl. Annalisse shrugged miserably. 

“It’s fine,” he said, “next.” 

Lazy-Eye-Larry and one of the other movers, who he’d asked for help with the cabinet, shuffled gingerly forward. The thing towered above Desmond; all Larry had to do was stumble again, and he’d be crushed. 

“Put it down by the bedside. I can’t see it properly from there. You!” Desmond snapped his fingers at a third mover, who had gotten his hands on Annalisse’s rolling pin. “Put that down and move this table out of the way.”

As they arranged everything to Desmond’s liking, Annalisse leaned down and whispered a question in his ear. “Why are we doing this, Desmond?”

“Why?” He seemed to swell at the word. “We’ve sniffed out two fakes already in only eight pieces. If I am to be confined to my house, I intend to at least clean it up.”

Annalisse didn’t think the house looked very clean at all with splintered wood on the floor, doors removed from their hinges, and doilies outside the doily room (which she hadn’t actually known about prior to today), but worried that if she said that she’d be dismissed on the spot. So, she kept watching—helpless.

Once the cabinet was in place, Desmond looked at it carefully—the outside, first. Then, he saw the frames inside—ghosts of something else—and made his decision. “Fake! Destroy it.”

“But—”

“I don’t care, Annalisse! I say it’s a fake, and I want it gone!”

Lazy-Eye-Larry nodded and moved to the display side of the cabinet, between Desmond and the bed, and gave it a shove. It leaned backward, and nearly fell away from the two of them, but he didn’t shove it hard enough. Instead, it fell back forward and—since it was weighted more in the front—pushed past its neutral resting point. It would have completely crushed Desmond if Lazy-Eye-Larry hadn’t been there to break the fall.

Instead, he took the brunt and sprawled backward across both Desmond and the bed, the cabinet atop both of them. Mahogany was not a particularly lightweight wood. 

***

After a heated, one-directional shouting match at Lazy-Eye-Larry, Desmond began moving the purge at a much faster pace. He stopped checking things so closely; everything suddenly seemed to be made of khaya, now that the movers had passed the initial outer layer of genuineness that seemed to mask the house’s underlying rot. 

The only things that he thought were made of mahogany were the ones that arrived already cracked or broken, ruined in Larry’s increasingly shaky grip. It was anyone’s guess as to why Desmond didn’t send the man away from his house after so many mistakes. The person who understood the least was Larry, who found himself silently wishing for an end to the day. He tried to catch Annaliesse’s eye a few times to find some communal solace, but she resolutely avoided him. 

The call of “Fake! Next!” rang out on repeat and without input from Annalisse, but Desmond still did not allow her to leave. She was to sit and stare silently, judging nothing and hating everything. An extension of Desmond’s own misery, but completely unhelpful in actually diminishing what he felt. 

The movers brought out large trash bags to clear away the excess wood as it started to block their paths to the bed. Desmond was irritated because this slowed the progress of the purge, but there would have been no purge at all if he couldn’t at least see what he was ordering to be destroyed. At the end of it all, he was left with the seven pieces of mahogany that he had cleared at the start. He demanded the movers bring each one back in for inspection.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, once the movers had returned to their van and driven away. “I’m shocked. There’s no more honesty in commerce, Annalisse. Look at this.” He held up the last of the seven—a stately chessboard with extravagant, frilly designs all around the border. Desmond only had the barest idea of how to play chess.

“I still think this is mahogany,” Annalisse said.

“Well, what do you know, anyway. Do whatever you will with it.” He handed it off to her, and waved her away dismissively.

“Does it have any pieces?” 

“It is the piece. It’s for display. Leave me, now.” 

For display. It should have been a trifling term, but Annalisse had run out of trifles. Her last trifle had come about fifteen seconds ago, when Desmond completely ignored her opinion. All she had now were affronts. Display! The word struck her wrong.

Deep sea creatures are only as suited as they are to the extreme pressures they endure because there is something inside them that pushes outward against the crushing force. Some might call that strength or durability, but it’s only really fine-tuning. When these organisms are brought to the surface, they explode. Such is the fate of the blobfish, and such was the fate of Annalisse. 

“Leave you?” The words flew from her mouth with much more force than she would have intended—if she were lucid. “That’s all I’ve been asking to do! For the past three hours! And now that it’s all over, not even a thank you?”

“Annalisse!” Desmond gasped, giving a show of surprise so convincing that it might have actually been true in some part. “But, where is all this coming from? Surely you’re paid well enough to indulge me from time to time.”

Annalisse stood silently in front of him, her insides all coiled and ready to leap. Maybe it was preparation, maybe it was an attempt at restraint by the parts of her that understood survival. 

“No amount of money is enough for this,” she said, the words just as coiled as her body. “None.” She thought she could still hear that buzzer. 

“But you need it,” Desmond said, matter-of-factly. “Casinos keep records, you know. I know where you go. You won’t do anything rash.”

But humans need a lot of things, and sometimes they can’t have everything. The image of the knife cabinet flashed through her mind, and she regretted not opening it—until she remembered that it had been made of wood, when it existed. It was hardly relevant whether the sharp, jagged thing she threw at him came from the cabinet door or not, but it did. 

It struck Desmond’s skull and landed right in front of him on the bed. He looked slowly down at it, as though processing what exactly had happened—and perhaps wondering if he’d been concussed. He didn’t notice that his head was bleeding until a drop ran down, off the side of his cheek, and onto his lap.

“Apologize,” she said, as he lifted the corner of his bedsheet to stanch the flow. 

“But, Annalisse! Whatever for?” 

“You know exactly what! Everything I do for you, everything I’ve made for you! You come home every day to the best food money can buy, and half the time you spit on it and send it back! Or how about mini-breads! Those were your idea, but I’m the one who has to live them down? And this! This!”

She scrambled around on the ground for another piece of wood, preparing to show him exactly what “this” was. 

“But Annalisse,” Desmond said again, softer this time. “I thought it was so obvious!”

“What?” she screamed, pointing another, sharper piece of wood at him. “What was obvious?”

“I know I’m hard to please,” he said, raising his hands. “I admit it. It’s why I hired you in specific; you’re so very good at it. I thought you knew. I’m so sorry that it wasn’t clearer to you just how much I appreciate your services.” 

“That’s not a real apology!” She threw this piece as well, but it angled wide and cracked the drywall instead of his nose, skull, or ribs. “This is all your fault,” she said. “It’s all your fault! Say it!”

“I… could have done things differently.”

“Desianna left because of you.” Her voice was starting to regain some of its temper now—concentrated jabs instead of frenzied bursts. “People have died because of you.” With each accusation, she took a step closer to him by the bedside. “I am like this, because of you.” She raised the chessboard above her head, 

“But please, is this really what you want to do? Are you a murderer, Annalisse?”

There was no existing model of human prediction that could have confidently guessed her next action. Every single one was split fifty-fifty (within a small margin of error) on whether she would bring that otherwise-useless board down on his head and spill his brain. Even with the granular, biochemical-leaning ones—it was too close to call. One of the many random events that all the world’s hopes are eventually pinned on. 

So, of course, she turned and hurled it through the window, letting it fall and crash on the asphalt below. “This is what I think of you,” she said, “and if I had any way to leave, you would be dead.”

Desmond watched her patiently. 

“I’m going to make dinner, and you’re going to pay me an extra half on my salary for taking care of you like this.” 

He nodded, because for now, it was his only option.

***

"This is your last chance to get out of there," Dr. Miranda said, eyeing Desmond with the same sense of apprehension a dentist might get from looking at a particularly cavity-ridden tooth. "I mean it when I say that something's wrong with it today. I won't take any responsibility for what happens next." That phrase would have been cause for concern coming from anyone. Coming from Dr. Miranda, who had performed so many biological alterations on herself that the concept of 'species' no longer applied, it ought to have been reason enough to sprint to the nearest bus stop, head to the airport, and buy the first ticket to the other side of the planet. She stared unblinkingly at Desmond, wondering whether he'd back out.

Desmond, who had so many IVs attached to him that he looked more like a patch of grass than a man, still somehow managed to convey his offense at the suggestion. It was like an angry breeze blowing across a rubber field. "A week is too long to wait. And anyway, I don't accept excuses from my employees," he said, "unless they're paired with letters of resignation. Do you have one prepared?"

"If my options are to pull the lever and accept the blame or resign, then you can unhook yourself. There are others who will fund my work." Dr. Miranda wheeled herself away from her control panel and started toward the door. She really would have gone, too. It wasn't necessarily frustration with Desmond--she tried to be above petty arguments--but more about covering liability. Regular malpractice suits were one thing, but a malpractice suit from a billionaire was another thing entirely--and not one she wanted to face.

But he did call her back, and she wheeled her way right back over to the blood-cycler. This was one of her more recent inventions, from after she'd finished working on Desianna. About once a month, Desmond would come in to get his blood completely replaced. The old blood would enter her blood culture and mix with lots of other blood, all of which she fortified with antibodies and anti-aging gene therapies to make super-blood. The entire arrangement cost millions of dollars a year to maintain and operate (in no small part because of Miranda's salary), and it all went to keeping him alive and healthy. The money would have been better spent buying designer puppies and hurling them into different oceans across the globe.

Miranda pressed a button on her control panel, and a red light went on above her monitor. "Do you verbally confirm that you accept any medical consequences that may arise as part of this procedure, in full knowledge of the risks associated, and that you waive your right to sue me for any harm incurred during the procedure?"

Desmond stared obliquely at her from where he was laying for a few moments, as though he were trying to will the question away. Fortunately, he was completely trapped. "I do," he said.

One of Desmond's greatest weaknesses was his utter inability to compromise on the things he wanted. Often, it wasn't a weakness at all, because the things he wanted were often the same things that kept him alive. Often, but not always. This meant that when Dr. Miranda told him that something had been wrong with the blood-cycler all morning, that she'd wasted the entire day trying to fix it and gotten nowhere, that she needed a week to make sure everything was safe, his only option was to double down. He'd hired Dr. Miranda because she was the best the world had to offer, and he was of the strongest constitution in the world, he thought. There should have been no reason for delay.

At first, when she pressed the "on" button, things seemed to be progressing normally. Blood flowed up half the IV tubes and down the other half in bright red rotation, and Dr. Miranda thought she must have been imagining things. This wasn't entirely uncommon for her; a weak imagination would have made her a poor visionary.

The moment she gave her sigh of relief, the previously very stealthy blood clot fully covered the intake valve. It took her a few seconds to notice Desmond's blood pressure rising, because it was still within the normal range at first, but then it was very rapid. Numbers and buzzers and sirens started going haywire, and she made a lunge for the emergency stop button just as Desmond screamed, jostling loose one of the in-pumping IVs. Jolly red rivers sprang both from the loose tube and from Desmond himself, flooding those once-austere plains with sweet victory. By the time everything had shut down and she had plugged enough holes to stop the immediate flow, Desmond was unconscious.

To those who didn't understand just how many corners Dr. Miranda cut out of the scientific method, she was a miracle worker. One of her hobbies was designing specialized cures for individual strains of the common cold. If she saw someone exhibiting symptoms, she would ask for a mucus sample and the odds were good that they'd be feeling better in the next six hours, but about one in twenty of them would develop tumors six years down the road. She was more careful in her professional work--the gene therapies, the cancer treatments, and the blood-cycler itself, for instance. All that medical talent--the potential to help millions--and she decided to use it to cure Desmond's internal bleeding. He would've been dead within the hour if not for her. Within the hour!

Pain was the first thing Desmond registered when he woke up, followed closely by a typed sheet of paper taped to the ceiling above his head that read, I told you. Desmond would have scowled at it if he had the energy, but even opening his eyes had taken more work than he anticipated. He was the kind of tired that most closely resembled dead. Not actually dead.

In the absence of any other options, he started to listen. Dr. Miranda--although he couldn't be completely sure it was her--was seated only a few feet away, working on something quiet. He wouldn't have heard her at all if not for the occasional clicks of whatever she was doing. That was because she only barely needed to breathe anymore, and she certainly didn't need to do it loudly. That (along with her almost-zero metabolism) had resulted in muscle atrophy, but she didn't need to be able to walk or lift anything particularly heavy to pursue her passions.

The clicks were rhythmic, but spaced far apart; one every few seconds. She was reassembling her machine after a thorough cleaning, but he had no way of knowing that, and he wasn't technically minded enough to surmise it, so he remained in ignorance. He wasn't even willing to ask, because that would have meant admitting that he didn't know! All he could do was stay right there and wait for something to happen.

"I told you so," Dr. Miranda said without looking over.

"Felt the need to say it again, did you?" He could only barely manage to speak at all.

"Don't you think I'm entitled to say whatever I want after an impromptu, life-saving surgery?"

Desmond's insides felt like they had all been mixed together, like there would have been no cleanly sectioned organs if she were to open him up and look; only a coarse sludge with undefinable chunks. "I never gave you permission to do surgery of any kind."

"Not to worry," she said, "I thought of that. If you decide that you'd rather the surgery be undone, say the word and I can have a lethal injection for you within five minutes. Top-quality service, and certainly no waiting."

It was then that something miraculous happened: Desmond, wracked with heart-splitting pain, filled all at once with too much blood and too little, and utterly, completely defeated, found himself at a loss for words. There was no insult to sling here; nothing that he could thrust in Dr. Miranda's face that would make her feel worse without directly ignoring the recorded truth of his waiver and looking even more stupid than he already did. Defeat was a bitter, unfamiliar taste, and he had no way of compartmentalizing it.

Dr. Miranda began to hum. It wasn't really any song in particular; just a string of long, discordant notes. It might have barely qualified as a melody, if a single blotch of red paint with rough edges counted as a painting. Still, at least it wasn't the song about the daisies.

"Can you please stop that?" Desmond said after a few minutes, once he'd managed to register through the pain that someone was doing something close to performance art. Dr. Miranda, who hadn't even realized she was humming, stopped without a word. "How long am I going to be like this?"

"It was, perhaps, one of the more intense procedures I've ever done. I expect you'll be down for at least… two weeks."

"Two weeks!"

"That's two weeks before you can walk. I'd recommend a few months before you get back in the cycler; we don't want anything popping open in there if we can help it."

“There,” he said, putting his hands on both her temples and pointing her head at the mirror. Desianna had been avoiding the mirror, in part because of the bun, but also because of the rest of her outfit. Desmond had found her a long, flowing purple cape fit for a king, as well as a ruffled collar, pantaloons, and so much jewelry and gold that it was hard to tell the difference between her and a large, scaled reptile. 

She, being a six-year-old, jumped when she saw this gilded stranger, before she could remind herself of Desmond’s words on staying calm. If she had been wearing a mask to cover her upturned nose and hazel eyes, she would have never known it was her. That might have been better, because then she could have at least pretended that it was someone else, instead of her own face staring out from the body of an impostor.

“Aren’t you stunning? So much authority.” Desmond adjusted the crown almost imperceptibly to the left. “I think this suits you—I really do. And this crown! The way it brings out your eyes is so striking. You’re so lucky to have something like this, all bought and paid for. It’s a rare privilege.”

“It is,” Desianna admitted, watching Desmond’s eyes carefully in the mirror to catch the moment he looked away. If he looked away, that meant she would be able to look away as well. 

“We’ve worked so hard for this,” Desmond said, relishing in his stolen valor as he removed his hands from her temples and put them on her shoulders instead. “You’re going to do great.”

Those last words had an incredible affect on Desianna. She greedily soaked them up in much the same manner as a cactus. Also like a cactus, she would store them for longer than any living thing reasonably should, playing them over and over in her head until the next drizzle of kind words came. That could take anywhere from weeks to months.

“You really think so?” she beamed, straightening herself up to her fullest height, chancing a look at her face and quickly reconsidering. 

“I know so, dear,” Desmond said, lightly massaging her shoulders. 

Desianna needed shoulder massages from time to time because her daily life was so stressful that her shoulders were already about as tense as a thirty-year-old’s, even though she’d only had a fifth of the time. An exhaustive global census would reveal that she was, by most measures, the world’s third-most time-efficient shoulder-tenser, only beaten out by two monks in the Lapeni mountains who had achieved a state of meditation so complete that their bodies were more comparable to stone than flesh. 

Perhaps it was the massage, or the easy smile on Desmond’s face, but Desianna decided that she was brave enough to prod for another compliment. 

“I practiced all the time,” she said, “even when you weren’t looking.” When someone says something like “all the time,” they’re almost always wrong; they forget to account for little moments of quiet between wake and sleep, for instance. Desianna was as close to correct as anyone could be.  

“I know,” Desmond lied, because he was unwilling to admit to ignorance or surprise under any circumstance. “Of course you did; what child of mine wouldn’t? That’s why you’re going to go out there, and you’re going to win.”

The mention of winning was enough to put Desianna into a half-catatonic state as she fantasized about a crowd cheering her name, and a smiling Desmond leaning down to hug her. Tantalizing. 

Desianna shouldn’t have even been allowed into the Higgswood Elementary Talent Show, because she wasn’t a student there. Technically, she shouldn’t have been allowed into any talent show, because she was legally homeschooled. Several of the stricter administrative staff had tried to block her entry and a lamppost had fallen right in front of Desmond on the walk over, but his money and agility meant that these were trifling matters.

Once Desmond realized that Desianna looked a little too happy, he cleared his throat to snap her out of her waking vision. “We’ve got a few minutes left,” he said, “so why don’t you practice your lines?”

Desianna nodded and turned excitedly toward him, glad for any excuse to get away from the mirror. If she had to wear this stuff, she at least didn’t want to see it. She pushed her throat forward as far as it would go to deepen her voice and began.

When the arrows came for me, my shield was the first to give itself. A hundred or more must have lodged in its wood, until the surface was nothing but pulled-apart sawdust. The last arrow left it crumbling apart, held together only by a purpose it could no longer fill. So I left it to rest on the ground.

When the swords came, I met them with my own. I battled off hundreds—if not thousands—but each left a notch in the steel. By the time I finished with the last, I was left with an empty hilt and a sense of dread.

When the spears came, I had nothing left to protect myself. I hid behind trees and rocks and walls—all gave themselves in my stead—and the onslaught remained. Further and further I ran, until one day I found a spear of my own. It was sharp, and it was strong.

I threw it as hard as I could toward my attacker, and there were no more spears. Nor arrows, nor swords. Only a momentary quiet, and a set of tracks to trace if I ever wanted to find my home.

Then came Time, and He would brook no substitution. “You have defended yourself valiantly,” He said, “but there can be no escape from me.” 

But I had never given my self before, and I wasn’t going to now. I was my own to keep. I took up the spear again and ran it through His heart, and now every moment is forever—an infinity of nows, each one stretched and strained. I would do it again.

“You forgot attribution,” Desmond said once she had finished. 

“But you already know where it’s from,” Desianna said, “so I didn’t think I needed it.” 

“It’s part of the speech, so you always need it. Say it, so I know you know it.”

Desianna bit back a disappointed sigh. “The Rite of Kings, by Lester Von Neumann, chapter seven, page eighty-three.”

out of curiosity, what is the narrator’s soul made of (if the narrator has a soul at all)?

Scissors were better, but they had been in Desianna's hands, and her head barely came up to the sole of his boot once the motion stopped. They only flew as far as the middle of his shin before impaling themselves uselessly into the ground. That was a good word for the entire scene: useless. A waste of time and effort for all parties involved. Packed to the corners with failed crowns, ready to be incinerated the moment they had set.

Desmond had much stronger, harsher words than "useless" for the current state of affairs, but since the situation was his fault, he had no right to complain. Unfortunately, the only right Desmond cared for was the right to rule, even though most modern scholars agreed that it was a fiction. 

"You clumsy little oaf," he breathed, without taking his eyes off the ceiling. 

One might think that with such a quiet word as "breathed" in the sentence, the insult might have fallen short of Desianna's ears and left her blissfully ignorant of its utterance. One would be wrong; the rest of the room was as quiet as a deaf person's grave, and Desianna knew better than to let Desmond's words go ignored. She shrank back, away from him, and curled herself up as much as she dared. She'd be in the fetal position if she went too far, and that was possibly the worst place to be against an angry Desmond. 

"I'm sorry," she said, for fear that if she breathed too, Desmond would pretend he hadn't heard. "I don't know how it happened."

It is possible to determine exactly how Desianna fell based on a number of clues in her physiology at the time. For one thing, her eyes were bleary from exhaustion, and that meant that she couldn't see as well as she normally did. Her hands were shaking too, which correctly implied that she was distressed, and her natural dexterity was reduced for it--even more so because she was only six. Then there was the general fatigue; she'd been trying for hours to make the perfect crown, and Desmond had found plenty of flaws in each and every attempt. A lump here, a slight irregularity there, a dent in the overall form--none of them were perfect, and they'd only gotten worse as the day heaved itself inch by inch across the world, shuddering and gasping for breath.

All of these things in combination might not have been enough to make her trip on a clean floor, but the floor wasn't clean.

"I know how it happened," Desmond said, sitting up to look at her. Instinctively, she curled up just a little further--pushing the limits. "It's the same reason you've been making all of these mistakes with your crowns--you're careless, and now that carelessness has started to hurt the people you care about." He pointed his thumb at his chest with a degree of self-importance that defied simile and metaphor. "I understand that empty-headed little girls can't always be as serious-minded as I'd like, but this is getting ridiculous." 

"I'm trying," Desianna said, the words so dry in her throat that they caught momentarily. It was better that they were dry; that was the only thing keeping her from bursting into tears. 

Desmond stood up, dusted himself off, and said, "Speak clearly. Misshapen crowns are one thing, but no child of mine will slobber misshapen words and get away with it."

Desianna, lips tightly sealed and eyes blinking much too fast to stay dry, raised her gaze to meet h is and nodded, hoping that would be enough. Some children have a remarkable ability to hope over and over, even when they have every reason not to. This is because it takes some time for humans, who are quite slow in development, to learn that sometimes there is no hope at all and they would be better off just giving up. 

"Well?" Desmond said, nudging the scissors out of their newly-carved groove in the floor with the toe of his boot. At least, it was a boot in some sense of the word; it had little to no value as protective footwear, because it was so thin. Its main jobs were to look pretty and give him heels. Desianna weighed the risks of speaking against the definite cost of silence in a grim calculus--the kind that really only ought to crop up in philosophy essays. After much deliberation, she decided that willful silence seemed too close to suicide for her liking.

"I'm sorry," she managed, with only the slightest quaver on the second word.

Desmond tightened his lips and huffed through his nose, but said nothing more about her diction for the time being. Instead, he started kicking crowns, one by one, to the sides of the room. Desianna pretended to feel nothing as she watched her work crumple and wilt, because it made no sense to mourn failures. 

"You've made quite a mess," he muttered, aiming a particularly hard kick at one of the more complete crowns. It flew by Desianna's face and half-crumbled into damp shreds as it hit a chair leg, before spinning its remains into the wall. Desianna flinched because she was a human person, and those usually come with involuntary reflexes. 

"I know," she said, once there was a tiny lull in the sharp impacts of foot against crown and crown against wall. 

"And?" Desmond aimed a crown at the rim of the table, and miserable wet confetti blanketed all of Desianna's tools--except for the scissors, which still laid impotently by her head. 

"And I'm sorry," Desianna said, shuddering as Desmond somehow managed to break another crown against the ceiling. This one only fell into a few pieces, but all of them plopped down onto Desianna, some of the paste clinging to her shirt and pants. "I'll clean it up." 

"Dog," said Whiskers, "come look at this."

Major padded over to where Whiskers was sitting, jowls flapping from the motion. He wasn't so used to motion anymore, but he still managed well enough when he had to.

"You're not supposed to look at the sun," he said, flashing Whiskers a milky not-glance. "You'll end up like me."

"I'll be fine," Whiskers grumped, "I'm a cat. What's the point of having slits for eyes if you can't use them? Anyway, look." Whiskers pointed a paw out to the sky, but Major still didn't follow.

"I need what little sight I've got left," he said in something too mellow to be a growl, but too quiet and low to really be anything else. "Otherwise, how will I look at the flowers?" Major liked looking at the flowers almost as much as he liked smelling them; he thought their shapes were very good. Sometimes bees landed on them, too, and bees were always fun to watch. "Just tell me what's wrong."

"It's upside-down," Whiskers said. He arched his back and leaned away, like he half-expected it to reach down and flick him on the nose. "It's been like that all day."

"It's a ball," Major sighed. "It can roll around all it wants; how can it ever be upside-down? You see it roll across the sky every day, you do. On the subject of balls, I saw some really incredible ones earlier, when Mama took me to the vet. Lots of them, just outside this enormous building--all round and red, and sitting there on the sidewalk."

Whiskers didn't really care about Major's ball story, but one of his four maxims was that he should never interrupt, so he sat there and half-listened to the inanity of it all as he tried to will the sun back into its rightful place. The sun cared even less about Whiskers' mental supplications, so it stayed right where it was--topsy-turvy.

"How would you even know if it was upside-down?" Major asked, forgetting about his other story in an instant, as though someone had flipped a switch inside his head. Major's memory had taken a serious downturn in the recent months. It had begun to really inconvenience Whiskers, who found it harder and harder to hold any sort of coherent conversations with him. At least it cut his long-winded digressions short from time to time.

"The colors are wrong," Whiskers muttered. "I wouldn't expect any dog to recognize it--let alone you--but it's yellower than it's supposed to be, like when Mama leaves her pictures outside. It's because we're seeing the wrong side of it. I always wondered what was back there, but now that I see it, I wish it would just go back to the way it was." Major let out a big sneeze that Whiskers interpreted as derisive. When he turned to tell the old dog off, his eyes suddenly began to water; he hadn't realized just how they stung.

"The sun has always been yellow, at least as far as I can remember. It's just not very yellow. You're getting paranoid, if you want to know what I think. Too much time looking up. Saps your youth, it does."

"Paranoid?" Whiskers snapped, as cats so often do. "What if it falls on us? Maybe it has always been yellow, but it's never been this yellow, and you won't look. Are you happy wallowing in ignorance forever?"

"Maybe," Major yawned, circling once and plopping down on the patio for a nice, warm nap, "Looking doesn't seem to be doing you any favors."

Whiskers cast his eyes around the patio, searching for some way to explain the benefit of watching the sun. There was nothing obvious enough for stupid Major, he thought, so instead he said, "Just you wait and see. When it falls, I'll be ready."

"When it falls?" Major said. "You were asking what if it fell only moments ago, and now you're saying when. If it falls, it can crash right into me. I'll be here, enjoying my nap, and it can crush my bones and burn me to ash or whatever it is suns do. Is that ready enough for you?"

Desmond, who had draped himself in more fur than existed on wild animals in a 10-mile radius, stood at one end of the street and watched in disgust as the swarm throbbed with activity. He considered several of the restaurants on this street “acceptably nice,” but he would have considered them excellent if they didn’t  allow such a routine debasement of their clientèle. Some of the people walking around today looked like they didn’t even own any gold. If they did, they certainly didn’t know how to use it. Nonetheless, Annalisse was gone, and he, as a mortal being, still had to eat food if he didn’t want to experience mood swings, pain, and eventual death. 

He was about to huff in frustration when a billboard caught his attention from across the way. It read, in vibrant purple letters, Vittorio’s Emporium, and the path to it was relatively unobstructed by the grimy folk. The decision was simple from there. 

When Desmond stepped into Vittorio’s and shut the door behind him, the noise of the street outside disappeared entirely. It was him, alone with an empty reception desk, a framed drawing of a cat that looked like it had been done by a four-year-old (it had actually been done by a seven-year-old, but he was stupid), and a listless line of piano notes breezing softly into the room. 

Apart from the art, Desmond nodded in quiet approval at the atmosphere, before ringing the bell at the desk. He waited about fifteen seconds before ringing it again, and then ten seconds after that, and then five. Finally, a server came from further inside. 

“Hello, sir,’ she said, “sorry for the wait.” Her tone suggested that she was lying. “Will it just be a table for one?”

“A private parlor, please,” Desmond said, ignoring the clear layer of ire hiding just beneath her job-mandated politeness, “and a tall glass of wine to start me off. Your most expensive stuff.” 

“Our private parlors are reservation only.” 

Desmond, eager for an opportunity to display his wealth, said, “Oh, I’m sure they are—this is a very classy establishment, after all—but I’m also sure that for an acceptably high price, there can be an exception.”

This server in particular was no stranger to making exceptions, but they usually weren’t for money. More often, it was for small things, like bringing out an extra slice of cake on someone’s birthday, or free appetizers on anniversaries. Even on the rare occasions that she did accept “incredibly generous tips,” she liked the people she was helping. She didn’t particularly like Desmond, and she wasn’t in a good enough mood to pretend, so she let her eyes roll at his suggestion.

“Did you just roll your eyes at me?” Desmond asked, even though he’d clearly just seen her doing exactly that. “Is this the way you treat your customers?” 

“I’m sorry,” the server began, but that was far too little to stop him at this point. 

“I’ll have you know that I am Desmond Rantriba, and I won’t be treated like some second-class citizen! I could buy and sell this restaurant and everything in it a hundred times over, and your first  reaction is to treat me with disrespect. Well, I think you’ve made it very clear exactly what kind of values this place has, and what sorts of people ought to eat here. You won’t be seeing a dime of my money, that’s for sure.”

Then, before she could even begin a response, he turned on his heel and stormed back out the door, arriving once again on the bustling Calo Boulevard. 

It didn’t take Desmond long to find another place to eat. For as picky as he might’ve seemed to be, he was actually very open to eating a wide variety of foods—another contributor to his infallibly good health. This time, he’d gone to a fancy Ylatian place called “Pavo’s Pesto,” which had readily given him a private parlor, and assigned him three servers to keep him happy. It was a frivolous assignment—one person hardly needed more than one server—so the other two just stood guard at his parlor entrance in case someone wanted to “disturb his peace.” 

For his appetizer, he’d ordered a creamy vegetable soup with a round of sturgeon caviar-topped focaccia. Pavo had sent the soup out in the restaurant’s oldest, most time-honored ceramic bowl, which had been around for about three-hundred years, and only saw use about once every decade nowadays.

But even something as well-preserved as this bowl was not immune to the ravages of age. There was an internal break on the very bottom, just barely hidden away from the naked eye. When Desmond’s spoon touched it, a fragment detached and started floating around in the soup, waiting to be swallowed and choked on, or chewed up with the surrounding vegetables. It was in Desmond’s spoon, ready to make a positive change in the world, when he stopped and sniffed at the caviar.

“You,” he said, snapping his fingers and calling the idle servers into the parlor with him. “Where is this caviar sourced?”

“Just off the coast of the Spiral Sea,” said the shorter of the two, “why?” 

“Unbelievable,” Desmond muttered, pushing the plate of focaccia a little further away from himself, “but not unexpected. The Spiral Sea is home to the most unpleasant fish I’ve ever had the misfortune of eating; everyone knows that only fish from the Rhombus Ocean are worth a damn. Switch this out for Rhombus Ocean caviar, if you will.”

The two servers looked at each other, mildly confused, until the taller one left to talk to someone higher on the chain of command. 

“How’s the soup?” the shorter one ventured, against his own better judgment. 

“It would be greatly improved with the right caviar.”

Desmond’s dour tone made the situation quite clear: there would be no further discussion until his problem was fixed. In his mind, this strategy made him a tough negotiator. By preemptively closing any avenues for dialogue, he shaped meetings such that his terms were the only ones under discussion, and therefore the only real option to move forward with. It was one of the finest strategies any toddler had ever devised. 

Through this entire silence, the broken ceramic shard sat patiently in Desmond’s spoon, waiting for its shining moment. If he’d been a reasonable person, that moment would have come. This was some of the best soup in the country (although Pavo’s wasn’t so well-known that it would have appeared in any lists), and he’d hardly eaten a bite all day. But there was nothing for it; he wasn’t reasonable, and no amount of hunger would suddenly change him to be. The shard remained untouched for just as long as the silence. 

Instead of the taller server, the chef de cuisine, Pavo himself, stepped into the parlor. 

“What’s this I hear about a problem with the caviar?”

“It’s sourced from the wrong ocean entirely,” Desmond said, turning his nose up at the dish, “and it renders your food completely unpalatable. I need a replacement if I am to enjoy my meal here.” 

“I’m terribly sorry,” Pavo said, “but there is no other caviar in this building. It’s all from the same place, my friend.”

Desmond almost launched into an angry tirade about the declining quality of food service in Deston, but Pavo caught him before he could build any momentum.

“If you’re looking for more depth to your seafood, I know of an excellent place a little further down the street. They should have what you’re looking for.”

Desmond hesitated. On the one hand, he thought, this fellow was very clearly a local man; if he’d had a wider reaching perspective, he would have had caviar from more than one place. In general, Desmond strived to never trust the tastes of local men, because he found their opinions to be too grounded in immediate reality. However, he didn’t want to spend more time on Calo Boulevard than necessary. Perhaps, he thought, if this other place had these more exotic sources, Pavo would know. 

“Alright,” he said with narrowed eyes, “where?”

“It’s called Super Sushi,” Pavo said.

Desmond stood to leave without another word, but Pavo held up his hands. “I know how it sounds,” he said, “but it’s a good place. Owner’s just a little eccentric, that’s all.”

“Is that right.” As far as Desmond was concerned, eccentricity was a very good thing for a chef to have, for much the same reason that spice was a very good thing for a dish to have. The greatest chefs were the ones who could combine strange flavors that nobody normal would think should go together. Only an insane person could decide unprompted that mint flavors belonged anywhere near savory meats, for instance, but this combination had created one of Desmond’s favorite delicacies: Peppermint Pork.

“Oh, yes, very strange individual. Great food, though.”

Desmond thanked Pavo for his help, left several pieces of unhelpful and unconstructive criticism about the food, and then left for Super Sushi. The ceramic in his bowl sat alone, quietly disappointed.

As it happened, Super Sushi was in a complete state of upheaval. The owner, a flighty older lady named Yoko, had decided that today was the day to try a completely new menu. Her various chefs and servers scrambled from station to station, trying and failing to keep up with her fiendishly complex notes in any timely manner. Yoko herself was hidden somewhere in the back, quietly taking inventory—her favorite thing to do whenever she found herself overwhelmed by the stresses of her work. 

Nonetheless, Desmond was intrigued enough by the whispers of this head chef to wait patiently to be served. He had even been willing to eat at a public table; this place had no parlors. He sat quietly in the corner, poring over the long, complicated menu, until the fugu section caught his eye. 

Some humans have a perversion surrounding death. They take pleasure in taunting that grim concept, in testing its boundaries to see where exactly lies the uncrossable line. It should come as no surprise that egotistical Desmond did this often, with gusto and zeal, and he hadn’t yet been taken. Fugu was a purpose-made way for humans to engage with their perversions, and Desmond made it a point to try it every time it was available.

When his server finally arrived, he forcefully jabbed the first option in the section, which was a sashimi arranged like butterfly wings. 

“I’ll take this,” he said, letting the excitement read clearly in his voice. 

The server grimaced. “Sir,” she said, “you know that—”

“Of course I know,” he said, blowing right past her. “I don’t want to be patronized by the woman bringing me my food. Go and place the order.”

“Our fugu chef is new,” she said, valiant in the face of his customerial stupidity. “Are you really sure?”

“I’m sure,” Desmond said, showing an unprecedented ecnuo of patience. “Fugu it is.”

Their fugu chef was better than new and inexperienced—he was Lazy Eye Larry who, before today, had never even seen a completely intact fish. He’d gotten this job through a statistically improbable series of clerical errors, misplaced resumes, and misremembered interviews, and now he was staring straight down the barrel of one of the most poisonous pufferfishes known to man. 

Someone might have seen what a botched job he did of cutting it open, soaking the poison deep into the meat, making all the pieces the wrong sizes, and somehow getting bits of skin onto the dish. Someone might have seen that, if not for the fact that everyone was scrambling just as hard as he was, thanks to the new menu. The only difference is that most of them were scrambling with a degree more competence than he was. 

If his final plate was supposed to be a butterfly, then it was a butterfly that had been caught in a nuclear fallout zone. Somehow it had a gaping jaw with jagged teeth and a third wing. By sheer chance, he’d also spilled rice over the plate so that it looked like spindly little legs, bent all at the wrong angles, as though someone had introduced this creature to the broad side of a book. It was beautiful, in much the same way that a bird vomiting into her chicks’ mouths is beautiful. 

The server put on a pair of latex gloves before handling the plate, but even then, she regarded it with apprehension. It was only when Larry shot her an intense look, forged in the fires of this strange day, that she found enough courage to bring it out and place it in front of Desmond.

Desmond’s face went from eager anticipation for his death fish to startled horror when he saw what lay on the plate. “What… is this?”

“Fugu,” the server said, bravely. 

“I was promised a butterfly.”

“It’s a fugu butterfly.”

Desmond stared at the plate for a long, long, time in perfect quiet. The server watched him, curious. His eyes moved from one end of the plate to the other, over and over and over, as though the image before him needed to be savored. He opened his mouth and for a moment—for one shining, perfect moment—it seemed like he was going to eat. 

“This,” he said, “is without a doubt the worst thing I have ever seen. There is a time and a place for eccentricity in cooks—I understand this very well—but when the price for eccentricity is a complete desecration of all aesthetic sense, the word ceases to apply. Insanity, depravity, aberration—none of these words sufficiently describe the injustice that has been done to my eyes on this day. If I were to eat this, I would be casting aside my own dignity and peace in exchange for meaningless calories. Everyone in your kitchen should be sorry, and everyone on this wretched street is worse for having you here.”

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). 

"What do you want?" 

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." 

"Did he send you?" 

"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."

"How many meals?"

"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.

"You're ugly."

"Anyone who likes you should be considered for work in a glue factory. If I spend another second with you, I will die."

"I left my casserole in the oven, so I have to go get that."

"Can I pull out one of your fingernails? To remember you by."

"Please?"

"Sorry, I left my pliers at home, actually."

"Your fingernails aren't even that nice, so whatever, I guess.

"Actually, you really remind me of my dad."

"He's dead."

"How many of your immediate family are dead?"

"And how many of those are your fault?"

"Sorry, I don't really go for murderers."

"I left my dog in the oven, so I have to go get that."

"I've just been with so many liars, I'm exhausted. I'll bet you're a liar, too."

"I'll bet you hate me."

"I'll bet you want to hurt me."

"Yes, you do!"

"Yes, you do! Get away from me, you creep!"

"Don't touch me!"

"Don't touch me!"

"Yes you are!"

"If you don't leave me alone, I'll pepper spray you!"

"I left my oven in the oven, so I have to go get that."

"Do you do bitcoin?"

"There's this video on youtube called anti-pickup lines, and I'm on number 25, and you still haven't left. Will you go if I say please?"

"Please."

"This wouldn't have been a problem if I'd brought my pliers."

"It's been fun and all, but I do actually have to get going."

Scream as loud as you can

For instance, the vast majority of humans considered Desmond to be a very attractive individual, despite the fact that he would have made an abysmal partner, and he was an even worse father. For any purpose where attraction was relevant (apart from solitary moments of shame in locked rooms), Desmond was the worst candidate imaginable. The flies especially understood this very well; if Desmond approached, they would leave the vicinity immediately. They did this with any human, of course, but it still counted as a victory here. Even the worms, ambivalent as they were toward him, had a better read of the situation than the dough-eyed humans.

Apparently, all it took to be attractive to them was "soft, flawless mahogany skin," "sultry almond eyes," and "luxurious, easy hair with dreamy curls." Plus money, fame, and a town named after you. The point is that it didn't make any sense.

Regardless of whether or not it made sense, it was the truth, and Desmond knew it all too well. He was in front of his mirror--his fourth favorite place to be in the entire world--halfway through his second hour of preening when the doorbell for his penthouse went off. It was an odd time for it; Desmond didn't expect company before nine a.m., let alone at half-past-five. As far as Desmond was concerned, there were only three groups of people who called this early: beggars (tax men included), criminals (beggars included), and tax men (criminals included).

His default response for each group was the same: one hand firm on the grip of his revolver, ready to draw at any second, creeping slowly toward the door. It was overblown; only two people had ever made attempts on his life via door-knocking, plus a couple accidents. Desmond must have known this, but he didn't particularly seem to care as he went from behind one sofa to another. This imagined persecution made him feel very important.

He took long enough responding that the mystery caller knocked again. There was only one thing Desmond liked less than attempts on his life, and that was being told off. A second knock, to his mind, was the equivalent of saying "why are you so slow?" and nobody would speak to him that way. He abandoned all pretense toward stealth and stormed up to the peephole, where he saw a scrawny young man, barely an adult, looking anxiously from side to side.

He wore a plaid button-up that clashed horribly against his slacks and tie, but complimented his eyes decently well enough. The entire package was hastily, poorly done, like a gift wrapped in coarse brown paper and allegedly held together by "a mother's love." Desmond hated this kind of person more than any other--they thought of themselves as dreamers and hopefuls, but all they knew was mud and grime. It showed in the way they presented themselves; they knew nothing of dignity, or society, or any of Desmond's more elevated pursuits. Here was a beggar, but maybe not a criminal or a tax man.

"Whoever you are, go away! Come back at a more normal hour, or better yet, never at all. I've had a very long week, and I'm not interested in being shaken down." For Desmond, a 'very long week' meant that he'd had to spend it at his fifth vacation home instead of his fourth, and that one of his meals had come from a Patty Pope, which he viewed as the least horrifying of the world's fast food grease traps. At least he owned that one.

To be clear, he owned the intellectual property for Patty Pope. He also owned most of Deston's franchise locations by virtue of owning the city as a whole, but most of the other big names had refused to sell their trademarks, and instead of going to war with them, he'd convinced himself that he wasn't interested in buying. Restraint.

"Uh, it's... Ian, sir. F-from Vermin Hurtin'."

"Ex-Vermin Hurtin', if you please," Desmond responded curtly, "and you're about twelve hours early."

This news surprised Ian--he could have sworn this was the time Desmond had mentioned--but he was a quick improviser. "P-p-punctual, sir! I-I thought... thought you'd p-prefer it this way, but if you're not r-ready--"

"Wait!" Desmond's mind was moving at a thousand miles an hour. Ian was ridiculous for coming this early--that much he could see--but it was difficult to wave this particular brand of ridiculousness away because it came from a place of conscientiousness. If Desmond admitted that he wasn't ready to see Ian now, at a time when he couldn't have had any other appointments, it would mean that Ian was the more conscientious of the two, and that would be a catastrophe. At the same time, he had another hour-and-a-half before he was to be finished with his preening. To him, this was a disaster.

"I respect your dedication," he finally said, "and so I will let you speak to me, but your error cannot go unaddressed. You may not lay your eyes on me. Just stand out in the hall and think about what you've done as we talk."

"Uh, y-yes, sir."

"Now," Desmond said, steepling his hands in front of his chest as he started to pace, "by your coming here, I take it that you'd much rather be employed than unemployed."

"That's right, sir. Y-you see, my f-father--"

"And that means," Desmond interrupted, "you're willing to atone for this awful, awful oversight of yours." Over the years, people had come to Desmond with a number of 'sob stories,' and he could tell from the first few words whether or not they would be useful to him. A story about a young man caring for his father might have had its place somewhere, but not from Ian.

"A-atone?"

"You heard me, boy. Congratulations--you've found yourself new employment! Since you insist that someone must've sent those rats as a prank, you're going to help me find out who it was. There were plenty of cameras on that house--you'll go through all the footage, find the identity of the criminal, and then bring it to me. We'll take further action from there. Your pay will be... half of what it was at Vermin Hurtin', until you can show me the barest level of competence. How does that sound?"

"Half? But that's--"

"Too generous, I know. You can thank me in an hour-and-a-half, once your hallway probation is finished."

It was a second layer of carpet; a living, breathing sea of revolt and festive squeaking cheer as far as the eye could see, in all directions. They carried all sorts of diseases with them--hantavirus, lyme disease, leptospirosis, salmonellosis, as well as an exciting new prion that had formed only a few days ago in a stroke of glorious luck, and that had not yet been named. The diseases formed a sort of second society, mixing and mingling from rat to rat in complicated dances of probability and transmission.

Desmond, nimble little freak that he was, had managed to perch atop a half-open door in his sitting room where the rats couldn't reach. It was unclear exactly how he'd managed to do this, but it had involved a lot of extra twirls and flips that he probably didn't need. He hadn't escaped completely unscathed; there were a couple nicks around his ankles where the rats' teeth had found their mark. Of course, it was unlikely to matter given that he'd had all the standard vaccinations--as well as several secret vaccinations he'd been withholding from the public--but there was always the hope that one of the prion rats might've gotten to him. He'd taken out his cell phone and started shouting orders to every pest control company within a five mile radius. He'd managed to get them all on speakerphone. Such was his right as an inconceivably, disgustingly rich person.

"They've completely made the place their own--what's WRONG with you all? What do I pay you for? If there's a single brain put together between your mushy heads, you'll be here with flamethrowers and hazmat suits in the next five minutes! Do you hear me? Five minutes if you want to keep your jobs, all of you!" Pest control was one of the industries where Desmond had a local monopoly. He thought there was a sense of power in the idea of driving vermin away by force.

"Which one of you is responsible for this house, anyway? Speak up now, and your job will be the only thing I take."

"Uh, hi, I'm Ian," Ian said in a voice that shook in fear almost as much as it shook between his upper and lower registers, "with Vermin Hurtin'. I've got the report right here, and we sent people over to your house a week ago. They gave it the all clear."

"WELL, Ian, if you did a check, maybe you could explain the seething mass of bubonic torment on my floor! Did you perhaps send someone blind, deaf, and comatose on accident?" Desmond's voice, in stark opposition to Ian's, was like a freight train: hurtling forward with unstoppable momentum born from a furious internal core.

"No, I-I'm sure, we checked! Maybe it could be someone playing a prank on you?"

"A prank? People love me! Who on earth would want to prank me--let alone go to such lengths? Idiot boy!"

For once, Desmond was actually correct, at least in a way: this was no prank. These were very sneaky rats, and they had avoided the detection of the pest control people by being very sneaky and good. They were in no way, shape or form, intended as a prank. In fact, there was no intention at all to them besides the intention that rats normally have, which is to enjoy good food in a warm house. And there was nothing else to say on the matter, so Ian really ought to have started considering the sneakiness of the rats instead.

Of course, it's difficult for even the best humans to admit when they're wrong, not least when their job might hang in the balance. Ian, who was most certainly a human and not necessarily one of the best, pressed bravely (and incorrectly) forward.

"I-it seems like the best explanation to me, sir, if I know my pests. Which, I think I do. I mean, we didn't see a single sign of anything odd when we were there; I have the report in front of me. It's actually really detailed, because we knew you'd be coming over in the near future."

Desmond went for another retort, but a wave of rats crashed against the door and jostled him enough that he lost his grip on his phone. It was a pity that he didn't fall in entirely, but the rats were pleased enough with their new toy for the time being. Some of them nibbled at the receiver, which sounded loud and unpleasant to the poor pest control people on the other side.

A contingent of the smarter rats took a renewed interest in the door. Some of them started trying to skitter up the side--to no avail--but the bulk of them started nibbling at the bottom. Desmond gave a very loud scream, but this did little to stymy the merriness of the horde.

Desmond, frustrated immensely with his current situation, cast his eyes about the room for some way to set about fixing things. The sitting room itself was largely empty. Between visits, he had a team of experts work on his vacation homes to maximize the feng-shui, and this time they'd taken a minimalist approach. Or at least, as minimalist as was conceivable with someone like Desmond breathing down their necks.

However, the sitting room was attached to a "small" indoor gym, which had several different work machines cramped tightly together and, perhaps more importantly, weights of various persuasions which, Desmond thought, could be used as impromptu weapons. The rats had taken little interest in the exercise room because, apart from some unappetizing sweat residue from the last time Desmond had been here, there wasn't anything to eat.

The only trouble (for Desmond) was that the door didn't open into the gym; it was on the wrong side. To make matters worse (for Desmond), the rats had made quick progress gnawing up the door. By stacking on top of one another, they'd almost drawn level with the first hinge in some spots. One would think that this would be enough to deter Desmond from trying any tricky maneuvers.

One would be wrong. Among all the things Desmond lacked, fear was one of them. That's not to say he had no self-preservation instinct--he had plenty of that--but that didn't manifest as fear in his mind. It was more like a mangled sort of anger-pride that refused to be extinguished. To make matters worse (for normal people everywhere), he was still obscenely acrobatic.

He grabbed the outer rim on the door's threshold, steadied himself, and then kicked off the door. His legs swung down, narrowly avoiding several rat bites, and then back up on the other side, where he hooked his toes into an especially gaudy picture frame that held an oil portrait of himself, shirtless and muscle-bound. According to him, there was no better media in the world for motivation.

From here, Desmond was home free; there was a chin-up bar only a few feet away, and then it was a hop, skip, and a jump to the weight rack. He grabbed a jump rope on the way, something which would have baffled any sensible person watching, and then he tied it to a five-pound disc weight.

Desmond spent the rest of the wait for the pest control corps swatting rats with his long-distance weapon, which didn't do much against the sheer volume of them all, but did make him feel better. As the different pest control groups arrived, he kept their order in his head, so that he could later apply pay cuts accordingly. Only the first group to arrive remained entirely unscathed. There was some frantic deliberation over how best to clear out the rats, only for Desmond to eventually decide that they should just burn down the house. He'd annex a few of the nearby lots and build a bigger, more decadent one.