#vmxember

September chill is not friendly, it is almost unwelcoming, frosted gust of wind that buries through her clothes and bites into bone. The night is no longer young and even the sky wears a different kind of darkness in this town. She is still bleeding when she steps into the complex’s elevator, the wound pressed against her coat’s sleeve. When the doors slide to a close, Sumin studies the person on the reflective surface– pallor on skin and dark rings lining the rims of tired eyes,  she finds a slender ghost dressed in black. Her teeth create dents on the pliant surface of the linings of her mouth that she runs over with her tongue again and again – inside her mouth is the taste of rust. Everything surrounding her is motionless paired with some jazz instrumental humming in the background.  Her phone vibrates against her thigh and disdain floods her muted expression, device cradled by a palm and pressed against her ear. The conversation is anything but fruitful, on the other line, her hacker panics, his apologies running bloody from his lips.

“If you weren’t so fucking useless, I wouldn’t have to clean up after you.”

Cottonmouth plants a snake in her mouth so that every syllable that is uttered between gritted teeth is a hiss. Before her serpentine tongue was a saccharine mouth, naiveté was becoming only on an untainted palate. This has been her beginning – saccharine mouth, dull teeth and a dulcet cadence, her words hanging on flimsy gossamer strings. Cottonmouth plants a snake in her mouth so she gets accustomed to her own poison and learns not to flinch at her own infliction. This is how her words bite like venom; this is how she learns to sharpen her teeth. “Do something about your fuck up; I will not be dragged along by your stupidity.” She ends the call then, disregarding any attempt at retaliation. The doors slide open at her floor, Sumin steps into the hall.

Her hands are delved within her pockets, a fist closing around the flashdisk (tonight’s assignment), fingertips stroking against its plastic covering (tonight’s failure). It does not take long for her to find herself at Ember’s door. Sumin takes a few moments to collect herself first, lingers in front of it before she knocks.

( She thinks of Ember – a halo of golden hair around her head, the burning city at her feet, she thinks of Ember, Cottonmouth’s second-in-command (they call her the mother of snakes), she thinks of Ember and the snake in her mouth curls in submission.)

When her knuckles rasp against the door, she exhales.