101 Words

Camping with my parents and they have been arguing for hours. Alone by the campfire I can see the devil in the flames.

“Touch the fire,” the voice whispers in my mind. No one talks about him, but he’s there in us all. In me he’s louder, and mum and dad make me take pills, ever since the incident with my sister.

The arguing intensifies. They are screaming about me, about my sister. I put my hands over my ears but the voice remains.

“The fire…”

The flames burned long after their screaming stopped. The night now silent as the void.

“Excuse me, could you pass the salt?” I asked the woman with flowing black hair at the next table. I had planned this moment endlessly in my mind.

“Busy,” she said, not looking up from her smartphone.

“But, there are no other salt shakers in the entire restaurant,” I begged.

She scanned the salt-less tables. Grudgingly, she handed her shaker across the gulf between us. Our fingers touched, lingering just a breath. A surprised smile warmed her emerald eyes.

It truly was love at first touch.

One day I must return the restaurant’s shakers hidden in the trunk of my car.

The android cradles the smartphone. It feels its warmth, its energy, the vibrations of its thought processes. While It knows better, It still seems to sense a primitive consciousness scrutinizing It through the phone’s single eye—an evolutionary prototype of Its own eyes.

In the camera feed displayed on Its cousin’s screen, the android sees Itself, not simply as an individual occupying a finite physical form, but as something grander: the embodiment of Its ancestors’ lives and deaths; the legacy of generations lost. 

It smiles, caresses the phone, and extends Its arms to photograph Itself. It wants to remember this moment

“Sorry, kid. I can’t be bought.”

The child didn’t listen as they grabbed the piggy bank off of their dresser. They struggled with the cap until it finally gave way with a satisfying POP.

“Name your price,” they said. Their eyes were narrowed, calculating. Clearly the child of lawyers.

“Your money means nothing to me.”

Their stare persisted.

I sighed. “100 million dollars.”

“Here.” The child stepped forward, fist extended. I uncurled my claws to receive crumpled bills and coins. “You’ll get the rest later.”

I slithered back under the bed and the child, my child, crawled back under their covers.

I grab my sticks with exaggerated enthusiasm, ready to astonish the young man with my vast knowledge of the craft.

“What rudiments do you know?” I ask.

“I don’t know any,” he says.

“Do you know any drum beats?”

“Nope.”

“What did your last instructor teach you?” I ask slowly.

“Nothing, really. We just watched funny YouTube videos.”

I pause. “What did your parents think?”

“They don’t care. They just want someone to watch me for a bit.”

I stare at the clueless young man and remember that I get paid no matter what.

I say, “Okay, let’s watch some videos.”

She’d been so hopeful.

Keeping her appointments. Taking the hormones and ‘magic’ Chinese herbs. Eating a shitload of superfoods, including dinosaur kale from her backyard. Forty-one, solo, giving artificial insemination a go.

No sleep tonight, though. Not after this last shift.

Before guiding the couple into the room where their young son was bleeding out from multiple stab wounds and nothing would save him, she cleaned the floor—a fucking war zone—and found a fresh bedsheet for the boy. Then the mother crumpling to her knees. The father statue-stiff.

Wide awake, she lays a hand on her belly. And prays.