Feline Fucking Aeris

Chapter 12 of The Triple World

Hey all, I’m trying out past tense for this chapter. I’m not sure which to go for when it comes to the story as a whole - any thoughts? Do you have a preference?

Any opinions welcome as I’m currently in the paralysing realms of indecision!

The door banged shut behind her, slamming with the authority of an Arbiter Nova. Daphne didn’t look at Timta, but she could feel his eyes following her. Hers were fixed on the door straight ahead. Her office had never looked so inviting. She unlocked it, sauntered inside and slammed it - closing Timta and the rest of the pawnshop out.

She fell against the silver metal as soon as it swung back in place, sealing her inside. Sliding down the cold surface, she clutched at her face, dragging her hands down her cheeks. Her meetings with Lord Pangol were never particularly enticing, but that one had been a nightmare. His new Colosseum was imprinted on the backs of her eyelids. Daphne was no soft, simpering, delicate, little flower, but that sight… those sounds… Lord Pangol’s request - those had all spooked her. Those street-slickers. At least when it came to selling their memories, they could do it at will. Or in accordance with how desperate they were. But that. That man. That was pure, unadulterated despair.

Still. She couldn’t let it bother her. That was not her life. It was the life of someone else. Someone she didn’t know. Someone she didn’t care about. Someone who had let themselves get into that situation. She snapped her eyes back open, unfurled her arms from her knees and slowly rose back up to straighten out her already extremely straight and crease-less pencil skirt.

As she let her eyes focus on her surroundings (instead of replaying the events from the Colosseum, over and over again), she noticed that her Oracle was all lit up, blinking its bright blue eyes and watching her. Her computer screen was up, too. Its face covered with a list: her database, her bought and sold memories. It was loading something. Or something was being uploaded.

Freeing herself from her reverie, Daphne hurried over to the screen. There was only one open application, but the window shut down just as she got close enough to be able to read what might have been written on it.

She turned to the Oracle. “Who turned you on?”

“Nobody,” it replied with a voice that was so much more than human.

“Then, why are you on?”

“You left me on.”

“No, I didn’t,” Daphne spoke through gritted teeth, panic starting to rise up in her throat. “What was happening on my database?”

“Nothing was happening on your database.” The Oracle was calm, serene.

“I saw the screen. Tell me what was happening.”

“There was nothing on the screen. Humans are fallible. Sometimes their eyes don’t see what is really there. They invent things. These events take place oftentimes when a human is tired or stressed.”

“Patronising bitch,” Daphne spat out as she flicked the switch to turn it off.

She stalked over to the locked door. There was no sign of forced entry - its touch pad was un-corrupted. She pressed her thumb against it, accessing the entry log for the day. The grey screen told her there had been no entry while she was out. Nothing.

She wrenched open the door and glided out into the hallway.

“Timta.” He was with a customer. Some scrawny looking woman who looked a lot older than her clothes suggested. They both looked up from their negotiations with faces of fear. This pleased Daphne. At least she could still instill fear into some people. Even if they were only her employee and a startled slut from the slums. “Now.”

Timta asked the woman to wait, politely. Too politely. Excessively politely. Daphne would have to pull him up on that later. She didn’t want people thinking that Matter Over Mind was full of soft touches who would fall victim to their piss-taking, pangol-grabbing ways. Prey on desperation; pray for salvation - that had always been her motto. She’d screw over anyone in this life. She had never believed in a next.

“What is it?” Timta asked.

“Did you go into my office while I was out?”

“No, of course not.”

“Are you sure?” She narrowed her eyes at him, enjoying seeing him squirm under her glare.

“Yes. I don’t have the code. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

“Did anyone else go in? You’re not the most observant. Could someone have slipped in while you were… distracted?”

“No. Absolutely not.” His voice sounded more confident now. More sure of himself. “There wasn’t time. There have been a steady flow of people today. And I haven’t left the shop floor at all. That just couldn’t have happened. I’m sure of it.”

Daphne just looked at him. She looked at him for a few moments. “Ok. You can go,” she said quietly, a sinister sweetness coating her voice.

His face painted with evident relief, Timta hurried back to his waiting customer.

“I’ve got to go back out,” Daphne called after him.

Timta briefly looked up and nodded at her, returning to his customer to ask how much she wanted for the memory.

Daphne rolled her eyes.

“Well, I was thinking 70 pangols, maybe?”

Daphne decided to wait. To watch how this would unfold. Timta, the hard bargainer, would cave, she was sure of it.

“Well,” he started, “I’ve already got a lot of rapes on the books.” He looked steadily at her, his face creasing with something disgustingly like sympathy.

“Oh yes,” Daphne intercepted. Both sets of eyes darted over to her. “Hundreds. Look at this one.” She prowled behind the counter, clicked a few buttons, flipped a few switches and a holographic image projected itself into the middle of the shop floor.

A woman, sobbing, crying, wailing. Men laughing, drinking, thrusting.

Daphne leveled her eyes, focusing on the woman in front of her. “And how about this one?” She flipped another switch and the hologram shifted to show a different sobbing woman in the same position. Same state of undress. Same state of despair. “Or this one?” She flipped a switch again. “This one?” She kept going and going and going. 

Timta and the woman both looked at the floor, mute. 

Daphne flicked a final switch, dissolving the moving pictures. “20 pangols for a rape.”

The woman bristled. “I can just go to a different shop. You’re not the only one who does this, you know.” Her voice sounded scratched and raw.

“Go on, then,” Daphne countered. She knew she was the only pawnshop in this particular district. Now that Alex Zampion was gone, anyway. Her face flinched as she thought of him. Luckily neither Timta nor the street-slicker saw it.

The woman had tears in her eyes now.

“If you’re going to cry, at least have the good grace to leave first and do it outside.”

Timta cleared his throat.

Realising that her tears would be wasted here, the woman straightened up. “20 pangols will be fine.”

“I thought it might be,” Daphne said, acid dripping from every word. “I’ll leave it with you, Timta,” she added. “As I said, I should be going.” She didn’t take her eyes off the woman as she spoke. She kept them trained on her until she physically had to turn her back to leave the room.

When the door closed behind her, she breathed out. She’d just have to ask around, see if the Nabrinskys were running any updates on their Oracles. But that would have to wait. 

Still shaken from her meeting with Lord Pangol, Daphne’s thoughts were elsewhere. Entirely elsewhere. In fact, her thoughts were leading her to somewhere forbidden to all citizens of Skyreen, from the street-slickers, to the middle classes, right up to the Apex.

But she needed to go. She needed to see Mererid.

She sidled over to her desk, reaching into the bottom drawer for the rucksack inside. Black, blending with the rest of her outfit - nearly unnoticeable.

She slipped out of the back door, hearing it click softly behind her. She stopped dead. Listened. There was the gentle hum of a skybot nearby. Unmistakable. A liability. She stopped breathing. Waited. 

The hum grew quieter, skittering off somewhere. She glanced up the street, to her right: nothing but the glowing gold sheen of the orb lights suspended in mid-air. She took off to the left.

There was no sense in taking the lumina - it was traceable. Mererid lived on the outskirts of the city state, in the furthest corner away from the Apex - as far as it was possible to get. It would look bad if she got caught out there. She did not need something tracing her to Mererid. She had worked too hard to fall now.

The world around her simultaneously dimmed and lit up; the golden orbs gave way entirely to the gaudy, puce lights of the outskirts. The neon purple illumination beneath the paving stones cast Daphne’s shadow up onto the walls around her, turning her into something huge, foreign and malignant. She ducked into an alleyway - again, listening out for skybots waiting in the darkness, spying with their camera lens eyes.

Nothing.

She took a change of clothes out of the rucksack. More black to blend in with the night that seemed to be swallowing her whole and spitting her back out in purple. But nothing like her smart pencil skirt suit. The baggy trousers, over sized shirt and long coat would make her blend in. Not just with the darkness, but with the street-slickers. Nobody had well-fitting clothes. They were always either too big or too small. And if they were too big, they concealed even more.

Glancing around continuously as she changed, her eyes darted towards any possible source of sound.

There was a clatter from deeper in the alley. 

Daphne froze. Her fingers tingled with the force it took for her to keep them still. But she refused to move. Stubborn. Desperate. Her stomach felt like it was falling through her pelvis.

A meagre flurry of movement. Her eyes skimmed, side to side, up and down, to pinpoint its origin.

An alley cat. Felus fucking aeris. Though they had got smaller over the centuries, they still managed to cause a ruckus wherever they went. Daphne breathed out, becoming aware that she had been sucking in her cheeks.

She finished changing as the cat wound its way around her ankles. Jerking back out into the street, she threw a quick look over her shoulder. The cat was lurking back in the alley, just watching her. She could see its chest, so much bigger than the rest of it, rising and falling as her feet carried her in the opposite direction.

Passing by store fronts of pawnshops, like hers, she couldn’t help herself - she peered inside: very plain in comparison to hers - all black and white monochrome, a brazen, blatant attempt to imitate and flatter the colours of the Skyreen Guard. Daphne felt her lip curl into a sneer. 

She kept walking. The neon colours of an off licence blazed across the street. It was like she was walking onto a rainbow of petroleum. People were gathering outside the off licence, whooping and causing a commotion. 

Daphne craned her neck. A fight had broken out. No doubt a drunken one. Blood, bathed in cerise. What else would these street-slicking scumbags be cheering for? It was all they knew. It was all she had known once. But fuck if she was going to think about that now.

She wasn’t far from Mererid’s and as far as she was aware, she had evaded the skybots’ eyes. But she would have to move fast, if she wanted to keep that up. They were always attracted by raucous crowds. They weren’t there to break it up. They were just there to observe - to record.

“What are you doing here?”

Daphne’s legs stiffened. She pulled her sweater up over her nose before turning around to face the voice.

The figure’s arms were covered in street-slicking stamps: a dove trapped inside a cage of fingers; the words ‘BEHOLD THE FUTURE’; swirling mandalas over her hands. Mererid. 

Daphne closed her eyes as relief flooded into her veins, swamping every inch of her face. Though Mererid’s face was a more welcome sight than most, she felt unnerved that she didn’t recognise her voice. Had it really been that long?

“Well?” Mererid flung her hands out wide, black hair melting into the black sky above her.

“I need your help.”

“Don’t you always?”

Daphne looked at the floor, to avoid the other woman’s angry, fire-hazel eyes.

“Why don’t you go to one of the government sanctioned tarot readers? You’re pretty cosy with the Apex, aren’t you?”

Daphne swallowed. She had no answer. No defense.

“We both know that they don’t tell the truth, Mererid.”

“Do we? And is that why they drive us underground? So that they can play-pretend and make-believe their divinations, while true sooth-sayers, clairvoyants, mediums and tarot readers are forced out of work - branded illegal?”

“There is nothing I can do about that.”

“You could choose not to be a part of it.”

Daphne squeezed her eyes shut.

But Mererid continued, “Do you remember Neri?”

Daphne nodded.

“Got caught last month. Sent down to the Surface. Exiled, simply for keeping the old traditions alive. The true religion.”

Daphne winced. She had always liked Neri - he was a kind neighbour when she and Mererid were growing up, always offering to walk them home from school if they were scared by riots, sharing his food if Daphne’s mother had spent her money on… other things.

Mererid huffed, puffing her cheeks out as though her outburst had been physically strenuous. “Come one, then.” She cocked her head, gesturing towards her home. “Can’t do it out here.”