Burned And Burning

by Joyce Ellen Armond

Joyce loves sappy love songs and face-eating monsters with equal enthusiasm. Her personal passion is melding the genres of romance and horror. From her home base in rural Pennsylvania, waiting for the zombie apocalypse, she edits the Speculative Romance Online website and newsletter. Her first novel-length work will be released by Liquid Silver Books early in 2007. You can visit her at specromonline.com.

Neil slipped through the open door. Viv followed barrel first. The smell instantly choked her -- an overheated, swampy tang. Her eyes swept the scene. Her brain registered the scarred wood of the desk as familiar, but not the naked curves of skin and all the hair. The Third knelt on the desk. His back, his chest, his legs crawled with hair. His stubbly chin ground into a woman's shoulder. She teetered at the desk's rough edge, while a man, as properly hairless as she, pounded that rhythm between her legs.

A thick cable snaked from the jack behind the Third's ear, almost hidden by all that hair. The main cable frayed into a dozen coils leading to pins sticking in the couple's skulls, around and through their Burn scars.

"Police!" Neil roared. "Get down on your knees! Now!"

The woman screamed. The Third tore the plug out of his jack, while the man reached out and swept the pins from the screaming woman's skull.

Neil took a lunging step forward. "I said down now!"

A sudden flare of light from behind the Third blasted through Viv's optics. She pawed them off. A second couple pulled the Third out an open back door. The screamer went with them. The remaining man raised a gun. Viv saw Neil, his optics half off, waving his barrel wildly. He fired. On the wall behind the Third, paper pages exploded into the air. The remaining man aimed at Neil.

"No!" Viv moved without thinking. She crashed into Neil. Fire crashed into her, a worm of fire eating through to her ribs, chewing up flesh and throwing back blood.

"Viv!"

The room swirled to the frantic beat of her heart as she swayed, swayed, swayed.

Guns cracked, miles away.

Swayed, tipped. The floor caught her.

"Viv!" Neil skidded to his knees beside her. His face loomed, half in darkness, half in the triangle of light from the open back door. "Viv?" He pushed his optics the rest of the way off, tore his hat off, too. His Burn scar threw a shadow across the smooth skin of his skull.

Viv thought it was snowing. Loud snow, thumping snow. No -- the thumping was her heart. No, no. Running boots.

"Medics, now!" Answering chatter burst through his radio, but she couldn't make out the words. "Viv?"

It wasn't snow falling. It was pages. Paperback pages.

"Viv? Stay with me, partner. Medics, now! Now!

She was so cold, maybe it was snow.

#

"I think she's awake."

Viv thought the unfamiliar voice was wrong, because she still felt trapped by the dream. She'd had the stress dream: tiny tailed stars swimming up her spine, swarming into the bundle of nerves in the nape of her neck, chewing into her brain. She always dreamed it when things were bad. Why were they bad?

"Officer Beal?"

Her Burn scar itched, so maybe she was awake.

"Can you open your eyes?"

A chore to even think about opening her eyes. She tried to shake her head no, so that the annoying voice would go away and let her rest. Easier maybe to open her eyes.

"Viv?"

Neil's voice eased into her ear and slid like hot chocolate and cookies through her tightly strung nerves. For him, she pried open her lids. He stood beside her, his hand resting on the metal rail running along her bedside.

He smiled, and his shoulders dropped all their tension. "Hey."

She tried to say "hey" back but her tongue was pumice in her mouth.

A woman in scrubs pushed Neil to the foot of her bed. He tapped Viv's toe and smiled. "You're gonna be okay."

Viv flicked her eyes around the room: low lights, blank walls, gray glass observation window. She recognized critical care. She couldn't remember why she should be there.

"You're gonna be okay," Neil said again.

Viv felt far from okay. Pain lurked along her nerves. A monitor in the room beeped the rhythm of her heart: a steady surge and ebb. The sound dripped against her skull, against her Burn scar. The rhythm. Something about the rhythm.

"Viv?"

The surge and ebb. The light in the room flared. She saw body hair and cable coils. The rhythm. She saw fluttering pages. She smelled it all over again.

"Turn it off." The words dribbled past her lips. "Turn it off."

Neil frowned, returned to her side, bent down to listen. "What?"

Bmp-bmp-bmp-bmp-bmp. The mechanical sound moistened. She kept smelling it.

"Turn. It. Off!"

Her muscles convulsed and she thrashed against a panic she didn't understand.

"Turn it, turn it, turn it --"

Neil caught her shoulders and held her down.

"--off off off off --"

Cold drugged waves washed her away from the rhythm. The ebb and surge frayed like a cable coming out of a hairy head, and she slipped into uneasy peace.

#

"So how are you feeling?"

Never lie to a shrink. "Better." Viv came to her feet, reaching her arms high, then touched her toes.

The department therapist smiled indulgently. "And the dream?"

Viv sat back down. "Not for seventy-two nights."

The therapist had explained that the dream was a biological memory of the Burn. The scar was put on cosmetically, as a statement, a visible mark of commitment. The actual destruction of the animalistic neuroreceptors was accomplished by nanites.

But it happened when I was two.

The therapist said it didn't matter. The body remembered the trauma, and the memory escaped in times of stress as a dream. Viv was twenty-six years old and no one had ever explained it.

The therapist looked over her notes and gave a satisfied nod. "Okay, I'm clearing you to go back on duty, but only on the desk."

The innocent phrase made Viv seize up inside. She waited until the therapist signed her name to the release, and handed Viv her copy, before she asked the question that bothered her more than the dream.

"Why didn't Neil freak out like I did?" And that's how she felt, like a freak who froze up at the wrong time and almost got her partner killed. A freak who needed seven months of therapy because of body hair and swampy smells.

"You said it yourself. You were Burned when you were two." She gave Viv that certain bright smile, the same smile everyone gave her. That proud smile that said we've saved you from the worst kind of fate. "Your partner was only Burned ten years ago, when he emigrated."

No one had told Viv that either, and she'd never thought to ask. She knew he liked mustard and not mayonnaise on his tofurky sandwiches, but not that.

"Your partner knew what he'd see on the other side of that door. No matter what anybody told you beforehand, Officer Beal, you didn't. You couldn't."

#

The squad decorated Viv's desk with big red targets on her first day back. At week's end they took her out after shift for gooey pizza and rich, smuggled Chianti. Neil walked her home. Hours past curfew, the streets were empty. It was just Viv, Neil and the stars.

"I can walk fine, you know. I don't need help." She'd been alone in all kinds of situations with Neil. But tonight felt different, and it set her teeth on edge. She blamed the wine.

Neil just shook his head.

"I can skip. I can hop. I can even boogie." Viv wiggled all over. Illicit wine giggles echoed in the dark.

"Can you dodge better?" He used that same gruff voice since critical care. "That's the question."

"What is up with you? You suck all the fun out of still being alive." She stretched toward the sky, feeling the twinge she'd always feel where the bullet had chewed through her. "It's great to be alive!"

"Will you keep it down?" He laughed a little, like it hurt him to do it. "You're illegally drunk."

"Who's going to arrest me? You?"

"I could."

"You wouldn't."

"I might."

"Yeah, right."

They reached her building's door: a double-paned, metal-rimmed monster with voice-id speakers for eyes.

"Do you think you can get home okay by yourself?" Viv asked. His building, same quad, was across the silent street.

"Get in there." He nudged her toward the door, then caught her arm. "Viv---"

"No scene, Neil, please. No big scene."

"You almost died for me."

"Almost." She turned back to him, feeling warmed by the wine. This is what had set her nerves on edge. This unavoidable expression of gratitude. "You'd have done the exact same thing for me, right? That's what partners do."

"You saved my life."

"So return the favor someday." She pushed him toward his own building. "Go on, you big drunk. Or I'll arrest you."

He chuckled, tilting precariously on the curb. "Yes, Officer Beal. Right away, Officer Beal."

"Sheesh." She spoke her id code into the speakers and the door lock released.

Neil still wobbled on the curb, scratching at his Burn scar.

"Go home," she said, and went inside.

#

Morning stuck light shards through Viv's eyes and nailed her dry tongue to the roof of her mouth. She shuffled into the kitchen for a necessary luxury: a cup of coffee. Wine last night, coffee this morning. High living for someone who'd almost died.

She nursed the steaming bitter mug until her eyes focused without conscious effort. That's when she saw it: a folded sheet of white paper slid under the door. She considered calling the sniffers but noticed words in the upper left corner. Inked letters with a familiar slant: CAN YOU UNDERSTAND. No question mark.

As an officer of the law, Neil had the code to override her security door and slide the folded paper into her kitchen.

Didn't he have a hangover as bad as she did? What was he doing sneaking around after dark? He must have done it while he was still drunk.

Viv abandoned the last sips of coffee. She felt the twinge in her side as she bent down and picked up the folded paper. As she did, a flurry of smaller sheets swirled across the kitchen floor. She recognized them immediately. The snow that fell after Neil and the Third's shooter exchanged gunfire. Pages from a paperback novel, and she knew what kind of paperback novel. Completely illegal. All properly imported reading material was provided over the net.

Viv laid the five pages in an orderly line across her kitchen table. The printed words looked strangely flat and matte, stuck on paper instead of floating in the depth of a display. She saw the words but didn't read them. Didn't need to. In her mind a rhythm began to throb and a tang fouled the back of her throat. She had to get away. She threw a long coat over her pajamas, the rhythm relentless, stuffed her feet in shoes and pulled open the door.

Neil waited in the hallway, face pale, eyes bright. He pushed her back into the kitchen and closed the door behind him.

Viv backed up. He didn't look like her mirror image now. The look in his eye kicked her pulse into overdrive. The back of her thighs bumped the table. Her fingers brushed the corner of one illegal page. "Are you crazy? This is contraband. Evidence. You took it from a crime scene."

Neil ignored her. He paced back and forth, surge and ebb. "Before I Burned I took the cocktail."

Viv's skin crawled at the slang. Such a well-bred euphemism, as if drug-induced mating was James Bond and martinis by the pool.

"Did you know that about me, Viv?"

"I don't want to know." She wanted her world back, her pre-Third world back. When no one had hair and she wasn't haunted by wet rhythmic smacks.

"I was a painter. An artist. She was rich, and it wouldn't matter what she looked like once I took the cocktail and the hook was in. She was rich, Viv. Unbelievably rich. She could have kept me forever. A life of painting and ease and true love."

He spun the last two words and her stomach clenched. Even Burned at two, she knew about the cocktail and the hook, the promise of biochemically induced passion that even fights about money couldn't kill. She knew what kind of perversions tainted the world outside the colony. She'd dedicated her life, risked her life, to fight against them.

"So they plugged in the cocktail and it was like flying. All I wanted to do was go down on my knees and adore her forever, just like it's supposed to be out there. Everything perfect. Everyone loves."

Neil stopped pacing but the ebb and flow still pounded at Viv's head.

"She was rich. Rich enough..." His voice broke. "She didn't take the cocktail. She didn't take it."

He said it with the awe of a hurt child, and Viv felt her heart break for him.

"She had a house full of beautiful men who were chemically addicted to screwing her..." His head dropped. After a moment he drew in a ragged breath.

"Neil." Viv reached out, touched the tips of her fingers to the curve of his shoulder.

His head snapped up and he pushed her away. She stumbled back into the table, which tipped and clunked on its side. The sound vibrated through Viv, shaking her heart like an earthquake. The pages skittered past her feet.

Neil's lips curled and his eyes narrowed. "So I came here and I Burned it all out of me. Forever."

Viv felt his anger slap her in the face.

"And here you are." He put his hand to his head, his fingernails raking over his Burn scar. "My partner. Every day I'm with you. With your green eyes and your stupid jokes. I found you...and I can't. Feel. Anything." A line of blood trickled from his scar down his forehead. "I can't want you, I can't even get hard..."

Fear like she'd never known gripped Viv by the throat. She could barely speak around it. "Get out."

Neil tilted his head. His fingers still gouged at the scar. "Can you understand?"

"Get out, Neil, I won't ask you again."

He lunged, grabbing her throat with one hand and her breast with the other, dragging her against him and grinding his lips down on hers. Viv pistoned her knee into the soft parts between his legs and wrenched away while he doubled and gagged.

She stutter-stepped into the bedroom, fumbled open the nightstand drawer. Service pistol heavy and cold in her hand, she returned to the kitchen.

Neil gasped for breath, his hands braced on his thighs. Viv ground the barrel tip into the skin of his forehead. It slipped a little in the blood running from his Burn scar.

"Get out."

He nodded once and backed up slowly. Viv realized he was crying.

"Get out."

"Viv--"

"Get out!" She screamed it, the barrel steady. She didn't lower the gun until Neil closed the door and she was alone. Her leg muscles quivered, and she collapsed in a heap beside the fallen, stolen pages.

#

Six hours of staring and shaking later, Viv picked up the nearest page, read a line at random.

Lord Robert stared into Lady Anne's eyes, fell into their blue depths as if she were the sea and he were eager to drown.

She put the page back on the floor. Hysterical laughter bubbled up her throat. Even Burned at two, she knew the biological mechanics. Eyes were not involved.

Neil's pain hung like smoke in the kitchen, her only company.

A memory of her therapist's words tried to dissipate it. Focus on what's important, Viv. Where is your biggest commitment?

At the time, in that context, she'd replied that her biggest commitment was to her job.

So what would it take to shake that commitment, Viv? A little fear over seeing something that upset you?

Viv had bristled. A little fear? A little something? She'd gone into white-sight panic. She'd shut down.

But are you going to let it be enough to shake your commitment? The therapist's voice had a smug edge to it, because she knew that Viv would never break.

What was her biggest commitment?  This time, without any expectations or pressures from a therapist who held the key to returning to work, she arrived at an entirely different answer.

Viv pulled herself to her feet. Fear swarmed like rats under her skin, like tiny tailed dream stars that were predators she had to escape. She abandoned the safety of her apartment. People on the street moved out of her way as she strode through the orderly, symmetrical developments. She was a cop and she knew where to find anything illegal, even something as illegal as this. It took her until sundown. She stood in an empty room facing a Third, the same one who'd witnessed her brush with death.

"Have you come to arrest me?" His eyes mocked. The worst punishment he could suffer was permanent expulsion, his trading privileges revoked. Maybe a short stint in jail if he got a judge out there sympathetic to the colony's cause.

Viv shook her head. She told him about Neil. "There's a man...my partner..."

The Third listened through all his disgusting hair, and when she was through, handed her a pencil-thin phone. "Tell him to be here in thirty minutes. Tell him to come to the basement."

Viv dialed Neil's mobile number. He answered on the first ring.

"Neil Brody." So much suppressed anguish in those two words.

"Meet me." She gave him the address. "Basement. Thirty minutes."

She heard him take a breath to reply. Fearing he would say something to defuse her courage, she disconnected.

The Third took her downstairs, to a foundation of one of the pre-colony buildings. Real brick and mortar. The room held only a table, not a desk, and no books.

"They were all confiscated," he said.

Except for five pages. Now Viv wished she'd read them. Dry biological textbook descriptions suddenly seemed inadequate. "How exactly does this work?"

The Third laughed. "Oh come on, everybody remembers."

Viv felt like a freak all over again. "Not me." She rubbed her Burn scar. "I was two."

The Third pushed a hank of hair from his forehead as pity and anger bloomed in his eyes. "My God, this place is sick."

Viv felt a flash of loyalty to the colony, then a sinking stone of guilt.

"First things first. Take off your clothes." He unbuttoned his shirt with hairy fingers, revealing matted, swirling black fuzz.

"Why don't you shave all that off?" Viv heard the disgust in her voice. "You wouldn't be so obviously illegal."

The Third dropped his shirt, pulled off his belt. "Honey, I don't want to be anything like you. I'll stay hairy, thanks. Now get rid of the clothes."

Viv pulled her shirt over her head. "How does it work?" If she kept talking, she wouldn't have room in her brain for second-guessing. "The hook up, I mean."

Naked and horribly hairy, the Third held up the cable with its tangle of coils at one end and the jack at the other. "I hook up the two of you to me, and you can use my unmutilated neuroreceptors to feel the looooooooove." He grinned. "I can't wait to see it hit you."

"What do you feel?" Safer to be curious about what the Third would feel.

"Oh baby, I feel yours and his and mine. What a rush." He pointed for Viv to sit at the edge of the table. "Now this hurts, but it's worth it."

The first pin pierced her skin with a quick buzz of pain. "Not so bad."

The Third poked in four more pins. "Wait for it."

Viv heard a click. Five thread-sized somethings slammed through the skull. The bones of her sinuses reverberated with it. She squealed.

"Trust me, it's worth --"

The door banged open, a full twelve minutes early. Neil pulled off his shirt with one hand while he closed the door behind him with the other. Buttons skidded across the floor. Viv flashed back to her apartment, remembered the wet wriggle of his tongue on her lips, and almost bolted.

The Third put his hand on her shoulder. "Steady, girl. Steady."

Neil stood half a foot from her, wearing nothing. He kept his eyes down. His fingers flexed and unflexed, surge and ebb.

"I can't do this," Viv whispered. She slipped off the table and onto her feet, but the Third stopped her with a glare.

"Sure you can do this. You want to do this, remember?" The Third began poking the pins into Neil's head. "It's not like I'd let you leave now anyway." He stood beside Neil, disgustingly hairy where Neil was smooth, and hard where Neil was soft.

"Here it comes." He tapped the main cable. Viv heard the click. Neil shuddered and grunted.

"I can't-- " The scarred table pressed against her thighs as she tried to back away.

Neil raised his face. The intense expression there froze Viv's muscles. "Plug it in."

The Third climbed on the table behind Viv. Both men were too close, too close. She reached for the pins in her skull, to rip them out before the Third made contact. Neil caught her wrist. Her flesh puckered away from his touch. She hoisted her hip onto the table to escape, bumped into the Third's hairy chest.

"And we're in."

In a heartbeat, Viv's world went from fog to focus. She looked at Neil and saw him, really saw him. Saw the dent between his nose and his lips. The curve in the lobe of his ear. Her emotions went from flat lines to tangled spheres echoing with depth and dimension.

Neil whispered, "Yes." He pulled Viv up against him, skin to skin. Her nerves sizzled to life, and she screamed into Neil's open mouth over what they had taken from her.

#

"There's a wireless implant system," the Third said through the new hair he was growing across his upper lip. "If you two want to go permanent together."

After three months and twelve sessions, Viv pushed her head through her t-shirt neck into real hope. She looked at Neil. His shirt and pants were still unbuttoned. He stared at her, a goofy grin spreading across his face.

"You'll have to find a Third looking for a permanent hookup, but they're out there. I know you'll miss my spunky charm..."

Oddly enough, Viv thought she would miss him. But the idea of being tied to him forever, with all that hair...and she wouldn't miss these dark rooms in secret places, or all the lying.

"You'd have to leave the colony, though. Go back out there. But you'd be plugged in all the time." The Third smirked. "Or at least when you all three are within 100 meters of each other."

"Set it up," Viv said. She watched Neil button his shirt. He always buttoned from the top down. She knew what she should feel, seeing the curve of his stomach through the twitching fabric, but without the wires and the jack-in, she felt nothing. It was like dying of thirst in a rainstorm.

"Is it legal?" Neil asked.

The Third laughed. "Everything's legal out there."

"Set it up," Viv said again, and Neil backed her up with a nod and another smile.

Then they heard the boots outside the door. Viv grabbed her gun, while Neil pushed the Third toward the door hidden in the back. There were always escape routes. The cops burst in, flashing bright spotlights into their haven.

"Get down. On your knees. Now!"

Viv recognized the voice. She fired anyway, and fired accurately. Then she ran after Neil and the Third, never looking back.

© 2006 Joyce Ellen Armond