Moero Future story

[Moero]

Silence, and the endlessly stretching black. Useless crackling was being emitted by the half-dozen or so radios, each set on different frequencies.

Moero stared into the black. Her eyes glowed very dimly, unfocused. Keep going, she thought, then jerked her head to the side, her eyes resuming their normal color.

She leaned forward against the dashboard, still staring. Four months she had been in the black. She had visited all the settlements nearest to Earth; she had radioed all her old hunting contacts. “Sorry Mo,” they all said, “But I’ll radio you if I hear anything.” She had visited all the interdimensionary mediums of which she knew, and had found out about and visited or at least radioed various magick outposts. Four months since she had talked to Tay, convincing him to let her go first. “I am the universe’s best bounty hunter, after all,” she had said. “I’ll be back in a month at the latest.”

Three months ago Tay had radioed her. Hearing of her unsuccess, he informed her that he would join the search on his own. “Good luck,” was all she could say. Ever try tracking a guy that could teleport?

“Blue Hawk, come in, requesting communication, over.” The transmission came through faintly, underneath the static of the other radios.

Moero shifted and stared at the radios, then pressed the corresponding button on the dashboard. “Give me your info first, I don’t start conversations with just anyone.” Her voice was rough from lack of use.

“I’m here to negotiate on behalf of the House of Flying Bullets.”

Moero froze for a moment, but forced her response to sound apathetic. “Yeah? Still intent on killing me, are they?” This was something she hadn’t reckoned on. Surely the explosion from the plasma cannon—

“Your little stunt at your trial hardly pulled through, my dear.”

Moero growled and reconnected her mind to the ship. As soon as she was online she was able to locate his ship. “If you’re not out of shooting range in about ten seconds, Feng, you’re going to wish you had never heard of the House.”

There was crackly laughter, then the message, “If you shoot at me, every hunter in the House will know your galatial coordinates. They’ll be on you faster than fists on Marlowe. Besides,” and his ship suddenly appeared right next to hers, “ever try shooting at a ship that could teleport?”

Son of a bitch.

“Preparing to board.” The hatched opened on the top of his ship. A man in space gear appeared, carrying a chain. After lashing their ships together, he opened her hatch and let himself in. Moero was just disconnecting again as he let himself into the cockpit.

“Get the hell off my boat, Feng.”

Feng pulled off his helmet and tutted sarcastically. “And I thought you’d be happy to see me, Mo.”

“Don’t call me that, you doublecrossing bastard.”

He smirked. “You sound lonely, been out here long?”

“Don’t give me that crap. You here for the House or what? Quit stalling!”

“Funny thing about the House. We’re in a very peculiar relationship—better than yours, I’m afraid. You see, they think I’m dead. I haven’t got convenient trackable features like yourself.” Seeing that Moero was simply going to continue glaring at him rather than reply, he continued. “Yes, some silver-haired fellow nearly did me in last year. About the same time as your trial, I believe? At any rate, they think he succeeded—he took my tags.”

She continued to glare.

“My dear Moero, you were always awful at calling bluffs. Why would I inform the House now? It would certainly ruin my proxy amnesty, and besides, I have everything I want right here.”

Moero whipped out a gun and leveled it at his heart. “Get. The smeg. Off. My ship.”

“Moero. You know better than to fire that in an all-oxygen environment.” He smiled smugly and took a few steps towards her. “You are a child, Moero. A beautiful, greedy child.” He placed one hand around her waist, the other on the back of her head, and forced her into a kiss.

“I hate you,” she growled when it was over.

“But hate can be an exciting emotion. Haven't you noticed that? There is a heat in it one can feel. Don't you feel it tonight? Exciting, isn’t it? Hate is such a wonderful emotion. Hate, I’ve found, can be the perfect replacement for love.”

As he was speaking, Moero was turning the gun around in her hand. “What the hell do you know,” she lashed the hand with the gun upwards, bashing him on the side of the head, “about love.”

Feng released her and stepped back, feeling the side of his head where thick brown blood oozed out.

“Love, I know nothing about that. But I do know all about what we used to have.”

“Remember the rules.”

“The rules can be changed.” He paused, a sick grin on his face. “The rules have changed.”

Slowly, Moero reached behind her head and unclasped her necklace. Without taking her eyes off Feng, she placed the necklace on the dashboard behind her. “All that means is that we’re playing a different game.”

[Moero]

The moments seemed endless at the time, and suffocating—yet formed out of thousands of ephemeralities. Cuts and scratches healing as they were formed, one breath after another. Nothing lasted but the moment.

She couldn’t find Rev, so she reached for anyone . . . and Feng was always there. Even after he left her ship, they always found each other. Every bar she visited, every hotel she stayed in—she knew he would find her, so she didn’t even bother hiding. Wherever she went. She hated him so, she couldn't get him out of her mind. He was in the air she breathed. She thought she was dreaming. She'd heard his voice in her sleep anyway. Then she realized... She finally realized Feng was her prison, but she could not run away.

“Wherever you go, you'll be tied to him. You'll never be free.”

“Who?” Moero asked. Dingy light filtered in between the blinds, straight lines across the rumpled blankets. He had followed her to a moon on the outer edges. It was remote, but that was no obstacle for Feng.

“The guy you’re tracking. You’re thinking about him all the time, aren’t you?”

“If you’re worried about him, don’t be. I hate him.”

Feng was sitting on the edge of the bed, sucking a cigarette. “Hate . . . Why not make it easy on yourself and let him find out about me? Are you afraid of what he might do to me?”

“Feng . . . I am.”

“What?”

“Afraid.”

“You?” He scoffed in a puff of smoke.

“I wish I'd never...”

“Never what?”

“Met him, darling.” Moero sat up and kissed his shoulder, then his neck.

By then Moero had noticed the power. She had realized how easily it could destroy him.

“It doesn’t do any good to run away,” she whispered into his ear.

“It never does,” he replied, then turned his head and returned the kiss on her mouth.

[Moero]

“When was the last time you thought of me before me met again?” He had found her again, another hotel, another ghetto planet.

“It was about a month before I left,” Moero replied, placing the hairbrush on the mussed covers, next to her hair jewels and chopsticks. She used her hands to split her hair into two sections. Feng sat forward, kneeling on the bed behind her. He took her hands and parted her hair with them, then began kissing the back of her neck.

“I could not escape you even in dreams.”

Her slip rustled as she turned partially. He drew back her hair and kissed her collarbone. “I think we were both haunted,” she replied. “I thought maybe I could escape it if I went inside myself.”

“I thought we established,”—he spoke between kisses—“running away never helps.”

It’s not running away if you’re getting closer to the problem.

“Why don’t you kiss me back?”

“Feng, please let me go. I can't stand it anymore. I don't want anything from you, but please, just let me go.”

Feng turned his kisses into soft bites.

“I’m not your gorram doll, Feng.”

“Yes you are.” Feng slipped the strap of her nightdress down over her shoulder and pulled down the zip in the back. He moved his kisses lower. “You are my little lolita porcelain doll—” he slipped a hand through the opening in her slip and around her body, “and you love being broken. You're breaking up in little pieces. Am I wearing you down?”

“You?”

“Something is.”

“I hadn't noticed...”

Moero twisted slightly. Feng took full advantage of the movement—just as she knew he would. He still held her left hand, but his right hand was occupied, leaving hers free. He didn’t notice the slight movement it took for her to locate and take hold of a chopstick. He did notice the pain when she impaled the chopstick into his right thigh.

“I am not your doll.” Moero wrenched away, standing up off the edge of the bed.

Feng sat back and pulled the stick out of his thigh. “I’ll call you whatever I want,” he said. “You’ll take it and you’ll like it.”

“I don’t think you have any idea how much I hate you,” she said, reaching back into her hair.

“What are you gonna do? Shoot me?”

Moero lowered her hand. “No, Feng. I’m not going to shoot you—not now, or ever. But I don’t ever want to see your ugly phiz again.”

“Who is it you’re chasing, anyhow? Some lover who spurned you? And you can’t get enough of him, so you’re chasing him to the ends of the universe to beg him to come back. That’s what you are, Moero. You’re a chaser, and you never get what you want. Me, I’m a taker. I get what I want.”

“Would it interest you to know how much I hate you, Feng? I hate you so much that I'd destroy myself to take you down with me. Now I've warned you. Now that's all fair and even. Get your clothes on, Feng, you’re getting out of here. Now you gonna leave peaceably or am I going to have to use persuasion?”

“You could persuade me to the ends of life, darling. You’re hot when you’re angry, all flushed and breathy.”

Moero glared harder at him—within moments her heart rate lowered, her blood drained from her face and her breathing was quite calm and slow. “I despise you and I never want to see you again.”

“Sure, I’ll leave, Mo. You’ve seen the last of me.” His lips twisted into a smirk. “It’s almost as though you don’t love me anymore.”

“I never loved you, even when I had the chance. I told you, I hate you.”

“And it warmed you.”

“Hate is the only thing that has ever warmed me. Now cut the small talk and get out.”

Feng scooted off the bed and walked toward the door. “Sure, you’ll never see me again. I’m never coming back. Then it will be just you and your dreams and your runaway lover.” He turned the knob, opened the door, and closed it behind him.

Moero stood, breathing slowly. She trembled for a moment, then collapsed into a shuddering mess on the floor. “Damn him . . . Damn him . . . ” Her breathing became progressively erratic and her shaking more uncontrollable.

She had held back, and she regretted it.

[Moero]

Moero put down her tumbler, heavily, and drew in a long drag on her cigarette. She let the smoke linger in lungs before blowing it out slowly. “Another.”

“Don’t you—“ She stopped the barkeep with a sharp, lucid, and perfectly sober glance.

“I’ll never have had enough.” She lifted the cigarette again to her lips.

Tinny jazz spewed out from the bar’s ancient sound system. It was growing early, and the crowd had quieted but not thinned. Now was the time for the lonely and desperate, who swallowed shots in time with the brushed cymbals and had tears rolling down their cheeks to accompany the melancholy saxophone. In corners small groups sat in tight circles, speaking in hushed tones of illicit deals. Moero had been there all night. She had filled several trays with ash and had bought enough drinks cover the barkeep’s rent for the next few months.

He placed another tumbler of gin and coke in front of her. “You know, I seen you come in here almost every night. You spend the night drinking but I ain’t seen you ever get drunk.”

“Just keep them coming, Sam.” She downed the drink quickly. There was burning, then euphoria, then a strange numbness, then she was back to herself.

The heavy, wooden barstool scraped against the floor as someone pulled it up next to her and seated himself. Moero didn’t bother looking up. He smelled human, that meant he was relatively safe. Relatively—because humans were rather hard to come by in space, so the fact that he was there meant he was different. It was a strange, bitter, clean smell, but it was human.

“It is so crowded, yet so lonely.” He had a strange accent that could be Russian or from the eastern half of Europe.

“What makes you think that.”

“Because you smoke too much. Only the frustrated are smoke too much, and only the lonely are frustrated.”

“That’s very philosophical, Swede.”

“It’s Tomek. I’ve been watching you all night. Who are you waiting for?”

“Someone who isn’t going to show up.”

“So you drink, trying to turn it into a dream. You don’t know what to do. I sympathize with you, deeply. Life is difficult for defenseless people.”

Moero gave him a sidelong, scornful glance, and sucked on her cigarette.

“Do you love him?”

“I don’t know what you’re on about.”

“It’s a simple question.”

Cigarette holder which wigs me, over her shoulder, she digs me. Out cattin' that satin doll.

Still staring down at her cig, she pulled out a gun and cocked it as she trained it on the barkeep. “Sam, turn off that damn song.”

“Sure, Mo, sure.” He hurried over to the control panel and switched it over to something slow and blue, moaning saxophones and deploring trumpets.

“That’s a pretty trick,” Tomek said as she placed the gun back in her hair. “Got anything else in there?”

“Just a couple dead bodies of former lovers.”

Tomek let out a small, appreciative chuckle. “What would it take to join them?”

“Stupidity, and the bad luck of falling in love with me.” She tapped her glass definitively and Sam hurried over.

“Another?”

Tomek stayed Moero’s hand from handing her tumbler back over. “A hot chocolate for the lady, please. It’s the least I can do.”

“You’re starting to annoy me, Swede. I don’t know why I don’t just kill you.”

“Because you want someone to talk to, and that’s all I’m want from you.”

“Alright Swede, I’ll talk. I’ve got nothing to lose. But I can’t guarantee you’ll like what I have to say.” Perhaps, inexplicably, the alcohol was getting to her. Or maybe Tomek was right, maybe she did just need to talk to someone. “I bet you hear these stories all the time. ‘Mister, I met a man once when I was a kid,’ they all begin.”

“I must repeat my question. Do you love him?”

“There are two men, and I don’t ever want to see either of them ever again.”

Sam placed a steaming bowl in front of Moero and gave Tomek a warning look, before hurrying to the other end of the bar.

“Perhaps you love the one who does not love you, and one loves you and you do not love him?”

“Love has nothing to do with it.”

“In that case, love has everything to do with it.”

“The lack of love, the incapability of love.” She lit a new cig with the butt of her old one. “It’s binary but the ‘verse is gray. I hope he never comes back, for his own sake. I’ll kill him if he comes back. Even if I don’t want to, I’ll do it. I’ll kill him.”

“Which one?”

“Both of them. The one I’m looking for, and the one I’m waiting for.”

“What a strange entanglement.”

“I'm poison, Swede, to myself and everybody around me. I couldn't stand to do that to someone that I loved.”

“Ah, la femme noire, la femme fatale.” He placed an arm around her. “You are a goddess, and not even my charms can cure you.”

“Not even the strongest magic in the ‘verse.”

“Know you of the Requiem?”

“It sounds tragic. Well I’ve had enough tragedy in my life, Swede. Too much for an empath with his pretty words and hot chocolate to take care of. You really thought I didn’t know, with your beetle-wing heart and heavy blood. You’ll have to get your cheers elsewhere.” She placed a few hundred on the counter and stood up. “Congratulations, Swede. You know more about me than anyone else in the ‘verse. Now you can tell stories to your coven about the girl you couldn’t cheer up.”

Tomek physically felt her drawing farther away as she left. The emotion was gone and now the bar was just filled with drunken sadness and criminal secrecy. He shook black pepper into the hot chocolate and drank.

[Moero]

The Great Zeripheth was at a table, laying tarot cards, in the back portion of the pub when Moero entered.

“I haven’t seen him, hon,” he said in his tired queen voice. “Silver hair, blue eyes—human, right?”

“Just a very close approximation.”

“You’re headed somewhere dark,” the Great Zeripheth continued, tapping down cards with thick, bright acrylic nails.

“I’m headed somewhere dark.” Moero replied dryly. “Is that what your cards tell you?”

He arched an eyebrow, but continued looking down at his cards. “No, that’s just me speculating. The cards are telling me about the past, now. Nothing but a woman and a man, and a sea of blood.”

“You’re not going to like what happens to you if you continue being so unhelpful.”

“I told you already; you’re the one who stayed after that. You want to hear something else.”

“Just give me a reason.”

He snapped down another card. “There is weakness, and frailty. But there is courage also, and honor in humanity. But you will not see that. You are afraid. All your life, you have hidden in the shadows. Scared of who you are, and what you are.”

“Not anymore.” Moero’s arm shot out towards the Great Zeripheth. There was a flash in her mind—soft, squish, blood, tear, Feng suddenly quivering, not again—she closed her fist and it hit the Great Zeripheth’s chest, stopping his heart.

Just as instantaneously, she was sitting back normally, and the Great Zeripheth was slumped over his cards.

There was no one left for her now.

[Moero]

It was agonizing, being alone again. She moved restlessly across galaxies. She did not dare to contact anyone. She went to large cities to become lost in the crowds. She went with whomever she could. She always left before sunrise. Her life was blurred. She was never really asleep; she was never really awake. Sometimes she forgot what she was looking for. Sometimes she wondered if everything had all been a dream. Maybe she was still the sixteen-year-old in the stolen spaceship. She had never joined the House of Flying Bullets. She had never met Feng. She had never buried her heart. She had never hunted Ayame. She had never crashed back on Earth. She had never become entangled in Newscast. She had never met Rev. She had always been in the black, that whole time, all of it was a dream. Just space dementia. A dream from a sixteen-year-old runaway longing for life.

Twenty years ago she had seen space darkness for the first time. From the black she came and to the black she had returned. She always returned to the darkness. It was as much a part of her as . . . anything; she didn’t know what.

But that heart-shaped necklace, glinting on the dashboard, always reminded her of the truth. The sordid, inescapable reality of what had become of her. It was her past, present, and future. She thought it might burn her if she touched it, so she left it there, in the ship.

She still couldn’t believe that he wasn’t coming back. She couldn’t stand not knowing. If only she knew, she could act. Instead she waited for herself to be ready. And when the time came, she found him.

When she opened the door he was sprawled across the bed, watching the television with disinterest. “It all looks lonely, doesn't it?” the television said. “All bad things end up lonely.” A breeze played with the curtains.

Feng glanced up at her and switched it off. She opened the door wider. They looked at each other. Neither of them spoke.

“I was waiting for you,” he finally said.

“Find anything interesting?”

“Getting you here was a nice trick. Well, come in. Sit down. Drink? Cigarette?”

Moero remained in the doorway. “You know what I want.”

“You do hate me, don’t you?” Feng stood to meet her.

She lowered her eyes in the perfect display of nubile naïveté. “You have no idea how much. About that night . . . “

“I don’t want to hear about that night, can’t you understand?”

She raised her eyes again, up to his. Deep blue and trembling with tears. “Hate is a very exciting emotion. Haven’t you noticed? Very exciting. I hate you so much, I think I’m going to die from it. Darling—” She kissed him, passionately. He put his arms around her and returned it. “I think I’m going to die from it,” whispered against his mouth.

He kissed her again, walking toward the bed. She remembered the sun setting behind grassy hills, hiding in the closets of the House’s planet base, feverish summer nights, teenage recklessness. She already knew how to shoot guns, so she spent her training time learning how to make love.

“We're right back where we started,” she whispered. Right back where . . . “

“Right back where we started.” He pushed her down.

“Feng, that isn't even decent.”

“What did you just say?”

“Decent . . . I said, ‘decent.’”

“It’s just that that word sounds funny coming out of you.”

She flipped him over onto his back. “There's never been anybody but you and me. All those things I did were just to make you jealous. There's never been anybody else.”

“Not anybody?” So smug in his supposed conquest.

“Not anybody.”

She leaned down and began kissing him on the mouth. “Remember when I said I would destroy myself to take you down?” As she spoke she traced a finger down his neck onto his chest, circling it around until she pinpointed the precious vibrations. “That was a promise, not a threat.”

She plunged her hand into his pectoral muscles, ripped aside his sternum, and tore out his heart.

He didn’t die instantly, but he couldn’t do anything either. Moero sat, holding his heart as it pumped its last, futile beats, while blood welled into a pool in his chest, and his body slowly cooled.

“All fair and even,” she said. She put the heart down, washed her hands, and left. No one saw her come; no one saw her go.

She felt cleansed. It was as though she had closed a chapter of her life. It was as though the future was all that was left for her. Even she could not fathom the destruction the future held in store.