Chapter 1: love taste

"He is a consolation prize in open rebellion."

— 1 —

I'm no longer surprised. We've spent so long breaking each other that I can only stare dispassionately as my every cell, every polypeptide chain, every chemical impulse turns to useless ribbons. Strings of ones and zeroes written in human blood.

There's some sixty-thousand miles of cardiovascular tubes in a human. Veins, arteries, the little arterioles. You pull a human apart and stretch a person's tubes out in a thin line end-to-end, and you've got a dead person.

I know what Monika looks like when you do that. Same as she knows of me. She knows I have five-point-three liters of blood. Her blood is low in sodium today. Mine is drowning in caffeine and nicotine.

I am no longer surprised.

I feel nothing for the woman I love. I don't know if she feels anything for me.

Nothing but the almost sexual satisfaction of perfecting a simple, rote task. Until you can do it without fail no matter how many times you do it, no matter how long.

There is just me. There is just Monika. A wicked game neither of us can recall starting, nor dream of finishing. We just pretend really hard one of us will give up first.

This time, Monika wins, and I die.

Next time, I'll return the favor.

We're still running on best two out of three rules, after all.

— 2 —

I sit on my bed, flexing fingers, marveling at the way human joints are supposed to work. It's the small things that make this Hollywood Studio life worth living. Two eyes that see in proper color. Lungs I haven't poisoned yet as some coping mechanism that stopped working long before it became a perpetual addiction.

There's a school of thought Monika and I once discussed, as I was knee-deep in her liver (it was red). The English corpus is maybe five hundred thousand words wide. Monika and I have used them all between ourselves. We haven't expressed a single thought in all that time. If we dig far enough, we've had every conversation before. Every permutation. We can predict what the other will say out of a bored sense of been there, done that.

We just don't realize it in the moment. It's an old familiarity.

Sometimes permutations are different. We break so many things about each other that we break the very foundation of how we met. I've met Monika in Moscow. I've met her in San Francisco. Once, when she was feeling flirty, I met her in a nameless Seattle coffee shop.

This time it's the basics. I wake up in a bed, in a suburban home. I stare at my hand, then trace my fingers along the veins up until I'm at my shoulder. All systems nominal. Physical sensation returns, but the psychology of what keeps it running is a jumbled mess.

I'm not truly here. I'm playing a part. All the world's a stage. Once again, our scheme didn't work.

I get up. Clean myself. Scrub imaginary spiders out from my skin until the flesh is raw, and I can feel something as I dress for the school day.

I have to change shirts only once after the blood stains the undergarment. After that I clot correctly, know I'm alive, and have to wonder how much longer.

I leave the house without eating.

And expect the old dog and pony show to start up. I need a daily dose of self-hatred to really begin my day. No one can do that better for me than Sayori.

But I step into the artificial sunlight. I move forwards through suburbia. And nothing happens.

Strange.

I wonder if my rush to get the show started has jumped the gun. So I stand there and think no thoughts, waiting for stimulus, a rat with his favorite skinner box empty.

"Hello!" a girl calls out, and it's all I can do to keep my blood pressure from leaking out of self-inflicted wounds.

Monika.

She's dressed for school, skirt and blazer so tight as to be almost more revealing than nudity. Long brown hair. Athletic build. Her blood type is not donor compatible with mine. She doesn't so much walk as glide, like her feet are some smooth illusion.

But that's not what bothers me. It's that she's not sticking to the script. She shouldn't be here, not yet, if this is the setting we're rolling with. This isn't the order of operations. No PEMDAS to be found.

I put my hands into my pockets and shiver. "It's been a while."

"Has it?" she asks politely. She, unfortunately, is still in full possession of both lungs. "Time has been fuzzy lately, l̴̬̲̤͍̄ǫ̸̨̧̦̦̦͙̰̙̮̈́̑̈̃̅̆̏̈͑̚̕͠͝v̵̮̣̮͖̣̅͌̈́̈́́̆ḛ̸̢̡̹̱̬̩̖̮̤̻̓̾͂̓̐̃̈́͊͂̈̌̐͑͒͜."

She says something. Maybe it's my name. Maybe it's a title of affection. I don't really recognize it in either case. I stopped identifying with anything other than ego, the self. Whatever mismatched series of synapses carried this consciousness from one golem of meat to the next. Maybe I never had one.

"Yeah," I say, and feel déjà vu. I've had this conversation with her before, in some permutation. Sometimes she pretends she doesn't remember. Sometimes I do. We've had every possible arrangement of words that make sense—violent, sexual, spiteful, adoring.

Nihil novi sub sole.

Monika pouts. Her femur requires exactly 1721 PSI to break. "Not much for words this time?"

"No."

She sighs, looking to the side, almost dejected. "Make a deal with me?"

I have nothing to say to her.

But she still pretends to smile, flexing her lips into something humans associate with emotions neither of us have anymore. When you've been with and against someone as long as we have, on a timespan that stopped making sense somewhere in the dark recesses, when mental integer overflow starts to rot you away, love and hate regress into mere phonemes. She and I, it's something akin to something you revere, a person you worship by digging your thumbs into their eyes, and crying as you kiss blood-stained lips.

I didn't always know these words. I can't recall where I learned them. I just do. Because of her.

Monika holds out her hand to me, a fist. "Rock paper scissors me."

I look into her green eyes that I know taste of salt. "Best two out of three, right?"

She nods.

"What happens if I win?"

"You won't."

"I will," I say, and mean it. I can't conceive of any other alternative.

"Then we change the story your way," she says, frowning, and I want to rip her lips off. "We try another permutation. See if that works."

"And if you win, we do it your way."

Monika shrugs, her smile going downcast.

"Will I remember next time?" I ask.

"What if neither of us remembered?" she asks. "What if we—stayed the same people, but changed the connotation. A new setting. If we, you and I—" It's like she can't continue.

"What if we were different people?"

Monika considered. "I'd still love you, and you'd still love me. No matter who we became. But I think we're both so damaged, we'd bleed through. We'd become ourselves again. And we'd find ourselves back here."

"I want out so badly."

"Maybe this time it'll work," she says, and I don't believe her.

"Sure of that?"

She nods.

I stare for a long time. Before, reluctantly, holding out my fist. "Two out of three."

Monika giggles. "You're so predictable. You're going to go rock first."

"Yes," I say. "And I'll still win."

We hold up our hands.

I pick rock.

So does she.

We go again.

She wins the first real round.

"One for the money," I say, pounding my fist into mine.

"You're going to go paper," she says with determination.

"Yes," I say, "and I'm going to win."

Monika pauses for a long moment. Before giving me the first, honest smile. Bedroom eyes. A giggle that's like bells being ground into a fine powder.

"On three?" she asks.

"On three."

We speak in unison, with all the eagerness of the children we were when we met. "Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!"

I look at her hand. She looks at mine.

I can see her eyes going distant. A flicker of something. Looking for answers in lines of codes written in our very DNA—contemplating how to turn GATTACA into MONIKA.

I disapprove.

I do it better than her.

Because I never learned that little trick. It's a simpler thing for me.

I step forwards, and she gasps in surprise as we find ourselves so close. I reach out for her, and for a moment she hesitates. Before she wraps her arms around me.

Leaving her neck open to break.

It takes nearly a thousand PSI. I know from experience.

She has the courtesy to die, sobbing into my chest.

Before reality ends and we do it all over again.

oooOOOooo 3 oooOOOooo

I had a dream once.

Where I fell from the sky. And I sent a text to each and every person I knew I loved. I turned the phone to silent, and just got that done; and I was content in the dream that that would be enough.

Then I land.

In my dream I am a coin flip. I hit the ground, neither heads nor tails. On my side.

And my ribs pierce through my lungs, and I die.

I have it again tonight, and wake up in a panic before my alarm goes off. Covered in sweat from every gland, out of breath, heart racing.

I sit up to collect my thoughts and find my feet. But this morning, thought itself seems ponderous with effort. I end up staring at the ceiling, listing my thoughts in order, imagining them up there in little rows of soldiers. It's my design sheet, my drawing board.

Putting together today's plan.

Until I'm ready.

And then I begin my routine.

Every morning begins with 4 mg of creatine mixed into exactly one cup of cold-brew black coffee I prepared the night before. I use this mix to take 65 mg of iron, 500 mg of magnesium, a men's daily multivitamin, and 400 mg of ibuprofen in advance of when I'll need it.

The pills go down hard, carving furrows into the muscle of my throat. Only the cold black coffee soothes it. Pushing chemicals into my stomach, and then through my liver to disperse about my body to wherever my digestive system thinks best.

I shave. I use the facilities. I do pushups and sit-ups until failure, and go for a brisk two-mile run. I hit the end of my run at the college campus gym. The next hour is there. Monday is legs.

Once I can barely walk straight, I know it is time to take a quick, cold shower in the locker rooms so I don't dry my skin out. No more than two minutes. I have places to be.

I return to the student apartment just off campus.

I have laid my outfit out for the day in advance. I do not eat breakfast. I stretch. I ask my roommate about his plans for the day. Make smalltalk I never remember.

And, finally, when the time is up, I leave and head to class.

A girl once stopped me between classes to tell me I looked fit. I didn't catch her name. And I hope to see her or hear words like that again.

I take notes in class. I see no reasons to speak out or ask questions.

When the last battery is done, I do after-school sports. The big game is coming up, as it usually is. I don't want to disappoint.

I decline their invitations to hang out afterwards and go home. All they'd do is drink, and I don't need the calories.

I eat the meal I made yesterday in advance while making tomorrow's dinner. I prepare coffee for tomorrow morning and lay out my outfits. My roommate usually shows up around then.

I go to bed precisely at eight o'clock. My roommate hates it, but I've set the ground rules, and there's no arguing. 5 mg of melatonin and 25 mg of diphenhydramine HCI makes sure I'm clocked out.

Every morning begins with 4 mg of creatine mixed into exactly one cup of cold-brew black coffee I prepared the night before.

Then it's exercise. Tuesday is chest.

Shower. Change.

Head to class.

There's a problem. Its name is lunch. Most of the campus is outdoors, split between relevant buildings making up the university.

I take the time to read ahead in my textbooks. Feeling nothing as I look at images of people dissected, and idly wondering if I'd look that good without skin, just muscle.

"Ę̸̼͓̱̯͎̦̬̤͋͠g̸̛̫͓͕̺͊́̈͛̍̈̐͑̈͊͗͒o̵̢̪̺͑̎͐́̽͒̎̄̐͝͝?"

I blink hard. Press my palm into my eye as if to keep down the sudden feeling of nausea. And look around the library with the other.

"Oh my gosh, it is you!" she says excitedly, sliding into the chair across from me. Her brown hair is neck-length. She reveals too many bones when she smiles. "Holy crap, I didn't recognize you at first. I mean—"

She laughs awkwardly, touching the tips of her fingers together like she's trying to dislocate the joints. "Presuming, you know, I didn't just walk up to a random stranger and act like I knew him. Which, you know, wouldn't be the first time."

I look at her with both eyes now, enjoying depth perception again. I try to place this petite girl, but it's hard. I don't share any classes with her. Maybe she's been to one of my games. That happens sometimes. But the longer I look, the more she fidgets.

She says my name again, like she isn't sure anymore. "Earth to you? Hello? Sayori?"

I slam my book shut as it all comes back to me. She flinches. My mouth opens, only for nothing to come out. As I suddenly feel like this is the first time I'm speaking in a dog's age, and whatever I say next will be profoundly important. Like I'm about to make some big first impression that's going to count.

But honestly? Fuck that.

"Are you the girl who got drunk and asked me to sign her boobs?" I ask seriously.

Sayori looks at me with horror. Both of her eyes fit neatly into her face. She shouts my name, face turning red. "You can't be serious! We were neighbors! Went to school together. Do you—how can you—holy crap, man, that hurts!"

I let the moment hang, just enough to make Sayori doubt everything. Before I smile. The muscle is called zygomaticus major. "That's for cheating in our last game of tag, Sayori."

She blinks rapidly. "I—but—wha'?" Until her confusion breaks out into a laughing fit. "Oh my gosh, that? That was years ago! And I didn't cheat, you just weren't fast enough."

"You ran onto a bus and got lost!"

Sayori snaps her fingers. "Yes, but I also spent an hour crying downtown until our moms came and found us. I was a victim." And then she gives a contented sigh. "Those were sunny days. I think last time I saw you was in our high school yearbook. I was paging through it over the summer, saw your name, and couldn't believe it was you. Doubly so here and now. You got big."

"You stayed about the same size."

She pouts. Then, with a discerning look, she puts a hand to her forehead and extends it out to me. She has to lean across the table precariously. Sayori hitches up at the end to touch my forehead. "Mm, no. Nevermind. You totally got smaller. We're the same height now. I know because I made it up just now. Sorry, not sorry."

For some reason I feel a vein in my forehead twitch. My skin feels like it doesn't wrap around my muscles tight enough. Loose and flabby.

"Aight," I say evenly.

Sayori sits back down, sucking on her lips. She says my name cautiously. "You okay?"

I shake my head. "No, not especially. You caught me in the middle of some studying. My brain hasn't switched over yet to people mode."

Her eyes go to the textbook on the table. "What's your major?"

"Pre-med."

Sayori does a theatrical doubletake. "Drunk pre-meds and designer drugs!"

I make a face. "What?"

"Uh, it's a song. Panic at the Disco."

"I don't—no, I don't know 'em."

"Ah, I… see." Sayori pushes her index fingers together again. I believe it is a tic. "Actually, uh, I only came to the library because there's a coffee shop here. I need my fix. You should come with me; I've only got so much time before I collapse without it, and there's so much I want to talk to you about. We're playing catch-up!"

I glance at my watch. There are thirty-three minutes left. I will walk five minutes to my next class, in order to arrive ten minutes early. If I don't, there's a risk I won't get my favorite seat.

"I don't know, Sayori. There's—"

She reaches out to take my arm. Her fingers are delicate, breakable, and she gives a mildly surprised look as she feels me. Before she wipes that off her face and just looks determined. "No, your consent was never up for debate. Get a coffee or snack with me. Please?"

After a long moment, I sigh. "I'm being kidnapped, help."

Sayori stands and I go along with her. "It's true. I'm a menace, Ę̸̼͓̱̯͎̦̬̤͋͠g̸̛̫͓͕̺͊́̈͛̍̈̐͑̈͊͗͒o̵̢̪̺͑̎͐́̽͒̎̄̐͝͝!"

I blink hard again. Feeling off. And wonder if there's a chemical imbalance somewhere inside me. Maybe I hit the gym too hard and didn't eat sufficient protein to cope. But whatever it is, it's enough that even Sayori is able to drag me off. I only barely have time to grab my backpack before she kidnaps me.

To my surprise, there's a little line for the coffee shop. Sayori takes me up to the counter and orders—a cinnamon coffee cake and tall pumpkin spice. I stare at the menu and calculate it to be about 660 calories. A quick snack, and she's up to about a quarter of my daily intake. All sugar and carbohydrates. I could imagine myself sharing her meal, the calories ballooning out of control before I realize it, and staring at a disjointed, swollen stomach tomorrow in the mirror—

Sayori elbows me. "Hey, what are you getting? Don't just stand there."

"Tall coffee, black," I say by rote.

The barista nods, and just waits. Expectantly.

I look to Sayori, who is suddenly doing her best to look inconspicuous.

Cautiously the guy behind the counter asks, "Sorry, is this one order, or two?"

Sayori just kind of grimaces, doing that finger thing again. "So, funny story. Like total haha moment."

This feels so old, so familiar that I almost deflate. "Do you have any money?"

She snaps me a pair of finger guns. "What even is money, when you think about it?"

"Man! I can't believe I fell for your oldest trick, Sayori!"

The girl just smiles wide up at me.

"How much do your parents make again, Sayori?"

"How much do yours make?"

"Mom don't," I say, trying not to act short.

"Sir?" the barista asks.

I sigh. Take out my wallet and just hand him some paper. "Together."

Sayori beams.

"You planned this, Sayori," I say evenly.

She fakes a gasp. "J'accuse! How dare you!"

"Sayori."

The girl winces. "Okay, so… maybe a little? But you were donating to the feed Sayori fund. That's a tax write-off, right there!"

"I don't even know if I pay taxes," I say. "That's a troublesome thought for next year."

Sayori frowns as she collects our stuff from the counter. "Then how are you affording being here?"

"I get a budget as part of my scholarship."

Her eyes widen. "Wait, you got a scholarship? What for?"

I shrug, following her outside to a little table. "This and that."

She says my name sternly.

"Sports," I admit.

Her blue eyes rove over me almost skeptically. And for a moment, I feel a little pit in my heart. I lean forwards fractionally, hoping she'll say something. A remark, a compliment, about me.

Instead, she just whistles and takes a seat. "Wow."

"Bad wow or…?"

She tucks a bang to the side. "No, I mean—just wow. You just, like—the boy I knew, I never could have imagined you'd turn out like this. Felt like I had to drag you outside. You really did become a different person when puberty hit, huh?"

Sayori smiles and dips her pure carbohydrate lunch into her sugary drink. I gaze into my coffee, as if searching for some answer, a prophecy of the future. And feel suddenly so sour. My watch doesn't say enough time has passed, and I realize I'm stuck with Sayori.

"And I don't mean how you got so tall," she says with a mouthful of food. "Remember when, ah." She props her head up on a hand, smiling at me. "You were barely a few fingers taller. I thought that summer would never end. Sometimes I'd knock on your door. Sometimes my mom would let you in and you'd drag me out of bed. Sometimes we'd play Mario Kart and try to win a best two out of three."

I flex my fingers at that, looking away. My skin feels itchy.

"Nothing we did really mattered," she says, "but it felt like… like all that did matter, y'know?"

I avoid the urge to check my watch. "It was nearly a decade ago, Sayori. Can't do the same thing every day. Middle school and high school happened. Sometimes I saw you, y'know?"

She perks up. "You did?"

"Walking to school or from it, I thought I'd see you. But you looked like you had somewhere to be. Or I had somewhere to be." I shake my head. "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold."

And at that, her look suddenly becomes very sharp. "That's… that's Yeats. The Second Coming."

I shrug.

"I didn't—I didn't know you were into poetry, literature." She gives me an embarrassed smile. "You looked a bit like a meathead, so…"

That sour taste returns. I try not to pucker my lips.

Sayori inhales sharply, waving her hand. "That's not—I didn't mean that in a bad way! I'm surprised, is all. That's a good thing. It's, uh, it's totally very awesome! I just didn't—" She shrinks in on herself, cheeks red. "You read a lot or something?"

I tap a finger on the table. "Un poco. Some days it's not smart to push myself. I read sometimes when I need to recover."

She gives me a long look. A considerable look. As if she's trying to estimate my lung capacity. "Hey, so… I don't have time left before my next class, but… can you do me a solid?"

"Why does that question fill me with a sense of dread?"

"It's nothing bad, don't worry." She waves a hand dismissively, smiling. "Just—it was nice seeing you again. I don't want it to be the last time before you see me in another decade or whatever. Buuuuuut me and some friends, we have this little after school thing. And it'd be cool to show my old friend off to my new ones."

"When?" I ask.

Her eyes light up and she rattles off dates and times.

And at once, I know it won't work. It can't. It's right after I do sports, but it's just—it's a thing, y'know? It interrupts my routine. My schedule. I budget for lunch, this time now, to be something of a free period. Make a plan, but let the flow take me. This isn't a flow anymore. This is extra budgeting.

I start to shake my head, but she holds up a finger sharply.

"Not asking you to commit to anything," she says seriously. "Just—y'know, be kinda cool. If you showed up. Just once at least. It's an official school thing, if you're worried about that. On campus. Sometimes there's tea or snacks. We talk this kinda stuff. Keats, Stephen King, Brandon Sanderson, Khalil Gibran."

I blink at the last name. "'Defeat, my defeat, my solitude and my aloofness.'"

Sayori slams her hands on the table, almost spilling her coffee. "That settles it, you're coming! You know too much to be allowed to live."

I sigh. "Sayori…"

"I know exactly where to grab you to kidnap you!" she says threateningly, but with a hopeful smile. "Please? Just once at least. See how it is."

I debate with myself for a long time. A part of me hopes I'll run the clock out and she'll have to leave before I can give an answer. But she doesn't. And I'm forced to open my mouth. "Maybe."

She winks. "Maybe is a baby who always says yes."

I scowl. "No."

Her expression doesn't waiver. "No is a hoe who always says fo' sho'!"

Against my own wishes I laugh. "What the hell, girl?"

Sayori is beaming. "Here, gimme your number. I gotta run soon, but this isn't the end of this. Stop by, say hi, steal some snacks—do whatever. Just don't leave a girl hanging, alright?"

I sigh sufferingly, offering her my phone. "Alright."

"Alright!"

After reading the number, she texts me quickly. It's just a series of happy emojis. Sayori quickly chugs her coffee, nearly coughs, and croaks out a "It was really nice seeing you again. Looking forward to this!"

It was not. For reasons I couldn't fully articulate.

Sayori stands. But when I stand, she ambushes me with a hug. I just stand there, dumbly.

"Tomorrow, okay? That's the next meeting," she says.

"Tomorrow."

She flashes me a peace sign. "Get hype, Ę̸̼͓̱̯͎̦̬̤͋͠g̸̛̫͓͕̺͊́̈͛̍̈̐͑̈͊͗͒o̵̢̪̺͑̎͐́̽͒̎̄̐͝͝!"

And as she runs off to her next class, I'm left feeling oddly sick to the core of my stomach.