A.N: For part of this chapter, I decided to portray madness from the villain (Koldon) POV so you guys can see what poor Nina has to deal with.
Chapter Twenty Five
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"Prostitute or Assassin?"
"Assassin." Nina replied. "As if I would let scumbags use my body to get off on."
"I know. Same." Eun giggled. "Prostitution isn't a job anyway. Dunno why they delude themselves into thinking it's a job."
The two eighteen year olds sat side by side on the park bench, munching on sarnies they brought just earlier.
"It's just a verbal contract for paid sex between a woman and a sleazy bastard. Hardly something to be proud about." She scoffed. "Rather sink a six inch blade into a pervert than let him desecrate the temple that is my body. I know it sounds very serial killer like but our job lets us be Queens. I love my job. I choose my job. My job doesn't choose me."
Some people walking by gave them funny looks. Nina wants to laugh. She was a Queen with a knife. Or better yet, a Queen who had knives adorning her crown. And bullets as gems.
"Do you get nightmares and stuff?"
"No, I sleep at night peacefully." Nina replied straight away. "You?"
Eun stopped chewing her sarnie, toys with the crust. "Nope. But Nina, are you sure you don't get nightmares? Any regrets?"
There was a long pause. Nina finished her sandwich and with a pensive look, she finally answered her best friend.
"My first kill, I killed someone in front of their son. It was at a cinema in Limerick. Since then, I try to avoid killing people in front of their children. Makes the job a little harder but at least the kid won't get trauma like I did. I saw my dad get murdered and I couldn't stop it."
"Is it why you picked up the gun?"
Nina's eyes slowly open. It is still dark within the open grave. That dream feels so real as if it were a memory. Her pink, white and gold strapped Alisa Watch says it was 4 am and she curses under her breath. The sky above her not in the shade she'd like it to be.
Her phone was gone. She couldn't call for help.
Alone she was in such a wretched place.
Crushing feeling, hard to ignore.
Still in this horrid place, surrounded by mud. There was no way to get out. She was more than six feet deep. The soil around her crumbled each time she put her foot in it to try climb out. She just hopes the Alligator doesn't come in. She did not want the Alligator.
How she got here? It was a mystery. One minute she was out and about then felt herself being stopped by a policewoman named Detective Coke. Thinking it was about the murder attempt, she got in the African American's police car. She didn't remember anything else after that.
Remembering the distress signal put on the watch. She presses it and waits for Alisa to find her. Helplessness made her feel so pathetic. A robot had to come save her.
All the while, the question of whether to go to Eun Seo echoes in her mind.
"Niiiinnnna! Niiiiiinnnaaaaa!" Koldon, the Alligator bellows in his kitchen apartment. In nothing but tacky croc skin pants and Aladdin shoes. With a sweat coated spandex of a bright green hue. Handcuff wristbands to boot. Long fingers cuffed with stained vintage rings. So fashionable.
Vodka after vodka he downs his drinks. In shot glasses.
Mixes it with some Kvass and Starka.
He is an alligator mid pounce. Whatever nonsense that means is blocked by his alcoholic haze.
Rawr goes the Alligator mid pounce! Hahaha!
Nina would laugh at him. She always thought he was full of cringe…
Step on me. ma'aam please.
The more she rejected him, the more he wanted her. It is his lifelong obsession.
Nina's hidden warmth beneath her ice was only for the boy toy to enjoy. Koldon wants it. Fuck. He hated having to earn something other than payment for his contracts. He could force Nina but there would be enjoyment in that. He wanted her willingly to come to him. Maybe nearly killing her wasn't the best idea.
What's an Alligator to do?
He called her but she doesn't pick up. It goes straight to voicemail.
"I need a release….I need to feel every inch of you, feel every taste bud of yours and count each strand of your hair, one, two, three, please be with me…how..how are…you so good at this?!" He urges into the voice and then quickly ends the call before further cringe could spill from his maw.
How to seduce the Ice Queen who never opened her legs to everyone who wanted it? Did she like corn or porn? Someone teach him! He was a loose man though, shared himself with almost everyone who was foolish enough to have him and his fluids . He picked up a few STDs along the way and kept shush about it. He gave a few women UTI's and that made him proud.
He drinks some more till the whole Starka bottle is emptied.
Koldon always displayed his private parts as if he achieved them and not because of genetics. As if he went through the witch trials to make it grow with a deal with the Gods. He pulls it out and swings it, imagines himself hitting her face. Tears in her blue sexy eyes. He rarely washed his junk. Liked his sweaty smegma smell too much.
Sadistic mind even pictures faecal matter on it.
The wicked alligator plays the Cha Cha Slide song as he does it. Violently thrusts his hips once at 'One hop this time' and twice at 'Two hops this time'. Such an absolute clown.
His hips jerk in sync to the fast beats after 'Everybody clap your hands!' Imagines a teary eyed Nina choking out of control.
Koldon laughs at such a filthy fantasy.
Shuts off his stereo when the song ends.
See, he would jump through the circus hoops. Just to put that fucking stuck up Ice Queen in her place. How dare she act superior and not put herself through disgusting shit? Snobby bitch. He wanted her humiliation. How dare she have self-respect and self-love?!
Satisfied at his fantasy, he tucks himself back in his tacky trousers.
She had a hidden treasure between her legs. He hopes he had the key to it between his and not that hunky boy toy she was parading around with. So how to seduce his Queeny Weeny? He couldn't ask her dead daddy for her hand in marriage. She would slap him. Or give him that horrible dick kick. He never forgot how badly it stung even after years. Felt as if she ruined his family jewels for good.
If he can play the cat and mouse game and pretend he was this all powerful 'God', his ego can be satisfied.
He is fully saturated by Nina. Again, his thoughts turn another drunken turn. Saturated? He meant consumed. How the hell did saturate come into his mind? Was he thinking of the fat mince meat gave off when cooked? That shitty fat that solidified into loose wax?
Koldon images himself with Nina in an intimate and deviant way.
He sensed fire from within…but not within himself but her…
Oh god he wasn't making sense. A light ramble of pure enjoyment! Hahaha!
He needs to sit the hell down. But first, he pulls a packet of raspberries from the fridge, washes the little bastards and throws them in a white bowl. The empty packet is thrown into the trash. Fuck the environment. Hopefully these will help his hangover.
He sits the hell down. At his white table.
Koldan lifts one raspberry out of the bowl and throws it in his mouth. Plop. It feels like picking off someone's tumor and eating it. He repeats and throws in the second raspberry, it squishes reluctantly in his mouth and spreads little seeds. Then those seeds are crushed by his molars. Never to sprout into something more.
Kind of how he killed people. Never to live another day.
He picks up the third one and observes it. Looks like it was something pulled out of a nostril. Turning it over to see the hole, Koldon instantly shoves the tip of his tongue in it. Rolls it around for a bit and for a second, wears it like a glove. He pretends his tongue is a string and the raspberry is a puppet. Makes stupid sounds with his mouth.
It is fun until it drops into his mouth and meets the same fate as the ones before it.
He tips the bowl to one angle and opens his mouth so the last few roll in. Plop, Squish and Crush. A madman in a wintry chill.
Wintry chill! Wintry Chill! Nina ice queen! Ice! Ice! Queen! Sledgehammer crash the ice! Bits of ice everywhere! His ice!
He laughs until the uncrushed seeds get stuck in his throat. Then he's forced to spit it all out, making a mess on his table.
It looks like a murder scene.
"Nina-san!"
The blonde tiredly looks up. "A-Alisa?"
She sees the innocent pink haired robot peer from the top. A sigh of relief escapes Nina's mouth. Finally, light at the end of the tunnel.
The robot gets down into the grave and begins to lift Nina up like a damsel in distress.
"H-hey…whoa.." Nina moves away, embarrassed. "What the hell?"
"If you want me to save you, you'll need to let me carry you." Alisa tells her. "There are landmines around this grave. We have to be careful."
Whoever put her in here sure didn't want her getting out or anyone attempting to help her. Damn, someone really wanted her dead.
"O-okay..," Nina says, a little shaky. There is mud on her clothes and she didn't want to get it on a spotless Alisa. She rests an arm around the robot's shoulders. Strong silicone arm support the back of her knees.
"Sorry for being muddy." Nina mumbles as Alisa lifts her up like nothing before slowly flying out.
The sound of the wings was pretty loud so she couldn't hear what Alisa says.
Later, the two are on sitting on a bench, side by side kind of how Eun and Nina did in that dream Nina had. Alisa was helping her research Detective Coke. Nina decided she really couldn't trust the police, not after waking up in a grave.
She loathed how hard this game was becoming. So tempting to curl up and sleep the problem away.
Alisa had a journal which could be accessed by downloading an app on her smartphone, since the phone was Alisa's, the app was already installed. Then you had to punch in a code and be close to Alisa so that the signal from the robot could recognise the phone. Nina was only doing this because she liked the idea of being the first to use a new type of technology before everyone else. She needed to see what this Alisa app was all about.
When Nina looks at Alisa's journal, she is shocked as hell and annoyed to see the choice of words used when describing her in them. Repetitive indeed, it irks her.
"Damn, Alisa, I get that I'm not your most favorite person in the world but I think we get the gist of it. You don't have to keep describing me as this cold frigid unfeeling woman in every damn sentence." Nina comments.
"I thought maybe if I keep repeating the words, I wouldn't be hurt everytime you display cruelty and if someone looks into my journals, they will get the message about what kind of person you are incase they forget. I have to keep reminding people that you're a cold apathetic woman." Alisa explains. "Just in case they forget."
Oh. For fuck's sake. How cringe-worthy. Cold this. Cold that. Icy this. Icy that. Give her a break! And the lengths Alisa went to widen those descriptions: Her ice mask never dropped for a second, sending icicles all over the walls, floor turning it into an igloo hut, polar bears and penguins hanging outside playing happy feet…giving Katsuhiro Harada an idea for a new Tekken stage for a game frozen in time for the ice sculpture.
Something on those lines anyway. She couldn't read past the third 'Glacial eyes'
Stop. Please. Stop.
Get some help.
"You're the sculpture. I'm a real person." Nina told her. "Stop confusing us."
"You didn't comment on my purple prose. Please may you comment on my purple prose."
Oh for fuck's sake.
"Vomit-inducing." Nina replies. "I've never been a fan of purple prose although I love the color purple."
Purple prose sucked. Too much repetitiveness. She was sure the bandwidth in Alisa's storage was getting wasted on unnecessary words. That doctor was really useless for sure…
"So what now? Are you going to make me erase all the repetitive adjectives I used to describe you?" Alisa challenges, her green eyes glowing for a second.
If that glow happened to show others the emotion in the robot, it was a nice touch, Nina thinks. But shame that a robot could never feel emotions. She isn't going to play pretend.
Nina lifts her hands up to form a box. Demonstrating things with her hands was a strange trait she only picked up from her interactions with Alisa and only did this with the robot. It was like sign language and there was no reason why Nina formed this little habit to communicate with the robot. Maybe she was testing the strength of Alisa's scanners? Maybe she didn't like Alisa giving her eye contact when she was speaking? Who knew if the doc was watching all the time from behind those fake green eyes?
Once Alisa's eyes focus on her hands, Nina begins her speech.
"We're going to take all these words, cold, detached, unemotional and all the synonyms for those words, put them in a box, seal it shut and toss the bitch in the ocean." Nina says to the android while demonstrating with her hands like a teacher to their student.
"It has to be a biodegradable box! We cannot pollute the ocean!" Alisa cries. "Think of the sea creatures!
That was something Julia would say. And even Jin.
"Fine, it's a biodegradable box and the words are also biodegradable so they don't come back up for you to use when describing me." Nina relents with a roll of her eyes.
A robot caring about environmental issues? How strange.
There was some temporary silence between them.
"Alisa…thank you for helping me." Nina finally says. She means her words.
The robot is caught off guard and then her lips curve. "You're welcome."
The smile was so disgustingly human like. It is unsettling.
"I have amnesia because of your dad." Nina says. "You know about the whole cold sleep thing so I won't talk your ear off about. All I want to know is what would you do in my shoes? If an old friend comes back and offers you help? And you're in the point in your life where you need that help. Even if you don't want it but it may protect the ones you love?"
"I would accept the help." Alisa says. "To protect my loved ones."
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Published: 25th Oct 23