White and Other Tales of Ruin

Honey looked at the clock. “You can hold me for six minutes.”

“Longer,” Tom said, shuffling over and wrapping Honey in his arms. It was awkward at first — strange, after what they had been doing, that a simple touch could feel so clumsy — but after a minute it got better. The tension in Honey’s muscles drained away, her head dipped onto Tom’s shoulder, she dropped her cigarette and sighed heavily. “Longer,” he said again.

“Three more minutes.”

“Honey…” He hated that she was still clock-watching. He knew that all this wasn’t just a part of the act, another twenty dollars-worth, because he could feel the heat of her skin and the coolness of tears on his chest. Something had happened, removing the sex from this moment and replaced it with something far, far more.

Tom knew that Honey had not been designed for that.

“I want to stay like this forever,” she said, and it was like a punch to Tom’s chest. “Forever. But you saw Hot Chocolate Bob. You… don’t know what he’s like. You just can’t imagine.” She lifted her head to look at him. “If we’re five minutes over he’ll be up here. He’ll kick you out, or worse, and as for me…”

“What? What?” Tom didn’t want to know what the pimp would do, but he thought that knowing would take some of her hurt and bleed it into him.

“Us plastics are quite hardy,” Honey said. “We can take a lot of beating.”

“Part of the design,” Tom said bitterly.

“Part of the design. Warriors and whores. Need to take abuse.”

“Come with me!” he gushed, realising how foolish this sounded. An hour ago he’d paid some pimp for a fuck with a random whore, and now he was asking her to run away with him, be with him. Foolish, but it felt so right.

“Don’t be stupid,” Honey said.

Tom felt defeated, lost. And stupid. “I’m sorry.” He’d come in this artificial whore’s mouth, and he thought that gave him the right to tell her he loved her. Stupid.

But he did.

“Do you mean it?” Honey said, after a long pause.

“What?”

“What you said earlier. Do you mean it? I’ve heard it a million times before, but I’ve never had cause to believe.”

“Come with me and give me a chance to show you.”

She was silent again, staring at him, and Tom felt as though he was being appraised inside and out. Could she see inside? he wondered. Could she penetrate to the deepest parts of him, the secret centres where even he did not hold reign?

“I’d risk everything,” she said. Tom wasn’t sure whether it was a statement of fact or intent.

“Then come — ”

“I can’t, not now. Kiss me.”

Tom leaned forward and kissed Honey, and she tasted of her name. Smoke and cheap food and himself, she tasted of that too, but it was all sweet. He held her head and pulled her to him, kissing her, his eyes closed, the skin of his palms and fingers tingling where he touched her skin.

She pulled away at last. Her eyes were wide and moist, her breathing fast. She glanced at the clock. “Time’s up.”

Tom sighed heavily, wondering what to say. He was running out of time and needed a plan, but his brain didn’t function. He shook his head angrily, furious at himself, unsure of where the fury came from.

And then Honey saved him.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Lunchtime. I’ll say here instead of going down the street for food. There’s a back door, down an alley next to Hell’s Bookstore on Ashley Street. You know it?”

“I’ll find it.”

“Come here then. And take me away.”

“You’re sure, you believe me, you’re sure?” Tom gushed, stumbling over own thoughts.

There were footsteps on the landing outside the door, and the handle rattled.

“Go!” Honey said. And in an instant she was a ragged, hard whore once more, a plastic bitch built for sex and sucking and little more, sitting back with her legs splayed and another cigarette in her hand. Tom despised the transformation, and he suddenly wondered whether she’d been kidding him all along. The doubt was reinforced when he tried to discern hope in her eyes: there was nothing there. Only a vagueness, a vacancy, waiting to be pumped full of the desires and fantasies of her next client.

“‘The fuck?” a voice said from behind him. “Time’s up, shithead.”

Tom turned around, and Hot Chocolate Bob stood in the doorway.

“I was just leaving.”

“Best you do. Got a lawyer outside, real slimy type, top dog, criminal defence, ready to stick it in Honey’s ass. Like that, don’t you Honey?” He grinned as he spoke, and the paleness of his skin was countered by his black, rotten teeth. He was bald, no eyebrows or facial hair, and his eyes were networks of broken veins. Tom wondered which drugs he did. Probably all of them.

“You know I do, Hot Chocolate Bob.” Her voice was low and sultry. It dripped sex.

Tom didn’t want to turn around and see Honey like this. He looked at the pimp instead and felt his rage building, percolating through the layers of apathy he’d drawn around himself over the years and filling him with energy.

“Out. Now.” The pimp wasn’t joking. Tom could see the bulge of a piece on his belt and his eyes glittered like loose diamonds, the sign of a military-level optical chop. If he’d had his eyes done he’d likely had other stuff as well, and Tom had no desire to mix it with him right now.

Later, maybe.

But not now.

“‘Bye sweetie,” Honey called mockingly as he passed the pimp at the door. “Your juice tasted good, Honey wants more, come back soon.”

He needed to turn around and see her one more time. Just in case he was wrong. Just in case she’d lied. But the pimp had pushed past him into the room, and the two of them were muttering together like lovers, and there were wet sounds that Tom didn’t wish to know.

“… like it like that…” Honey said.

Tom hurried away from the room, passed a dozen more just like it, and walked quickly outside to find escape.

The sun was setting by the time he approached his street, and the night people were out. It was as if the dusk dictated style: the roads heading into town filled, and the people almost all wore black. A dark tide of humanity flowed into the city, accompanied by the clinking of chains, the buzzing of zips, the musical tinkling of jewellery, visible or otherwise. Some of the people had been professionally chopped — eight feet tall, three arms, four breasts, one guy with a huge dick swinging unhindered between his feet — but most had chosen merely to adapt themselves. Tattoos and piercings were the least of it. Amputations, scoops of flesh removed, dyed skins, divided penises, all manner of mutilation was at home in these crowds. Nothing was a surprise.

It made Tom wonder just where these people would go next.

He’d seen it all before, but it never ceased to fascinate him. That people should act like this — tear themselves apart, wound for pleasure or pleasure through pain — confused him. But sometimes, just sometimes, he wondered whether being artificial simply meant that he could never understand.

They were heading for the clubs. There were dozens in the city, most legal, a few not. They buzzed every night and bled every day, bled money to the law and literal blood from their cellars and other hidden ‘rooms’. Tom had visited them a few times in his wanderings and he’d seen some things… some awful things. The nearest he came to these clubs now was the occasional visit to a brothel, and always, always, a brothel where the whores were artificials. After what he’d seen once or twice in club cellars he had no wish to know more of what people could and would do to themselves. And to each other.

Now, walking against the flow, his vision darkened by the sunset and the stares of those passing by, Tom felt