Wall Of Cloth

by Jared Axelrod | Feb 13, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

Hijet dreamed of breasts, as he did every night. And once again he awoke with his sheet stained. Once more he would endure the sharp tongue of his mother holding the stained sheet as evidence of Hijet’s unclean body, and crying to the gods why she was cursed with a son.

Hijet endured this as he always did, with his head down.

Hijet was of the age most boys apprenticed themselves to their father’s trade. But Hijet had no father, so he sat by the village fountain in voluminous robes and head-covering with the other men who had no trade to speak of. There were more begging for work than usual; most construction work was now done by the new mult-limbed robots from Betleguese Prime. Only the soon-to-be completed temple required non-steel hands, but the temple could only afford a handful of workers. The rest of the men stood by the fountain, waiting to be told to work.

By noon, two dozen men were still waiting by the fountain, and it was looking like Hijet was going to face another day of no work and another night of curses and beratements. The square was already filled with merchants and businesswomen, and Hijet resigned himself to staring through the eye-slits on his head-covering at the short skirts and ample cleavage on display. He was so intent on a fruit merchant and her tight pants across the square that he didn’t notice the woman standing in front of him until she tapped him on the shoulder.

“You. Boy-Eyes. Turn around.” She was tall and strong, and her tank-top was stretched tight over her proud breasts and muscular stomach. The veins on her hands stood out blue against her tanned skin. “You deaf, Boy-Eyes? Turn around.”

The other men turned away, their own eye-slits finding purchase elsewhere. Hijet, cowed by this woman’s forcefulness, hung his head and turned. He had no idea what she wanted, and a he let out a gasp behind his head-covering when she did something he never in a million years would have expected.

The woman’s strong hands found Hijet’s rear through his robes and were feeling it. Evaluating it.

“You’ll do,” she said. “Come with me, Boy-Eyes, and I’ll pay you twice what you’d get shoveling dirt or pulling weeds.”

Hijet looked at the other men for advice, but he only received the blank silence of heavy robes and slitted hoods.

The woman’s house was as bright as the square; it seemed to Hijet that there she owned no walls, only windows. Even deep within his robes, Hijet felt exposed.

“Take your robes off.”

“But…I am male,” Hijet said.

“That’s why I brought you here. You want the money? Off with the robes.”

“I…I am a man.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Boy-Eyes.”

“I am…unclean.”

“That’s why I’m using mud,” the woman said, unwrapping plastic sheets from around am immense amount of clay. “Look, I can’t sculpt you if you don’t take the robes off. You can leave the head-cloth on, if you like. I just need your torso.”

Hijet relented and removed the heavy robes, but left the head covering. The light streamed through the many windows, hitting his body at every possible angle. Hijet had never felt the sun on his bare skin before. And yet, it didn’t feel near as hot as the woman’s eyes. Hijet felt her gaze on his rear, on his stomach, on his chest.

“I think,” Hijet said, raising his chin, “I’m going to take my head-covering off.”

Streaming

by J.R. Blackwell | Feb 10, 2006 | Story

Cory pressed his foot on the rubber accelerator so hard that the car began to smell like peanuts from the oil it ran on. The couple in the back seat started making out viciously, tearing at each other’s clothes. They were middle aged, sixty or so, horny on a cocktail of uppers and hormones. They didn’t care where Cory took them; they were only there because the cab was cheaper than a hotel room. Cory laughed to himself, delighted at the couple’s enthusiasm. He slapped the plastic window on the back seat closed and inserted the woman’s credit line into his car. The car accessed her account, withdrawing money as the seconds flipped by on his red digital display.

Cory drove like a madman, like a bat on fire, like a gamer with a thousand lives. He accelerated around corners, trusting his system to warn him about oncoming vehicles. The woman began to moan in the back seat, and Cory smiled, a little turned on despite himself. It was the perfect backdrop for his show. Cory touched the broadsword on the seat beside him for good luck and pressed a button on his neck, connecting him to his personal server. In a few seconds he felt the network buzz inside him, warmth rushing down his spine.

“Streaming.” He said, and about four hundred people locked to his signal “I’m live.” Flags popped up on the inside of his vision, greetings and questions from his regulars. He dismissed them with a hard blink. He would deal with them later. Now, now was for the show.

“I’m Cory, and this is Backseat Metro, where I talk about my life as a cabbie in the big Eastern Sea City, from New York all the way down to DC. Right now I’m driving on the Clinton Bridge which is still stained black from the poison cloud that killed all those people last year.” Cory’s fans liked it when he put a bit of news into his show.

“They say that the black doesn’t make the bridge dangerous, it’s just a residue from the non-lethal part of the cloud, but I still put my filters on when I drive over the damned thing. Whether or not the black is toxic, the vampire gangs sure like it, hanging out on the viewing sites, trading their narcotic bites to junkies for blood. Part of me wishes that they would sandblast the thing white again, and part of me just loves the retro 17th century thing the kids have going on here.”

The woman in the back screamed passionately, her naked back pressed against the plastic divider between the front and back seat.

Cory glanced back at the couple. “Say hello to Roy and Michelle everyone. They are celebrating their first retirement into their second careers. Right now I’m taking them to the drive through Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the homeless bohemians are working on painting the front steps. It looks like they are painting giant self-portraits. I heard that Police have tried to pull them off, but the college kids surround them in protest. Personally, I think the whole thing is good publicity for the museum.”

Michelle and Roy were rhythmically slamming their bodies against the back window.

“Roy and Michelle aren’t particularly interested in destinations folks, not physical destination anyway, so right now I’m taking them where I want to go, and recently I’ve had this hankering to see this painting. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s near the end of the drive through tour, and it’s of a man standing on stairs, in a dark corridor wearing a long white robe. There is something in his eyes that just says strength to me. He’s clearly a warrior, and of all the scenes of romance and religious stuff in that museum, he really stands out. I like to think that someday, I’m going to be like that guy in the painting.” Cory patted the electric broadsword on the seat beside him, his baby.

“When I retire, I’ll leave the cab and feel the cement of the Metro highway under my feet. I won’t ride but I’ll walk the entire length of it, I’ll meet every face and landmark I speed by, and I’ll know the whole thing like a lover.”

The backseat was suddenly quiet; Roy and Michelle were slumped over each other, exhausted.

“Happy Retirement folks.” Cory switched off the feed and took the couple home.