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Lensman
I don't want to be a Lensman. THEY STAND, in two rows, steely-eyed gazes focused on me. They line the corridor, all of them dressed in black, arms folded. They are silent; the corridor is mirror-floored, an inverted image of them hanging below. From one to the next, their faces are different, but with an awful sameness, some process that has been applied to each; innocence lost, illusions about the inherent goodness of the universe gone, eroded away. The look of veteran police officers, firemen, emergency rescue workers who have seen one too many mangled corpses and yet haven't let it get to them. They've persevered. Maintained. There's a brass band playing in the distance. The notes echo down the corridor. I'm standing here with my jaw hanging down, looking from one to the next, seeing no pity in any of their faces. Each arm, the right folded under the left, has a bracelet, each bracelet has a glowing lenticular jewel that flashes pale fire in contempt. At the end of the corridor he stands, dressed in grey, next to a machine that looks like it is for the application of casts to broken arms. Uh-oh. No way. NO WAY. If they - if, uh, they CAN'T, I don't want to be able to read their minds, because that will mean that they can read MINE. They're all perfect, they don't have faults, they don't have embarrassing sexual fetishes, they don't get turned on by the woman on the back of Cleo magazine wearing faded jeans and a white cotton tank top, they don't have things that they'd be afraid of having brought into the light - I can't let them do this to me! I back away. the two endmost leap forward, hold my arms, drag me forward towards the machine. I struggle, my feet slipping against the mirror floor. He on the left slides the sleeve of my Country Road windcheater up my arm, with a deft motion undoes the catch of my watch, removes it. I almost get away, but his grip is sure, and they drag me, inevitably, towards- My knees fold underneath me, and they haul me up to face the man in grey. He gives me an understanding look, seizes my left hand and forces it into the device. It hisses, closes around me firmly, no nonsense, it isn't going to allow me to slip away. I glance up at him, his stern heroic features (they actually look chiselled, as if he was a collaboration between a plastic surgeon and a monumental mason) relax briefly. As if this is supposed to console me. The device grows warm, uncomfortably so, it's burning me, there's a pink-tinged actinic glare from the edges, I can feel it forcing the bones of my forearm apart, there are conduits of agony shooting up my arm, along my shoulder and up into my mind - ah, shit - Just before it hits, I'm desperately trying not to think of that story I posted to alt.sex.bestiality... |
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