I wasn’t attacking only Revvie’s rival: some policemen around me would hear the siren song of the mosquito. That was how you made sure an illusion got stuck in someone’s head: you made everyone else present suffer it too. Perceived reality is, oftentimes, more of a matter of consensus than a matter of facts.

  The black man stopped Rev’s punch with a single hand, not bothering to change his footing as he held her wrist. Rabid was Revekka’s stare, so in tune with her foaming mouth. ”You were properly warned, lass.”

  I could almost hear the bones in the trembling arm of Revekka cracking as he held her by the wrist, the eyes of my hot-headed companion wide open.

  “Worry not, your healers are used to broken bones.”

  I hurried up. The man next to me scrunched his nose in gesture of annoyance and I noticed how his hand went restless, as if he wanted to swat anything. Revekka was already on her knees, her enhancement probably on the verge of giving up, held by sheer force of will and fascinating and flummoxing forbidden ferret finery.

  I needed a better word for that monstrous alliteration’s end, but for the time being —basically forever— shall it evidence my lack of linguistic proficiency.

  The man kept pressing, and tears began rolling down rev’s face. Poor thing, she had gotten into trouble, being born from Revvie’s lacrimal ducts. Revs carpal’s, ulna and radius had their days counted if nobody intervened. Luckily, her knight in buzzing armor would soon pretend to arrive.

  Dame. Dame in buzzing armor. Let us talk with property, lest we misgender the Aedes madams and their all-natural zebra fur coats.

  A twitch of the ears among the pitch black hairs of the fighter. A slight widening of the nostrils and a shooting or bounce of the eyes to the sides, searching for the source of the sound. Yes, this man feared mosquitos.

  The buzzing drew closer to him, or rather I forced it to draw closer to him. Only for a moment his grip slipped, loosened enough for an absolutely fuming Revekka to slip her hand away. And in that instant of truth, I needed to strike, to prevent him from regaining focus as Rev stepped back, turned on the ball of her feet and launched a devastating roundhouse kick aimed low.

  The tickling came in, the back of the neck my target. The man barely managed to leap out of Rev’s range. A hint of agitation had slipped into his breath, a brief scratching of the neck that betrayed his awareness of it all.

  Revvie had not noticed because if she were a bull she would have been born attacking the placenta, losing the fight immediately afterwards. To see red, she was useful—the remainder of the color spectrum, in her opinion, could go fuck itself. A respectable life philosophy for a person of her capabilities, if you ask me.

  But I? I could see the small beads of sweat budding on the man’s forehead. The subtle myoclonus of the digits resulting from jangling on someone’s nerves. The foreigner from the equatorial lands was a nimble creature, a deadly dancer against whom I wouldn’t face off in the stage or in the field. But I had always been a man of exquisite detail. Of observing the world to make out what made people tick. I knew how the grocer around the corner felt about people touching her produce, how she didn’t mind most grabbing themselves the potatoes or the bananas, but hated them bruising her precious tomatoes.

  None of that is some double entendre, just in case.

  The point being: I am gods-be-damned-and-sodomized good at picking up on tiny, insignificant details. Sometimes. Other times, I can go around my house searching for my earphones just to realize they are hanging for my neck after rummaging through every possible nook and cranny. I hate to admit it, but it’s true, my adored fans: I am simply human at the end of the day. Not at the beginning, though. The lack of coffee dehumanizes me something fierce. I self-caffeinate, therefore I am kinda deal.

  Rev attacked once more, this time going for a high jab, taking advantage of a lapse in judgement from her (our) adversary, who had gotten distracted, slapping the exposed skin on low back and glancing around. He was still looking for a mosquito that wasn’t there. And he moved his mouth so slightly, an almost imperceptible waving of the lips. Someone mumbling “where” or something similar under their breath. I couldn’t help but smile, and to dissimulate my smile I needed to cheer on Revekka. But I couldn’t cheer in a way that seemed earnest and good nature, or she would pick up that something was amiss. So when her punch contacted with the man’s nose and he stumbled a few feet back, his integrity protected by his soulgyving prowess, I let out a Saonism.

  “Go Rev! you almost got him cornered despite fighting in a circle. Achievements in geometrical ignorance, if there are any.” I bit my tongue, denoting my nature as a mischievous imp, a transgender gander of the clownish variety.

  “Go fuck yourself, Saon.” She spat to the side and raised her guard, preparing in case the agile sir counterattacked. He wouldn’t, though: paranoia grew in him, bit by bit, buzz by buzz.

  “Okay. And afterwards? It takes like, eight minutes to fuck myself, tops. Clocked, even. I have a playlist of pornos I haven’t seen, with women that look like, not a Revekka, that is very carefully curated and catered to my particular—”

  She was quite the multitasker, and interrupted me while ducking under a straight punch form his ostensibly not so straight opponent. “Shut your damn trap Saon, or after him, you follow!”

  “I’ll follow. And like. And subscribe for more content.” I threw a thumbs up her way, making her fume and groan as she managed to sneak in another jab onto her distracted opponent.

  “Where is it? Where is it? I will kill that damn thing, and then deal with you, brat!” The man said, his calmed voice gone. He was going mad, and I didn’t understand why, to be honest. A mosquito couldn’t bite through the skin of an enhancer, not while they were using magic. Or, rather, I understood it to be a phobia, an irrational fear without a why. Sure, at first it may have stemmed from catching some ugly disease borne by the dipteran vectors, but he had nurtured the fear, subconsciously, and let it grow until it consumed him. Facing the insect wouldn’t work to cure him, and most healers refused to deal with matters of the brain. Even those trained in neurology shied away from such complex issues. Alzheimer’s, maybe even Parkinson’s healers and biomancers would treat, regress the damage, even cure if you went to the few with the knowhow and had some fat stacks of cash ready for them. But a phobia? You were stuck with good old psychologists and psychiatrists for that, my friend.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The man spiraled further and further into madness, turning away from his adversary just to search for the mosquito. Revvie took exception to this, and after nearly breaking her hands trying to hurt the enemy enhancer despite her hits barely rattling his hardened physique, she desisted, face turned to five course meal for a vampire.

  She approached the line and leaned over a pair of plastic shields, letting them support the weight of her tired body. "What have you done to him, bitch?" The princess barked between teeth that I was surprised to see standing in place.

  “I have painted his heavenly body at a most serene landscape, lying nude over the greenest grass and eating the most turgid and obscene apples and delicate, round grapes, all within my mind’s eye. ‘twas a day’s work,” I said, pride beaming on my face.

  She let out a low growl and showed her teeth, like the rabid bitch she was.

  “Damn Revvie do we have to vaccinate you again? The vet’s expensive y’know.”

  The man jumped away from the circle of people and into the mass. “I have other matters to tend to! Farewell, rookie pig!” He saluted with two fingers on his forehead, trying to save face, and unknowingly failing, before disappearing amidst the masses.

  “Goodbye you ghetto leprechaun, you’ll be missed.” I mumbled, and then took my hand to my heart. “So, Rev, do you know where Val is?”

  “Do I look like Valenan’s caretaker? Like her nanny? Come on Saon, tell me, do I?”

  “Revvie if you ever get pregnant despite nature’s best efforts to make you the antithesis of ‘Submissive and breedable’, or if some soulless bastard left a baby on your door, I wouldn’t call child protection services. I’d skip that and directly call the maker of tiny coffins. Or the operator of tiny ovens.” I appraised her body, up and down, grimacing the whole time. “Maybe not-so-tiny coffins if they take after you.”

  She clawed the top of one of the shields, her grasp on it so strong that the plastic began to protest and present tiny cracks. And those shields were mass produced to last. A few days. A few hits. They were sort of shitty, all things considered.

  “Well, all things considered, I’ll be making like a tree and poison myself with my own metabolic waste. Ciao.” I turned on my heels and hurried behind the defense line, leaving the din of the protestors and Revvie’s fuming behind.

  I spent the remainder of my work day bothering the driver of the Van. We talked about his marriage, about how his husband was a switch as much as he was a bitch, and about how I was truly not some psychopathic murderer. Just a clown. Not a murder clown, like that one from ancient mythologies, immortalized in comics and a few animations and films recovered from before the Advent. The one that fights against the millionaire dressed in black. Those were simpler times, when just having money made you high and mighty. Now it was being enough of a son of a bitch to enslave a few hundred thousand souls that granted true power. A well-fed sacromotor, a carefully nourished sacromotor, a grown, sprawling sacromotor. There was no technology of men or decree of gods that could withstand the power derived from a million tortured spirits.

  The officer told me about his hobby, woodworking. Crafts were appreciated, if they were authentic, and sold for quite a good penny. In a world of manifestation modules and automated factories, handcrafted goods had garnered a faithful, if rather small, following, not to speak of the eccentrics with more money that they could spend in a couple lifetimes.

  Then, speaking of eccentrics, the conversation steered towards a favorite of mine: Air fryers. Yes, those useless things that people from before the Advent loved with a burning passion. No, not the new Genuine Air Fryers with Ancestral Technology that AnteAppli sells. I mean the honest to god things we knew all of our lives before someone found an old instruction manual and figured out the whole shtick was not, in fact, frying the air. No, I am talking the ones that introduce air bubbles into the oil for reasons, trying to make your potatoes somehow healthier by what basically amounts to culinary astrology. Mars is high and thus the potatoes are dryer because we aerated the oil beforehand and a Pisces will betray your trust sometime this coming decade. That sort of nonsense. Nonsense I loved, because what can scream “humanity” more that doing dumb shit just because we can? Nothing. That’s a privilege of humans, cats and maybe raccoons. Not ferrets. Never ferrets.

  Public service announcement: Fuck ferrets. No, not like that.

  Afterwards we spoke about how we hated ferrets. He thought they were cute, but I hated for both of us, being the altruistic soul you may know me as. Therefore, yes, we both hated the damn things enough.

  After a while I got bored of doing socials with him, he wasn’t entertaining me anymore and I needed to get going to watch my evening cartoons. That may or may not have been pornographic.

  They weren’t. I enjoy the colors and contrasts and watch it for the plot, okay?

  In the cool air of the twilight, when the sun went down and through the membranes at its sides the dome slowly equalized temperature with the exterior world, I stood and took the smoke and rot in. This was my home, even as the civilians screamed under the punishment of the tear gas canisters, as the batons crushed ribs and my superiors clashed with the top agents of the rebels somewhere around my father’s palace. All my life I had studied and trained for this, for the easy life of the one that upholds the status quo, and it was... just as boring as I had imagined. Clock in, be a terrible person, clock out, and collect a decent paycheck at the end of each week. It was much, it wasn’t honest work, and I didn’t care. For you could do the most honest of works for other, but if nobody paid for it? you are a parasite, a bum. And then they would blather on and on about the benefits and virtues of “work culture”, as if the soulgyver that wanders the world healing people for free were less of a hard worker than the one who charges for its services, only because the first one has to beg for someone to pay their coffee or a meal. I have seen what goes on behind the surface, how you people can reconcile such contradicting beliefs without batting an eye.

  I mean, it’s not my case, I aim to be the closest thing to a bum. You all deserve it. And you shall bask in the glory of Saon Ladius, because, yes, it’s a privilege to behold my magnificence. At a glance, from afar and through shaded glasses, because I am mighty ugly, but magnificent all the same.

  In the cool air of the twilight, I was a villain, and not the big one, but just one of his countless pawns, merely an eye of the machine that was scallop. And it felt good. Insignificance was peace, insignificance was to fly under the radars of the fat fishes of the enemy, of the criminal organizations that had come to hate the governor and the rebels who believed it untenable to be ruled by someone who found himself entrenched at the wrong side of morals. To matter not was to fear not. Some men desired the burden of power because their desires couldn’t be acquired without it. Mine costed like 350 Cryolophos a day, and my weekly wage was some fifty thousand, adjusted by inflation or deflation as months go by, the Earth spins on and on and those motherfuckers born in the Half moon empire try to revive pandas and blow billions in making no progress at all. Except for that one time they engendered a polar bear with a Holstein pattern, that one was funny.

  That night I went home, and took a hot bath. Scratching my bony chest, I wondered if my crows could be found inside, or if my Sacromotor truly was elsewhere. I almost fall sleep sitting there, in the bathroom floor, among reveries of abilities to come, as the warm water relaxed my tired muscles. That day had marked a pivotal moment in my life. I had gone from being merely a passive observer of Retriever horror to being a spinning cog of the repressive machinery. My life was beginning to shape into what it would be for at least the following 40 years.

  And I say at least, because my father, immortal, never minded sharing his gift with his most faithful dogs.