"Against Humanity" - entry for Writer In Motion 2021
Photo by Jaroslav Devia at Unsplash
"Against Humanity"
“We have to talk,” Chelion said in its most
take-me-seriously voice.
I intended only to dismissively glance up from my pinball
game, but its appearance commanded a double take. I managed not to tilt the machine, but I lost
my ball. “Not while you look like that,”
I shuddered.
“Like what?”
“Like fifty farts in a trenchcoat.” I pulled back the plunger and released the
ball, hoping that if I annoyed it enough, I could get through my game.
There was a pained pause.
The singed-caramel reek of the thing assailed my nostrils. Well, not on the corporeal level. Still.
“It’s not a trenchcoat,” it pouted.
“Of all the --Then like a hundred farts in a hoodie.”
“Why a hundred now?”
“Hoodie fabric’s breathable.
Takes more farts to look like that.”
Chelion sighed and put its icy hand on me. “Kurathel…”
Flinching, I lost my other ball and slapped the machine in
frustration. It flashed TILT at me. “Well, what?” I glared at it in embarrassed
frustration. Humiliating. “Nice hoodie,” I sneered.
“You cheated.” It
looked mad. Billowing clouds of
s’mores-flavored smoke poured off of it, spilling from its amusingly mundane
hood.
“’Course I cheated.
Cheating’s what I do. But
I’m serious: you look like an asshole.
You’re scaring the norms. Knock
it off.”
It facepalmed its fake flesh hand into the mist, leaving a
metaphysical mask behind, but looked barely better: the face it had crafted was
inhumanly beautiful, glassily impassive.
“You shouldn’t have told me that Cards Against Humanity were
legitimate gauges of human merit.”
I couldn’t help but yelp with laughter. “That?! That’s what you’re pissed about?”
The hipster playing the what-he-thought-was-ancient Pac-Man
machine nearby glanced at us, then did a double take. I grinned and stuck out my forked tongue. His mouth fell open, jeans darkening with
urine: fuck, why couldn’t people just be oblivious? Nostalgia for arcade games wasn’t the only
reason I missed the Goddamned 80s.
I grabbed Chelion by its elbow-equivalent, flinching again
as I felt its vaporous chill through the knit cotton. “My place,” I hissed.
It sighed, sending up a single plume of incense-smoke,
probably to Heaven. “Gross.”
I let go and apported.
It followed. When it arrived, I
spat, “I feel the same way.”
Its mask rolled its exquisite fake eyes. “That’s not what you said yester—”
“Lies, remember?”
I pointed at myself. “Do you
understand?”
It shook its head.
“But that doesn’t matter. I
disintegrated and damned someone because of their cards, Kurathel.”
I laughed so hard I lost my human shape. When I got my shit together, it was still
staring sorrowfully at me, its impassable mask completely unmoved. That set me off again. “You what?!”
“I took a human life.”
“You take hundreds of human lives,” I managed to choke out,
still giggling. With flaming hands, I
smoothed away my barbed tail, squeezing my own butt.
“I took a human life because she said … never mind what she
said. It was horrible.”
“Was it super gay?”
“No, Kurathel, why would I care about that?” It ran its hand through its mist, stripping
off its mask of humanity as it did so, and turned to look at me in all its
ethereal anguish. “No, it was super
blasphemous.”
I ran my tongue over my fangs, grinning. “What’d she say?” It shook its head. “C’mon, what’d the murder victim say?”
“Stop, Kurathel.”
I went and took its misty hands. “You can tell me, Chelion. Was it about altar boys?”
It sighed. “No.”
“Abortion?”
“No.”
“St. Augustine’s pear tree?”
“Be serious, Kurathel.”
“Was it the card about the nail holes?”
“There’s a card for that?” it wailed. “Heavens, no!”
“Hell yes, and you’d hate it. Come onnnnn. Give me a little hint.” I put an arm around it. “You wouldn’t have come to me for help if you
didn’t intend to tell me.”
“She said… she said that her personal Lord and Savior was
Batman.”
I stared at it. It
stared back. It looked much unhappier
than I felt the situation warranted.
“Um. I can safely say I have
heard worse.”
It threw its hands up.
“Batman is fictional,” it scoffed.
“Wait. You understand
fiction when it has to do with Batman but you can’t understand that the cards
are fictional situations?” I started
giggling again.
It elbowed me. “This
is serious. I killed a person.”
“Sounds like she busted a Commandment. Like, the first one.”
It waggled an airy hand.
“Not genuinely. Not enough to
justify smiting her and tormenting the soul.”
“Okay. I’ll help you
hide the body if you do a little something for me…” I wagged my eyebrows and
pointed meaningfully downward.
“No, I disintegrated the body, remember?”
“Bah.”
Chelion softened, if a cloud of mist could be said to soften
any further. “But it’s really decent of
you to try to cheer me up.”
I gave up pressuring it for sex. “Say that again and I’ll cut you.”
It shook its topmost cloud.
“Don’t be like that.”
“That is literally how I be.”
Chelion bent to pet Virgil, my badly-behaved tomcat. The cat rubbed against its clothing and wove
through its tendrils of mist, spreading its icing-and-myrrh stank to drown out
the cozy brimstone-catbox-and-dirty-laundry aura of my apartment.
I scowled; setting ground rules for personal hygiene was
going to be necessary. I was never going
to get the smell out of my sheets. “So,
your Batman worshipper is dead and dusted, and you now understand the error of
your ways. Seems fine.”
“It’s not fine.”
“Can you finagle a do-over?”
“We don’t have those,” it said softly, and picked up
Virgil. He rumbled like a twelve-dollar
vibrator.
“Then what the Hell do you need me for?”
It brightened. “I
need you to get the soul back for me.
Pretty please with sugar on top?”
“Ew, sugar.”
It continued staring at me until I gave in. Fuck.
“Okay, okay, Sugar.
You be on top.”
Chelion glowed, but then again, that was normal.
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