Skin Folk (29 page)

She fought her way out of the clinging cloth to sit up in bed. The effort made her pant. She twisted the heavy mass of her
braids up off the nape of her neck and sat for a while, feeling the sweat trickle down her scalp. She grimaced at the memory
of last night.

Cleve wasn’t there. Out for a jog, likely. “Yeah, that’s how you sulk,” she muttered. “In silence.” Issy longed to know that
he cared strongly about something, to hear him speak with any kind of force, the passion of his anger, the passion of his
love. But Cleve kept it all so cool, so mild. Wrap it all in fake skin, hide it inside.

The morning sun had thrown a violent, hot bar of light across her bed. Heat. Tangible, almost. Crushed against every surface
of her skin, like drowning in feathers. Issy shifted into a patch of shade. It made no difference. Fuck. A drop of sweat trickled
down her neck, beaded a track down her left breast to drip off her nipple and splat onto her thigh. The trail of moisture
it had left behind felt cool on her skin. Issy watched her aureole crinkle and the nipple stiffen in response. She shivered.

A twinkle of light caught her eye. The closet sliding door was open. The wetsuits, thin as shed snakeskin, were still humping
each other beside their storage boxes. “Nasty!” Issy exclaimed. She jumped up from the bed, pushed the closet door shut with
a bang. She left the room, ignoring the rhythmic thumping noise from inside the closet. Cleve was supposed to have discharged
them; it could just wait until he deigned to come home again.

Overloading, crackling violently, the ganger stepped back. Issy nearly wept with release from its jolt. Her knees felt watery.
Was Cleve still breathing? She thought she could see his chest moving in little gasps. She hoped. She had to keep the ganger
distracted from him, he might not survive another shock. Teeth chattering, she said to the ganger, “You melt the sugar and
butter—the salty butter’s the best—in milk, then you add cocoa powder and boil it all to hard crack stage…” Issy wet her lips
with her tongue. The day’s heat was enveloping her again. “Whip in some more butter,” she continued. “You always get it on
your fingers, that melted, salty butter. It will slide down the side of your hand, and you lick it off—so you whip in some
more butter, and real vanilla, the kind that smells like mother’s breath and cookies, not the artificial shit, and you dump
it onto a plate, and it sets, and you have it sweet like that; chocolate fudge.”

The sensuality in her voice seemed to mesmerise the ganger. It held still, rapt. Its inner lightnings cooled to electric blue.
Its mouth hole yawned, wide as two of her fists.

As she headed to the kitchen, Issy made a face at the salty dampness beneath her swaying breasts and the curve of her belly.
Her thighs were sticky where they moved against each other. She stopped in the living room and stood, feet slightly apart,
arms away from her sides, so no surface of her body would touch any other. No relief. The heat still clung. She shoved her
panties down around her ankles. The movement briefly brought her nose to her crotch, a whiff of sweaty muskiness. She straightened
up, stepped out of the sodden pretzel of cloth, kicked it away. The quick movement had made her dizzy. She swayed slightly,
staggered into the kitchen.

Cleve had mopped up the broken glass and gluey candy from yesterday evening, left the pot to soak. The kitchen still smelt
of chocolate. The rich scent tingled along the roof of Issy’s mouth.

The fridge hummed in its own aura, heat outside making cold inside. She needed water. Cold, cold. She yanked the fridge door
open, reached for the water jug, and drank straight from it. The shock of chilly liquid made her teeth ache. She sucked water
in, tilting the jug high so that more spilled past her gulping mouth, ran down her jaw, her breasts, her belly. With her free
hand, she spread the coolness over the pillow of her stomach, dipping down into crinkly pubic hair, then sliding up to heft
each breast one at a time, sliding cool fingers underneath, thumb almost automatically grazing each nipple to feel them harden
slightly at her touch. Better. Issy put the jug back, half full now.

At her back, hot air was a wall. Seconds after she closed the fridge door, she’d be overheated and miserable again. She stood
balanced between ice and heat, considering.

She pulled open the door to the icebox. It creaked and protested, jammed with frost congealed on its hinges. The fridge was
ancient. Cleve had joked with the landlady that he might sell it to a museum and use the money to pay the rent on the apartment
for a year. He’d only gotten a scowl in return.

The fridge had needed defrosting for weeks now. Her job. Cleve did the laundry and bathroom and kept them spotlessly clean.
The kitchen and the bedroom were hers. Last time she’d changed the sheets was about the last time she’d done the fridge. Cleve
hadn’t complained. She was waiting him out.

Issy peered into the freezer. Buried in the canned hoarfrost were three ice cube trays. She had to pull at them to work them
free of hard-packed freezer snow. One was empty. The other two contained a few ice cubes between them.

The ganger took a step towards her. It paddled its hand in the black hole of its mouth. Issy shuddered, kept talking: “Break
off chunks of fudge, and is sweet and dark and crunchy; a little bit hot if you put the pepper flakes in, I never tried that
kind, and is softer in the middle, and the butter taste rise to the roof of your mouth, and the chocolate melt all over your
tongue; man, you could almost come, just from a bite.”

Issy flung the empty tray into the sink at the other end of the kitchen. Jangle-crash, displacing a fork, which leapt from
the sink, clattered onto the floor. The thumping from inside the bedroom closet became more frenetic. “Stop that,” Issy yelled
in the direction of the bedroom. The sound became a rapid drubbing. Then silence.

Issy kicked the fridge door closed, took the two ice cube trays into the bathroom. Even with that short walk, the heat was
pressing in on her again. The bathroom was usually cool, but today the tiles were warm against her bare feet. The humidity
of the room felt like wading through spit.

Issy plugged the bathtub drain, dumped the sorry handful of ice in. Not enough. She grabbed up the mop bucket, went back to
the kitchen, fished a spatula out of the sink, rinsed it. She used the spatula to dig out the treasures buried in the freezer.
Frozen cassava, some unidentifiable meat, a cardboard cylinder of grape punch. She put them on a shelf in the fridge. Those
excavated, she set about shoveling the snow out of the freezer, dumping it into her bucket. In no time she had a bucketful,
and she’d found another ice cube tray, this one full of fat, rounded lumps of ice. She was a little cooler now.

Back in the bathroom, she dumped the bucket of freezer snow on top of the puddle that had been the ice cubes. Then she ran
cold water, filled the bathtub calf-deep, and stepped into it.

Sssss…
The shock of cold feet zapped straight through Issy’s body to her brain. She bent—smell of musk again—picked up a handful
of the melting snow, and packed it into her hair. Blessed, blessed cold. The snow became water almost instantly and dribbled
down her face. Issy licked at a trickle of it. She picked up another handful of snow, stuffed it into her mouth. Crunchy-cold
freon ice, melting on her tongue. She remembered the canned taste from childhood, how her dad would scold her for eating freezer
snow. Her mother would say nothing, just wipe Issy’s mouth dry with a silent, long-suffering smile.

Issy squatted in the bathtub. The cold water lapped against her butt. Goose bumps pimpled the skin of her thighs. She sat
down, hips pressing against either side of the tub. An ice cube lapped against the small of her back, making her first arch
to escape the cold, then lean back against the tub with a happy shudder. Snow crunched between her back and the ceramic surface.
Issy spread her knees. There was more snow floating in the diamond her legs made. In both hands, she picked up another handful,
mashed it into the V of her crotch. She shivered at the sensation and relaxed into the cool water.

The fridge made a zapping, farting noise, then resumed its juddering hum. Damned bucket of bolts. Issy concentrated on the
deliciously shivery feel of the ice melting in her pubic hair.

“Only this time,” Issy murmured, “the fudge ain’t set. Just sat there on the cookie tin, gluey and brown. Not hard, not quite
liquid, you get me? Glossy-shiny dark brown where it pooled, and rising from it, that chocolate-butter-vanilla smell. But
wasted, ’cause it wasn’t going to set.”

The television clicked on loudly with an inane laugh track. Issy sat up. “Cleve?” She hadn’t heard him come in. With a popping
noise, the TV snapped off again. “Cleve, is you?”

Issy listened. Nope, nothing but the humming of the fridge. She was alone. These humid August days made all their appliances
schizo with static. She relaxed back against the tub.

“I got mad,” Issy told the ganger. “It was hot in the kitchen and there was cocoa powder everywhere and lumps of melting butter,
and I do all that work ’cause I just wanted the taste of something sweet in my mouth and the fucker wouldn’t set!

“I backhanded the cookie tin. Fuck, it hurt like I crack a finger bone. The tin skidded across the kitchen counter, splanged
off the side of the stove, and went flying.”

Issy’s skin bristled with goose bumps at the sight of the thing that walked in through the open bathroom door and stood, arms
hanging. It was a human-shaped glow, translucent. Its edges were fuzzy. She could see the hallway closet through it. Eyes,
nose, mouth were empty circles. A low crackling noise came from it, like a crushed Cheezies bag. Issy could feel her breath
coming in short, terrified pants. She made to stand up, and the apparition moved closer to her. She whimpered and sat back
down in the chilly water.

The ghost-thing stood still. A pattern of coloured lights flickered in it, limning where spine, heart, and brain would have
been, if it had had those. It did have breasts, she saw now, and a dick.

She moved her hand. Water dripped from her fingertips into the tub. The thing turned its head towards the sound. It took a
step. She froze. The apparition stopped moving too, just stood there, humming like the fridge. It plucked at its own nipples,
pulled its breasts into cones of ectoplasm. It ran hands over its body, then over the sink, bent down to thrust its arms right
through the closed cupboard doors. It dipped a hand into the toilet bowl. Sparks flew, and it jumped back. Issy’s scalp prickled.
Damn, the thing was electrical, and she was sitting in water! She tried to reach the plug with her toes to let the water out.
Swallowing whimpers, she stretched a leg out: Slow, God, go slow, Issy. The movement sent a chunk of melting ice sliding along
her thigh. She shivered. She couldn’t quite reach the plug and if she moved closer to it, the movement would draw the apparition’s
attention. Issy breathed in short, shallow bursts. She could feel her eyes beginning to brim. Terror and the chilly water
were sending tremors in waves through her.

What the fuck was it? The thing turned towards her. In its quest for sensation, it hefted its cock in its hand. Inserted a
finger into what seemed to be a vagina underneath. Let its hands drop again. Faintly, Issy could make out a mark on its hip,
a circular shape. It reminded her of something…

Logo, it was the logo of the Senstim people who’d invented the wetsuits!

But this wasn’t a wetsuit, it was like some kind of, fuck, ball lightning. She and Cleve hadn’t discharged their wetsuits.
She remembered some of the nonsense words that were in the warning on the wetsuit storage boxes: “Energizing electrostatic
charge,” and “Kirlian phenomenon.” Well, they hadn’t paid attention, and now some kind of weird get of both suits was rubbing
itself off in their bathroom. Damn, damn, damn Cleve and his toys. Sobbing, shivering, Issy tried to toe at the plug again.
Her knee banged against the tub. The suit-ghost twitched towards the noise. It leaned over the water and dabbed at her clutching
toes. Pop-crackle sound. The jolt sent her leg flailing like a dying fish. Pleasure crackled along her leg, painfully intense.
Her knee throbbed and tingled, ached sweetly. Her thigh muscles shuddered as though they would tear free. The jolt slammed
into her crotch and Issy’s body bucked. She could hear her own grunts. She was straddling a live wire. She was coming to death.
Her nipples jutted long as thumbs, stung like they’d been dipped in ice. Her head was banging against the wall with each deadly
set of contractions. Issy shouted in pain, in glory, in fear. The suit-ghost leapt back. Issy’s butt hit the floor of the
tub, hard. Her muscles were twitching spasmodically. She’d bitten the inside of her mouth. She sucked in air like sobs, swallowed
tinny blood.

The suit-ghost was swollen, bloated, jittering. Its inner lightning bolts were going mad. If it touched her again, it might
overload completely. If it touched her again, her heart might stop.

Issy heard the sound of the key turning in the front door.

“Iss? You home?”

“No. Cleve.” Issy hissed under her breath. He mustn’t come in. But if she shouted to warn him, the suit-ghost would touch
her again.

Cleve’s footsteps approached the bathroom. “Iss? Listen, did you drain the wet—”

Like filings to a magnet, the suit-ghost inclined towards the sound of his voice.

“Don’t come in, Cleve; go get help!”

Too late. He’d stuck his head in, grinning his open, friendly grin. The suit-ghost rushed him, plastered itself along his
body. It got paler, its aura-lightnings mere flickers. Cleve made a choking noise and crashed to the floor, jerking. Issy
levered herself out of the bath, but her jelly muscles wouldn’t let her stand. She flopped to the tiles. Cleve’s body was
convulsing, horrible noises coming from his mouth. Riding him like a duppy, a malevolent spirit, the stim-ghost grew paler
with each thrash of his flailing body. Its colour patterns started to run into each other, to bleach themselves pale. Cleve’s
energy was draining it, but it was killing him. Sucking on her whimpers, Issy reached a hand into the stim-ghost’s field.
Her heart went off like a machine gun. Her breathing wouldn’t work. The orgasm was unspeakable. Wailing, Issy rolled away
from Cleve, taking the ghostthing with her. It swelled at her touch, its colours flared neon-bright, out of control. It flailed
off her, floated back towards Cleve’s more cooling energy.