The Slow

Glasses clinked as the guests dressed in white floated around me. I stared at the bubbles in my glass as they slowly dissipated. First budding on the side, growing until the laws of the universe took over and it rose floating to the top. Each reaching their demise with a fizzing pop. I never drank on the job.

The host of the gathering stepped up onto the stage. Made of stone, over two hundred years old. New blooms colored the backdrop behind him. Rumor had it that every plant had been replaced in preparation for this event. Each white lily and rose a new addition especially for tonight. For what I was about to do. Restoring the natural law of the universe one body at a time.

“Amici, Perenti, Friends, Family!” He called out to the hundreds clustered in his gardens. “We have gathered here tonight to celebrate,” He paused, “Well me.”

The crowd laughed as he pressed his hand to his white vest. The pearl suit jacket discarded early into the night.

“Seeing you all here makes it almost bittersweet,” He was charming in that old Italian way. Easy smile, tanned skin, a glint in his eye that said, we could have some fun together.

“Before The Slow, people were only able to gather after death. Now thanks to that unknown scientist, we are able to gather to say goodbye.” Three women at the front began to cry. Silent tears dripping down perfect wrinkle free cheeks. One of them was his mother. She hadn’t aged since she was nineteen. I remembered her. As a child she played in my garden. She did not remember me.

She should be storming the stage, pulling him away and to his senses. Instead, she shed demure tears. Not enough to make the mascara run.

My host’s hair was dyed an unnatural shade of grey. Odd scars framed his eyes and mouth. Wrinkles, I realized. He had surgery to imitate wrinkles. Others surrounding me had employed different effects. Iridescent Makeup applied over scrunched up faces, color free cracks showing beneath the peacock hues. See I have more lines than you.

“I have seen enough from this world. I remember laying these stones.” He stamped his foot on the ground. His eyes for a moment seemed so old in his otherwise young face.

This was not the first speech of the night, but rather the last. The Eulogy’s had been said, the jokes, the touching stories recited.

“Il mio angelo della morte” He gestured towards where I stood in the crowd, it parted like the sea.

He just called me his angel of death. I considered putting it on my business card.

“Never has death looked so good.”

Like the other guests I was dressed in white. But where their outfits favored more modern geometric designs, mine was different. Strips of fabric had been wrapped around me. They wove around my neck, crossing over my bust, pinching in at my waist and draping to the floor. Separate pieces crossed around my arms, ending in gloves. Each a stylized version of old hunters forearm guards. The energy weapon on my back looked like a giant bow. If you looked up the Greek goddess Artemus, I would look like her. Dramatic. But he had paid for the premium package.

Leaving my glass on the table I made my way to the stage.

A man stepped out of the crowd then, lending me his hand as I ascended the stairs. One look at his face and I stumbled.

His hair a dark black. Soft when you ran your fingers through it. Blue eyes like the Aegean see. I hadn’t seen Katashi in over a century. And there he was, white blazer, tight smile.

My husband.

I wanted to slap that smile off his face.

I pulled my hand back from his, making it up the few steps on my own.

The Host took my arm, displaying me to the crowd like a trophy.

“I have given a lot of thought to my last words,” He pressed a kiss to my knuckles. At the front of the crowd Katashi downed the rest of his whisky.

“Should they be comical, profound?” He played to the audience. “But I have settled on a simple truth, I am ready.”

He bowed to me with a flourish. I took my place at the back of the stage. He stepped towards the front.

Men and women swarmed, gathering behind him as I raised my weapon. They would get splattered with his blood. Of course they would. Its why they wore white. Katashi moved silently out of their way. My eyes tracked him, before snapping back to my employer. My target. My willing victim. What did it say about me that this was my favorite part. The look in their eyes, before I shot them. I looked for it. The dawning realization. This is happening. I chose this.

I pulled back the string, a phantom arrow glowing in its grasp. Waiting. Waiting. I thought of the maid he put in the hospital when she refused his advances. The families his company made homeless for the sake of Human Advancement. Starving but unable to die. I waited.

There it was. The change of heart. It cut across his face like lightning.

With a breath I let go. His head exploded in a fountain of red. Drenching those behind him in the fresh stink of iron. His guests exclaimed with glee.

Humanity. How far we had come.

I stepped to the body. Examining the damage. Keeping a count in my head. Thirty seconds. Forty.

Where his genial smile had rested moments ago there was nothing but the stump of a neck. Still, I counted. The Slow sometimes had difficulty letting go.

“It’s been five minutes,” said Katashi beside me, checking his battered Rolex watch.

You really should replace that thing. The comment was on the tip of my tongue. Old habits.

The silence hung between us. Heavy in the cool night air. He hadn’t changed. Of course he hadn’t. He couldn’t. There were no laugh lines anymore. No naturally greying hair, or watery old eyes. Sharp as ever. His eyes traveled my face.

“The last time I saw you in a white gown,” he murmured almost to himself. “Fia,” The nickname flared in my chest. An old wound returning. I balanced my bow against the centuries old stone. Deactivated. I would need to clean it before the blood spatter stained the light wood. I needed to hand out my business card tonight. Needed to expand if I was to have any chance of fixing my mistake. Needed to think about anything besides the man standing beside me. Or the fact that he still wore his wedding ring. If he saw my own bare hands. He didn’t mention it.

“How you have changed,” he took the handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to my cheek. It came away red.

“My wife wouldn’t hurt a fly.” To anyone else it would sound like an insult. But the way he was looking at me. Hope danced in his eyes. A fragile, flickering flame. But hope for what? If he wanted to woman he had left all those centuries ago he would be disappointed.

“Fly's don’t pay me to kill them,” I said. I snagged a glass from a waiter floating by. The honeyed liquor seared my throat as it went down.

“Oh, may I?” A woman asked, snatching at the handkerchief in his hand. Small and blonde. She had avoided most of the carnage. Her dress had only the slightest spray of blood. Poor thing. All that white and no brain matter to decorate it.

“Unless you want it?” Her eyes danced between us. I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat and, with practice, pushed back the revulsion in my eyes.

Katashi clenched his fist around the cloth. Unable to keep the disdain from his face.

A small child clung to her leg. My heart nearly punched its way out of my chest. Children were rare these days. They took too long to raise. Were too expensive. Too much trouble. His big brown eyes fixated on Katashi’s hand.

“Have it,” I said meeting my husband’s gaze, “We have no need of it.”

His hand relaxed and allowed her to pull the bloody cloth away.

She handed it to her child.

“So cute,” I said, as the child stuck the bloody material in his mouth. My hands clenched at my side but she didn’t notice.

“He just started walking, and he’s only twelve!”

“So advanced for his age!” I cooed. Katashi turned away.

The woman ushered the baby off, content with her prize. We watched as they made their way through the blood-soaked crowd.

“How can you stand it?” he asked me, “This world we made.”

I sighed. Over a century and we were still having the same conversation.

“You know I heard that before The Slow children would learn to walk at two years old.” He imitated the gossip frequently heard online and across drunken dinner tables worldwide. “I heard it was one! That’s ridiculous nippers can’t even lift their heads at one. They were considered fully grown at eighteen. Now you are just talking shit. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer-”

“Are you done conversing with yourself or should I leave?” I asked.

He smiled. One sided. For the first time in a century, it reached his eyes. Something was different.

“I work at CAHE,” he said it like Ka He, the Center for Advancement of Human Endeavor.

“The Lab?” I asked. His eyes were weary. Perhaps I hadn’t changed as much as he had hoped. My hand tightened around my glass. I needed another.

“So, in this lab. What do you do?” My tone was clipped.

“Can I show you- Don’t,” he said, grabbing my hand as I turned to leave. “Fia,” he paused “Sofie, please.”

When I turned my head, our faces were close. Our lips an inch apart.

I nailed him with my gaze, “I said I would never step in a lab again.”

He swore in Japanese. “We were trying to save our son.”

“We were failing to save our son.”

Silence sunk over us again. An oppressive weight scented by rose blooms and drying blood.

He did not let me go. My eyes moved away of their own accord.

“When you didn’t come back, I thought you had found a way to go with him,” I finally said.

“I tried,” He admitted. He did not cry, or weep or scream, the tears had run out long ago.

“So did I,” His eyes met mine then and I saw that ocean that had drowned us long ago. He was still barely breathing. Or perhaps like me he had grown gills. And no longer tried to swim to the surface of it, no longer tried to find the light.

The evening breeze blew in, chilling my skin. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it around my shoulders. Old habits.

“If they knew we were responsible for this. Would they love us or hate us?” He scanned the crowd and settled on the child. “Would why we did it matter? If this is the result?”

Endings gave things meaning. Since The Slow, endings were in short supply.

“Nothing matters in this world. Not anymore.”

“What if we could make it matter again?”

“Katashi,” I didn’t know if his name was meant to be a warning or a plea. It came out somewhere between the two.

“How old do you think everyone here is?”

It was a rich gathering. Besides the child I’d be surprised if anyone was under a hundred. He was changing the subject.

“I am arrogant enough to want my own accomplishments. I'm demonstrating my work tonight.” He reached into the jacket that he had placed over my shoulders and pulled out a slim remote. No more than a black box with an ominous red button.

“Katashi,” this time his name was a warning.

“The Slow was your brainchild, my darling. Let me introduce The Quick.”

There was no flourish. He did not grandstand or make a lengthy speech. That wasn’t his style. He pressed the button and turned to the crowd.

At first there was nothing. Then they started to melt. Skin sagged from faces, muscles withered. Dark marks bloomed across fair skin like mold. They were aging. Hair fell from scalps in chunks, cataracts faded young eyes and they began to drop. One by one, arthritic fragile bones breaking under their weight. Nobody screamed. It was too quick. They fell. Skin turning grey, dry. Dust. Each reaching their demise with a weary sigh.

I pressed shaking hands to my face as tears pooled in my eyes. I laughed.

Katashi stood firm next to me. A smile grew slowly over his face before falling flat. His eyes glued to something over my shoulder.

A small boy stood in the middle of the crowd. Before The Slow you would have guessed he was twelve. Clutched in his hand was a bloody handkerchief

So advanced for his age.

My Jaime had been nine. Next to him the desiccated remains of his mother blew in the wind.

With slow steps I descended the stairs and approached the crying boy. Draping the jacket over his shivering shoulders. He clutched me tight as I lead him back to the stage.

Katashi held out his hand. That hope flickering back in his eyes.

I smiled and took his hand.

Restoring the natural law of the universe one party at a time.