Elektra's Revenge: Chapter Five

Work

ISMENE

Ismene Senzanombril was blamed for her mother’s death in the Lyfe mine. 

They said the child had stayed alive by drinking her mother’s blood; how else would the girl live in the ground for a week? She was found by another mining crew, sent to recuperate the equipment after the collapse, as no one expected survivors. 

She must be a vampire. 

There was no trial, so the sentence was casual: From the age of seven, Ismene mined for Lyfe in her mother’s place.

It didn’t matter that none of the accusations were true—that the mother’s neck had snapped with the falling debris as she bent over backwards to protect her little girl. She was dead when the endless wait in the dark began. A wait of which Ismene never spoke, as it buried the girl she was.

Ismene knew she had done nothing wrong, but no knowledge could stop her from feeling guilty. Somehow it felt safe; to reject the sentence would turn the pack into a mob.

She was sorry everywhere she went. 

In the morning, in the low room in the Home Tunnel where the miners had their breakfast, she was as sorry to be alive as she was anywhere else. She clung to the end of the child miners’ table. Most of their parents were dead, too, yet she was worse than they were, somehow. They gossiped and played like any children; Ismene sat alone, sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

When they crawled on hands and patched knees into the red soil, the dark holes, the narrow tubes that had collapsed on her before, she was sorry for her terror. When she fainted, she woke up sorry, determined to do better, determined to feel no fear. This became her sacred refrain:

You’ve had enough suffering

The basket is empty

There is no more.

But the dirges the other workers would chant and sing as they crawled through the ore wormed into her soul. She was sorry, she was silent, she never spoke for her sins; but as sorry as she was, the song became her. 

She sang along in her mind with the sad mortal choir all around her, their voices rasping sweet with dust, every foothill and pinnacle of the soundwave clear as bells in her mind. She was sorry, so she always entered the tunnel last, her head held low.

She was sorry at the end of the “day,” many hours later. The planet was locked in orbit so that it always showed the same face to the sun, and the backside was always faced away; but they had to live on that cold side, as the light side of the planet was hot enough to boil their lymph.

And thus the moon became their sun. 

What would seem like night in the City of Heaven was, to the miners, their beautiful and almost endless day. It measured twenty-eight red and rusty Old Earth hours, from the time the City of Heaven rose in the sky—shining worklight down upon the planet, guiding beams of pale fire down the small holes drilled in the tops of the tunnels, shedding silvery moonlight through the cancerous red dust onto the sweaty bodies burrowing and sifting, burrowing and sifting—till the moment when that moon finally slipped gracefully behind the Behemoth Mountains, heralding dinner and a coughing, poisoned sleep—it was all for work, the whole day. 

At night, no one could work.

When the moon began to brush the Behemoths, the stars burned brighter in the darkness; people needed more light, but the nightmares could see all. So at twilight the miners fled to the Home Tunnel and sealed the door with a heavy stone. The cries in the night were awful, but they were music, too.

The Mineshaft Adolfs and Gentil Henris owned the moondown, followed in the wee hour by the Pepperbabies—all small creatures, but their fangs were tipped with jagged barbs or worse. They moved at the speed of nightmares.

And if the last hour of the night caught you outside… well, nobody alive knew what a Cromwell looked like, and nobody wanted to. Not even suicides. Nobody wanted to die mad.

For children whose parents were alive, who were not punished for a death as Ismene was, there was a “school”—an old mine tunnel. It had hardly any dust inside. There, these aristocrats learned to be mine foremen, and when they came of age they were sent to the upper tunnels, where they worked at packaging the ore in black waxed paper and placing it on a simple pulley dumbwaiter.

These rigs were too light to lift an injured miner; this educated class must work the pulleys nearly all day to move the ore to the surface, pound by pound. Those who did well would be taken and trained to process the ore in the refineries that sent up tarry smoke along the Black Sea shore all night, smudging the whole horizon; or they might even learn to pilot the shuttles, ripe with Lyfe, up, up, up to the spectacular moon.

They guided the shuttles back to the red ground, empty, like falling dumbwaiters, and it all began anew.

The singing, too. A few mortals, in these recent years, had been brought to the legendary moon to reward them for their singing. Pulled aside mid-song, a gloved hand emerging from the tunnel wall and taking them by the shoulder, they disappeared into the sky. 

But this was cause for hope only among fools: Who thought they would be so lucky? Who believed they sang so well? What good was a work song, that it should be rewarded? And what fresh hells might await them on the moon? 

Few who made that apotheosis ever returned. Some older miners said the moon was paradise. But some said it was the City of the Adolfs. They said the Mineshaft Adolfs leapt from the shuttles like cat-demons, mutated on the moon, became godlike, demons, Moondolphs—hungry black holes that ate Lyfe ore and made the Lyfedrug kill you even faster, with the gaze of their distorted red eyes.

If the Moondolphs ate the ore, then the Moondolphs might eat singers, too. Maybe that was why the shuttle pilots never spoke.

Ismene did not hope. Ismene was sorry. But the songs became her. They filled her.

Till one day, she could not be sorry anymore. The song escaped her; it swelled in her throat like an tumour and exploded with her breath; she sang! She sang like a thousand suns. Everyone in the tunnel looked back at her in fear. And next came the gloved hand, groping at her burlap bibs in the shadows…

At sixteen, Ismene rode the shuttle wide-eyed to the moon. She learned to read and write.

The next year, she met Elektra. The most beautiful creature she had ever seen.

Creature, as it turned out, might be the correct word.

ELEKTRA

Elektra punched in at the Skull and Platter at three minutes after ten.

Ismene was already working at ten sharp, clad in a perfectly pressed dishwasher’s uniform, bearing her stacks of plates. She appeared like a from the steamy mouth of the dishroom like a hell’s angel, just as her late, flustered friend flopped through the kitchen. 

Elektra tried not to be inappropriately envious of Ismene’s punctuality, and failed.

“Three little minutes!” Elektra hissed. She spitefully flicked the time receipt stapled to her name tag. She would have to wear the scarlet receipt, front and center of her rumpled blouse, for the duration of her shift, and every customer would see the bright red label the time-clock had stamped upon it in bold 200-point bubble letters: 

TIME THIEF. 

Despite the slow erosion of technological civilization, somebody had salvaged automated personnel monitoring.

“‘Time thief’? That’s not stealing, Ismene, that’s missing the bus by half a step! That’s a tear in a salted sea!”

“Those means two opposing things, I thi—”

“—I’M the thief? When these time thieves want us in our uniforms before we’re on the clock!”

“Well, it’s all hardly a drop when you consider eternity,” Ismene sighed. She straightened Elektra’s powder-blue bow tie for her, and peeled a beer-bottle label from the side of her matching newsboy cap.

The caps and bow ties seemed to have been deliberately designed to humiliate the wearer. Even in the humble, overheated dishroom, Ismene had to wear them lest she be spied carrying out a rack of glasses; the steam blew into whorls under the cap’s visor and condensed to drip into her eyes.

“At any rate, you should steer clear of philosophy today. Sergius is having his period.” 

Sergius was their manager. “Still? That boy’s going to bleed to death.” Elektra went back to glaring at her name tag. “I think he makes us wear these just to give the cheap bastards an excuse not to tip.”  She poured herself a drink of water and sucked it down hotly.

“Well, sure.” As they chatted, Ismene distributed the plates, restacked a sloppy pile of mugs, measured brew leaves into the basket of the big hot-drinks machine, and flipped the water switch—much of which was technically Elektra’s job. “I rather think they do that to encourage us to show up on time.” She tried as hard as usual to not regret having gotten Elektra this job in the first place.

“Don’t fuck with me, Ismene. They should be stapling this shit to the brain damaged fucking hippobus driver, if they want to shame any objects into getting anywhere on time… Goddamn Government employees, the only thing they know how to do well is shoot old guinea horses, the turd-drunk sons of—”

“How long have you been taking the hippobus, Elektra? You’re supposed to leave home a couple hours early in case of—well, in case it does what it usually does.”

“Which brings my workday up to a cozy fourteen hours. No thanks, sister.”

Ismene shrugged. “Does it matter whether you’re thankful? You show up on time or you’re going to get fired… I can’t stop it for you, it’s like a law of physics.”

“Fuck physics.”

“I guess you keep saying this job is temporary anyway...”

“I wish! We’re never going to get anything of our own going if we only get three waking hours a day to ourselves.” Well, it’s only three unless we stay up all night getting high, she thought sheepishly. Then it’s a full ten, but I don’t really get anything done except bad sex… 

Was it really so bad? 

Elektra hated all of her thoughts.

“Lay-dies!” They both jumped at the sound of a nasal male screech.

“Oh, by Hermes’ cock...” said Elektra.

“Speak of the Moondolph, and he shall appear.”

SERGIUS

Sergius swung round the corner of the beverage station. “I can hear you whining from over by the watercat tank, girls.” 

“Great, put it in your spank bank and leave us alone.”

“If I had the chance to leave you alone, Elektra, it would make my year.” Sergius laughed at his own joke, then waited till they laughed too.

From the sheen around the crotch of his red uniform pants to his droopy yellow moustache, Sergius played his part in life—as a mild embarrassment to a minor Immortal family—with gusto; he loved low-level management and all its petty irritations, most of which exuded from his own person. He was a rock in the sandals of his inferiors and superiors alike, but since his family owned the Skull and Platter chain, there was nothing anyone could do about it. 

He twirled one long, bowed leg over the other as he halted, tipping forward with a deliberately clumsy theatrical momentum; Sergius had no artistic talent at all, and he knew it. In a city where every jackassed waitress had pretensions, he relished his indifference toward all of the arts and toward his own reputation with equal pleasure.

“While you’re busy having the exact same conversation you had yesterday, I have triple-seated your section, Elektra. You’re welcome. And we’re out of soufflé cups, whatsyourname. So hump your butts.”

“Can—”  

“Elektra, whatever you’re going to say, it doesn’t need to be said.” He grabbed the pan of drink garnishes from Ismene’s hand and shoved it on the wrong ice bed, displacing the cold tisane. “It’s going to be a busy lunch and if you two don’t turn these tables in thirty and keep your station clean and shut your dirty little hole I’m giving you all the plastic-surgery women in round two, ya hear me now?—GO!”

Elektra felt like tackling him, but settled for a comical fist-waggle. He wasn’t as bad as he could have been; he always seemed to be silently begging someone to kill him. 

He hadn’t always been so marvelously unpretentious. 

Sergius began life as a promising singer. To his ears, at any rate. After four years of music college, however, his professors still did not see fit to award him a degree. 

For his family’s sake, the administration cited a blizzard of hemming, hawing excuses—which made him believe the musical establishment felt so threatened by his talent that they were out to gatekeep his career lest They be overshadowed.

He stalked away with his head high; he finally enrolled in bureaucracy studies, to his family’s relief. But inwardly, he was all paranoia and puzzlement—why were They so keen to nip his chances in particular?

He refused to leave his Sophton loft for weeks at a time, and his grades in bureaucracy plummeted. By the end of the semester, his father laid down the law: if he wasn’t going to class, they would render the loft unto his sister unless he agreed to make himself useful in one of their businesses.

After a brief period of deliberate sabotage and disciplinary actions from his duncle the boxer, Sergius was convinced he must make the best of things.

He did have talent, albeit not in the realm he wanted: he turned out to be more than competent at wringing a profit from the Sophton Skull and Platter.

The better he got at it, the more enthused he became. Consequently, the great-great-grandfather who had founded the chain was, in the end, extremely fond of him, prodding the bitch-goddess Hope to rear her ugly head when the paterfamilias contracted depression.

Depression was the only disease that was fatal to Immortals. Paw-Paw began muttering about suicide when Sergius was only 24. Nobody inherited that young! The favored young manager would surely be rich when the bell tolled for Paw-Paw. 

Sergius sort of loved his forebear, as one should—but nor could he slow his hands, when he found them rubbing together in glee.

When the old fellow died, Sergius could hire a band and launch a virtuous indie act. No help from the Government—strictly sheer, bold talent! Surely the magical hand of the Audience would reward his oppressed excellence? His voice was unconventional, that he might admit, but he considered it as possessed of a sparkling uniqueness, darling.

This bright, raw slice of Hope set Sergius up to live the worst day of his life.  

Sergius had never been able to hear himself sing. Recording devices were rare, and under Government control; only the outstanding students of each graduating class in music school were documented for posterity. The tape recorders were brought out like crown jewels each year for graduation.

One of the lucky winners, the mortal Gynt, wound up as a busboy at the Skull after graduation.

Music was half of musical theater, so after the utopian atmosphere of school the entire art was almost as perfectly gate-kept as acting. Gynt put on the occasional well-attended concert, and a handful of times was allowed to be part of a theatrical orchestra, but his fans were too frightened to express their appreciation too vigorously; he bared his soul to polite applause, and then it was back to humping dirty plates—a humble task Gynt nonetheless carried out with suspiciously smug good cheer.

It fooled Sergius, who thought he was stupid and used him as an example of how Elektra ought to feel.

But the judge wasn’t fooled.

Gynt had used his official recording session to watch his professor like a hawk. He memorized the the wall panel in which the recording devices were secreted, and where in the professor’s underskirts she kept the key (he knew she was a pervert). Then at his own graduation party, he let her seduce him while her wife got too hammered to stand.

After she fell asleep, he copied the keys to her office and the vault. From then on he only had to make sure the tape recorders were in the right place each year at graduation; for the rest of the year, he could record his own voice for posterity. 

He had to wait till death for fame. He didn’t want to be shipped to the Syd District for theft of Government property and Hermes knew what else. But after he was safely dead, people would know who he really was under the powder blue bowtie and humiliating beanie hat.

It made them easy to wear.

The “Immortals” could have their silly hour on the stage—after they had all slit their wrists, the name Gynt would live forever!

Granted, it was humiliating to be treated as a half-wit by a no-talent like Sergius. And Gint had a weakness for playing pranks.

Eventually it all became a perfect storm in the wake of which Gynt made sure that Sergius would take his self-titled ‘victimhood’ in silent spite forever more.

Gynt didn’t feel guilty for a moment. Sergius inflicted his singing and his original compositions on the staff daily. Any action thereafter was, morally if not legally speaking, self-defence.

After one particularly heartfelt concerto, Sergius stepped outside in self-satisfaction, to enjoy a cigarette; he was irritated upon his return to find his entire staff huddled in the dishroom round Gynt, who clutched a strange device. They were all giggling, wasting time, as they listened to a recording of some horrible trash—the kind of screeching that was always added to new dance interpretations of Waiting for Godot instead of Sergius’ work. 

He glared at Gint. “Can’t you torture animals on your own time?” The employees giggled harder. “What?” Sergius sneered. He pointed at the exotic, black plastic machine. “Aw, is it personal? Is that your little band you’re always talking about? Sorry if I hurt your widdle feewings, but if that’s supposed to be music, you should work harder at your day job.”

The giggling got nastier. “Can I quote you on that?” smirked the busboy.

“I mean everything I say,” Sergius snorted.

“Good,” said Gynt. ’Cause it’s you.”

“Me? What is me?”

“The recording. This is you, an hour ago. Torturing me,” Gint said with a nasty grin. 

“What are you yammering about, sweetie?”

Gynt gave him one last dose of his sarcastically compliant “idiot” face; the rest laughed harder, almost menacing now. “Sweeeeee-tie,” Gynt drawled—his eyes suddenly glittering with a light that was not only intelligent, but deeply malicious.

Sergius’ eyes began to dart back and forth. “Good Ganymede, are my own employees in on the conspiracy now?! That garbage isn’t me, I—”

Suddenly he stopped dead: words had caught his ear. The device was singing: 

All the trouble and the lies 

I’ll cut you down to size 

And everyone will see

The genius that is meeee, eee, eeeeeee, ee eeeeee…

Sergius’ face turned white. The moon quit spinning beneath his feet and he was flung into lonely space. The lyrics were as intimately familiar as they were heartfelt. But you couldn’t tell they were heartfelt, because the voice got in the way. Nasal, whining, out of tune… it was the voice of a spoiled child. Awful.

But it was his voice. His song.

What? He was a God; how could the Fates have abandoned him? How can this be ME?! Who would give anyone a vocal instrument so worthless and vile? What was he being punished for?! He backed away from the laughing underlings, shaking his head, No no no no no no….

He was absent from work for a few weeks after that.

Gint disappeared, and Sergius returned with a smirk on his face which never seemed to fade.

Ah, well, he never would have gotten his big chance anyway: After centuries of teetotaling, Pa-Paw had discovered Enriched Lunar Likker. He was probably going to outlast Sergius.

Elektra could understand Sergius’ frustration. He had a certain asinine charm, and the way he ran the place kept the seats full. Then again, this was thanks to great business-improving ideas such as the “Time Thief” badges, and she had laughed the hardest when he heard his own voice.

ELEKTRA

To make things worse, when she was hung over, all Elektra could think of when she looked at Ismene was all of the reasons she had given Ismene to hate her.

And today they were working with Katie, who was as dumb as she was friendly—to customers. To other employees, she was an affable shark. Her satisfaction with their simple life drove Elektra up a wall. At the moment, she was giving a table of Goddesses a flirtation routine as nauseating as Sergius’; worse, she seemed sincere. It was easy for her. Elektra wondered what it was like to feel good in your own skin. Hers crawled.

“Oh, don’t worry, honey, you can get away with an exxxxxxtra sauce,” Katie chirped. “It’s a light dipping sauce.”

“Dipping sauce,” Elektra hissed, vaguely interested in why those words made her so angry. “A sauuuuce for you to be dipping your fooooooood in, like a fucking moon raccoon, except you aren’t cute, you dumb food-obsessed animal.”

“And anyway,” Katie the Idiot continued, lying, “you have a spectacular figure! Don’t worry about the fat for a second!”

“FAT!” hissed Elektra. “PERFECT! Bring me the exxxxtra DIPPING SAUCE!”

Ismene blinked at her, loading a tray with water glasses. “I take it you’re hung over?”

“Of course. I am fully aware of the fact that I sound insane standing here talking to myself.”

“That you do.”

“But listen to this idiot!”

Ismene rolled her eyes. Katie was ostentatiously ogling the dumpiest, most egg-looking customer at the table. “I’m not sure whether I’d rather have your figure or have it, darling, if you know what I mean, but I wish I were in there somehow.”

“Oh, you!” said the flattered, blushing mark.

Ismene, who couldn’t argue with Elektra’s bad attitude this time, pantomimed a gag. Elektra snorted appreciatively, attracting a confused glance from Katie, who considered herself a terrific comedienne. 

By chance, everyone in Heaven was a genius of some variety.

Katie was also in theater, mostly as a way to be interesting to potential mates. She was full-blooded mortal, so she was always an extra despite her stunning beauty, but Katie wasn’t bothered; she was so pretty that everybody stared at her when she was standing silently onstage, and that was what she wanted. Memorizing lines wasn’t her bag.

So she was content to dash the genius she assumed she possessed on the rocks of petty social interaction and profit; that’s usually how it goes for people who don’t feel the need for the things they do to live up to their self-esteem. She was tipped well for her imbecilic jokes and nobody mentioned that she was a tease; then she had work as a theater extra almost every weekend. It was hard to believe she was technically living the same life as Ismene and Elektra. She had her own apartment in Sophocles!

Not that Elektra wouldn’t have hated her anyway.

For all her sheen of aggressive cheer, Katie was careful to never make life better for others, unless they were paying her, or it would make her look good.

If she was a genius when it came to customer interaction, Katie’s talent for avoiding side-work was beyond the pale, her timing impeccable. When the silverware needed rolling, she always found a way to go above and beyond for one of her tables as not only a money-maker but an excuse. She treated the other waitresses like dishwashers and the dishwashers like foundling Anihils; she had never taken the garbage out in her life, and she was a champion monkey-wrencher.

Nobody in the restaurant made money till Katie knew she was making the most. 

If the customers ever displeased her, she took it out on the kitchen—yet for all her nasty tantrums, Sergius never got to see her in scapegoat mode. Managers only saw the miracle of the shining Katie, always positive, all of her anger safely dumped on the head of some powerless line cook, a selfish indulgence which Elektra never allowed herself, preferring to chew herself up inside.

People like Katie hogged the stars and clogged the sewers. And they could never understand those creepy negative people. That Elektra, with her bad attitude! How poisonous.

Elektra, to be fair, was particularly indistinguishable from cyanide today.

When she greeted her first table, the second sentence of her scripted spiel escaped her; she was supposed to tell them about the special. She knew it involved a cheap cut of Bigface-fish, “char-broiled to perfection,” she mumbled, “poised on a savory pool of…”

Elektra’s memory short-circuited. No doubt it was a pool of something disgusting. What kind of foul joke was she living in? 

“Sorry, there’s no special today,” she lied.

But silently, remorralike himself, Sergius had come gliding up behind her. He shoved her aside. 

“I’m sorry, folks, we do have the Bigface-fish, on a wonderful pool of konker nut sauce, with your very favorite choice of sides.” 

Elektra turned red; Sergius was deliberately embarrassing her, but also he knew that “choice of sides” was one of the industry jargon-phrases that she couldn’t stand. Was it too much trouble to say “side dish”? And did people have to be so self-satisfied about getting their preferred “choice”? Ohhhh, you got your special choice.  “YOU’RE STILL WORM FOOD,” she wanted to scream. 

“We also have synthetic rice,” Sergius said. 

Still smiling at them, he grabbed Elektra by the waistband of her apron and dragged her, retching from the pressure on her abdomen, backward into the kitchen. “Katie, take table sixteen for Elektra. She doesn’t like their faces.”

“Huh? … OK, great!” Katie fixed her lipstick, smirked at Elektra in a way that was just fake enough that you couldn’t call her sarcastic, and flounced joyously back onto the floor.

Elektra wondered what kind of drugs Katie was on and where she could get some.

“I can’t believe I just had to do that,” Sergius said. “It’s too charitable to call that a rookie mistake. If you were an eighteen-year-old trainee I would have fired you right there... How much did you drink last night? Don’t answer me, I can guess from your stench, you snotty little dipso. You’re lucky I’m a sentimental guy. If I weren’t, you’d be out on your ass.”

She cocked her head at him, not belligerently, and wondered whether he would let her demote herself to dishwasher. It was the only tolerable spot at the Skull… but like anything tolerable, it didn’t pay enough to buy you Lyfe. She glanced at the loathsome specials board one more time – why was it so much harder to memorize than the lines in Macbeth? – and sucked it up. Swim with the sharks, junkie!

 “I am so sorry, Sergius,” she said piously. “I will do better.”

He grunted at her in clear disbelief, but she had recited her line; all he could do was stalk away. “No, seriously!” she yelled after him.