The Kindest of Them All
Lucifer can't take a joke.
One would assume the ultimate trickster can swallow a taste of his own medicine. I told him God “blessed me with his almighty scrotum” and he got super jealous as any decent husband ought to. Mr. Morning Star confronted God with condemning words and threats. I witnessed a whole lot of erratic wing flapping and finger pointing. The pretty boy’s hair gel and body oil was flinging everywhere. God said, “I smite thee” and the angel lost his wings as well as his holy underwear model contract. I divorced him faster than he could crash land on Earth.
The rest is, of course, biblical history.
I’ve moved on to more earthly dwellings since then.
My most recent main squeeze, Spencer Benson, is a real catch. He’s more wholesome than a slice of Wonder Bread from a pristine White mid-American nuclear family. My precious Spence and I are being chauffeured in an electric SUV with dark tinted windows. Our destination is a high-class restaurant where the chair covers are made from tiger leather and meals are cooked by actual human chefs with published articles in Bon Appetit.
The coastal morning mist and pollution from surrounding refineries blend to form a depressing sepia filter. Sweat beads on my chest and moistens my modest floral dress. The air is metallic, humid, and runs through the respiratory system like a fresh breath of burnt tobacco smoke. These congested streets are adding to the already dense atmosphere. The driver turns on the radio and tunes to the local news. A cheeky reporter asks a climate expert about the failures of clean energy initiatives. The reporter goes on about Regression Era politics, loss of incentives for energy companies to adapt, and people moving inland during the rise of sea of levels.
Humanity’s woes are nothing but a blanket of white noise to me. My sole concern is the fact it’s 32 degrees Celsius in an East Coast city in fucking January. The streets are lively in a bad way. A long-haired cyclist wears a tank top with the face of President Humbert crossed out. He yells passionate gibberish out of his face. I roll the window down as we approach a stoplight to humor him, or rather, myself.
“Impeach Humbert! Impeach Humbert!” he chants.
I rest my chin on my palm and watch the guy cycle over an empty beer bottle. He falls on his ass. Underneath the skin is vein-less synthetic muscle. He curses himself, or rather, the voice projecting out of the thing curses himself. This individual complains about being a cheap-ass and buying an early version of Intratopia’s SITTM: Stick-it-to-the-man Bot.
The SITTM bot gets up and rides onto Hamilton Street where the heart of the protests are raging on. Thousands of angry SITTMs chant the words “impeach him.” They hold up signs reading “We Are the Damaged” and posters in Mount Rushmore style with classic male heroes such as Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and the Botox-faced Humbert. The driver makes a left after the light and continues towards the restaurant. Some of the fauxtesters check their wristphones. They jump around, high-five each other, and raise their energy drink cans in the air.
“My Intra points are skyrocketing, man!” One of them scrolls through his wristphone.
“I’m at twenty-five hundred already,” another adds.
“Hell yeah! Let’s keep it up,” a woman says.
They drop their cans on a nearby sidewalk and rejoin the protest party. A nearby storekeeper throws up his hands at the sight of all the trash surrounding his store. Spencer sighs out loud and rests his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m at odds with the world we live in,” he says.
I grab his hand and smile.
“How so, детка?”
I wipe the evil-eyed smug off my face, roll the window up, and turn to my beloved Spencer.
“At one end,” he says, “we have Kalawati’s Intratopia with her chokehold on society. On the other end…”
“Other end?”
“The Professor and his violent extremists…Shift Society.”
I beam at him like a schoolgirl.
“Oh,” I start, “you know me, детка. I’m just simple girl. I don’t know about politics.”
“You don’t have an opinion in all this?”
“People have ahh…right to express opinions.” I shrug. “Listen, детка.” I caress his cheek with the back of my hand. “You do enough good for society. I mean, hello? You found cure for cancer. You’re ангел.”
“Kat, I had an entire team of highly talented biochemists behind me.”
“You’re mastermind behind all.”
“You’ve been so supportive.” He kisses my cheek. “All of our accomplishments are truly thanks to your love.”
“Aww, you’re so sweet, детка.”
The driver pulls into the Romanesque restaurant with pillars and shit.
“Ready to eat, hun?” He smiles.
“Always.”
Spencer exits, and I wait for him to open the door for me, like a proper gentleman should. We walk with interlocked fingers to the entrance.
Look at us—the perfect couple.
The world-renowned scientist Spencer Benson and me, his Russian trophy mate Ekaterina Ivanovna Vinovich. Ekaterina—who per pundits on right-wing news outlets—has the body of a supermodel and the IQ of a wax model. They’re right, of course. I’m nothing more than a brainless hot steaming piece of supportive ass with broken English. Slavic women are the consolation prizes for rich American men, second only to submissive Asians. This has been true since antiquity.
We stroll into the restaurant and take our reserved seats.
“It was very kind of Pastor Thompson to pay for breakfast.” I watch the male server pour the pure water into our glasses.
“He’s a humble man,” Spence says.
Spence gazes at me…at my outer beauty (since things like “inner beauty” and “wonderful personality” are compensating traits for not having what really matters, zero gag reflexes.)
“There is problem, детка?” I flutter a glance away from him. “Your eyes send shivers down my thighs.”
“Sorry. It’s just…gosh. I still can’t believe how lucky I am to have met a beautiful woman like you. Those big green eyes of yours are just so mesmerizing.”
“Spence, stop.” My cheeks go flush. “You’re making me feel like nerdy schoolgirl with glasses and braces.”
“Oh, I just adore you when you blush!”
“Let’s eat! I can eat whole salmon with my salad this time.”
We take our time ordering and share unpleasant pleasantries. A singular holo-tv hovers from the corner of the VIP room. It’s muted, but I can see the news reels below. One reads:
KALAWATI CHAUDHARY SET TO INVEST 25 BILLION INTO NEW “INTRATOPIA BANK”.
The next headline reads:
RENOWNED CRISPR SCIENTIST SPENCER BENSON SET TO SPEAK ATWOOD CHURCH WITH PASTOR PAUL THOMPSON.
A picture of Spence is at the bottom right corner. The man is certainly no looker. He’s got like five internal bumps on his ginormous Greco-European nose. And bushy eyebrows. He rocks half bald, greying hair, with a beer-belly (even though he doesn’t drink) that requires him to lift the fat just to see his cock, even when erected. I bullshit not: He can’t see his erected four-inch pecker standing straight. What Spencer lacks in length, he makes up for in girth with a cock wider than a Campbell’s soup can. I often reevaluate my life decisions as I’m sucking him off and his lion’s mane of pubes grazes the tip of my nose ever-so-subtly.
I’m even more reflective when I’m shouting pornstar clichés in Russian while he’s fucking me fat-Elvis-pelvis-pump style. To his credit, however, Spence doesn’t lock himself inside a NueroPod and use a perfect avatar in lieu of his actual self.
“I think I’ll have an organic salad as well.” He taps his finger on the gold-lined menu.
I spit up water in laughter.
“Oh, Мне жаль.” I rub my chest. “Went down wrong pipe.”
“I need to get back in shape.”
He forces me to swallow a rush of laughter because of his key word “back” in shape.
The server returns with a sliced baguette as we order our salads. I pick up an organic, gluten-free, carb-free, pesticide-free, high fructose corn syrup-free, non-genetically modified, cage-free, and free-range piece of bread and take a bite. It tastes like freshly printed copy paper.
At least its fluffy.
“I just love cell bread!” I chew in inauthentic glee. “You get fluffy of bread and no fatty carbs!”
“I really need to develop your palette.” Spence inspects the bread. “Maybe I’m just old-fashioned.”
“Or just old.”
“Kat, c’mon,” he frowns.
“Just kidding!” I say with smiling eyes.
I catch a glimpse of people through the glass double-door walk into the restaurant. A white haze floats behind the group. I’m thinking my eyes are blurry, so I rub them and blink several times. The server brings our salads and sets down the plates. In front of me is an inch-thick Alaskan-style lab-grown salmon filet resting on a bed of spinach and kale.
“Salmon for breakfast.” The waiter announces. “The breakfast of champions!”
“Riiight,” I nod.
The waiter gives me a stupid cheerful look. I stare at him for exactly four seconds and twitch my lip which translates to “dude, get your stupid-ass out of here”.
“Guess I’ll be on my way then. Enjoy your meals!” He turns and leaves.
I side-eye him and see that white air-smear once more. “The fuck is that?” I say under my breath.
“What was that, hun?” Spence leans in.
“Spence, do you see hazy white object there?” I point toward the entry, near a podium.
“Err, well.” He takes out his bifocals from his button-up pocket and puts them on. “No, nope. I can’t see what you’re describing.”
I must be fucked in the head.
Well, this is a first for me. Is that a goddamn ghost? Did I just say ghost? As curious White people say in horror-thriller flicks, “I must investigate.” No, no. What am I thinking? I’m going to walk in the restroom and get my left areola ripped off by a monstrous and possessed Japanese girl.
“Anyways,” I wave off my anxiety, “shall we dig into this salad?”
“Of course! By the way, Kat,” he points at my plate with his fork, “is it just me, or does your plate look a bit…”
I try to focus on what he’s saying but I can’t.
Someone’s staring at me.
My fucking temple is on fire. I can feel the eyes like a goddamn sunray. Some phantom stands at the entry. My peripheral vision confirms it. I thrust my head to the right and see it. It’s some figure wearing an ankle-length and deep hooded white coat. The coat has a big golden nautilus spiral as a logo in the center. Its head is sunk into the hood, so I can’t tell the gender. The cryptid freak then walks, or rather, hovers into a restroom.
“I think I see someone…это пиздец.” I get up and grab my purse. “Be right back.”
I open the glass door and pursue the spy with a fast power-walk. Upon entering one of the last bastions of liberal policy, a gender-neutral restroom, I spot the attendant and two transwomen.
“Aye, white figure walks in here?” I fix my eyes on the stalls. “You see?”
“Everyone in here is a white ‘figure’, including me,” says the butch attendant. “You might wanna be more specific before throwing out an insulting term.”
“No, you Food Network reject.” I tap my fingers on my thighs. “Tall person in long-ass white coat. No way you could miss it.”
“You’re crazy, lady,” one of the urinal chicks says, zipping up her leather pants.
“And you’re walking ball of confusion.” I push open one stall after another. “Where hell is it?”
“Who the hell are you calling an ‘it’, huh?” the other bitch says.
“Hey, hey, take it easy!” the attendant reaches out to grab me.
My kneejerk reaction for when I’m unexpectedly grabbed is to chop a motherfucker in the throat, which I do to Ellen Degenerate here. She drops to the floor while holding her neck and coughing up blood. The first urinal hoe grabs my shoulder to accomplish I don’t know what, and I end up head-butting her or they or them in the jaw. She backs into the other they-person finishing up her tinkle.
“Eбанутьй, пиздаы!” I punch one of the elegant mirrors and crack it, cutting my knuckles in the process. “Блядь! Fuck! Argh!”
It’s not the pain that has me stricken, it’s the fact I must take out my frustration on an innocent mirror and not on the faces of these oblivious people. I leave the restroom and grab a well-placed and timed bottle of vodka off a counter near the kitchen. Back inside the restroom I go, pouring a bottle of cheap Russian water onto my hand and taking several swigs in the process. The two identifiers have recovered and are calling out to the unresponsive attendant who’s still on the ground. They don’t yet recognize it, but the dear restroom hostess has choked on her own blood and is glossy-eyed dead on the ground.
I’m not super strong—bitch must have had a preexisting condition.
How pathetic.
“Ma’am, ma’am, are you alright?” They urge, shaking the attendant.
It’s a matter of time before they recognize homegirl is dead. And it’s a matter of time before more people come into the restroom. I need to make a move and fast. The last thing I need right now is for news headlines to read: Ekaterina Ivanovna Vinovich, girlfriend of famous scientist, Spencer Benson, murders a lesbian restroom attendant in upscale restaurant. They’ll lynch me for such a “hate” crime. It’ll be at this point where I must confess to everyone and say, “I’m not a homophobe” and “I’ve eaten plenty of pussy” to clear any misunderstandings.
I make one of the smartest and most well-thought-out decisions in my life: Remove a three-inch pocketknife from the stocking underneath my dress and slice the throats of the two survivors. The shock takes them by surprise, and they begin squirming around like vermin while holding their necks. It seems like they’re Intratopia Ava users because last time I checked humans don’t bleed blue or have shiny aqua-colored neck flesh. After their last gasp, I drag each corpse into separate stalls, prop them up on the toilet seats, and shut the flimsy doors.
“Nothing to see here,” I mumble, locking each stall, “they’ve got bad case of diarrhea.”
I remove my hair pin and unleash my wavy locks as I exit into the hall. The end of the pin is a fingernail size device which I place in my ear then tap twice. A tingle wrings through my head as I send a thought-call.
“Operator,” says a familiar female voice, “where may I direct your call?”
“Oh, shut the hell up, Retina!” I yell in thought. “I need assistance A-fucking-SAP.”
“Aye, pobrecita! ¿Qué tienes, maestra? You can no longer handle all of Spencer’s love handles?”
“That too. But, besides that, I need you to lockdown a restroom in, fuck, what’s this goddamn restaurant called again?”
“You’re in Roma, pendeja.”
“Yeah, that place. I need you to override the locks and force some sort of out of order sign in front of the”—
“It’s done. Anything else?”
“Oh,” I widen my eyes, “already?”
“Mhmm.”
“Err, yeah. Send a clean-up crew too if you don’t mind.”
“They’ll be there in twenty.”
“Marvelous.”
“How else may I be an accomplice to your fuckery?”
“Just work on your alibi.”
“I’ve already got it covered.”
“What is it?”
“Qué? Lo siento, officer. No hablo inglés. Sí, señor. Soy inmigrante.”
“Perfect.”
“Thanks. See ya, maestra. Retina out.”
I wrap some toilet paper around my knuckles, take out a pair of decorative yellow gloves from my purse, and notice the holographic “out-of-order” appear in front of the restroom. The server bumps into me and flinches.
“Whoa,” he flails his arms, “you alright there, ma’am?”
“Totally fine.” I fake a smile. “Thanks.”
He notices something off about me and yanks me by the arm into a nook in the hallway.
“Eris, you crazy goddamn dame,” he darts his eyes around, “I heard that commotion in there…what the fuck was going on?”
“Minor altercation.” I slap his hand off me. “Retina, has it taken care of already.”
He makes a move into the woman’s restroom.
“Aye!” I snatch him back. “Did I say make a formal investigation, Inspector Gadget?”
He does a spin move like a point guard in the NBA and enters the restroom.
“Oh,” he twists around and face-palms, “Jesus fucking Christ, Eris, can you go a day without killing someone and putting our operations in jeopardy, you psycho?”
“They were being little cunts.” I point at the corpses in complete defense of my decisions. “Gah, you’re such a fucking drama queen, Goodnight.”
“I’m getting tired of putting up with your shit all the goddamn time.”
“Aww,” I squeeze his shoulders, “you poor thing, don’t worry, my little princess. Daddy’s gonna buy you a cute little dollhouse for you to play in.”
“Real funny, bitch.” He shoves me and returns to “work.”
I leave the restroom and return to the table. Spence notices my new state and stands in concern.
“You took a while, sweetie,” Spence says, “everything alright? You’ve got some blood on your dress.”
“Yeah, my bad. I just got my period and a bloody nose. Double whammy. Fuck me, right?”
He widens his eyes at this new voice.
Woops, get back in character, Eris.
“Oh, Kat.” He sighs. “Let’s get you back home after we eat so that you can change your dress.”
“No, no.” I clear my throat and sweeten my tone. “It’s fine. I’ve got ahh…stain remover in my purse.”
“If you say so.”
Before eating, I clench and release my damaged hand under the table.
“How’s your salad, детка?” I maintain a perfect awkward smile.
“Lacking meat, to say the least.” He looks at the greens on his fork.
I grab my fork and dig into the salmon salad. It tastes rubbery and artificial, “lab-to-table” as they say. I notice my plate is tilted forward for some reason.
“Hmm, what’s this?” I reach behind plate.
“Something special.” Spence stands up.
I pick up a small velvet box with the words Cartier written on top. He gets on one knee, opens the box while it’s in my hand, and says “Kat.” He hesitates. “This past year with you has been the single greatest moment of my life. And…I…wish to continue to share this feeling with you for…,” he swallows hard, “for the rest of my life. Ekaterina IvanovnaVinovich, would you give me the greatest honor in being my wife?”
I’m floored.
“Err, блядь.” I scratch my head. “I mean, yes. Yes! I would love to be your wife!”
“Really? Oh, Kat!”
He reels me in with his fat arms and kisses me. Kissing him is the closest thing to bloodless torture as it gets.
“I’m so excited!” I exclaim, releasing my grasp of him.
Manufacture tears. Manufacture tears. C’mon, Eris…you can do it.
“This feels so right.” I break down. “How romantically original of you to propose at expensive restaurant…”
“I’m so happy, I’ve lost my appetite!” He stands and wipes away authentic tears.
I notice my surroundings and see some of the restaurant staff applauding the scene. A few women approach the restroom and turn around frustrated after reading the “out of order” sign. Three men dressed as plumbers enter the restaurant and glance around searching for someone specific.
They see me. I wink at them. The crew enters the restroom with several big black duffle bags.
Success.
“Oh, Spence!” My mouth quivers and I transform into a babbling crybaby. “This is so surreal! All my life…I’ve wanted to marry sweet, tender, romantic, chivalrous, gentleman like you ever since I was…I was…малышка in Moscow playing with my Digi Barbies. We’ll be perfect couple!”
“I’m so glad I can make your dream come true, my love.”
“I have something for you too, my precious man.”
My favorite waiter brings Spencer a small silver tray and opens it. It’s a golden apple with the words “to the kindest of them all” in cursive.
“This is gift from me.” I blow him a kiss. “For kindest man I know…”
“You’re the sweetest, Kat.” He takes a big bite. “Mmm…honey!”
He finishes my sweet treat, and we start to gather our things. Spence hands the server a hundred-dollar bill as a tip. The man studies the paper money like he dug up an artifact. We get up and head back to the entrance.
I can hear the sizzling of flesh, and it’s not coming from the kitchen.
