Queermance Anthology, Volume 1 (6 page)

'You're outdoing yourself,' she says, still breathing heavy. She lets her head rest on my
shoulder, her hair falls from around her face and tickles my breasts.

She kisses my cheek, lips warm, and then gets off me, off the couch, and kneels in front. Her
hands have force when they need to, and she parts my legs, kisses and sucks her way up my
thighs.

Now it's my turn to grip hair, clench teeth, mutter names. She takes my hands on hers and I hold
onto her like she's giving me life, my fingers ball into fists around hers and my thighs close in
around her head. She lets one hand go and fingers me as she uses her tongue, faster, I can't
breathe, my throat is raw and I fall apart.

She emerges and grins, kisses me on the lips and I taste the salt.

Melbourne is an attractive city. A sexy beast. I may be a little drunk, but I would
totally bang Melbourne. It's White Night, the night of twelve hours of art across the CBD and there
are people everywhere, clutching each other, slamming past because their business is just so much
more important.

The tram here was fuckin' awful, I swear I could barely breathe. Of course, no one had the sense
to open a damn window and I couldn't reach. Simon kept singing and I kept almost vomiting, mostly
from the jolts but a little from the booze.

And now my phone doesn't have any reception and I'd said to Emily, 'Oh yeah, we'll meet at Fed
Square,' like it was no biggie.

Of course, that was damn stupid and now I'm standing on the steps looking over at the train
station. Which is what every other single person looking for someone is doing; and I'm not really
that tall, so I can't see a lot.

I sway on my feet a little, maybe getting drunk prior wasn't the best idea, but Simon can be very
persuasive and he was buying, anyway. Maybe he was stealing, who can be sure in this morally
bankrupt society, anyway, right?

I close my eyes for a second and feel the music pumping in my bones, travelling up my limbs and
bursting out through my mouth. I know maybe half of the words, and when I open my eyes a couple of
people are staring.

Where the hell did Simon go, anyway?

Will, that's right. They found each other again. Dunno how that's gonna go, Simon's good at
breaking hearts, but we'll see. Like I can talk, anyway. But not Emily; she is, like, endgame.

I blink. Was that the rum or did I think that? Best not to dwell.

There are people dancing in bright colours and it's like they are the music, the way they move.
Boom, boom, boom
. The bass in my collar bone.

It's been ages, anyway, and I've got no idea where she is. Emily likes books. I bet she's gone to
the State Library. Half the time when we meet in the city, it's on the steps of the library, so
maybe she's gone there. There might even be fewer people there.

Anyway, I can see straight now, so I follow the flow of people away from Fed Square and up
Swanston Street. All the buildings are lit with projectors and the colours shift and sway, I look up
and there are people everywhere taking photos on their phones. I grin and keep walking, past the
lovers wall, past overpriced food stalls.

I only see one puddle of vomit on my way. Wow, Melbourne, well done. But, the night is still
young. It's only eleven and this thing goes til seven AM.

There's a busker duo in the middle of the road, I chuck a couple of coins at them. As I walk
past, a group of girls sing at the top of their lungs, clutching each other and giggling. They
continue in the opposite direction, but they make me smile.

'Lucy!' I hear, but the voice is far away and there's probably a million Lucys in this crowd.
They call out again and then someone grabs my shoulder. It's Simon and his idiot-grinning face; Will
and his round cheerful one that is drunker than mine; and Emily, who gives a short wave.

'You found me,' I say, trying to hug them all at once. I go to kiss Emily but get Will's shoulder
instead.

She pats me on the head and takes my hand.

'We're gonna go home,' Simon says, and Will grins at me.

'I won't be home for a while,' I tell them, 'if that's what you're getting at.'

'That's exactly what we're getting at,' he replies. 'Bless your soul, Lucy in the sky.' He tips
an invisible hat and walks off, hand in hand with his possible-boyfriend.

'They together again?' Emily asks. She's got a binder on, I notice, and loose shorts. Hair styled
different, jagged and short.

'I dunno,' I say. 'Maybe? I can't keep up.'

'Shall we?' she asks, offering her arm. 'The State Library's doing a thing.'

We make our way there, dodge the drunk men and accidentally find ourselves on a road where they
haven't blocked off the traffic. But we arrive on the steps whole, and join the line to get in. I
can't stop giggling and Emily keeps going
shhhh
even though she's laughing, too.

After a zillion steps, we're led into the dome and the chairs are all gone, though the study
desks remain, and projected on the walls and roof are colours, twirling. The whole room is silent,
everyone inside takes in the sight. It takes me a while to figure out that I'm looking at a giant
rhinovirus on the roof, its DNA strands crawling around the room, around the doorways and books.

Well, they might be DNA strands. I don't know, they kind of look like the things I studied back
at high school. And now I can't really talk to ask Emily anyway, my mouth is too heavy.

We sit on the desks furthest away from the door; there's still room over here. The colours
change, orange and blue and angry and then it's herpes on the walls.

'Herpes has never looked so good,' Emily whispers, and I break out into giggles all over
again.

I groan and check the time: six AM. No, this time isn't actually real. I must be
dreaming. There's a thunderstorm outside, and I roll onto my back, listen to the rain hit the roof
loud and steady.

Simon's in the kitchen already. I'm sure he doesn't actually sleep and has several stomachs. Not
that I'm complaining. His cooking probably kept Emily around that first morning, bless his little
soul.

'You're awake early,' Emily says as she huddles closer for warmth.

'Thunder,' I say, yawning. 'I was just thinking about you.'

'What a coincidence.' She nuzzles into the pillow and closes her eyes again.

'Why did you leave your number under my pillow that day?'

She laughs. 'I blame the cat.'

'Is that some kind of terribly subtle double entendre?'

'It might be.' She cracks open an eye. 'But no, your cat was sitting in the middle of your bed as
I walked past your room and I fell in love with her. It had nothing to do with you.'

'Of course,' I say.

She sits up, gets out of bed. 'I'm gonna go steal some breakfast.' She stoops and kisses my
forehead and winks at me.

The cat, meanwhile, leaps into Emily's warm spot, looking quite pleased with herself.

I had one hour of air left. Fifty nine minutes. Fifty eight. Seven.

I wrenched my attention away from the counter. These escape pods were well made, comfortable for
a given meaning of comfortable, and contained food and water and even entertainment.

For forty days. This was the thirty ninth day. I still had food and I still had water and I'd
been entertained by the second mate's complete collection of 20th Century noir films - while the
automatic systems hunted across the galaxy for the nearest beacon or habitable planet - but now I
was running out of air, without which all the rest were a little superfluous.

And there was still nothing out there but the Big Black.

And asphyxiation is such a nasty way to die.

I tried not to think about it. I tried to think about my last lover. A brief encounter at
Marsport; a sweet mouth, a strong hand, all over in a moment. Never saw him again. Couldn't even
remember his name; if I ever knew it.

They had all been like that, I realised. Impossible to keep a planetside/traveller relationship
alive, though some people always tried it. They were the ones who fornicated their way through the
unattached members of the crew when they got that gram that said, 'sorry, I've met someone'.

I had been the delighted recipient of some of that attention. But people who form relationships
will form new ones; and all my lovers had gone on to settle down with someone else, and make the
lunchtime crew smile at how they doted on each other.

No one doted on me. I was an easy lay, a reliable comfort, to be applied to the ache as needed;
discarded when replaced. If I died out here, as it was increasingly likely that I would, no one
would weep for me.

So I began to weep for myself. I was actually sobbing, in a way I had not done since I was seven
and my father died, when I heard a little voice that said:

'Lonely. Cold.'

'Escape Pod 459, Galaxy Class ship StarRover out of Syria Planum, Mars, requesting urgent
assistance,' said my pod's automatic message.

I held my breath, my face wet with tears. No answer. It must have been a ghost.

There is a theory that everything said on any form of communicator is still bouncing around the
universe; bits and pieces of conversations emerge out of the static between the planets.

But I was in way out, in deep space, hence my present predicament which would shortly become a
plight - in, oh, I don't know, another fifty-three minutes?

'Speak again,' I said. 'Is there anyone there?'

'Lonely,' said the voice.

'So you said. I'm lonely too. Where are you? Can you come and get me? Guide this pod? I'm running
out of air,' I tried not to sound too desperate.

'Cold,' said the voice. It sounded like a man.

'Yes it certainly is,' I agreed. My surge of hope died. If this was some last cruel trick of the
gods, I hoped they were laughing themselves sick. But at least I had someone to talk to, even though
it was just a spectre.

'Let me in,' pleaded the voice.

'Love to, but I can't open this pod in space,' I told it. 'Only in atmosphere. So you'll just
have to talk to me.'

'Who?' asked the voice.

'Sebastian Reynolds, first mate, StarRover, a good ship until she developed some explosive engine
trouble and we all got thrown out here. I hope the others made it. I was the last to go. We shoved
the families and the couples out first. But I had no one. Still haven't,' I concluded. 'You can call
me Sabi. What's your name?'

'Spectre,' said the voice, after a pause for thought.

'Nice to meet you, though it would've been better if I didn't have, let's see, forty-three
minutes left to live. I would've taken you to my favourite bar and bought you a drink. Mars ale, the
finest that Syria Planum could provide. Tastes wonderful, once you get over it being blue.'

I was not really expecting a reply. These electronic ghost words almost never make so much as a
sentence and they are not responsive. Unless you are sitting in an escape pod with twenty-eight
minutes left to breathe. And hallucinating an Imaginary Friend to comort your inevitable death.

'Let me come in,' breathed Spectre, sounding closer and louder.

'I can't,' I replied. 'I wish I could.'

Now was not the time to remember all those merry ghost stories about pods found with the occupant
all wizened and drained of blood by space vampies who projected through the walls. But, I thought,
so what, I was dying anyway - in twenty one minutes.

'Will you harm me?' I asked, a stupid thing to say.

'No,' sighed Spectre. 'I'll love you.'

Probably to death, but the odds were not in my favour for living more than eighteen more minutes,
so I said: 'Come in, Spectre,' and opened my arms.

And he
flowed
through the hull - a lovely man-shape made of starlight - and wrapped
himself around me and sank onto me, icy, beautiful, and so cold that I thought he was just death in
another form. But in the atmosphere of my pod he warmed to human temperature and kissed me with lips
that felt real, and coupled with me with a human body, so that I wondered if he was just a terminal
hallucination my brain had given me to soften my dying.

Nice going, brain, I thought, as I stroked smooth buttocks, pulling them closer, and felt Spectre
arch against me, gasping without breath into my mouth. I could only see him as a shimmering outline,
but I could feel him as though blood pumped in his veins.

'Let me come in,' he pleaded, and I laid myself flat and open for him, and I have never felt so
dissolved, so possessed. Something entered me. Something came to an orgasm as I did.

Was his semen starlight, I wondered. His passion was scorching,his love was like a supernova. No
one had ever loved me like that.

'Warm,' said Spectre, snuggling close to me, fingers searching my face as though he had never
touched a human. 'So warm and sweet.'

That lovemaking must have taken up all my remaining time, so I kissed his hands, palm and back,
and whispered: 'Goodbye, Spectre, I'm so sorry I can't stay.'

And he kissed tears from my eyes and…

I didn't die. Or, perhaps, I already had. The counter had run to zero minus thirty minutes. I was
out of air and dead. Except that I wasn't.

'Are you keeping me alive?' I asked Spectre, who had both arms wreathed around my chest.

'Yes,' he said. His voice was firming. 'You are part of me, now. I am part of you. We are one. We
can live in everything but water. We don't like water.'

'So you can live in hard vacuum?' I asked.

'We can,' he corrected. 'By myself I am just a wailing ghost, seeking human heat. We love humans.
Humans taught us love. They taught us about the flesh. We never had flesh before.'

'Will contact with you kill me?' I asked. Not that I minded. I was already overdue.

'No,' said Spectre, as he caressed my cheek. 'We don't die,' he said. 'Humans tried to teach us
about death, but we didn't like it.'