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Blue Jeans and Moonbeams, by Sarah Stone

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One

It was the sheer sensation of silence that was the most notable aspect of the house. As Ray Ruby came through the front door the oiled silence of the door opening and swinging shut behind him was like an opening and shutting dream, a thing normally accomplished on soft rubber pads bathed in lubricant, slow and easy. The double carpet in the hall, the colour of ice-cream, which he had recently laid himself, gave off no sound from his shiny, calculated movements. And when cold winds scraped the house late at night there were no rumblings, rattles, or curtains swaying, he had checked the storm windows. The rain screens were securely locked with bright new firm hooks, and the boiler never roared but sent a whisper of warm, soothing wind up the throats of the heating system that sighed ever so quietly, blowing the ends of his velvet trousers as he stood, warming himself from the bitter morning.

Weighing the silence, he slowly nodded with satisfaction that it was so unified and complete. There had been nights when rats had walked between the slim wall-layers and it had taken baited traps and carefully selected poisoned foods before the walls were once again mute.

They were waiting for him in the living-room. He listened. They made no sound. Good. Excellent, in fact. They had learned to be silent. You had to teach people, but it was well worth it, there was not spark of a cigarette lighter or even a muffled cough coming from the living room. He worked off his slender white gloves, hung up his Liberty print overcoat and stood there for a moment with an eager expression of urgency on his shallow face, thinking of what had to be done. Ray Ruby proceeded with familiar certainty and lack of motion into the room, where the four cold females were sat slumped over on the sofa, not moving or speaking. The only sound was the liberal pad of his high-heeled patent boots on the deep carpet. His eyes, as usual, and as routine had it, fastened upon the woman nearest to him. Passing, he waved a finger near her cheek. She did not blink. His wife, Caroline Ruby sat firmly, deeply embedded in the tasteful sofa cushions, and if a mote of dust floated lightly down from the ceiling, did her eye trace its orbit? Did the eye revolve in its socket with cold precision? And if the dust mote landed on the strata of her eyeball, did the eye bat? Did the muscles flinch? The lashes close? No. Ray Ruby carefully seated himself in the regal armchair opposite the sofa and looked at the other three lifeless women, while he slowly rubbed his cold fingers back to life. The heat of the house was beginning to get through to him and he was feeling a little more humane. The second was a young girl, aged about fifteen. Sadie, Caroline's adopted niece. She had merely come along at the wrong time and Ray found that there had been no option but to stop her. She looked calm, sat there pressed between Caroline and her friends. Ray considered feeling pity for her, but decided against it, giving no reason. The other two women, Lisa Newton and Andrea Smith, were close friends of Caroline. And although Ray didn't feel any intense hatred for them, he did intend to get violent with them, as was his way. Quiet, calm and ferocious, in a loving way. Ray took his eyes off his dead guests and turned to walk to the large south-facing window. He stroked his dark hair flat. It was time to call David.

Two

Ray had been right all along, David was in hell. He had denied it to Ray, and he had tried to deny it to himself, but Sunday morning David woke up, saw the blood in his bed and could no longer hide the truth from himself. He had fallen in love with Ray's deceased wife, Caroline. It wasn't much blood - a dried brownish spot no longer than his finger. He stripped off the sheet and saw that it had soaked through to the mattress. As he scrubbed at the stain with a wet, soapy towel, David blinked back a tear and tried to think logically. He was changing, no doubt about that, but the change was far from complete. Ray had seen the signs, but then he had been through it himself. David considered if he might not be too late to stop what was happening to him. He dressed himself and went downstairs to his mother, she was watching cartoons. She watched a lot of cartoons, mostly the stupid ones from when she was a girl. She liked The Smurfs, Scooby Doo and Captain Caveman. There was a bottle of pills on the sofa beside her.

"Mum, what are you doing?" David was only half-horrified that she was still at home. "It's seven forty-five! You promised."

She stuck out her tongue and blew him a raspberry.

David picked up the bottle and shook it, there were only a few pills left in it. "You're already late."

She held up eight fingers. "Not 'till eight."

Her- eyes were bright. David wanted to hit her, but he resisted and held out his hands to help her up.

"Come on."

She pouted. "My cartoons."

He grabbed her and pulled her off the sofa. She stood, tottered, and fell into his arms. He took her weight easily, she weighed less than he did. She didn't eat much.

Three

At Ray's, David strangled his mother in the hall, quickly and easily. She didn't flinch and she died quietly. David apologised to Ray for being late.

"Where have you been!" he snapped slickly.

"I'm sorry," David said, releasing his grip and letting his mother fall to the soft carpet. She hit it with a soft thud. "She was supposed to come on her own, but she was watching T.V."

Ray nodded. "She's a wreck, look how skinny she is!"

"You could have done this," said David, becoming annoyed and scared at the same time.

"Yes, I know. But you need the practice." Ray looked at the clock on the wall that clicked without making a noise. "It's nearly time," he said. "Come with me to the living-room, and bring that sack of bones with you."

David didn't answer but followed anyway, dragging his mother behind him by her wrist, like a mother dragging a child.

Four

A sledge hammer was swinging inside David's head. He sat in an uncomfortable chair, fighting the pain of it and staring at Caroline, Sadie, Lisa, Andrea and his mother, but mostly he was staring at Caroline. Necrophilia had never held that much fascination for him, but now he was beginning to see it in different light. It was nearly lunchtime, he was hungry and his guts ached.

"Do you remember what it was like four years ago, David?" Ray said. He was wearing a pair of rubber surgical gloves and they squeaked and scraped as he stroked his hands against each other.

"I was sixteen," David said slowly. "And that's about all I know." He moved his gaze from Caroline to Ray. "Why?"

"Where have all your childhood memories gone, David?"

"What childhood memories?" David said. "What are you talking about?"

"Exactly," said Ray. "You have no childhood memory."

"What?" He didn't understand.

Ray sighed and went to sit in his important-looking, but wholly comfortable armchair. He sighed, looked at his hands, looked at David and then looked down at his hands again, as if he was lost somewhere or as if was wearing someone else's hands.

"What is all this?" said David. A look of confusion covering his face.

Ray removed the rubber gloves. "You are a victim," he said. "You were born, or rather created, four years ago, and ever since then the world has conspired against you, and against me."

David didn't respond. He just sat and listened.

"I used to believe," Ray continued. "That I was just being paranoid about a lot of things. That I had somehow created my own sufferings in you, and through that I had failed to take responsibility for my own life and my own needs."

David looked on in disbelief.

"Insane I may be," Ray said. "But not as insane as a world like this that needs victims like you and these five women to keep its wheels turning."

Five

For a few days after his conversation with Ray, nobody saw David. Ray cooked and ate the five women, then, with everything forgotten, he went about his daily business and nothing more was ever said or done. David, however, was in hiding. He was scared. He knew he had been touched by something unbalanced and raw, his body felt corrupted and his thoughts still belonged to Ray Ruby. He spent a month walking, singing, drinking cola and fighting back the lusts Ray Ruby had instigated. Nothing had ever enraged him more. Hiding was perhaps not the best way to describe David's actions, avoiding would probably be more appropriate. For many years to come David avoided himself, but that's not the point. He started by peeling back the skin on his left forearm. It hurt, but not as much as he had expected. Next, the muscles. He cut into the solid tissue with a knife he had stolen, removing the flesh-pulp one chunk at a Lime. He had struck open wide veins and was bleeding heavily, but he didn't feel faint. The next shock really was a shock. Instead of encountering bone he discovered instead metal. Piston-like shafts of silvery metal, made shiny by the blood still flowing from his arm, ran up the length of his limb. And under the veins were wires, all colours and all intertwined. The last remaining blobs of muscle gave way to soft durable bags of rubber-plastic filled with heated liquid.

Christ! thought David. What the hell am I?

Then he remembered Ray's final words to him. "I created you," he had said. "You're a machine, a killing machine, my killing machine." David had assumed that Ray was being ironic or metaphoric, or at the worst cryptic, at the time, but now he tasted truth.

"I'M A ROBOT!" he shouted. "I'm a fucking robot! Why?"

David walked to a nearby field where he could find solitude. Swinging his tattered arm as he walked across the grass. He shook his head. He certainly wasn't like any robot he had ever known, not that he had known many. Robots were perfect within their limitations, which were exactly known. Robots had no potentiality for mutation. Humans were badly flawed, flawed physically because of genetic mutations, flawed mentally and emotionally because of a flawed and mutating society. Both the human being and his society were, theoretically, evolving toward the ideal. In the meantime, reality, a sandstorm, cut and blinded the human. The casualties of mutation and reality were high, David had seen that through Ray. Still, the limitations of each human were, unlike the robot’s, not obvious. And if you thought you knew the limitations of a person, you were often surprised. The human would suddenly transcend himself, lifting himself up by the metaphysical bootstraps. And he did this despite of, or because of, the flaws.

Maybe, thought David. That was the difference between robots and humans.

"Long live difference," he said, and licked some blood from the metal in his open wound.

Sarah Stone