Annie E


Pet was helping Annie drag Body Mod sheets out of the stack. Annie was a better reader so she walked onto each sheet and Pet put tick marks next to one of the subcategories that was developing.

It was kind of mindless work for her. Drag, wait, mark, go drag the next… That gave her plenty of time to watch Annie, though.

And she worried.

Her friend was so loud and strong all the time and now she was getting quieter and quieter with each sheet.

The stories were often sad, sure. Even for the ones that were just decorative, the piercer seldom used pain killer and sometimes didn’t even wipe the area with alcohol to prevent infection.

But some of them were absolute horror stories. Annie knelt silently on one page for quite a while. Humans were running back and forth making the input stacks so no one noticed, but Pet was staring right at her, pencil lead poised over her sheet.

“Annie, what is it?” she finally asked.

“I can’t do this…” Annie said softly. Pet carefully put her pad and pencil down and walked over to kneel by her friend.

“Do you want to trade categories? Maybe we should have a rule, rotate people through the difficult ones so they don’t get all dirty on their souls, or you don’t believe in souls so we’ll say to keep the gunk out of the brains. Hey, we can do the Rescues for a while, that’ll be fun, right? ‘Cause you and Buttercup are Rescues and Kerri was and I saw the look on Electra’s face, she might be one, unless she’s New Career, but then that would be Amelia, too, so do you wanna do New Career?”

“No, Pet,” Annie said with a very weak smile. “No, I can do this. I can read all this CRAP that humans do, because none of it comes as a shock. Humans have been scum for 10,000 years.

“No, I…” She took a deep breath. Pet waited patiently. “This guy? He had one leg cut off at the knee because it was the only way to fit him into the cockpit of a toy car they had him driving.

“They couldn’t redesign the fucking TOY so they amputated a defenseless sylph.”

“That’s so sad,” Pet agreed.

“It is. And it’s a story that needs to be told. I can’t… I can’t imagine going on Electra’s show and talking about how aggravating Ray is when he cuts my chocolate ration in half, when there’s stuff like THIS in this god damned world.

“I can’t take up her time for petty little stories of teasing and pretend fights when I have a master who loves me and will die for me, and I’d die for him, when this shit should be on every channel, 24/7! You know!?”

“I know,” Pet said. She grabbed Annie in a tight hug. “Okay, okay, okay,” she said into her ear, stroking her back. “Ray hasn’t filled out the forms, yet, so when we break for dinner, we’ll tell him we don’t want to be on the show, we’ll just watch from the auditorium and not be on the list of possible guests, okay?”

Annie just wept silently onto her best friend’s shoulder.

Pet looked up to see the far end of the table where Ray and Denny were opening the last box. They both flinched and turned to stare at where Annie was having her little breakdown.

She waved at them, trying to convey that everything was okay, or okay enough, and not to interrupt anything until the promised break, but that was too much information to gesture one-handed and she wasn’t about to take both hands off of Annie when Annie needed her so much right now.

That’s when two more hands showed up. An arm wrapped around Pet’s shoulder. She twisted to see Electra. Electra Louden herself was kneeling right by them! And she was hugging Annie, too!

“Annie! Look who’s here!” she whispered urgently.

“I heard,” Electra said. “You don’t have to be on my show if you don’t want to be.”

“It’s not you,” Annie said. “It’s not that we haven’t dreamed of being on your show-“

“I know, I know,” Electra said softly. “I heard. But I need you. I need people EXACTLY like you. I can’t just tell horror stories.

“I do need to tell the worst stories. People need to know what’s going on in the world. HUMANS need to know what sylphs go through, what we’re subject to.

“But sylph need to know about you, too. That there ARE owners who can be trusted, and loved, and love us back.”

“Well, Lurch has his good points,” Annie replied automatically.

“She heard everything,” Pet reminded her.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you said you’d die for Ray and now you’ve said it out loud and everyone knows it and I only wish it had been on camera so Ray would know it.”

“Ray knows,” Denise said from over their heads. “Just like I do.” She touched a loving fingertip to Pet’s back.

“Well, if it’s so obvious, where’s Lurch now, when I need him?” Annie snarled. But for once, it was so clearly forced it made Pet and Electra laugh.

“He’s putting together a meal for the four of us,” Denise said. “We’re going to take a time out and hug a lot and come back refreshed and ready to finish.”

“Oh, very well,” Annie sighed. She turned to hug Electra. “Thanks for understanding.”

“Give your giant my love,” Electra replied.

“Yours, yes. I can pass yours along. I don’t want him to think he can just expect it from me, though.” They climbed into Denise’s hands and she carried them towards a table in the corner.

Electra looked down at the sheet she was standing on, shuddered, and wiped a tear from her cheek.

That’s when Conrad picked her up for a little time out.



-----
Index

111. Electra D

113. Kerri E