Lords & Ladies of the M'Verse: An Ooorah Anthology

Day 14 - JesseSprague's No Matter What They Say

No Matter What They Say

by JesseSprague

I chug directly from a bottle of cheap vodka—well cheap is relative. Here on D'Sisa vodka is never inexpensive since it has to be imported from Earth. That is beside the point. It tastes like shit. If I was home, I couldn't gotten far better for far less. I wish it was at least good vodka.

I stand on my balcony. If the little slab can be called that. The primary inhabitants of D'Sisa are these twig like butterfly people. I suppose most of them would have used this as a door to and from the apartment. But I don't have wings, so I call it a balcony.

I can't see the ground. That's how high up I am. Well and it's night. I can at least tell where the ground is, if not make out details, during the day. The floor is 319 and the view now is the smoggy sky of this horrid world.

Up until tonight I'd been off the bottle—even taking a Toadie program for substance abusers on the mend. Not that I believe in that shit—I mean God. I guess I also mean the stupid program too, if I'm honest. But she believed in it all and she was worth it.

I quit drinking three months before I met Sefera.

I was standing in front of the gemlike bottle of booze in the import section, trying to decide which to fall off the proverbial wagon with. You see, I'd just lost my job and my apartment, and that seemed like a good reason to drink myself into an early grave.

That is until Sefera smiled at me.

It sounds corny, but I knew right away that she was that "one good thing" I'd been searching for my whole life. She wasn't one of the butterfly people, in fact she looked human in shape and size—and very female.

"I've never understood how you humans can drink that stuff," she said. She had these adorable green-lined gills that slid along the side of her head where a human girl would have kept boring old ears. The rest of her was this pearlescent grey, and she wore a red helm over her head with small black tubes that inserted into the gills on either side.

"I've been trying to quit," I said. Something about her made it impossible to lie.

"Try these." She tossed me a small pack from her basket.

"Ecrivains?"

"No one can quit something all on their own—we all need help sometimes."

And then like an idiot, I blurted everything out. About how no one needed taxi drivers anymore—what with auto drivers being cheaper. About how I'd lost my temper with my boss when he cut my hours. I guess he didn't appreciate being shoved.

I shared how my lease was up, and they wouldn't renew to a human. Especially one with what they called a "history of violence." One little incident back when I was drinking! One! But that was enough.

I told her how I couldn't afford a ticket back to a predom human world, let alone Earth. Plus my luck wouldn't be any better on Earth. I'd burned all my bridges there. You know how it goes. We've all got pasts.

Point was, I was stuck on D'Sisa, and I'd only come in the first place because everyone said humans were a great novelty here.

Sefera invited me home. I don't know why she trusted me. I wouldn't have trusted me, but Sefera was a one-of-a-kind type of girl. She gave me a key the next week. No one had ever trusted me like that. She helped me find a job being a driver for a wealthy family of butterflies—they and their friends oohed and aaahed over my humanity. Things were looking up.

It would be crass to give details, but Sefera and I became intimate over time. So when, after all of this, she asked me to go to the Toadie support group, how could I say no?

I couldn't.

I didn't.

I wish I had. This is all their fault.

The first few months were great, but then they started really pushing religion on me. So I lied. I told them I'd converted. It was easier that way. Sefera was no help—she was what you'd call a true believer.

I never told her I converted. Never. But she heard somehow, and she was happy.

You've gotta understand, I would've done anything for her. That's why I bought the vodka—I wanted to propose—to make our little thing official. I figured it was worth getting drunk one more time to do it right.

Sefera didn't understand. Really it was her fault for coming home. She was supposed to be at work. Everything would have gone right if she'd been at work.

"What is this? How could you?" she yelled.

"It's not what you think." I may have been a bit overly aggressive in my reply. But she was supposed to be at work. Plus I'd already downed a few shots and wasn't thinking clearly.

"Don't tell me what I think!" She yelled. "You're a liar, a damn liar."

"No..." I fumbled in my pocket trying to find the pearl beads that would tie our hands together in an eternal bond. She'd understand if she saw that, even if I couldn't find the words.

"I thought you were doing so well. You said you had gotten faith."

I never could lie to her. "No. I didn't tell you that. You heard that."

Her silver scales flushed a dark green at the edge.

I stood up—to comfort her that's all.

She backed up. "It's all been a lie."

I reached out. That's all I did.

She's the one who leapt back.

And it's this stupid world filled with fucking butterflies that puts apartments up so damn high with no windows... just fucking ledges over nothing. Sure we usually had a gate up, but we'd had some butterflies over the night before and removed it for their ease.

No matter what anyone says, I didn't push her.

The wind is cold and I can't see the ground. I can't see her down there. But I know she is.

I'm just going to finish this bottle. Then I'm going to test if I can fly any better than Sefera.