Lavender: a Strangely Slipstream Novelette

Anti-Heroes Meeting

She hurried to her Anti-Hero group meeting in an abandoned warehouse. She was proud to be a somewhat core organizer, though she'd skipped the last meeting and gone late to the one before. She wished she were wearing her black scarf over her face to fit in with the aesthetics of the group, but she was glad she could do it without it. She acted like she didn't even notice. She let herself in and entered through the labyrinthine quiet hallways, built into the back of it, to a small room with extra soundproofing.

The windows were covered with blackout cloth, and candles lit the room. The conspirators pointed to charts and argued about statistics. Annatalia wasn't entirely sure this was really the underground group for her. Everyone was looking at her funny. She'd been working on feeling more at home. She'd hoped to spend time with them socially outside the group and did her best to seem edgy and bold, but she always walked home just as lonely as when she went.

She stood at the table blushing more by the minute, worried by people's looks of concern, or even laughter, and a couple of them saying "Hello?" as if it were a question that she was supposed to have the answer to. She sat down with poise, though she'd missed the first twenty minutes. She realized she enjoyed the in-between transportation state much more than discussing committing a dubious revolutionary act with people who smoked cigarettes and blew the stink in her face.

The man next to her said: "I vote yes on destroying Lavender. That's no surprise. And I vote yes on destroying all of the time-sharing worlds and simply cutting down the population on Earth by whatever means necessary. I propose putting cyanide in the salt capsules."

People nodded and looked to her for her vote. She'd hoped her feelings would clarify once she was there, but she just didn't know what to say. She stammered, and paused, blushing. "Absolutely it would be ideal if we could make the world better by doing that. But I'm seriously re-considering the maturity of the plan altogether. If we do destroy it, and any of the others, I think we should alert the people so they have time to go to Earth first. I don't even know right now if I want to destroy Lavender. And I even wonder if maybe some of the creatures should be given survival rights." She trembled.

Members hardly had time to show a second of surprise at her audacity before the man next to her bent over the table and talked fast and loud in a nasal voice, his head covering her view of many people at the table. He said, "Well, anyone who thinks like that obviously could be a spy. Do you really mean that, Annatalia, or are you just – you know? Is it that time of month?"

She stood up and started to shout at him until she realized she was covered in blood. She sat back down. "That's from a Deerplant, Bloodflowers, and a squashed Bloodling," she mumbled. She could feel her chin quiver and tried to hold back her mouth from moving into a ridiculous shape.

She coughed to cover up her sniff.

Two other members laughed at the man next to her as his face turned into a prudish wrinkle. She laughed with them. She wanted everything to be OK. She said, "I do agree that there have to be fewer people on regular Earth, of course. No sane person could argue against that. And I know how hideous things will probably get inside the Flexible Fields, especially if creatures grown in Lavender continue to travel to other worlds. I know most of those worlds are worse than Lavender already. We all know I have my parents partly to thank for how nice Lavender is. And sometimes, I think maybe they did the best anyone could have done under the circumstances." She held her head high and glanced upward.

"Come on. What's the problem, kid? Killing people is the only way to make enough space on Earth so we can collapse the worlds. It just can't hold everyone. If we let them all live and collapse the time-share worlds, we'd be responsible for murdering the rest of the species on Earth humans haven't already killed. He held up the chart she had made. "You were part of the liaison with the mob to prepare to kill people off. Why are you changing your mind now? Are you scared?"

She wished she were wearing the rest of her black. Black lipstick, eye shadow, even that hair dye she'd been thinking about using. They'd know then she hadn't gone soft. They'd be able to tell she was still a woman to be reckoned with who saw what needed to be done and did it.

Or was she?

She was wearing a dress. What was she thinking? She tried to run over super-heroines in her mind as role models that wore dresses like that, but she couldn't think of any. And there she was, initiated by one into what should have been the last straw that pushed her into activism. The Deerplant blood had almost emboldened her to be the Anti-Heroes' Hero. Yet she was on the verge of becoming instead the Anti-Heroes' Anti-Hero.

The Anti-Heroes' lips were looking crumpled, hanging sideways, pinched and stuck on their suddenly dry teeth. They were waiting for her to say something next.

She ran out of the building.

She would become a hunted woman. No way would the members allow her to roam Earth or Lavender freely, giving away the secrets that could get them imprisoned for life.

She stayed in the shadows, zig sagging, running away from steps she heard behind her, hiding in alleys.