io9 is proud to present from lightspeed magazine. We cover the latest LIGHTSPEED stories every month. This month’s selection is “The Waking Sleep of Boiling Wounds” by Dave Ring. enjoy!
The burning wounds put me to sleep
by dave ring
Dawn shoots out a wisp of cirrus clouds, smearing the sky like sunscreen. Beanie had been awake for several hours with pain in her back. She is too old for such a thing. Mox was still sleeping like the dead, her snores coming in rhythmic gasps.
It’s hard to imagine Beanie ever sleeping next to the noise every night.
She should wake up Mox, but a little nap didn’t seem to hurt. Until finally there was movement from the striped bay window below them. Beenie looked through the scope of his rifle and saw the farmer putting the kettle on. It took all of Beanie’s courage not to pull the trigger.
When the other woman would scold her, Beanie pushed Meaux and gently covered her mouth. “He’s up.”
Professionalism replaced annoyance. “Slide over.”
Beanie stepped aside without protest. Mox is shooting better so far. Letting her look into the scope for thirty seconds gave Beanie a chance to think about the light brown band of skin on Mox’s fingers.
“Are we okay?” Mox asked.
“we are doing well.”
“Okay. I’ll be on Channel 5.”
Beanie made a sign of affirmation and began to descend.
Every agent in the Cabal has a handwritten rating in the upper left corner of the first page of their profile, opposite the crappy passport photo they took during orientation. This rating represents their ability to interact with subatomic particles of phase order SAPPhO. Agents call it “The Void.” The first part of the rating is a number between 0 and 100.
This number shows the agent’s ability to enter the void. This letter shows the extent of their manipulation. Mox’s SAPPhO is 45A. The temperature in Beini is 99 degrees Celsius. No one else has a numerical rating above 84. Beanie’s record is half an hour. Normally the Cabal won’t let you enter the battlefield without a B-Class certificate, but it’s hard to argue with 99.
Strangely, all of the Cabal’s voidwalkers are female. Not everyone is a lesbian, but suffice it to say that the abbreviation feels like another example of the corporatization of Pride. They weren’t all cisgender, either—as was confirmed when Meaux was approved for spinal augmentation surgery—though Beanie was disappointed when she realized there were no non-binary surgeons. It made her question the part of herself that had always been insecure about being a woman. “I’m not quite a girl yet,” she often said, and the feminine honorific still gave her goosebumps. But it’s hard to deny the ability associated with gender to slip into the spaces between atoms like blood into the cracks between floors.
Some jobs are like killing a deer with a chainsaw, or shucking corn with a mallet. This is one of them. Both of the farmer’s knuckles were on the floor, and there was blood in Beanie’s eyelashes, but the fool still said no nonsense. Maybe she’s losing touch.
With Harvey on the dial and Meaux in her ear, everything felt like it had in the past. Beanie was listening, yes, but really she was thinking about the night they fought in the mall food court. Before the first split, before they opened up. Back when it was just them. When Mox had the nerve to tell Beanie that she “never really let her in” while eating a cheesesteak.
When Beanie scrapes her knees against the fountain in the middle of the mall, she realizes that all is lost between her and Mox. Mox needs someone to make her feel wanted. But Beanie spent his life learning how to be content with what he had. It’s all hers.
It has now been fifteen years since they worked together. Being involved in the affair feels like the best part of marriage, without all the noise.
During their seven years together, the Meaux tried to repair their marriage through counseling, crystals, and a brief, very uneven polyamorous trio. That moment of clarity under the mall’s fluorescent lights didn’t matter because Beanie kept it to herself. She’d never found a way to share it without it feeling like a betrayal. Still, she learned a lot about herself during those years—about communication, trauma, and being an ace—and when the Cabal grew enough to form a second division, Mox terminated it and moved to Phoenix. It was the right thing to do, but the logic of it shut down Mox when Beanie told her about it.
Eventually, they spent almost twice as much time apart as they did together. Mox’s new wife, Freddie, was the bassist in a goth cover band, and nothing made Beanie more envious than seeing Mox filmed standing at the foot of the stage where Freddie performed.
At one point, late at night, Beanie must have watched one of the videos over a hundred times, mesmerized by the scraping of strings and the sound of Freddie’s background voice and Mox singing along behind the camera. The next day, she received dozens of notifications. Beanie’s fingers must have dragged across the keyboard and wrote a string of kjnsddjjkjsdnkj Below the video. same girl, samesaid the first comment, while the second and third commented with a drooling emoji.
As Beanie frantically tried to figure out how to delete her post, a small white box appeared on her screen. Meaux clicked the heart button next to her comment. Beanie couldn’t bear to delete it, that sliver of connection like a wisp of dandelion seed floating in the vast emptiness of the Internet.
“It almost worked,” Beanie told Mox via comms. “It’s almost normal. I guess I shouldn’t be afraid-“
“You want to know what your fucking problem is?”
Beanie muttered. She wasn’t fooled.
“Sick Tell What the fuck is your problem.
Beanie knew that Mox punctuated each word with a finger that bit his nails. Harvey coughed into the phone, but Mox ignored him. “have no such thing As usual. If anything, I wouldn’t think We are almost normal. I want you to be a boiling wound, because that’s who you are.
“I’m leaving this channel,” Harvey said. “Well done, Beanie. Great to have you on the team again.
Mox and Beanie trade breaths until Mox succumbs first. “Well, damn it. Look what you went and did. Now Harvey is going to be mad at me for bringing you back.”
Beanie sniffed. “My boots are more emotionally secure than that boy.”
“You’re right.” Mox smiled. “But that boy is over thirty now, old girl.”
Beanie barely minded being called a girl when the word came out of Mox’s mouth. But she showed an expression of disbelief. “No way. I remember his first job, when he peed—”
“This is me explain, beanie. That was seventeen years ago. From then on we just–oh. A crunching sound reached Beanie’s ears, like eggs cracking on the pavement. Mox’s voice dropped twenty decibels. “We were created. Sniper, half in the void. Fourteenth floor, facing the bright light. I’ll hang a line.
“Mox?”
But she’s gone.
To Bini, the void has always been the sexy man at the bottom of the cliff, looking up like he’s about to step on her. But there is no reward for her ID today. Hearing silence and knowing that Mox was dead, he threw Beanie in. She didn’t even notice the horizon change.
Even when dealing with snipers, the eye socket surface of her skull was as crumpled as a used tissue in Beanie’s hands, and Beanie remained in the void. She finds the thread Mox had hung from the bullet and uses it to glide between two skyscrapers, throwing herself into this incipient sadness and hatred that builds up inside her like fire. Beanie hated the sniper, she hated the man who framed the farmer, and she hated having to tell Freddy what happened. Beanie hated seeing Harvey like this—he was back in the blind, salt streaking down his cheeks.
She would hug him immediately. When she’s ready.
When you die in the void, you leave behind a weak, hollow echo. A sketch. One person doesn’t echo much. It’s a neon mirage with a malignant half-life. Meaux lay on the ground, still wide-eyed and annoyed at being touched, eyebrows raised and lowered like animated emoticons.
Beanie lay next to Mox’s still silhouette, though she might as well have been holding psychic sandpaper. The stinging silence between them made everything almost feel like before. Just one more minute, she told herself.
Wait another minute.
About the author
Dave Ring is a queer writer of speculative fiction based in Washington, DC. he is Hidden One (2021, Rebel Satori Press) and many short stories. He is also the publisher and editor-in-chief of Neon Hemlock Press, and strange magazine. Find him online: davering.com or @slickhop on Twitter.
please visit lightspeed magazine Read more great science fiction and fantasy novels. This story first appeared in the June 2024 issue, which also features contributions from Varsha Dinesh, Andrea Kriz, Megan Chee, Dominica Phetteplace, Deborah L. Davitt, Oyedotun Damilola Muees, Shanna Germain and others. You can wait for this month’s content to be serialized online, or you can purchase the entire issue now in a convenient e-book format for only $3.99, or subscribe to the e-book version here.
Want more io9 news? Find out when the latest news is released Miracle, Star Warsand StarCraft Release, what’s next? DC Universe in Movies and TVand everything you need to know about the future doctor who.
