Borderlands 2 Read online

  “Answer me one thing,” Gary said, low and even and electric. He yanked open his shirt to bare his chest. “What the hell is happening to me?”

  They stared at his nipples, now in full nursing deployment. By now an arrangement of eight or ten red welts had erupted beneath them, down his ribs, like especially prominent mosquito bites.

  Alexis smiled broadly. Mischievously. “You empathized with Lana after all! How sweet.”

  “You think I’m fucking around here?” Gary roared. In that moment, he wanted to hit Alexis, woman-in-the-making or not.

  “It must’ve been love.” Gabriel leaned in to dart his once-feminine tongue onto a nipple. An unexpectedly intense pleasure trilled through Gary. Horrifyingly intense. For a moment, he wanted only to feel it again, ever the hedonist. He snapped his shirt closed.

  “But I didn’t take any hormones!” he cried, head swimming.

  “When two people love each other.” said Gabriel, “a little bit of each one stays inside the other. From you, Lana took a certain amount of independence, I think.”

  “And what did I get from her? Tits!’ His laughter rivaled Megan’s in hysteria.

  “Oh, it’s much more than that, Gary, surely you can feel that by now,” Gabriel said.

  Gary peered down his torso, suffering a mental dust storm. With a clearer head, maybe he could make sense of this, pinpoint some allergic reaction as the culprit. But no, he’d had to pollute himself once again.

  “I don’t want this, don’t understand it.”

  Gabriel propped his head atop a loose fist, leaned in. ‘Do you know what the very, worst part of being us is? The very worst aspect?”

  The question sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it. Try for an answer, any answer, try to work this through …

  “Your body is wrong, a prison, what? What?”

  “Oh, that’s it, all right,” Megan said.

  Gabriel cocked his head “Not quite.”

  “Isn’t it?” she shrieked, then stood and whirled on Gary. “Do you know what it’s like to wake up every morning with something like cancer hanging between your legs? Because that’s what these are like to me!” Megan clumsily hitched up the tight black dress she wore. Her penis and scrotum were framed within a garter belt and stockings. “They’re wrong! I DON’T WANT THEM AND NOBODY WANTS TO TAKE THEM AWAY FROM ME!”

  Alexis rolled her eyes. “I hate it when she’s like this. You’d think she was on her period or something.”

  Gary watched, mortified, as Megan sufficiently lowered herself to plop her genitals onto the tabletop. Flaccid from her estrogen intake, limp and sexually useless.

  Something in her eyes, though, foaming drunken madness, accelerated by grief.

  “Nobody cares,” Megan muttered, then seized Gary’s wine bottle and smashed it against the table’s edge. She held the dripping, jagged remnant with the same reverence lavished on surgical steel.

  “I know how this is done,” she said

  And smiled while bringing the glass slicing down. Blood was drawn at the first firm stroke. As Megan’s face twisted into a beatific mask of agonized rapture, liberation. Alexis screeched and pushed herself away in the booth. Gabriel reacted more out of surprise than revulsion, shutting his eyes sadly as Megan sawed away.

  New sights, sounds, tastes, sensations, experiences … damn them all. This was too, too much. Gary bolted to his feet and reeled away from the booth. Fixed his eyes on the way he’d come up and lurched toward it. A moment later a firm hand gripped his upper arm, steering him another way.

  “Let me help you,” said Gabriel.

  He tried to wrest free. “I just want out of here!”

  Gabriel remained firm. “This way’s quicker. I promise.”

  Gary struggled another moment, then saw the exit sign glowing where Gabriel pointed. Surrender. Gabriel knows best.

  Gabriel hustled him through the gathering crowd like a master guide. When they burst through the exit, Gabriel released his arm. The roof; Gary recalled Lana’s tales of the garden. The fresh air hit him like smelling salts, vibrant and tainted with the brown scent of Mississippi mud. It drew him on, and he lurched past greenery, shrubs and bushes and small trees in planters. Within, shadows moved to the rhythms of breathless moans, and he saw them … face to face, head to lap, groin to buttocks.

  Help. He needed help. Medical help.

  Near the far edge of the roof, Gary collapsed, spent and shaking. He rolled onto his back, beginning to weep at the night sky while distant thunder rolled. The desultory rains were moving on, leaving darkly blue and violet clouds in their wake, boiling past the face of the moon.

  Gabriel knelt beside him, set a comforting hand on his traitorous chest. Beneath the hand, Gary’s flesh throbbed tenderly. Pleasantly. Rebellion by carnality, for part of him was intrigued.

  “Poor Gary.” Whispered, soft.

  “What’s wrong with me?” Choking on tears.

  “Megan.” Gabriel shook his head. “Sometimes she’s so gothic. I’m sorry you had to see that. I knew she’d do it someday, she was so obsessive.”

  Gary’s shoulders shuddered,

  “I never got to answer my own question. About what the worst part of being us is. Can you guess?”

  Again, that nudge of familiarity. Further this time, nudging all the way to recollection. Lana had asked him nearly the same question, that first night on Basin Street before he had even known the truth about her. A riddle which had gone unanswered, forgotten.

  “No … I don’t …”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute.” Gabriel looked fondly down at him, that androgynous face at once strong and tender.

  And calculating. “We can’t go all the way across, you know. We never will make it one hundred percent.”

  His hand stroked Gary’s lap, popped the button of his slacks, drew the zipper down. Massaged him, bared him. And, Heaven help him, against all wishes he was growing erect.

  “If you’re going man-to-woman, the surgery’s pretty successful, but the hormonal changes are lacking. If you’re moving the other way, like me? The hormone change is better, but not the surgery. They can build me something that looks like a cock… but it won’t much act like one.” Gabriel gave him a squeeze. “This hard-on? It’s a miracle I’ll never, ever know. At least their way.”

  Gabriel paused long enough to peel away his own clothes. Behold, the hybrid. Still on his back, Gary saw moonlight glint off the shiny healing scars of a double mastectomy, amid sprouting hair. Lower, the wonders of the pubic triangle still hid within a thatch of hair.

  “You’ve known Lana’s half, now why don’t you try my point of view?” Gabriel murmured, then straddled him. Mounting firm.

  Raped. The thought was murky surreal. I’m being raped. But his hips surged upward all the same. Tomorrow had always been soon enough for self-reproach.

  “But the very worst part of being us?” Gabriel stared down, sheened in sweat. “We’re made, not born. We can’t procreate. But … I think maybe we can change that.”

  This was more than fucking, Gary knew that when he saw the others gather round to watch. This was tranquilizer. This was anesthesia. Bribery and reward and homage. Total manipulation. Oddly, humiliation never entered his mind.

  “A friend once told me … the land of Dixie is the land of ghosts.” Gabriel’s breath was deepening with the rhythm, voice growing huskier. “I believe that. And I believe that New Orleans is a magic place. There’re people here, they know things that others think they have no business knowing at all. Maybe they’re right. But Lana didn’t think so.”

  When Gabriel stripped Gary’s shirt away, he saw the twin rows of nipples aligned down his torso. Erect and straining, like those of a sow with a farrow of piglets.

  Gabriel bent low, placed his lips to one. And sucked.

  Gary gasped, shaking his head, but feeling a flow of transient warmth, and an emotional glow he could label only as maternity.

  “Lana looked for someone like y
ou for a long time. I never saw her any happier than after she met you. Someone open-minded … interested in new experiences … who wanted no part of his past life.” Gabriel touched a quieting finger to Gary’s lips when he started to speak. “But let your conscience off the hook. She didn’t kill herself over you … she did it for us.”

  Once content to observe, the others now started forward.

  “It was the one sacrifice she wanted to make, to thank the rest of us for making her feel like she belonged somewhere. It … didn’t take long to make up her mind once she decided you were the one.”

  Gabriel raised to kiss him, and the others closed in. Half-men, half-women, these walking techno-miracles of endocrines, scalpels, and silicon. Taking positions at the nipples, tenderly joining to him with suckling mouths. They were very gentle, did not bite.

  “Lana was spiritual … and she was carnal … and she was maternal. Just like a goddess should be.” Again, Gabriel shushed him with fingertips. Still grinding with muscled hips. “Reproduction is more than working body parts. It’s spiritual, too. I think Lana knew that better than anyone else. And now? She’s closer to you than she could ever have gotten with her body. Can’t you feel her inside … yet!”

  He searched hesitantly, tentatively. Thinking maybe, maybe, there was another light, another warmth, pulsing within.

  “No matter what, though,” Gabriel whispered, “don’t ever think she didn’t love you. Oh, she did. She does.”

  Of course she would. How could she ever have done this to someone whom she hated? For, What is love? Two souls and one flesh.

  Gary writhed, the eye in an emotional hurricane. Tears, love, revulsion. But fighting would accomplish precious little. And he was needed. So he lay back amid this roof-bound Eden, beneath the rolling sky, and let them nurse, while still more found their way to the roof to take their place in line. And within—from within—the juices flowed. Testosterone, estrogen, androgen; spiritual and hormonal mother’s milk. To nurture and nourish miracles greater still.

  Gabriel cupped his cheek. “You are truly honored. You’re the madonna of an entirely new gender.”

  Gary surrendered, fully, the pleasure and contentment swamping even the staunchest denial. He stretched wide his arms, satisfied he and Lana would forever be as one, and reached to embrace their children.

  SARAH, UNBOUND

  Kim Antieau

  Kim Antieau is quietly creating a reputation as a short story writer of finely pointed, emotionally charged fiction. Living in the state of Washington, she has seen her work published in most of the major magazines and anthologies. Her contribution to Borderlands 2 is a subtle, sensitive journey into the mind and imagination of a small boy. It is also a poignant examination of one of our society’s most gut-wrenching problems.

  “Sarah,” Paul whispered, his breath warm on her ear. His lips brushed the small of her back and then kissed the tiny rose that bloomed from the dimple above her left buttock. “My tattooed lady,” he said. She turned and drew him toward her, inside her. She saw stars in his eyes. “I will give you whatever you need,” he whispered. Sarah gasped with pleasure.

  Suddenly, she was eight years old. Her father’s footsteps were quiet outside her bedroom door. Then he was in the room, pulling up her nightgown, groping for her in the darkness. He pushed the pillow over her mouth as he rammed himself into her.

  The phone rang, and Sarah opened her eyes. Morning. She was alone. She sighed. The dream was all wrong. She didn’t know a man named Paul and her father hadn’t raped her until she was eleven. The phone rang again. She answered it.

  “Sarah? It’s Nancy. Did I wake you?” Her sister’s voice did not sound two thousand miles away.

  “Sarah?”

  “No, I was awake,” Sarah said. “What’s going on?”

  “Sarah …” Nancy’s voice broke.

  “What’s happened?” Sarah’s stomach was suddenly in a knot.

  “It’s Carl.” Their brother. “He and Katie have split. Apparently he’s been molesting his daughter.”

  The room shifted slightly, and Sarah drifted. Who was that in the distance talking on the phone, her face white, her lips turning red where she bit them?

  Sarah tasted blood, and she was on the phone again, listening to her sister cry. Molest. What a stupid word. He had raped his daughter. He had assaulted her. He had taken her body away from her.

  “That bastard,” Sarah said.

  “Sarah!” her sister cried. “He needs our support.” Easy for her to say. Their father never touched her.

  “Like father, like son,” Sarah said. There was silence on the other end of the phone.

  Finally her sister said, “I’ll talk to you later when you’re calmer about all this.”

  Sarah set down the phone. When she got her degree a year ago, she had moved as far away from her family as she could—without leaving the country. It hadn’t been far enough.

  Suddenly she realized she did know someone named Paul. He came to her office once a week for counselling. Only he wasn’t an adult. He was eight years old. Sarah grabbed her stomach. “My God,” she whispered. She was having wet dreams about her young clients! “Like father, like son. Like daughter.” She bit her lip until she tasted blood again.

  Sarah’s office seemed grayer than usual as April clouds covered Mount Hood in the distance and dropped down to become fog in the Columbia Gorge. She knelt on the floor and pulled out the toy box. Often children who had been molested became molesters. A learned behavior. Which meant she, too, could molest some innocent. She pulled out a black plastic horse from the box. Paul loved this horse. She smiled. He called him Caesar. He was a mature child; only when they played together did he act like an eight-year-old. Sarah dropped the horse into the box. She felt too deeply for the children. She dreamed of them, and their wounds were open sores she could not heal. Children were too fragile; it was too easy to damage them permanently.

  She closed her eyes. She heard her nightgown ripping, felt the pillow cover her mouth. How could her brother do what her father had done to her for countless nights?

  Sarah pushed away the toy box and stood up and went to her desk. She thought about talking to Henry, the head of the counselling and resource center. She would ask to be taken off any cases which involved children. She knew what he would say. He would want to know if she had ever touched or talked to her clients in a sexual manner. Of course she hadn’t. Then he would remind her that dreams were only symbolic representations of other things. He would also tell her that she was very good with children. They seemed to instinctively trust her.

  She rubbed her face and sighed. She had gone to counselling herself while completing her degree. They had talked about her childhood experiences with her father. She thought she had dealt with it all. So had the counsellor. Now the memories were resurfacing. Like some kind of toxic waste.

  She looked at her desk calendar. Paul was her first client this morning. He had been coming to her for two months, ever since his mother committed suicide by driving into the Columbia River as Paul watched. The mother had left behind a boy with little self-esteem. At each session, Sarah worked on making him feel important and loved. Later, she would help him feel anger. Today, they would play, as they often did. It was good for him to be a child for a little while each week.

  Sarah went into the waiting room. Paul sat quietly, reading a National Geographic. He was alone as usual. His grandparents didn’t think he should be coming to these sessions, but the court had insisted. He looked up when she entered the room and smiled.

  “Hello, Sarah, whose name is like a sigh,” he said. His fine blond hair fell down across one blue eye. He put the magazine down and got up. Then he went to her and grasped her hand in his and said, “How are you today?”

  “I’m good,” she lied. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  They walked together into her office. Paul let go of her hand and went to the toy box. Sarah closed the door and then sat
on the floor next to Paul.

  “Caesar!” he cried, pulling out the horse. He laughed and galloped the horse across the carpet. Sarah took out another horse, a palomino with a purple saddle and golden mane and tail.

  “I’ve been coming here for two months,” he said. “I looked on the calendar. I like it here.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “It’s safe here,” he said. “Sarah, whose name is like a sigh, I’m going to marry you someday.”

  Sarah laughed. “Are you?”

  He nodded. “And I’ll give you whatever you need.”

  Sarah stiffened. The man in her dream had said that. Her heart raced. How had Paul known? No, no, he didn’t know. He had probably said it to her before, and she had incorporated it into her dream. Yes, that was what had happened.

  “And what do I need?” she asked.

  He looked at her. “To be safe.”

  That was the second time he had mentioned being safe.

  “What do you need?” she asked.

  “I need to go away,” he said. He rocked the horse back and forth.

  “Why?”

  “Because she told me to go away. She said she needed to be alone. Then she pushed me out of the car and drove into the river.”

  At last, he spoke of her death.

  “Maybe that was what your mother needed. What do you need?”

  He reached out and touched her hand lightly. Then he smiled.

  “Are you going to leave me?” he asked.

  “No, I’m not going to leave you.”

  He crawled up onto her lap, as he often did, and Sarah held him close. She rocked him gently and felt his tiny heart beating next to hers. His mother had killed herself, his father had left when Paul was three, after putting out a cigarette on his son’s buttocks. Now Paul put his small arms around Sarah. He smelled clean and fresh, like Tide. Like the pillow her father had used to press against her mouth until she felt as though she was going to suffocate, and when she couldn’t get her breath, she floated out of her body. She went higher and higher until it seemed as though she was on the ceiling. Below, her father grunted, his pants down at his knees. She couldn’t see herself beneath him. It was as though he was pushing himself into nothing. She floated to the stars and watched them twinkle. When she came back, her father was gone. She wiped up the blood and semen and wished she could go away forever.