Something to Show You
"Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire."
- William Blake
Denmark sat up with a start.
He had been woken from his slumber by the light in his room being turned on. He sat up, wearily rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and was surprised by how thickly crusted with salt they were. He must have been sleeping for a while.
It dawned on him that he was no longer strapped to the bed. His eyes narrowed and he looked around warily.
What manner of game were they playing?
Satisfied that he was alone, he swung himself out of the bed and toppled over, sprawling awkwardly onto the hard floor. He rolled over onto his back and lay staring up at the ceiling for a moment, collecting his thoughts. He had forgotten about his missing leg.
"We left you a crutch to help you walk," Mayotte said matter-of-factly as she entered the room with a matronly cluck.
"Personally, I think you should stay strapped to the bed."
At the sound of her voice, Denmark spun around and scrambled clumsily into a defensive posture.
"Relax. I'm not going to hurt you," she said in a soothing tone as she approached him.
"Here, let me help you up."
She stooped down in front of him and offered him a hand up. He took it warily and let her help him stand up.
"How do you feel?" she inquired.
Now that he thought about it, he felt amazing. His teeth had ached for so long that he had become numb to the pain. Now that it was gone the void that the pain left in his consciousness gave him a mental clarity that he hadn't felt in years. His vision was also clear. Everything was sharply focused and there was no longer a misty veil over the world.
"You needed a lot of work," she continued, ignoring his silence.
"We had to replace your entire lower jaw with new teeth. The mess of dental caries must have been quite excruciating for you. We've also removed your cataracts and corrected astigmatism in your eyes. You will find your vision has greatly improved. There is an unusual gold coloring in your left eye. We have left that uncorrected. The doctors don't think it has any negative effect on your vision and it's quite a beautiful counterpoint to the green in your right eye, but I'm sure you already knew that."
Denmark did not have the faintest clue what she was talking about, but he liked looking at her so he kept quiet and allowed her to continue.
"We've also treated your skin and hair for parasites and we've hopefully cleared up all of your bacterial and yeast infections. You may find it a lot easier to relieve yourself from now on."
She looked down at his flaccid penis and grinned coquettishly. Denmark was surprised by how clearly her skin appeared to blush with arousal. He had never been able to see that sort of physical response to emotion before. These people appeared to be in possession of some powerful magic and must have cast some sort of spell on his eyes.
"You should be more careful about who you're sticking that thing in," she admonished.
Now it was Denmark's turn to blush.
With a wry chuckle, she grabbed the crutch from the end of the bed and showed him how to use it.
"Come on, get dressed, and follow me. I have something to show you."
She turned and marched off out the door. Denmark called out after her.
"Wait," he barked gruffly, "Where are my clothes and armor?"
She turned back and gave him a quizzical look.
"Those horrid things? Oh, they never came with you. You arrived here, naked as the day you were born. They were beyond repair anyway. You'll find fresh clothes in the cabinet beside the bed."
She waved a hand in the direction of the bed, and stood in the doorway, grinning mischievously as she waited for him to get ready. Denmark turned, located what he assumed she was referring to , and hobbled over to it. The cabinet was a squat, rectangular gray box that just about came up to his waist. He examined it warily, looking for a means to open it. There was apparently no handle or latch that he could see. Then he noticed that a small area on top of the cabinet appeared to pulse and shimmer ever so slightly. The effect was so faint that it was only barely noticeable. He stooped to examine the spot and prodded it with his index finger. The cabinet beeped in response as it recognized his bio-electric fingerprint and opened with a soft hiss. The combination of hissing sound and sudden movement caused Denmark to jump with fright. His lack of experience with using a crutch resulted in him sprawling onto the floor for the second time in the space of five minutes. Mayotte guffawed involuntarily at his misfortune, but quickly regained her composure and hurried over to help him up again. He brushed her off angrily and used the bed to pull himself back up.
"How did you know that the sensor pad was there?" she asked as he removed a simple white tunic from the cabinet.
"What do you mean?" he replied as he pulled the tunic on over his head, "It's right there on top of it."
"Are you telling me that you can actually see it?" she asked, incredulously.
Denmark looked at the faint, pulsing square of light neatly position on the front right corner of the top surface of the cabinet and frowned.
"It's easy to miss, but yes, I can see it," he replied.
"Now that is interesting," she said, whistling softly under her breath. "That sensor uses infrared and ultraviolet radiation to take a biometric scan of the skin. Most people need to be shown how to open it. You must be sensitive to non-visible electromagnetic radiation."
Denmark gave her a blank stare. He had absolutely no clue what she was talking about.
"Are you telling me that there is something wrong with my eyes?" he asked, raising his hand to his face.
Mayotte stepped forward quickly and pulled his hand away before he could rub his eye.
"Don't do that," she admonished before taking a good, long look at his eye.
"Tell me something," she asked, staring so intently into his face that he found himself getting nervous, "have you always had those gold flecks in your left eye?"
"I'm not sure," he replied warily, "not that I'm aware of. Nobody has ever mentioned it before."
"Hmmm," Mayotte replied thoughtfully, "it's pretty hard to miss. If you had always had it, then someone would have mentioned it to you at some point. It's possible that you picked it up on the transit through the gateway. The pod shielding may not have been enough to protect you from some exotic electromagnetic particles at the core of the Firewall."
Denmark gave her another blank look.
"The trip may have had an effect on your eye," she said, attempting to simplify, "it's making your eye work differently. This is very interesting."
She looked him up and down. Now that he had on the patient tunic, he could almost pass for respectable. She nodded approvingly. With a cheeky wink and smile, she beckoned for him to follow her.
"Come along, sunshine. As I said, I have something to show you."
He had not really understood any of what she had just said to him, but the smile she had just given him combined with the sway of her hips as she walked away lit a fire in his loins that shut down all his higher brain function anyway.
He hobbled after her, the crutch clattering awkwardly with each step.
Art by Daniel Sheldon https://www.facebook.com/speednperspective & https://twitter.com/Beatroute
