selfish love gene

CW: death, dead bodies, body transformations

The smell of leftover sunshine from our earlier beach trip is stuck in her hair, and I can’t help but remember when Suze liked daisies and her skin was warm as toast. Now her legs are gel-slick against my silk sheets. We live eighteen floors up a high-rise building. Advertisements flash on buildings opposite, grainy images about spider lilies blooming in oceans across the world, resembling networks of arteries undersea. The cityscape backdrop outlines her figure, washing her in soft spills of neon; the curve from her shoulder to waist that I’ve memorized, the swan jut of her wrist. 

The sky is a tarantula-black and Suze kneels on my bed, diligently tracking my goldfish with her eyes gone glazed. When it’s just me and her like this, I pretend it’ll be this way forever, that I won’t have dead bodies to go back to, to try and reanimate. The contracts on my desk say otherwise, but for now, they’re meaningless slips of paper. 

I come over with a towel and wipe down her sides. Uniquely, Suze has gills on her ribs, a byproduct of the lab work that I performed on her. I injected shark DNA because she liked sharks when she was alive. I prod around her midsection with extra care. Nothing reminds me more than her gills that she is no longer like me.

On normal nights, I’d take her out to the coast and watch her cut through salted crests with my infrared goggles, but Suze has been anxious as of late. In her panic, her jaw twitches uncontrollably, spiny teeth gnashing together.

We skip the coastal trip and cuddle in bed together, legs tangled, and practice the art of remembering. In this intimacy, I can’t look her in the eyes anymore, that humane spark overtaken by the curiosity of a guileless animal. It hurts to know that I still have her with me, but not wholly.

Hours later, I wake with the taste of lightning lining my mouth. It’s raining outside, and through my blurred windows, I see floating ad clips about data infusions: A snake winds around a girl’s torso until her body bends to its ministrations and morphs into a snake of its own. 

The spot next to me is empty and cold.

I find Suze in my laboratory, standing before my most recent client. She has peeled away the body sheet so that my client’s face blooms against the stainless steel of my table.

Already having smelled my arrival, she asks, “What’s her name?”

I don’t want to answer but Suze’s looking at me so intently that I’m compelled to. “Eris.” 

She repeats the name silently to herself. I wrap my arms around her waist, my hair falling over her shoulder.

“You’re freezing,” I say in between kisses on the cheek. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Will I see her tomorrow?”

Taken aback by the change of subject, I hesitate, wondering about the extent of her newfound obsession with Eris. Suze has now been alive for two weeks since I revived her from her untimely death. There have been rotting arms I’ve had to painstakingly fix, long sessions of speech therapy, slow nights and persimmon moons, forgotten memories—memories I’ve had to drag back from the graveyard, but never this. Never interest. It makes me question if I’ve been doing something wrong, if somewhere in the convoluted steps of my scientific research I made a minuscule error that caused her to come back only half-Suze, the rest of her a cluster of instinct and sepia memories. 

All my other clients have expressed their satisfaction with my services. My customer ratings are in the clouds. Just yesterday the Vangs dropped by to gift me a hefty discount to their hypercars as gratitude for bringing their son back. He will graduate in the spring, his mother wept, and we will be so happy. They showed me pictures of his future college dorm, two-hundred-something square feet of space equipped with our cybercity's highest technology. I warned them that in the first few years of his returned body, their son cannot be exposed to too much electrical energy.

In present time, I herd Suze into my arms, reassured by her heat, the realness of her being. “She won’t go anywhere,” I reply. Though it’s vague, it satisfies her. We turn away from the frozen body, and I cast one last glance at it before the lights are out, missing the fervid gleam in Suze’s eyes.

***

When Eris awakens, a thousand colorful fish are seen leaping from the oceans. I am in the middle of filing a patent for my nitro-chromatic technology. It’s the magic behind my resurrection miracles. I hear an explosion of glass outside my office and rush to the scene. Suze stands awestruck as a thin figure approaches her, glowing from the mahogany sun. Eris’ blonde hair falls to her waist, her skin silky as condensed milk because of the vampire bat DNA now running in her body. I don’t think either of them has noticed me yet, so focused on each other as they are. I call up the robot maid to clean the mess. Suze used to hate my over-reliance on technology. She said it made life worthless if we didn’t do the things that we have autonomy over—cleaning up after ourselves, cooking our own dinners—and instead heaped the tasks on pieces of metal.

“It makes life a lot easier for someone who spends ten hours in a lab,” I’d tell her. She’d respond by swiping my nose sweetly and locking my robot in the closet until the battery ran out. Then she’d make me the best pancakes, and we’d fuck afterward.

Now we’re sitting in a pizza parlor, waiting to order. Suze wanted to come here for Eris. During one of their many conversations, while I was in my lab working my life away, they bonded over pizza. 

The whole room looks like wax, like I’m on the outside glimpsing into an oil painting. One of the hanging bulbs above us flickers. I’ve been picking at the cherry plastic of my booth seat, and now it’s puckered like a mini-explosion. Suze and Eris are seated across from me, whispering to each other. They’re drowned out by the chirpy tunes coming from a beat-up jukebox.

The waitress approaches our booth. “Alright, what’ll we be having today?”

“Cheese pizza.”

“Pepperoni, please.”

Suze and I speak at the same time, causing my face to heat up, a sort of flustered trance taking over me.

“But you don’t like pepperoni,” I say with a stiff smile. It’s a statement but comes out more like an interrogation on my end.

Suze holds my hand across the table. It makes me feel like a lab monster that has to be pacified. “It’s Eris’ favorite.”

For a second, I don’t know what to say.

“One cheese and one pepperoni?” Thankfully, the waitress offers a solution or we’d be staring at each other all night.

When it arrives fresh out of the brick oven, the pizza tastes like wax. One word for this night, I’ve noticed, is “waxy.” Maybe my taste buds are deteriorating. Maybe I’m depressed as shit. I want to go home.

The jukebox gets jammed. Repeats the same word. Love, love, love—until it blurs into left, left, left—

The same waitress comes out behind the counter and smashes it with her fist, and it starts up again. Places like these that use old technology are rare but highly sought after by both tourists and elites. People seek out nostalgia. It’s what I’ve built my business off of. Grab the rope to anything that makes a heart tug and you’ve got endless cash in your pocket.

Maybe I’m evil or something, but I’m relieved when Suze and Eris don’t enjoy their pepperoni pizza. The crust was too hard and hurt Eris’ teeth, which were still sensitive after her revival.

“I make some mean pancakes. C’mon, let’s go home and it’ll be my treat.” They smile at each other, one girl with rows of shark teeth, the other with beady bat eyes.

Back at home, the kitchen counters are powdered with flour. I listen to them from the other room, their chatter like rain hitting the roof, close but phantasmic. I sit in darkness, a plush blanket around my shoulders. The wall-mounted television screen flickers with the latest soap opera, volume turned down to the lowest setting so I can feel like I’m a part of Suze’s world even if I’m only a door away.

While they enjoy their fresh pancakes, I finish the last of my cold pizza, the grease thick on my tongue like loss.

***

Suze likes to go on nightly swims. Her shark genes demand it, and I have a theory that she’s itching to show off her skills to Eris. I take them to the coast because I need some air and time away from the staleness of my lab. I should’ve known better.

Eris’ blood scales down the beach rocks like fruit punch. Strange, black protrusions push against the membrane of her back, her skin rolling and spasming. They tear through—flap open—extend on both sides of her slim body, and she screams. The sound is horrible, made worse when the wind around us catches it and sends it across the horizon, where Suze is swimming with powered strokes to return to shore. From where I’m standing, she looks like a force of nature, cutting through waves with predatory precision.

Ocean droplets take to sky, refracting light, as she lands on hard ground, whipping her long hair back and out of her face. Her eyes are lined with fury.

“What happened?” she demands of me.

I’m slightly offended because she sounds like she thinks I would hurt Eris. “It’s her second transformation. She’s acquiring more of her animal traits. You—you went through it too.” I point at Suze’s gills.

Suze wraps Eris, who is trembling, in a towel. Her nose is attached to the curve of Eris’ neck, so intimate that something inside me tears, but then I remember that sharks are drawn to the smell of blood. I can’t figure it out, the intimacy versus the predator-prey relationship. The other day I caught pinpricks on Suze’s neck, blushing the skin around it. I’m not privy to whatever it is they have going on. I feel betrayed, but I haven’t put word to the feeling yet and don’t want to because it’ll only make my hurt that much more real.

“We have to return to your lab. Fast,” Suze says, already walking away.

We came here on foot. It took thirty minutes. “How?”

“I’m calling up a hypercar.” My hand twitches. Observant as ever, she notices my silent refusal. “We’re taking the hypercar,” Suze insists. “This isn’t about you.”

For a moment, I’m reliving it all again. The distorted metal. The rusted blood seeping between crushed glass and blown out engines. The unanswered phone calls. Identifying dead bodies.

“But…you…”

“Are you coming or not?”

I shrink away, dread stilling my muscles and leaving me deadlocked. Suze knows my answer. She doesn’t wait to see if I change my mind.

I meet them back in my apartment. Suze has settled Eris on the couch and is holding her hand. I slip into my lab and return with a syringe. When I’m ready to plunge it into Eris’ skin, Suze slaps my hand away. The syringe flies across the room. My hand burns. An animal sound crawls out her throat, her lips curling back to fold over her teeth, tiny arrows all pointed at me.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“You want her to be in pain?” I snarl right back.

Suze retrieves the needle. “I’ll do it myself.”

And then because I’m spiteful and pissed, I say it. “After Eris wakes up, I’m sending her back to her family.”

Suze is on me in seconds, forcing me back so quick that the air threads through my hair. Then I’m against the wall, my shoulder throbbing. Her clammy hand cradles my throat. I can feel her overgrown nails testing the skin there. Her breath puffs in my face, the heat of it unfamiliar and uncanny.

“You love me.” I don’t know if I’m trying to convince myself or her.

Suze pushes in close to my ear. “You’re my creator. I don’t love you.” 

Behind her, Eris moans in pain.

Suze releases me, eyes running up and down my body in disgusted appraisal. I wasn’t lying. Eris has a family to return to. In fact, they commissioned me to revive her, paid in full. She probably even has a lover waiting for her. I preen at the idea.

On the other side of the room, Suze administers the needle, cooing gently to Eris who is curled in her arms. Because I feel awfully lonely, I scroll through the recordings on my phone. I watch Suze and Eris across the room, press my phone to my ear and hear Old Suze’s voice. In this little universe, she is speaking to me.

***

Three stops down University Lane, the street is rife with milling customers. The scent of cheap cigarettes lingers behind me and disappears into the throng of people. Despite it being night, businesses are booming on the street. Stalls blink bright, selling spare robot parts, fresh-made noodles, and remodeled phones.

Someone bumps into me, questions if they’ve seen me somewhere before. I retreat farther into the tall collar of my coat and sidestep them, digging my nails into my palm.

The shop I’m looking for sits on the corner, hidden behind heaps of cardboard boxes and vending machines. The bell jingles when I open the door, alerting the owner to emerge behind a beaded curtain. She’s an older woman, blinking at me—one eye normal and the other cyborg-embedded. I make it quick, telling her I’m here for data infusions. I heard I could extract my memories and give them to someone else at the cost of losing those memories in return. She’s expressionless as I explain myself, probably having heard the same story from multiple customers before me.

The process is painless: a USB cord that cuts into my wrist. 

Extraction. Painful.

Memories are vacuumed out of me at the speed of light. How the bus routes shut after nine so we were stranded and spent the night in a motel off the highway. Yellow kitchenettes and the wood table we carved our initials into. How her smile tipped up mid-joke. How we hold hands every time we cross the street. Memorized shoe sizes, coffee preferences, favorite water temperatures. The line of her back. Lazy movie nights. How I laughed so hard, rice shot from my nose. How she never let me forget it for the next two years I had left with her. Car doors ripped open—no—blood, whose? 

Suturing the wound. 

I was afraid I’d be different after this, but my heart is still full of love for Suze. I guess my love for her was more instinct than memory, ingrained so deeply even partial loss of memory couldn’t erase my desire for her. The lady injects my memories into a rectangular handheld device with a needle-like end.

“Memories expire after one hour. Make sure to use the flash drive before then.”

Suddenly, my phone blares, a little circle on the map lighting up red. Suze is trying to break through the security mechanisms of my home. I have to hurry.

Just as I grab my coat and leap over the store counter, the lady speaks out. “You are stealing Death’s work,” she pauses, “and he will come after you like fire on a fuse.”

***

All the light bulbs in my home have been blown out. My shoes crush glass shards on my way in. The floor-to-ceiling window where we used to watch the cityscape now has a large hole where someone pummeled their way through.

No—

The flash drive falls to my feet, forgotten.

Suze’s room is a mess with clothing thrown everywhere. She’s taken her essentials. Eris’ belongings are gone too.

Did they fly out the window together? Make use of Eris’ newly grown wings?

I flail from room to room, trying to piece out what happened.

Eris’ parents will arrive in an hour. They will want an explanation that I can’t give. My girlfriend eloped with your daughter? Yeah, that works. I’m going to have to take care of their emotional needs before my own. It’s going to suck.

I yank open the drawer in my lab. That’s when it hits me. The Vangs’ discount coupon for hypercars in my drawer is gone, and something like morbid panic overcomes me. I press my fingers into the metal hard enough to hurt.

I fumble for my phone, opening the interface. Maybe I can call Suze and convince her to come back. I still have the flash drive—

A red circle blinks next to her display name.

In the past ten minutes, Suze sent me a new audio recording: “I’m sorry I’ve become a cold-blooded animal.”