Crud.
I should call my friend Joss, who’s less than an hour away and said she’d pick me up if I needed to go home early. She even said she’d come in to physically help me out; I just need to say the word, and she’ll throw on a pageant gown and a masquerade mask, make it look like she’s a fellow anonymous cosplayer.
I’m not going to make her do that. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but she’s the most naturally beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life, and those old pageant gowns are a good four sizes too small for her these days.
No, I spend a good, long time on that ledge watching those marshmallows engage in fisticuffs upon the sugar-rimmed glass and decide that this is a night to enjoy myself.
To float.
To dream.
To let go of every nightmare lurking at my frayed edges.
To imagine a future where everything works out for me in unexpected but satisfying ways.
To imagine a future at all, after an entire year of planning for a just-in-case that meant that I would simply cease to be, a distant memory rarely thought of, winked out of existence in a handful of decades, like I was never here at all.
To live.
“You okay there?” a man in a Starfleet uniform yells to me over the din of conversation and the pulse of the club music. It’s early enough that most of the convention floors of the hotel are crowded but not so loud, but this is the pre-gaming spot. In the next couple of hours, the screaming and the hard beats will spread like a virus.
Like a cancer.
I nod; the world goes swirly. I try to focus on the man, but the lights are also swirling. I get him in flashes of blue eyes and dark hair and white skin. Red shirt.
Dead.
Captain.
Or dead. That’s how Star Trek works. You put that red shirt on, and you die. Unless you’re the captain.
“You sure? You’re crying.”
“What? Oh.” I dab at the corners of my eyes, discover that yeah, I’ve shed a couple tears. I soak them up with the lacy white gloves of my Sotchoku costume. “Just my eyes watering.” I laugh. “I think I’m high.”
He quirks an eyebrow in the dancing lights, flashes me a row of teeth that feels like too many, but that’s probably the drugs. “Oh yeah? Can I buy you a drink?”
The math there doesn’t math, but math was never my strong suit, and I’m fairly sure I have three fingers on my right hand. The gloves are normal, everything was fine when I put them on, but when I look at my hand now, I can’t even count as high as I need to. So no, it’s probably my math that’s off, not his.
“I am so thirsty,” I tell him. I didn’t even realize that until I said it, but now I’m pretty sure it’s not the cancer that will kill me. I have a thirst, and it is fatal.
The man laughs and grabs me by the waist to put me on my feet. I shriek, startled, the move unexpected and still hitting that odd math part of my brain, but I’m on my feet, my heels anchored on hotel lobby carpet.
“Relax,” he says, his voice so close to my ear I can feel it slithering down my ear canal. “I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall.”
His hand feels funny on my waist, but I have a waist and he’s a Red Shirt. He’s a corpse. Everything is weird. “Sorry, I’m just wobbly today.”
There’s an open seat at the bar, although it looks like a guy in a Deadpool costume, his mask flipped up enough that he can drink a beer, is holding it for someone. The Red Shirt guides me toward it, and I resist until he says, “That was my seat.”
The Deadpool nods. Slowly. So slowly. Like he’s forgotten where his eyes are and needs to retrieve them. Acid does crazy stuff to time. It was probably a normal nod. “It’s your seat now,” he tells me.
The Red Shirt is tall, the bartender is tall, even the seated Deadpool on one side and the Ghostface on the other side are tall. Everyone is tall, and I’m tiny. Shrinking. Vanishing. Alice in Wonderland eating the biscuit.
Drinking the potion.
Eating the biscuit.
Drinking the potion.
