Underland Press

By Simon Drax
August 18, 2009

(Be sure to check out The Simon Drax Blog for supplemental reading)

And now the eighth installment of Simon Drax's Exit Vector...

* * *

"We should get out of here," Trista snarled. "It's late."

"Later than you think," Frost said, but Trista had already stalked away.

Trista moved hard-shouldered through the club's gaunt and slow-moving patrons. It was very late, nearly morning. She had talked for hours, revealed more than she intended, and now as she shoved through the ghost crowd Trista was peppered with drunken come-ons and sordid offers. She met each mumbled proposition with a death-glance that could melt steel, yet inwardly she cursed herself anew; thanks to the violence of her teleport, her clothes were barely more than burnt rags. She caught the telepathic splinters of heavy metal ripped pixie stripper babe hot! from nearly every human male she passed. A few of the women, too.

Trista's lips curled. You don't want to dance with me, humans, my kisses are deadly. Her head fairly swam from the drink, the tale, the old familiar sheath of self-loathing. My kisses, she thought, my...

And as Trista pushed open the door to the fetid washroom, it struck her full-force: it was upon her. The ache. Damn it.

She swayed, steadied herself. The door swung shut behind her. A distant part of Trista's brain reasoned that she shouldn't be surprised: she considered the energy she had expended saving Mori, the gallons of toxins in her system, the near-crippling sorrow that the telling of the tale always brought, but still... the timing could not have been worse.

The ache.

It was upon her.