Dystopian Futures Suck Balls When The Inquisition Comes To Investigate Your Tax Return
an excerpt

Mary always knew that smile wasn't all of the story: broad and golden even as a hand cupped her jaw while her fingers tapped the glossy keys, seat creaking under her weight as she shifted and smiled back. She didn't quite dare to lean into his grip, not with his butler grandstanding in the hallway about something or other, voice cut with the sharp notes of the piano, but his eyes were as warm as if she had. His thumb rubbed over her lips and his smile dimmed to something ironic and appreciative, more real than anything else she'd seen from him.

'Marry me, Mary,' he murmured, right there with his hand warm on her face and the collar of her freshly-starched shirt itching and the sun lighting dust motes dancing in a shaft of sunlight above their heads, looking at her, just looking at her and seeing her, a sixteen-year-old girl taking piano lessons at the great estate every Wednesday, a girl named Mary sitting on a piano bench and looking right back and knowing she was seen; Mary, just Mary.

'Yes,' she said, certain, and he wove his hand into her hair, already loose from its pins, and cupped her skull in his palm. She played a little of Ode to Joy, unable to resist, and his eyes warmed in a smile truer than any touching his mouth, his hand as steady as his gaze upon her. He didn't try to brush her hair back into order; didn't shake it free of its bonds, but left it to curl over her shoulder, wound in loose rings around his fingers.

'There are some things you should know,' and she shakes her head, smiling a little herself.

'You won't give me forever, I know,' she said, intent upon their reflections in the black polish, his palpable focus as her fingers rippled across octaves; up, down, about in something more and less than a tune. 'We have time.' His reflection doesn't look convinced; his hand in her hair weighing with something like regret. 'It matters that you want to, I know you do. It does.' He nods and she pulls away; the lesson is over. He lets her, slides his hand down her arm, cupping her elbow and pulled back as the door opened to admit the butler, pale and indignant.

They're a scandal of course, the talk of the town, and he makes a dry comment about it being a dire state of affairs as he bends to kiss her knuckles the same way he has always done, glancing up at her through his eyelashes from his textbook-perfect bow over her fingers with a half-smile just like the first time, every other time, and she shakes her head, laughs. She feels younger somehow, thrilled and unable to contain the overflow of nervous giddy anticipation.

Her wedding is a blur, the only thing she's aware of being the wealth of gold next to her, still and calm in a whirl of colour and faces, watching her with something a little like love when he promises to love and cherish her forever, and she says I do, yes, yes.

Learning the estate is a matter of confusion, of long echoing halls and happening upon unexpected delights: a tucked-away ballroom gilded gold, floor inlaid with black marble and ivory; a hidden-away nook with a perfect view over a stretch of children's gardens with low hedges and twisty gravel paths, nook dominated by a foot-operated spinning wheel, the spindle black and wickedly sharp, stiff beside an ancient rocking chair, yarn crumbling in neat rows inside a hatbox beneath the seat.

Learning him is far more difficult; his moods are bleak and his humour contrary, though he always has time to spare to listen to her, hear her with a focus as intent as if she were the only person in the world that mattered at that exact moment. It's unnerving, in some ways, that complete attention, his quick understanding of things she does not yet have the words herself to say; unnerving and reassuring in its constancy.

Her sisters whisper over him, faking solemnity whenever he happens to glance their way and breaking into giggles once he has left the room, but their warnings are uniform, their anxiety sour in the air.

'I'm not sure you can trust him, Mary. They say, well - he's a bit -' Her eldest sister gropes for words and Mary shakes her head.

'He loves me,' and she knows it.

Being married to him is like how she imagines milltary wives feel, their husbands far away in jungles, and it is nothing like what she had hoped to expect. The other side of their bed is cold more often than not; he is there, tired and apppreciative on the phone, in tight angular script in letters she keeps wrapped tight in the top drawer of her dresser, in the flowers picked fresh from the gardens and placed on a flat-topped chest at the foot of their bed at his orders; and yet he is not when she realises, standing in the middle of the kitchen, that she has no idea what the cook's stubborn adherence to tradition means and if he were there, he would be able to explain.

He is away days, weeks at a time but never longer than a month, blowing in with trade winds, stock fluctuations, spices still heavy on his skin. The nights he gets back he swings her around, stocking feet sliding on the floor of their bedroom though the estate has three ballrooms specifically for dancing, and dips her, twirling her close and wedging his nose into the crook of her shoulder, breathing against her collarbone. His arms settle across her waist, her hips, and she can feel his joy at coming back to her like it's a physical thing, fluttering and humming against her skin.

She still doesn't know exactly how old he is or what it is he does or how he skips from one place to another so fast or why his eyes sometimes gleam poisonous green the night of full moon. But times like this, moments like this with his voice husky in her ear singing Mustang Sally in his odd accent, it doesn't matter.

Pregnancy is her sisters and her mother fussing over her, standing ankle-deep in a rosebed with the gardeners laughing, who all know her by name and face though they touch their foreheads and call her 'missus' with something close to awe. It's propping textbooks open on her belly and chewing thoughtfully on a pencil, calling her husband just to hear his voice as he guides her through the right and wrong of professional capering, hemhawing and things simply untrue; it's having flour in her hair to the roots and cakes baking in a row of ovens, the cook accidentally calling her by a name not her own and shying away when she thinks Mary will ask; but Mary does not ask, because she does not care to know, and soon they are waving steam out of their faces, the lapse ignored but not forgotten.

It's also her husband staying at home longer and more often, servants scurrying in and out of his wing of the estate, accompanied by men and women in odd clothes and foreign accents like her husband's but thicker, harsher, their eyes cold and warming as they see her, bending to kiss her hand and smile at her in that same way; a cultural thing, she understands now, the norm, and feels a little foolish for having been so charmed. As the winter turns becomes spring, she makes it a habit to walk the length of the gardens and into the far western entrance of his wing, taking the twisting, narrow stairs to the fourth floor and stifling laughter as she takes a cup of coffee from the kitchen to the right of the stairs and into her husband's study, bellying up to his chair while he leans back in his chair, staring at the frieze on the ceiling and strangling his fingers with the phone cord while someone on the other end natters on and on and on.

He always has a warm, if tired, smile for her and their unborn, opening his arm to her and leaning his head against her belly and interrupting whoever it is on the line with a lazy, satisfied, 'My wife is so beautiful'. She can hear their laughter, their surprise at his saying such a thing, and it doesn't faze her anymore. Mary used to think, too, that her husband had ice for blood and a heart frozen to injustice, so cold and disinterested when he made one of his rare passes through the town and her friends did their best to draw his attention with flashy clothes and bright teeth and he passed them by like they were behind thick panes of glass, a brief glance to see what he couldn't have and never would before speeding onwards. She has learnt now that her assessment was more or less true.

'You're too good to me,' he protests, as always, and she kisses the top of his head, scratches at the flakes of blood looping behind his ear and down his neck. He forgets to clean up sometimes, that much she can guess, and he only does it at all because he knows it bothers her. Still, sometimes she wishes he would check to make sure it was all gone, instead of leaving her with the odd, twisting feeling of unwilling speculation.

She tells him as much and his gaze at her flickers startled. Mary can guess why; most wives would be shrieking bloody murder, not calming reminding their husbands to clean up. But this is her husband, not her commandant, and she can ask but she cannot force. He accords her the same respect, something she's grateful for when the design of some of the tapestries sets her skin crawling and she orders them taken down. His smile slides back into relief.

'Alright, then. I'll find a mirror and, uh, take a good look before I come near your august presence.' He's not quite teasing her, and she pulls at his hand, taps his fingers until they unclench from the cord and admit the base of his cooling coffee cup, inscribed World's Greatest Dad as a joke but she suspects it's the truth; her husband strikes her as a dilligent, caring father, if for no more reason than he has never hurt her, loves her too much to conceive of the possibility. And that, sometimes, is all of why she keeps loving him through the maze of secrets showing just enough of themselves to make her head spin from attempting to grapple with their enormity.

For a moment, standing there with his arm around her and looking down at the crown of his bent head, down and across his desk filled with long lists and inventories and forms in no language she recognises and letters in curving slanting feminine hands not her own spilling off one corner onto the carpet, she sees nothing.

It's not a moment of blackness, or dizziness; just the feeling of being somewhere else, like peeping through one of the pigeonholes into another room, or listening at a door. She is not here, because if she were, she would not be here. And right in her line of nonsight here in this nonworld is a thing she has never seen: his skin is as black as the darkest Caribbee, and his eyes are green, reminding her of the French Cajuns she saw once, a long time ago, her language become theirs in a way indescribable. Yet, for all that his voice asks her Are you lost? there is no welcome in him. She turns away, as she has taught herself: turns away, inside and out, and when she opens her eyes again she is holding back uncharacteristic rage, rage not her own whittling away at marrowbone and myelin.

Her husband takes one look at her and goes white. 'Leave her,' a command, and the moment passes, and she blinks. He stares back at her, rubs his thumb along her jaw. Mary meets his eyes, his too-expressive too-human inhuman eyes, and sees nothing but hollowness. Questions hover and fight with some instinct to smack his arm from around her waist, and she shakes her head: once, thrice, and picks up his mug, absorbs its faint warmth, enamel and sharp edges of gaudy paint. She does not say a word; she does not want to know, she does not want to know, she does not want to know.

All the while, that hollow beats inside of him, steady as a mechanical moneky-drum, beating to the rhythm of her heartbeat - no, she realises, not her, their child's, inside of her, beating through his palm on her stomach and through his arm and reverberating inside where she is not allowed to go.

Mary sees, and she does not ask. There are places where only the inhuman, lacking human fear and hatred and delight, can go. And Mary may be his wife; but she is human, and human she will remain. This, above all, she learns here and now, is mercy. It is his gift to her. The phone rings, and rings, and rings again, querulous, and she bends to kiss his forehead. It is not quite a blessing, but it is the only forgiveness she has.

'I'll get you more coffee.' He nods and picks the phone, clearing his throat and pulling back his arm to tap his wrist agains the edge of the desk, a nervous habit, and within moments it is as if nothing has happened, and she has not yet walked in: the creak of his chair, his relaxed slouch and irritable tapping, his eyes tracking across the ceiling frieze that she cannot bring herself to look at. But to see him now is to see echoes made visible, action and reaction and muffling carpet and hands over mouths. Mary could leave now and his life would not change at all. She could stay, and accept the fact that what is eternal may shift its shape, may grace new courts and create new bounds for its cage, but there have and always will be echoes, lost no matter who hears them.

This, then, is the answer.

She will stay, and in a little while she will stay again; and a little later yet, she will stay also.