Chapter 5 d Reflex

He looked up, meeting Emi’s bright face as she peered down on him adoringly. He tipped forward away from her, knelt onto his knees, and then faced her. She sat back holding herself up by the arms, staring, and waiting.

He leaned in to close the gap between them, but it wasn’t enough. He crawled on top of her and aligned their faces. He licked her lips. Her tense muscles loosened and she fell back an inch. The thirst reflex was still strong, and even though he watched her intently like prey, he knew that the kind of nourishment that he needed wasn’t what she could offer him.

It seemed like it was just the two of them until Nansen moved. His hands clasped one against the other in front of his upper abdomen and he leant forward. His eyes glimmered wet and dilated. “Good boy, Iggy,” he praised. “Wasn’t that fun? Aren’t you happy? Now, you get to do that every night, for as long as you live.”

Iggy couldn’t concentrate. His attention caught sight of the string of lights shining hypnotically from the hallway, illuminating the darkness. Directly across the way, the red light called him like a siren, promising him another delicious taste of the red nutrition. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay and not only relive the ecstasy over and over, but because he was starving again. Still thirsty. He licked his lips and whispered, “again,” then he leapt to his feet and charged inside the next prepared room.

“Wait!” Nansen held out an arm, missing him by a fraction of a second. “These people are for everyone! We share them! Iggy! Wait!”

Regardless, no one could have stopped Iggy. After his third victim, he became overwhelmingly woozy at the height of his thirst hypnosis that Nansen seized the moment and collected him over his shoulder and dashed out of the basement before Iggy realized that the blood was gone.

The next thing Iggy knew, he was sitting on top of a bar stool, staring at himself through a mirror. He should’ve felt some sort of mixture between shock and surprise, confusion perhaps, but he had absolutely no sudden response. His mind wasn’t aware of much. He couldn’t think thoughts. He could only see what was before him.

Gazing through the mirror, he could see Emi standing against his left shoulder, stroking his black hair between her fingers and a comb. Even with the extra curves that hindered the length, it was below his collarbone, and strange to feel it against his skin. It hadn't been that long before. She played, lengthening and dropping his hair with each stroke. Her voice was soft, yet sharp like glass. “How short will it be?”

Nansen paced back and forth with his arms crossed tightly over his chest and scissors clenched in his hand. All of the muscles in his body were tense. “He’s going to be so mad at me,” he groaned, bringing voice to the thoughts rolling around in his head. He shook his chin side to side disgracefully and planted a palm over his temple. His eyes clamped shut as if he were feeling the actual pain of guilt. “I should have waited. I’m such an ungrateful idiot!” He pointed his finger straight toward Emi’s back. “KillJoy, if you tell Baine how awesome it was to watch, I’ll kill you.”

Her lips twinged. “Don’t give me any more ammo to use against you, idiot. No wonder why you’re the buffoon around here.”

“Dammit, we should have waited.” He spun around. “I’m going to regret taking him down to the feeding rooms alone.”

Her head tilted and she narrowed her sights on him. “Enough already. You’ve said that a million times. Are you going to get snipping at this mop, or what? Do you even know how short you will make it?”

He planted his feet and met her stare. His hand rose, and he sliced the scissors through the air at the height of his own chin. His voice was tight, and rumbling with pressure. “It’ll be right fucking here; where he usually had it. Are you happy?! Hair is the least of our worries.”

Her expression softened and she glided a lock of her own hair through her hands. Her fingers caressed the strands softly. “Will it always grow so fast?”

Nansen’s arms dropped to his sides and he slouched his shoulders downward. “That’s it… I’m defeated.” He raised his hands like claws. “I want to strangle you, but I know that strangling you won’t work, so, I’ll just try to explain. The first time that hair is cut, the growing slows down, and it won’t grow back that fast ever again. It actually grows back very slowly, so you need to protect it if you don’t want to be bald for ten years.”

She frowned at the very thought of it and wrinkled her nose. Her eyes observed the snowy shimmer of her locks closely. “Then, I shouldn’t cut it, just in case?” She looked up with large hopeful eyes. “What will happen if I never cut it?”

Nansen couldn’t handle it. A growl of frustration mixed with anxiety traveled out of his throat and he clutched the scissors tighter in his grasp, nearly bending them useless. “You will be asleep... all the time, like an old fat cat, which might be better than having you around asking questions all the time! This is all really unimportant compared to the real problems at hand.”

Unconcerned for him, she peered elsewhere. “When it’s my turn, I am going to cut it really short. All the way to my chin-”

“No, you aren’t. You’re a woman. You need your hair to attract men.”

Her cheeks flushed red and she pinched her lips together. “Such useless jargon. Women aren’t to be looked at only in that way! Where I come from, men and women are equal, and can choose whichever hairstyle that they want.”

The scissor blades spliced through the air. “You aren’t where you were anymore, now are you? Here, you’re a woman. Here, you will look like a woman. Here, you’ll act like a woman-” Behind him, the door opened, creaking only once, and he silenced. His back flattened and his shoulders pulled back as he peered through the mirror, watching Baine enter the room. He swallowed dryly, folded his hands behind his back, and turned around.