The Body Harvest by Michael J. Seidlinger

Author:Michael J. Seidlinger [Seidlinger, Michael J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

TEN

“WHAT’S it going to be, then?” The pure pleasure is painted across the aisles. Zaff’s vindictive destruction of the arcade, it may feel currently like the end of an era, but it can all disappear.

They just need to say the words.

Everything could so easily fade, a stain on this earth made temporary, but perhaps it’s more like they don’t yet understand what’s at stake.

Will takes the light gun in his hands.

Zaff likes what he sees, grinning widely, “What’s on your mind, Will?”

Olivia takes a step closer, reaching for Will’s free arm, “Don’t do it.”

All the more reason for him to go through with it. Will raises the gun, aiming down the sights. There’s only one real target. He aims right between the eyeballs and pulls the trigger. Click. Another pull of the trigger, the plastic gun does as it was made, a little fake recoil, but otherwise a simple and would-be satisfying click.

“You could have just said yes,” Zaff winks, letting the employee go.

In fact, there’s more than just the one to let free, the entirely of all that painted pleasure, blood red stains against an aural soundscape of would-be bliss, it unravels between Zaff’s fingertips, and there’s only Will and Olivia to know what might have occurred.

It was made in nobody’s image.

Zaff gave them the choice and it was a decision forged by inaction, so the arcade will live another day. It will spread cheer to people that might never see the world unfolding between blinks, the world dealt as brand new, full of untold terrors, and the brink of people willing to lay claim to all that could be yours.

There’s nothing left for them here. Zaff has made his point. They return to the Corvette, only this time it’s a blue sedan, nothing special. “Where did…” Olivia starts to ask, and then stops.

“Now you’re starting to get it,” Zaff says, before coughing and spitting blood. “Don’t worry,” he raises his hands. “I’ll drive.”

This moment acts as a pivot. Zaff entered their life as a mentor figure, only to become a menace. Here, post-arcade, he becomes more of a colleague. In time, he will become a victim. By then he’ll be down to a few final breaths, and both Will and Olivia will have also pivoted on their descent to rock bottom.

Time for a little show and tell. “I showed you something from my past,” Zaff says. “Now you show me something of yours.”

Olivia in the front passenger seat, she squirms at the thought of what Zaff might ask of her. When history tells her that it’s a transaction, almost always take and no give, the body and eventually more to draw from the mind, she is quick to take a stance. This was the reason she turned to chasing the crash, the feeling of lightness that keeps all this anxiety from ever reaching her reality. Zaff calls attention to her panicked breaths, “You’ve got plenty of time.”

The tell—Will refusing to make eye contact.

The solution—Zaff speaks directly to his past, right on down to cadence and tone, “…and to think the CFO believed that guy.

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