Keith A. Raymond, MD

Desecration of Temptation

by Keith ‘Doc’ Raymond

Pop-Top was drowning in Crash Metal, the music rattling windows in their warehouse loft.

Outside, a banshee wind blew garbage down the forgotten alleys in the district. Knickers climbed

through the window, her usual entrance from the fire escape, hating the steel sliding door off the freight

elevator. Something was up, or it soon would be.

Knickers’ eyes shifted, taking in her twenty-something friend with a flat top, bobbing his head,

eyes shuddered. His black T emblazoned in white words, shouting ‘Don’t Say Gay’ on the front. She

loved that shirt, because on the back it said, ‘Say Queer.’

She cranked the stereo down from eleven to two, lifting him out of his lyrical high. As he spun

back down to Earth, Knickers remarked, “You know, love, they invented headphones for just such a

deafening experience. It helps not to abuse the neighbors.”

“What neighbors?” he asked, looking around as if someone moved in to the industrial quarter.

All the boarded-up buildings labeled in Mandarin clothed their surroundings in failed start-ups.

They were, in fact, the only occupants in the district, mostly because of the toxic byproducts floating

around. Their makeshift hovel smelled like molten plastic that incense couldn’t hide, but tried.

The stink rose from the vacuum-form plant that once spread out on the floor beneath them.

They lived there for the square footage that even the wealthiest couldn’t afford. Even if the odd couple

could pay for the abandoned squat, which… forget about it.

“Doesn’t it bother you we might shorten our lifespan living here, Pop-Top?”

“A long lifespan is way overrated, Knickers.”

They entered their familiar popcorn machine of argue and counter-argue on a subject without

end. But it was their way of re-familiarizing themselves with each other. A weird sort of affection.

They had their own lovers out there, of course, two queers as they were, but their intimacy was as close

as homosexuals could get without exchanging bodily fluids.

“Like the new hair, Knickers,” Pop-Top finally broke off the banter, diverting her attention.

“Gone metallic gel, the latest thing,” she said, primping in a fun-house mirror they stole. She

checked her waif-like curves, all distorted. “Got us a job…”

“Yeah, wot? Like the last time?”

“Nah, that was a blow-out.”

“Bloody right, that.”

“I think you’re going to like…”

He drowned out her voice when he cranked up his Crash Metal again using a remote. It was a

splice between punk, techno, death metal, and sound effects. But this tonal cataclysm was a mishmash

of all the endings to a song one could imagine, smelling more like jazz than Crash. Rather than turning

it down, which would make him lose the plot again, Knickers leaped on top of him, straddling him in

her holey leotards, and yelled in his ear.

Pop-Top’s only reaction was to look down, hoping she wasn’t brushing his skanky jeans. He

wriggled like she did, avoiding her, then nodded. Knickers couldn’t tell if he was head bobbing or

agreeing to the work opportunity. She lifted his chin, and he pursed his lips like he was going to kiss

her. She wiped her mouth, clogged with saliva, on the back of her fishnet glove. It was on.

***

They entered the doll factory around midnight. It smelled familiar, a cross between latex and

sex lube. Armed with Chinese fighting axes, Pop-Top dragged the tip along the steel rails of the

displayed body parts, causing a squeal. Knickers turned back at him and shook her head.

‘These aren’t the ones,’ she telepathed to him, noting the red flash of a silent alarm up near the

ceiling over his shoulder.

Their time inside was running short. Unless they wanted to get caught, which sometimes was

part of the contract. Not this time, though. She found the chamber where they kept the prototypes, their

target. She flicked open the pen sized industrial laser and cut through the door hinges. Pop-Top grabbed

the edge and pulled the portal open on its locks.

The chamber was wall to wall love bots. They went to work with their axes, spilling synth

blood from mixed gender bald bodies awaiting wigs. There was arterial spray, synth semen, and joint

fluid flowing as they demolished all the samples. After, covered with bot spooge, they looked like

Rorschach test patterns. Interrupted, but not quite finished, by the sound of big bruisers stomping

through the aisles heading their way.

A muscular wall of moo shu pork vapor was en route to their location, a herald of the hurt

coming at them if they didn’t vacate double quick. They dropped their axes and ran. Angry voices and

gunshots came after them from behind. Rounding an aisle, they mounted the scaffolding, heading for

the tilt window near the ceiling, where they gained entry.

As Knickers went leaping through, an electromagnet came on with a buzz, pulling her by the

hair back inside. If Pop-Top hadn’t lunged just then, his legs mounting her shoulders, forcing her

through by his butt, she would have flown back into the enforcer’s arms. Missing the rope, they ended

up all humpty-dumpty in pieces on the ground outside.

If it wasn’t for their contractor sliding up in a getaway hover van and pulling them through the

side door up and away, they would have become melted cheese on the enforcer’s bread. Manx gazed

down at the broken bits he hired for the job, and said, “We can fix you, but it will come out of your end

of the contract.”

“As usual,” Knickers moaned, and passed out from the pain of multiple fractures.

***

Days later, hoisted out of the repair jelly tank, they dripped. Pop-Top smiled over at Knickers,

all naked and feeling spunky, although his hair was a mess. He admired her red plaits hanging down

from her head, the metal gel dissolved away. The tech lowered them into a hot wooden vat bath and

pointed out the soap and towels she left by the tub.

Twenty minutes later, they were pulling on pants and tops. Manx came in and handed them

wads of yuan, then departed without a word. Knickers looked down at her pay and was about to protest,

but he was already gone. She shrugged at Pop-Top. He frowned back, patting his flat top back into

place. At least they were feeling no pain.

They walked out of the body shop and into the smoggy sunlight, squinting.

“Least he could have done is leave us some sunglasses,” Pop-Top complained.

“This will keep us in won-ton for a month,” Knickers answered.

“At least. C’mon, let’s go get laid.”

“Or played,” she quipped, and smiled at him with a broken incisor.

On the billboard down the street, a worker pulled down the ad for the new pleasure droids.

There was a slash across it saying ‘Temporary Production Delay/Chip Shortage.’

Pop-Top grinned back, “Yeah, babe, job done. Time for fun.”

They walked arm in arm, and she wished her T shirt said on the back, ‘Say Queer.’ Because

flesh is better than synth any time.

END

Dr. Raymond is a Family and Emergency Physician. He practiced in eight countries in four languages. Currently living in Austria with his wife. When not volunteering his practice skills, he is writing, lecturing, or scuba diving. In 2008, he discovered the wreck of a Bulgarian freighter in the Black Sea. He has multiple medical citations, along with publications in Flash Fiction Magazine, The Grief Diaries, The Examined Life Journal, The Satirist, Chicago Literati, Blood Moon Rising, Frontier Tales Magazine, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, and in the Sci-Fi anthologies Sanctuary and Alien Dimensions among others. He is the fiction editor of SavagePlanets magazine. Aliens submit!