LM Fontanes
Listen to Lori read her story
In another life I might have been a peach. Not a supermarket hardball of a peach, juiceless and wan, but a tongue-kissing disaster destined to run down your chin and spoil your pristine lab coat. And like all peaches, I want teeth to bite me, to complete my destiny, to expose my jagged spikes of seed protection to the promise of burial and regrowth. To be eaten and to live again. Instead, I am the playground of mosquitoes and bedbugs. No creature of blood meals can resist my siren skin. My mother sighed every time I came home a veritable pincushion, itching from lingering playdates after dusk.
I got my revenge.
After many rockstar years at university, top-notch leaders in the field of GE entomology now vie for my zealous innovations. Tomorrow, I will unveil our latest, the ultimate in a series of products my team has designed to counteract insect predation on homo sapiens targets. Insect-borne diseases cost millions of lives and billions of dollars, even more so with the rapid deterioration of our sad climate. But now, the BYTE system will be implanted subdermally into the abdomens of hundreds of volunteers who, like me, live in constant dread of a histamine downward spiral. They can join the double-blind cadre of subjects. Unlike me. I have not let that impede my relief, however. With a little coding switcheroo and the assistance of my postdoc, Ms. Paradiso, today I became case #4389255. Now, I, too, will share in the fruits of my own genius and, once and for all, never have to itch again.
I’m ready to taste victory and gift it to my molars.
It’s a bit odd that Ms. P turned out to be the brightest of my numerous students this past semester. To observe her would be to presume she’s too socially-adept to care about nanoscopes and which dye stains protoplasm best. I’ve watched her in the quad with her coterie of sporty boys and Thelma girls. Young adults masquerading as brilliant inventors standing under trees waiting for an apple to fall. It never happens.
I think Ms. P might have a soft spot for me. That’s been rather useful. Nothing so vulgar as actual physical coupling has occurred. And yet the possibility lives in every moment and keeps her close and wanting. She should be here in 5.4 minutes. I’ve entrusted her to insert the implant that will nestle under my own not-at-all-flabby abdominal skin. Do not scoff. The brain requires a fit body to support its highest performance and so I keep up with my crunches and, of course, leg days.
***
Okay, I’ll admit, that was weird. Ms. Paradiso, up-close and latex-gloved, prepping my skin with the gentlest of swipes, inserting the object of my own design…I must stop here. Even this morning after a very troubled sleep, I want to put the scene on repeat. Again and again and…stop. I must not… Wait, those footsteps in the hall! Yes, she’s, can it be? Early? Ms. P is never early. The press conference is not until noon. Why is she…
“Professor, I’m sorry to bother you. I know you’re getting ready, but I need to…”
Oh no, I’m not prepared for this. My thoughts jumble.
“What I mean to say is…”
“Ms. P, I’m not sure…”
“I took it upon myself to alter the design,” she blurts, glancing down so that her natural lashes fall onto pillowy cheeks. I’ll admit I see red.
“You did wh—”
“Remember when we discussed using the variant gene?”
I stared.
“The one from Prunus persica?”
I did. I remember it well. I discarded the idea when early testing indicated a tendency to wander. A certain juiciness counter to containment within the cellular structure. Which makes sense, when we’re talking peach genes.
“Professor, you’re perspiring,” she whispers.
I can feel it already. Have felt it for hours but didn’t want to face it, my lab coat now stained pinkish-orange where it clings to my formerly impressive biceps.
Ms. P comes closer, sniffs then strokes. I feel that slight give that fruit has when it’s ready to be consumed. I look into her face and see the mouth I was made for. As she opens those plump lips, I spy a glint of white from each incisor and she asks a question to which I cannot say no.
“Just a bite?”
There is no such thing with something as delicious as I have become.
LM Fontanes is a multi-racial, multi-genre storyteller who writes, teaches & leads. Words in/upcoming The Bulb Region, Neither Fish Nor Foul, Epistemic Literary, Trash Cat Lit, Roi Fainéant, Underbelly Press, Frazzled Lit, Silly Goose Press, Temple in a City, Emerge Literary, 100-Foot Crow, JAKE, 34 Orchard, Flash Fiction Festival Anthology, Thomasonian, Salt Bloom, and long-listed for The Smokey Award and nominated for Best of the Net.
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