Hero is a Four Letter Word Read online

  She picks at her cuticles. “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”

  “I gathered.” I stand from the table and go to do the dishes. I can’t abide a mess.

  She comes up behind me and wraps her arms around my waist and presses her cheek against my back, and asks, “What do you want to do this afternoon?”

  “Whatever you want,” I say. “I’m all yours.” I turn in her arms to find her grinning. She believes me, whole-heartedly, and she should. I never lie, and it’s the truth. For now.

  When the week is over, I sit her down on my operating table and carefully poke around the bullet wound. In the x-ray, the bones appear healed without a scar. Her skin is dewy and unmarked. The stitches have dissolved and a scan with a handheld remote shows that the nanobots are all dead and ninety-three percent have been flushed from her system. I anticipate the other seven percent will be gone after her next trip to the toilet.

  I do another scan, a bit lower down, but there is nothing there to be concerned about, either. We have not been using prophylactics, but I’ve been sterile since I used the serum. It was a personal choice. I had no desire to outlive my grandchildren.

  Rachel hops from the table, bare feet on the white tile, and grins. “It’s Saturday!” she says.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Time to go!”

  “Yes.”

  She takes my hand. “And you’re coming with me, Olly. You’re coming with me and then they’ll see, they’ll all see. You’re different now. You’re a good man.”

  I smile and close my fingers around hers and, for the first time in many decades, I lie. “Yes, I am, thank you.” I use our twined fingers to pull her into the kitchen. “Celebratory drink before we go?”

  She grins. “Gonna open that champagne I saw in the back of the fridge?”

  I laugh. “Clever Rachel. I can’t hide anything from you.”

  Only I can. I am. When I pop the cork she shrieks in delight. Every ticking second of her happiness stabs at me like a branding iron and dagger all in one.

  I thought I would need a whole machine, a gun, a delivery device, but in the end my research and experiments offered up a far more simplistic solution: rohypnol. Except that it is created by me, of course, so it’s programmable, intelligent in the way the cheap, pathetic drug available to desperate, stupid children in night clubs is not. My drug knows which memories to take away.

  Clever, beautiful, dear Rachel trusts me. I pour our drinks and hand her the glass that is meant for her. I smile and chat with her as she sips, pretending to be oblivious as her eyelids slip downwards, giving her no clue that there is anything amiss.

  I catch both her and the glass before they hit the floor. Tonight she will wake in her own bed. She will honestly remember spending the week with a friend she then had a fight with, and no longer speaks to. She will wonder what happened to her backpack, her cell phone, her law textbook. She will not remember the Prof, or The Tesla. Her mother will be annoyed that she will have to tell her the stories over again, stories that Rachel should have internalized during her childhood.

  And I will shut down this hidey-hole and go back to my apartment and cash my welfare cheque and watch television. And it will be good. It will be as it should be.

  The stupid boy with the gun might have been the bad guy in our little melodrama, but I am the villain.

  I am the coward.

  About the Author

  J.M. Frey is an author, voice actor, model, and professional geek. She holds a BA in Dramatic Literature, where she studied playwriting and wrote her thesis on the evolution of Anime. She received her MA in Communications Culture where she focused on the anthropology of fandom.

  She is active in the Toronto geek community, appearing at fan conventions, presenting at awards ceremonies, appearing on television, radio, podcasts, and in documentaries to discuss all things fandom through the lens of academia. She plays a recurring character in several different web series and a forthcoming web-based feature film. She has lectured at the Pop Culture Association of America’s annual Conference (San Francisco), the University of Cardiff’s Whoniversal Appeal Conference, and the Technology and Pedagogy Conference at York University in Toronto.

  Her debut novel Triptych was nominated for two Lambda Literary Awards (SciFi/Fantasy/Spec Fic & Best Bisexual), nominated for the CBC Bookie Award – Best SciFi/Fantasy/Spec Fic (2011), was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2011, was on The Advocate’s Best Overlooked Books of 2011 list, received an honourable mention at the London Book Festival in Science Fiction (2012) and won the San Francisco Book Festival for Science Fiction (2012).

  She is addicted to tea, scarves, and Doctor Who, which may or may not be related, and her pie-in-the-sky dream is to sing a duet with John Barrowman.

  Connect with J.M. Frey on Goodreads, Facebook, or tweet her at @scifrey. Read more about her life and books at www.jmfrey.net.

  Also by J.M. Frey

  Triptych

  The Dark Side of the Glass

  Find out more at www.jmfrey.net

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  The Once and Now-ish King

  Another Four Letter Word

  Maddening Science

  About the Author