Nheshe's right hand
instinctively raised as the gun fired.*
*Since its
social mechanisms were still infantile, not having matured beyond
that of a toddler, the betrayal of the androgyn's assumptive notion
that it could trust this person made its pale pink
blood boil. It wasn't Nheshe's fault...feelings were neither good
not bad, they were just feelings (as Father Renfield would have
consolingly declared).
The raised right
hand (skin protected by an organic de-magnetic epidermis) deflected
the bullet, and despite the frantic inaccuracy with which the shot
was fired, the deflection sounded out a perfect, dreadfully
harmonious “wheeessshhh”, sending the bullet into a perfect
ricochet, which one might argue appeared to be an immaculately
orchestrated piercing of Andrew's heart (no metaphor here).
Andrew sunk back
into his recliner, and focused all of his shock-laden adrenaline on
breathing steadily as he felt numbness begin to envelop his body.
Nheshe's left hand
dropped the telephone as it began to weep acidic tears almost
immediately. It knew there was nothing it could do to
save the poor young man, since, in its current state of
non-completion, super-humanoid development was still shy of any
applicable medical knowledge or ability.
It
emphatically apologized, and began to feel a harrowing new
wave of a negative emotion it was unfamiliar with.
Nheshe's mind was
racing as it frantically thought of anything it could
do to remedy the situation. There was one particular skill it
had going for it: its reading skills were far
superior to any other known physical being, since it could
blow through an entire book in a matter of minutes (often seconds),
retaining at least a good 90% of the material in its memory.
Upon a careful
scan, Nheshe recognized most of the books on Andrew's shelf (mostly
theoretical metaphysics or fantastical fiction)...but there was a
particular one it wasn't familiar with.
“What's this one,
sir?”
Andrew looked up
and saw Nheshe holding a Bible.
“Don't...that...won't
help you...”
Nheshe's detected a
hesitant modesty in the dying man's voice. It flipped through
(/read) the entire thing from cover-to-cover in 94 seconds flat. A
deeper, more overwhelming sense of guilt washed over it.**
Nheshe ran to the
kitchen and grabbed a large knife (Andrew, though baffled, didn't
have the energy to panic at the sight of this). Nheshe gripped the
knife with its left hand, raising it high above its head
as it placed its right hand on the counter. The knife came down
quick and hard, penetrating the creature's thick skin, and severing
Nheshe's hand from its body.
** “And if your
right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is
better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” Matthew 5:30
As his physical
senses were reaching their full diminishment, Andrew expected to feel
the shedding of some final tears...but apparently they were all
getting hogged by that damned alien.
THE END
Vote
ReplyDelete