The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) Read online

  "We were given the mighty dragon eggs, which we harvest for the Plutians’ benefit. The eggs are traded," the old man snorted, "to the other planets and to those in other galaxies, so that the young dragons will not hurt us. We mature only a small number of beasts for personal use by our House's Plutian overseers. It lessens our burden of personal protection and affords us a much simpler life, does it not?

  "We are so very lucky to begin again as a race. This is why we have put aside the old naming, to name ourselves and our young with names of life. It is to remind us of our luck, as we struggle to keep ourselves from the jaws of extinction.

  "This is also why it is so important that each of you mate one another without thought of enduring love or parental bonds. The Plutians have made it so. We need not bind our individual Houses together, or trust in one another, when we are so richly rewarded with threadbare lives for living apart."

  The taleor's words were sculpted, his vocal italics precise.

  "What could be a simpler objective than our day-to-day survival? It is simple to use our food and our daughters as currency to one another. This keeps our race...peaceful."

  The old man's gaze circled the fire again. The original, ancient word that belonged at the end of the tale had been selectively omitted after one taleor had lost his life over finishing the story with the one concise word. Overheard, translated, and interpreted by a Plutian, the exact word, strong, was immediately banned from use.

  "We follow our basest urges now, because that is all we have and all we know to do. Reproduction, and food, and work. We enjoy this blessed cycle of simplicity, which 1295 knew would be our salvation. After all, we were the savages, the ones who killed the first Plutians that came to help us. We live in remorse and gratitude on our Earth, that we were shown grace on our own soil. As it is, we are now...the aliens."

  CHAPTER TWO

  September 3, 2013

  At least it wasn't police lights or the bad breath of a stranger that woke her. Maeve sat up on her bare-floor mattress, flattening her back against the cold plaster wall, before answering her phone. The ringtone had keened its warning. Her mother was on the line.

  Maeve already knew why she was calling. It was why Maeve yawned and scratched her head and took her time to thoroughly debate answering.

  The call was because Maeve's father had coughed up an extra five mil to get Maeve flash frozen in one of the posh, Archive chambers. Among the affluent, it was the thing to do. The world's atmosphere was going to shit, according to everything reported on the TV news, and scientists were expecting a world-wide oxygen shortage. So what did the rich do? Hell, they jumped into Profanyl chambers and had themselves artificially suspended until shit settled down. According to the lab geeks, there was a fix, but it would take at least 17 years to turn it around.

  There was no reason for a ridiculously wealthy family like the Aypotus to have to wait around for a fresh world to happen. Not with the boatloads of cash Maeve's father had made in medicinal supplies. He was the world's top supplier of health, for God's sake. He didn't wait in lines. With the Archive chambers, the Aypotus could hop into the express lane and detour right around the coming apocalypse.

  Still, it was a little shocking to Maeve that she would be included in the 'family' part. She was her parent's embarrassment, their only child, and therefore, their biggest failure. The tattoos and piercings and, probably, all the leather, was why the tabloids labeled her The Badass Black Sheep of the Aypotu's aristocratic trio. The wickedly cool moniker did nothing to impress her parents.

  So, it was a bonafide shocker when her mother had called initially to say that she and Maeve’s father were paying for Maeve’s chamber. It was still pretty surprising that her mother would call a second time.

  Maeve picked up the phone, curious to hear if her mother wanted to hammer out their differences, apologize for Maeve's lousy childhood, or even just confess her love to her only daughter in a blubbering torrent in the final hours leading up to their appointment at the archive the next day.

  "Hello?"

  "Maeve, it's your mother."

  "I know. Caller ID."

  "I called to give you our expectations."

  "Expectations?" Maeve snorted, but her mother ignored it.

  "We expect punctuality, Maeve. Five p.m., 141 East King, downtown Lancaster. Write it down and don't be late. Don't bother the valet with that car of yours either. It won't matter if you leave it in the street."

  "You're okay with the paps snapping photos of my bumper stickers? I've got some new ones on there..." When her bumper was full, she'd started tattooing the back panels of her decrepit Dodge Ram and slowly, the stickers had consumed her ride’s whole tailgate. They were starting to slop over onto the back panels. Maeve had even bought a new one, just for this occasion, that said Adios Bitchachos.

  "Let them take whatever photos they want. We won't have to deal with it for 17 years. By then, it'll be old news," her mother said. "However, tomorrow. We want you to wear something reasonable. It's the least you can do, considering your father has paid so much for your chamber. No rivets or studs or spikes. And wear shoes, not those ridiculous boots. And for God's sakes, please don't embarrass us. You need to look presentable."

  Even with the laundry list, Maeve was still fascinated that the call was happening at all. She had assumed that her parents were going to pull a fast one, quietly overlook their only daughter on Freezer Day, scurrying over to the Archive to get themselves good and frosted before Maeve got wind that she was written out of the will and out of their future. It only seemed right, since they’d managed to ignore her existence fairly well throughout her life, starting even from the moment she’d been born. Her parents had immediately handed her over, after the slew of new mother photographs that would appear on national magazine covers, to the first of several caregivers.

  "I want all that graffiti on your body completely covered," her mother went on. "And you need to remove all that garbage you put in your face—"

  "Why? Do piercings screw with the icebox?"

  "It's not a cryogenic facility. They use Profanyl. Gases." Her mother groaned. "And don't say screw, Maeve. It's so unrefined."

  "That's because I'm a diamond in the rough."

  "We're going to be dramatic this morning, is that it?"

  Instead of arguing for the greater good, Maeve took the low road. "No, dahling, we shan't."

  Another sigh. Maeve thought that even her mother's exhales were crafted to be high snobbery.

  "Promise me that you'll arrive looking decent, just this once. Your usual costumes make us look as though we raised you in a circus. It embarrasses your father."

  Maeve decided to ignore the whole costume remark. After all, her mother shouldn't throw stones. Some of her own couture made it seem as though she could balance beach balls on her nose.

  "I wouldn't dream of it, lovey,” Maeve said. “I promise, I'll wear my best fishnets. No snags."

  "You're making me cross on purpose."

  "Cross, you say? I sooo enjoy a good row out of you, Caroline. Let's have at it, shall we, dahling?"

  "Maybe this was a mistake."

  That drew Maeve up short.

  "By mistake," she said, her tone turning to the metal she often used as a shield, "do you mean shelling out of your beloved Midas pile, to popsicle your only daughter, or are you speaking in the broader sense, that your only daughter's entire presence is a mistake? Just remember, mother, I didn't ask to come into this world. You’re the one who chose to have a child...dahling."

  She meant to sound like an ungrateful bitch. Acknowledgement was a childhood war she'd lost with her parents long ago. She'd spent years pawned off on nannies and when she outgrew them, she was dumped in her wing of the mansion to grow into a woman on her own. As if raising a child to maturity could be done as easily as stashing a Poinsettia in a closet.

  It would have been a miracle if Maeve turned out any other way than she did—fearless, clever, skin like hardwood
—except that her parents knew just how to get under it. She was their female Pinocchio, a symbol rather than a real girl. But luckily, she'd finally learned how to play their puppet, pulling back on the strings in a way that supplied a dance on both ends.

  Her mother sighed. "Don't forget. Five p.m. The Archive in Lancaster."

  "I got it, Mother," Maeve sighed back. "Be Punctual. Be dull. Dress like the other sheep."

  "Dressing properly is not dull, Maeve."

  "If you say so."

  Once the call flat lined to a dial tone, Maeve flicked off the phone and lay down on her nest of blankets to think about whether or not she would actually show up at the Archive tomorrow. It would be freaky to fall asleep for seventeen years, even freakier if she never woke up at all. But when Maeve really looked at where she was in her life with a tight lens, the view wasn't that great. The Archive could be a perfect escape hatch.

  At twenty-two years old, Maeve had flipped off her family and their money and decided to make it on her own. It hadn't worked out so well. She'd succeeded in proving her parents mostly right—that a trust fund baby was helpless once she spit out her silver spoon. She also proved the public right—that Maeve Aypotu contributed little more to the world than her mistakes, slapped on the front of the tabloids for their entertainment.

  The paparazzi still enjoyed snapping pics of her at the clubs with different dates each night, or at her job as the front-desk girl at the In Deep Ink tattoo parlor. They took wistful photos of her, resting her chin on her hand, elbow on the counter, bored during a break, and accompanied them with articles that took a lucky shot and would often capture more of the truth than they probably realized. The tabs made her out to be what she really was: a wild little rich girl who had failed to become anything more than her family's money. On good days, they portrayed her as a rebel badass that just didn't care what anyone said about her. On bad ones, they painted her as desperately lonely, pining for a real man to come bobbing out of the sea of boys she bedded. The message behind almost every article was the same: go home, Maeve. Take the easy way out. You’re a failure.

  And damn.

  They were spot-on with all of it.

  Not that she'd ever admit it.

  Maeve's mother would have been ecstatic if her daughter would've settled down with anything that had a penis from their proper society circle. But Maeve wasn't dumb. Those penises all belonged to the metro-sexual boys who were meticulously monitored and manicured so that their dirty fingernails weren't so noticeable.

  There were the vampirish party boys who drank all night and never rose before noon; the rat-racers and ladder climbers, who had no time for anyone or anything but their own ambition; the boys whose neglectful upbringings and silver spoons were used to cook crack between trips through the revolving door of the detox clinic; and then there were the occasional freak shows, like Josh Tresge, who liked to set fires to his ex's cars, or Kurt Tenneman, who drew faces on his penis before flashing it around at the mall. It was a dismal selection.

  Maeve dubbed them Metro Society Rats. In her parent's eyes, it would be far more acceptable for Maeve to have a miserable, but wealthy, life of pumping out ratlets while the tabs reported on her husband's suspected affairs. It would be acceptable and concealable, so long as they weren't Maeve's affairs. Chicks didn't cheat or beat or snort or screw in Maeve's world. They went to spas for cleanses and tried to wash away whatever made them insufficient to their asshole husbands.

  Once or twice, Maeve had been on the verge of giving in. Sometimes it seemed easier—settling for a world she hated, but knew how to navigate. Unfortunately, she sucked at holding the rigid pose required to fit into the airbrushed, fireplace-painted lives of the upper class. The pretentious gestures and fraudulent etiquette made her want to barf club soda. There was just no place in the cream of her society's crop for a girl who could knot a cherry stem with her tongue and dangle it from her navel piercing.

  Maeve scared off the Metro Society Rats pretty easily by refusing to bite her tongue when her opinions surfaced. It terrified them when she called bullshit on their excuses. Panicked them when she demanded respect. It made her an outcast when she refused to offer them second chances.

  The Rats had no idea what to do with her. They didn't view her scorpion tattoo, her septum piercing, or her buckled shitkickers as a symbol of her strength. Instead, they regarded it all as they would the diamond on a cobra's head. The Rats were scared witless at the prospect of tangling with something so much more powerful than themselves.

  Unfortunately, most of the men Maeve had found outside the social circle were no better and some were even worse. They chased after her for money she no longer had, for novelty, for their 15 minutes complete with a glossy shot of themselves in a tabloid. After only nine months of slogging through the dating shit pool, Maeve was done with it all. She was lonely and poor and exhausted when her mother called her about The Archive.

  So now she had three choices.

  First, she could stick it out where she was and hope the world didn't go to hell the way everyone said it would. It seemed like a shaky bet, since the climate was always goofy, gobs of species were dying, and the rain forests and icecaps seemed to be ditching the whole supporting-existence party.

  But, even if the world pulled off some big, fat, miracle healing, no matter how independent Maeve was, she wouldn't have her parent's money to fall back on. She could always try to renege on turning her back on her inheritance, but damn. Begging for the money back, in Maeve's eyes, was a worse option than the second choice.

  The second choice was jumping into the Archive deal and hoping she would wake up to the new life portrayed in the elaborate Archive binder that her mother had sent over. On the front page of a pamphlet tucked inside, there were beautiful people dressed in white cotton, emerging from their chambers to jump around in high meadow grass. Inside, there were glossy photos of elegant dining halls with waiters serving gourmet meals to smiling families; pictures of gold, silver, and platinum Profanyl chambers with pristine beds inside, an angled photo of two platinum chambers, with a woman and man visible through the window in the top, smiling serenely in their peaceful slumber; there were photos of crisply uniformed staff, managing an enormous food pantry and handsome doctors listening to happy children's heartbeats. Other pictures showed various rooms: ones that looked like hotel suites, ones that held an array of wardrobes stylishly suitable for a wide variety of Armageddons. The pamphlet made the second choice look pretty damn good.

  And then, there was the third choice, which wasn't so much a choice as a possibility. Death. And it could happen with either the first or second choice, depending on how things went.

  Maeve sucked her lip ring between her teeth and traced the tangy edge with her tongue. She sat like that for a while before she picked up the phone, released the jewelry from her teeth, and dialed In Deep Ink. A guy with a buttery voice answered.

  "Hi, Chili? Yeah, it's me, Maeve. Do me a favor and let Wyatt know that I'm not coming in today," she said. Before the guy could answer, Maeve darted her tongue across her lips, jiggling the ring at the corner of her mouth. She cleared her throat. "Let him know I quit, alright?"

  ***

  Fuck it, Maeve thought as she pulled up her sputtering carbon footprint to the Archive's valet's curb. A young guy in a red vest and black pants jogged over. He popped open her door and thrust his hand inside. Maeve took the offer of assistance, scouring the valet's face for signs of recognition. His eyes lit up like sparklers, his gaze flowed down from her pierced eyebrow, past her septum ring, to the toes of her shitkickers. She had a dozen sharp remarks ready to raze any attitude she got from him, but the guy only glanced back at another valet, who was sitting on the valet's bench, tapping his watch with a smirk.

  Maeve was relieved. They might know who she was, but it didn't matter to them; she could've ridden in on a camel. The two valets were having some sort of contest and all she had to do was get the hell out of their way. She complie
d. The Valet roared off as soon as she cleared the fender, and Maeve noticed, as she walked to The Archive's revolving front door, that the valet still seating on the bench was frowning now as he stared at his watch.

  Good. She couldn't help but smile to herself. Team Maeve should always win.

  Swirling into the building, Maeve paused half way across the lobby. A high, glossy black counter stood in front of her, hiding almost everything behind it, but the elegant blond top knot on a receptionist's head. As Maeve drew near the counter, she saw a silver and glass elevator ascending up the farthest wall with her mother and father inside it.

  Her mother wore a teal pencil skirt and matching suit coat that had carefully tailored, elegant ruffles at the pockets. She could make out her mother's lips, twitching like cat's whiskers as she spoke to Maeve's father. There was no mistaking the topic of their conversation when Mr. Aypotu thrust his index finger in Maeve's direction. Maeve smiled up at them, jutting her lip ring a bit as she waved, until they'd risen so high that Maeve could only see the black bottom of the elevator.

  The buckles on Maeve's leather shitkickers rattled as she crossed the last bit of marbled lobby floor to the front desk. The receptionist, attached to the hair knot, glanced up at Maeve with an immediate little frown. With another blink, the woman recognized Maeve and quickly swapped the disdain for an ass-kissing smile.

  "Oh! Ms. Aypotu! Welcome to the Archive! It's wonderful to meet you! My niece is a huge fan!"

  "Thanks," Maeve said. This kind of thing was always miserable. Fan of what? The tabloid accounts of her vast failures? Maeve was acutely aware that she'd never done anything to earn someone else's admiration, aside from being born into a family with a heap of loot. The receptionist still rambled on.

  "She's nine years old and she's Miss Independence. She drives my sister nuts wanting to get her face all pierced up like...well, she thinks all that is..." The receptionist circled a finger over her face, ending at her slightly jacked upper lip. Maeve didn't help. She was past apologizing for her appearance. Instead, she gave the woman a blank stare. The woman straightened in her chair, finger-padding invisible from the keyboard in front of her. "What I mean is...all your, ehm...style...is impressive. Olivia loves all that craziness! She buys every magazine with your face on it."