Body Double

The taste of a word has never felt so good in my mouth before. This one is just like hard candy: undeniably rough around its jagged edges, but soft and terribly sweet in the middle. Inviting, shiny, imperfect yet smooth, and devastatingly easy to swallow.

And he’s got these hands, huge knotty knuckles atop bony meatless fingers, riddled with cuts and bruises from working on the unforgiving engines. On days like today, when I pass through the corridor of his quarters and allow myself to peek through the sliding glass doors of his workshop, they’re the first thing I notice. He works fast with them, one might even say sloppily, but I’ve eavesdropped on him talking about his work enough to be sure he knows perfectly well what he’s doing. He passes tools from hand to hand, screwing here and unbolting there as if his life depended on it. But then again, it does; all of our lives do.

“Fio, what the hell are you doing? The food’s been given out already and I’m starving, move your ass.” Nym frowns at me from the end of the corridor. Every time I linger for a minute too long, he ends up finding me and knocking me back down to Earth. He pretends not to know what I’m doing because he hates to dwell on anything from the sentimental realm, but unfortunately for him, we’ve found ourselves in this exact situation many times over.

“Just, um, checking on their progress in there. I’m starting to get nervous about our deadlines, feels like we won’t be ready on time,” I muster, rapidly shuffling my feet in his direction. He rolls his eyes deep into the back of his skull, seeing right through my lie, but as expected, he simply shrugs and makes his way to the kitchen, not caring to comment on it; I follow close behind.

As it has been the case every single day since our arrival in this abandoned airship, we’re served with nothing remarkable for our only meal of the day: mushy blobs ranging from shades of green to grey we once would’ve called vegetables are displayed in metal bins near the walls, and on the few tables, platters upon platters of small amphibians and barely dead insects still hum and buzz as they wait for us to devour them. In a time so many years ago that the memory of it already feels like a distant dream, I remember refusing to consume any of it, but soon enough we were met with our new reality: we didn’t have a choice. Until we were able to get the ship back on its feet and floating away to a more habitable land, we’d have to get our nourishments from the few unappetizing plants the airship’s artificial environment would allow us to grow and the few edible species that still survived beyond our walls, out there in the unhospitable air, that we were able to capture.

For almost as long as I can remember living in this contraption, I can also remember that chilling jolt of electricity I feel whenever our eyes meet. Sable, a name so foreign that has become too familiar over the years, occupies my thoughts as if my brain had been programmed only to think of him. The memories of his warm forehead against mine get me through the longest workdays, and the sight of the back of his head alone manages to lift my spirits from the dark depths they sometimes wander into. At night, when I find myself alone in my pod where I am sure no one could ever hear me, I can’t help but whisper his name to myself, over and over and softly, slowly, until the sound of my own voice rocks me to sleep like that of waves crashing against the sand. In my dreams, I am always the water, and he is forever the beach, and I find myself drying my tears every morning when I am met with the stark reality of things.

“Not hungry?” Nym looks down at my plate expectantly, Sola childishly licking her lips and rubbing her palms together in excitement in the seat to the left of him. Unbothered, I just push my food across the table towards my two greedy, shameless friends.

“It’s a shame we won’t be getting to eat all of these delicacies anymore in just over a week,” Sola says in between two bites, slurping up what looks like a salamander tail with such a repulsing sound I feel compelled to apologize to the workers eating near us on her behalf; Nym swats away my politeness with his free hand, the other one too busy digging deep into my leftovers.

“I, for one, am greatly looking forward to discovering what better they’ll cook up for us once we go East. I hear the plains are full of fruits, can you imagine? Feels like I haven’t tasted anything sweet in decades!” Nym’s eyes only ever light up this much when he’s discussing food, much to my dismay.

Just when I go to answer, as I’ve been trying to force myself into having more mundane conversations instead of being endlessly lost in thought, he walks in and I instantly lose my train of thought. Sable, sporting his signature stained mechanics overalls, makes his way towards his habitual table. My eyes follow him around as subtly as they can muster it, but whenever I look at him I always feel as though my gaze is burning into his skin. Right before he sits down, it’s like he can feel it and he abruptly turns to face me, looking directly into my eyes. Time stands still for half a second, maybe less than that, and in a blink he’s moving again, heading towards the lavatories. Before my brain can have the time to think about it I stand up to follow him, praying Nym and Sola will think nothing of it.

I hide in a corner while I wait for him to finish up in one of the stalls. When he walks out and stops in front of the sinks, the light shining in through the tiny square window above our heads makes the top of his hair glow in the darkness of the room and illuminates his golden eyes that I can barely make out in the mirror. I decide to walk out of the shadows and surprisingly, he doesn’t startle; he just faces me, and we stand in silence for what feels like the longest couple of minutes of my life.

Whenever an unnatural death occurs, the family of the deceased gets the opportunity to transfer their consciousness into an existing body; our community is built on the principle of being ready to make the greatest sacrifice when someone else is deserving, and it’s been like this forever. Weeks ago, Sable’s body was chosen by a grieving family, and thus he was taken from me. Every trace of his self, his personality, his memories, was erased and replaced by that of Argo, a fellow mechanic of about the same age who was forgotten outside the ship coming home from a scouting mission. The toxic outside air had eventually seeped into his protective suit, infiltrated his lungs, and in the end, taken his life. I didn’t know of him before the incident, but ever since Sable was deleted to make space for him to live on, I’ve been unable to stop tracking his every move. As if seeing me around would eventually make Sable come back up to the surface.

“Was I once someone else?” This stranger with my lover's face asks earnestly, his eyes kinder than they ever were but his voice the same it always was. When given a second chance at life in a new body, you have no memory that you ever died. You have no memory of ever having had another appearance, and it’s unlawful to make a Reborn aware of that fact. Nonetheless, I feel myself shaking, knowing I’m about to cross a line, but also knowing nothing could stop me from doing so at this point. At last, I nod, my eyes closed, and he takes a step towards me.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and I sigh deeply; my intentions were never to bring guilt upon this innocent boy. Taking another step in my direction, he then asks: “Was I ever yours?”

I look up at him, and whatever he reads on my face makes him put his hand up to my face and cup my cheek; with a tremble, I nod again.

“Well then, may this bring you solace,” he says, and before I can brace myself, his lips meet mine. They’re warm, the shape so comforting in their familiarity, but so many things about the kiss are undoubtedly wrong: he leans right instead of left as I had grown used to expect it, and although Sable’s hands used to always rest on my waist, now they’re on my neck, thumbs softly caressing my jaw.

I pull away first, equal parts saddened and stunned by the sequence of events. Sable, or Argo rather, looks at me with a sad smile. When he runs his fingers through my hair in lieu of goodbye, the tenderness of his gestures simultaneously ruptures and soothes a wound inside of me. He starts for the door but at the last moment, I grab his forearm, not yet ready to part ways. He looks down at my hand gripping him, then up at me, and in that instant, I see it clearly. The eyes looking back at me may have the exact same colour, they may shine the exact same way, but they’re not the eyes of a person in love with me.

So I let him go. It’s not him, it never again will be, but that doesn't really matter. Tomorrow, I’ll be at the glass door in his corridor, looking in and longing, once again.