Jack of Hearts

TW: brief mentions of self harm

Drumming his fingers to a rhythm he had used since childhood, Jack Dancer shook his head at the screen. “It’s wrong.” He bit his lip. “The course is wrong.”

“You don’t have to agree with the information, Jack. You just have to be able to repeat it when you get to the questions,” Max said in a soothing voice that wasn’t working.

“But it’s wrong. It says you remove the ignition plugs to test for wear. You don’t have to on ships made by Bandersnatch, they have a viewing port so that you can inspect them with the engine running.” Tasting blood, he touched his lip and saw red on his scarred finger. “The guide is full of shit. Whoever writes these things knows nothing about spaceships.”

Shaking his acne scarred face, Max smiled. “The guides are written by dozens of experts, edited by artificial intelligence, then checked by other experts.”

“Then why is it wrong?” Licking the bite in his lip, the unqualified master mechanic grimaced. He tugged on an eyebrow hair until it came away then tossed it aside.

“Don’t do that!” said Max. “If you need help I’ll help you.” Looking around he asked, “where is Mimic?”

“Watching the captain’s remastered episodes of X-files probably.” Jack tugged at another eyebrow hair, feeling that it was longer than the rest.

“Poor thing, being subjected to the captain’s obsession. Still, I suppose it’ll learn to talk faster with her than with you.” Max slapped Jack on the shoulder. After flinching the older man cast a warning glance at his attacker’s shoulder.

Reading the tutorial manual for his test Jack nodded a minute later when what Max had said filtered through his focus on the task at hand. Drumming his fingers on the table, Jack repeated the words ignition plug over and over as he read the passage.

“You’re busy. See you later,” Max said, shaking his head. “Good luck.”

A while later Jack thanked his crewmate who was already gone. “Ignition plug.” Fighting the instinct to snap the tablet over his knee, he started the test. He clenched his jaw. Every answer he had to give vocally was growled. Anger at the inaccuracy only built. When the fanfare that signalled a pass sounded he threw the tablet down.

Unit complete. Well done Jack Dancer. Click Next to start the next unit.

Rex stared at Jack. Leaning back in the stool bolted to the floor he let the cat leap into his lap. Rex liked him. Perhaps because he didn’t talk much. Rough fingers flowed through soft fur. The black and brown stripes hinted at the heritage of wildcats. White sunburst markings from its nose to eyebrows told the tale of interbreeding. Jack’s raging heart rate slowed.

Purring lulled him into a state of thoughtless bliss. Whenever his hand stilled he was stirred to movement by the nudges of Rex’s head. Drool began to drip from the happy cat’s mouth as fingers scorched in engine fires scratched behind the ears.

Every stroke of Jack’s hand closed the cat’s yellowy-green eyes. Wishing he could be that content, he yawned and stood slowly. Rex leapt to the table then onto his shoulders. “Coming with me?” he asked rhetorically. Claws anchored the chubby fluffball to him when he bent to pick up his tablet and toolbox.

Heavy boots clanked on the steel grating of the hallway floor. Beneath each panel were wires and pipes he and Max were responsible for. He turned the handle for the cabin he shared with most of the crew. Snoring echoed in the space. Doctor Annie Brie’s pink socked foot hung out of her bunk, pushed through the curtain.

Jack placed the furry king on his bed. Peeling off his boiler suit he opened his trusty toolbox and pulled out a soft toy vacuum packed at the bottom. Air filled the space between stuffing. The bear inflated. Jack called it Kuma. “Last chance for me to let you out?” He looked at Rex. Using his tail as a pillow, the cat answered his question.

Crawling into his bunk, he curled around the cat who moved for no one. Clutched tightly in hand, Kuma took him to memories of family long gone. Staring at his eyelids he thought of his daughter, out there somewhere in the galaxy. Did she think about him? Did she know about him?

Waking to the sight of Rex’s backside Jack turned his blue eyes to the room. Irene Moriarty stared at him with her head tilted. Standing in her underwear she looked at him as if he was an exhibit behind glass.

“Rise and shine,” she said. Black eyebrows jumped up and down over her brown eyes. The bags they had once shared were gone from beneath her newly moisturised skin. Nothing would ever wipe away the self inflicted scars on her arms. Jack had learned the hard way not to ask about them. Rex purred when she stroked him. “Getting up anytime soon?” Smirking, her eyebrows danced again. “My mistake, part of you got up already.”

“That just happens,” Jack said, sitting up and displacing the cat. Rex nipped his unruly bed before jumping to the floor. Covering his morning wood with a hand and dragged the curtains across his bunk with a screech that half stirred his roommates.

“You don’t have to be so shy. I can see you like me. Even if you can’t.”

“It’s not about that,” Jack told the black of the curtain.

“Then what is it?”

“It feels like a game to you. Just a bit of fun you’ll get bored of. I don’t work like that. I’m all or nothing. When Marie left me it destroyed me completely. I lost control. I punched the bulkhead until I cut the skin on my knuckles. Broke bones in my hands I’d never heard of. I screamed until my lungs burned. I couldn’t stop.

I loved Marie with everything I had. I wanted to be a dad. That should have been enough. She didn’t leave a note. I still don’t know why she left me.” Her kiss took him off guard. A peck on the cheek. Coffee and gyoza on her breath. Irene’s hand took his.

“I’m not used to people who care, Jack. That’s why I’m flippant. Sex can be a way to pass the time. Lust is a drug. Addictive. Sinking my pain in oxytocin even if I can’t drown it gets me through the hours. Being high stops me from thinking about the things people have done to me. Things I’ve done to others, and to myself.

I don’t always know how to behave around people. I say things people find strange. I’m good at what I do but that’s not enough. People talk and I think I know what they’re saying but then there’s all the other stuff. Hidden meanings when they talk. You don’t do that.”

Irene seemed to have made a statement. Jack agreed so he sat up. He stretched. Bare feet on cold steel. A shock he always used to wake himself fully. A shiver travelled up his body. She stood watching him. Waiting the way people did when they’d spoken and he hadn’t responded.

“What do you want Jack? Do you want me?” Irene stared expectantly at him.

Not knowing why he fought the urge to cry. His eyes fled hers to stare at the wall. Inhaling to speak didn’t bring the words to mind. Deep inside was a dam of emotions waiting to come crashing through. Shaking, he began to hyperventilate. His vision clouded.

Memories Jack had been pushing down for years resurfaced. Mother told him she would be right back when the welding was done. His father’s last words were to scold him for putting tools back in the wrong place. Marie had her back to him that last night, shook off the arm he wanted to wrap around her as they slept.

“I don’t want to hurt.” Jack’s crimson face stung with heat. “I don’t want to be alone.”

Irene wrapped her arms around him cautiously. When he didn’t push her away she held him tight. With her head on his shoulder he could see her distorted tattoo on her back beneath her loose tank top. Life is short, space is hungry curled across her protruding spine between freckles.

Fingers gripped his back so tightly it hurt. Her black buzz cut prickled uncomfortably against his bare shoulder. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said in a stuttering voice.

She jerked back upright as Doctor Annie Brie’s bunk stirred. Irene wiped her eyes on her arm. “You’d better get to work. I need to sleep.” Irene bit her lip. “We need to get our shifts changed to spend some time together.” She squeezed his hand and disappeared into her bunk, drawing the curtain between them.

Jack followed his routine. Vacuum packing his bear was first. He looked at the scan of his daughter. Both treasures were stowed in the toolbox where they would always be at hand in an emergency.

Going about his duties as he always did, the exchange with Irene went round and round in his head. Are we together now? Is that what she wants? He changed filters. Welded leaks. Nothing made less sense to him than people. Do I even want to be in a relationship? She’s blunt. If finding a partner meant making the first move he knew he would die alone. Irene’s interesting. She knows the stars.

Rex brushed against his legs for the quiet affection Jack gave best. Satisfied, the cat departed a minute later.

“Jack? There you are,” Max said. “Why are you still working? Your shift ended an hour ago.” Rested and washed, the young man was the antithesis of Jack who was covered in dust and engine grease. “Have you eaten?”

“It’s been twelve hours?”

“Thirteen.” Max said slowly. “Are you alright? You seem a little weird. More than usual I mean.” He reached out to put a hand on the senior mechanic’s shoulder then remembered that Jack didn’t like it.

“Do you know anything about women?”

“I should be asking you that.” Max shrugged. “Anyway. Get some grub and some kip. Anything I need to look at?”

Shaking his head, Jack walked away. When he got to the canteen the captain and Mimic were sitting together at the table talking. Shocked by the progress with the machine’s learning, Jack made himself a bowl of his usual cereal and sat by the robot that had been around when dinosaurs walked the Earth.

“How are you?” Mimic asked in a voice that was an amalgamation of the accents it heard most. A sizable portion of the captain’s voice to start with. Mulder and Scully from the X-files it had been watching for days. Lilts of Chester Shinoda, the singer of Captain Eliza’s favourite band Insect Warrior. Jack’s sensitive ears picked up hints of Doctor Anie Brie, Irene and Max. There beneath it all were thin foundations of his own monotonous voice.

“I’m confused.” Jack retrieved his usual bowl and spoon and made himself the cereal he always ate when he was struggling with emotions outside his comfort zone. “You’ve improved quickly.”

“You confusing?” Mimic asked. Its liquid head formed into something resembling an oversized David Duchovny sculpture that wasn’t quite finished. A silver eyebrow rose to emphasise the question.

“No.” Jack clenched a fist. He hated when people merged separate points he’d been making. “I mean that I’m confused about something. And also that you’re much better at talking now.” Sitting next to the ageless remnant of a lost civilisation all Jack could think about was the prickle of Irene’s hair on his neck. Unpleasant as that sensation had been, the feeling of her arms around him had awoken urges for companionship he’d pushed deep down inside him. Why waste time chasing the impossible?

“Irene looking at you.” Mimic’s face melted back into the stretched ovoid that seemed most comfortable for it.

Jack turned around in the empty cafeteria. “She’s looking for me?”

“She’s looking for me.” Mimic repeated, taking the question from his words and using his flat intonation. It nodded.

Forgetting his cereal, stomach rumbling, he left to look for her. At the doorway he remembered his toolbox and turned back for it. With the old steel chilling his fingers he searched for Irene.

Boots that normally hit the floor in a steady beat stuttered in a half jog. At intersections his head twitched. “Irene.”

Forehead pressed to an airlock window. Eyes on infinity. “Everything is out there. Everything and nothing. It would take about five million years to walk to the nearest world. If there was anything to walk on.” Her tattoo peaked from a navy blue tank top. Constellations of freckles had Jack’s mind drawing the lines between. “Do you like my body, Jack?”

“What about it?”

She turned a flare of anger into narrowed brown eyes. “Do you find me beautiful?

“I like your skin more now that it’s soft.” Knowing honesty wasn’t the best policy he told the truth anyway. “Your scars make me sad. I wish you hadn’t done that to yourself. No one should feel like that.” Staring at his fraying boots he let a silence grow wild between them.

“It’s not about how they look? You hurt yourself. I’ve seen you.”

He looked up. “No I don’t.”

“You pull out your eyebrow hairs when you’re doing your certification. You press your spoon into your hand until it’s almost cutting you. You blame yourself for things you had to do.” She took a step towards him. Irene spread her arms to hold him.

“It’s not the same.”

“Nothing is the same. Everything is different. Unique. We’re all the last unique snowflakes of winter melting in the warmth of spring.”

“Snow?” Jack frowned. Searching his mind for anything that would give her words meaning he came up blank. Her arms around him made him jump. His boiler suit kept the sharpness of her hair from most of his neck. Comforting pressure melted him.

“What’s your favourite song?” Irene asked. Warm hands rubbed his back as if she wanted him to grant her a wish.

“Apostate’s Lament by Serene Flames.” Playing in his mind, the instrumental blocked out other thoughts. He barely heard her response.

“That doesn’t have any words,” she said. Irene’s voice had a sleepy quality. Fingers traced circles under his shoulder blades. “I like Love Me Like a Punch.”

“By Hayley Franklyn? That’s a messed up song.” Lyrics recalled a fetishised relationship of mutual domestic violence. Hayley Franklyn had a voice that defined a generation and emotional enough baggage to fill a cargo hold.

“I’m messed up. I’ll say that now. Can you handle that?” Freezing, she waited for him to speak. The longer she waited the more dread set in. Faces of men turning her away flashed in memory. Grim things best forgotten returned.

“I want to try,” he said an eternity later when stars had withered and died. Irene’s universe was reborn with her smile. Her kiss took them both by surprise. Jack stood stock still for a minute. Hesitation. Shaking. Stiff on the chopping block, waiting for the knife to fall.

“I want to.” Jack had waited for another universe to come and go. An awkward silence that could devour all hope hung in shadows around them. “I’m just scared.”

“What’s that called?” She touched a protrusion in the wall.

“That’s a rivet.”

“What’s it made of?”

“Zinc coated steel.” Information rolled off his tongue instantly.

“Come here.” She pointed to the airlock and opened it.

“What are you doing? We’re not wearing suits.”

“We’re not going outside.” She pointed to the brightest star in the black beyond the slit of glass. “That’s Priory eight-nine-four. The other one is Priory eight-nine three. They’re part of the constellation called Daria’s Chalice. Daria’s Chalice is the best navigational point in the darkness here. As if they’re anywhere near each other.” Animated by her passion, Irene smiled, seeing things Jack couldn’t imagine. “I’m scared too. When you’re scared tell me something about the ship. When I’m scared I’ll tell you about the stars.”

Reaching out his burnt hand he waited for hers. He looked at the freckles on her shoulders. Her brown eyes had flecks of black and gold. An inoculation scar hid among the brown spots on her arm. Jack looked at the seals on the door between them and certain death. Irene took his hand. Noting the heavy beating of his heart he felt it slow.