Free Sing Me Your Scars (Apex Voices Book 3) by Damien Angelica Walters Page B

name.
    §
    Little Big smashes the collared one with a hammer. Shards of
metal fly up and bounce off my glass, specks of red spatter the walls. He
laughs and shakes the hammer in front of our boxes but doesn’t break the glass.
    §
    “Naomi, you’re still human.”
    Inside, the gears move.
    Am I?
    §
    “They call themselves gods, you know. Maybe they are, I
don’t know. They say they killed the old god.”
    The collared man said the same thing, but the words mean nothing.
The key has not shown me god yet.
    “They’re remaking, changing, everything. The oceans are black
now.” He laughs, but the edges are hard. “I didn’t even believe in god.”
    I turn my key until I find the ocean, the kiss of water drops on
my skin, the salt taste on my lips. She ran into the blue-green water,
splashing, and I said, “Be careful, be careful.”
    “Naomi, please, why won’t you talk to me?”
    Because I can’t remember her name.
    §
    Little Big takes the woman in black out of her box and cuts
off her arms. He puts her in the cage where the collared one used to live, and
she sits in the corner, motionless. She doesn’t weep like the others.
    In a rush, Little Big leaves the room; I never see him again.
    I hit the glass until another star appears.
    §
    “Naomi?”
    §
    I think about gods and birds and the key in my back. I think
about the crack in the glass, how it stretches almost to the bottom now. Every
day,
slap-crack.
I think about scars and stitches holding me in
place.
    Tearing me apart.
    I’d like to leave the blue room and see the ocean. I’d like to
remember the little one’s name. I turn my key, and the gears click.
    I’d like to be human again.
    §
    Slap.
    Crack.
    Until the glass falls like rain. I
remember the taste and the way it turned my hair into wet tangles. Before they
took me away, before the remaking and the pain. There are still holes in my
memory, spaces for forgotten things, but I remember enough, and if Big finds
me, I won’t let him put me back in the box.
    I step to
the edge. Thick dust covers the wooden table and the floor and shimmers like a
grey veil. I think we are the forgotten things now. Broken, remade into almost
perfect, yet left behind.
    “Naomi, be careful,” the one with
the blue eyes says.
    William.
His name is
William.
    “I will,” I say.
    I will break his glass, too, and
find a way to free the others. I won’t leave anyone behind. I hope my legs are
strong enough to break my fall, but I am not afraid.
    I remember her name.

Sugar, Sin,
and Nonsuch Henry

    Sugarsin bumped into Henry VIII at a yard sale.
    One minute she was making her way between two tables draped with
a floral cloth and loaded with a haphazard array of junk; the next, she rounded
the table, and her shoulder struck something hard and unyielding. She said,
“Sorry,” glanced up, and froze in place.
    He’d been placed off to the side like an afterthought, next to a
wrought iron coat rack and an umbrella stand in the shape of a penguin. No one
had bothered to wipe the dust from his face or brush the cobwebs from his hair,
and dark stains riddled his doublet and hose. At least his codpiece was intact.
    In spite of the grime, there was no mistaking his visage,
captured in the prime of his youth before he went to fat and ruin and rage. She
checked the nape of his neck, under his hair, and smiled. The factory seal
remained intact, which meant no one had altered his programming. He was an
older model, an unsuccessful one, despite the massive media campaigns. Too
old-fashioned for anyone but the faux-flesh collectors.
    And for her.
    The company called them
historical companions
—to amuse your friends and family
. Sugarsin always
thought it would be interesting, albeit strange, to have one, but even after
the price on the Henry model was reduced by half, it was still more expensive
than she could afford. She thought of her house, the quiet; it might be nice to
have some signs of life, even of the artificial variety.