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I Can Do It Better

The music from the sound system cut to a low hiss. Corey turned around to the stage, if it could even be called that, where some young tiger was tuning an acoustic guitar. Dissonant chords filled the room and Corey quietly snarled. The bull turned back around to his drink, silently resenting the feline for picking today, picking this bar, picking musician as a life choice in general. Of course he knew he was misappropriating his mood, and of course Corey knew he didn't care. It had been a terrible day, and all he wanted was a drink and to be left alone. Of course, if his boss were here he'd find some reason to belittle him for having a quiet drink alone instead of getting _more_work done or some other ridiculous request the bull would be obligated to fulfill. Corey huffed through his nostrils and downed his drink.

"I've seen that face before," said a gentle, husky voice. The bull turned to his left and saw an arctic fox, leaning on the bar with her hip sticking out, looking him over like she was evaluating a statue. Her eyes were dark, dark brown, her fur bone white, her dress tight and revealing. "That's the face of someone directing their anger at someone who doesn't deserve it." The vixen slid onto the bar stool, graceful as a dancer. "Maybe someone who isn't involved should help out." She leaned in, and Corey couldn't have missed the fox's cleavage if she were wearing a bullet-proof vest. An amulet dangled between her white-furred peaks, some kind of insect.

Corey chuckled and motioned to the bartender. "I appreciate the show, miss, but I know when something's up."

The vixen flashed a smile, black lips curling over sharp, pristine teeth. "Good thing I'm not up to anything." Right as she said it, the sound system cut out, the speakers spewing out awful static like the buzzing of a swarm. It made Corey wince, his tail instinctively trying to swat at whatever would try to land on him. As quickly as it started, it went away.

The bartender placed the drink in front of the bull, and the vixen immediately picked it up, taking a chaste sip. Corey raised an eyebrow. "A beautiful thing like you walks right up to me, puts on her sexiest moves, steals my drink, and I'm not being conned? I'm sorry, dear, but - "

"You work in politics, you know how to work people, you're not easily fooled. Yeah, picked up on that miles away." The vixen's eyes were locked on Cory, and her smile widened. "It's a government town," she said, swirling the drink slowly in her hand. "You're wearing a very nice suit and have expensive taste in alcohol. Three strikes," she leaned in again, and Corey instinctively flicked his eyes down her dress and back up. "You're out," she breathed, the words blowing into Corey's fur.

More dissonant notes filled the bar as Corey looked the vixen up and down. She didn't seem to mind, inviting the scrutiny. The only people who did that were the ones with something to hide. The bull's eyes flicked to her drink, twisting from her wrist, then back to her. Corey turned his body, squaring his shoulders at the vixen, and extended his large hand. "I'm Corey."

"Janet," she said; delicate, white-furred fingers taking his. Black claws tickled his palm. "Now you're a bull with a problem, Corey. Why don't you let me help?" She continued to swirl the drink in one hand, occasionally glancing into the spinning liquid.

Corey watched as her hand lazily moved the glass. "Why?"

"Why not?" she gave him a sideways glance. "Just talk. That's all I want. I won't say a word. Till you're done anyway." Corey narrowed his eyes, looking at her, unintentionally focusing on her breasts, her legs. She did not stop moving her glass. She was a con artist, alright, even talking to her was dangerous. Except he didn't know any real secrets; he didn't have any real authority.

The bull sighed, glancing at Janet's drink and the liquid swirl. "I'm the top aide for a senator. It's a tough gig, lots of last-minute deadlines, late nights, emergency meetings." Corey watched as the drink turned. His fists clenched tightly. "I do a lot of work. A lot. But I have no job security. A senator can get work for years, based just on their face. People know them, and you can't replace familiarity. But hard work?" Corey snorted. "Anyone can do that."

Corey looked away from the drink, into the dark eyes of the vixen. "My boss threatened my job today. I've been with him this entire term. I haven't had a vacation day since I applied for that job. I was promoted - by him personally. And I'm still_expendable." Corey set his jaw, trying to get his breathing under control. "I know that man, I know his _career, I know his life, and he thinks he can replace me? Because of a few mistakes?! After all the work I've put in, I'm still replaceable?!" Corey breathed in deeply, slumping. "And you know what? He's right. A lot of ambitious kids would kill for my job."

Janet's smile had wilted. As her hand tilted the glass back and forth, the fingers of her free hand touched her amulet. Gently, as if reminding herself it was still there. Then her fingers drifted down, along the hem of her dress, grazing her breast. Corey watched the entire movement. "Your boss is a jackass," she said finally, "but I disagree with you."

Corey raised an eyebrow, setting his weight on the bar with one elbow.

"Hard work isn't replaceable. Each person has their own way, their own method, their own," she sped up the glass slightly; Corey flicked his eyes down and watched for a moment before looking back to her, "flavor.

"Your boss may believe you're replaceable, and maybe he could even find someone to do it. But no one is replaceable. It's not that someone else could do your job - of course they could. But it's your_job. Just like how no two people are the same, no two people _work the same. Live the same. Lead the same." Janet leaned away from Corey, toward the bar, looking deep into her drink. He could feel the conviction drip from her words. "You look up to your boss because you know only he can get something done. He made it his job. It's why your boss has his power over you. Your boss promoted you for the same reason. What they call work ethic, what they call drive, is an extension of you, your being. It isn't hard_work, it's _your work."

Her fingers touched the insect amulet; one claw grazed an obsidian black eye. As the song from the stage continued, feedback began to build up, slowly, the swarming sound rising almost imperceptibly, until the tiger managed to get it back under control. "There was a time people knew that, respected it. A thing was built by ones' blood, sweat, and toil and it was rightfully called theirs. If they made a building, if they made an army, if they made an empire. People looked up to them in awe of the power they commanded, the force of their will. It filled them with wonder, to see what this person could accomplish. And it filled them with fear should they ever set their sights on them."

The spinning liquid in her glass had begun to collect bubbles, amber pearls that caught the light around them and directed it back into her eyes. She turned to the bull, and her eyes turned the light into cunning and malice. Corey realized he had been watching her drink more than he had been watching her, and he blinked to refocus. She straightened again, pushing her chest forward and Corey could just make out the outline of her nipples in her dress. She brought the glass to her lips and sipped her drink while it was still spinning. As she pulled the glass away, she flicked her tongue along her bottom lip. Corey blinked again. Was her tongue . . . black? No, he just hadn't been paying attention to it.

"What do you want?" Corey asked, crossing his arms. "Why tell me this? Why even listen to me?"

Janet looked away, spinning her glass. Corey's eyes were drawn to it, though his stance remained resolute. "I'm not trying_to con you out of anything, honestly. But I do want something from you. Something I can see in you. I'm . . . not like you. I don't have the ability to work into people's good graces with demonstrations of my talent. But you do." Janet touched the bull's shoulder, and even through his suit he could feel her claws. The tingle filled him with an excited fear as she brought her hand across his shoulder blade to his spine. "I want to join with you. Become a team. I use your position, your skills, _your work; and you use my cunning, my ruthlessness, my drive to become more than I am." She pulled herself close to him, using his body as an anchor to do it. He could feel strength in her arms, downy fur hiding muscles he wouldn't have expected in someone so lithe. She pressed herself to him, her pristine white fur tickling his short, coarse coat. "Together, when our time comes, we'll change most everything."

Corey looked into her eyes. Even in broad daylight they'd be nearly black. He glanced back to the bar, to the drink. It was beginning to stop, the bubbles in the liquid rising to the surface and bursting, a silent life cycle in amber. As he watched the sound system began to feedback again, but quieter, more subtle; as if the swarm of bugs making the sound were farther off, slowly consuming their way into the horizon. Her words hung in his mind like fog. It was all so strange. Is it what he wanted? Power, position? And why_did she want to help him? Who _was she?

Janet took her finger to his chin and guided his gaze back to her eyes. Her look wasn't the look of a lover, warm and inviting, but scrutinous, evaluating. She was looking for what he had to hide. It made him uncomfortable. He knew he could stop her, push her away and tell her to fuck off. But damn she felt nice against him. If her look wasn't warm and inviting, her body was.

Her hand stroked along his jaw. "Give me one night to prove myself to you. One night."

Corey raised an eyebrow. Maybe he didn't trust her. Maybe he didn't believe her. But he knew an invitation when he heard one, and he was interested in this from the moment he saw her. It had been a really bad day. He looked down from her face to her chest; the insect, black eyes peering into him with a life of their own, implacable, unknowable, foreign against her white fur. He could at least take up this part of her offer. For the bad day.

"I can't say no to that."

Janet smiled, again showing her predator teeth. "I live up the street." She stood, just as gracefully as she sat, and walked out of the bar. Dissonant chords marked each of her steps and she glided to the music. The song was over now, the guitar fading to nothing more than quiet feedback, that uncomfortable noise now familiar. Janet's tail swished to either side with her hips, the movement enticing Corey from his stool, out of the bar, down the street. Outside her door, the vixen gave him a coy look over her shoulder. "Make yourself at home. My house is yours." Corey chuckled as she got the door unlocked, following her in. She did not turn any lights on, and the bull couldn't make out any details in the darkness.

The door closed behind him with a soft click that filled the empty blackness. The room smelled thick and unpleasant, like burning dust on a furnace and Corey wrinkled his nostrils against it. As he tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness, he saw a faint, flickering light down a short hallway. "You should look at it," Janet said. Her voice seemed baited, expectant. "Go." It was as if she came from all sides at once. Corey shook his head, looking for the vixen in the dark. It was pointless, far too dark for him to see, even though he could feel her presence around him. The bull headed down the hall, toward the light around the corner. As he approached, the air became more acrid and thick; Corey recognized it as candle smoke. The weight of it coated his tongue and forced him to swallow.

He reached the corner, turned, and immediately stopped. Candles lined the room and filled it with weak, stuttering yellow light. Against the far wall was a massive statue of something terrible and strange. Tall, thin horns, antennae, came out of its top; its eyes were black voids, sucking in any light and destroying it. Candles were grouped in front of it, casting light beneath it and giving the statue a shadow even larger than itself. Corey recognized it, the same creature on Janet's amulet, and finally realized what it was: locust.

Corey tried to back away, away from this shrine but his back met the wall. He turned his head and saw Janet, smiling at him; black lips nestled between white fur and white teeth, like the stitches holding together torn flesh. Her eyes were no longer dark brown, even the near black they had seemed at the bar, but pure black, voids that could consume the entire universe.

"Beautiful in its own way, isn't it?" Janet said, stepping toward him with that familiar sensuality, "Locust are deep in your mind. From a time you can no longer remember. I am too. I've been watching you, all of you, for a long time. Waiting for you to see who walks among you again. To feel it. Sometimes I come right out to you, telling you the truth. But you laugh," her voice broke, "you say I'm a myth, I'm a lie."

As she moved, her hand drifted to the back of her neck and undid her dress. It fell away and she effortlessly walked out of it, never breaking stride. Corey pressed himself into the wall, swallowing a gasp as he watched her. Her voice continued to break as she spoke, "You don't recognize me. You can't_recognize me anymore. I once ruled over you _all with a terrible might like a storm, and you loved and feared me, sang anthems of my wonder and beat yourselves for my glory." The locust amulet slid over her fur in a pendulum stroke, black eyes matching hers. Blood red markings were on her fur, random but symmetrical, beginning at the bottoms of her breasts, over her ribs, meeting on her hips and pubis. Whorls and twists, they seemed to move on their own, reaching forward to the bull. "Now there are no anthems, just the dull echo of your fear, the resonant ring of your desire_to submit to me again. I want it. I want the melodies, the anthem, the voice, the respect, the fear, the wonder, the _power."

Janet - the name was wrong on her, she was much older, much more unimaginable, Corey knew - raised her hands, palms upward and fingers splayed. Her claws shone in the candlelight. "I'm not going to kill you, Corey," she said, a smile on her lips that somehow resonated into the voids of her eyes. "I need you. I meant it when I said you were irreplaceable." Then her arms shot out, one hand gripping his jaw, the other the top of his skull. She was strong, so much stronger than she looked and so much stronger than him. Corey was six inches taller than her, and she easily forced him to look down at her. Her smile had been replaced with a sneer, a primal and timeless hatred filling her features and her voice. "But I can do it better."

Corey's fear filled him and made him feel light. He gripped her arms and tried to struggle but she couldn't be budged. Her fingers squeezed his head, sending sharp bolts of pain through him and forcing him to cry out. She redoubled her grip on his jaw, holding his mouth open and moved her other hand over his eyes. Corey felt her breath over his lips and heard her inhale, quietly. The breath went on and on, never stopping, long past the limits of a mortal. It became difficult to catch his breath, quick airless pants as his lungs desperately tried to pull in air. Struggling became difficult and the sound of her inhale grew, rising around him. His chest began to hurt as his lungs spasmed and he could feel the air was leaving him; she was sucking it from him.

The inhale became a roar as his rapid heartbeat filled his ears and pulsed painfully in his temples. Janet's, no, the creature's fingers squeezed tighter, and he could feel her body shuffle closer to him, greedily pressing against his own. He couldn't struggle anymore, the strength in his limbs gone. His knees were limp, the only thing holding him up were the creature's arms. Muscles across his body twitched as the hurricane noise spiraled around him, his body draining through his mouth.

The creature readjusted her hands, no longer needing to keep Corey's mouth open herself. Gripping the sides of his head, Corey gave a final tremble as he saw a golden haze, the most pure light, flow out of his muzzle and into the vixen. Looking at it reminded him of stars and the warmth of a summer sun; Corey knew, his fear greater than ever in his life, it was his soul. Her maw was wide open, black tongue and flesh illuminated like an oil slick by the gold haze. Her eyes were not illuminated; pure void, where light and hope and thought itself were consumed by this being, timeless and powerful beyond measure.

The light grew brighter, filling Corey's vision, blinding him. He couldn't feel his body. His senses tumbled, throwing him around like a bubble in liquid. The noise around him was all he could perceive, twisting him in a whirlpool cacophony. It wasn't just one sound anymore, but a mixture of voices, screams and whispers, some in languages he recognized, many he could not. They invaded his thoughts and seemed to run through him, and somehow he felt as though the voices were a part of him.

The brightness of the light receded around him, but Corey could not orient himself. There was something in front of him, but not the creature, his eyes couldn't adjust to make it out. He wasn't facing the right way, there was something in his hands, he felt cold. As his eyes adjusted he could make out the thing in front of him: himself. Except he looked desiccated, as though he had been dried in salt for years. His fur had thinned and gone grey on the edges, his tongue hung limp out of his muzzle, his horns had cracked and decayed. He looked into his own eyes; they had gone dead and black. He screamed, but heard no sound. The voices around him quieted, not going away but clearing enough for him to separate them as background noise to the rest of the world.

Corey watched as his body fell to the ground, crumpling into a heap like a paper skeleton. His hands raised in front on him, without his will. They were his own, just as he always knew them, and yet his body was on the floor. Corey's mind spun, unable to comprehend what was happening. The large knuckles and heavy hooftips flexed, palms twisted without his control. His view angled down, and he saw the creature's amulet on his chest; the blood red swirls twisted on his own fur. "I haven't been this tall in a while," his voice said. It was his voice, it was in his head, but the bull hadn't said it. Corey realized his body was no longer his own. The voices around him rose a small amount, seeming to resonate joy.

"Corey, I hope you understand what's happened, what you've become now. You'll always be with me." Unbidden, Corey reached across the span of his memories, to his happiest, his worst, his proudest and his lowest moments. Against his wishes, he thought of work today, his boss, all that he had done to further the senator's career. He knew it was the creature, but he was as powerless to stop her as he was to move his body. As he thought back to work today and focused on his boss, instead of irritation or anger, all he saw was weakness, vulnerabilities that could be exploited. He didn't see the senator as a mentor, but a worm to be crushed on his own way up. "You'll always be a part of me now. And together we'll do things few can imagine." The whispers around the bull seemed to close in around him, caressing and soothing him. They would never leave him now, a constant, the rhythm in silence. He could reach out and learn from them, use them to his benefit. An army of knowledge and experience at his hands, the truest source of power. "I can't replace your experience and your personality. I can't replace you. I need you."

The voices rose, some kind of dissonant harmony, beautiful and chaotic, the sounds of a swarm that could not be stopped. Corey turned to the locust statue, reached his hand up and touched the amulet. Was that the creature, or had he_wanted_ to do that? A smile played across his lips, and Corey truly didn't know who had done it.

"But I can be you better."

3,706 words

Inspired by "No Anthems," Sleater-Kinney, from No Cities to Love, 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ec0y7HTyQ4

I'm a low hiss telling you something's amiss

When you hear the sound

I'm the whisper I could do it better

When I look around

I'm desire itself beaming from the highest shelf

You should really look down

There is no roadblock that I couldn't unlock

I really get around

_ _

Seduction pure function

It's how I learned to speak

Steal your power in my hour

I will change most everything

_ _

I'm not the anthem

I once was an anthem

I sang the song of me, but now

There are no anthems

And all I can hear is

The echo and the ring

_ _

I'm the sly one watching how to get it done

I don't say a word

In a slow dream planning out my next scheme

I lay my moves down

I'm the pool boy filling you with cool joy

In my melody

I will lay low figuring the way to go

Behind the scenes

_ _

I'm not the anthem

I once was an anthem

I sang the song of me, but now

There are no anthems

And all I can hear is

The echo and the ring

_ _

Seduction pure function

It's how I learned to speak

Steal your power in my hour

I will change most everything

_ _

I'm not the anthem

I once was an anthem

I sang the song of me, but now

There are not anthems

And all I can hear is

The echo and the ring

_ _

I want an anthem

A singular anthem

An answer and a force

To feel rhythm in silence

A weapon not violence

A power, power source