Take it Off and Show Them What’s Left of Me

EJ Cope

It’s been ten years since I woke up in the junkyard. Lights from the galaxy and the city ahead glinted off piles of metal, winking like eyes. Rain cascaded down them in artificial waterfalls. From my paralysed body, my head arose, my fingers clasped together like a doll. A doll with no one to move all her parts, no one to pull her strings. I peered down and along myself, as the nearby city exhaled in an overarching sigh. My body collapsed into its newfound heaviness and I laid, amongst the scrap for days, while the Milky Way coiled and writhed into death and being, time and time again. It was a defeated creature, one so big that I could only fathom its tail, forever obliterated into shards.

When other junkyard girls tried to speak to me, I pretended I was mute and deaf. It wasn’t a major stretch of the truth. By behaving this way, it became real. And inevitably, one of them would recognise me. One of the girls kept visiting me. I’d steal glimpses of her, lifting my eyelids just enough to make out her short, blonde hair and smeared skin. She stood next to me and crouched, examining me. Eventually, she touched me, her fingers warm on my arms, up to my shoulders. I knew it then. She remembered me. And even though her touch felt good, I knew she was fated to hurt me. She’d got a look at my face and my horrible body and she knew who I was. And she kept coming back. She grabbed hold of my foot, lifted it slightly, and rammed a wrench into my ankle. I sat up, meeting her eyes, and found that one wasn’t a real eye at all. It shone metallically under the triple moons.

*

It’s always rush hour in the city centre. The ground rumbles, the puddles tremble. There is a constant backlog of traffic, a feeling of impatience. Businessmen scurry down the streets, their faces flashing past me. It’s hard to differentiate them as individuals. Suits, briefcases, trench coats, umbrellas. They don’t notice me. Several of them knock into me at the zebra crossing. This planet is just a stopover for them. It throbs incessantly with their rhythm.

Just before the corner shop, there are three small children. I avoid looking at their faces, favouring their outstretched hands. One puts their sparkling fist into a businessman’s trench coat as he struggles to light a cigarette. The child pulls out a few notes and makes a dash for it, the other two crashing behind. It’s rare to see children this far from the junkyard. 

My boots squeak as I go into the corner shop and grab a big bottle of Sprite. At the back, a tall businessman stands right in front of the condom section, so I can barely see around his broad shoulders. Rainwater drips from my hood onto my face. The businessman glances over his shoulder at me, and he blushes, pink blooming in his cheeks, his wet hair falling over his jaw. His face is soft-looking, as if stained by lifelong embarrassment. But his eyes are dark. He darts out of my way and starts browsing, rather intensely, at the pregnancy tests. I don’t know what’s taking him so long to decide. They have off-brand, latex-free condoms. I grab three packs, stowing them under my arm and scan the lines of feminine products. I take a box of medium-flow Tampax, laying dormant and alien inside their packaging.

The cashier scans my items – beep, beep – and then taps the price monitor with his long fingernails. 

‘Sorry.’ It’s the businessman again, empty-handed, and too wide to move past me at the till. I clink against the counter. He brushes past me as he leaves the shop. 

After I pay I scoot down an alleyway scrawled with graffiti. Cartoons characters, fuck mes and yous, cunts and pricks. Coming out onto the main streets, I keep my arms locked to my sides. The uniformed workers of the city are swarming the crossing, with their shiny name tags: shopkeepers, receptionists, servers. In the near distance, the towering spires and turrets of the city centre glitter, their flashing lights melting in the rain. I work beyond the casinos, overflowing with suited men. Through the glass of the buildings, they can be seen puffing on their cigars. But I could gamble myself up there – my body – sprawled out amongst the towers of chips. My breath swirls up into the sprawling galaxy as I turn round the bend, met by a queue of cars, exhausts chugging out smoke. Just ahead, dancers spin on their poles, lining the road. Their hands and legs scrape against the metal. Taxis and limousines ooze with cash, with a tideline of rubbish crumpled on the tarmac. Above the main stage, a train crashes past, and on the bridge, a neon sign reads AUTOMATA, alternating in pinks and blues. The pounding bass from the speakers reverberates inside of me. 

‘You took your time.’ It’s Kee, short blonde hair spiked up with an excess of gel, wrapped up in a puffer jacket. Her fake eye gleams with iridescence, like a spinning coin. 

‘That’s because I was getting your tampon things,’ I tell her, passing her the bag. 

Behind her, Ula stands, wearing nothing but lacy lingerie with leather accents and a black bunny tail on her behind. She glowers at me, blowing thick marijuana smoke out from the side of her mouth. It curls up around her afro hair. If I’d known she was standing here I’d never have approached. I feel a clanging deep inside my chest as she passes Kee the glowing stub and steps forward. In exchange, Kee gives Ula the bottle of Sprite.

‘Oh,’ I say. But no one hears. I’d thought the Sprite was for Kee and I. 

Kee passes the stub to Ula, which she frowns at but tokes nonetheless. Trapped between her hard finger and thumb, the stub gets flattened, before falling and fizzling out on the wet concrete. Kee used to offer me joints, but hasn’t since the last time, when I convinced myself I was paralysed. I’ve never been able to access the sensation of being high anyway.

Kee puts her arm around me. ‘You got the right ones?’

‘Latex-free,’ I reply.

‘And heavy flow?’ 

‘Fuck,’ I mutter.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kee says. 

‘No, no. I did get heavy flow. Yeah,’ I lie. 

Ula slots the bottle of Sprite under her arm. ‘Have you heard?’ she asks. 

Silence descends on us and I realise both Kee and Ula are waiting for me to respond.

‘What’s that?’ I’m too aware now of the sound of my voice. I don’t know if I’m speaking too fast or slow. Kee’s arm tightens around my shoulders.

‘It’s all gonna kick off,’ Ula says. 

‘No, no,’ Kee says to her. ‘You’ve been reading too much shite on your phone.’ 

Ula ignores her. ‘You know our water was fucked a few weeks ago?’

I didn’t know. I actively avoid the news. And when I’m home alone, it’s not like I spend a whole lot of my time running taps.

‘Well, they found a bunch of weaponry. Underneath us. Underneath the city.’ Ula laughs. ‘Unsurprising really.’ 

‘They come up with bollocks like this all time,’ Kee says.

Ula gets her scratched phone out and the screen illuminates her face. ‘You know earth?’ she asks me.

She thinks I’m stupid. I nod along anyway, in a way that is ambiguous enough, as if I wasn’t sure what she meant initially but am now beginning to understand. A pair of dancers walk by, their high heels clip-clopping on the pavement. 

‘Apparently, it’s weaponry from old earth powers. Because they used to mine the fuck out of us. They must have dug it all out and then—’ Ula stops, biting the nail of her index finger, which like the entirety of her arm is artificial and robotic. The enamel of her teeth clinks against the metal. ‘Who knows who might try to claim it all for themselves.’ 

I know she’s trying to scare me. She’s trying to smoke me out. But this is the only conversation I’ve had with anyone who isn’t Kee in months.

‘Let’s not worry about it,’ Kee says. 

‘I’d send you the article, but I don’t have your number,’ Ula says. 

‘Wow,’ I say, as sarcastically as I possibly can without getting in trouble. ‘Yeah, great.’ 

Ula lowers her gaze and smiles at me. She doesn’t want my number. Every time I see her I’m reminded that she’s very attractive. Like an ancient creature, she bares her teeth at me. ‘I’ll bugger off then.’ She struts down the congested road with the Sprite under her arm. A drunkard leers at her out of a car window, but she spits at him, and the window rolls back up. 

Kee calls after her, ‘So you’re done with the politics talk then?’

Then Kee embraces me tightly and for a little too long. Holding my shoulders, she says, ‘I’ll see you later. At home.’ She sets off down the road and I watch her as she goes around the bend. These days, the most I see of Kee is her leaving.

I feel the clanging inside of me finally subside. Alone again. Bypassing the crowd of cars and men, I slip round the side to backstage. Through the black curtain, wires run like thin polluted rivers over the brick walls and floor. By the lockers, I interrupt two dancers kissing, their metal hands clasped together, their lips interlocked. I blush, and the heat in my cheeks makes me think of that strange businessman in the corner shop. There’s a series of scuffling steps as the dancers make themselves scarce. Behind the decks is Harlow, another friend of Kee’s. She has a pair of headphones around her neck, her ginger hair luminescent under the bright lights. She notices it's only me and ignores me. This is actually the best interaction I can hope for with Harlow.

I remove the uppermost layers of my clothing and place them in my locker, before slipping on my high heels. I like being tall like this. With a deliberate slow twist, Harlow lowers the volume of the thumping track, and male excitement rumbles in its place. I pace up the stairs to the stage and walk out onto the platform. The pole gleams at me in the low lighting. The audience’s staring eyes, like a many-headed monster, glint darkly. Harlow brings the music up again, the speakers pulsating with anthems of a revolution that never succeeded. The lights undulate all over my body. 

This is an exercise in bodily presence.

First, I show them the length of my sparkling legs, slowly hitching up my skirt. Once one man starts whooping, the others soon follow. There are faces in the crowd that are warped with intrigue, others with disgust. But they won’t look away. ‘Alexa, get your kit off!’ And that gets a raucous laugh.

I step out of my skirt and bring my leg up, leaning the heel of my foot on the pole. The metallic limb stretches up above my head. A few notes get thrown, floating to the ground. New girls collect and count the cash at the peripheries. I thrust my iron backside up and out, my hands clinking on my knees. I turn away from the crowd and crisscross my arms to remove my top. I swing it in the air before letting it fall. My stomach is hard and glinting. As I climb the pole, my fingers and inner thighs scrape, metal on metal sending sparks. That’s their favourite trick. The audience pushes closer, spilling their drinks.

Back up against the pole, I unclip my bra and let the straps collapse down to my elbows, past my wrists and then my fingertips. It’s always the same. Momentarily, the crowd is consumed by a wave of incongruous shouting. My breasts are unmoving, frozen as steel. I fill up with the moment, the feeling of being watched, some kind of hot oil. Take a good look at me. Look at what’s been done to me. Look at what I’ve done to myself.

And now I’m not hiding at all. Like Ula, I smile and bare my teeth at them, but mine are half-fashioned from platinum. If it wasn’t for the fact of our hybrid bodies, Ula would easily be the highest earner at AUTOMATA. But I win on that front.

I like it when the men are scared of me. When they want me and that scares them. I like the way they try to compete with each other, the way their pert butts look in their suit trousers. Just like me, they are also a performance. I think I’m just an excuse. They want to see each others’ faces pool with desire, but would be ashamed if the source was anything but a woman. What they don’t realise is that I’m not a woman at all. And they think I don’t have any feelings. Maybe I don’t. I can see the colour of their nipples through their white shirts. I could take them between my metal teeth and bite them clean off, chew them up like gum and blow out bubbles.

I thrust my head between my legs, confronting from upside down the mass of faces and vehicles. There are always a few I recognise. A memorable number plate or a stupid moustache gives them away. They’re often the sort to linger afterwards, only to be shooed away by the older girls who can no longer dance. But I understand. They only want to know what it’s like to be with someone like me, something designed. 

I lift myself onto the pole again, hands and legs clasped around the cool metal and start to spin. I throw my head back, my long hair dancing in the breeze. The music is distorted by the inhuman sounds of technology. Back on land, I shimmy out of my underwear and close my eyes. 

Naked.

From the neck down, my entire body is replaced with metal machinery. Armoured plates at my shoulders, breasts, stomach, butt, and leg muscles. My bolted knees. In between, my designed chrome bones, my silvery tendons. Running up my arms, down my legs. A glimpse of my shiny ribs. The steel spheres of my knuckles. My hard and sharp fingernails. Glints of blue and pink reflect from the galvanised buttons of my nipples. I dance in the body I’m stuck in forever. Four times a week I take off my clothes and show them all what’s left of me, what I am now. I cling to the pole, legs poised, bathing in their gaze. Sometimes, I think I can read their minds. They want to know if I possess the cunt of their dreams. But it would be no good, with all its sharp edges.

I spot a blushing face. He’s there, that strange businessman from the corner shop, looking up at me like he’s the smallest man on this planet. Perhaps he’s attractive too, but not in the way that Ula is. The lights pulse over his face, and with each flash, he’s got a different expression. At first, he seems disgusted, then the crowd jostles and he looks horny then curious then worried until it settles on something final. His eyes glisten, tears streaming down his hot cheeks, while his lips smile. He is beautiful.

I have seen this oxymoronic expression before. It is something about me, perhaps not even my ersatz body, but something in my very essence, that elicits this ambiguous response. Something old bubbles up inside of me. The girl in me believes he has really seen me, the one that’s locked inside all of this steel. I swallow it down. But it’s wishful thinking, that childhood memories are something so tactile they can be dissolved inside a machine body.

*

I’d thought I was paralysed forever in that junkyard. And I was ok with that then. I didn’t want to be saved. But that little girl, with her boyish hair and her rusty wrench, woke me up. I reached, clamping my hand on her wrist. Her real eye was blue like the heart of a flame. She yelped and let go, but the wrench was still stuck in me. I was only vaguely aware of its horrid presence inside of me. 

I leapt up and ran, but I wasn’t pulling the strings. This was all mechanical instinct. Nevertheless, excitement bloomed inside of me. Perhaps I could occupy this body after all. The wrench was slowing me down – in the form of a limp – but I was so fast, the air whizzing in my ears. The ground beneath us was unsteady, layer upon layer of partly degraded rubbish. It bubbled and swelled like an ocean. And over those bobbing waves was that one-eyed girl, chasing me down. She wanted to punish me. She wanted to dismantle me. Perhaps I should just let her have her way with me. I’m good at that.

The thought was so loud that I stopped running. And then I fell through the reeking junk, clunking and squelching on the way down until I sank into immeasurably deep water. I even tried to swim up to the surface, but I was too heavy with all that my body had become, with the secret I was carrying. Despite it all, my body had tried to save me. Before my consciousness seeped out of me, that was my last thought. Despite it all. 

Slowly, I came back to myself. The one-eyed girl was staring at me, her blonde hair now dirtied. When I sat up I coughed up black water.

I saved you, the one-eyed girl said with a lisp. 

I never asked her how. I never asked her why. I didn’t look at her but at the landscape. The birdless purple sky and the mountains of unwanted, abandoned things. 

My name is Kee, she spoke again.

If you’re going to take me apart then just get on with it, I said. But my voice came out wispy, I hadn’t used it in so long.

I thought you might be dead, she replied. Tell me your name. 

Why? 

Because I saved you.

You can take my metal. 

No, she said, It’s yours. 

Is it? I asked.

You don’t have a name, do you? Is that it?

I looked at her then and realised that her real eye was not a hot kind of blue at all, but a placid one. Like a body of water on a healthy planet. Her nose was perfectly upturned, with freckles across her cheeks. It was abundantly clear to me then, that she didn’t know who I was after all.

I don’t remember it, I lied.  

*

At home, I watch old nature documentaries. This is an itch I scratch only when I’m home alone for extended periods. This particular one is about the ocean. Everything is colourful and infested with life. Everything is interconnected. I’ve grown accustomed to the specific scuffle of Kee’s footsteps, so I turn the TV off the moment I hear her, just as a sea turtle sweeps across the screen. She fumbles with the key in the door, clearly drunk, and then gets two bottles of beer for us out of the fridge. 

Lately, we’ve been doing this thing where we don’t talk much. We drink bottle after bottle, and I fall deeper into thoughts of earth and that strange businessman. Kee plays music through her chipped bluetooth speaker. Her favourites, as usual, female artists from the asteroid belt. Combing her hands through the length of my hair, Kee says, ‘It's getting so long now.’ Her fingers get stuck in knots, and it tugs on my head. Tremors pulse across my scalp and stop dead on the metal of my spine. ‘You need to look after it.’ Kee rids her hands of split ends. 

‘I condition it,’ I lie.

‘You can’t leave it down like this at night.’ Her fingers graze my ear as she tucks my hair behind it. ‘I know.’ She pops to the bathroom and returns with a hairbrush and elastic bands. ‘I’ll plait it for you.’

I put my beer down and examine the broken ends of my hair. There’s something about it that I’m deeply attached to. This grew from my head. It’s mine. ‘I don’t know.’ 

‘It’s just for tonight. You can take them out in the morning if you want.’ Kee smiles, armed with the hairbrush. I notice then that the gap between her front teeth from girlhood has closed. 

I give in, turning away on the sofa. I’ve never had anyone brush my hair before. Not even as a child. I take a swig of beer before Kee gets to work, the bristles tickling my scalp.

‘When I was little, I was part of a gymnastics team.’ Kee interlaces portions of my hair. ‘We used to sit in lines and plait each other’s hair like this at the beginning of sessions.’ Her fingertips are so warm and soft on my skin.

I think about myself when I was little and organic. It’s the beer’s fault, and Kee’s, but I take another hard swig anyway, swallowing the memory down. ‘How old were you?’ I ask her. 

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Maybe nine.’ She ties off the end of the first braid, looping the band over and over.

‘That sounds nice.’ I hold the finished plait and run my fingers down the pattern. It makes me happy to see all the hair that I grew myself weaved into something so simple and pretty by Kee’s hands.

‘Do you not have any memories like that Sola, none at all?’ Kee uses the brush to scrape the hair up from the other side of my head. 

I pick at a dry piece of skin on my forehead, staring at the dark TV screen. Kee stops brushing, holding my hair in her fist. I must be running out of chances to avoid this question, but I do it anyway. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I start. ‘About when we met.’ 

‘That’s sweet,’ she replies. ‘How long has that been now?’ 

‘Ten years.’ My fingers find a growing pimple on my chin.

‘Has it really?’ 

‘How did you save me?’ I scratch at the spot with my metal nail.

‘It’s hard to remember.’ 

‘Don’t do that,’ I say. ‘Answer the question.’ 

Kee grabs my wrist and pulls my hand from my face. ‘You’re picking. You’re making yourself bleed. Anyway, you avoided my question first.’ 

‘Ok, how about this? Why did you help me?’ 

Kee finishes her beer, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘You won’t like my answer.’

The skin lodged underneath my metal nails is flaky, laced with watery blood. Kee should have let me drown. I can read it, written there, in the coding of my skin and blood.

‘What were you watching?’ Kee asks, turning the music off. She grabs the TV remote and turns it on. Instantaneously, the screen is alive with luscious greenery and a chimpanzee, with its mottled face and blank eyes. ‘What is it?’ she asks me. 

‘Nothing,’ I reply. ‘Old reruns.’

Kee’s side profile irritates me with its petulance – it’s all in the upturned nose – but her replaced eye, smooth, reflects the green light. She doesn’t know a thing. That fact is ultimately soothing to me and always has been. But now, in this silence, I’m not so sure. I’m finally considering the possibility that she’s known who I am all along.