(Sci-Fi Short Story) 04 Coughing Fits

My throat had grown worse. From a faint itch to a full-on clawing. It had come on fast, this malady and entirely ruined my evening. I was supposed to be meeting with a beautiful vertecuine woman at a new bar uptown. Now, sadly, I was confined to my apartment. Wrapped in the finest SimuSilk sheets, drinking as much water as I could put down.

But it just kept getting worse. After searching my home, I found nothing that could help with this damned scratching.

I knew travelling to the work retreat was a bad idea. Even if it was a tropical jungle paradise, the networking had been exquisite. I just knew I’d catch a cold from all that handshaking.

So I endeavoured to run to the bodega at the end of my block. I threw on a puffy jacket and pants and dialled in the built-in heater to try to shake my now growing shivers. Was the heat off in this place? I pay too much to not have any heat.

Out into the elevator, which glowed its subtle violet and asked me which floor I’d like to travel to.

“GRRRRound,” I wheezed.

“OK, Ground it is, sir. Say, you don’t sound so good? Should I book you a doctor’s appointment?”

“NNUUHH,” was all I could spit out

At the bottom, I passed our doorbot and waved politely. He nodded as he always did. I still can’t remember its name, though. Not like I could say anything anyhow.

Heading through the sliding glass doors into the street, I find that it's freezing. I should have brought a better jacket. 400 floors down, everything is bathed in neon lights and steam from the gutters. People move everywhere. The tram taking people uptown to the nightlife runs overhead. The other way is to the grand elevators that take people to various floors of the station.

A hunched, bearded man pushing a wheelchair strapped with garbage bags that ballooned out bigger than he is. The large maroon bags bulged, and he teetered as he walked. As if a slight breeze might send him and his riches right over. Presumably, they were filled with spent drink pouches that he collected from gutters and bins. He said nothing while he worked. An outstretched hand was all he needed to coax someone to pass over their treasure.

Disgusting, I thought. I paid a lot to be in this neighbourhood. Couldn’t they try a little harder to keep out the riffraff?

I move slowly and with focus past the windows of the fanciest clothing stores. This is the area where the who’s who come to spend their time and cash. I live here after all, a senior junior executive at the Kaupunki United Insurance Company, so what does that make me?

Like most streets on this floor, several stores down is my local bodega. Shambolic, but charming, always containing whatever a person needs. You take a certain ownership of your local spot. When you stop there for things so frequently, it becomes yours.

Mine was called Grim’s Butikk with a parsley green sign depicting a thumbs up, outside. It was small on the outside, but always bigger when you were wandering the aisles looking for something.

I entered through the front sliding glass doors, looking at the owner. His name was… I drew a blank. I couldn’t remember, but it wasn’t Grim. I’d made a joke to him once, and the only grim thing about him was his response.

He was a small man with a bald head and a long beard. He had cold, dark eyes and rarely spoke.

His cat, Fungus, could be found sleeping atop the canned food in the back. Today, he was on top of the warm food trays at the front. A reminder to skip their cabbage pies under their silver cloches.

I found myself rushing to the pharmacopeia in the back of the shop. Past shelves packed with food and drink. The machine was a fine white box. More pristine than the surrounding store. I approached grabbing the microphone.

“Ughhh, fargar(COUGH)dard(COUGH),” I gurgled, accompanied by the feeling of being punched in the jugular from the inside.

“Can you say that again. More clearly this time.” Said the machine.

“My throat, it’s sore.” I scraped out.

“Please insert a probe into the impacted area,” it said, popping out a disposable probe that I put in my mouth, wincing. It heated up, and the gearbox within the machine began to whirl.

“Please remove and dispose of the scanner. This may take a moment.”

I looked around for something to do. The scrolls were up front, and the owner always gave me trouble for reading and not buying. A rack caught my eye, and I stopped to flip through a selection of thin foil packages until I stopped on one labelled “Saskatoon Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream.” My favourite. I pulled it out. Then thumbing back through for a lemon bar flavour for later.

I clasped the pouch. Twisting a knob in the centre, an amber light began to glow. Brighter and brighter until it couldn’t get brighter. I pressed in with two fingers, hearing a crack. The foil inflated warming in my hand. The light began to flicker, but didn’t go out. I tapped the button a few times, but it started to hiss. Quickly, I twisted the button off as the bag began to depressurize. I placed my lips on it, tilting it back to take a swig of the sweet and creamy syrup. Tasted just like a Saskatoon pie, I thought.

Well… I’d never had whatever a real saskatoon pie is, but it tasted just like the store brand flavour I’d grown up with.

I stashed the lemon bar pouch into my chest pocket. The machine was still whirling.

Fortunately, the pie had coated my throat a little, providing some relief. Unfortunately, the scratching was back. Now, like something was caught in my windpipe. I coughed and hacked; reaching for my throat.

The owner glowered at me from the front, but the sliding glass doors distracted him.

I was too busy hunching over, coughing, to notice that the three oni who had entered were wearing all colourful cloaks and half masks showing ornamental fangs that gave the appearance of demonic spirits.

“Give us your credits and your pharms, old man!” Shouted one.

“And throw in a spicy cabbage pie,” said the other, waving a ray gun in his face.

I continued hacking, now lightheaded and seeing stars. I fumbled forward for something to lean on. Instead, I went headfirst into a shelf, knocking bags of rice to the floor.

“Yo, you back there. Shut the hell up. Can’t you see we’re tryna concentrate on robbing this place.”

I could only cough in response. It felt as if something was trying to claw its way out of my throat.

One of them approached, waving the ray gun in my direction. I didn’t want this kind of trouble. I just wanted my cough medicine.

“If you don’t shut it, I’m going to melt ya.” He said, putting the finned red ray gun under my chin. It was the cheap tin-clad kind. Straight from a vending machine. One where the ornamentation and details were simply painted on. Like a child's toy, but still capable of killing me if this guy really wanted to. I put my hands up, trying my best to signal that I wasn’t going to be a problem, but the robber was already looking at something behind me. “Ey, they got a pharmacopeia back here.” He shouted to the front.

He pushed past, and I fell to my knees and clutched the shelf for some stability.

It was at this moment that the machine rang out and repeated a message, “error unknown foreign body detected. Seek emergency medical help.”

One of the Oni began to panic. Slapping the top of the machine and barking, “What the hell is wrong with this thing, old man?!”

He did not respond, still held at ray point, unloading the register into a bag. So they began to slam on the machine, to which it began politely asking, “Please do not touch or interfere with the machine.”

The Oni nearest fired his raygun into its control panel, but instead of causing damage, it vanished. The smell of lime jelly wafted through the air. 

“What in the hell. This things got a R.E.D.A.C.T.S. system on it.”

Random Extra Dimensional Active Tracking Shield or R.E.D.A.C.T.S. was a defence system usually only reserved for serious combat. I’d only seen these on screen at the Crystal Video theatre. Syndicate agent Jay Pulp would take down an entire black market organ farming gang with his bare hands. Or at least his trusty ray gun and R.E.D.A.C.T.S. system, which scanned an incoming threat and transported it to a random alternative dimension.

The Oni fired again, but got the same result as the machine politely scolded him while the shouting from the front continued.

It was amongst this din that three things happened simultaneously.

First, I felt several straw-like objects force their way up my windpipe and out of my mouth. Revealing 13 spindly legs that pushed on the side of my head until it extruded a small spherical body covered in what appeared to be my blood and mucous.

Second, the oni, who had been watching in horror, screamed, backing into his friend and causing him to fall into the machine, firing a shot at point-blank range that evaporated not just the shot, but the ray gun and his forearm in another waft of lime jelly.

Third, distracted by the commotion, the thug up front had turned away from the register long enough for the old man to pull out a Claymore and fire what looked like non-lethal but incredibly painful sound waves into the side of the thug's head, staggering him into the food trays and causing Fungus to startle and begin clawing the oni.

The din grew to bedlam as the Oni screamed, firing weapons with abandon.

This spider creature, which had dislodged from my mouth, jumped forward, attaching itself to the startled oni, who dropped his ray gun and clawed at his mask.

Armless, the other one shrieked, spraying blue blood on the machine.

The machine processed his situation immediately: “loss of limb and external bleeding of a Gormuine Aged 76, blood type x-, no emergency contacts registered. Dispensing clotting cream.” A bright yellow tube emerged. “Don’t forget to pay at the front and have a great day.” Said the machine in a friendly voice. 

Now able to breathe, but leaking blood from my mouth, I turned over and began to crawl up the aisle toward the front.

The oni at the front tried to fire a few shots wildly in the air, causing Fungus the cat to dart off out of sight.

He rushed to the back, leaping over me and aiming his ray gun at his friend's head, now half digested by the growing orb at the end of the nightmarish legs. He fired.

The spider exploded violently, and the whole mess of them fell backwards into the machine, causing a great ripping sound. The sound in the room went from a cacophony to a single high-pitched ring.

The entire store was suddenly very hot and bathed in fluorescent green. I crawled as fast as I could, not looking back until I reached the front doors. The room was now disgustingly scented with the smell of fake lime. I had to get out.

“Are you going to pay for pal?” Said the owner, furrowing his eyebrows at me.

I looked up, bewildered. Blood is still leaking from my mouth. I asked, “Can I. Can I get a mountain spring water as well?”

He nodded, grabbing me a transparent twisted bottle from the back shelf.

I got to my feet, grabbing the counter for support with a twist of my watch and a tap against the register I had paid.

I ripped the tab from the bottle top and began to drink, stopping only to look at the back of the shop, which had become encased in a large green crystal.

“Is your insurance going to cover that?” I pointed.