I cracked my eyes open and squinted at a ray of sunlight sliding between the opening in the center of the blue curtains directly into my eyes, searing my brain with its cheery temperament. It wasn’t the reason I woke up though, the warm compress slowly squeezing my skull to bursting was what woke me up. I winced then groaned as I touched my face. The memory of getting the snot beaten out of me, quite literally actually, came back.

As I thought about the night, I came to the conclusion that the goddamn sonji did not like me very much and wondered what I did to him that I couldn’t remember. Although I did remember part of the night.

"Oh fuck no." I muttered and tasted blood from the scab that broke open on my upper lip. "Did my neighbor really help me in and clean me up?"

"Yep, and you poked her boob with your finger; which was a deliberate act I would like to add. You can try passing it off as being drunk but we both know you just took advantage of being drunk to get away with it." Bevisste answered.

I pushed myself up and grinned a little. "She didn’t seem all that upset about it though."

"You should go try it again right now and see what happens. The results cannot be worse than your last attempt at getting a date." Bevisste said.

I rolled my eyes and walked to the bathroom, feeling pain coming from every spot on my body. I’m surprised the beast hadn’t broke any bones. "Did she ever say her name, Bevisste?" I leaned close to the mirror and gently prodded the yellow and purple mass on my forehead, right cheek and around both eyeballs..

"Second drawer down on the right." Bevisste said. "And yes she did say her name."

I pulled the said drawer open and grabbed a tube of green paste. The shit stung like a million angry wasps attacking the skin but the amazing healing property of it would take away the swelling and scabbing completely in a little less than five minutes. I just had to endure the irrationally angry wasps for those five minutes.

"What’s her name? I obviously do not remember the little details from yesterday. Oh fuck that hurts." I cursed as I began smearing the paste on my face.

"I guess you should not have drank so much Tom. I am not going to tell you. I keep telling you to slow down your drinking, maybe you making an ass out of yourself next time you see her will make you stop drinking so much or so often."

I let the words wash over me, the pain from the paste was way past intense. There should have been a warning on the tube telling people not to smear it over all their face at once. I decided at it felt like a welding-torch was applied to my face that I was definitely suing if there wasn’t one. I gripped the sides of the sink until I was sure I would rip chunks of porcelain free and tried concentrating on the timer counting down to zero from five minutes.

As the timer hit zero I was positive I had not drank enough House IPA to get as intoxicated as I had been last night. I had had maybe six beers, and while being twenty five percent alcohol by volume the drinks and having more kick then a demon possessed donkey, they were just not enough to get me that inebriated. I voiced my concern to Bevisste as I wiped the paste off then looked at my face in the mirror. Aside from the three day stubble on my chin and cheeks I looked positively radiant.

 "I have been thinking about that as well. I believe Abe poisoned you." Bevisste said.

"What? No." I shook my head and stripped naked, getting underneath the shower head before I turned the shower on. A little cold water therapy before I got to the hot water was exactly what I needed to perk up. "Abe would not poison my beer Bevisste. He likes me."

"You drink a lot of beer at his bar Tom. You are not his friend. You are just a good customer."

"It could have been One-eye." I retorted.

"It could have been."

I stayed to my thoughts for the remainder of my nice scalding hot thirty minute glimpse into heaven. After brushing the stink off my teeth and getting dressed for the day, I grabbed a bottle of water and my bicycle.

"You grabbed her chin, looked into her eyes and told her how beautiful she is." Bevisste said as I touched the doorknob.

"What?!" As I stood there I could almost remember doing just that. You know those dreams where you are in your underwear in front of your high school class and how embarrassed you feel even in the dreams? Yep, that was me at that moment.

"You told her she was so nice for helping you after you, and I quote, got my ass handed to me by a four arm dickhole. You told her Samantha would have never helped you like she was."

"I mentioned my ex?" I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

"Oh yes, you also told her how wonderful she looked in her jeans and her workout clothes."

Before Bevisste finished talking I was at the  side window overlooking recycle canisters.

"Where are we going?" Bevisste asked.

"Out the back door. God, I need to stop drinking. I really said all of that?"

"And more." I could hear the amusement in her voice.

Out went the bike, I winced as it crashed on the ground. It was only a seven foot drop out the window though with my streak of luck both tires popped off with one rolling down the road to never be seen or heard from again. I tossed the bottle of water out the window and followed it down thanking whoever was looking out for me by forcing the Super to put the canisters back in their correct spot. I lowered myself down, breathing a sigh of relief at seeing my bike with nothing more than a new scrape across the right fork.

I stopped at the edge of the front of the building and cautiously looked around the corner. Sure it’s childish however when you’re reminded of how much of a complete jackass you made in front of a person you had a monster crush on, let’s see if you act any different. I nodded my head at seeing the coast clear and slipped off the pedal as an incoming call startled the piss out of me.

"Hey Dogan. What’s up?" I got my feet on the pedals once more and began riding towards the subway station to take me to Port Richey. Cleo didn’t exactly give me a specific time to meet her, so I was hoping if I got there early she would still be wearing a satin nightgown. Yeah, it’s pathetic, I know. I don’t care all that much though.

"You still coming to the Four Card River game tonight?" Dogan, the one and only person I would call a true friend asked, referring to the Oazan original card game.

"Son of a bitch. That’s tonight?"

"You know you can ask Bevisste to give you reminders. They built that feature into the EEs pretty much when they first came out a really long time ago."

"That’s just what I need. She’s bad enough as it is, I could not imagine having to hear her harp at me about missed appointments."

"I heard that." Bevisste said. I smiled.

"Okay weirdo. You coming tonight or not? I think Deedee is going to be there."

Ah Deedee, an android that was quite possibly the cutest person to have ever existed. I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to date her or squeeze her cheeks, she was so goddamn cute.

"I probably won’t be able to make it. I’m doing a story on the girl who got her cat killed, she’s Timber’s daughter."

"Holy shit man! Well forget I said anything about Deedee, you go get yourself some rich tail. I’ll tell Deedee you came down with the case of some Sather Crabs that’s why you’re not here tonight, in case the rich girl falls through." Dogan said.

"Oh yeah, thank you so much Dogan." I replied dryly.

"Hey, androids can’t get crabs so why will she care?"

"You’re such a gentleman." I said laughing.

He ended the call leaving me positively confused. Three women fighting for my attention. I couldn’t remember the last time that happened. If only the richest one did not have four arms, it would have made my decision easier.

I rode with a confused smiled down the road, deluding myself that three women were fighting over me and loving the feeling. It doesn’t take much for a thirty six year old war-torn alcoholic bachelor with a job no one else wants to delude himself that life is somehow better.

Even the subway station was mostly empty and easy to get on. This was my day. If only I could get Cleo to remove those two extra arms. For the life of me I could not puzzle out why anyone, obscenely wealthy or not, would want to attach to extra arms to their body. It seemed to me that the extra limbs would just get in the way, especially when you went your entire life only using two arms.

I cursed under my breath at the image of my boss superimposing itself on my vision. "Morning Pam, what can I do for you?"

"Is the cat story done yet?" She asked cutting right to the chase. You don’t get to be the CEO of a journalism company by being sunshine and rainbows all the time.

"Miss Eviners wants me to drop by today to go over everything about her cat. She was just too distraught yesterday to talk. She ran away sobbing about two minutes after I arrived."

"You made her cry Tom!" Pam bellowed.

"I didn’t make her cry Pam. She thought of her cat and began crying but told me specifically to come back at 1100 this morning." She did tell me to come back today so it was not a complete lie.

"Well hurry the fuck up and get over there and Tom." She held up a warning finger. "You make her cry again and you’ll have Timber to worry about. You better leave there making her believe she is better off with her cat dead."

"Of course Pam, that’s what I do." I closed the connection and my eyes as I shook my head.

The sound of the approaching subway train caught my attention. As it slowed to a stop I got onto a completely empty car with two sonji and a lope. The way the sonji eyeballed me gave me shivers up and down my spine, making me instinctively reach for the Luxor 56 Special I no longer kept on me. After nearly shooting my big toe off after one particularly long night of drinking I thought it better to just have it as a home theft deterrent system. I still knew how to fist fight from my days in the Marines, well at least when I’m not possibly poisoned and incredibly drunk.

The sonji continued to eyeball me until I took one step towards them. They both looked calmly away as if I were not in the same car as them. Though they stayed completely silent they moved their Twitchers; two overly long fingers of the four arms. The twitching of the fingers was a form of communication with the people, though what they said I would never know. All it looked to me and every other person not a sonji I mentioned it too, was a slight muscle spasm in their hand.

It was not looking good for me today. The last thing I needed after Bevisste reminding me of how embarrassed I should be was one of these two assholes being part of One-eye’s band and decided I needed a new lesson.

I was saved by a cop, well a convention of cops leaving one meeting building to go to another. The doors opened at Mala Station and even I got temporary cold feet. I don’t do anything illegal, as far as I am concerned, although seeing more cops than could fit on one subway car standing in front of me as the doors opened made me rethink all of the slightly shady happening I had had in my life. If I was sweating when I exited the subway station, it was from carrying by bicycle, not at all from hoping that cops were not mind readers.

"Thank God those cops were there Bevisste but I hope to God I never have to endure something like that again." I said.

"Why what did you do? Should I flag one down and tell them you have something to say?"

"I’ll take the EEs out and throw them away." It was a bit of an empty threat with the Enhanced Eyes being surgically implanted at the age of six. However where there’s a will there’s a way.

"You would starve to death. The grocery store is less than a mile away and you would walk in a circle till winter and never find it."

I huffed at her and held my hand up at a car on the corner hoping the driving computer saw me and let me pass; which it did of course, if the driving computers didn’t react to pedestrians they would have been all recalled. I like to tell myself that when I put my life in danger by not waiting for the crossing signal. I was on the other side of the intersection away from the car when Bevisste noticed it on the mirrors attached to my bike before I did.

A boat. A goddamn boat driving down the street, halfway on the goddamn sidewalk came up on me so fast I had nothing else to do than leap off my bicycle. The only saving grace was that I had been slowing down due to an illegal right turn by a jerk. Leaping to the side I pulled my bike with me. Cartwheeling arms and legs running like an old cartoon character, my feet hit the ground first then my face and chest into the front window of a large office building.

I peeled myself from the window and looked down the road to see a particularly ugly sonji, red skin from a poor diet and spindly hair changed to yellow pointing at me with one of his arms as the boat turned the corner heading towards the marina.

"What the fuck was that all about? Did I say something bad about a famous sonji person or something last night?" I looked over my bike and smiled. Thank the good Lord for holographic mirrors. You had to cut the handle bar in half to get to the CPU.

"You don’t remember what that sonji told you after it finished beating you?" Bevisste asked.

"No I do not. I remember him not wanting to talk it out over a nice cup of coffee though. Did he say I was too inhospitable?" I pushed off the ground and began picking up speed. Sure riding a bicycle in a city with a bunch of maniacs deciding their manual driving was so much safer than tried and true and tested failsafe computers that normally drove the car was completely reckless and would be the end of me—thing is I love the bicycle. You can go on sidewalks with a bicycle. You can’t do that with a motorcycle or a rolling death trap. It was also environmentally friendly.

"He said the cat died of natural causes."

"I forgot all about that. Great. Now I have a bunch of irrationally angry sonji on me because some stupid cat died. Fucking fantastic. Maybe Pam can give me some more stories like this."

"The woman preferably having two arms?"

"You know me better than my own mother, Bevisste." I said with a laugh.

Next Chapter: Dogs are going to be the end of me