Rubberwerks 2 - Part 3

"We're low on beans."

Sharon was working the industrial grinder. She hardly hazarded a glance up when she spoke, nodding to Janice to find more. Business had been brisk, and Sharon was doing a surprisingly good job at playing nice with strangers. Janice left her lover alone with the general public, a soft smile on her face. It was good to see her blossom. Sharon was often the dominant figure in their relationship, and that suited Janice just fine, but she still reserved the right to feel proud of her gray-haired beauty.

Moving down the steps into the basement, she appreciated the cool and dark and quiet. It was like passing into another world. one of those fantasy worlds she read about in her pulpy novels Sharon hated so much. Janice enjoyed a moment to lean against the wall at the bottom of the wooden steps, soaking up the peace.

Her eyes popped open. It was like someone was whispering to her. She pushed herself off the whole, bending as she rounded a corner of the big basement, past the bags of coffee beans and into a discreet corner neither of them explored the day before. The basement formed a U-shape that Janice now followed until she came to the tip of the opposite passage.

"What the fuck?" she wondered aloud.

Leaned against the far wall, half-obscured by a trio of wooden pallets and empty sacks was some kind of black oval. It hummed with energy. Janice looked between her legs to see cables snaking away from it like black veins, giving the thing an eerie life. Standing near it made the hair on her arms stand up, as if the ozone were crackling after a lightning strike.

The leaning pod was secured by a hinged door. As Janice followed the seams with her eyes, she found a circle with two depressions on the left side. A keypad? A fancy science-fiction handle?

Janice reached for the disk to test it. A swell of dark liquid reached out for her hand, a thick droplet defying gravity to meet her touch. She wasn't sure if her finger ever actually touched the pod or if the pod touched her first. Suddenly, the tips of her forefinger and middle finger were swallowed in the black goo. Her hand jerked away instinctively, a sensation of such intense cold it burned her. In the dim light of the basement, Janice held her fingers up before her eyes. All traces of the goo were gone. She wondered if she hadn't imagined it all. She slipped her fingers in her mouth, sucking and warming them. The taste under her tongue was industrial and tart, and she winced. And yet she shoved her fingers deeper into her mouth. Her body tingled as she drove her fingers toward the back of her throat, her eyes slamming shut.

"Jan?"

It was Sharon calling from upstairs. She could have been calling from another galaxy.

"Coming!" Janice looked again at her fingers, looking just the same as they always did. She gave the pod another glance and then shouldered a bag of beans and mounted the steps to the first floor and the din of customers and the rich scent of brewing coffee.