200 MILLIGRAMS
by David Amburgey
Even in the dark Alcmena could feel the superyacht in the bay. Whenever the Saturnalia dropped anchor off of Martha’s Vineyard it changed everything about the sea, and everything in Alcmena. Like a basalt isle its symmetrical pillars reshaped the waves and killed the wind. Its glass and steel heights never ceased their party glitter. The sound of gulls, the sound of waves...everything smothered under the echoes of the ship's revelries. But tonight it was especially unbearable: the faintest ghost of piano music drifted across the water.
Alcmena stood waiting, cross-armed, trying her damnedest not to explode in fury. She waited for them to finish counting the carrots.
Ten minutes ago, the three white-gloved valets had arrived, three hours late, travelling to dock by the Saturnalia’s tender. She’d watched them rope the smaller ship to the dock and climb onto land, fussy and starch-collared. This bitter arrangement of hers had gone on for two growing seasons now and Alcmena knew the deal. She handed her pistol to the tallest, Sileno, for the peace bond, and watched as he snapped a plastic tie around the trigger. Instinctively she ran her thumb against the zip tie on her ring finger and took a deep breath, praying for patience. It would all be easier if she couldn’t hear the fucking piano.
But ten minutes had passed, and her patience was waning. Still, they inspected her gunny sack, turning each carrot over with careful consideration, before placing each into their titanium case. Alcmena cracked a knuckle and glared off at the Saturnalia. She’d love to finally let loose, to scream and curse at the seaborn fuckers, but even without the music she knew they were too far to hear a thing from the dock.
“That does it.” Sileno brushed a speck of dirt from the last carrot and placed it with the others. With practiced ease he closed the case and flipped each latch closed with his thumbs.
“Good. I’m glad. Now, your masters are going to come through with their end of the bargain this time.” As Alcmena said it, as the words left her mouth, she knew in her gut they wouldn’t.
Sileno stood upright and tugged on the bottom of his cream-coloured servant’s vest. He smiled, the greasy sort of self-assured white man smile that she’d seen everywhere before the Fall but only amongst the Yachted since.
“My Masters regret to inform you that the price for your...rings return has changed, again.”
Alcmena felt her nostrils flare. “Regret it, do they?”
“Afraid so.”
“The deal was two hundred carrots. One carrot per milligram. Two hundred carrots for a carat.”
“Might I remind you that you gave your wedding ring as collateral for the seed grant.”
“Your masters wanted me to grow for them. They demanded the ring...as a reminder of what they held over me. They told me I could buy it back.” Alcmena’s jaw clenched tight. “They don’t need my diamond, they have all the diamonds they could ever want. You have taken everything I love from me...please, I want my wedding ring back.”
“You can have it. It’s three carrots per milligram now, and you only have a hundred here tonight. Just one more season and you can have your trinket back. Now, we have other homesteaders to gather tribute from so if you’ll kindly excuse us.” Sileno smiled thinly and nodded at his two under-valets, who hefted the food case between them. She couldn’t watch them fumble her carrots back onto the boat.
Alcmena turned her back to them. She forced herself to breath, forced the rage in her throat to still. She looked down at the peace bonded pistol, and then at the zip tie bound tight around her ring finger. The length of the
finger burned, scab-skinned and red from friction and dirt. Two seasons, a whole year, and every time she looked at her finger she wasn’t reminded of her husband or their love. Alcmena could only see her own desperation there, her own pain.
What would he say if he saw you like this, Alcmena wondered, ‘You can survive without me. You can overcome anything, grow to accept anything.’ But Alcmena didn’t have another season of growing in her.
She slowly pulled her hunting knife from its hip sheath, listened to the ethereal keystrokes floating across the bay. With bared teeth she wedged the tip of the blade between her flesh and the ziptie, wiggling it through blood, turning, pulling tight. The truth, Alcmena thought, about bonds was simple: they can always be broken if you are willing to pay the price. The tie on her finger snapped with little effort. The tie on her gun took a few seconds longer.
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The sea that night sat calm. Alcmena didn’t. She guided the ship’s tender through the water with a steady, if bloody, hand. She ate a carrot as she went. The Saturnalia loomed even larger up close, its control tower blocking out the moon above and so many of the stars. She slowed the boat, balancing herself as it bobbed up and down the gentlest of waves. But Alcmena had no gentle left in her. She left any remains of that on the dock with the three dead valets.
As she maneuvered her ship alongside, peering in the dark for the gangway, she finally found herself close enough to hear the piano. Alcmena recognized the tune and put her bloody hand to her mouth to keep herself from crying out. Ligeti, Etude No. 13, The Devil’s Staircase. She knew it because her husband hated playing it with a passion. But art-enslaved had no say, not on ships like the Saturnalia.
Alcmena dropped the last of her carrot overboard, thinking of her carat ring and her husband’s bondage as she hoisted herself up onto the gangplank.
This might end badly but, by god, it would end tonight.
