Metal Heart

• Twinkle Raut, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2022

She is alone; her metal hips are veiled, swept under her shimmering dress. She downs the last of her drink, leaving only a single cherry. She doesn’t eat it. It would make her throat rust.

She places her glass a few centimetres away from the edge of the bar. Precarious. Pulsing music rushes through her auditory sensors. The song shifts sharply. Her eyes dart from one side to the other. She breathes in and out deeply, quickly glancing at her watch.
5…4…3…2…1

The man in the dark suit pulls back the stool next to her and sits down.

His face is shadowed; she catches only glimpses when the disco light turns, flashing pink and green over his crooked nose.

Moving ever so slightly toward the man, she raps her knuckles firmly against the counter.

The bartender’s attention is caught, and he throws his towel over his shoulder.

‘Whiskey Sour, extra lemon.’ She says.

The barkeep grunts and turns to pour her drink.

She meets eyes with the man next to her.

‘And one more for my friend here, please.’

The man turns and tips his hat, to which she nods.

So far so good.

‘Hello, sir, how’s it going today?’

She tries not to make it sound scripted. Like she hadn’t performed it in front of a mirror, over and over. Like she hadn’t spied on him for weeks, researched his favourite drink, favourite bar, the exact time that he walks and sits on the exact same stool every day.

She forces her smile, making sure he can’t see that her bottom row of teeth has been replaced with cyborg scrap.

As he sips slowly from his drink, he begins to speak.

‘You know, I come here every day,’ the man says, smiling drily, ‘never spoken to anyone though.’

‘Why’s that?’ The woman was stalling, eyeing the door, looking for the fastest way to leave.

‘Haven’t got anyone, have I?’ He sighs after tipping his drink into his mouth, ‘Everyone seems so… soulless these days’

‘Mmm,’ she says, covering up the whirring of her ankles, ticking of her arms, the constant beeping of the blood pulsing through her iron veins.

He still doesn’t know that he is one of the last pure human beings on Earth, that he is the target of every criminal in the world, that there is a bounty of millions on the black market for his head.

Good human parts, untainted by machinery, worth more than you could imagine. You just had to find some.

She’d made a deal with a shady stranger.

She just needed to uncover his identity and kill him. Someone else would deal with the rest.

She sees the stranger’s henchman enter the bar.

He nods.

Ready.

She slips her hand in her purse, fishing out a gun, fingers ready to pull the trigger.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The crowd falls silent and the woman in the sparkling dress slips through the back door, the figures of her bank account rapidly increasing.