Catalyst

It takes more hits to break the glass than you expected, but you always were weak, and it doesn’t help that you’re so worried about overcommitting and tearing your arm open.

When it finally breaks you knock the fragments out of the frame before reaching in to unlock the door.

It’s weird being here at night, when the store is quiet and dark; the soft glow of an exit sign pulses above you, reflecting off the countless shelves which line the space. The jars and vials which fill them almost to bursting shimmer like prisms in the light.

You’d thought about just grabbing as much as you can, sweeping shelf after shelf into your bag, but …

The thing you’re here for, the thing you’re really here for, is in a locked case at the back, just past the register. It’s big and heavy and unlabeled. The liquid inside seems to swirl a bit faster as you pry open the lock, to roil and beat against its confines as you pick it up and slip it into your bag, carefully padded with old sweaters to keep it safe—

You tell yourself that just imagining things as you run out of time.

There’s a staircase at the back of the store, winding up; and there’s a light up there, the proprietor’s voice calling “who’s there?” as creaking wood announces her approach—

But you’re gone before she makes it down, and you don’t stick around to see her reaction.

The next day there’s an offhanded note in the newspaper about a dangerous catalyst being stolen, and a plea to return it before it’s used; the shop closes briefly, reopens with windows made strange by the careful traceries of fresh wards.

It’s a week before you dare to retrieve the jar from the burnt out tree where you hid it, just off a trail no one but you bothers to walk. You weren’t sure if the proprietor had a way to track it, to find it, but if she does she hasn’t bothered to.

So you’re safe, right?

You start small. Just a few drops pulled out in an unused needle, a thick glob of purple with pale blue veins exploring the syringe as you raise it to your lips.

It tastes like honey and acid and pain, and after that your tongue is never the same.

But that’s the point.

You struggle to keep your new tongue from flopping out of your mouth, from slipping past your lips to taste the air; it’s too long, too eager and sensitive. It looks so different, so out of place in the middle of all your flawed humanity—

But at least it gets good reviews from all your hookups. It makes kissing and licking and sucking so much more satisfying than before; using it is all you can think about most nights, and people appreciate that.

You even start to get something of a reputation.

Through that all, through those sweaty nights and painful days, the jar sits waiting beneath your bed.

You don’t want to go too far, right? You just wanted to have it. To have the option.

… right?

You can only lie to yourself for so long.

Small changes aren’t enough. Hidden changes aren’t enough. All those splotches of purple and blue spreading across your skin just highlight the distressing humanity of the parts you haven’t changed, of how wrong your face looks and how little effort it would take—

You wake up sweaty and needy from dreams of emptying the jar over yourself, of bathing in the catalyst, your hand already working between your thighs as you struggle to shake yourself free of longing’s cobwebs; your nascent reputation shifts with your growing needs.

It was going to be too much in the end, of course it was; temptation can only be denied for so long.

Sucks that you run out of the catalyst just before that.

It was never meant for piecemeal application, never meant to be shared and split up into dozens of tiny dose.

But you didn’t know that.

The proprietor recognizes you the moment you walk into the shop; your best efforts couldn’t conceal the purple covering half your face, the electric blue swirling in your eyes—or the stubby little horns pushing up through your forehead.

The place where the jar you stole should be is still empty, and you almost cry as she locks the door behind you, as she carefully ushers you up the stairs into a small apartment full of plants and obscure apparatuses; the place where she makes at least some of her products.

The conversation isn’t an easy one. You apologize, you plead, you beg—she seems more interested in the half-done changes that ripple through your body.

She hardly treats you like a person as she undresses you, as she paces around you, considering—

“You’ve really fucked up, you know”, she finally says. “Not just stealing ZS-371, but the way you …” She gestures at the glossy purple splotches covering your chest and face and crotch, at the threads of blue pulsing in them and reaching out into untreated skin.

”… I know.”

“It’s definitely fixable, I’ve got an adjacent catalyst which would blend well with it—safely locked away, so don’t get any ideas—but why would I want to help you?”

“I … I’ll do anything, just, please …”

“Ha! Bet you wish you’d thought of that before you stole it. Could have avoided this whole mess.”

You stare at the floor, unwilling to meet her gaze.

“Well, what’s done is done.”

She lets the silence stretch and laughs at the despair growing on your face.

“I have recently found myself in need of a …” she gestures vaguely. “Let’s just say an assistant. Someone who will do exactly what I say, no matter how degrading, and whose body is pliable enough to test new catalysts without worrying about long-term effects.”

She smirks. “Does that sound like something you’d agree to in exchange for me giving you what you’ve been begging for?”

Of course you say yes.

It’s not like it was really a choice.