Kludge | Rachel Schmidt

Rachel wakes up face down in sweaty sheets with a mouth that tastes like a dive bar floor went and died in it, a stomach heaving like an ugly grey sea, and a headache that stabs at her forebrain with the feckless enthusiasm of a hobbyist lobotomist armed with an ice pick and a dream.

She groans queasily into the mattress and rolls over, shivering in the tangled sheets. It's a few more minutes before she drags herself to the edge of the bed, bare feet slapping the nubby carpet as she swallows stale bile. No puking on the rug, sugartits, she tells herself, lurching unhappily to her feet.

The bedroom is a mess, as usual, but the predawn light stubbornly trickling under her dusty curtains is mercifully too thin to do anything but give the clutter a suggestive wash of silvery highlights. She winds through it by memory and bumps open her bedroom door with her hip, rubbing the grit out of her eyes with the heels of her hands.

When she drops them, she pauses. She blinks. She rubs her eyes again, like a goddamn cliche, and hisses through her teeth like an old-fashioned radiator.

"Oh, fuck off," Rachel mutters peevishly as she stares at the frozen intruder floating in a gleaming sphere of suspended animation in the middle of her living room. "I'm too fucking hungover for this."

With that, Rachel throws up her hands and walks right by the situation to the bathroom hallway.

She spends long enough in the bathroom to get the morning after fuzz off her tongue and spit up a mouthful of yellowish bile. When she circles back to the living room she swings by the kitchen first to snag a bottle of vodka out and a shot glass, and she set both down with a clink on top of a half-gutted old speaker as she eyes up the stranger floating in her trap.

"If I'm remembering how this one works, you should be able to hear me in there," Rachel says, pouring herself a shot and knocking it back with a faint grimace. Her stomach rebels briefly, but she keeps it down and replaces the shot glass with a cigarette from a crumpled pack. "So let's assume you can."

The teeth on her cheap lighter slip once before they catch, sparking up a light she brings to her lips as she leans back against the wall, angular and exposed in nothing but the rumpled tank top and white panties she passed out in. Maybe she should have put on some pants before she started monologuing, but c'est la vie. Really, they're lucky her tits aren't out. Or unlucky, depending on their inclinations toward tits.

She pours another shot and knocks it back, cigarette dangling between her fingers, and exhales hot and dry through her nose.

"Okay," she says, clinking the shot glass down. "So here's the thing."

Rachel reaches past the shot glass and picks up the gun next to it, not that most people would assume the crudely Frankensteined bastard spawn of a microwave and an old CRT television she's cradling is a gun. H.R. Giger's take on a leafblower, maybe. She assumes that pointing it menacingly gets the point across.

"I have no idea who you are," Rachel informs the stranger, her voice rasping like sandpaper over smoked glass, slickly scratching. "Which makes this a little awkward, wouldn't you say? Well, you wouldn't," she gestures at the suspension globe, "But you catch my drift. Hard for me to decide what to do with you if I don't know who I'm doing it to. I've got a shortlist of scenarios, if you'll indulge me."

Rachel's chapped lips tilt in a slight smile as she takes a drag of her cigarette, nicotine chasing alcohol into her bloodstream. Her hands are already shaking less. Good sign. Wouldn't want to have twitchy fingers next to a trigger.

"Most likely scenario uno - you're a thief. I can respect that, in theory. An idiotic thief, robbing a gadgeteer in their lab, but live and learn. Which you'll be doing if you are a thief, because I'm a catch and release sort of gal," Rachel murmurs, a trace of old theatrics slipping back into her tone. "Scenario two, you're here because you've got some kind of grudge against me, which falls back into the category of 'idiotic'. Or you're a would be client who let themself in through my front door, like an asshole, which means I'm upcharging you fifty percent of my flat fee. That's my top three guesses, but feel free to surprise me. Just try not to be surprising in a way where I vaporize most of your internal organs in the next fifteen seconds, all right?"

She waves the unwieldy gun with deliberate carelessness, the kind of lazy sweeping gesture that suggests reckless disregard for the concept of weapon safety.

"Try not to break anything when you fall," Rachel suggests unhelpfully before she kicks the hidden release button in the baseboard behind her heel. The shimmering suspension globe buzzes, then cuts out, dumping the stranger back into the world of physics and motion.

.

Rachel wakes up face down in sweaty sheets with a mouth that tastes like a dive bar floor went and died in it, a stomach heaving like an ugly grey sea, and a headache that stabs at her forebrain with the feckless enthusiasm of a hobbyist lobotomist armed with an ice pick and a dream.

She groans queasily into the mattress and rolls over, shivering in the tangled sheets. It's a few more minutes before she drags herself to the edge of the bed, bare feet slapping the nubby carpet as she swallows stale bile. No puking on the rug, sugartits, she tells herself, lurching unhappily to her feet.

The bedroom is a mess, as usual, but the predawn light stubbornly trickling under her dusty curtains is mercifully too thin to do anything but give the clutter a suggestive wash of silvery highlights. She winds through it by memory and bumps open her bedroom door with her hip, rubbing the grit out of her eyes with the heels of her hands.

When she drops them, she pauses. She blinks. She rubs her eyes again, like a goddamn cliche, and hisses through her teeth like an old-fashioned radiator.

"Oh, fuck off," Rachel mutters peevishly as she stares at the frozen intruder floating in a gleaming sphere of suspended animation in the middle of her living room. "I'm too fucking hungover for this."

With that, Rachel throws up her hands and walks right by the situation to the bathroom hallway.

She spends long enough in the bathroom to get the morning after fuzz off her tongue and spit up a mouthful of yellowish bile. When she circles back to the living room she swings by the kitchen first to snag a bottle of vodka out and a shot glass, and she set both down with a clink on top of a half-gutted old speaker as she eyes up the stranger floating in her trap.

"If I'm remembering how this one works, you should be able to hear me in there," Rachel says, pouring herself a shot and knocking it back with a faint grimace. Her stomach rebels briefly, but she keeps it down and replaces the shot glass with a cigarette from a crumpled pack. "So let's assume you can."

The teeth on her cheap lighter slip once before they catch, sparking up a light she brings to her lips as she leans back against the wall, angular and exposed in nothing but the rumpled tank top and white panties she passed out in. Maybe she should have put on some pants before she started monologuing, but c'est la vie. Really, they're lucky her tits aren't out. Or unlucky, depending on their inclinations toward tits.

She pours another shot and knocks it back, cigarette dangling between her fingers, and exhales hot and dry through her nose.

"Okay," she says, clinking the shot glass down. "So here's the thing."

Rachel reaches past the shot glass and picks up the gun next to it, not that most people would assume the crudely Frankensteined bastard spawn of a microwave and an old CRT television she's cradling is a gun. H.R. Giger's take on a leafblower, maybe. She assumes that pointing it menacingly gets the point across.

"I have no idea who you are," Rachel informs the stranger, her voice rasping like sandpaper over smoked glass, slickly scratching. "Which makes this a little awkward, wouldn't you say? Well, you wouldn't," she gestures at the suspension globe, "But you catch my drift. Hard for me to decide what to do with you if I don't know who I'm doing it to. I've got a shortlist of scenarios, if you'll indulge me."

Rachel's chapped lips tilt in a slight smile as she takes a drag of her cigarette, nicotine chasing alcohol into her bloodstream. Her hands are already shaking less. Good sign. Wouldn't want to have twitchy fingers next to a trigger.

"Most likely scenario uno - you're a thief. I can respect that, in theory. An idiotic thief, robbing a gadgeteer in their lab, but live and learn. Which you'll be doing if you are a thief, because I'm a catch and release sort of gal," Rachel murmurs, a trace of old theatrics slipping back into her tone. "Scenario two, you're here because you've got some kind of grudge against me, which falls back into the category of 'idiotic'. Or you're a would be client who let herself in through my front door, like an asshole, which means I'm upcharging you fifty percent of my flat fee. That's my top three guesses, but feel free to surprise me. Just try not to be surprising in a way where I vaporize most of your internal organs in the next fifteen seconds, all right?"

She waves the unwieldy gun with deliberate carelessness, the kind of lazy sweeping gesture that suggests reckless disregard for the concept of weapon safety.

"Try not to break anything when you fall," Rachel suggests unhelpfully before she kicks the hidden release button in the baseboard behind her heel. The shimmering suspension globe buzzes, then cuts out, dumping the stranger back into the world of physics and motion.

Rachel wakes up face down in sweaty sheets with a mouth that tastes like a dive bar floor went and died in it, a stomach heaving like an ugly grey sea, and a headache that stabs at her forebrain with the feckless enthusiasm of a hobbyist lobotomist armed with an ice pick and a dream.

She groans queasily into the mattress and rolls over, shivering in the tangled sheets. It's a few more minutes before she drags herself to the edge of the bed, bare feet slapping the nubby carpet as she swallows stale bile. No puking on the rug, sugartits, she tells herself, lurching unhappily to her feet.

The bedroom is a mess, as usual, but the predawn light stubbornly trickling under her dusty curtains is mercifully too thin to do anything but give the clutter a suggestive wash of silvery highlights. She winds through it by memory and bumps open her bedroom door with her hip, rubbing the grit out of her eyes with the heels of her hands.

When she drops them, she pauses. She blinks. She rubs her eyes again, like a goddamn cliche, and hisses through her teeth like an old-fashioned radiator.

"Oh, fuck off," Rachel mutters peevishly as she stares at the frozen intruder floating in a gleaming sphere of suspended animation in the middle of her living room. "I'm too fucking hungover for this."

With that, Rachel throws up her hands and walks right by the situation to the bathroom hallway.

She spends long enough in the bathroom to get the morning after fuzz off her tongue and spit up a mouthful of yellowish bile. When she circles back to the living room she swings by the kitchen first to snag a bottle of vodka out and a shot glass, and she set both down with a clink on top of a half-gutted old speaker as she eyes up the stranger floating in her trap.

"If I'm remembering how this one works, you should be able to hear me in there," Rachel says, pouring herself a shot and knocking it back with a faint grimace. Her stomach rebels briefly, but she keeps it down and replaces the shot glass with a cigarette from a crumpled pack. "So let's assume you can."

The teeth on her cheap lighter slip once before they catch, sparking up a light she brings to her lips as she leans back against the wall, angular and exposed in nothing but the rumpled tank top and white panties she passed out in. Maybe she should have put on some pants before she started monologuing, but c'est la vie. Really, they're lucky her tits aren't out. Or unlucky, depending on their inclinations toward tits.

She pours another shot and knocks it back, cigarette dangling between her fingers, and exhales hot and dry through her nose.

"Okay," she says, clinking the shot glass down. "So here's the thing."

Rachel reaches past the shot glass and picks up the gun next to it, not that most people would assume the crudely Frankensteined bastard spawn of a microwave and an old CRT television she's cradling is a gun. H.R. Giger's take on a leafblower, maybe. She assumes that pointing it menacingly gets the point across.

"I have no idea who you are," Rachel informs the stranger, her voice rasping like sandpaper over smoked glass, slickly scratching. "Which makes this a little awkward, wouldn't you say? Well, you wouldn't," she gestures at the suspension globe, "But you catch my drift. Hard for me to decide what to do with you if I don't know who I'm doing it to. I've got a shortlist of scenarios, if you'll indulge me."

Rachel's chapped lips tilt in a slight smile as she takes a drag of her cigarette, nicotine chasing alcohol into her bloodstream. Her hands are already shaking less. Good sign. Wouldn't want to have twitchy fingers next to a trigger.

"Most likely scenario uno - you're a thief. I can respect that, in theory. An idiotic thief, robbing a gadgeteer in their lab, but live and learn. Which you'll be doing if you are a thief, because I'm a catch and release sort of gal," Rachel murmurs, a trace of old theatrics slipping back into her tone. "Scenario two, you're here because you've got some kind of grudge against me, which falls back into the category of 'idiotic'. Or you're a would be client who let himself in through my front door, like an asshole, which means I'm upcharging you fifty percent of my flat fee. That's my top three guesses, but feel free to surprise me. Just try not to be surprising in a way where I vaporize most of your internal organs in the next fifteen seconds, all right?"

She waves the unwieldy gun with deliberate carelessness, the kind of lazy sweeping gesture that suggests reckless disregard for the concept of weapon safety.

"Try not to break anything when you fall," Rachel suggests unhelpfully before she kicks the hidden release button in the baseboard behind her heel. The shimmering suspension globe buzzes, then cuts out, dumping the stranger back into the world of physics and motion.