“Happy birthday,” Mara whispered. Again the atrocity on my bed stand buzzed its lips. It sounded as if a lightning flash had interrupted the signal. I wondered if an electrical storm had started outside. I paused for a moment, but there was no thunder.
The Tazers began thumping and twanging again in earnest. I shrugged. Mara pulled me closer. I quickly lost interest in all else. Mara missed her class.
I awoke after midnight with a start. Mara had long since gone home to her parents’ apartment. There was a phone ringing, but I didn’t have a phone in my bedroom. Confused with sleep, I groped blindly for the lamp switch. Then, for the first time I touched it. My fingers pressed into its pseudo-skin. The flesh felt soft and smooth, just the way a young girl’s cheek should feel. My middle finger found the moving lips. I was grabbing a stranger’s face in the dark.
I gave a yell and rolled out of bed on the opposite side, thumping into the bedroom wall with my shoulder. I snapped on the light and there it was, on its sixth ring, mouth opening to expose those hard wet teeth that glistened between its red lips. As the ring died away, the lips relaxed, slipping down to cover the white teeth again. Shaking a bit and blinking the sleep from my dehydrated, sluggish eyes, I pressed the button to answer the call.
“Hello?” I asked tentatively.
“Hello,” replied a soft, sultry voice. I smiled and relaxed a notch or two. It was Mara. Then I stiffened again. Was it really Mara, or did the thing just use Mara’s voice for phone calls? No, that didn’t sound right, Koreans wouldn’t think like that. I rubbed my face and smoothed back my tousled hair. The rush of adrenalin was fading. I sank back down to sit on the bed.
“Hi Mara. What’s up?” I asked, feeling that strange ache you get when your mouth wants to yawn but you are trying to hold it back. I glanced at the digital clock on the thing’s front panel. It was 1:17 a.m.
“I want you to kiss me,” Mara said. She gave a girlish giggle.
“I want to kiss you too, babe. I’ll make a point of it tomorrow. Why are you calling so late?”
“I’m calling because I want you to kiss me,” here she gave another giggle, sounding like a fourteen year-old sharing secrets. “I want you to kiss me right now.”
I had been staring at those moving lips while she said this. The effect was mesmerizing. Those cheeks, the way they swelled up when she smiled and the way the teeth parted when she giggled. It was unsettling. How did they keep it so wet-looking in there? Was there really some form of moisture? It had felt wet when I had accidentally touched it a few minutes before. Automatically, I rubbed my forefinger against my thumb and wiped my hand on my pants.
“Come on… Kiss me.”
“What?” I asked a bit hazily, but already my heart had quickened a bit in alarm. Slowly, it dawned on me. She wanted me to kiss the thing.
“You mean…?”
“ Kiss me, William,” the thing said. It made horrid puckering motions that I would have thought cute and enticing, if Mara had been making them.
“I can’t do that!” I blurted. For the first time I let my real feelings of disgust creep into my voice. The puckering and giggling faded immediately.
“Don’t you like my gift, Will?” Mara asked.
“Ah… Of course I like it. No, I love it, babe. How could I-”
“You hate it.”
“No, no Mara. I think-”
“Then kiss me, dammit.”
So that was it then. I was stuck. It was like knowing that you were going to get your teeth pulled today. There weren’t going to be any more excuses or postponements. The surgeon had started gunning his drill to tooth-burning speeds and set his robot’s-paw lamp to shine directly on your mouth. This was it. I looked at the false female mouth on my bed stand. The sight of it brought weird thoughts to my mind, thoughts of (Phone Sex. Just have your Visa ready, and a voice called Candy will talk you into ecstasy) rubber dolls and kissing robots.
The thing needed to be locked up. I needed a bigger strongbox. My lips curled and my eyes squinted closed in disgust. I decided to get it over with.
I knelt in front of the thing and bent to kiss it. It was like sinking into the dentist’s chair and clipping on the bib. I kept telling myself that it was only plastic. The thing puckered horribly, and I kissed it. It was just like giving Mara a quick smack, except that the realism boys in Korea had forgotten one thing. It felt like flesh, it was smooth and soft and pressed in like flesh, but it was cold.
Mara’s, that is, the thing’s, lips were cold like those of a puckering corpse. I nearly screamed. Jerking back, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand repeatedly and quelled the urge to spit. Stomach acids burned the bottom of my esophagus.
“Ahh… That was nice, honey,” said Mara, sounding satisfied again.
“Sheez,” I exclaimed as it hit me. I cuffed myself in the forehead with my open palm. What an idiot. What I should have done was make some kissing sounds up close to the receiver. I hadn’t needed to really kiss the thing. Damn.
“Isn’t this great? Now we can kiss anytime, we never have to be apart.”
Dream on, woman.
“Yeah, right,” I answered. I scratched my head. Funny how your head always itches when you get out of bed. A jingle from a dandruff shampoo ad ran through my mind.
“Bye, bye babe. Go back to sleep now.”
“Goodnight babe.”
The phone clucked, the tongue hitting the roof of the mouth and making an unnatural sound. The connection was broken.
“Sheesh,” I repeated to myself. I got to my feet and headed for the bathroom. I could still feel the cold press of those dead lips on mine. I washed my face and dried it, rubbing hard with the towel. Then I brushed my teeth and washed my face a second time. I headed back to bed and just as I was switching the light out, I noticed that the thing’s lips were puckered up again. I paused for a moment, frowning fiercely in the dark. Then I switched back on the light.
The thing’s mouth had relaxed. It was bland and expressionless. I shook my head, switching the light out again and climbing back into the sack. I did not fall asleep for perhaps an hour.
When I finally did slip off, I dreamt of Mara’s funeral. She lay in a casket in a Southern-style service, where they often kiss the dead. After I had kissed her, the cold touch of her lips lingered forever, a taint that could not be washed away.
The next morning found me lazing in bed, as I am fond of doing on the weekends, contemplating the day ahead. The prospects were not pleasant. It was Saturday, the day of the reunion. Every time I thought of it, a groan sounded in my mind. A tortured groan. Truly, it was going to be torment to spend a perfectly good Saturday afternoon with Mara’s relatives.
Shaking hands and mouthing greetings. Smiling, even as the flood of new names is being instantly forgotten by all. Uncle Larry from Utah with the bad foot. Cousin Paul with the headphones and the complex handshakes. Aunt Edna with the innumerable surgical scars, ancient stinking pets, blue-rinsed hair and liver spots.
They were bizarre, every one of them, and yet they were all so typical. It was going to be a long afternoon of paper plates loaded with potato salad and deviled eggs. I hate deviled eggs.
It was 8:30 a.m. and as I had not slept well I decided to catch another hour of sleep. I recalled the brush of those cold pseudo-flesh lips and rubbed my mouth disgustedly. I fingered the radio to a station that featured soft music with few commercial interruptions and set the timer for an hour of music followed by an alarm signal. Performing perhaps its first useful service quite well, the box sang quietly, and as long as I averted my eyes from the moving lips on the bed stand, I found the music quite pleasant. I soon drifted off.
I awoke to the sound of the doorbell buzzer. Immediately, I had an uneasy feeling that I had overslept. The soft music station was still playing. I glanced at the clock. It read 11:02. The door buzzer sounded again as this sank in. I was supposed to have picked up Mara at 10:30.