• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

M. Darusha Wehm

Explorer of Worlds Real and Imagined

  • News
  • Buy Books
    • Digital Download Store
    • Get Paperbacks
  • Podcasts
  • About
    • Bio
    • Demographic Info
    • Bibliography
    • Press Kit
    • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • Short Stories
    • Bodies at Rest, Bodies in Motion
    • Fire. Escape. – Sample
    • The Foreigner
    • Major Tom and the Lucky Lady
    • The Interview
    • Lucidity
    • Fame
    • Chekhov’s Phaser
    • Career Opportunities
  • Science Fiction
    • Beautiful Red
    • Children of Arkadia
    • Andersson Dexter
      • Self Made
      • Act of Will
      • The Beauty of Our Weapons
      • Pixels and Flesh
    • Modern Love and other stories
    • The Voyage of the White Cloud
    • Retaking Elysium
    • The Qubit Zirconium
  • Mainstream Fiction
    • Devi Jones’ Locker
      • Packet Trade
      • Sea Change
      • Storm Cloud
      • Floating Point
    • The Home for Wayward Parrots
  • Anthologies
    • KeyForge: Tales From the Crucible
    • Trans-Galactic Bike Ride
    • Fireweed: Stories from the Revolution
    • Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume I
    • The Dame Was Trouble
    • Dystopia Utopia Short Stories
    • Science Fiction Short Stories
    • Procyon Press Science Fiction Anthology 2016
    • Use Only As Directed
  • Games/Interactive
    • The Martian Job
    • Alexander Systems
    • You Do You
    • if ink could flow backward
  • Books

Bodies at Rest, Bodies in Motion

“You don’t look like an Ishmael,” he said, an eyebrow arching. But it was a costume party. She could be anything in there.

She laughed, throwing her head back and revealing the hollow of her neck. She looked very thin, he thought. “I guess not,” she said, “but I’ve always wanted to say that when someone asked my name.”

“Ishmael it is,” he said. “You better call me Isaac, then.” His seventies afro shortened while his moustache grew, and the loud disco suit he’d been wearing morphed into a ship’s dress whites. A martini shaker appeared on the table next to him and he gave her the pistol-finger.

“Very clever,” she said, shaking her head in what he imagined was admiration. He mentally made a list of all his friends who liked — or at least had an awareness of  — cheesy old television. “But isn’t that cheating?”

“You’re the first person I’ve talked to tonight,” he said, “no one else saw the other outfit. Besides, this one’s better.” He tugged the jacket down and grinned. “So, Ishmael.” He sipped from the red plastic cup in his hand. “You appear to have me at a disadvantage.”

“Oh?”

“You’ve got me figured out, but I can’t tell who you are supposed to be.” He took in her utterly generic jeans and pale blue t-shirt adorned with a line drawing of a sparrow.

She leaned in toward him and looked around as if fearful that the other partygoers might overhear. “I’m the Empress of the Universe.”

“I see,” he said. “I must say, you look almost as much like the Empress of the Universe as you look like an Ishmael.”

She grinned. “I’m in disguise.”

He barked out a laugh, spilling his drink in the process. He grabbed a nearby napkin and dabbed at her arm, revelling as always in the simulacrum of touch. It wasn’t exactly right, he remembered that well enough. But it was so close.

He was disappointed when she took the napkin from him to finish cleaning herself up. “In disguise,” he said. “Very good. You might even win with that one.”

Read on one page

Pages: Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6

Primary Sidebar

Retaking Elysium cover

Retaking Elysium

Mars is good place to reinvent yourself, isn’t it?

Jules Morales’s life has always been a state of contact change. When the opportunity comes up, why not take a trip to Mars to work on the platinum mining operation—and make a load of money? But what if there is more to Mars than just a payday and an adventure?

The woman now calling herself Lisa Marie has spent her whole life trapped by the struggle to make ends meet, and sometimes held hostage by her own memories. On Mars she might finally find financial security, but will she also find something to care about today, and maybe even for the future?

Learn More

Publications

  • . ….. ..story .. time
  • A Most Elegant Solution
  • A Most Elegant Solution (audio)
  • A Wish and a Hope and a Dream
  • Alexander Systems
  • Fear of Lying
  • Force Nine
  • Good Hunting
  • Home Sick
  • Home Sick (audio)
  • Homecoming
  • I Open My Eyes
  • if ink could flow backward
  • Microfiction @Thaumatrope
  • Modern Love
  • Modern Love (audio)
  • Preventative Maintenance
  • recursion
  • Reflections on a Life Story
  • Showing the Colours (audio)
  • The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1
  • The Interview
  • War Profiteering
  • War Profiteering (audio)
  • we are all energy

Footer

Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Connect

  • Email
  • RSS

Other Writing

Poetry

  • . ….. ..story .. time
  • 140 and Counting
  • creation myth
  • Force Nine
  • if ink could flow backward
  • recursion
  • we are all energy

Non-fiction

  • 90ways.com

Copyright © 2021 M. Darusha Wehm