There’s good money in dancing, and the work’s easy.
I pull on the electrode-lined skinsuit and step onto the stage.
When the blacklights flicker on, I can’t see anything except other skinsuits – limbs moving awkwardly, robotically.
Closing my eyes, I surrender to the electronic impulses directing my hands to caress my thighs.
I never see the clients; I don’t need to.
I know their expressions – eager, soulless, power-hungry – as they wield controls like puppeteers.
Thwack.
Another dancer punches me in the face.
Unfortunately, some of the clients are also sadistic.
It’s easy money.
But occasionally I go home with bruises.
C.L. Sidell grew up playing with toads in the rain and indulging in speculative fiction. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in Apparition Lit, Dark Moments, F&SF, Martian Magazine, Medusa Tales Magazine, Orion’s Belt, Strange Horizons, and others. You can find her on Twitter @sidellwrites
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