“Do Your Worst”
performed a sexy little number- “Oh, fuck,”
- you were in the circus together
- threatened to kill again
- “Butternut,” I said.
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“Do your worst,” grunted the small man through clenched teeth.
“Okay,” Tessa chirped. She turned the polarization impulses on his couch all the way up. He tensed, then began to quiver. The vibration speeded up until his outline blurred, and then kept increasing until it hit a resonant frequency where he transformed into a mass of cubes in different sizes, all slowly revolving against each other. He looked like Picasso having a nightmare about Escher. I found the event nauseatingly hypnotic, but it seemed Tessa found the spectacle somehow arousing. She performed a sexy little number on her tip-toes to show her enjoyment.
“Oh, fuck,” said the tall man. “I’ll tell you everything!”
“Good,” I said. “Start with who recruited you back when you were in the circus together. Was it Lyudmila?”
“We were never… But wait, it was someone named Lyudmila. How did you know that?”
“Because it’s always someone named Lyudmila. Don’t tell me, she said I was a killer, and that I had threatened to kill again?”
“No, nothing like that. Actually we just have a message for you. All that stuff about an ass-kicking was just our way of making it a little more fun.”
I scowled at him. “Okay, whatever. What’s the message.”
He eyed me nervously, the low-level polarization of his couch making his limbs twitch. “This is going to sound like I’m trying to play for time or mess with you, but I promise I’m just following her instructions.”
I nodded wearily.
“She said I can’t give you the message unless you tell me the keyword.”
“Butternut,” I said. I said it without hesitation, because of one very strange evening years ago when Lyudmila had been present.
bonus points for using them in order