If you choose links we provide, we may receive compensation.
The Refrigerator Monologueshits stores June 6.Preorder it here, and read an exclusive excerpt below.
Its not his fault.
Saga Press
Im not even mad.
Picture me as I was then.
Goddamn, I used to love my lab coat!
Saga Press
It made me feel invincible.
A knight in shining polyester.
I was gonna be twenty-two so fucking soon.
I was gonna graduate with honors in overachieving-know-it-all studies.
The future looked so good on me.
Not bad for an invisible-class nobody.
You know the invisible classes.
Theyre the ones you never see till you need them.
My dad was a garbageman.
My mom was a night nurse.
My whole childhood was made up of wee hours.
Youd think Dad would have smelled horrific all the time, but he didnt.
He smelled like coffee grounds, no matter how many times he showered.
People throw out enough coffee in this city to keep the whole world awake till Judgment Day, Paigy.
You should eat something besides that sugary crap, you know.
Why dont you make her a soft-boiled egg, Nora?
Brainiacs need protein or they keel over.
And hed whistle and spin woozily on his heel like a cartoon.
My mom sighed the same when I was seven as when I was seventeen.
Her sigh was the prettiest part of her.
Shes a vegetable now.
What are you going to do?
Everyone does the long, woozy whistle and keels over.
You get real honest when youre dead.
So let me give it to you straight: its my fault.
The Arachnochancellor and Doctor Nocturne and those singing, boiling violet lights over Manhattan?
They belong to me.
Not me alone, of course.
I was only an intern.
But it came from my lab.
What a fathomless world can live in the slim space of 2.21%.
It was such a nothing assignment.
Busy work, really.
I was on Team No Blow Up.
That was my job.
We had a prototype.
Id gotten us 2.21% closer to the promised land of nobodys flesh melting.
Tom and I met in class.
Dr. Alastair Augustus presiding.
Wed both played piano since we were kids.
Dr. Augustus was a wonderful lecturer.
Tall and thin in his dark suits and floppy hair, gesturing wildly with his good hand.
Hed lost the other in Kuwait.
Youd think he wouldnt want to talk about it, but Dr. A wasnt like that.
Hed tell you anything you wanted to know.
Tom and I are both front-row wave-your-hands-in-the-air-like-you-just-really-care-way-too-much types.
One day, Dr. A asked us to stay after.
Hed written a piece for five hands, and he wanted to take it for a spin.
Toms, mine, his.
We made a mess of it at first.
Frantic eyes jumping between the sheet music and our leaping tangle of fingers.
It was a nocturne.
Music is an asshole like that.
Motherboards and soldering irons and cables, oh my.
But I was happy.
The sex was sweet and deep and good.
We made do with four hands.
Now, after, Tom snuggled against me, rolling the M key over his thumb and his forefinger.
I looked up through the spaces between the bones of his hand at the moon outside the window.
M is for lots of things.
Pretty soon it would be the Frosty Frogs hour.
Youre like the boy version of me, I sighed.
it’s possible for you to fix my computer while I save the world.
Tom clutched invisible pearls.
This is the mating dance of the lab scientist and the computer engineer.
View our majestic plumage.
You bite your tongue!
Cool is as cool does.
Thats right, your big, strong, supercoolboyfriend to make it all better.
Thats when everything changed.
Ill show you cool.
The lab was quiet at four AM.
Fluorescent lights and shadows and my brand-new 2.21% improved solution, the color of Frosty Frogs by moonlight.
Ive gone over it in my head a hundred times since.
Because listen: Paige Embry practices Good Laboratory Hygiene.
Perfect laboratory hygiene, in fact.
I got into my hazmat suit and put Tom in Jimmy Keelers.
They were about the same size.
I checked the seals twice.
Protocols: I follow them.
Protocols are a girls best friend.
So, I dont understand.
I still dont understand.
So, this is what you do, Tom said from beneath his plastic mask.
All hail, Queen of Goop.
Okay, its not that impressive in its resting state.
We called it hypermercury, even though there wasnt much mercury in it anymore.
It just sounded badass.
Hold out your hand.
Girls do dumb things to impress boys.
But I swear it was safe.
Our suits keep it off you.
Theyre designed specifically for working with hypermercury.
Maybe I missed a micro-tear.
Maybe the gloves were degraded from the days testing.
I poured my goop onto Tom Thatchers fingertipsjust a little.
I swear, only a little.
At first, it did its thing and did it fabulously.
My happy silver mud flowed over his knuckles, mapping his hand, conforming, coating, encasing.
Becoming a gauntlet that almost nothing could pierce or dent or scratch or penetrate in any fashion.
Just like it was supposed tobetter than it was supposed to.
I could see the wrinkles of his glove forming in crisp, flawless silver.
And then he started screaming.
Through the faceplate of his suit I could see Tom Thatchers pretty face annihilate itself.
Sudden thready veins snaked over his jawsilver, white, blue, blacklike frost cracking.
Like dye falling through water.
His eyes became hot diamonds, a million boiling crystal facets shredding his pupils.
He said my name once.
Then Tom fell down.
When he got back up, everything in the world was different, and it would never go back.
He saidIm okaybut he wasnt.
He saidIt didnt hurtbut it did.
He saidI feel finebut he lied.
Youre the same person today as yesterday.
You just got a really big present and a shiny new hat to wear.
I saw it first.
Tom Thatcher, standing in a puddle of rain.
But it wasnt rain.
Too silvery, too thick, too opaque.
But he was already gone.
Thats what the speed of light looks like when youre standing still.
I walked up to the N/R train subway entrance and waited for him to remember I existed.
By the time he came silver-screaming down the stairwell, the sun had come up.
Nothing can hide in the all-seeing light of dawn in Manhattan.
Everything is just so totally clear.
Holy shit, he said.
Nobody ever talks about the sex.
Nobody but the Hell Hath Club.
Ill tell you something, it is unsettling as all hell.
Tom turned into a hummingbird.
With whatever hypermercury had become once it got inside him and unpacked all its secret belongings.
Sometimes his eyes were diamonds.
Sometimes they were human, brown and warm.
Sometimes he was kissing me.
I could feel the difference on my lips.
Afterward, I lay there with one leg flung over his thigh, and we stated the obvious.
Ive seen a movie in my life.
Ive read a damn comic book.
Why pretend theres some mystery to Hardy-Boy out?
Dead rising from the grave?
Only die with a headshot?
Youve got zombies, son.
So, Tom Thatcher said with a grin, Im clearly a superhero, right?
Do Ihaveto fight crime?
He whispered sweet everythings in my ear.
I mean, thats the classic career path.
Computer science degree is to San Francisco start-up as superpower is to fighting crime.
Never really wanted to be a cop, though.
I ran my fingers down the line of his jaw.
So dont be a cop.
You donthaveto do anything.
Except maybe see a doctor?
I have a responsibility, dont I?
If youre strong, you gotta use that strength.
Im good, arent I?
Im a good person.
I could use it well.
I could fix things.
Debug the world, little bit by little bit.
I cant just go back to school like nothings different.
You cant just shove power under the bed and expect it to stay put.
I just have to do it carefully.
Because Tom Thatcher was a good person.
I took the solution sample home with me.
I didnt even break a sweat going through security.
Turns out lying and stealing arent that hard.
If youve got a solid reason to sin, its easy.
This was my reason: one Kid Mercury was enough for the world.
One good person could be trusted.
Mass-produced Kid Mercuries could not.
Tom kissed me so fiercely that first morning.
He could hardly contain himself.
He started giggling and fell back on the bed.
Oh my god, Paige, Ireallywant a costume.
The garbagemans daughter could indeed sew.
Copyright 2017 by SAGA PRESS and Catherynne M. Valente
you might preorderThe Refridgerator Monologueshere.
