And he says, “You can call me Six,” in his gristly little batman voice.
Dégueulasse.
I find myself in a most unfortunate interaction, sitting across from some sort of space clown in a booth at the vegan diner on Third. He looks ridiculous, wearing an abominable form-fitting green flight suit (?) underneath a cheap leather jacket, with a flowy red scarf around his neck and a cartoonish green astronaut helmet on his head. I suggested we change into normal attire for this conversation, but he said his clothes were “on his spaceship,” and when I suggested that he ought to go back to said spaceship, currently orbiting the moon, for propriety’s sake, he responded with base sarcasm, the dullard’s impersonation of wit.
“Phalene,” I say, gesturing at myself. “Pha- as in fabulous. -Lene as in lens. Emphasis on the second syllable. A perfect iamb.[1] Sometimes, people mispronounce it so that it rhymes with baleen. If you do so, Mr. ‘Six,’ I will kill you.”
He chuckles. “Good luck. And it’s just Six. Number Six if you’re nasty. Operator Number Six if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.”
His helmet’s visor is opaque; he can see my face, but I cannot see his. With a shift of horror I behold […. . .] black glassy insect eyes from which there comes no reciprocal gaze but only my doubled image cast back at me.[2]. I do not like it when I cannot make eye contact with an interlocutor. How are we meant to communicate if I can’t see inside? We may as well discourse in semaphore or interpretative dance.
Of course, I am wearing my mask, a stylized moth affixed with magic, which binds my eyelids shut so that I can keep dreaming. But a mask does not obscure. Rather, in its artifice, it reveals. Acrasia wears a face crafted by history and time, but Phalene wears a face crafted by Acrasia, who is a significantly less accidental artist than history. A second face is still a face, and the eyes on a moth’s wings can still see. I’m also wearing the rest of Deception, my Chrysalis, a backless purple gown with gold accents. Clearly, I am overdressed for the diner, but one must maintain balance. I will not remove my mask and show my belly to this fool, this clown, this dullard.
Forgive me: he glows inside, doubly. There is a brightness and its opposite, not darkness but another brightness, just as intense. I see it with the eyes on my wings, the brightness and the brightness, both like Lite and unlike Lite. He glows inside, and I find it very irritating of him.
“Trite,” I say, in response to his little ‘joke.’ I hate when people make shallow pop culture references in lieu of humor.
He shrugs. “Okay. I’m easy. Call me a Six machine. Six bomb. Six, drugs, and rock and roll. Whatever. As long as you call me.”
“Are you trying to hit on me?”
“Nah. I’m succeeding at hitting on you.”
“Ugh! Dégueulasse.”
“What?”
“It’s French for disgusting.”
“Then say ‘disgusting.’ In English. The language we are speaking right now.” His voice projects from a speaker on his helmet, and the microphone picks up every little breath and sigh, such as the disgusting little susurrus he just released.
“The point, dullard, is that you are gross in every language.”
“Aww, you hurt my feelings. And I thought we had such a nice rapport last time. What crawled up your ass?”
“You abandoned me on the moon, asshole.”
“Oh yeah. Oops.”
“Oops? Fuck off.”
“You’re fine. You made it back. I’m proud of you.”
From his jacket, he pulls a weapon, a self-consciously “futuristic” knife with visible circuits on the spine and a glowing green edge. I reach for my fan,[3], preparing for a fight, but he reverses his grip and, with his other hand placed on the table, begins to stab the spaces between his fingers, leaving scorch marks on the laminate. He’s playing pinfinger,[4], like a middle school boy or an extra in a pirate movie.
And he continues to glow, too brightly.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask.
“I don’t really feel like I need to give this conversation my full attention. Keep talking. I’m listening.”
My jaw literally drops. “Are you kidding?”
“Yeah,” he says, without looking up. “This is my tight five. Real funny. Ha ha ha ha ha.”
“Listen. I will not allow some Power Ranger wannabe—–”
“What the fuck is a ‘Paranja?’”
Not only does he dare to interrupt me, he is improperly imitating my (very slight, very subtle, barely there at all) accent.
“Po-werrr Ran-gerrr.” I make sure to disambiguate my syllables, realign my vowels, and emphasize my rhoticity, so as to clarify my intent. “You look like you’re dressed as a Power Ranger for Halloween.”
He shrugs. “Never heard of it.”
“It was the biggest show in the world when we were children.”
“Maybe I missed it,.” he says, voice dripping with more of that unctuous sarcasm. “ We didn’t have cable. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that we’re from different fucking planes of reality.”
I click my tongue; it sounds so silly when he says it out loud like that.
“I’m still not sure I believe that. I asked my mother, who is a very powerful magickal entity, the absence of a goddess, and she had no idea what I was talking about. Are you sure you’re not just mentally ill? Or perhaps you hit your head, and now you believe that you are a Power Ranger from another dimension.” I gesture at his outfit. “Do they sell those at Party City or did you make it yourself?”
My mother actually said something cryptic about clocks unfurled into rivers, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“Made it myself. If you like the detailing, you should see what’s under the hood.” He gestures down at himself with the knife.
“Ugh!”
“I meant my body. A resotech masterpiece of augments and biohacks, fabricated and retrofitted by yours truly. You don’t have to be so prissy about everything.” He pauses. “But for the record, the dick is fucking dynamite. Designed it myself.”
“You’re repulsive.”
“What? They don’t sell dicks at Party City either. Anyway, I took a bunch of readings and did the fucking math. Timespace gets all fucked up when you’re around. It’s like our universes or dimensions or whatever are, I dunno, overlapping. And by the way, your mom is not a goddess. Gods and goddesses aren’t real.”
“I never said she was a goddess,” I say. “She’s the absence of a goddess. It’s different.”
“It’s pretend. ‘Magic’ and ‘goddesses’ are pretend. She’s probably just an alien or something.”
“She is an alien, but she’s also the absence of a goddess. I am also an alien. Somewhat. I am primarily a living magick spell, but that spell is alien in nature.”
“That’s fucking nonsense.”
“Says the Power Ranger.”
“Oh fuck, space moth Sailor Moon thinks I don’t make sense. My reality is shattered.”
He has referenced that a few times now. I believe it is a television show in his universe? I refuse to dignify it with a response. I am not going to set myself up for some dull comic routine.
Yet he keeps tapping the table with that silly knife. Yet he keeps glowing so bright I can taste him.
“Will you stop that? We’re in public.”
He looks up and glances around the diner, only slightly slowing the tempo of his dumb little game. “I thought you said we were invisible? I can’t be seen—-”
“Calm down, Superman,” I say. “One, I never said they couldn’t see us, just that they won’t notice us unless I want them to. Watch.”
I blow out my shadow and have it dance around, hopping from table to table and generally making a scene. People look up at it, then go back to their meals and conversations, as if momentarily distracted by the clitter-clatter of an errant fork.
“Two,” I continue., “The reason you need to stop is that the rules of propriety don’t disappear just because the people around us are ensorcelled.”
“What the fuck is ‘Supah-man?’” he asks.
“You don’t have Superman?!”
“Yeah nah, I’m fucking with you.” He lets out a wretched little chuckle, then refocuses on his knife. “So your shadow thing, it’s what, some kind of harmonic manipulation tech? A perceptual filter tied to the resonance matrix?”
“What? No. It’s magick. I do magick.”
“Oh right. ‘Magic.’ I almost forgot.”
“We’re not having this argument again. ” I look at the menu for a second, but I am unable to align myself with my desires due to that miserable tap-tap-tapping on the table. I try to ignore it, but it resounds uncomfortably in my soul. It was a low, dull, quick sound — much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. “Do you really have to do that now? It’s impossibly annoying.”
“I’m following a harmonic sequence based on the golden ratio. You wouldn’t understand, but I’m actually doing a lot of complex calculations right now. If you could minimize the chatter, that’d be great for me. And probably everyone you have ever or will ever meet.”
“Asshole,” I mutter. I’m definitely going to kill him. After I’ve enjoyed my caffè, of course.
I gesture at the waitress, tug on her shadow just a little. We’ve been waiting forever, at least five minutes, and no one has even bothered to take our order. Outrageous. She wheels about sharply, dropping the trays she was carrying, and she finally walks, stumblingly, to our table. I am about to place my order, but Six once again interrupts me.
“I’ll have a large Americano, no cream or sugar, and an order of sweet potato fries. To go,” he says.
I sneer at him. He doesn’t seem to notice. “Well, I’ll have a medium caffè mocha with two shots of espresso and as much chocolate syrup as you are allowed to give me. And un pain au chocolat.”
Six audibly groans, like the cyhyraeth echoing on the moors.
“Excuse me?” asks the waitress.
“Un pain au chocolat? A chocolate croissant,” I say.
She nods and walks off. Six mutters and sighs and rolls his head as if profoundly exasperated. His performance is so big, you would think he was auditioning for a seventeenth-century mime troupe, this Pierrot ass motherfucker.
“What?” I ask.
“Why’d you do that? Speak English. Use the names that are on the menu.”
“That’s what it’s called. Pain au chocolat. Or petit pain. Or chocolatine. Or couque au chocolat. I stick to the Parisian version for clarity.”
“Yeah. Clarity. Nothing more clear than speaking fucking French instead of the words on the menu.”
“You know, I really wouldn’t have taken you for one of those ‘We’re in America, speak English’ people.”
“You know that’s not what this is about. This isn’t a French restaurant. You’re just showing off.”
“All I’m hearing is ‘speak English or get out.’ Was there a Whites Only sign out front that I missed?”
“Fuck you. I’m not white. I’m Asian.”
“Oh no! It’s internalized. That’s the worst. Liberate yourself, brother.” I raise my fist in solidarity. “Black Power supports Yellow Peril.”
He says something in, I think, Chinese. I don’t attempt to respond. He gives a smug little laugh.
“Oh what’s that? No Mandarin? How about Canto?” He says something else, holds for a second, then continues. “No? Wow. Better have a conversation in English then, the language that you and I and the waitress all fucking know.”
“Fine, fine, Jesus. I can’t help it that I’m a cosmopolitan.”
“You absolutely can. Just speak English.”
What a tedious man. Some people simply have no passion for living.
The waitress arrives with our order. I take a sip of my mocha. It’s terribly bland. I add sugar from the little paper sugar packets.
I don’t even know how to describe the sound Six makes. A grunt? A sigh? A growl? However you call it, it is ugly. I have to say, his little utterances are making me quite choleric, and I fear I will not be able to maintain my charming affect much longer.
“Ugh. You’re making it sweeter?” he says. “Why didn’t you just order a milkshake?”
“How is this your business? Why are you in my business right now? Drink your disgusting Americano and leave me alone.”
“Disgusting?”
“Drip coffee or espresso, pick a lane.”
“Oh, Miss Pain Au Chocolat thinks my order is too European?”
“I didn’t say that. I said it’s disgusting. It tastes bad, and you have bad taste. Just like you have a bad personality, bad manners, and no fucking brain.”
Six abruptly stops playing his knife game, which is to say he buries the knife in the back of his hand, spilling blood and oily green fluid and pure Lite. He doesn’t scream or wince. He just looks up at me and softly chuckles. “You know what? After we figure this out, I’m going to actually kill you, Phalene.[5]”
[1] Recall the King James: “And God said unto Moses, IAMB that IAMB” and “Before █████ was, iamb.” See also: Popeye: “Iamb what iamb.”
[2] Coetzee. The one about the fella learning that colonial oppression is bad, dick-first.
[3] My magical focus, like the wand of Circe or the staff of Moses. We all have such enchanted objects: Psyche’s scepter, Mariposa’s mirror, Nabi’s bow, Titali’s sword.
[4] The knife game, finger fillet, that bit with the android in Aliens.
[5] He rhymes it with baleen. Fucking asshole.
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From Plastic, Prism, Void: Part One by Violet Allen. Used with permission of the publisher, LittlePuss Press. Copyright © 2026 by Violet Allen.
