The Cafe D'uanna was located in a shopping center frequently visited in the mornings by middle-aged women and men who clearly had nothing better to do on a weekday morning.

  It was also visited however by a doe-eyed, strawberry-blonde little girl...Who always seemed to attract rather a lot of attention from the local shoppers. She loved to play dress up and always wore the same thing, a short-sleeved, delicate silk dress. One rippled. Sometimes appearing pale-gray others near-white, and so fine it looked like it was flimisly made of cobwebs.

  The flowing dress had pale pearl buttons and was donned with lovely, strappy, silver high-heeled shoes. Despite the fact it was only early autumn, she always shivered with cold. She assembled amongst her daily worn garments, a large, white bonnet. She looked in her old-fashioned flowing, white dress like a virginal, young princess of extreme purity, an angel, or a delicate white rose.

  She had an extremely strange manner. Raced around the place as if her slender, elongated limbs were filled with boundless energy going into shop after shop buying clothes, old-fashioned porcelain-skinned China dolls, and stuffed animals. Goodness knows where she procured the money for such things; she looked perpetually pale and peaky and underfed with bruised under-eyes yet surprisingly full cheeks. Her little, round, red lips were the most beautiful, dark rose-pink.

  Further still, she certainly bought a decent amount of pizzas, fries, and burgers and one scoop of triple chocolate the other toffee, ice-creams, and caramel milkshakes and donuts.

  Every lunchtime however she would stop at the Cafe D'uanna and meet a boy...

  He was a Prince Charming, handsome boy who dressed not as if he were on his way to a fancy dress party like she did but in attendance at a nineteen-sixties, rock concert. His attire consisted of cotton, silk, or linen shirts in an array of dark, vivid colours. Black, midnight blue, purple, red, forest green, or dark-gray were his hooded jackets. Dark blue or dark-gray jeans or lustrous dark silk or linen pants either black or dark blue.

  He would always pair these outlandish vintage clothes with very expensive-looking gray sneakers. He, this companion of hers, would get them a table near the back of the restaurant where there was a large stained-glass window that let in pale, winter sunlight.

  The woman who ran the place, Andrea, was in Mist’s estimation a most wispy, unattractive, and mousy woman; all pinkish-white flesh, long, dull, and medium brown hair-tails, and close-set ferrety features. Consisting of little, yellow-flecked brown eyes, small, thin, pink lips, and a tiny, short, button nose.

  Today she dressed to his abject disgust, in a bright orange top, vile, light green pants, and an electric blue shirt. Andrea had since these adolescents first appeared the strangest feeling, she knew them... something tugged at her memory. She'd seen these kids before. It was not till the second week that they had visited Cafe D’uanna, and she had sent Sally over to take their order that she realized who they were.

  “Gary,” she exclaimed excitedly to the cook, “it’s Shiver and Mist, those new members of World Unified. Only fifteen yet he offered them positions they both actually have mental health issues they were treated for but so do one in three people now. Their Party leader said it was a symptom of our capitalist and quick-fix society; with its over-diagnosis of mental health issues.”

  “Anyway, they were on the television last week with the leader, that really hot guy.” “The one who says raising living standards will slash right down the number of women wanting to go into the prostitution and porn industry,” Andrea finished. This policy of the Party interested her as she considered herself a feminist.

  “Mr Smooth you mean...” Gary said in a tone of dislike. “His party's a communist, fascist, crapload and he's a stupid fucking crank as is anyone who works for him regardless of what they look like, Andrea” he added snidely and perhaps jealously as he glanced over at Mist and Shiver Gray.

  They looked must be admitted, rather more than wonderful: the day’s brightness and warmth caused an odd, golden, heated movement, an almost stovetop simmer to run across their soft, abounded-in-the-fair hair. A sweet wind blew across the pair with a healthful hue. By the plump-faced virtue of youth, one saw the gleams and seemingly-ghostly transience of inhumanly perfect flesh: young, pale, and pearly as a new, seashore shell.

  “Mist what are we going to do about rallying support for the Party?” Shiver was saying meanwhile, her lovely face anxious under its oyster sheen. Her suppleness twisting and contorting lithely.

  “I’m tired of handing out flyers to people in areas both rich, poor, and all shades in-between and being looked at like I’m promoting rape or mass murder. This one old hag spat at me and told me to go back to Russia,” she said with a scowl playing petulantly at the corners of her downturned, little rosebud mouth.

  She took a sip of her hot chocolate, licking a whipped cream mustache off a narrow upper lip, pushing it outwards over her fuller, pouty lower lip, and looked pensively at Mist.

  ‘Just do what I do Shiv,” Mist said unconcernedly biting into his burger “Just dump them in the nearest bush after Aryan gives them to you and just say you handed them out like a good little soldier."

  “Mist!" Said Shiver looking genuinely shocked, “This isn’t a joke, you don’t really do that do you?” Her face had that startled fawn look it sometimes got, her dark, doe eyes wide and almost panicky-looking with surprise.

  “Once or twice yeah actually,” Mist said. His eyes pure purple in the shaded light, flashed with amusement. “I was just like "Oh fuck this” and I chucked the flyers straight in the bush after about my fiftieth house.”

  “On the whole though I just tell people they have a choice... Either they take a flyer from me and at least glance at it or I'll follow them around for the rest of the day shouting "Support the Australian Dope and Sexual Freedom Party," and telling everyone we are polygamous lovers regardless of whether the person is male or female."

  “You should have seen the look on the face of that ninety-year-old guy I threatened to do it to. Poor oldie nearly had a heart attack right there on the spot. One lady, I chased her around all day shouting “Don't leave me, baby, I can't live without you.” Everyone was staring so much that she finally took a flyer and raced off like death itself was after her.”

  “How old was this woman?” Shiver inquired.

  “Like forty or so fat and plain but hey love is blind right,” said Mist and they both sniggered.

  “Sometimes I shout, “support the Klu Klux Klan.”

  '“Death to blacks, Indians, Jews, and Muslims"' or if I’m feeling really creative, I dress up like a brown shirt and explain to passers-by we’re officials promoting the 21-century Neo-Nazis.”

  “My personal favorite; “Bring Back Golden Dawn! Greece’s most misunderstood Party.”

  You didn’t say any of that, Aryan would have killed you.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “No, I just wanted to.” Mist sighed.

  “I was a hero. Sticking up for the little guy every time. Don’t think our ruling elites, have a right to make you work for third-world wages that leave you starving or homeless, don’t want to live in an alley?" I said.

  “We’ll keep jobs for current citizens. You matter, you’re not simply interchangeable worker bees who when you collapse through dangerous jobs/overlong hours will be replaced.”

  “Well Golden Dawn would certainly work for you,” said Shiver.

  “I mean your appearance is certainly very Aryan race perfection; blond, tall, muscular but also rather pretty. You could be the poster child for Hitler youth.”

  “Not you so much”, said Mist to Shiver “You’re too fragile, waiflike, and dark-eyed. Too high-cheeked Slavic and ivory, almost slightly Asiatic. Hitler wanted strong, robust, blue-eyed women who could breed like cattle.”

  “I am very fertile Mist you know that! The most fertile woman is actually one who is small and delicate and near hairless with a big-eyed childlike face and slender, hourglass shape and I’m always mistaken for younger, and my weight is forty-three kg and my waist seventeen inches as you well know.”

  “My body is swimming in high levels of estragon and progesterone instead of testosterone which cause increased height and course features and mini moustaches. Not to mention the widened bones and shoulders, flabby apple bellies, ropey muscular physiques, and the shapeless hips of most women. Besides being pointy-faced and Asiatic is gorgeous. “

  “I have strong sexual dimorphism instead of the shapeless, man-jawed, square-boned androgyny of most modern women,” she continued

  “Yes, you are pretty, don’t be so touchy. People of your generation are so insecure. Narcissistic too, which should be great but often they’re wholly undeserving of adulation and combining these traits is just gross. We’ll either way, we should probably go now. We have to attend that charity group’s awareness campaign on homelessness and the rise in unemployment especially among the young.” Mist said.

  “We are the same generation, Mist.”

  “Only humans have generations, Shiverla are immortal, why would we have generations? Stop acting like a human and I will stop forgetting you aren’t actually one.”

  Shiver pushed away the remains of her double cheeseburger and fries. All she ever ordered, besides the chicken strips or the mushroom burger. Finishing the final sip of her iced chocolate she nodded, “Let’s just pay then...”

  Mist swiped his card and the two walked out in silence.

  As they were leaving a group of women just entering the café, spotted Shiver and Mist and began pointing excitedly “Look at that little girl she is so cute so sweet, she is just adorable. She’s simply lovely like a little lion cub or tortoiseshell kitten. Did you see those great, big, dark chocolate-brown eyes and long dark lashes?”

  “The boy’s gorgeous too though I thought they looked rather like young foxes especially her with her red hair,” her friend agreed.

  “It’s happened again Mist,” Shiver whispered, “like the woman in the shop calling me gorgeous and Shaya saying I was lovely and Leila and Ambrose and that guy Andy that I was beautiful like a China doll and photogenic and the visiting teacher say I was so cute and adorable and those tall guys who came up to me back at school and said I was cute/ gorgeous for a child and my dad’s friend saying I was breathtaking and beautiful and looked like a medieval princess or pointy-eared elf or painted angel….”

  “Yes, I know Shiver it happens to me regularly too,” Mist interrupted.

  “Her hair was bronze and pale red-gold, her skin like cream and both their eyes were so huge and his eyes were purple-gray can you believe so beautiful” the two women continued on in awe as they passed by the two Shiverla.

  “Hey Mist?” Shiver said suddenly. “I think someone’s following us.”

  “Nice to see your overactive imagination is still intact,” Mist said as they commenced walking out the door.

  Nearby, a twenty-seven-year-old waitress signed with an understandable but petulant curl of the lip and one already somewhat beset by misery that soon turned wearisome and irritated, due to the loss of her apartment and foreclosure imminent upon her boyfriend Walter’s house and their need to move back in with relatives, namely her judgemental mother.

  She walked over to serve a customer who had been there for quite a while; a very tall, thin-built man in sunglasses and a beautiful, dark overcoat and suit with a downcast face completely in shadow and with an order of tea, and a slice of cake he finished mere half of. She asked him inquiringly and with impatience if he wished to order anything else.

  ”Hmm? I believe that’ll be all thank you,” he said softly; ostensibly well-mannered and polite but with some subtle undertone, an air of boredom and imperiousness. Though she could not have articulated why, it reminded her of the very handsome and snooty blond boy who was in the cafe earlier. As he raised an impossibly-large head slightly she caught a very brief glimpse of a fraction of his face and let out a silent scream almost dropping to the floor herself before losing her grip on a glaringly-shined, overpolished plate that fell with a clink.

  “Here,” the man said, amused, picking it up with a surprisingly rapid and graceful movement before she could even react. Luckily it was not broken. She took it from a gloved, outstretched hand that sat upon the ludicrous length great and ungainly, of an odd, emaciated yet muscular arm, perhaps akin to that of a starved predator, and fled. Her face still showed consternation. Ordinarily pretty but a little empty eyes, had been rendered in bulbous ugliness. showing far too much white, with irises appearing utterly diminished by being thoroughly spooked.

  “See,” Andrea meanwhile had just commented to Gary somewhat smugly. “I told you Aryan and his campaign kids are stunning.”

  "By the way, how is it going with Jacob and your little "quest" to beat Emanuel at his own game," Mist asked later. When the Shiverla pair were lounging on the ornate furniture that decorated Aryan's manor.

  "I don't think he will beat Emanuel or the AI. Neither will I; unless the AI goes easy on me. Maybe if I cry..." She pondered this half-seriously, with a smile.

  I mean people couldn’t figure out a way for ages until Beast Man, our Lord Scaly Skeletor, uploaded himself playing it..."

  Mist frowned. "You mean his DNA-splicer version?"

  "Yeah, the one with the dickish scientist who spearheads an appearance-altering technology where you splice yourself with cool machines, animals or even plants. In our world obsessed with specialness. Since anyone could and did, make themselves a generic blonde beauty with maybe a tail. They quickly grew tired of such homogenized and limited forms.”

  Mist nodded, "Oh right. Didn't they start adding dozens more exotic animals and laboratory-created parts to themselves? From furry-possum ears to steely hides?"

  Shiver nodded. "Yeah. They continuously needed something new. Soon engineered themselves using animal, cybernetic, and twisted human DNA, into monsters. Ones ever trying to outdo one another; competing for that greatest hybrid combination. The longest neck, the largest, most complex eyes, the greatest beast arms, and the most exotic, dragonfly wings.”

  “Eventually their bodies grew more and more bizarre and sometimes didn’t work properly. I think they all pretty much died because they ignored warnings of public health crises and side effects as they were not hurting anyone but themselves and to stop them from altering themselves was an infringement of their rights to do with their body as they will.”

  “I explained to Jacob yesterday how the mergers caused numerous health complications, and how the effects got worse generationally when the already incompatible hybrids attempted to mix and breed. I told him how Emanuel ensured the studies showcasing this were all hushed by the trillion-dollar industries that owned and controlled the tech. He vilified all the little goody-goodies who protested. Became on mass, silenced. Seen as so hateful for their attempts to criticize others' precious, personal choices," Shiver snorted.

  "Humans are so lame."

  “Anyway, being so vain, entitled, and prideful and the like, they showed more concern for not critiquing others wants than worrying for their safety. Never refused any foolish desire or checked their own pride. Continued to genetically alter their forms to suit their individuality; under the premise of utter liberty to the point of self-endangerment. Happily, accepted risk, sickened and died.” Shiver smiled and spoke up again, spookily.

  “When Judgement Day came there were no good people or even humans at all, left on earth. Only self-obsessed, decaying monstrosities whose dead and darkly-sinful spirits watched as the Nephilim took paradise. After their failure of a society collapsed and they all perished. I honestly loved playing The Merlaid. it was fun coming up with other methods. It was always so expansive. Instead of only a few, select doomsday scenarios programmed in as playable, you theoretically could have any. I never got past bronze though."

  "I made it to silver. Jacob can have my technique though it won't be much use since he will still have lost the bet. Anyway, it took me three tries, and no way was I spending any more time to get the pointless gold," Mist said.

  "Emanuel can have his little intellectual triumph. The game is amusing but still a slightly wasted effort," Mist yawned. His wide, violet-grey eyes drooped softly under golden-black lashes and his fair hair tickled Shiver's arm that rested next to his proud head.

  "Will see what happens tomorrow when Jacob tries his hand again..." Shiver murmered.