Inktober #3: Bait (Patreon)

TW for attempted child molestation, implication that it was more than “attempted” in the past.

This one was hard, and I feel like it kind of trails off rather than ending. Which probably means it wants to be a much larger piece, not a ficlet, but Inktober’s about doing the ficlets, so oh well. I may expand it at some point in the future. 

 ***

Minna was very, very reluctant to let Jasmine come to her house for a sleepover; Jasmine had to work on her for most of the school year, despite Minna coming over Jasmine’s house over a dozen times. But finally, in May, Minna agreed. “My dad’s going to be out of town,” she said, “so you can come over this weekend.”

“I don’t understand why I can’t come over when your dad’s around?”

“Uh, my dad likes peace and quiet, that’s all.”

On the night of the sleepover, however, it turned out Minna’s dad was in town after all, his business trip apparently unexpectedly canceled while Minna was at school. “Oh,” Minna said. “We ought to cancel this, then. Maybe you should call your parents?”

“Don’t be silly!” Minna’s mom said. “It’ll be fine, won’t it, Jake?”

“That’s right. I’ve got no problem with you having a sleepover, sweetie. Who’s your little friend there, honey?”

“I’m Jasmine.” He didn’t seem like he was angry, or mean.

“Jasmine?” He laughed. “Is that old-lady name making a comeback now?”

“I was named after my grandma. My friends call me Jazz, though.”

“That’s great,” Jake said, grinning. “You like board games, Jazz? You even heard of board games? I know you kids, always playing on your VR sets, but did you ever play real games like we used to when we were kids?”

Jasmine happened to know that if Jake was the age he appeared to be, his childhood was probably spent playing video games on 2 dimensional screens, but she didn’t challenge him. “I like board games, sure!”

Minna looked unhappy, but she didn’t say anything. Minna’s mom wanted to join in, so they all played Monopoly. And when it was over and Jake had won, Minna suggested playing Risk. “You like Risk, right, daddy? I bet Jazz would like Risk…”

“Too late in the evening, honeybuns,” Jake said, ruffling Minna’s hair as she flinched. “You girls need to get some sleep! I’ve got the guest room all made up for Minna.”

“But daddy! It’s a sleepover! She was going to sleep in my room!”

“Don’t be silly,” Jake said. “You girls would be up all night talking then, and ruin yourselves for school the day after tomorrow!”

Nightgowns were put on. Teeth were brushed. Jake hovered, making sure they went through their bedtime routines. Jasmine could see why Minna wouldn’t want her over for a sleepover if this was the way her dad acted. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Minna having friends, it was that he was obsessively attentive, to the point where it was hard to actually just find time to hang out by themselves and play. Maybe that was why Minna had suggested playing Risk; playing with her friend and her dad wasn’t as good as playing with her friend, but it was better than being sent to bed separately.

When lights went out, Jasmine took her nightly meds with the glass of water she’d cajoled from her friend’s parents for her bedside nightstand, and then lay in bed on her side looking out the window. Half an hour later, she heard the door open, and rolled over. “Mr. Levesque?”

“Oh, you can call me Jake, Jazz,” Minna’s dad said. “Mind if I come in?”

“Well, I was trying to sleep…”

“Oh, that’s okay. You’re young, you can deal with a little lost sleep. You just have to count them up when you find it.” He chuckled. “You get it? Because ‘little lost sheep’, and you’re supposed to count sheep to fall asleep. Do they tell you kids to do that nowadays? They told me.”

“I know about it,” Jazz said. 

Jake sat down on the edge of the bed. “You kids know all kinds of things nowadays, don’t you? With all this stuff on the Internet nowadays.”

“Didn’t they have the internet when you were a kid?” The Internet had been around for over a century, but for some reason, adults seemed to love behaving as if it was a brand new thing that only kids understood.

“Oh, yeah, but it wasn’t the same. We didn’t have VR, we didn’t have olfactory or tactile back then.” He leaned in. “I bet you spend a lot of time on the VR, right?”

“Um, I guess. I have a lot of homework most days, though.”   

“You ever watch any porn, Jazz?”

Jasmine sat up. “Uh, wow. That, uh. That’s… not a question dads are supposed to ask sleepover friends of their daughters, is it?”

“It’s fine,” Jake said. “I know you modern kids are into all that kind of stuff.”

“Um, not really.”

“Oh, come on. I know all you girls nowadays watch that stuff. Not like when I was a kid. Back then, the boys were the only one who used to watch that stuff. But I know you kids nowadays don’t think there’s anything wrong with girls liking, you know. To do it.”

“I don’t think—”

“You ever thought about doing it with a boy?”

“I, uh—”

Jake leaned forward again. He was far enough into Jasmine’s personal space that she would have difficulty getting out of the bed. “It’s okay. I can teach you.”

“I really don’t want to—”

“You’ve got to learn sometime,” he said, and kissed her. With tongue. Gross, disgusting, grownup tongue. 

Jasmine bit his tongue, hard, and as soon as he recoiled, she shoved the taser she’d been holding under the covers into his solar plexus. His face wasn’t in contact with hers anymore, so she was free to pull the trigger, and she did.

“You little—” Jake started to say, thickly, with his bitten tongue, and then he couldn’t speak again because he was convulsing and falling off the bed.

Jasmine threw the covers back and pulled out the badge and the ID card she’d been keeping under the pillow. “Detective Jasmine Sykes, Sex Crimes division. Jake Levesque, you’re under arrest for attempted solicitation of a minor, sexual assault—”

“You’re – you’re not a minor, bitch!” he gasped out. Good. So he knew what the color band around her ID meant.

“You’re right. I’m 53 years old,” she agreed. “But you thought I was a minor. And you did kiss me after I explicitly said I didn’t want to, which is sexual assault. Given the reports we have on you from some of Minna’s other friends, I think that’s going to be enough.” 

The door opened. “Jazz! Are you all right?” Minna asked, and then took in the taser, the ID with the colored hologrammatic border, the badge. “Oh.”

“My backup’s just pulled up outside, Minna. Can you get your mom to let them in?”

“I… okay…” She looked down at her father, and her face twisted. “Serves you right! I hope you go to jail, you creep!”

“Minna – honey –” He reached toward her, from where he was lying on the floor, but she turned and ran. 

“You have the right to remain silent,” Jasmine said. “Anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to a lawyer—”

Her partner, 6 foot two and solid muscle, came in, holding a real gun, with two other cops behind her. “Jazz! You okay? This scumbag didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Naah. He kissed me. It was horrible, I don’t know what the fuck kind of aftershave he uses but he’d be better off moisturizing with a three day old dead rat. But I’ve dealt with worse, and that’s as far as it got.”

Jasmine let the grownup cops handle talking to Minna’s mom, filling out the paperwork for the arrest, cuffing the perp and dragging him off to the van. She had a traumatized ten year old to deal with.

“I thought – I thought you were my friend,” Minna said to her, eyes filled with tears.

“You are my friend.”

“But you’re a grownup! I saw your ID, I know you’re a child impersonator!”

Jasmine sighed. She hated that name, but in her particular case she really couldn’t dispute it. The Extended did not all have professions where they had to pretend to be children, but she did. “I’m not a grownup, I’m an adult. There’s a difference. And if I don’t have any friends who are actual kids, then I wouldn’t be able to do my job. I like you, Minna. I liked playing with you.”

“Did you just make friends with me to get at my dad?”

“I transferred to your school to get at your dad, but if you and I hadn’t been friends I would have gotten him to show his true colors some other way.” She took Minna’s hand. “He did this to some of your other friends, too, didn’t he?”

She choked on a sob. “He said – he said he’d never need to come to me again if I invited my friends over, but I didn’t know what that meant. I tried sleepovers twice. The first time I didn’t know. Kayde wouldn’t be my friend anymore after that. The second time I heard him, with Myesha, I knew I couldn’t ever have another sleepover. But you kept asking, and he was supposed to be out of town! You were supposed to be safe!”

“It’s okay, Minna. I know you were trying to keep me safe. It’s all right.”

She hugged Minna, who sobbed again a couple of times before getting herself under control. “Is this – do you do this kind of thing a lot? Go over kids’ houses and prove their dads are…”

“I don’t always do it by making friends with the kids, no. Sometimes I take a class with the guys, or I get in their car, or something.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

Jasmine nodded. “But not as bad for me as for an actual kid. I’ve been doing this for 30 years.”

Minna shook her head. “That’s so weird. You look just like any of my classmates.”

“Yeah, it is weird.” Jasmine’s parents had been rich enough to make her one of the Extended, over 40 years ago. Anybody could be immortal – well, unaging, at least – as long as they started the treatment before puberty. The same treatment that kept her cells dividing and her body from breaking down with age, kept her from ever going through puberty or reaching an adult’s height. She was fortunate to be a cop – universal health care didn’t cover the cost of Extension, but Extended were so useful in the police force, with their ability to catch pedophiles in sting operations, get information out of child witnesses, go unnoticed by criminals, and anything else an actual kid could do but wouldn’t know how to, or couldn’t be exposed to the risk of doing, that most big-city forces paid for the Extension medications for their Extended officers. As few as five missed treatments and puberty would start, and once it did, Jasmine would age and eventually die the same as any normal human. She could be immortal, as long as she gave up her right to ever look like an adult.

Extended – usually referred to as “child impersonators” in the media, and by average people – could theoretically live forever. The oldest of them were only in their 60’s, but it was holding true so far. Enough people had made that bargain in their childhoods that Extended got specially marked IDs identifying them as Extended, granting them secure access to their full adult rights. No matter what age they looked, society had to acknowledge their true ages in any age-restricted activity. Such as drinking, or being cops. 

“You are my friend,” Jasmine repeated. “I like making friends with kids. Adults don’t get to play. Who’d want to give that up?”

“Are you gonna stay? At my school?”

She couldn’t. She might find it very relaxing to impersonate a fourth grader, and she might enjoy having actual children for friends, but the department would want her to go somewhere else, especially now that her cover was blown here. “I’ll stay as long as they let me,” Jasmine said.