She opened the envelope and screamed. Lick, lick, and sealed it tight. His address she wrote in delicate red ink, a thin spidery scrawl which crawled over the front of the envelope and crept over to the back, coming together into a pair of bright red lips over the seam.

Emotion-paper was still a new thing, the idea of some crystal-wearers out in Sonoma that actually seemed to work. Like a flat mood-ring, it imprinted with the feelings of the person using it. And with the proper equipment, a helmet that transmitted some harmless electrical impulses to the reader, those emotions could be brought out. Sort of like a movie soundtrack playing over the letter as you read it. It was expensive, pointless, and experimental, but people seemed to love it.

Her note, such as it was, didn't have any writing. The paper in the envelope curdled first from a plain white into a sickly yellow, from yellow to grey, and eventually most of it turned black. The edges of the paper were brick red, and the whole thing looked like some ancient warning that rivals would send each other.

Surely he wasn't stupid enough to actually "read" the thing. He couldn't imagine what she had to say to him, not after what he had done, certainly couldn't imagine what he would want to hear. So the paper sat there on the table, a thought unheard, a scream unsc