Natural Consequences by Elliott Kay

chance.”
    “Hey, Lori, back again,” came a male voice. The two looked up to find a tall, muscular man looming behind them, his smile not quite as broad as his chest. He had to be proud of both. His teeth were laser white. His shirt spread unbuttoned at the top, showing off both his gold chain and the dark chest hair threatening to explode from his pecs. She caught an accent that she could not immediately place as the handsome stranger said in a great voice, “I’ve missed you so much. Why do you never come around anymore?”
    “I was here only last week, Emir,” Lorelei answered. “You don’t remember?”
    “Ah, every night without you is like an eternity,” he said, so smoothly Amber guessed he must have practiced it. The next line was dismissive rather than grandiose: “Besides, you were with that boy you keep hanging around with.”
    “We are rather fond of sharing our time together,” Lorelei smiled patiently.
    “Sure, but you could maybe share a drink with me, eh? Maybe let me take you out some time? He’s not here now. How serious could you and your boy be?”
    “Quite serious. I don’t think I’ll take you up on your offer, Emir.”
    “What’s the matter?” he scowled, though trying to maintain a cheerful tone, “you afraid you’ll like it? Or maybe you’re afraid he won’t?”
    “Emir, I’m not interested, and that alone should settle the matter. But since you asked,” Lorelei smiled sweetly, and then stepped closer, putting one hand on Emir’s chest, right over his heart.
    Amber leaned in to hear what Lorelei said, but it all came out in a different language. Is that Arabic? Amber wondered. Turkish? Regardless, her words took the wind from Emir’s sails. His eyes went wide with disbelief and even fear.
    He stepped aside. Lorelei walked past. Amber followed. They weaved through the aisles of pool tables. As before, Amber knew that most every man watched Lorelei pass. “What did you say to him?”
    “Emir obviously grew up believing that women don’t know their own minds,” Lorelei shrugged. “Were I interested in investing the time, I’d correct his error. I find him annoying, though, so I put things in terms he’d understand.”
    “What was that?”
    “I told him that the last time a man wouldn’t leave me alone, my love followed him into his home and stabbed him in the heart. Right in front of all of his friends.”
    Amber almost tripped. “Is that… wait, really? He believed that?”
    Lorelei grinned over her shoulder. “Why shouldn’t he? Don’t you?”
     
    * * *
     
    Not for the first time, Alex regretted putting his photography class ahead of his social life.
    “In contrast to modern American policies, photographs of the dead were not forbidden or banned by the Allies during the Great War,” droned the lecturer. Above and behind him, black and white photographs of hospital scenes and lifeless soldiers laid out in rows flashed past.
    “Plenty of examples can be found in the archives, from the war’s beginning in 1914 right through ‘til its end.” The lecturer clicked through more black and white tragedy. Alex cringed.
    His photography professor pitched this as a study of the growth of camera technology, and a way for students to earn some extra credit. The various sign-in sheets in the lobby and the bodies packing the auditorium suggested that plenty of classes from other schools had similar interests. Alex had all his assignments in, but his attendance had grown spotty as of late. He needed the points.
    He didn’t need the First World War. Somehow, nobody thought to note that little detail in the lecture title. His professor conveniently glossed over that.
    “Naturally, photographs of the action as it happened on the front lines were difficult to arrange,” said the lecturer. “Equipment was clumsy and not particularly quick to operate like cameras today,” he said. “Naturally, you don’t see many views of the battlefields at night. Flash photography