Intermezzi
Tomoe Exposition walks into the sterile white plane. The click-clacking of her heels echoes. Soon she finds a worn, maroon leather recliner chair next to a counterfeit Tiffany floor lamp. "Wow. A Matrix reference. Why am I not surprised."
She sits in the lounger, taking care to cross her legs and smooth her black miniskirt. The chair faces the frame. She looks out at you, her dark eyes merry, her smile inscrutable. "Oh, hey! Long time no see." She scoots back into the chair, the leather scrunching. "Sorry for this hokey Fourth Wall routine, but Oblimo asked me to say a few words. Me, I don't think they need to be said." She folds her arms across her blouse. "He's a bit of a wuss when it comes to new things. Besides, if you've read this far, you probably know what's coming. Oblimo lets me read the roughs, so I definitely know what's coming, at least as much as he does, which—granted—isn't always that much. Sometimes, the inspiration fairy takes its time when taking a dump."
Tomoe plops her hands onto the armrests, and sighs. "Okay. Here's the deal: Yves' getting some in this chapter. More than some. If you ask me, it's about damn time. Yaoi is my second favorite thing to watch while I whack off, next to futa of course. That's 'homoerotica' and 'dickgirl' porn, respectively, in case there are any noobs out there." She reaches her right hand down and pulls a wooden handle. The back of the chair reclines and the footrest pops up.
She props herself up on her elbows to look out at you again. "This chapter features a ton of hardcore yaoi-futa fucking. Me, I'm in hog heaven. For some reason, Oblimo wanted you to know ahead of time. I'm sure there's more he wanted me to say." Tomoe bends forward and wrestles with the zipper on the back of her miniskirt for a while. "But I don’t give a damn. If watching SB and Yves doesn't turn you on, that's your business." She wriggles her lithe, olive-skinned legs and kicks off the skirt. It drops to the nominal floor. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gunna get down to business."
The frantic fingers of her right hand squirm into the crotch of her rosy silk panties just as her left hand reaches up and switches off the lamp.
"Get writing, big guy."
Yellow and black warning stripes marked a hairpin left turn few hundred yards up the road. Yves downshifted. The Aston Martin decelerated to a more comfortable speed, the speedometer dipping below the 100 MPH mark. The engine's revving modulated into a throaty feminine voice, "Trust the tranny, Yves."
"Just testing the clutch," Yves said, applying enough gas to keep the car humming at eighty miles per hour. He eyeballed the upcoming left-hand turn. The thick backwoods tree line afforded little room for error. About one hundred sixty degrees at the steepest, he judged. "You're tail happy, SB."
The muffler snorted. "You accusing me of skirt-chasing, or oversteer? I deny neither." The turn hurtled closer. "You want me to handle this one, yaoi-boy? Remember what happened last time."
"Nah." Yves kicked the clutch, spinning the steering wheel hand-over-hand to the right, shocking the powertrain. The Aston Martin lost its balance, rear wheels slipping wide, threatening to fishtail. Yves pumped the clutch pedal, teasing the flywheel, his foot angled to punch the gas and brake. The rose supercar's spin-out became a tight, controlled drift. Yves floated through the hairpin, accelerating out of the turn in a smooth upshift and an earsplitting squeal of rubber burning against asphalt. "I've got it."
The Aston Martin zoomed up the straightway, engine purring but nonverbal. Yves waggled the gearbox stick. "I thought you had a dry clutch, SB." He arched a brow. "Now it feels all wet."
"Wuh," the engine gulped. "Wow. So, uh, does this make us even? You know, for last time?"
"You mean when you reprofiled your camshaft without telling me?"
"Not my fault. You, ah, really know your way around a stick." SB's embarrassed mumbling barely rose above random engine noise. "So the VTEC just kicked in, yo."
Yves glimpsed a gray shimmer dancing behind the dense line of evergreens. "Looks like we found the reservoir."
"Oh. Cool. Um. Hey, Yves?" The stick shift shivered under Yves' fingers. "Can we take that turn again?"
Unyx's sex was candied gossamer against Jo's tongue. The onyx glossing Unyx's cleft thinned and nestled until her labia flowered black and her clitoral hood gleamed as a black pearl. Unyx tasted of sex and licorice with an undercurrent of sweet liquor so potent it cut through the red rhythm fogging Jo's mind. Jo pulled away from her feast. "Ouzo?"
"of – course – what – else? but – please." Unyx's tail, still entwined about Jo's leg, tugged, gentle but insistent. Her gloved hands urged Jo back down. "please – finish." Jo flittered her tongue over Unyx's clit, a bud of black silk. "god – three – Ursula – Nyx – me – we – all – feel..." Unyx thrashed and pushed Jo prone onto the green bed, bundling Jo head-to-toe under her serpentine trunk.
Jo reveled. Muscular, python power surrounded her, quivering against her legs, her arms, her everywhere. The taste of ouzo and sex flooded her mouth. The random spasms soon settled into a slow, steady pulsation, beginning with Unyx pressing her pussy into Jo's mouth. The pressure traveled down Jo's neck, over her breasts, tummy, thighs—pausing to prolong the tender squeeze over Jo's sex—and legs in undulating waves. Jo felt as if she would melt.
Then the tip of Unyx's tail glided between Jo's labia majora, moving to the same pulsing beat, and Jo felt as if she would fly. Jo stretched up, hugging as hard as she could. Her arms barely reached halfway around the sleek snake swaddling her. The thick tail-tip nudged and nuzzled but would not penetrate. A greedy, empty need yawned between her legs. Jo arched her neck, the back of her head crushing into the flowerbed, her chin burrowing into Unyx's sex. She screamed. She begged, "Fuck me. Oh, God, fuck m—" The tail-tip slid into her, in perfect time with the beat. "My-fucking-God!"
The beat pulsed within her, without her, around her. Unyx's tail-tip filled Jo up, so thick it throbbed against her clit, only to withdraw again. Jo ran mad. "Stop teasing and fuck me—Jesus oh God so deep. More, dammit, more." Then, unthinking: "Cum. Cum in me."
Unyx's punishing rhythm began to falter, her steady rocking started to seize. Jo felt a giddy rush of triumph. "Yes, yes, cum in me!" Jo heard Unyx's wordless, helpless yelp. A single spasm shot through the bulk above her. The tail-tip thrummed once, twice. A sizzling, fluid warmth gushed inside her. Jo climaxed, laughing in lazy delirium. The tail-tip shuddered and withdrew, leaving Jo's womb awash.
Jo came down far enough to think about it. "Wait. What the fuck just happened?"
Unyx flopped down beside her on the flowerbed hard enough for Jo to feel the shockwave. "So," Unyx gulped, her milk-white skin slick with sweat, her eye-mask retreating into contact lenses. "So that's what it feels like."
Jo felt positively oozy. "That's what what feels like?"
"I think..." Unyx mopped her brow. "I think I finally reached the end of Galatea's lesson number five."
Unyx's tail twitched in the jasmine flowers between Jo's knees, shiny-slick, almost greased. Jo daubed her hand over her sex, more curious than trepid. Her fingers shone with her own wetness—she'd been in near constant meltdown for ages now, or so it seemed—but little else. Her sinuses twinged. "Ow." She rubbed her nose, smearing her nostrils with her own musk. "Ew. Stupid, stupid." The pinching twinge spread out in a spiky ring around her head. "Christ, what's happening now?"
Unyx held up her hands, her right with every finger outspread, her left gesturing thumb's up. "Lesson number six."
"Say what?"
"I'm closing ion channels."
Jo's headache faded, leaving nonplus in its wake. "What?"
"Un-mindfucking you."
Jo growled and squeezed her knees together, squashing jasmine and Unyx-tail between them. The obsidian, ophidian goth girl yipped like a puppy, her tail recoiling. "Gah, careful! It's really, really sensitive." Unyx giggled. "We're Unyx. We've got afterglow." She closed her eyes and settled into the flowerbed. "We've gotta take a nap."
"I liked you better when you over-explained everything." Jo sat up and grabbed for Unyx's tail. She overshot, amazed at her newly-grown reach and frustrated with how much her newly-huge-and-bouncy boobs still managed to get in the way. Jasmine petals flew as Jo and Unyx played a giggly game of keep-away with the tip of her tail. "Start expounding or Mr. Happy gets it."
"All right," Unyx laughed, squirming. "All right! But, listen: do you hear her? Do you hear Black Cherry's blood music any more?"
Jo froze. "No." It was true; the party-next-door-but-between-the-ears sensation that had plagued her for hours had fallen silent. "Wow, no! Did you do that? Oh, thank you! But how?"
Unyx shrugged, eyes closing again. "How did Black Cherry mindfuck you in the first place? Get the blood music inside you, we mean."
"I'd crawled into bed." Jo blushed. "With my jelly-egg vibrator. I was friggin my way past Pluto when that cherry-chocolate tramp strutted into my room like she owned the place and sat on my face." Jo relaxed and lay back. "I was too far gone, and she tasted too good, and the whole thing was too damn kinky…so I ate her out. She came like crazy and the music started up."
"Black Cherry's cum was full of nanomek—what she calls 'novilunium'," Unyx explained, and then she blushed, silvery blood flushing milk-white skin. "So was ours. The binding we ate was very strong, you see, so we couldn't give you any nanomek until we got really excited. Stopping a mindfuck costs more nanomek than starting one up, so we had to get really, really excited." She grinned, shook her head. "And the spooge shall set you free."
Jo lay awhile in thought. She felt sated and stuffed enough to ignore the gurgling, orgiastic noises from across the flowerbed, at least for the moment. "So you cured me of blood music."
Unyx bobbed her head. "Yep."
"By fucking my brains out until you came like a sperm whale."
Another head-bob. "Yep. Had to burn all the nanomek in our cum to do it, too. So you're truly free from all headfuckery now."
"I wasn't even thinking about that," Jo said. "When Black Cherry did it—did me—it felt like she was being selfish, taking something from me. But you," she laughed through her blush, "you gave and gave until I almost blacked out."
Unyx, her eyes still closed, waved a silent Aw, shucks, at Jo. "So what were you thinking about, then?"
Jo rolled onto her side. "I was thinking about my sorority sisters."
"What about them?"
"Can you cure them, too?" Jo asked.
Head-bob. "Yep."
"The same way?"
Head-bob. "Yep." Unyx sighed, resigned. "In fact, it's the only way."
"Um." Jo paused. "I'm not sure how to tell you this. There's lots of girls in the Ep-Zed House this weekend—we're throwing a big party tonight—and I think Black Cherry got to them all. I mean lots of girls. Like, over a hundred."
Unyx rolled over and leered. Her eyes sparkled like black ore, her tail toying with the petals of countless flowers. She bobbed her head. "Yep."
The rose-colored Aston Martin supercar growled down an abandoned road, little more than a narrow strip of potholed hardpan dusted with gravel. The engine groused at being kept in such a low gear. Yves shot a sour look into the rearview mirror and the engine's grumbling grew self-conscious. "I want to go fast," the engine said. "Can't help it. Not when you're behind my wheel, driving me like that."
Yves maneuvered the supercar through a rusted-open chain-link fence. "Like what?"
"Like 'wow'," the engine chuckled, a strange bubbling sound. "Like I want to scream, 'Floor it! Floor it!'"
Yves shook his head, bemused. "You are every red-blooded American male's wet dream, SB."
The engine mumbled, "I seriously doubt every." They drove down the old gravel road in silence and second gear before the engine affected an overblown fake orgasm. "Ooh! Ah! Floor it! Floor it!"
Yves laughed hard enough to bring his headache pounding back to life. "I can't. If I did, we'd drive right into the reservoir." The road curled into a dead end behind a wide grassy bank. A fallen, weatherworn sign insisted upon no fishing without a county permit. "We're here. And you still haven't told me why you wanted to come in the first place."
"You need to relax." The supercar's engine noise dropped into a subsonic purr. The driver's seat thrummed against Yves' neck and the small of his back. Yves yawned, headache gone. "This place is pretty relaxing, isn't it?" the engine asked.
A thick wall of pine trees circled the bank. The reservoir stretched out ahead of them in a great, flat bowl. The early-afternoon sun reflected off the dark water in flashing triangles. The grass grew wild and tall, cutting off sight of the road, completing the illusion. "It's amazing," Yves confessed. "A mountain loch in the middle of Middle America."
"Reminds me of a bend in the Durance River," the engine whispered, "a long time ago."
Yves left the stick in neutral and engaged the emergency brake. "So what do we do now?"
The engine cut out and the driver's side door clicked open on its own accord. "We get the fuck out."
Yves hopped out and ambled down the sloping bank. He heard a metallic sigh behind him. He bent at the water's edge, hunting without success for a good skipping stone, hearing SB's swaggering walk rustle the grass behind him. When he stood up, a strong hand slipped around his shoulder, fingers firm and cool. A breeze carried the scent of wild strawberries and cotton candy. "How do you feel, Yves?"
Yves stretched. "Deliciously sleepy."
Those slim fingers patted him on the back. "C'mere, Yves."
SB wore her signature one-piece dress, sunlight painting her in fiery shades of red and gold. She knelt onto a wide tartan picnic blanket, patted the spot in front of her. "Come on down."
Yves tapped the blanket with a sneaker. "Is this you?" He hoped he sounded more curious than nervous.
"It's of me," SB explained, "but it's not me. I've locked it, it's just a thing." She smoothed out the blanket. "Well?"
Yves sat cross-legged before her, inspecting the tartan textile. "Soft. Feels familiar, somehow."
"You'd be surprised, the kinds of things you can spin from sugary carbohydrates. If you're working on the sub-molecular level, that is." SB read Yves' expression and added, "Okay, maybe you in particular wouldn't be surprised." She shifted, her cheeks darkening to a true crimson. "What're you looking at?"
"Your eyes," Yves answered. "It was recently pointed out to me that I do not pay close attention to a woman's eyes."
"Dude." SB gestured at her lap, where her manhood folded between her knees like a bendy third leg. "Do I look like a woman?"
"Do appearances matter?" Yves asked in return, still scrutinizing SB's face. "I thought they were rock candy or some other sugar crystal. Your eyes, I mean. But they're not, are they? They're real diamond."
"So?"
Yves nodded. "'So,' indeed. Diamond's just carbon, after all, less complicated than sugar in some ways." SB's wry smile set her eyes twinkling. Yves nodded again, downcast. "Yeah, I'm stalling. I don't even know what's going to happen, and I'm stalling. Wow, listen to me…"
SB tipped her head. "Yves?"
"…I'm talking as much as Ursula…"
SB coughed politely. "Hey, Yves?"
"…No worse: Dee."
SB plucked Yves' head up by the chin. "Yves. You really, really need to unwind." She held up the mason jar of strawberry colored jam in her other hand. "How's 'bout a rub down?"
Every bit of Yves ached, from his brain to his balls down through the soles of his feet. He wondered if any part of him, body or spirit, had escaped torture in the past twelve hours. He doubted it. "My arms are a little sore, yeah."
SB rolled her eyes, goosed Yves' cheek, and popped the jar open before setting it beside them on the picnic blanket. "Hold out your arm, then," she said.
Yves offered up his arm. SB gently rotated Yves' hand palm-upward. The improvised bandage on the pad of his thumb had frayed and curled up around the edges. SB picked off the tape and unwound the blood-spotted gauze, revealing a small but deep crescent-shaped puncture in Yves' flesh. "The cloister bell," SB murmured.
"Hm? Oh," Yves nodded, "the exploding doorbell, yeah. That sucker really took a bite out of me." SB gingerly inspected the wound. The sudden flare of pain took Yves' breath away. "Still stings a bit."
SB scooped a small dollop of jam onto one finger. "This will help." The jam's vibrant red contrasted the soft rose hues of her translucent flesh. "But you'll always bear the mark." Yves wanted to ask her what she was talking about but she smeared the stuff across the pad of his thumb without another word. He readied himself for another sharp stab of pain. It only tingled instead. A droplet of strawberry red nectar streaked down into the cup of his palm. Yves frowned.
"Your skin is warm enough to cook it into oil," SB said as more tingling syrup pooled in his hand. She held him by the wrist, and rubbed her thumb over the strawberry smear on his hand, tracing the flexor tendon anchoring his thumb and working the red salve into his skin. The puncture wound itched, felt tender when the skin around it flexed, but the pain had fled. Her gaze fixed on his hand, SB added, "You okay?"
Yves was not sure how to answer. I'm amazed. I'm relieved. I'm a little scared. "What do you mean?"
"The color." She gathered Yves' hand to her chest, soothing the stuff over his palm, then sliding her thumbs around and between his fingers. "Before it cooks into oil, it kinda looks like blood."
"You mean, do you remind me of Black Cherry?"
SB looked up from her ministrations, squeezing each of Yves' fingers in turn. "Well?"
"You're nothing like Black Cherry," Yves insisted. SB pressed the flat of his oiled hand against her cheek. Yves smiled, "You want details?"
SB dipped a finger into the jar and massaged more jam into Yves' wrist. "Just a couple."
"You'll have to give me a minute."
"Why?" SB slid her fingers up his forearm.
Yves sighed, eyes closed. "I just want to...feel this, for a while." The tingle stretched from Yves' fingertips down to his elbow. The muscles of his hand and forearm were as butter, all tension gone. SB found a potent pressure-point and a clarifying calm stole over Yves. "Black Cherry's dark currents give her that horrible, arterial red look," Yves heard himself say. "Yours is the red of rosé wine. Black Cherry felt like clay, wet cement, really. Raz and Eurydice felt like living, standing waves. You feel, well, real." He opened his eyes. SB paused, her hands encircling his upper arm. "With my eyes closed," Yves explained, "I can't tell that you’re meliae. Just someone who wears a summery cologne. Uh, I mean perfume."
SB stroked the length of Yves' oiled arm. Yves resisted the urge to purr. "I'm not built like other goo girls," SB said. "I'm organized."
Yves eyed the crowded crotch of her dress. "That's apparent." A breeze blew across the grass and rippled SB's dress, defining the angles of her lap. Good God, Yves thought, how big can that thing really get?
"Stop," SB breathed. She gave him a playful push, planting a strawberry-red stain over Yves' undershirt. "Or you really will start sounding like Dee. Anyway, that's not my only organ. I've got internal structures. Check this out." SB flexed her right arm. Her toned, oval muscles bulged. "This bicep ain't just for show. Striated pectin. Go on, check it out."
Yves reached out, prodding cautiously at first, but growing bold when his fingers only dimpled SB's upper arm. "Wow. Do you work out?" Oh, Jesus. Yves winced. What am I, twelve? What's gotten into me?
"My nanomek do it for me." SB rolled her shoulders and inhaled. Her round breasts jutted against her fiery dress, nipples erect and obvious and inches away from Yves' fondling fingers. "Wanna feel my pecs?"
I haven't been this close to second base with a girl since high school. Yves flustered and flushed. SB studied his face, winked, nabbed his other arm, and slathered it with a healthy gob of tingly jam. The delectable massage drove away memories of youthful, fruitless denial. "You're sure generous with that stuff," Yves said, sighing. "Thank you, thank you."
SB laughed. "I've come into possession of a dumpster full of it." She swallowed a bark of laughter and oiled Yves' arm. The creaking of pine branches and the gentle lapping of lake water against the bank filled the bashful silence until SB added, "Thanks to you."
Pain and stress vanished under SB's touch. Yves allowed himself to purr. "Mrr. Just what is it, anyway?"
"Have you ever heard of woad, Yves?" SB asked, swirling her thumbs around his elbow.
"Only as the past tense of the Keanu Reeves verb, 'to whoa'." SB smirked but said nothing. "It's a dye, blue, or something, right?"
"Or something, yeah," SB said. She leaned close to massage his upper arm. Her breath tickled Yves' his neck. "Anyway," SB began, "the ancient Britons painted themselves before every battle. They needed no other armor."
A memory of kilts and blue paint clicked into place. "Like Braveheart," Yves said.
SB froze, then snorted, "Nothing like Braveheart." She went to work on his shoulder. "I'm talking aboriginal Albion, Yves. And it wasn't blue, either. Julius Caesar called it vitrum." She shook her head in reverie. "Julius. Now there's a guy who knew how to spend five denarii."
"Vitrum," Yves repeated. He knew his Latin roots from years of applied science. "Glass." He raised his free arm. The glaze of massage oil blazed in the sun. "Vitreous armor." His skin glittered as the oil dried, mellowing into a healthy glow. He twisted his arm one way and the other. Sunlight played over whipcord muscle, his wrist, his palm.
Yves stared. The puncture wound on his hand had healed. "Glass armor." Only a faded, comma-shaped scar remained, as if Yves had born it for years. From birth, Yves realized, like I've born it since birth. It's a mark, not a scar. That's what SB said. But now what?
SB's eyes danced, her voice edgy with urgency. "Take off your shirt, Yves."
Yves tugged his undershirt up over his head, his arms smooth and sure but his back panged hotly, forcing him into a hunch. SB had a big, three-finger scoop of jam ready and aimed for his chest. She hesitated, watching his spiky blonde hair droop over his eyes as his undershirt fell away. She flashed a crooked smile, brushed his hair back with her free hand, and splattered the scoop of goop atop Yves' head.
"Hey," Yves startled, laughing, but SB ignored him and combed the stuff through his hair with her fingers.
"The soldiers of Sparta and Macedon," SB said, knee-walking behind Yves' back, "would groom one another with it, with the vitrum."
Yves felt SB's knee nudge up against his butt. He suspected it was her knee, at least. "I thought that was just olive oil."
"No." SB's aquiline chin pressed into the hollow of Yves shoulder. The slinky material of her dress whisked against his back. Her lips scraped against his ear as she spoke, "They used olive oil to fuck." Yves swam in the scent of her summer cologne. SB reached up and scrubbed the jam into his scalp without mercy until Yves protested that his brain was marinating in strawberry marmalade.
"Better marinade than migraine," SB said, oiling Yves neck and knuckling the ridges of his shoulder blades. "Wouldn't you say?"
"Just keep doing what you're doing," Yves said. The twanging pain in his back evaporated under SB's care. "And I'd say any little thing you asked me to."
Rose crystal arms snaked around Yves' chest and slapped a big blob of jam onto his stomach. "Do you know what's going on, Yves?" The arms slithered up his chest, spreading the melting jam in two tingling swaths of oil from his abs to his pecs. Her firm breasts squashed against his back.
"You're," Yves shivered as SB's fingertip skated across his nipple, "you're seducing me."
"Mm," SB agreed, squeezing oil into Yves' ribs, "but do I have to?"
"No," Yves said, realizing it himself for the first time. He turned to smirk at her. Shining blonde blades of hair bowed to occlude his eyes. "You had me at, 'Ride me, Yves.'"
SB scooted around to Yves's side and kissed him. This time, Yves returned the kiss and took her in his arms. The giving flesh of her lips and toned expanse of her back felt as firm as any man or woman's, but her silken touch, her summery smell, her salty-sweet taste were beyond exotic, almost unearthly. SB broke their kiss and Yves, breathless, rested his forehead against hers. "I think I understand Dee a bit better now," he said.
"So," SB said, sitting up and daubing strawberry balm on the tip of Yves' nose. "If I'm not seducing you…" The balm melted into oil and she spread it across the bridge of his nose and around the orbits of his eyes. "Then what am I doing?" She swabbed his temples and forehead and Yves breathed easy; he had never felt more clear-headed in his life.
Yves thought about it as SB rouged his cheeks. "You're anointing me."
SB grinned and glanced aside, as if remembering some private joke. "I'm a-knighting you."
"I thought you knighted someone with a sword."
SB's introspective grin turned downright wicked. "That comes later." She finished her handiwork on his face and sat back to admire it.
The balm tingled as it dried. "Glass armor," Yves remembered. "You're armoring me. Outfitting me? No." He found the right word and it both thrilled and chilled him. "You're girding me."
SB leaped close, her third kiss hungrier than the last two combined. "Lie down, Yves," she said, voice low. "Lose the pants."
Yves settled into the picnic blanket, scrunching the wild grass beneath. His hair fanned over his face, shading his eyes from the cloudless sky and the sun high above the pines. He twirled a finger through a sheaf of his suddenly salon-perfect coiffure. "I've never been vain about my hair." He bunched his legs up. His knees still creaked and his thighs cramped but he ignored the pain as best he could and shucked off his slacks. The cuffs caught on his sneakers.
SB's arch smile hovered into view. "Silk boxers?"
"I'm vain about other things," Yves readily confessed. SB padded down to his feet, giving Yves a slow-pan eyeful of her copper-clad, powerhouse ass. "Uh." SB's rear swayed from the heavy counterweight tucked between her legs and hidden by her flowing dress. "Oh, boy," Yves swallowed. "Anyways, I always just let my hair do whatever it wanted." Yves propped himself up to watch SB undo his laces and a blonde tussock fell neatly across half of his face with an almost audible foop! noise. "I never expected a hairdo would take me literally."
Sneakers and socks sailed into the surrounding grass. SB administered the strawberry balm to Yves' feet. Yves yelped when she kneaded between his toes. "Quit squirming," SB said, smothering his heels and ankles in extra helpings of the stuff. "Achilles was ticklish, too, so I missed a spot and I bet you know the rest."
"Oh, ha, ha," Yves said. SB glanced up, her expression blank, and Yves added, "Um. Ha?" SB held his worried stare a moment longer, then thrust her tongue out between her teeth, dug her fingers into his calves and tickled him until Yves' howling laughter echoed across the placid reservoir. When Yves caught his breath, SB was smoothing salve over his knee. His lower legs wore greaves of glassy grease. "Okay, so you're girding me in vitrum—Ah!" A pressure point in Yves' knee popped and relief flooded through his leg. "God, that feels fucking fantastic. A minute ago I was nearly crippled. Now I want to run a marathon."
SB moved on to Yves' other knee but her eyes were fixed on the crotch of Yves' boxers. "Save your strength."
Yves heard the meaning behind the innuendo. "So vitrum is not going to make me strong like Dee."
"Nope," SB said. She popped another pressure point. Her hand crept up Yves' thigh.
"Good," Yves sighed, closing his eyes, letting the last of his pain and weariness wash away. "I'd be worse off with it. If I were suddenly Superman, I'd have to unlearn years of fighting with limited resources." SB oiled Yves' inner thighs, hands squeezing in a lazy rhythm. Blood rushed into Yves' face and his crotch. His slowly engorging dick slid against the silk of his boxers. "I guess virtum doesn't make me bullet-proof, either?"
"No," SB said, her oiled fingers working under the left leg of his boxers. "You'll never be bullet-proof, but fight well and you won't have to be." Her fingertips brushed against his pubic hair and she turned her attention to his other leg.
One of Dee's interminable comic book lectures rose unbidden in Yves mind. "Superman versus Batman," Yves heard himself say.
SB's sensual fingers froze. "Say what?"
"Superman's power comes from who he is. Batman's power comes from what he does." Yves had heard this bit from Dee so many times he could not help but plunge ahead. "Superman stands his ground and bullets bounce right off him. He doesn’t even have to think about it. Batman can dodge bullets because he's careful and brave, clever and quick." Yves sat bolt upright. "Plot armor. That's what Dee calls it. That's what vitrum is." Yves rubbed his stomach. The oil had soaked into his skin, but he could still feel the energizing tingle. "You're covering me in plot armor."
SB had not moved since Yves started blabbing. "Are you trying to turn me off?"
"Hey, now. You, Tomoe, Nyx and Galatea are the gals running around empowering nerds." Yves lay back, hands behind his head. "What did you four expect?"
SB blinked at him, then whipped off his boxers. She dug deep with both hands into the mason jar, leaving nothing but dregs of jam at the bottom of the glass. "Really hot and freaky sex sprinkled with the occasional Monty Python reference," she said, fingers dripping.
"It's a fair cop," Yves admitted.
"Quiet, you," SB said, and brought her hands down.
Her left hand traced circles about his balls while her right slid straight down his scrotum. The jam melted immediately into oil. SB did not lose a single drop to the blanket beneath. She massaged rolls of oil into Yves' sensitive skin, running his taint between her ring and middle fingers.
SB's expert hands and the tingling oil electrified Yves and his pelvis pivoted up to meet them. SB wasted no time and dove her fingers into the crack of his ass. She teased the rim of his anus and he barked in surprised pleasure, bent his knees and pushed his butt off the blanket. "Perfect," she said, grabbing a cheek, "stay just like that." She cooed as she oiled him up, one hand squeezing his ass, the other curling around his balls and teasing the root of his cock. "Ooh, is this fun." Yves erection surged, the glistening red head of his dick peeking out from his foreskin. "Gotta get me some of that," SB said, bringing her right hand up and spiraling down his shaft, peeling his foreskin back with each pump, determined to paint every ridge and wrinkle of him in oil.
Yves groaned and collapsed onto the blanket, his twitching dick pointing skyward. SB's eyes unfocused, her lips puckered into a hazy smile. She coddled Yves' balls in her left hand, milked his cock in her right. "C'mon," she hummed. "Come on." Tension gathered in Yves' crotch and released in a full-body twitch, again and again. SB burst, "Oh! God," and "Oh! Yeah," with each shudder Yves gave her. She rocked up high on her knees and her own hardening prick flopped onto the blanket between Yves legs and pressed up against his inner thigh.
Yves felt some switch thrown deep within him and the maddening tension became a tide of building pressure. He moaned and muttered, inarticulate with encroaching orgasm.
SB bent forward. "God." Her lips hovered inches from the head of Yves cock. "Oh, God." She wrapped both hands around Yves' throbbing shaft, pushed its head between her lips. Yves whimpered and seized. SB sobbed—"Oh, God,"—around the head of his cock. He came.
And SB wept and nursed on his cum as if their lives depended on it.
"Holy shit," said Yves when SB finally rocked backward. "The only other time I've cum that fast and hard before, I was alone. And seventeen." SB tried to laugh but only gasped for air. Yves asked, "Nanogasms?" SB nodded, eyes crossed, and Yves added, "You just gave me a massive macrogasm, SB. You deserve more than a little blood music." Yves sat up, bare chest filmed in sweat, and eyed the mammoth bulge in SB's dress. "Why aren't you naked?"
He reached out, one hand following the distending curve of SB's dress. SB's hard-on grew and throbbed, as wide as Yves' hand, beneath his touch. I only caught a glimpse of her at the store, he thought, taking the hem of SB's dress in both hands. SB bit her lip as Yves sat close, drawing her dress upward. I know she's big, Dee said she was humungous, but how big could she possibly—"Ow," Yves said, as the head of SB's dick bopped him on the nose.
Yves gawked at a candy-red, fist-sized cock-head, polished in maraschino-cherry pre-cum and crowning about three feet of rose-red shaft. The whole package looked crystalline and fleshy at the same time. Veins like chiseled rose quartz somehow pulsed with life. SB worried her lip and searched his face with anxious eyes. Her childlike pout put Yves over the edge, and he laughed so hard he had to hold on to the sides of his head.
"No one," SB muttered, then shifted and raised her voice over Yves' delighted cackling. "No one has ever laughed at my dick before. Ever."
"Why not?" Yves wiped tears from his eyes. "It's amazing. You're amazing, SB. I mean, look at you. You've got the biggest penis on the planet and you're still insecure. If a three foot cock can't make a dickgirl confident, mortal men are doomed."
SB threw her head back and cracked up, her dress cinched around her belly. Her glans bobbed and weaved as she shook with laughter. Yves tracked the red cock-head's perambulations with his eyes, more amused and amazed than mesmerized. "You've got to tell me, how on Earth do you and Tomoe…relate?"
"She's lost a little weight since we first met," SB snickered.
Yves knew he would not get any better answer than that, and his mind was elsewhere anyway. "Well." He cracked his knuckles. "In for a penny…" He reached out again, with both hands this time.
SB shied to the side. "Wait."
Yves' fingertips hovered, poised to grasp. "Why?" His eyebrows waggled. "I'm really good at this bit."
"I know. Wow, do I know." She sighed. "That's the point. But cumming costs me nanomek, and, Yves, you turn me into a walking fire hose."
Dropping a gentle hand to SB's knee, Yves said, "I feel wonderful, SB. Better than I've felt in years. Awake, alive." He gave SB's knee an eager squeeze. "Horny. Hell, you probably saved my life. I want to share, SB. I need to." His hand inched up SB's thigh. "Sex is something that happens between two people, SB, and I want it to happen to you so good you'll see stars. Why are you so nervous?"
"Not nervous." SB leaned in for a sweet kiss but pushed Yves' hand away. "I'm not done sharing with you yet, that's all."
Or you're still too nervous to let me take the lead. "Very well." Yves swooned onto the blanket, the back of his hand pressed against his forehead. "Have your way with me, you cad." SB goosed Yves on the big toe, stood up, and walked straight past him. Her shadow fell across his face, soon followed by her dress. "Hey." He rolled over and looked up, the fiery dress dangling from his hair like a unwound turban.
SB stood naked at the water's edge. Her broad, sinewy back tapered down to a trim waist and a thick, traffic-stopping ass. Yves asked, "Are we skinny dipping?" SB turned and presented Yves with her profile, adding the high curves of her bust and impossible scimitar of her cock to the mix. Her substance possessed a milky translucence and the sun lit her up. She glowed from within, radiating a buttery aura, and Yves could only breathe, "My God."
"Actually, you need to stay onshore." SB stepped into the reservoir. Waves lapped at her ankles. "No matter what happens, no matter what you see, you can't touch the water. Understand?"
Some small part of Yves wanted to quip at the corny, fairytale instruction, but it was overruled by his awe of her beauty and the certainty in her voice. He nodded.
"Good." She strode deeper, proud and confident, until the she dipped low enough to dunk her balls in the water. She jumped back with a high pitched, piping squeak. "Eee! Cold!" Yves bit down hard on his bottom lip to keep from laughing as he watched SB shiver and crouch. "Well," SB said, "I'll fix that soon enough." She gave Yves one last, admonishing look. "I'm not Tomoe; I mean exactly what I say."
"And I'm not Dee," Yves said. "I don't touch my plate just because the waiter warns me that it's hot."
SB dazzled Yves with her smile, then gazed out over the dark water. "I haven't done this in a long, long time," she said, waded in deeper, and vanished below the surface.
Yves sat up, crossed his legs, draped SB's dress across his lap, and waited for something to happen. He watched the clear sky, half-expecting dramatic, stormy clouds to scud in over the horizon. None came. The sun climbed closer to the zenith of noon, warming the still air.
"Is this when I say 'It's quiet, too quiet'?" Yves shaded his eyes, scanned the tree line, then peered over the reservoir. "Hello? Ah, well. Thinking cap time, I guess." Okay, there's no denying that I'm caught up in Dee's story, or whatever fairytale he started when he bought his nanomek, then derailed by making Galatea first. "Is that all this is? Just part of Dee's story? SB?" After all, I didn't buy anything from SRU. I didn't start anything. Did I?
["…It's not my fault. I was perfectly happy being alone and miserable back at the bar. You were the one who decided to drop by and try and cheer me up, if you care to recall…"]
Yves stood up. The dress fell. He cupped his mouth and hallooed over the reservoir, ire rising with every word. "So all this happened because I chose to cheer a friend up? That's all it takes get stuck in my own fairytale? And why the fuck did it have to start with some psycho-bitch fucking me in the ass?"
A wave of sultry heat rolled over the shore. The whispery woodland sounds died. Whitecap waves chopped up in the heart of the reservoir many yards away. Yves folded his arms. "That's more like it." The heat grew oppressive. The whitecaps churned into a growing circle of froth. "Wait a minute." The fizzing whitewater expanded, raced closer. The air turned savanna-hot. "Uh, SB?" At the water's edge, steam rose and wildgrass wilted. "The, uh, lake's starting to boil." Columns of steam wafted skyward and the roiling waters boiled like a sign of the Apocalypse.
Yves backpedaled away from the shoreline as the ambient temperature rose from sizzling savanna to roasting sauna, hot enough to scald his throat or even burn his lungs if he risked breathing in through his mouth. Yves' hair frizzed out and fountained around his head in a cross between a bowl cut and an overgrown spider plant. His voice cracked and croaked.
"Is it too late to say, 'Pygmalion'?"
The columns of steam condensed into billowing walls of mist, carried to the lakeshore by waves of heat. Yves' thumb prickled. Water, he thought, as the thick trails of mist moved in. She didn't say 'Don't go in the lake.' She said, 'Don't touch the water.' The temperature continued to climb and Yves felt faint. The water's coming to me but I doubt that makes any difference. What do I do? Do I run? He cast about, made his decision—No—and dove for the picnic blanket, throwing it over himself just as the first tendrils of mist coiled onto the shore.
Yves lay in darkness and cool grass. No wonder this fabric felt familiar. The terrible heat buffeted the blanket above him. It's spun lace insulant, just like Ursula's high-tech potholders.
The hissing from the lake stopped. Yves counted slowly to two hundred before testing the air: sultry as a New Orleans summer, but safe. He crawled out from under the blanket, the shore soupy and slippery beneath his hands and knees. The wild grass now resembled boiled cabbage, browned and overcooked. The reservoir was becalmed. Mist licked across the smoothed water. The hush heightened Yves' awareness of his own nudity and exposure. He adopted a ready stance.
A silvered blade rose from the reservoir, piercing the surface without a ripple. SB soon followed, striving in a weary swagger toward the shore, holding a sword aloft above her head. Dark water swirled around her bare legs, her flaccid but still massive dick slapping against her inner thighs. Her eyes were dim and unfocused, her frown severe. Her muscles trembled, as did her voice. "Yves Valiancourt!"
"I am here," Yves said, surprised at his own formality.
An exhausted smile lit up SB's face. She stepped onto the shore, seemed to see Yves clearly. "Yves Valiancourt."
"I am he." His heart in his throat, his blood signing, he added in whisper, "'SB' doesn't really stand for 'Strawberry Banana,' does it?"
SB at last lowered her arm, resting the flat of the blade across both her palms. "No," she whispered back. "It does not." She fell to one knee before Yves, head bowed. She sighed, raising her arms to present Yves with a long, curved blade the color of frozen moonlight.
"I have borne you a sword, Yves Valiancourt."
Yves hefted the sword. The grip, wrapped in a braided weave of rose silk cord, could accommodate two hands but felt equally comfortable in one. The round guard had been forged from a midnight purple alloy Yves could not identify. The sharpened, single edge ran along the outside of the blade, longer and more curved than the samurai swords seen in the movies. It took a moment for Yves to find his voice. "How did you know?"
SB glanced up, grinning. "The tanto you have in your shirt—neat trick, by the way, can't believe I didn't notice it until I was feeling you up. You've got the tanto slung the wrong way 'round for typical katana work. And you weren't exactly subtle back in the SRU parking lot." Kalidescope eyes sparkled. "I could tell you were a tachi man."
Yves smoothed his thumb over the flat of the pearlescent blade; slick but not sticky. "What is it?" He held it up. It refused to reflect the sunlight. This is what's left when you take away the metal but leave the edge, the lethality, behind, Yves thought. This is the ghost of a sword. "SB, what did you do?"
SB stood. "I told you you'd be surprised," she said, chest heaving as she caught her breath. "The things you can spin from carbohydrates and the trace elements found in freshwater. But the process gives off so much waste heat I have to jump in a lake or spontaneously combust. Anyway, it's a metallofullerene core edged in aggregated nanorods folded into a fractal lattice serration…What's with that face? Constipated?"
"This is my 'processing technobabble face'," Yves said, stepping back, testing the feel of the deadly thing. "Metallofullerene core: more ductile than steel." SB nodded, so Yves struggled on with his translation. "Aggregated nanorods: harder than diamond." SB nodded again, her grin growing wide. "Fractal lattice…" He squinted at the edge. It remained out-of-focus. "What's its effective cutting surface?" he asked. SB scratched her head. "If you straightened out all those microscopic serrations but kept the same surface area," Yves continued, "how long would the blade be?"
"Ten," SB shrugged. "Maybe up to eleven." Her grin returned, positively shit-eating, and she added, "Kilometers."
"So," Yves said, trying a two hand grip. "Fractal lattice serration: sharp enough to cut through, what, solid rock?"
"Honey," SB sighed, "you could cut a diamond Sherman tank in half with that thing. And diamond is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, metals known to man." Yves just stood there, brow furrowed, so SB grumped, "Dee would've laughed that joke."
"That's my point," Yves said, turning away from SB to gaze over the tree line. "I mean, shouldn't Dee be here, not me? Doesn't Arthur get Excalibur?"
"Aw, don't be an idiot." SB gave Yves a dismissive but playful shove on the back. "Arthur's just a myth. Never existed."
"Oh, ha, ha."
"I'm serious. Arthur and Lancelot: both total bullshit."
"But, still," Yves muttered, "shouldn't Dee…?"
"Not everything's about Dee," SB insisted behind him. "Besides, Gawain got the green girdle. Yvain got the sword."
Yves would only stare down at the ghosted blade. "I don't know who those two guys were." Except one killed the other, according to Eurydice. "Unyx would know. She's a superhero. Like Dee. Like the rest of them." Yves' thumb prickled.
SB clucked deep in her throat. "Fine."
Yves whirled around, arms whipping up. Pale sword met pink scimitar a few inches away from his face. The two blades rang together in a crystalline tone as pure as two matched tuning forks. Yves boggled at the anger simmering in SB's eyes. "What did I…"
"Have it your way, then," SB growled and kicked Yves' left knee out from under him. Yves toppled backward. SB brought her blade whistling down at Yves' exposed neck.
Yves rode his collapse into a controlled tumble. SB's pink scimitar sank into the sodden earth. "You're quick," SB said, wresting the scimitar from the ground, whisking it high and behind her head. "Damn quick for someone who says he's not a superhero."
Yves sprang to his feet, pale sword ready in a two-handed grip. "Victory is not getting cut." He found his center and sought a Kamae, a kendo fencing ready stance. "That's not superheroic," he said, thinking, This is no kendo match and she isn't holding a practice staff. "That's just smart." He tipped his blade up, and entered a textbook perfect Water Kamae, reciting, "If you've thought of cutting, it's too late to cut." Her grip is tight. She's not ready. Don't move until you see it. "You must have already cut when you think of cutting."
SB's fingers relaxed. The scimitar's haft slipped a hairsbreadth downward. There. Yves angled his blade a few degrees, its tip pointed at SB's eyes. Now.
SB swung her scimitar down in a blurred arc. Yves was already moving, closing the distance to level the advantage of an overhead strike. The scimitar accelerated downward. He rotated his own sword. The scimitar rebounded and SB dropped back. Sport-drink red sweat beaded her bare breasts. Yves rotated back to his Water stance and waited.
"Your banter is pretty pithy," SB snarled, this time bringing her blade low and back, "for someone who says he's not a superhero."
Yeah, why the Hell am I bantering? "That's just my inner Dee talking," Yves said, and, feeling as uncertain as he sounded, he shifted his stance and lost his center.
"I know you're a superhero, Yves, and I know that you know." The pink scimitar swept up and out. Anticipating a feint designed to push him further off-center, Yves risked a sidestep—but SB swiveled her hips and double-feinted, her huge blade whirring faster than Yves thought possible. He walked right into an upswing about to crack open his chest like a book.
His thumb prickled. There was a screech of glass grinding against glass. Without thinking, Yves had leaned into the fatal swing. The scimitar grated over the flat of his blade until the guards of both swords clicked together. Yves and SB stood nose-to-nose, their swords locked together between them.
"I know you're a superhero, Yves," SB said, straining to break the lock and earn the riposte, "because despite all your training, all that muscle memory telling you to strike after each defense, you haven’t even tried to cut me yet." SB narrowed her eyes, her face slick with sport-drink sweat. "Only the good guys are dumb enough to do that."
Yves hissed, every ounce of his strength channeled into his effort to hold the lock. "That's not it." SB arched a brow and Yves conceded, "Alright, that's not just it."
The swords squealed in protest as their wielders forced them a fraction of an inch one way and then the other. SB gritted her teeth. "What else, then?"
Yves began, "This is…" SB yanked the scimitar's guard away and Yves dredged up reserves of stamina he did not know he had to clamp the pale sword's guard down hard, locking the blades again. "This is so fucking hot," he gushed.
SB gasped and relaxed her grapple. "Oh, Jesus, Yves, you should see." She pressed her leg into his groin; his growing erection crawled up her thigh, became spotted with sport-drink sweat. "You should see how fucking amazing you look." She let her sword fall to her side, one hand squeezing its ruby pommel, the other winding around Yves' neck to pull him into a summer-sweet lip-lock. "Ride me, Yves," she said, and kissed him again. "Fuck me." And again. "Fuck me, now."
Yves dropped his sword. It sunk into the ground up to the hilt. He squeezed the rose-colored thigh rubbing against him, relishing the feel of SB's lithe but steely frame. He urgently reached for SB's groin, yearning to squeeze something else—and poked SB in the pussy.
The bishi and the dickgirl yelped in shock and surprise, and glared at each other before spluttering embarrassed giggles and snickers. "Sorry, I'm so sorry." Yves blushed beet red. "Totally forgot."
SB waggled the pommel of her sword. "It's over here, Sherlock." She plucked it up, and proffered the pink scimitar to Yves. She pouted and rocked her hips. The longing look she gave him could have raised the dead. "Would you make a man out of me?"
Yves took up the oversized scimitar, heard SB's gasp as he gripped the polished quartz handle. He marveled at the sense of power in potentia it possessed, remembering the feeling from when he had held it before, back in the SRU parking lot: an almost drunken empowerment. "How do I?"
SB whimpered her need and drove two shaky fingers into her sex, her burning eyes never leaving his.
Yves was awestruck. Mother of God. "Lie down, sword bearer." SB stumbled and sprawled supine onto the picnic blanket. Yves fell to his knees beside her, clutching her sword. He goggled at the plum-sized ruby in the pommel, glanced down at SB's cleft. No way. No way can this thing fit.
Head lolling, SB spread her legs and parted her flush labia with trembling hands. "Please," she said, unabashed.
I can't believe this. Yves' head swam. I can't believe this is happening, that I'm doing this. He brought the sword-pommel close to SB's cleft. I can't believe this is making me so God-damned, mother-fucking horny. "Tomoe," Yves said, his breath haggard. "Tomoe made you like this?"
SB bit her lip and nodded. "She taught me. She taught me how to take it off. Now, please, put it back on." The pommel nudged against SB's mons. She thrashed and sobbed. "Oh, God, put it back in."
Sweat stung Yves' eyes. "Tomoe's okay with this?" Yves swabbed the sweat with his forearm. "With us?"
SB's laughter was faint and dazed. "I hope not. I hope she's jealous as Hell, of you as much as she is me." Her fingers fell away from her sex. "She's watching us, you know. Right now. A hundred years ago. A thousand years from now. So she'd better be jealous."
She brushed a golden lock of Yves' hair behind his ear, then tipped her head back and shouted at the sky loud enough to make Yves flinch and pull the sword back. "You hear me, out there? You see me, Tomoe?" Her cry was triumphant, not angry. "It's me. I'm the one! Not Ursula, not Galatea, not Raspberry, and it sure as shit ain't gunna be you! I'm the one," she said again, her tone softening. She pressed a palm against Yves' cheek, her smile as rapt as it was wicked.
"I'm the one who gets to fuck Yves." Her fingers dropped away from his face and wrapped around Yves' hand. She guided him down until the scimitar's bulging pommel nestled into her sex. "Do it, Yves." She luxuriated beneath him, hips pumping as her nether lips flowered to accommodate the pommel-stone. "It's time.
"It's finally our time."
Yves applied pressure to the pommel, felt the resistance of SB's most tender flesh. SB's fingers trembled over his. She spread the petals of her sex with her other hand. "Yves," she breathed, and opened herself to him.
His heart slamming in his chest, Yves pushed down on the rubicund pommel. SB clawed his chest, kicked against the blanket. "Yves!" Her labia enfolded the pommel. Pungent nectar drizzled around the hilt, the blade towering above the both of them. She led him to angle the scimitar down.
"Deeper, Yves."
Balancing the weight of the scimitar delicately in his hands, he eased the hilt in. Yves realized he wasn't breathing. SB screamed his name and threw her arms around his neck. She curled and huddled beneath his chin. The sword slipped further into SB's core and Yves felt a subtle shift in the contours of the rose girl's body. She felt more sleek, angular, and hard against him. Between his fingers, the scimitar began to burn.
Even though Yves hovered only inches away, even though Yves watched agog as it happened, even though Yves' hands were wrapped around the scimitar as it coarsened and thickened, the exact moment of transition—the moment where Yves could say, before it was her sword, and now it was her cock—escaped him, or maybe never truly occurred. One minute Yves was fucking an Amazon with the hilt of her own sword, the next he was jacking off a dickgirl with the biggest prick on the planet.
The potential power locked in SB's scimitar was a flickering candle compared to the flamethrower of her cock. Yves adapted to her size quickly, using the hollows of his palms more than his fingers to tease and squeeze her shaft. SB convulsed and groaned with each stroke. "Yes. God. Yes. God! Ye—No. Wait. Wait!" Yves threw his hands in the air, dragging one last shuddery cry from SB.
"Jesus Christ," Yves growled, standing with fists clenched. "I want to make you cum." He bared his teeth in a mirthless, horny leer. "Is that so much to ask?"
"I need you," SB said in an alto voice so deep it bordered on baritone. She rolled over onto her stomach, the pillar of her erection forcing her up on all fours. "I need you inside me." She scooted backward, pressed her ass against his groin until their balls touched. "And you know what they say, Yves." She threw him a shameless smile over her shoulder. "Ladies first."
Yves squat down behind her, his knees locked tight about SB's thighs. He loomed over her, bending down to kiss the sweet-and-salty, sports-drink sweat droplets off her brawny back, making her shiver. "What about lube?" he asked between kisses.
SB arched her back and rocked her hips in silent response. Her skin was satin against his chest, giving him another serious case of gooseflesh. His dick slid across the crack of her ass. Her cheeks were solid muscle but his shaft glided between them. Yves moaned and pressed his face into the sheaves of cotton-candy dreadlocks trailing the nape of her neck.
"No need," SB said, grinding her ass over his groin and her back across Yves' chest. She felt pillowed in luscious oil. "Not with the vitrum. Not with a goo girl, or even a goo dickgirl. Now fuck me." She bent up and back at an inhuman angle to plant an open-mouthed kiss on Yves' forehead. "Fuck me."
After almost three hours of non-stop flirting and foreplay, banter and battle, Yves needed no such encouragement. He was already reaching back, aiming the head of his cock at the bud of SB's anus. "Yes," SB whispered, relaxing. She reclined her head on her folded arms, her ass bobbing between Yves' thighs. "Yes."
"Yes," Yves hissed, and penetrated. SB's passage was tight but supple, forcing Yves' foreskin back but accepting the sensitive, exposed head of his prick, bathing it in a snug, delicious heat. "My God," Yves said, pressing his chin into her shoulder, feeling her whole body quake beneath him. "You're incredible." Yves slithered into her.
A single, hiccupping sob burst from SB's lips before she bit down on her fist. Yves started a slow rhythm, pumping the first few inches of his cock in and out of her in time with the low waves lapping the nearby shore. SB moaned after each stroke. "Mm. Mm. Mm—more!" Her fist popped out of her mouth. "More, dammit!" She rocked back on her elbows and knees in time with Yves' next forward thrust. Yves' dick sank into her ass until her balls slapped against his.
"Whoa-fuck," Yves said. SB's innermost nectar clutched his shaft. He withdrew, then drove forward. "Oh, wow." He built up a strong, lunging rhythm. "Oh, hot damn."
"Oh, thank fucking God," SB said, an obscene smile blooming across her face as she readied herself for some serious reaming.
Yves hugged himself tight to SB's back, stretching his neck to mutter in her ear, "Nuh uh. No rest for you." The sensuous, torrid friction of her core around his cock threatened to drive him mad. He bucked and reamed and bit her shoulder. SB slammed her fist between her teeth in and screamed. The juice of wild strawberries, so tart it was almost bitter, trickled around Yves tongue. He pulled away long enough to growl at SB, his teeth stained maraschino-red. "You are gunna cum so fucking hard."
SB craned her neck—"Wha'?"—but Yves' pounded into her as strong and steady as the crashing surf and she flopped onto the picnic blanket, cross-eyed and keening.
Her helpless pleas of pleasure triggered a rising pressure within Yves' groin. The urge to pump his pelvis became an imperative. Yves bit down again, wrapped his arms around SB, and hauled the two of them up together onto their haunches with his next thrust, his deepest yet. SB threw her arms wide. "OhmyfuckingGod—Yves!"
Yves' slipped his arms down and around SB's waist and pinioned her prick. "So hard," he promised her, his dick buried in her ass, his hands stroking the length of SB's massive member. "So fucking hard."
SB tried to protest, "B-but…" Yves stroked down on her cock while plunging into her ass and she could only wail his name, again and again.
"I know," Yves soothed, but would not relent. "Nanomek, I know. But don't worry." He stroked and plunged. "You feel so good, SB, I can't hold back." The pressure and tension focusing in Yves' groin began to crest. "And if I am going to cum…" He swirled one hand around the base of her shaft while pushing two fingertips into the wide slit atop the head of SB's dick. "Then so are you."
They came together in a torrent of release. Yves lurched and spurted deep within SB. The rose dickgirl sobbed and spewed a geyser of seminal fluid high over their heads. She fell backward against him, he collapsed into her. They kissed and panted and held each other close.
The intimate and glorious afterglow lasted about ten seconds before they were both spattered head-to-toe in a downpour of piping hot strawberry jam as SB's meliae jism fell to Earth.
The paperboy pelted down the narrow steps to the Epsilon Sorority House basement, satchel of soggy newspapers bouncing off his flat, newsprint-smudged ass. The pizza guy and Eddie followed close behind on the single-file stairway. The cable guy, his work-clothes little more than strips of cloth stuck to his sticky skin, hesitated at the top of the stair, set his jaw, turned and stood his ground.
Eddie poked his head back up the wood-paneled stairway, his face a blotchy patchwork of lipstick, bites, bruises, and vaginal juices. "C'mon, man! We don't have time."
"You guys go on," the cable guy said, his voice flat. The hordes of horny E-Z sorority sisters searching for them in other parts of the house sounded muffled but were getting closer. "It's too late for me." He adjusted himself. "And I can buy you a couple of minutes."
Eddie squinted up. The cable guy stood rigid, but Eddie could not read his body-language on his butt. "What the Hell, man?"
"I have erectile dysfunction," the cable guy answered in that same flat tone.
The pizza guy and the paperboy crowded Eddie at the stairwell's bottom. "Could've fooled me," the pizza guy said as the paperboy looked up, puzzled.
The cable guy sagged. "No, it's true. It's just not something I talk about. Even got a prescription for it. Never thought I'd need it, but I put one in my wallet, just in case." The rampaging Easies were close enough to pick out individual voices. The cable guy called over the rising noise, "Remember when I fell back on stairs, when we were headed for the second floor?"
"Oh my God," Eddie whispered.
The paperboy shrugged. "What?"
"I took it," called the cable guy. He adjusted himself again and stepped into the upper hall. "So get going."
The paperboy shouted from the bottom of the stairwell. "Took one what?"
"Viagra," Eddie said, his face ashen. "He took a Viagra pill. His hard-on'll last another three hours, or until his heart stops, whichever comes—uh, happens—first."
The pizza guy blinked back tears. "I'll never forget you, man."
The paperboy choked back rage. "You selfish bastard."
Eddie ran back up the stairs, grabbed the stairwell door. The cable guy took a few more steps into the hallway. Somewhere down the upper hall, a girl cried, "There he is!" Eddie and the cable guy exchanged a knowing glance. "Look at that, he's still hard," gloated another girl, "and just standing there." The cable guy nodded.
Eddie slammed the door to the stairwell shut, trapping the cable guy in the upper hall. He battered the doorknob until it he heard the mechanism inside crack. He hobbled back down the stairway, cradling his throbbing fist, where the pizza guy and delivery boy looked on in horror under a single, bare light-bulb. "Keep moving," Eddie ordered.
"What are we looking for?" the paperboy asked, casting about. An unfinished cement corridor and assorted basement clutter stretched in either direction.
"Storm cellar door," Eddie answered. "A huge-ass building like this has got to have a storm shelter. Right?"
The pizza guy nodded his agreement, then glanced up. Something thumped against the door at the top of the stair. "Did they get the extinguisher again?" The thump developed a steady rhythm and the pizza guy paled. "Oh, shit. That's his ass. C'mon kid." He clapped the paperboy on the shoulder. "Let's not waste the time he bought us." He led the paperboy down the left-hand side.
Eddie picked his way over steamer trunks and boxes of bric-a-brac to the nearest doorway: laundry room. Frilly under-things hung everywhere, a panty-raid mother load. Eddie shuddered and moved on, the hallway growing darker as he moved away from the stairwell. "You guys find anything?"
"Storage closet," called the paperboy.
"World's largest collection of old Cosmo mags," said the pizza guy.
Eddie found the next door. He rattled the rusty knob. "Please, God," he muttered, testing the door with his shoulder, "don't tell me we got all this way and the storm cellar's locked."
The paperboy's voice drifted down the corridor. "What the fuck is that?"
Eddie spun. The paperboy and the pizza guy stood at an open door at the far end of the corridor. They were bathed in a pale green light. "What's going on?" Eddie asked, hustling over as fast as he could.
"Is it," the pizza guy wondered, staring into the doorway. "Is it even real?"
Oh, no, Eddie thought. He heard the flickering buzz of florescent lighting as he approached. Light shone from the doorway ahead, casting scintillating motes of lime-colored light over every surface in the hallway. Please, no. He reached his two companions as the paperboy took his first step into the room. Eddie peeked around him. One look was all he needed.
The paperboy started, "Maybe it's just a sta—" but Eddie yanked him back.
"It's not," Eddie hissed. "Don't touch it. Don't go near it. And whatever you do, don't point your dick at it."
"All right, all right." The paperboy massaged his shoulder, then narrowed his eyes at Eddie. "But you know something. Something you're not telling us."
Eddie blocked the doorway and the contents of the room beyond. "It doesn't matter. Either way, we've got to get out of here, right?"
The pizza guy moved to the paperboy's side. "You've been here the longest, and I just realized you never told us how you got here." He folded his arms, making them dance with flecks of green light. "So what's your story, Eddie?"
"I don't have a story," Eddie insisted. His eyes grew accustomed to the eldritch illumination. "I'm just Eddie. And trust me, I have no fucking idea what's—the storm door."
The pizza guy blinked. "Say what?"
"Behind you," Eddie said, pointing. Now that his vision had adjusted, he could see the short stairway leading to a canted metal door. "It's right there. Guys, we're getting out of here."
The pizza guy turned. "Holy shit. You're right. We made it!" He marched up the stairs.
"I'm still a virgin," the paperboy insisted.
Eddie rolled his eyes. "Only in the strictest sense."
"Yeah," the pizza guy said, pushing on the door, "you've done things today that'd make Bill Clinton blush. Or give you a medal." The door creaked and moaned as metal strained against cement. "Eddie, give me a hand with this."
Eddie hopped up the stairs. The pizza guy shoved one side of the storm door. A sliver of light zigzagged down the stairs as the heavy metal door shifted half an inch before falling back. "It was just held by a sliding bolt," the pizza guy laughed, "but it's heavy as Hell."
Eddie shouldered up against the other side of the door. He turned to the pizza guy. "On the count of three?"
"Sure," the pizza guy answered, "but we're, you know, buck naked."
"So?" said Eddie. He gave the pizza guy a celebratory punch on the shoulder. "We're outta here!"
The paperboy mounted the foot of the stair. "Hurry up, guys, that thing in there's giving me the creeps and, well, a boner."
"One," Eddie said, shifting his weight. He grinned like an idiot.
"Two." The pizza guy tested his handhold on the door.
Eddie breathed deep. "Three!" He pushed.
Both sides of the door flew open, hinges squealing and sparks flying. Eddie and the pizza guy belly-flopped onto the grass. Eddie squinted in the sudden flare of sunlight until a long shadow fell over him, coasting wide to cover a huge swath of the lawn, as if cast by an encroaching alien starship.
"Oh, hello, Eddie. You've made a friend, I see. That's good."
Eddie punched the ground. "No, no, no." He turned his head. "I was so close."
Red Mary Jane jelly clogs skipped through the grass, stopping inches away from his eyes. "Aw, I'm sorry, Eddie. Was your friend close, too?" Eddie looked up at a pair of legs the color of a cherry creamsicle. "Don't you two worry. I'll help you finish."
Black Cherry swooped in. Eddie's stomach dropped. She flipped him over onto his back with one wing claw, pinned the pizza guy's arms to the ground with the other.
The pizza guy glared, murder in his eyes. "What did you do, Eddie?"
Black Cherry clucked, poking and prodding the pizza guy as if inspecting ripening fruit. A pair of long, black, braided hair extensions dangled from one of her hands.
The pizza guy hissed, "What. Did. You. Do?"
"Nothing." Eddie choked back tears. "I did nothing. I…I showed up for work."
"And I'm so glad you did, Eddie," Black Cherry said. She stood up, hands on hips, chest outthrust. "Because I'm starved."
"What the Hell's goin' on?" The paperboy tromped up the storm cellar stairs and into the sun before his eyes nearly popped out of his head. "Oh, fuck me."
Black Cherry tipped her head, the miniature pair of wings above her ears pricking up. "Okay!"
"So," SB said, wringing the last of the strawberry spooge from her hair, "all that high-minded talk about 'existential monogamy' is really just a rationalization of your fetish for—"
"For mutual, simultaneous orgasm," Yves said, nodding, "yes." He shimmied the picnic blanket over his butt, hoping it would serve as an impromptu towel. Instead, Yves got the strangest impression that he was polishing his own ass with a chamois. "Although I prefer to think that my fetish partakes in my philosophy, rather than one being the reason for the other. I don't buy into the idea of the whole…" He made chopping motions with his hand. "Separating the mind from the body thing. Is that bad?"
"I can think of more selfish fetishes than wanting to cum together," SB leered, ogling Yves' derriere.
Yves returned a smirk. "Unless you can shrink that thing between your legs down a few—dozen—notches, you ain't getting any of this." He dropped the blanket and slapped his ass.
"But it’s sooo shiny!"
"The palm sisters and their ten lovely assistants are itching for another go," Yves said, gesturing lewdly with both hands.
SB pouted, "Today's been a parade of ass, each juicier than the last, and it's all hands-off."
"I never said anything about hands off," Yves laughed.
SB hummed thoughtfully, furled the fingers of her right hand, and a knurled, pink dildo sprouted to fill them.
Yves' cock twitched. "Can you feel with that thing?"
"If I leave it unlocked," SB answered, "yeah." She sighed and the dildo zipped out of existence. "But it isn't the same."
Yves bent over to retrieve his sword, taking care not to flaunt his rear end in SB's face. The pale sword had struck a flat rock where he had dropped it, slicing through the stone and into the earth beneath. Yves pulled the sword from the ground and the stone crumbled to powder. He inspected the bare blade. "How do I clean this thing?"
"Liminal zero friction coefficient," was all SB said.
"I don't clean this thing," Yves translated. "Would you make me a scabbard?" He turned to her. "Do you have enough nanomek?"
"Normally, no," SB said, and pressed her palms together in a dreamy-genie gesture. "With most guys, the nanomek-sperm exchange rate is strictly two-for-one. But with guys like you and Dee?" Her hands parted. A curving, coral-colored scabbard grew in the space between them.
She tossed Yves the scabbard. He caught it and sheathed the pale sword in a single, lightning-quick motion. SB gaped at him like a crushing schoolboy, then licked her tongue across her teeth. "Mm. For men like you and Dee, meliae offer ten-for-one sales." SB bent to retrieve her dress, making sure Yves got an eyeful of strawberry-banana flavored ass. "Need anything else?" She feigned fumbling with the dress, her rump wobbling in the air.
"A new car."
SB pushed her cock to one side so she could gaze up at him upside-down through her legs. "Do you have any idea," she said slowly, "how many more times you'd have to cum inside me to create enough nanomek to make a car? Especially considering your cum-together fetish?"
"My weekends are free for the next few months," Yves confessed. "If I can save the world from Cherry Cupcake, that is. Tomoe would have to stick to her voyeurism, though."
SB's upside-down smile upturned into a frown. "Yves, there's something we need to talk about."
"Yeah, I figured." He took up the picnic blanket. "It's not even wet. SB, can you reshape something after you've made it?"
"Sure. But, Yves…"
"Too bad it's plaid."
"Color's not a problem." SB moved close and took his hand. "Quit stalling. How much do you know already?"
["…Gawain killed Yvain, and Dee will kill you…"]
"I know the punch line." Yves bundled the sword and scabbard in the blanket, did not like the way it looked, and started unwrapping it. "But I also know that Dee changed the joke. Cherry's supposed to be the spurned, older woman, like a fairytale witch-queen or something." Yves tried wrapping the sword again but gave up halfway. "Hell, Cherry wants to be the spurned, older woman, but she can't do that, not without a time machine." He blinked in alarm. "I don't have to worry about time travel, do I?"
"Not unless Mata Hari shows up," SB glowered.
Yves heard the edge in SB's voice and dropped the subject. "Cherry wants to be something she's not, and it's driven her batshit insane. Out of her gourd." Where had he heard that before? He shook off the reverie. "She wasn't her master's first," he continued. "She…" The blanket unraveled. The pale sword and coral scabbard clattered to the ground. "No."
SB moved closer, embracing him, trapping his arms. "I think you've got the full picture now."
["…No wonder that Black Cherry twat is out of her gourd…"]
"No." His mouth soured with the taste of copper. He tried to pull away but SB held him fast. "Let go."
"This is one time you need to separate your mind from your body, Yves," she said, refusing to budge. "You have to think it and remember it, without reliving or becoming it."
["…'Master' is gay…"]
Yves lost all control. He flailed and howled, kicked and swore. SB took all the abuse and would not let go. "What are you feeling, Yves?" she demanded, "What are you feeling right now?"
The word welled up and he spat it out. "Rage." Once named, it did not feel as deadly and wrong. "This is rage."
"'Rage,'" SB whispered, dropping back. "'Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles'."
Yves rediscovered his center. He slung his sword over one shoulder, the spun-lace insulate blanket over the other. "What would you have me do?"
Relief washed over SB's face. "Someone needs to die today, Yves."
I don't ask for much,
I only want your trust,
And you know it don't come easy.
—Ringo Starr (with George Harrison),
It Don't Come Easy
"…Well, Dee?" Eurydice was asking, punctuating each word with a surreptitious, molten kiss on the tip of his dick, sparking jolts of afterglow. His hips twitched, trying to turn aside out of instinct, but Eurydice clamped her thighs around his knees and held fast. "Is it time?"
Raspberry slathered Dee's chest with sex. Her ass slid over his nipples as she craned her neck to leer at him, her elfin ears wiggling in an expression both girlish and incredibly lewd. He could see Eurydice through Raspberry's lavender, translucent tummy. The green girl was gazing cross-eyed at his cock, coaxing his erection skyward with little kisses and burning exhalations.
He glanced up, his head pivoting in Tomoe's lap. Her face, framed in a mane of raven hair long enough to tickle Dee's nose, loomed high above honey-brown breasts. She winked, gave his neck a little squeeze with her legs, and his head was trapped in a tree-trunk vise.
CeeCee stood beside her, contemplating a plucked sunflower, its saucer-sized head filled with thousands of sticky seeds. Her mouth yawned and she popped the entire flower in her mouth, seeds, petals, three-foot stalk and all. She munched, looked about as if searching for something else to eat until her eyes fell on Dee's crotch, and she mimed an expression of dawning discovery.
Eurydice gave a polite cough. "I said, 'Is it time?'"
Tomoe, CeeCee, and Raspberry stared at Dee. A gentle breeze stirred the flowerbed. Dee gulped, "Um. Maybe?"
Dee felt Eurydice stiffen, then relax. "Raz," she commanded, "shut that man up," and sword-swallowed his cock.
"Yes, ma'am!" Raspberry saluted and slipped her slick ass up Dee's neck, over his chin, and onto his face.
Raspberry's orchid-petal pussy touched Dee's lips and he saw stars. The honey of Raspberry's sex was tarter and sweeter than the finest rhubarb pie. He was helpless not to eat. Raspberry shifted her plastic-perfect ass against Dee's face until she rode him cheek-to-cheek.
"So that's what a solid tongue feels like," she said. "Not bad, but CeeCee is bet…Oh." Dee found her clitoris "Oh, h-holy shit." She gaped down at Dee through her own gelled flesh. "Oh, where the fuck have you been all my life you fucking bastard!" She ground down, swearing a blue streak while her pussy painted a purple swath across Dee's chin. "I ain't never," she panted, "ever standing up again, swear to fucking God." She threw her head back, studding Tomoe's chest with amethysts. "Nng—fuck—cumming—again." She kicked and gnashed her teeth, falling backward between Tomoe's breasts. "Bastard. Motherfucker. More."
Eurydice's throat pulsed and thrummed around his cock—always swallowing, swallowing, swallowing—while Raspberry's succulent nectar and acid tongue rained down upon him. Eurydice raked her fingers over Dee's ribs, squashed her breasts around his thighs. The barrage of sex sent Dee over the edge and into a screaming orgasm.
Dee's cries bubbled through her inner gel and Raspberry bolted upright. "Whoa!" She eyed Eurydice. "Hey, did you just make him cum?" Eurydice only grinned and giggled around Dee's shaft as she suckled the dregs of his climax down. "That's two for you. In a row. And nuffin' for me."
"I'm the one just standing here," CeeCee said.
Tomoe cleared her throat. "I've got jelly all over my boobs. Hell of a show, though, girl. Damn."
"I'm not done yet," Raspberry pouted, rocking slowly. She folded her arms. "And the lime's bogarting all the baby-gravy."
The seal imprisoning Dee's dick in Eurydice's throat gurgled and she pulled her mouth free, tonguing the tip of his cock, catching the last gob of cum as his glans escaped her lips. Dee shocked and shuddered. "Pfft," Eurydice dismissed, "he's got plenty. Don't you, baby?"
Dee, his face still buried in raspberry heaven, tried to protest but only managed, "Bff."
"'Course ya do. Besides…" Eurydice shrugged, her syrupy lips descending toward Dee's captive prick, her gaze rolling up to stay locked with Raspberry's. "I'm better at this than you are."
Raspberry froze, then purpled. She rocked forward, peeling away from Dee's jam-plastered face, until she and the green girl were nose to nose. "What did you just say?"
Dee said, "Oh, shit."
"You heard me," Eurydice purred before treating herself to a mouthful of half-hard cock. "'Oo canth handle the dich. Wah'ch dis…" She deep-throated Dee with a greedy hum.
Raspberry wrenched Dee's dick from Eurydice's mouth. "Dee," she said as Dee writhed and gasped. "Have you ever noticed Miss Cum-Chugger here has only one blowjob Technique?" Her lavender fingers wormed around his lime-lubed root.
"There's more than one?" Dee panted, dick responding to Raspberry's ministrations. Two fingers, he thought, she's just using two fingers. Raspberry pushed and pinched. Exhausted, still in afterglow, Dee found himself growing hard. I think I'm in trouble.
"Thousands," Raspberry hissed, wrapping her hand around his reborn erection. She went cockeyed as her lids slid shut. "Jesus fuck that's solid." Her thumb stroked his shaft, never touching the crown of his glans. "This is no dick, this is an honest-to-shit, solid fucking rock."
"Nothing tops the Bowling Ball Through Eight Feet of Garden Hose Technique," muttered Eurydice. Dee thought he heard an undercurrent of triumph in her petulance and knew he was in trouble.
Raspberry sighed, chewed her lip, and rolled her palm over the head of Dee's dick like she were polishing a doorknob. "I know limes've got the greatest cunts, but nobody, nowhere has a mouth like mine."
Deep trouble.
Eurydice tipped her head, meeting Dee's anxious gaze. He had never seen a more wicked smile in his life. "Go through them all, Raz," she said, "I'm sure Dee'll tell us whose Technique is best."
Deep, deeeep trouble. "She's kidding, Raz," Dee said. Eurydice cocked her brow and angled Dee's dick up toward Raspberry's mouth with a fingertip. "Eurydice, please" he said, "tell Raz that you're kid—" The lavender girl eased her ass back and Dee was smothered in steamy, creamy raspberry pie. "Dnf."
"Quiet, kid," Raspberry growled at him, "I'm getting ready for work." Her hand slipped down his shaft, her thumb shivering across the very tip of his dick, toying with the extremely sensitive slit. "Gotta prime the pump with some yummy nummy pre-cummy, then I'm gunna milk Mine like we're goin' down to cow town."
Dee jerked under Raspberry's electric touch. Tomoe squeezed her legs and reached down to massage Dee's shoulders, a tenderness reinforced by an iron grip. In his weakened state, her touch proved immobilizing. "Aw, poor baby," Tomoe said. "So tense. Your life sure must suck."
"Actually," Eurydice said, fist against her cheek, watching enrapt. Raspberry flexed her jaw and brought her mouth down around her thumb, scraping her teeth across the ridge of Dee's glans and slurping up the strings of sticky pre-ejaculate she teased from his cock with her fingers. "I think it's about to blow."
A fluttering tongue replaced Raspberry's teasing thumb as she screwed her mouth onto Dee's knob, her hand swiveling around his shaft. Her jaw was muscular, her teeth sharp. Dee felt the sweet sting of flowing precum grow stronger. Raspberry groaned in depraved delight. She pressed her ass atop the bridge of his nose and humped his chin, coating his face and neck with runnels of purple honey. She slobbered up his cock in earnest, her hand slick around its root.
Dee lanced his tongue into her sex. A muffled, guttural chuckle rose in her lavender throat. She gyrated in furious little circles, grinding her clit against his chin. Her lips latched around Dee's glands, her fist blurred around his shaft, pumping faster and sucking harder until Dee's orgasm crested and crashed through him.
Raspberry cackled as Dee came, her face split into a jack-o'-lantern grin. She aimed his prick at her gaping mouth and painted her tongue and lips with spurts of silver. Her thighs clenched and relaxed around his head, aftershocks of her own orgasm. She smeared his spunk around her lips with her fingers, ran her tongue over her teeth, and laughed with a mouth full of cum. "Ha! Now I can get started."
Dee's unbelieving outcry—"Wff?"—was swallowed by her pussy and his deflating dick vanished down her throat.
A few years ago, one of Dee's ex-girlfriends got curious about something she had read on the Internet and chewed on a couple of curiously strong breath-mints before giving him a blowjob. After a surprisingly pleasant first thirty seconds or so, Dee spent the next fifteen minutes hopping around her apartment with a wet washcloth in his crotch. Galatea's seltzer-blowjob had been as intense but ticklish and sparkling.
None of it had prepared him for the full onslaught of a Raspberry deep-throating. Dee's dick could not have felt more stimulated if Raspberry had chewed an entire tin of breath-mints, chased them down with a few pouches of Pop Rocks and a liter of cola, and then hooked herself up to a car battery for good measure.
Dee lurched, breaking free of Tomoe's leggy headlock, arms windmilling, his erection resurging just as fast. Raspberry whooped like a cowgirl and rode him like a mechanical bull, legs wrapped around Dee's head, hands clinched around the base of his cock. Dee sat upright, Raspberry dangling from his neck, the world's most fuckable albatross. Her tits squashed against his abdomen and her face dug into his crotch. She released his dick from her throat and crowed, "Yippie-kay-yay! How'd you like that, motherfucker?"
"Wow." Dee teetered, thunderstruck, between shock and awe. "Wuh…Wow."
"What the Hell did you do to him?" Eurydice demanded, still glued to Dee's legs but quivering, her gel-flesh rocked by Dee's twitches and kicks.
Raspberry shuddered. "My mouth ain't even halfway done nanogasming, thanks to Dee's super-spooge." She pushed up with her hands and cinched her legs tight around Dee's head, ramming her streaming sex back into his mouth, and prostrating him back onto the ground and into Tomoe's lap. "That was just a few thousand nanogasms," she said, massaging Dee's hard dick with both hands. "Let's see what Mine thinks of a million of 'em."
Her lips curled into a salacious snarl. Raspberry scarfed up Dee's entire cock, drenching it in a tempest of nanogasmic gel. She encircled his root with her fingers. She disgorged slowly, pumping down with her hands while pulling up with her mouth, lips and tongue lazing over every inch of his dick as she withdrew. She sucked on the head, a demented Lolita with a well-loved lollipop, before gobbling his cock down for another slow pump-and-pull.
"Holy shit," Tomoe said as Raspberry's pump-and-pulls grew faster and sloppier, "I ought to be taking notes."
"Jesus wept," Eurydice said, head bobbing as she followed the action like a spectator at a professional ping pong ball championship. "Raz, you'd stop if Dee said the safeword, right?" Raspberry's slavering filled the field with syrupy slurch noises. "Right?"
Dee gurgled, lost in the sensorial storm of Raspberry's cosmic sixty-nine. He wrapped his arms around the lavender ass astride his face, kissed her clitoris into his mouth, and clung for dear life. Raspberry's eyes rolled back into her head. She went berserk, pump-and-pulling in double time, then treble.
Dee's onrushing orgasm nearly smashed his brain to bits. He arced in a grand mal seizure ellipse and he came, hard and wild, hips bucking. Raspberry neither slowed nor skipped a beat. She pump-and-pulled, milking Dee through spurt after uncontrollable spurt.
"And that," Raspberry gasped when she finally allowed Dee's dick to flop free of her throat, "is the 'Sucking the Chrome off a Caddy' Technique." She wiped her oozy mouth with the back of her hand, trembling and giddy with nanogasm. "Well, that's one down."
"That counts as two," Eurydice scolded, "and that makes us even. So it's time for Dee to fess up." She peered around Raspberry's tummy. Raspberry threw Dee a harrowing glance over her shoulder and bore her full weight onto his face.
"Dee," Eurydice said, ignoring the squishy sounds rising up from Raspberry's crotch as she rode him. "What kind of man are you, Chrome or Bowling Ball?"
Dee slowly raised one hand, fingers splayed. "Ffth."
Raspberry frowned. "Wuzzat mean?" she asked. Dee's arm drooped down into a nearby flower patch.
"Dee pled the Fifth Amendment," Eurydice sighed, shaking her head. "He's not going to tell us."
Raspberry threw her hands in the air. "Hasn't he seen any porn before?"
"Yeah," Eurydice said, propping herself up by the elbows. "Sure. Lots."
"Oh." Raspberry perked up, bouncing atop Dee's forehead. "So he knows what happens when the guy says he can't decide." Emerald eyes met amethyst.
"Tag team," the green and lavender girls sang.
"Come on down, Raz," Eurydice said, sitting up on her knees, straddling Dee's thighs. "Dee's gunna want to see this."
"Okay." Raspberry scooted around and knelt by Dee's side, then glanced at the surrounding girls. "But no one better call dibs on his face. I've got squatter's rights."
Dee blinked, eyelashes sticky with essence of raspberry. "Guys, wait." Eurydice and Raspberry shared shy smiles, bent toward one another. "I wasn't really thinking…" The two girls kissed, a tentative brushing of parted lips. "That is, I didn't really mean…" Eurydice pulled away, eyes heavy lidded and downcast, but her smile was sly and her mouth met Raspberry's again. Green fingers wound through orchid hair. "Um, at least, I don't think I really meant…"
"Dude," said Tomoe, staring, as Raspberry and Eurydice's delicate kisses lingered and emboldened. "Shut up."
Dee swallowed. "I'm trying." The green and lavender girls sighed and cooed and kissed open-mouthed. "But it's like I don't know how." Purple and jade tongues danced. The translucency of their gelled cheeks heightened Dee's impression of bearing witness to something remarkably tender and intimate. His manhood rose to the occasion.
"Wow," Dee said. Raspberry slid her arms around Eurydice's shoulders. Their deep soul kiss stretched longer and longer without pause for breath. "Oh, wow." Together, kiss unbroken, the green and lavender girls slowly bowed their heads down toward Dee's rising dick. "Uh. Wait." They nuzzled Dee's glans between their chins, their mouths working against each other in languorous, drawn-out smooches, chewing on each other's tongues. "Wait a minute."
The stealthy caresses of their necks against Dee's cock set his pulse pounding. Their elastic gel-flesh gave against his dick. His glans slid upward and was trapped between their lower jaws, a tight but oh-so-soft fit. Dee fell dead quiet.
Eurydice shivered and moaned in the sudden silence. Raspberry squirmed, as if infected by the thrill in Eurydice's flesh. Without unlocking their lips, they inched downward, and Dee's dick was in their kiss.
At first, the opposing suction of Eurydice and Raspberry's lips and the liquid lashing of their tongues was so gentle and luscious it drove Dee mad. He trembled with the impulse to feel more but was too overcome by the sensation to move. The green and lavender girl's eyes flew open at Dee's first spasm within their mouths, but their startled gazes soon dimmed, eyes hazing over. They mashed their mouths together, kissing harder.
Dee groaned and tipped his hips up, desperate for the double-suckle. Eurydice keened, her jellied dreadlocks flowed down her back like green icing from a cake left out in the rain. Beaded sweat, sparkling like precious amethyst, streaked Raspberry's flesh. The two girls' suckling became ravenous and their faces lost focus.
The tension of yet another approaching orgasm welled up within him. The pressure building in his abdomen and groin was so strong, the sensations surrounding his dick so strange, it made Dee dizzy, his thoughts swimmy and unsure. Raspberry and Eurydice devoured one another in the ferocity of their kiss. As if in a dream, Dee felt their mouths melt and merge into a vortex of need and greed and velvet and lightning and—cumming, cumming, cumming—He gushed in a shattering climax, his body jolting as he came, over and over and out of control.
The green and lavender girls slithered apart, tongues and mouths ungluing, their runny-honey faces trailing sticky tendrils. They splat down on either side of him, gulping and crooning as they reformed. "We," Raspberry wheezed, "we just—woo—we just invented a new Technique." A cascade of nanogasm transported her into giggling, helpless pleasure. " Chrome—ha—Chrome Bowling—Ha!—Chrome Bowling Ball—hahaha..."
"So much," Eurydice murmured, planting kisses on Dee's ribs and bellybutton. "You came so fucking much."
A shadow fell over the three of them. They glanced up.
CeeCee's eyes were nothing like the Sun. "And there'd better be plenty left."
Dee draped the crook of his arm over his eyes but did not bother hiding his smile. "Lord all-mighty."
"Yeah," Raspberry said, pulling herself together, arms high and chest outthrust in a glorious, rise-and-shine stretch. "I've got more nanomek in me than ever." She relaxed, one hand falling close to Dee's groin. "But I'm still a virgin."
"Oh, come on," Dee protested.
"I'm serious!" Raspberry cupped his balls. "I need good, hard cherry popping. Real bad." Her fingers stole up his shaft, working their revitalizing magic. "Real soon."
Eurydice sat up and swatted Raspberry's hand away. "Nuh-uh. That's Mine." Her nose twitched. "There's only so much I'm willing to share." She leered up at CeeCee. "Unless you've got a better idea."
Raspberry turned to Dee, her mouth puckered into childlike moue and her eyes wide and innocent. "There's a party in my cunt," she baby-talked, "and everyone's invited."
CeeCee swaggered over behind Eurydice. She placed two big, buttery yellow hands on Eurydice's shoulders of polished jade. Dee was amazed how petite Eurydice appeared beside CeeCee's towering, brick house figure. Combined with the hungry, mischievous glint in the amber woman's eyes, CeeCee reminded Dee more of Galatea at that moment than Eurydice did herself. Seeing the two of them together aroused but disquieted him in a way he could not put his finger on.
Raspberry had taken advantage of Eurydice's distraction and snuck her fingers around Dee's prick again. She sniggered, ears waggling, when she found him halfway hard already. "Attaboy. Just make sure you don't blow your wad over what's about to happen next."
Eurydice reached up and caressed CeeCee's cheek. CeeCee turned her head and kissed the green girl's palm.
"What's going to happen next?" Dee asked.
CeeCee's wet kiss broadened and Eurydice's hand vanished into her mouth. Raspberry's forefinger and thumb clapped around the root of Dee's dick like a cockring. "Don't you dare cum," Raspberry hissed into his ear as Eurydice stretched her other arm up to CeeCee's face. "We want you good to the last drop. And after this, you are not going to want to piss us off."
CeeCee's mouth yawned and Eurydice slid her other hand into it. CeeCee quivered and bent forward, her hands creeping down from Eurydice's shoulders to cosset her breasts. Purls of champagne cream traced over Eurydice's chest and arms. The two meliae presented a phantasmagoric tableau—CeeCee, her head bowed, standing behind Eurydice, sitting with both arms rising straight above her head until they disappeared into CeeCee's mouth—some carnal grotesquery of Hieronymus Bosch or sensual vision of William Blake. Dee felt no fear, only an anxious wonder that, over the past week, he had learned to love. And lust for, Dee admitted to himself as blood rushed into his face and groin. Damn me if Raspberry isn't right. The weirder things get, the hornier I get. What if this is as weird as it gets?
"After what?" Dee asked Raspberry, although he suspected he knew. As weird as it gets? Hardly. Eurydice's arms became sleeved in gold gossamer, her chest wreathed in spirals of Indian yellow gel. I've only just skimmed the surface of the weird. I'm not ready to dive deep, but that's exactly why I want to do it.
"It's time," Eurydice said, standing up into CeeCee's waiting maw, "for you to get a huge helping of Key Lime pie."
Jade arms, inlaid with gold, proceeded down CeeCee's throat as Eurydice rose to her feet. CeeCee's wide neck bulged only a bit. The amber woman rumbled her pleasure. A pale mint green flush bloomed in her chest.
"How does it feel?" Dee asked when Eurydice's elbows melted into CeeCee's mouth.
Eurydice swayed, her eyes dreamy. "Wow." She stood with knees bent and ass pushing against CeeCee's crotch, grinding to some slow inner beat. "So gentle." Gold filigree twisted about her thighs. "Oh, Dee, it's like the slowest, softest orgasm you could ever imagine." CeeCee loomed over Eurydice and the green girl's upper arms dissolved between CeeCee's jaws. "Is this how you felt?" CeeCee wolfed down Eurydice's hair one blade at a time, and Eurydice had to fight giggling and gasping with each chomp. "When I ate you…Ah! I mean, tried to eat you?"
Raspberry's cock-ringing fingers started an idle stroking. "Can't help it," she muttered. "Jeebus, I love this dick."
Dee's heart hammered. "N-no," he answered Eurydice, "not like that."
"Like this?" Raspberry smirked, and enfolded Dee's dick with both hands.
Dee juddered as she jacked him. "Yeah-it-was-a-lot-more-like-that."
Eurydice started to admonish her: "Raz, be goo—Ooh, God." But CeeCee latched onto her head. Eurydice spun around, squashed her curves against CeeCee's marshmallowy substance, her face upturned for a fierce, moaning kiss. Dee heard Eurydice's muffled squeals of delight as she scissor-kicked off the ground, launching the last of herself into CeeCee's absorbing flesh. CeeCee staggered backward, stunned by a meal so eager to be eaten. Her belly bloated. The mint flush plumed her breasts and neck.
Raspberry wrenched her hands away an instant before Dee reached the point of no return. "Nah," she said, cracking her knuckles in pantomime. Dee twinged with denied release. "From now on, you're cumming in our cunts or not at all, got it?"
"You know," Tomoe sighed, relaxing her legs around Dee's head. "I'm starting to feel fifth wheelie." Something snaked through a clump of salmon chrysanthemum to her left. "Hm?" A pointed, opalescent tendril bumped against her knee. "Oh. Hey."
Dee propped himself up, fascinated by the spectacle before him. The mint tint spread across CeeCee's body, transmogrifying all that it touched. Her spongy, cream-flesh jellified, developing a shimmering surface tension of milky green gel. Her belly flattened as internal fluxions redistributed the mass of her meal. Her waist tapered and legs lengthened. Her chest swelled, breasts riding higher and firmer as her shoulders climbed higher. She's ripening, Dee decided, as her hourglass figure ballooned up and out, growing ever taller and more pronounced. The two curviest girls on the planet decided that they weren't curvy enough. Her neck smoothed into an elegant pillar, her regal visage dimpled into a heart-shaped face with a cherubic leer. Loose curls of tea-green hair tumbled down her back. Her canary yellow gemstone eyes darkled into heliodor, the rarest green and golden beryl.
Dee gaped, "Holy shit." The mint girl's smile smoldered. She sauntered up and stood astraddle his hips. Dee bolted, sitting upright. His chin bumped against her knee. "Holy shit." She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and blotted out the Sun. Dee goggled upward from the darkness of a total mammary eclipse. "Hole. Lee. Shit."
"Why, hi," drawled Key Lime Pie.
She knelt over him, sandwiching his legs between her thighs. She bent forward, lips parted, and practically bowled him over with her tits. "Whoops. Glad we're outside." She edged back, caressing the rise of her left breast. Ripples raced ahead of her fingertips. "I'm not exactly door friendly at the moment."
Dee sat up again, squeezed her knee and found his voice. "I want to taste that kiss." Key Lime clucked and blushed the color of a Granny Smith apple. She bowed her head, leaning in. Dee pressed himself into her flesh—cool, firm, scrumptious—and met her lips with his, as gently as he could.
It was the most exquisitely sweet kiss of his life. Key Lime's apple blush flashed down her throat. She whimpered into his mouth, then scrabbled backward. "I came." Her thighs slicked down Dee's legs with nectarous sweat. "I came. Just one kiss and I came."
Dee smiled despite his escalating passion. "Welcome to Eurydice's world, CeeCee."
"She loves you, Dee," Key Lime said. She reached out, hand shaking, and brushed a few ringlets of hair off his forehead. "So much." Her fingers traced the line of his jaw, his neck. "Too much." She pawed at his chest, eyes roving. "I'm frightened."
Raspberry shoved her face between them. "If you hurt CeeCee, Dee, I'll kill you." She did a double take at his rampant erection. "Um. Eventually."
Tomoe twined the black tendril through her fingers. "Hey, Raz." The other end of the tendril trailed off through the flowerbed. "Look-it."
Raspberry's frown flip-flopped before she disappeared behind Dee. "Ooh. Whuzzat?"
Kneeling around his legs, Key Lime glanced down at Dee's dick. "That's…Mine?"
Dee nodded, "It's yours."
She skated up to sit on his thighs, planted her palm over his heart. "Mine."
Dee thought he still heard a slight hesitancy in her voice. He knew how to fix that. "Always," he said.
Key Lime's gel-flesh flushed iridescent hues of green and gold. She rocked forward on her knees, pushed him supine onto the soft green bed. She towered above him, one hand flat against his chest, the other aiming Dee's dick at her dewed sex. "This is Mine," she said, dropped down, and thrust him into her.
Dee arched, every instinct urging him to reciprocate the rhythm of the girl riding him. Key Lime dipped forward, spread her hand over his chest—the span of her fingers as wide as his ribcage—and held him flat. She mewled, gyring in wide circles above him. "Mine, mine, mine." She hunkered downward and enveloped his mouth with a kiss, her breasts overflowing his shoulders, trapping him up to his elbows in plush flesh, and rode faster.
Dee drowned in sex, a full-body fuck. Key Lime scraped her lips over his ear. "Cum," she said, "cum quickly." She sprawled like a leopard above him and he was smothered from his neck to his ankles. "Cum quickly so I can make you cum again." Dee was wreathed with her perfumed breath and intoxicated by her words. "And again." She cradled his head in the hollow of her neck as he trembled and seized. "And again."
His climax was so savage, Dee sobbed with each searing release. Key Lime exulted. "So much! Oh, Dee, you give us so much." She rolled upward to look him in the eye. "You gave Galatea love, you gave Eurydice life, you…" She blinked. "You're still hard."
Dee nodded, chest heaving. "I ask a lot in return."
Green-and-gold gem fire winkled in her eyes. "You're gunna get it." She looked past him. "Raz, come here."
"Mm?" Raspberry popped the black tendril out of her mouth. It shuddered and swooned in her grip.
Key Lime waved one hand in little circles. "Share Dee with me."
Raspberry tossed the tip of the tendril way. Tomoe giggled and sprung after it. "You mean," Raspberry marveled, "I'm finally gettin' laid?" Dee smiled but Key Lime canted her hips, making him groan.
"Uh-huh," Key Lime said, arms outstretched.
"About fuckin' time," Raspberry snarled, leapfrogging over Dee's face and squatting on his chest. "Yves says we're living in an X-rated fairy tale, but I've shoved my cooze at every cock I've come across and didn't get dick." She craned her neck to glare at Key Lime. "If this is porn, it sucks."
"Turn around," said Key Lime, her finger revolving in a little circle.
Raspberry shrugged and hopped about-face, winking at Dee. "Hiya, stud-muffin." The nectar of her sex burned his bellybutton. "Have we fucked you senseless yet?"
"Yes," Dee confessed, "Yes. God, yes." What had Tomoe said? "Going 'demiurgic' totally wiped me out." Raspberry nodded, frowning in mock sympathy, fingertips kissing across his sternum and nipples. His head spun. "But..."
Key Lime bucked against him once, swaddled his cock in the silk furnace of her pussy and bundled his legs in her heavy but giving thighs. "But your nanomek," she said, bucking again. Blood sang in Dee's ears and his erection rose anew. "Won't let you stop cumming. We've got you for as long as we want." Key Lime wrapped an arm around Raspberry and squished the lavender girl against her tall tummy. "Too bad the world's ending tonight," Key Lime purred, "or we'd make you cum for weeks."
Key Lime rocked her body behind Raspberry's. "Instead," Key Lime sighed, "we gotta pump it out." Raspberry swayed in time. "All of it out." The two girls lap-danced above Dee's cock, teasing it to bursting. "All of your cum out in one. Big. Blow."
Note to self. Some corner of Dee's mind was still capable of rational thought. Don't let CeeCee eat Eurydice again.
Raspberry wriggled her shoulders. Key Lime nestled her closer. "Someone's gotta move so I can get laid," Raspberry said, "and no eating or merging or any of that crap. I want," she declared, pointing at Dee's face, "that man's dick." She pointed to her pubis. "In this here cunt, right now, or someone's gunna pay."
Key Lime reached down, wrapped one hand around each of Raspberry's thighs. "I have an idea," she said. She began to ride Dee again, slow and rolling. "Well, CeeCee had the idea first."
Raspberry tipped her head back to look up at the mint goddess. "Whut?"
"It will be just like the Chrome Bowling Ball kiss," Key Lime promised, drawing Raspberry back until the lavender girl's ass slid over Dee's groin and pressed against the delta of Key Lime's crotch. "But with a different pair of lips."
Raspberry's mouth puckered into a haunting smile. "That is so wicked." She wiggled her butt backward. Key Lime's gel-flesh dimpled deeper and deeper around the lavender girl until she seemed to sink sideways. "CeeCee, you've got to eat Lime more often."
Key Lime's surface tension crested and broke around Raspberry in a gentle wave. From her thighs to her midriff, Raspberry slipped behind a curtain of green and gold. Key Lime never stopped her tidal ride but Dee felt a delicious change in pressure around his shaft. Raspberry startled. "Whoa, is that his dick?"
Key Lime sighed, "Mm-hm."
Raspberry's mouth worked in silence while something rounded and firm bumped and rubbed against Dee's dick. Her ass. Her ass inside Key Lime. "It's so hard," Raspberry whimpered. "So fucking hard." She clawed his ribs, dry humping him between the globes of her butt even as Key Lime fucked him. It felt too strange, too much, too good for him to process and he came in a torrent all over Raspberry's ass and into Key Lime's pussy.
Raspberry screeched, "No!" She tore at her hair, head whipping. "In me! He has to cum in me." She thrust herself backward as Dee came. The rushing, gushing around his dick soared. Dee was still in mid-spasm when Raspberry impaled her pussy upon him.
"Again," Raspberry sobbed, and she and Key Lime moved in tandem. "Again-again-again-again."
Dee's dick hardened almost at once. His heart raced, his breath and body burned. Every muscle quaked and although each orgasm felt like his very last, felt like a final, delectable release of the last dregs of his vitality, he knew Key Lime was right; he could do this for weeks, wanted to do this forever. Some athletes lived for the Runner's High. Dee thought he had discovered the Cummer's.
Another orgasm sizzled through him and Raspberry howled, gnashed her teeth and raked his belly. Her rhythm jerked and slowed while Key Lime continued her gentle, endless undulation, a perpetual-motion fucking. Raspberry crashed backward against Key Lime and her body disappeared into the mint wall of gel-flesh with nary a ripple.
Key Lime whickered, orgiastic, and two lavender arms shot out from above her hips. Their grip was iron, their strength irresistible. They hauled Dee up to a sitting position, gathered him into a clinch, and pulled him in.
He knew he was safe. He closed his eyes and let it happen.
The mint gel-flesh pressed around him in a familiar, traveling smooch that spread from his belly up his chest and neck, then over his face and shoulders and around his ribs—but this time it did not end. The body-kiss went on and on, covering every part of him, even behind his ears and up the crack of his butt. When he was immersed in Key Lime's voluptuousness, when the traveling smooch had no place else to go, it just kept kissing and kissing. Not just hungry, but happy. Equal parts love and greed, content and need. A true soul kiss.
Amidst the creamy maelstrom came Raspberry's hot and lithe form. Her chest welded against his, her legs locked behind his back. They were both awash in the deluge of Key Lime's eternal kiss. Her lips met his, her tart tongue darting, and he heard her.
I said I was going to make you cum harder than you ever felt in your life, and I meant it. You ready, solid boy?
Dee nodded, and whispered into her mouth, "Always."
Raspberry took up an opposing beat, moving in counterpoint to the current of Key Lime's kiss and to the rhythm of her sex around him. When Key Lime pumped down on Dee's dick, Raspberry ambled up. When Key Lime rocked up, Raspberry dragged herself down and drove his cock deep into her. Dee thought he would last forever, but the truth was, in the face of a simultaneous, three-meliae, full-body fuck, he lasted about thirty seconds.
Just like a man, all three meliae chorused as Dee came and came until he toppled backward and into the cool air and bright sunlight, insensate.
"Lookin' good, Jo."
Jo Echo woke from her doze in the flowerbed. "Tomoe, right? Unyx said to call you Tomoe."
Tomoe smiled down at her, nodding. Rivers of black hair flowed over her shoulders, spilling down and piling atop Jo's chest. The exotic fabric of Jo's coppery dress, stretched to its limits over what Jo resignedly considered her "newly huge boobs," conducted the tactile sensation of Tomoe's hair kissing across its surface, perhaps even amplified it. The newly huge boobs' newly monstrous nipples stiffened, tenting the material of the dress in a way Jo would find uproarious if she were watching it in a porn flick instead of experiencing it on her own chest. The fiery tingle made her feel powerful yet haywire.
Jo still moped. "I'll never play volleyball again."
Unyx snoozed beside her, her ebony serpentine trunk trailing away through the flowers. She treated Jo to a radiant, close-eyed, sleepy smile. "Mm, look in a mirror before you quit the team for good, 'kay?"
Jo moved to brush Tomoe's hair away but found herself stroking it instead. Totally haywire. So why don't I hear any blood music? Jo murmured, "Where'd you come from?" Christ, did I just say a pick-up line?
"Here and there." Tomoe shrugged one shoulder. "But just now?" She raised one hand. Unyx's tail-tip was woven between her fingers and wagging like a puppy's. "I believe I was invited."
Unyx stretched, her mouth forming a little O in a yawn so adorable it made Jo’s mouth water. She smacked her lips and sat up, arms lazing over her ophidian thighs. “Hello, Tomoe. What are you grinning at?”
“Your face. I know that face.”
Unyx arched a brow and her liquid black latex raccoon mask flowed out to fill it.
"That’s a meliae-jism O-face." Tomoe’s teeth flashed. "SB gets it all the time." She turned back to Jo. "So I guess those are for me," she said, gazing down at Jo’s nipples pointing up at her face. "But from you, not Black Cherry." She leaned down until her lips were inches away from Jo’s own. "How do you like them apples? Or should I say cantaloupes?"
Oh, God, maybe she’s right. I’m so confused. What do I do, what do I? Jo blurted, “I have fifteen dollars.” I solicit her like a hooker? Where the fuck did that come from?
Tomoe sat back, her smile unreadable. "Really?"
Jo blushed and stammered so it was Unyx who nodded and said, "Three five dollar, even."
"Well, now," Tomoe said, and glanced over to the tree where her purse still hung, "I just so happen to have a few things you might be interested—"
"Unyx," Raspberry interrupted, swaggering across the bed toward them, her face plastered with the smile of someone serenely satiated. "I think the phrase is: 'It's time.'"
"Dammit," Tomoe huffed. "What does a girl have to do to earn five dollar around here?"
Jo had not seen Raspberry up close before and was mesmerized by her beauty: skin of amethyst, lavender hair in gentle curls like thousands of orchid petals, a face of classic perfection. "Well, fuck," said the mouth in that face, glaring down at Jo and Tomoe, "did the Titty Fairy hand out extra cup sizes when I wasn't looking?"
Tomoe sat up and stuck out her chest. "Yep." Her boobs bobbled. "Jealous?"
"Nah." Raspberry knelt by Jo's side, opposite Unyx. "I love the feel of being held in one hand." Jo felt very crowded and her blush deepened. Without ceremony, Raspberry reached down, plucked up Jo's hand and plopped it atop one ample, amethyst breast. "What do you think, solid girl?"
"I…I…" Jo fumbled but Raspberry encouraged her to squeeze, pressing her hand over Jo's. Gel-flesh dimpled and flowed, surface firm but substance softer than any living thing Jo had ever felt. "Wow."
"Ha!" Raspberry let her hand fall. Jo lingered, fingers questing, until Raspberry's nipple hardened into a glassy pebble, snapping Jo out of her fascination and back into embarrassment. "Eurydice's gunna like you," Raspberry said, and Jo could not tell if her tone was threatening or promising. "A lot."
"Where is the Titty Fairy anyway?" Unyx asked, twisting on her trunk. "The yang-bath's long gone."
"You mean Eurydice?" Raspberry asked.
"No. Dee." Unyx's raccoon mask flowed wide and she laughed in a fast, breathy voice. "Dee – the – Titty – Fairy – hee!"
Raspberry hooked her thumb behind her. "Green Man's taking a little nap. Well deserved, for once. The man said he'd spew a bucket of spunk, and, by God, he delivered." Jo felt a little flurry of panic when she followed Raspberry's pointing thumb to the other side of the flowerbed and glimpsed a strapping, Junoesque woman the color of mint cream swaying toward them. "I mean," Raspberry continued as the mint woman came near, "he totally crashed his yoghurt truck. I am absolutely stuffed."
As an Epsilon Zeta sorority sister, Jo had lived in a house crammed with gaggles of girls for three years now, but even when she was a freshman and they slept two-to-a-bed, it had been routine. There had never been any real tension, no moments worthy of writing up in a letter to Penthouse Forum. Surrounded on all sides by women possessed of a confidence and sexuality so intense it was almost comical, Jo felt ready to write a Forum special exposé. Jell-O girls, snake-women, and amazons. It should be downright laughable…but not when it's happening to me.
Unyx peered up, way up, at the newcomer. "CeeCee?"
"And Eurydice," said the mint woman. "We're 'Key Lime' for the moment. With CeeCee's help, Eurydice can stay glued together for what's coming next."
"What's next?" Jo asked, butterflies boiling in her stomach.
Raccoon mask vanishing, Unyx unfurled in another scrumptious yawn, rising into the air on her gleaming, ophidian trunk until she drew eye-to-eye with Key Lime. "Fucking my brains out," Unyx smirked.
Jo could not decide if she were relieved or disappointed to find herself outside the center of attention. "More fucking?" she asked. "For God's sake, why?"
"We—Unyx—are going to need a lot more nanomek," Unyx answered, "if we're going to cure the Easies and stop the Frenzy."
Raspberry, who had been contemplating the rise and fall of Jo's newly huge boobs as she breathed, glanced up. "Cure the who and stop the what?"
"We've got to save the world, remember?" Key Lime reminded her. Eyes the color of golden delicious apples never left Unyx's.
"Oh, right," Raspberry said, "that." She gave Jo a wink and went back to ogling. "I've been kinda distracted lately. Jeez, solid girl, you've got legs all the way up to your head."
"Don't worry," Unyx said, "We've got a plan. Kinda complicated, though."
"But there's fucking," Raspberry insisted.
Key Lime and Unyx smoldered at one another. "Oh, yeah," said Unyx.
Raspberry shrugged, "Then don’t bother me with details. Just aim me at a cock or a twat and say 'Fire'."
"Bad choice of words," Unyx sighed. Key Lime brought her lips close. Unyx hesitated a microsecond away from a green-gold kiss. "You're not going to snowball us, right?"
"Ooh, wicked," said Raspberry. She set her jaw and her throat flushed the creamy color of a raspberry Italian soda. "I would," she added, her mouth sounding suspiciously full. "You wan' shome? Tashte's great. Dee'sh filling. Ha!"
"Not that way, honey." Key Lime bussed her lips against Unyx's left cheek and the obsidian Goth shivered her shoulders. "Ursula and Nyx are refined girls." Key Lime tipped her head and blew sweetly citrus perfumed air over Unyx's neck. The shiver shot down from her shoulders and through her tail, the tip curling into a trembling ball in the palm of Tomoe's hand.
Unyx whimpered. "What. What was that?"
"Refined Vitamin Dee," Key Lime breathed, "pure yang, courtesy of Dee and me." And she kissed Unyx full on the lips.
Unyx lost herself in Key Lime's kiss and the flood of nanogasm that followed. Key Lime nudged Unyx's lips apart with her tongue and breathed new life into her mouth. Unyx pressed close until their noses nuzzled. The air passing between them was sultry and pregnant with energy. Unyx inspired.
A rarified fluid, lighter and smoother than smoke, ghosted down Unyx's throat. The part of her that was Nyx recognized the substance viscerally, knew it by its taste—this was nourishment and power of a dizzying potency—and craved to feed. The part of her that was Ursula identified it intellectually—this was quintessence, what the alchemists of the West called the fifth element and the doctors of the East called yang—and became fascinated. Together, Unyx named it in the language of poetry—this was firmament, the material of Heaven, this was love—and grew as horny as Hell.
She kissed Key Lime back, open mouthed and greedy, onyx fingers gooshing in Key Lime's spongy mane as she inhaled more and more. Nanogasm rioted as nanomek replicated in exponentially bigger bursts. Blood music screamed as the novilunium waxed. A billion wires burned within her, superstrings of sexual tension, signaling the imminence of the hardest, most amazing orgasm of her life.
Then Key Lime broke the kiss and pushed her back by the shoulders. "Don't cum," she said.
Unyx swayed on her serpentine trunk as her nanogasm-mad mind tried to process these two words. All those shining wires, more and more and burning brighter with each passing moment, made orgasm an imperative. Unyx started to speak, "Wha—?" but Key Lime kissed her again and Unyx could only croon. "Nn. Mm!" A single pre-orgasmic tremor, a bodyquake, shattered across both her human and gelled flesh. Then another.
Key Lime pushed her away again. "Don't cum. You mustn't."
"She shan't, she shan't," Raspberry crowed in a nasal, affected sing-song. She searched for understanding in Unyx's crossing eyes but found none. "She's gunna shit bricks when she figures it out."
At last, the concept registered. "What?!"
Tomoe whistled through her teeth and returned Unyx's tail-tip to the flowerbed. "C'mon, Jo." Tomoe stood, flipped her hair out of her face. "We gotta go." She blinked and added, "Me oh my oh."
Unyx yanked hard on her own braids. "What do you mean we can't cum? We're so horny we'd have a screaming orgasm if that girl in Starbucks just looked at us funny."
"Get used to it," Raspberry smirked.
"Orgasm burns nanomek," Key Lime said as if that explained everything.
"Big fucking deal," Unyx hissed, scraping her bottom lip with her teeth. "We've got plenty." She had never felt so ripe with novilunium.
Raspberry cackled and fell to her knees beside Unyx. "You ain't got squat." She wormed her way between Unyx and Key Lime, aiming for the cleft where Unyx's thighs melded into a single ophidian trunk. "Yet." She kissed Unyx's glistening, ebony labia into her mouth, and exhaled with exquisite tenderness.
Jo reached for Tomoe's proffered hand. A few feet away, Unyx gasped and rolled her eyes over white. Jo asked, "What's going on?" Then she stood for the first time since she had entered the flowerbed. The hem of the coppery dress, which had first hung loose around her ankles, now draped just below her knees. She teetered on her newly statuesque legs. "Whoa."
"'Whoa' later," Tomoe insisted, taking Jo by the arm. "We need to reach minimum safe distance. Like, right now." She paused. "But don't forget your fifteen dollar, okay?"
"Nyx is used to running on empty," Key Lime said as Raspberry's nether kiss lingered and Unyx whined and babbled. "You have only begun…" Key Lime said, stepping over Raspberry to bump noses with Unyx again. "…to feel half of the way we feel." She palmed Unyx's alabaster cheeks. "All the time."
"Please," Unyx said. Raspberry's nether kiss went on and on, suffusing Unyx with that same quintessential-but-chained power, and those billion shining wires coiled into springs of sexual tension bordering on agony. "Please."
"Don't cum," whispered Key Lime, and filled Unyx's mouth with her breathy kiss.
Unyx reeled and rode an inner, rising wave. Within their shared body-mind, Ursula fought the urge to ride the ecstasy into an astral trance. Then Raspberry trapped the bud of Unyx's clitoris beneath a rolling tongue, and Unyx was beside herself with pleasure.
That's not fair, Ursula wailed. The purple tart is cheating!
Nyx was smug as a bug snug in a rug. you - wore - me - for - hours. Nyx's inner voice held none of the panic of Ursula's. fucked - me - for - hours. All the anxiety over threatened boundaries seemed to stem from the Ursula side of Unyx. you - wore - me - out - over - and - over - hours - hours - hours!
Key Lime cupped Unyx's breast, now dappled with inky sweat, and Ursula was sure she would break apart. Nyx, she marveled, I really made you feel this good, this bad? The thrill of panic gave way to the thrill of power.
yes.
Unyx's tail lashed. She tried to anchor herself to a rosebush but the spasms from pent-up orgasm ripped it out of the flowerbed, roots and all. Did, Ursula asked as clumps of Earth sprayed down, Did you like it?
yes - yes - Hell - yes. The thrill of power was pittance compared to the soaring happiness Ursula felt with these words. you - wanted - lifetime - nonstop - sex? you - got - it - little - sister - you - are - all - mine.
Ursula rejoiced, I am yours! Key Lime and Raspberry kissed and kissed and Unyx kissed back. Past and future melted into an eternal now. Every iota of Unyx itched for release. I'm freakier than Dee, aren't I? Ursula said at last. The frustration had plateaued into a cosmic high better than any bong hit. I must be. I'm loving this.
ha - ha - yes - my - love - yes.
Unyx stilled. Oh, God, Nyx, I love you. Her arms and trunk went slack. I love you.
Raspberry paused in her merry munching and glanced up, her chin streaked in swirling ink, tribal-tattoo style. "Hm?"
Unyx calmly stopped Key Lime's kiss with a wet pop. "And you," she said aloud, "you're a bigger nympho than Galatea or any of them, aren't you? You just never had the strength before."
Key Lime frowned. "Say what now?"
ha - ha - ha! yes! yes - I - am. Nyx's little voice rang with mischief, wisdom and a confidence Ursula had never heard before. and - Ursula - all - my - love - all - my - life - all - that - I - am - is - all - yours.
Raspberry scooted back on her butt until she bumped into Key Lime's legs. "Why's she smiling like that?"
"She's one of us now," Key Lime said. "Right?"
"Kinda sorta almost." Unyx rolled her shoulders. A second pair of arms, sleek and slick and blacker than sin, slipped out from under her first, swimming through the air like water snakes slithering through a swamp. Unyx purred as her new-made limbs grew thick and strong with new gel, muscle and bone. "So this is what a hard-on must feel like."
Across the flowerbed, Tomoe spun about the instant Unyx mentioned a hard-on—"Oh shit oh shit oh shit."—and elbowed Jo in the ribs. "Back, back, get back. Get the fuck back."
ha - ha - yes - erection - in - stereo - but - why - stop - at - two?
"Don't you worry," said Unyx. Her tail slunk behind Raspberry and Key Lime. "I won't."
Key Lime smiled and pressed close again. "Ursula?" Unyx heard hopeful edge in Key Lime's voice.
good - she's - guessed - what's - cumming - Raz - hasn't - but - always - ready - anyhow…
The tip of her tail tapped Raspberry between her purple shoulder blades. "Whut?" When the lavender girl turned around, the onyx tail darted right into her crotch. "Whoop! Get it out, get it ou…Ooh, God." Raspberry burbled and fell prone with a pungent splat between her thighs and a widening, blissful grin between her ears. "Leave it in."
so - give - it - to - them - till - they - melt.
"We are Unyx," Unyx said. Two obsidian arms slid around to clinch Key Lime's neck. Two more locked behind the small of her back. Unyx bent Key Lime backward, and French-kissed the canary-eating-grin off her minty face.
"And you are fucked."
Chop me into pieces,
If it pleases,
If it pleases…
And when the chopping is through,
Every piece will say, "I love you."
Every piece of me will say, "I love you, you, you."
—They Might Be Giants, Museum of Idiots
The Earth, itself untouched by hardship and virgin of the plough, offered up its ripe bounty unprovoked. And Men, contented with food created without toil, gathered the strawberries of the mountains, and currants, and blackberries sticking to their bramble-bushes, and acorns which had fallen from the wide-spreading tree of Jove. It was an eternal spring: the rivers flowed with milk and nectar, and honey—meli—sweated from every tree.
—Ovid (circa 8 AD), The Metamorphoses, Fable III: The Golden Age"Master." Black Cherry writhes on the linoleum bathroom floor. "I'm in you now." She swallows food coloring and stains herself green, absorbs her wings to provide her slender body some heft, but she has no real talent for mimicry. She resembles a garish and gloppy copy of Galatea.
She rises, sighing, "I'm in you." The coloring fades and the va-va-voom curves dwindle as rubied wings sprout from her back. "I've been in you for hours, now, remember?" She shuts her eyes and pops open her mouth, tipping forward. "You took my tongue, so that I might speak inside you." Her mouth lies hollow and empty. "You drank of my breast, so that I might touch your soul." She cups her coquette's breast, watching the last of the green tint fade from her flesh. She stands with the wings of a bat and a cardinal's colors. She winks an abyssal eye. "Not very romantic, but the magic was there, wouldn't you say?"
She taps a fingertip against her lip. "You're dreaming, Master."
She spreads her wings and pirouettes on the toe of her candy-apple red Mary Jane clog. "Finally!" Her wings ignore the dimensions of the crowded bathroom, as things often do in dreams, and fly wide. "I thought your green whore would never let you sleep." The buffeting air is redolent with sex, and the unmistakable scent of baking cookies. "I thought she knew better." She winks, shrugs, "Her loss," and wing claws longer than daggers and sharper than any swords slice through the air.
Dee feels no pain, only a gentle chill, as the claws pierce his skull and meet with a click somewhere behind his eyes. Black Cherry frowns in a moue. "Well, that didn't work." She pivots her chin, inspecting with her light-swallowing eyes. "Something's keeping me out. Is it you?" She smiles, a proud pet-owner. "Are you really that strong, to keep me out, even now, when I'm so close?" She holds up a length of black braided rope, tied up in white ribbon. "Even when I have this?"
The knowledge comes to Dee now fully-formed, as if he always knew, a part of the dream's back-drop slotted into place. The rope is Ursula's hair. Over ten years worth of growth. Ten years worth of work: an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening with…
[gates]
…combs of horn and ivory, every day, sitting at her…
[altar]
…vanity, gazing into her own eyes reflected back out at her from a century-old…
[scrying]
…looking glass. She performed this…
[ritual]
…compulsive routine, twice a day, every day, for ten years. The subtlest knife could not cut the bond tying Ursula to her…
[talismanic]
…trademark braids, any more than losing a limb makes someone less of a person. Black Cherry holds Ursula's life and power in her hand.
"Caught up?" Black Cherry asks. "Good. Whatever the reason, I can't get into your inner mind. I'm stuck here, in your imagination." She takes in her surroundings with a knowing smirk, and, as the bathroom vanishes around Dee, she muses, "What an odd place."
Linoleum bathroom tiles and specks of caulking and tumble upward in zero g. Fixtures and walls melt into wisps of menthol. Black Cherry brushes the drifting detritus away with a flick of a wing. "There are two gates of Sleep," she recites, skimming a finger across the page of a fusty tome that plops out of thin air and into her hands, "one said to be of horn, through which true shades given gentle passage."
She licks the pad of her thumb and flips the page. Dee knows she reads from the Aeneid, although he cannot fathom how he knows. Black Cherry grins at his confusion and holds the book out to him. Pages have been cut away to make room for a faded, four color comic book. "Classics Illustrated," she winks. "Is this how you BS'd your way through college?"
She returns to reading, "The other gleams with the whiteness of polished ivory." She pauses, raises a brow and harrumphs. "But through it the gods of the dead send false dreams to the world above." The book snaps shut. "Bingo."
Dee and the scarlet girl stand on a rain-slick city street before a door cornered off by red velvet rope. A sign above the door proclaims Lux in pale neon. Black Cherry flits over the rope and cracks open the door. Piano music spills out into the night. She whirls about and sings, her face a mask of sly delight, her soprano sparking and pitch-perfect:
I've just read of Cleopatra
The glamorous empire shatt'rer,
Who to Caesar lost her heart as well as her head,
But that stingy old Rotarian
Gave her nothing but one Caesarian,
So she fell in love with Marc Antony instead.
To worship two men in turn may be sublime,
But, oh, it's Hell when you care for both at the same time.She twitters and dips her head through the door, one leg raised behind her butt. "Not the sort of ivory I was expecting. Where do you get this stuff?" She peeks back at Dee.
Dee's speech slurs, his mouth feeling full of peanut butter. "Comic booksh. Innernet."
"Never heard of it," Black Cherry mutters, then sighs. "Can't get through your Gate of Horn. Tried that already." One wing claw dimples the side of her skull before leaning through the piano bar's front door again. "Ivory will have to do." She squares her shoulders, unruffles her wings, and scampers inside.
"Welcome to your nightmare, Master."
The wake of her wings drags Dee across the velvet-rope boundary and into the piano club. Upon stumbling through the front door, Dee finds himself in a tiny kitchen, a cluttered twin of the kitchenette of Dee's own apartment. A tall steel mixing bowl keeps the refrigerator's door wedged open and its compressor running nonstop. A few dozen empty boxes of cherry Jell-O are piled atop the kitchen table.
Black Cherry perches on the kitchen counter, feasting on the last scraps of Bernie's—Bee's—flesh she is willing to eat. Pheromones of fear befoul the meat. Cannibalizing Bee for his collagen was no picnic. "But I did it, Master," she says, slurping down wobbly bits of gristle.
Dee's revulsion overcomes the sleep paralysis swaddling him like wet cotton. "Why, Cherry? Damn it, why?"
"To be strong for you. Strong enough to fuck you. To beat you." She sucks the dregs of marrow from a cracked femur. "To please my Master whether he likes it or not."
After a few final, lingering licks, she bites the thigh bone in two, chokes down one half, and drops the other into the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink. She flips a wall switch and the disposal coughs to life. The femur dances and descends into the disposal as hidden, dull blades whack it into splinters. "I ate all that I could use," she shouts over the racket. She glances aside. "Well, almost all."
She holds up a mason jar with the remains of Bee's manhood. Dee struggles to reach out and throttle Black Cherry's throat, but his arms plough through air thicker than treacle, and the scarlet girl rebuffs them with an impatient wing. He can still speak, and opts to scream for a long while before words come out. "Why show me this?"
"No choice." Black Cherry shuts off the disposal. "Through the Gate of Ivory, I can't make any true visions or new memories. I have to work within what's inside you already—my memories from before you consumed my novilunium. Plus, it's fun!" She gazes up at him through her eyelashes. "You should see how adorably angry you look."
She hops off the counter, mason jar in hand. "Now then, where is…Ah." She plucks up the tin of nanomek in the other hand. "Hm." She contemplates the two containers. "I wonder if the old trick still works."
She plunks the mason jar back onto the counter. The two gobbets of raveled flesh inside the jar roll and rebound off the sides of the glass. "I just need a little bit of offal." She fishes inside the mouth of the garbage disposal and comes away with a finger-scoopful of muck. She flicks a dollop of the stuff into the mason jar.
She pops the top off the tin and dread blankets Dee. "My God, Cherry. Don't…"
She shushes him and gives the tin a short shake. "No talking during my flashbacks." A slight shower of soft powder wafts down into the jar.
"You didn't really do that," Dee says, aghast. "This is a nightmare, a false dream. You're…you're making this up."
"Could be," she twitters, locking the top of the mason jar in place. "I think I'll leave this little guy for you, a guardian at the threshold of the underworld. I bet you'll completely forget about it until it's too late, just like in all the stories."
Dee presses his fists against his forehead. "Remember, remember. This is important. Forget everything else about this fucking nightmare but remember this."
Black Cherry laughs like she will fall apart. "I love loose ends, don't you?"
Dee lunges for her but he still moves in slow motion. Black Cherry laughs again and skips from the kitchenette into the living room. She skids to a halt. "That smell. I didn't notice it in the kitchen—Bee's fear was too thick—but now…" She turns back to Dee, eyes wide. "I know that smell, Master." She giggles. "It's another me, isn't it?" A frown clouds her face. She swallows her laughter. "No, wait." She tips her head toward the ceiling. "It's her."
Dee staggers after her. Black Cherry groans. Wing claws scourge her back, her chest, raising crisscrossed, weeping welts. "There are gaps in my mind, Master." Beads of brandy bleed down her legs. "Glittering caverns filled with only the shadow of memory. I am newborn but there are echoes of something older, far older." She hangs her head. Her bangs fall over her eyes and she sobs, "I'm so confused. I'm so alone."
Dee reaches for her shoulder. "Cherry."
Black Cherry glares up at the lime-stained ceiling, defiance shining through sanguine tears. "I should be alone." A wing claw stabs upward. "She should not be here. It's all wrong." She sniffles, hiccupping giggles. "You made a mess of things this time, Master. But I will fix them for us."
She strides to the living room window, wrenches it open, and scuttles out. Wing claws punch through aluminum siding for purchase. "Come along, Master. I mean for you to see this through."
The dream-world shifts around Dee. He drifts three stories up in the middle of the night air. Black Cherry suspends herself upside-down above an apartment window. She peeps through, her face illuminated by a jittering electric glow.
Dee's heart is in his throat. "Galatea?"
Black Cherry grips the windowsill with her hands, and pries the window open with one long claw. Inside, the sliding lock rips free of the window frame and clatters to the floor. "If all your neighbors are this cute, Master," she remarks, "I won't have to eat many more of them." She swings to the side to let him see.
The living room behind the glass is not his own, but he recognizes its occupant readily enough. Dee breathes, "Oh, no.
"Viggo."
Viggo Palm sits in a cushy lounge chair a few feet away from a wafer-thin television so high fidelity it needs to be calibrated against the magnetic disturbances in the Earth's crust. The only source of light in the room, the television's ambient glow casts Viggo's fine black hair in electric blue. His ears are swallowed up by boxy headphones. He is absorbed in his work, which, at the moment Black Cherry glides through the living room window, consists of killing zombies.
Dee finds himself beside Black Cherry, standing amidst stacks of video game and DVD boxes in low-slung wire racks. Black Cherry nibbles her lip, eyes roving over Viggo's own low-slung, wiry frame. Viggo sits oblivious to everything but the virtual tide of the hungry dead rising in HDTV on the screen. His fingers blur over a wireless video game controller with so many knobs and buttons it looks like a gleaming scarab beetle. The room is silent save for the clacking controller and the muffled death-rattles of the living dead reverberating from his headphones.
Black Cherry fixates on Viggo's nimble fingers. "He knows the Flying Octopus, Hooded Pearl Technique," she marvels.
"Cherry," Dee says, "don't do this."
"Don't do what?" she titters, trying to imitate the butterfly movement of Viggo's hands. "This has all happened already. Maybe you just don't want to see?" She perfects the finger motion, then lowers her arm and plays out the same pattern across her mons. She squeaks and jumps, the miniature wings above her ears frazzling. "Oh, my!" Her brows knit.
"Cherry," Dee says, "wait." But she is already stomping across the room in her jelly clogs. Black Cherry opens her wings, curtaining the television set, and folds her arms below her bare breasts. The plasma screen's lumina ignite her curves with an eerie nimbus.
"What's wrong with you?" she asks, head-wings fanned, mouth filled with crimson foxfire. "Spending the night alone when you have hands like that?"
Viggo blinks up at her. The controller falls in his lap. He toggles the volume control on his headphones.
Black Cherry tips her head and taps her foot. "Well?"
The demoness and dweeb stare in silence. Then, in hushed tones, Viggo wonders: "Morrigan?"
Black Cherry purses her lips. Her left wing fleets forward, claw hooked down. Dee shouts Viggo's name but the sleep paralysis returns, cramming Dee in invisible gauze. Dazed and unflinching, Viggo watches the wing sail toward him. He taps the PAUSE button on the game controller between his knees. The claw flies past his ear and flips the lounge chair backward. The chair's upturned footrest points Viggo's feet at the ceiling.
The scarlet girl, more shadow than substance in the televised witch-light, sashays forward. She sighs, "Read a book sometime, alright?" and straddles Viggo's lap. The lounge chair creaks once, then wobbles as Viggo nods his fierce, wide-eyed agreement. Black Cherry tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, bends down, and enshrouds his mouth with hers.
Viggo reaches down and tosses the game controller onto the carpet. Black Cherry molds her body over his, snickers, "Good boy," into his mouth, and guides his hands up from between his knees to her naked sex. "Find my pearl."
Viggo moves beneath her and she trembles, still kissing, kissing. The miniature wings above her head furl into pointed cones, becoming perky cat ears. Dee knows he watches a cat at play with her prey and an enervating sense of dread and guilt—I mistrusted Galatea; I gave away the nanomek; I am the cause of all of this—roots him to the spot as an impotent spectator.
Black Cherry breaks the kiss. Her throaty chuckle fills the silence, her wings outspread wall to wall. Her lips shine in the half-light, serous and wet. Viggo swallows, his mouth glossed with brandy. He worships the vision above him before whispering, "I'm Badjao."
Black Cherry scrunches her hips around Viggo's hand. "Hm?"
"My granddad: Badjao," Viggo says, his smile hazy, his voice slurry. "Pearl diving is in my blood."
Dee manages to spit a few words. "You're. Mindfucking. Him."
"Oh, yes," Black Cherry replies. She descends onto Viggo again. At first Dee thinks their kiss has become soulful and full of tongue. Then a trickle of cordial escapes Black Cherry's lips, drizzles down Viggo's cheekbone and over an ear. This is no French kiss, Dee realizes, watching Black Cherry gush and Viggo guzzle. This is a grotesque communion.
"You won't…eat him?"
Black Cherry rocks up. "Oh, no." She snaps the buttons off Viggo's shirt, one by one, and shrugs. "Well, yes. But not now. Why?" She turns to Dee. "Do you want me to eat him, Master?"
Dee plods forward a single step. "Damn you." Words flow a little easier now. "Stop this. Leave him. Alone."
"You and I should be alone, Master," Black Cherry insists. "But for that to happen…" She pauses and glares at the television—No, through the television, through the wall beyond, into my apartment, to Galatea—"There's someone I need to deal with first." She turns back to Viggo. "So, Badjao."
"Viggo," says Viggo.
"Whatever. Can you hear it now?" Black Cherry raps a knuckle on his forehead. "Blood music?"
Viggo's face blossoms with silent revelation, a broad Oh, so that's what that is expression. "Blood music," Viggo echoes, glad to give the strange sensation a name.
"For the next few hours, that's all I want you to hear. And this." She slips two fingers into her sex then smears them across his mouth and under his nose. "Is all I want you to think about."
Viggo groans, "I already am." He reaches for her but she pushes his hands back. "Don't you want to fuck?"
Black Cherry finishes undoing his shirt and plants her palm over his left breast. "Of course. But later. Master must be my first, and you're not him. You're for the Frenzy."
Dee startles. It's like falling off a cliff. For an instant, he seizes upon the truth. He sees. He sees everything that's happened, everything that she's said.
["…It should be you…My master should be my first…It should have been you, but I have no time…"]
The whole puzzle clicks together in his head, Black Cherry's whole, crazy, pointless, stupid game. The knowledge is ephemeral. Dee can already sense it slipping through his grasp, through the gate of ivory, the font of false dreams. "Dream logic," Yves called it. It rarely makes sense after you wake up. Yet the bitterness and bile welling up in his breast feel strong enough to last forever. He knows what he has to do. "Enough, Cherry."
Black Cherry ignores him. "Are there any guardsmen?" she asks Viggo. Viggo frowns. Droplets of Cherry's cordial spill down his chin. "I saw a guardhouse outside," Black Cherry continues, "but it was empty."
Dee advances on the overturned lounge chair. "I mean it. It's over."
"Central office," Viggo says. His fingers strive for Black Cherry's cleft but she pins him down and shies away. "Near the front gate."
"I'm ending this." Dee stands before overturned chair. For the first time, Viggo registers Dee's presence.
"Dee?"
Dee looks down and speaks with his newfound voice: "Frog blast the vent core."
Black Cherry's incredulous laughter dies in her throat as Viggo flays and swears beneath her. The scarlet girl stumbles off the chair. "What? What?"
Viggo rolls onto the floor and springs up, wild eyed. Dee chases him out the front door of the apartment with two well-timed cries of "I'm out of ammo!" and "Shoot me!"
"That." Black Cherry shakes her head. "That never happened. Whatever the Hell that was." She levels an accusing finger at Dee. "You cheated!"
"No," Dee shuts the front door, bolts it shut. "I out-geeked you. V's a diehard gamer, and some instincts go deeper than sex. Besides, my head…" The apartment evaporates into diffuse light. "My rules. Get moving."
Black Cherry twitters and casts about for a reference point in the white, sterile plane. She finds a worn, maroon leather recliner chair next to a counterfeit Tiffany floor lamp. "What is this?"
"A Matrix reference." Dee smirks as he circles around to the front of the recliner. "You'll never understand me, or—" He freezes. "Tomoe."
Tomoe goggles up at him from the recliner, a toddler caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Her hair is plastered with sweat against her cheeks. Her skirt is on the nominal white floor. Her fingers are jammed into her rose underwear.
"Oh, hey, Dee."
Dee spreads his hands, lost. "What the fuck, Tomoe?"
"I," Tomoe starts. "I was…" She looks down at her crotch. The panty is soaked through. "I was just…" Her fingers withdraw with a lewd shlick noise, and she blushes strawberry red. "I was just leaving," she squeaks, hops out of the chair, wraps her skirt sideways around her waist, and crab-walks away.
"You're right," Black Cherry says, watching Tomoe vanish from view. "I don't understand you. Yet. But we'll have all the time in the world soon enough."
"That's what I want to talk to you about," Dee says. Black Cherry cocks an eyebrow at him and he gestures at the recliner. "Sit."
Black Cherry alights upon the recliner and crosses her legs. "Still warm. Well?"
Dee stares off after Tomoe for a moment, then shakes his head clear. "You want your master," he says, "all to yourself. I want all the mindfucking and Frenzying and—God, damn you, Cherry—the killing to stop. No more."
Black Cherry narrows her eyes. "So?"
"So," Dee says, and leans up against the recliner's armrest. "I think we can work something out."
Dee woke to debauchery.
Tomoe stood in stunned silence on the sideline. He had dreamt of her as he first met her: a short slip of a girl with dark, merry eyes. Now those same eyes sparkled from a face almost level with his above a body from a boyhood wet dream, an airbrushed pin-up girl with skin tanned to chocolate perfection, eye-popping curves, and waves of raven hair flowing down to her ass.
Dee ambled up, still groggy from sleep, trying to make sense of the spectacle Tomoe was watching. "What'd I miss?" Tomoe opened her mouth, but just shook her head, spread her hands, and shut it again. Long shadows moved behind Dee. He turned around and bumped his chin atop a bust crammed so close into a coppery one-piece dress he could hear the fabric squeal under the stress.
"There was a little purple one," came the voice from above the boobs, "and a big, minty one." Dee stepped back to better look the newcomer in the eyes, but old habits died hard and he found himself drawn to the sunlight reflecting off the skintight material hugging the huge globes right in front of him. The girl swung her arm out to point. Dee stared at the muscle gliding under her creamy skin instead.
"Then Unyx fucked the minty one so hard she came apart," the girl gabbled. "So now there's a yellow one—right there, see?" She pointed to CeeCee, lying flat on her back in a little pool of melted creamsicle, her face stamped into a blissed-out smile. "And a green one." Here the girl paused, licked her lips, and bent down to whisper to Dee, in hushed, almost reverent tones. Flower perfumed, honey-brown hair tickled his nose. "And the green one? She just keeps going, and going, and going…"
Dee swallowed. "Where's Raz? The purple one?"
Tomoe found her voice. "Up in the tree."
"I've been fucked by a train!" Raspberry hollered back, slung over a high branch in the one tree remaining upright. She pumped her fists. "Woo!"
"Hi, Dee," Eurydice sang down from the heart of a glistening black nest, a writhing web of clutching arms and questing snakes. "Unyx, put me down, Dee's awake…Wait." Eurydice twisted until she hung suspended by her ankles and wrists bound in ebony ropes. "Hey, Dee," Eurydice called. She bit her lip in concentration. A pleated, myrtle miniskirt unrolled over her thighs and a prim, tea green schoolgirl blouse skated up over her chest. "Wanna watch?"
Ursula, wearing a glossy raccoon eye-mask and nothing else, rose out of the obsidian mass, a porcelain pale mermaid bobbing up from an inky sea. Her lips were liquid black. Her high cheekbones, bare breasts and flat abdomen ghosted with silver as if the night had become her life's blood. Ursula's mask—Dee corrected himself: Unyx's mask—crooked up in arch inquisition.
Dee contemplated Unyx's outie navel and Eurydice's cheeky, jade grin before turning back to Tomoe. "You were right," he deadpanned. "My life does suck."
The tall girl eyed Dee up and down. "Wow." Her gaze locked in the "down" position. "You are very naked right now."
"That's Mine, Jo," Eurydice declared. The black cabling binding her unraveled and Eurydice drifted down to the ground.
"Why hullo there, Mine," Jo breathed. "I've heard some very good things about you."
The name and face of the tall girl clicked. "Jo?" Dee squinted. "Jo Echo, the volleyball captain?"
Eurydice bounced over. "You're a girl's volleyball fan?"
Dee and Tomoe chorused, "Yes."
Unyx nodded. "oh - yeah." The tesseract of Unyx's gel-flesh folded into itself before flowing up and around her ivory curves, collapsing into an onyx bodysuit, thigh-high go-go boots, and thick choker collar. "Zup, Dee?"
"What happened to you?" Dee glanced around. "To all of you." Jo shrugged and Dee froze, watching the cords of Jo's neck grow taut and her breasts battle with her dress. "Especially you," he told her.
Raspberry spread her legs to peer upside-down at Dee from her perch in the tree. "I got fu—"
"Not you," Dee dismissed, and waved off her two-fisted, one-fingered salute.
A distant motor purred. Tomoe turned toward the sound, her smile wide and sensuous. Eurydice stepped up to fill the silence. "You happened, Dee. When you fucked me." She blushed wine-dark, quivery with memory. "Oh, God, when you took me, you went all out. You didn't just fuck me." She gestured at the chaos of wildflowers around them. "You screwed the brains out of every female thing within seven yards." She patted him on the cheek. "No wonder you passed out."
Dee took her hand. "I slept."
Her brow knit. "Did you…"
"A little," Dee said and kissed her palm. "Went hypnagogic." Eurydice cradled herself against his chest. "It's okay."
"'Hypnagogic'?" asked a doubtful Unyx. The motoring noise drew louder, closer. "Where'd that come from?"
"Alan Moore," Dee said. Unyx looked blank and he added, "Really tall. Huge, crazy-ass beard. Writes comic books. Shacks up with his wife and her bi girlfriends. Talks to snakes."
"Owes me five dollar," Tomoe muttered as the roaring engine dropped to a low rumble.
The sound tickled Dee's memory. "Just what happened to Yves, anyway?"
"Hey, guys."
Dee, Eurydice, Tomoe, Unyx, and Jo turned.
"Ooh," said Jo.
"Gay," Tomoe whispered.
"Aw," said Jo.
A tall figure slouched in the heart of the copse of fallen trees, blades of blond hair falling over his face, a portrait of effortless elegance. A brilliant white shirt, loose and open over his tan undershirt, caught the sun's rays one shining thread at a time. His hands dangled over a long curved sword in a coral sheath, slung across his back like a yoke. Behind him, a rose colored roadster idled, crouching in the wild grass, a predatory monster of polished metal and glass.
"We’re superheroes," Yves said.
Wood rustled and snapped overhead. Yves sighed, let the sword slip from his fingers, and closed his eyes.
"Yves!"
Raspberry hurtled down, an amethyst lightning bolt, bowling Yves over in a blur of violet limbs and orchid hair moving too fast for Dee to see. Yves ended up flat on his back. Raspberry's naked body sprawled against him, her arms locked around his neck, her face buried in the hollow of his shoulder. She sobbed his name once, twice, then sat bolt upright. "You smell just-been-fucked," she said askance.
Behind them, the roadster's engine revved.
"Can't I get laid every once in a while?" Yves asked.
"Sure," Raspberry shrugged as the engine's revving became a syrupy burble. "But only if I get to watch."
SB strode passed them, coppery one-piece dress adhering to her curves and bulges. "Took me hours to get that man's dick in my ass."
Raspberry dug her knees into Yves ribs and crossed her arms. "What's she got that I don't? Or can't strap on?"
SB's stride broke when she crossed the threshold of the flowerbed. "Whoa." Her dress snagged on a rosebush. "Dee, do you have any idea what you did." Her words died in her throat when Tomoe stepped forward. "Oh." SB's fingers flew over her mouth. Her diamond eyes sparkled wet as Tomoe towered closer, her hair swinging in counterpoint behind her back. "Oh my God, T."
"Well met," said Tomoe, her voice melodic and strange. "We are well met in the navel of the world."
"So long." SB reached up to trace Tomoe's cheek. "It's been so long."
Tomoe glanced down. "It's getting even longer." SB swallowed a teary chuckle. Tomoe pressed their foreheads together. "I'll never look away again," she whispered. "Never. I swore, remember?" She stepped back to take SB by the hand. "Dee," Tomoe called, "we gotta go. You got things covered?"
Dee slipped his arm around Eurydice's waist. She nodded at him. "I think so."
"Gotcha." She led SB away. "Try to avoid the demiurgic stuff, okay? World navels can attract all kinds of attention. Know what I mean?"
"Not a clue," Dee replied, shaking his head. Unyx laughed.
"Good." Tomoe and SB stepped out of the flowerbed. Without looking back, Tomoe said, "You coming, Jo?"
Jo glanced up from her study of Dee's package and Eurydice's chest. "Who, me?"
"No, the seven foot tall muscle girl with huge tits behind you. Yes, you. And bring your three five dollar."
Jo dashed and bent over to grab her wad of bills, and it was Dee and Eurydice's turn to stare. "I've got fifteen dollars," Jo said, standing up. Dee and Eurydice glanced away.
"That's what I said," Tomoe said as she and SB entered the copse of fallen trees. "Later, Yves."
Beneath Raspberry, Yves gave her a sarcastic salute. "It's been surreal."
"It's just getting started," SB said. "See you around, Sir Valiancourt. Remember your choice."
Jo bounded after Tomoe and SB. "What are we doing? Where're we going?"
"Clubbing," Tomoe answered. "And a little shopping."
"But first," SB said, taking stock of Jo's dress and the assets within, "one of us has got to lose her skirt."
"What choice?" Raspberry glowered down at Yves. "And what was that about bellybuttons?" She toyed with the fabric of his sleeve. "And gimme your shirt. I sorta burned out the other one."
Dee picked his way into the copse of trees. "Let him up, Raz. It's time for Yves to stand."
Yves turned his head. "I don't like the way you said that, Dee." His ear pressed to the leaf mold, Yves could feel little ground temblors, vibrations on the cusp of hearing. Dee thudded toward him. "Jesus."
Raspberry curled a lock of Yves' hair around her finger. "I'll release him for a kiss." She blushed violet. "Please?" Yves propped himself up on his elbows. Raspberry scooted back until she sat in his lap. Yves sat up straight, took the now trembling lavender girl by her shoulders, and planted a warm kiss on her forehead. She bowed her head, wreathed Yves in orchids and the smells of early summer. "I would have been there for you," she whispered, "even if Dee had never bound me."
"I don't understand," Yves said, feeling awkward under her regard.
"In the Jeep," Raspberry explained, "right before the crash." She cleared her throat and spoke in a tinny imitation of Dee's voice. "'Raz, to Yves. Now.'" She ducked and kissed him back, soft but chaste, on the mouth. "Now and always." Yves stammered at her, but she winked, swatted him, and hopped to her feet. "Don't gimme none of your faggotry." She angled her thumb at Dee waiting a few feet away. Dee was inspecting the sword, careful not to draw it much more than an inch from its sheath, whistling and wowing. "King schlong demands an audience."
Dee handed him the sword after Yves dusted himself off. "This sword doesn't make you a superhero, Yves. Don't get me wrong, it's freakin' awesome, but it won't make you a Batman."
Yves shrugged. "Figured as much." He hooked the sword into the silk sash tied around his waist. It rested against his leg, blade curving down. "I don't feel any different, and when SB made me this outfit, she didn't bother with a utility belt."
Dee shook his head. "SB didn't make you a superhero, Yves, because you've already been one for years."
They stood in silence until Yves asked, "Are we supposed to kiss now or something?"
"If you two start making out in front of me," Raspberry breathed, "I'll finger-bang myself until my twat falls out, swear to God."
Dee thought it over. "I think the homoeroticism of our friendship is supposed to be latent."
"Latent?" Yves leered. "You're buck fucking naked and I'm wearing a long, pink scabbard. That's blatant, not latent." Dee's face remained thoughtful but blank. Yves' smile fell. "Yeah, I'm stalling."
"Back on the road," Dee said, "you told me I already knew what to do. Well, I think someone has to die today, Yves." Dee clasped Yves by the forearm. "And I won't let it be you."
Yves closed in. He felt the heat of Dee's breath and bare skin. "Dammit, Dee." His free hand seized the pommel of his sword, ready to draw. "It's not your decision to make." Dee maintained his stolid expression. "What is it?" Certainty chilled Yves to the core but he asked anyway. "My God, Dee, what have you done?"
Dee turned. Raspberry shivered and shrank back. "Raz, leave us for a minute." The lavender girl protested but Dee spoke unmoved. "Yves is safe from me." Raspberry purpled. Dee sighed, "Go, Raz," and the lavender girl fled. Dee released his hold on Yves' arm.
"The decision has already been made, hasn't it, Yves?"
Dee crossed the curving perimeter of the flowerbed. Goosebumps danced across his skin. Walking beside him, chin pressed to his chest, Yves shivered and shot him an inquisitive glance. "Tomoe said something about 'world navels'," Dee said. "I haven't a damn clue what she meant. Sounds like a drink."
Raspberry, Unyx, and Eurydice loitered in a circle around the snoozing CeeCee. Eurydice smoothed her skirts. "Hey, Dee." Dee thought her smile looked plastic. "Sounded like you two were having a Hell of an argument. What's up?"
"Macho bullshit," Yves spat.
Eurydice's brow crinkled in confusion. Raspberry slunk behind her and would not look Dee in the eye. Dee shook his head and turned to Unyx. "Yves says you can see the future. How does that work?"
"You explain it better than we do," Unyx answered.
"I did?" Dee scratched his head, parsing her reply. "I mean, I do? When?"
Unyx reached for Yves. "When Yves tells us Black Cherry raped him." Behind Eurydice, Raspberry drew in a sharp breath.
Yves pulled away. "I never told you she raped me. How the fuck did you know?"
Unyx blanched, her raccoon mask fading into her skin. "Oh God." She gaped. "Black Cherry raped you?"
Yves spluttered and swore. Everyone started talking at once, but Dee's calm voice cut through the babbling. "Unyx perceives fourth dimensional space-time from a fifth dimensional perspective. She saw that, in the future, Yves would tell her about Cherry. But Yves still had to tell her, otherwise she wouldn’t have seen it in the first place, and create a paradox. So Unyx can know something before it happens, as long as it still happens to her for the first time at some point in the future. She still has to be surprised to prevent paradox, so she winds up living a kind of backwards time universe." Dee perked up. "Just like Doctor Manhattan." He noticed everyone had fallen quiet sometime during his little speech and was staring at him. "What?"
"That's exactly right," Unyx marveled. "Except we're limited to about ten minutes for some reason. But who's Doctor Manhattan?"
"Oh," Dee shrugged, "he's a comic book character. Alan Moore again."
Eurydice and Yves exchanged a look. "Dee," Eurydice said with exaggerated care, "how did you come up with the name Galatea?"
"That's what they call Power Girl in the cartoon," he said. "Seriously: What?"
"What about 'Pygmalion'?" Yves asked, both curious and cautious.
"I got his name off the Internet." Dee faltered. "Googling, uh, for Power Girl porn."
"And 'Eurydice'?" asked Eurydice.
"Ah!" Dee waggled a finger. "I know all about Eurydice and Orpheus. There was a Jim Henson special about them. Orpheus sings her out of a tree. The tree opens up, it's all sticky inside, and, uh, and." Dee mumbled something.
"It got you hard," Eurydice giggled and Dee nodded.
"Are you telling me," Yves demanded, "that you've had all your insights and leaps of intuition these past few days because you love comic books, cartoons, and porn?"
"And muppets," Unyx chimed in. "Hey, Ursula whacked off to softcore vampire sex." She stroked Dee's sagging shoulder. "We are Unyx; we sympathize."
"That's nice." Raspberry's voice was little more than an acid hiss. She moved out from behind Eurydice, her hair whirling in an unfelt breeze, her body haloed in radiant reds and violets. "Now excuse me, I've got a psycho-twat to kill."
Dee sighed, "No, Raz."
"Shove it, brick-dick." Raspberry marched for the road. "I am going to burn new holes in the bitch just to shit in." She spat at the upright tree as she steamed passed. It toppled, vanishing into purple vapor before it hit the ground. "And then I'll get nasty."
"You will not hurt her, Raz."
Raspberry stumbled as if tripped, then spun around to face Dee. Her gemmed eyes burned black and ultraviolet. She snorted and made a guttural ch-hock! noise deep in her throat.
CeeCee bolted upright but it was Yves who ran between Raspberry and Dee. "Raz, don't," he said. "It's too late."
Eurydice cried out, ran to Dee, and clutched at him. "No. Not now. Too soon."
"It's time," Dee whispered to her. "It's already been decided."
"Dee's giving himself up," Yves said.
"No." Eurydice burrowed against Dee's chest. Her tears left trails of liquid emerald down his bare skin. "I've known you less than a week. As Eurydice, not even a day." She turned her cheek against his chest and listened to his heart. "I want years and years. I can't lose you now. I, I won't survive."
"You will." Dee held her tight. "You're strong, Eurydice." His hug slackened. "But I have to go to your sister now."
Raspberry clenched her fists and kicked a stone into high flight. "Why, for fuck's sake?"
"Black Cherry's holding too many cards," Dee said. "She doesn't just have Galatea." He nodded to Unyx. "She has Ursula's hair." Eurydice groaned and hid her face.
CeeCee frowned up at the two of them. "A wig doesn't make much of a poker hand. What am I missing?"
Unyx opened her mouth to speak. Dee interrupted, "Cherry can mindfuck Unyx any time she wants, can see through her eyes and hear through her ears," He looked to Unyx for confirmation. She nodded.
"Basically? Yeah," Unyx said. "Technically? Very no. But we don't have time to lecture." She pouted. "Bummer."
"Cherry knows," Dee said. "She knows Unyx is the only one who can really stop her." He glanced at Yves. "Stop the Frenzy, that is. She's ready to kill Unyx. I won't let that happen. And I can't let the Frenzy happen."
Raspberry took a few baby steps toward Yves. Yves held an arm out and Raspberry nestled under it in the blink of an eye. "I don't get it," she said. "She's already got the Easies. Isn't that the Frenzy?"
Dee shook his head. "That's just the beginning. Cherry's gone total psycho-supervillain." He eased away from Eurydice. "You were wrong, CeeCee, about the party. Cherry doesn't plan on killing or eating any of the guys showing up tonight. It's bigger than that." Eurydice crept back into his arms. "She needs them for nanomek—lots of it. She's going to weaponize the Frenzy. Load the Easies up with nanomek until they're contagious all by themselves, by fluid-borne infection. And then, she'll loose them."
"It'll be just like all those zombie movies," Yves explained while Raspberry breathed in the fragrance of his shirt. "Except there'll be a hundred Patient Zeroes. And they'll be horny, not hungry. And, uh, hot bisexual coed skank-bots, not corpses." He scratched his chin. "So it won't be anything like a zombie movie. It'll be much worse."
CeeCee mused, "A hundred maenads?" She drooped back onto the flowerbed. "Well, send one home." She closed her eyes. "I'm tired."
"There will be millions of them soon if I don't go to Cherry now," Dee said, squinting at the mid afternoon sun. "I have to get there before the party starts, and that's just a few hours away." He peeled away from Eurydice again. "So I'm going. Now." Dee looked Eurydice in the eye one last time. "I love you."
"Fuck you," Eurydice said, jaw set firm even as she wept. "If you're going to go, then go." Her finger stabbed forward. "But don't you dare look back."
Dee turned away from her. He shuffled out of the flowerbed, absent his usual, steamrolling strut. He passed Raspberry and Yves without a word. He thought he heard a gentle susurrus of gel-flesh behind him. Was Eurydice following? His ears strained for any sound, but he heard only his own breathing and the undercurrents of outdoor noise.
He crossed the fallow field, hearing nothing. He tripped up onto the road, hearing only the sound of his bare feet slapping against the pavement. He bent down to scoop up his clothes. He heard nothing behind him, felt nothing but empty air. He shook out his pants and muscle shirt as best he could and dressed as he walked toward the yellow SUV hidden beneath the overpass. The remaining grime from his premature burial gritted against his skin. And still he heard nothing, nothing, nothing.
Then: "You're supposed to be the one."
Eurydice sounded quiet and alone and right behind him. Dee straightened at once. He tipped his chin toward his shoulder. He listened to her silence, then bowed his head, grabbed hold of the SUV's front bumper with both hands, and tugged sideways.
The vehicle pivoted on its rear wheels, crunching asphalt as Dee swung it around, always keeping his eye on the road ahead. The driver's side door was wedged shut into the its bent frame where Dee had dropped onto the SUV's roof a few hours before. He punched out the window then tore the door in half. Dee clambered inside, forcing the canted roof to pop upward with the flat of his hand. Metal squealed and glass shattered and sprayed down in nuggets. His wrist flared with pain, a brief, phantom sprain. He ignored it.
The keys were still in the ignition. It took three twists for the engine to turn over. "Just like in the movies," Dee muttered. He shut his eyes, drew a ragged breath, then finessed the SUV into gear.
Eurydice watched the SUV pull away, drive under the overpass, up the onramp on the far side, and accelerate down the highway and out of sight. The engine's protests faded as the distance between her and Dee grew. Someone padded across the road behind her, quiet as a ghost. Eurydice spent a few thousand nanomek—she had so much now it frightened her, and she took every excuse to burn some—and heightened her hearing. She recognized the approaching heartbeat immediately.
"Eurydice?" Yves asked.
She turned to him, starry-eyed from weeping, her lips trembling.
"He didn't look back," she said.
It's time
We saw a miracle.
It's time
For something Biblical.
To pull us through
And pull us through
And this is the end
Oh, this is the end
Of the world.
—Muse, Apocalypse Please
The drive to the Epsilon Zeta Sorority chapter house proved dull and anticlimactic. The steering wheel jerked and the yellow SUV juddered if Dee pushed it over fifty miles per hour. He considered abandoning the beaten automobile and running barefoot all the way to fraternity row. It shocked him to realize he had been barefoot since "quickening Eurydice," as Yves called it, back in Bee's apartment. He wiggled his toes on the gas pedal. The thought of putting something on his feet was unnerving, exposing.
"I'd feel naked," he told his reflection in the rearview mirror. "Even putting socks on would make me feel naked." He downshifted into third gear and the SUV stopped trembling. He filed the barefoot question in his mental Things to Figure Out Later folder. Damn, that folder's getting pretty big.
With the automatic gearshift stuck in third, it would take him over an hour to drive to Epsilon Zeta. Pulling over and running began to appeal. His nanomek had remade him inside out, after all. Surely indefatigability during marathon sex translated into running a real marathon. And what about super-speed? Did he have any?
Red and blue flashed in the rearview mirror. Dee ignored the strobe lights for the moment, pondering super-speed. "Dumb name," he said. "'Celerity'. That's better."
A siren squawked once. Dee sighed and pulled over, a police car riding his tail. What about celerity? he wondered. Do I have any? He put the SUV in park and kept his hands at ten and two o'clock on the steering wheel, waiting for the state trooper to run the SUV's tags, call in the stop, and mosey over. Even if I have celerity, what would happen if I used it? Dee had to experiment and learn the limits of his powers eventually, he decided, but now was not the time. If Yves were here, he'd say, "Go with what you know." There was too much at stake for experimentation now.
The state trooper moseyed up to the busted driver's side window, drawling smoother than John Wayne. "What happened to your car, son?" He held a pad of ticket forms in one hand. "Driver's license and registration, please."
"You don't need to see my identification."
"I don't, huh? Now why is that, son?"
"I can go about my business."
The state trooper tore off the top form and crumpled it before retreating, his gait still set to Mosey as if nothing unusual had happened. "Move along."
Dee confessed to his reflection, "All right, maybe a little experimentation," and spent the rest of his trip quantifying his abilities in Star Wars terms. By the time the SUV rattled down fraternity row, Dee had given up on any aspirations to Jedi knighthood. Tomoe's "kuzbu" aligns more with the other guys. "That's okay," he said aloud, turning onto Campion Street, "the Dark Side has cooler lightsabers anyway."
The SUV rounded a bend, Epsilon Zeta Sorority House came into view, and reality became stranger than fiction. Dee took his foot off the accelerator and coasted into the cul de sac, not sure of what he was seeing. Porn movie clichés raced through his mind and the gaggle of vehicles parked in front of the house’s made sense in a funny, but not humorous, way.
"All that’s missing is a plumber’s van," Dee mused. He parked the SUV against the curb along side the FedEx truck, the russet Dodge Shadow capped by a triangular Napoli’s Pizza marquee, and an electrician’s van from a cable television company with a very ironic name, considering the circumstances. A ten-speed bicycle leaned against the steps leading to the house’s columned front porch. The bike was rigged with canvas saddle bags brimming with newspapers. "Christ, I hope that paperboy’s over eighteen."
Dee had not expected Cherry to start collecting guys—and "collecting" was the precise word for what Cherry did with men, Dee decided—until the party tonight. Did it change anything? They’re just more cards for her to hold. She already has the upper hand; it’s even "upper" than I had thought, that’s all. Dee surveyed the other buildings in the cul de sac, all unaffiliated student housing, and all dead quiet. It’s Friday afternoon, so where is everybody? He glanced at the dashboard clock: 4:20 PM.
"Oh. Duh." The lace-curtained windows in the sorority house’s three stories belied no movement. "Well, I’ve been talking to myself for a couple minutes now." The house’s front door remained closed. "And no skank-bot, wet tee-shirt, carwash zombie horde…uh, thing…this time. So I guess my public fuckability’s under control. Right?" Or Cherry’s found a better game to play. He listened to the SUV’s engine clank as it cooled. "Right. Here we go."
Dee swung open the car door, connected his bare feet to the ground, and felt his mind clarify, as if he had squeezed contact lenses, not into his eyes, but inside his head. He became aware of background details, the contours of ivy leaves and the granules of mortar on the sorority house’s brick edifice, without feeling overwhelmed or distracted. "Weird. Like Ritalin."
Dee mounted the stairs and crossed the whitewashed porch to the front door. The door stood ajar a fraction of an inch, just enough to prevent the latch from catching. Loneliness and longing welled up within him. He wanted one of his friends to say, "It's a trap!" or "I have a bad feeling about this." It was the perfect occasion, almost obligatory, and the stretching silence compounded Dee's sense of loss and doubt.
"God," Dee beseeched, "don't let me do anything stupid." He brushed open the door and edged inside.
Epsilon Zeta's foyer stank like a frat house. An Easy girl lazed against the wall, her back to the door. Strawberry blonde curls stuck out beneath her FedEx cap. She wore a tasseled leather jacket but no pants, only a pair of thong underwear skewed off the crack of her juicy ass. Her head cocked, trapping an old-fashioned phone handset between her cheek and shoulder, she twirled the cord around her fingers as she spoke.
"Uh huh. And three spicy tuna rolls. Yeah. Around five o'clock's fine. Can I request deliverers? Is Shota working tonight?" She turned to face forward, lacy black bra peeking out behind her jacket. Her voice trailed off as she stared at Dee. "Uh," she mumbled into the phone, "never mind." She squared her shoulders and the phone thunked to the floor. "Dinner's here."
Dee raised both hands, palms out. "I don't want to hurt anybody."
The Easy's hazy gaze zeroed in on Dee's crotch. She pouted, "Not even a little?" She bit her lip and took a step toward him.
"Get back."
The girl slumped, her mouth working against the wall. A single gasp escaped her throat. The soft, wet noise seemed to echo through the house. Dee heard pattering movement in the rooms above him, in the main hall before him, in the corridor beside him.
The strawberry blonde rocked back onto her feet, her face and neck flush. Her fingernails scoured the wall's wood paneling as she took another step toward Dee, chest heaving. Her breath smelled like a bakery. "Do that again."
Dee tried to ease his sinking stomach, looking for that center Yves always lectured about. Out in the house's main hall, a steady stream of coeds slunk down the stairs, a half-naked chorus line pussyfooting in time to an unheard beat. Dee found no center, only memories of Raspberry.
["…When Black Cherry concentrates on the Easies, she can make them do pretty much anything…"]
A vanguard curl from the strawberry blonde's mane tickled Dee's chin. She wet her lips and stood on tiptoe, questing for a kiss. How did he let her get so close? Here goes nothing. He pressed his index finger to her lips and said, "Black Cherry should be my first."
The blonde swayed in a faint, seizing his wrist. Dee's unmoving arm was sturdy as a wrought iron lamppost. Her hands slid down to his elbow and she dangled there, hissing air inward through clenched teeth. "Yes, Master. Yes."
Dee hoisted her chin with his other hand. Her pupils were dilated. Her pulse pounded in her throat like a drum. "Galatea, Cherry," Dee told the mind behind the frenzied eyes. "Show me Galatea's safe, then we seal the deal." The girl groaned, blonde curls flaying as she shook her head. "You won't win until she loses."
"Basement." The blonde loosed her grip on Dee's elbow and flopped ass-first onto the floor. "Down the hall, down the stairs." She pulled the thong until it tore, fingers shivering against her clitoral hood. "You're r-ready, Master. You're ready f-for me."
The narrow hallway was filled with girls. They squeezed against the wall, pawing at Dee's chest as he walked passed, before sinking into masturbatory oblivion. An empty doorframe, the door itself missing except for the hinges, revealed a flight of steps downward. A girl in a white spandex tee-shirt and pink hot-pants, reeking of fever and sex, stood rigid and staring in front of a swing-hinged door at the very end of the hall. She chewed her lip until it bled.
There is no center here, Dee decided, and descended into darkness.
Eggshell shards of glass crunched under Dee's feet on the last few steps. The jagged stub of a light bulb hung from the ceiling of the basement hallway. Coeds crowded the top of the stairs. Gloom thickened.
To his right, Dee saw the outlines of two doors. Beyond them, two great crescent shapes were obscured in deepest shadow. They made Dee feel watched, and he looked away, grown accustomed to the dark. A pale shaft of green light cut across the hallway floor to his left. He stepped into it.
The light spilled out from under a closed door. Heart hammering, Dee turned the doorknob. The mechanism grated beneath his fingers. He eased the door open. Brilliance dazzled him, caught his breath, and drew him into the room.
The room was small and spare. Slivers of green light danced on the whitewashed, cinderblock walls. An extension cord led from the one wall socket to the center of the room where three lamps were arrayed on the floor. Their upturned halogen faces triangulated on the room's sole occupant. She reflected and refracted their life-giving light like an emerald prism.
"Galatea," Dee said, reaching for her. "Galatea, I'm sorry." She did not move. "Galatea, this is all my fault." She did not move. "I'm so sorry," Dee whispered, and pressed his hand against her hip.
She was cold as glass, immobile as marble, and as dead as stone. "What did she do to you, Galatea?" Dee asked, looking up into her eyes. They sparkled, but not with mischief or any sign of life, only with the mindless glimmer of gemstone. Dee glanced down at her bare feet. "At least she did not put you on a pedestal," he said, and stepped back.
The statue of Galatea looked exactly as he remembered last seeing her: a figure as tall as it was curvaceous; a swooping X carved atop her left breast, angled and resembling a dancer in mid-leap; spikes of hair framing a mature face of aching beauty; that beautiful face downcast in quiet disappointment. "I didn’t trust you," he told the statue, "I blamed you rather than face the truth. I understand now." He stepped into the radius of light and took the statue by its unmoving shoulders. "I know what I am. And I love you, Galatea." He bent his head up. "It's time," he said, and kissed her on the lips.
Nothing happened. Her lips were cool and hard. Dee clicked his teeth against them, waiting for something, some sign of life. Tears ran down her cheek. He broke the one-sided kiss. "Galatea, thank…Oh." The tears staining her cheek had no telltale trail of moisture from her eyes. "Those are mine." He dried his tears off Galatea's crystal-carven face with his thumb. In a sudden inspiration, he gently streaked the statue's lips with his damp thumb, and kissed the salt into her mouth.
Nothing happened. The door creaked behind him. Dee swallowed against the lump in his throat. "What do you need?" he asked, tracing the inner edge of the X with his index finger. It stung.
A breathy voice twittered behind him, "More than words and tears."
Strong, warm palms pushed against the small of his back, slid up around his ribs and pressed against his chest. A dainty chin pressed into the hollow of his shoulder. Sultry-sweet breath tickled his ear.
Dee glanced down. A bead of blood seeped up from the scalpel-perfect cut in his fingertip. "Oh."
"Time to seal the deal," whispered Black Cherry, wing claws flexing high above him.
Dee started to turn but scarlet arms gripped tight. "No," Black Cherry said, "keep looking at her, not me. I want her to know she's lost."
"She can see?" Dee asked. He heard nothing from Black Cherry, sensed no stirring within the Galatea statue. The electric whine of the sunlamps filled the silence. "Anyway," he added, "we need to rework the terms."
"Oh?" Black Cherry giggled. She sandwiched herself against him. Her breasts squashed into his back and her groin grinded on his ass. "And what makes you think you're in any position to negotiate?" Her rising wings cast two crescent shadows on the far wall.
"Because I won't say it otherwise," Dee said, "and she won't truly lose unless I do."
The winged shadows froze. "You think you know me inside and out. You don't." The shadows shrank as her wings settled against her shoulders. "But you'll know what it's like inside me soon enough." Dee stayed stolid. Black Cherry sighed. "Very well, Master. You may restate your terms."
"Those other guys," Dee said. "I didn't know about them. I don't want them hurt; let them go."
"Who?"
Dee pictured the vehicles in front of the sorority house. "The cable guy, the FedEx guy, and two delivery boys. Pizza and paper, I think."
"Oh, them." Wings rustled. "They weren't my idea in the first place, although they came in handy. What else?"
Dee closed his eyes. "Galatea. I don't really think this counts as 'safe'. Release her."
Ten pinpricks of pain bloomed on his chest. Black Cherry's fingernails thickened into polished black talons. She sighed, drawing her arms downward. "You go too far, Master," she said over the sounds of ripping cloth.
This is it. Don't fuck up. "Nevertheless," Dee said, feeling the scrape of all ten talons. "Set her free. Let her go. No strings."
Black Cherry clucked and ticked, slicing shreds of Dee's tee-shirt onto the floor. "Oh, all right. I'll release her from all that binds her here. Satisfied? No? Ooh, you are impossible!" Her soft lips closed around his earlobe. "I love it. Fine, she'll be free to leave, unfettered and unharmed. Better? Then nod your head. Good boy. Honestly, it's like dealing with the Devil." She feasted on his neck, reduced his shirt to tatters with her talons. She perked up, mouth parting from his flesh with a wet pop. "But I'll need something extra in exchange." One final swipe of a talon over his collar and the jigsaw remains of his shirt fell to the floor. "I need a name, Master."
Her talons drifted toward his waist. "And I need pants," Dee insisted, "These are my very last pair." Talons plucked out an impatient beat on Dee's bare stomach. "Okay. Your master will name you. Now cancel the party and end the Frenzy."
She pushed herself away. "Are you serious? Think of it: a planet of women calling you Master, just like I do." He felt her shrug, the shadow of her wings waxing and waning on the walls. "Consider it a preemptive strike. Thanks to that stunt you pulled, every witch less than six dimensions away is already after your ass."
"What?"
"The omphalos mundi," Black Cherry said. Dee shook his head and she added, "The world navel you made? You weren’t subtle; don't think you can be, with something that big." She giggled at the memory. "I was fucking this paperboy in the backyard for the fourth or fifth time in a row. Those eighteen-year-old delivery boys have got a lot of spunk in them, in more ways than one; he didn't beg for his life until at least his third orgasm. So there I was, getting his barely-legal rocks off, when—Wham! A new omphalos mundi, bigger than life, and topped by an axis mundi shot up into the sky." She pinched him under the armpit. "That must have really drained you, Master. No wonder you slept." She pinched harder and Dee flinched. "Still drained, I see."
Despite the desperate circumstances, Dee felt bashful. "You saw that all the way from here?"
Black Cherry's laughter twinkled. "Master, they saw that from the Moon."
"Who's on the Moon?"
Dee felt another shrug, "The Amazons," Black Cherry answered. "Duh."
"You're not crazy for me, Cherry," Dee said, remembering Yves' earlier words, "You're indiscriminately crazy. There are over six billion people in the world nowadays, you can't just…Wait, Amazon women on the Moon?"
Black Cherry twittered, "Six billion? Really?" She hugged his back again. "I'll have even more time with you until the Frenzy runs its course and the female half of the world fucks the male half to death. Then I'll share you, or not, as I see fit, with any witches and Moon maidens and maenads and whoever else's left."
"No party, no Frenzy, no world fem-domination, and don't hurt anybody I've left out. Promise me that, and your Master will name you," Dee offered.
"Maybe," Black Cherry cooed, planting little kisses on his back. "I promise to think about it. Depends on how good a Master you are."
"I can live with that. But Unyx's hair: you've got to burn it."
Black Cherry gasped in mock shock and swatted Dee on the rump. "Nuh-uh. I'm keeping her hair as an assurance. Besides, you have nothing left to bargain with." She reached around to clutch his chest, the talon of her index finger pricking the rib below his left breast. "Do we have a deal?"
Dee gazed up at Galatea. She did not look back. "Yes."
A shiver of excitement shocked through the scarlet girl's body. She squeezed against him tighter than ever. "Cross your heart?" she asked, sunk her talon into his flesh, and dragged her hand up and across.
Pain exploded in his chest. Dee's knees buckled but Black Cherry held him up. His vision wavered. Blood spotted the floor. She withdrew her talon, but a heartbeat later another sank into the skin above his left breast and just below the shoulder. She held him in silence and exquisite agony, the talon burrowed deep but unmoving.
"Say it," Dee told her, his jaw clenched against the pain.
She shivered around him. Her sex felt hot and slick against his thigh. Black Cherry tittered, "You first."
"Yes," Dee nodded, "cross my heart—"
"And hope to die?" The words gushed out of her mouth as her talon sliced downward.
He was ready for more pain this time but it still took his breath away. He remembered his favorite line from Yves' centering lectures.
["…Victory is not getting cut…"]
He glanced down at the raw X incised above his heart, the blood streaming down to his belly. The center is here. He bowed his head. "Hope…Hope to die," he said.
"Then tell her," Black Cherry growled, grabbing a handful of Dee's hair and pointing his face up at the green statue's. "Tell her. She has to know."
Dee swallowed. "Galatea," he told the statue, "I'm ready."
Black Cherry mewled. Her talons vanished back into her fingertips. Her wings spread wide, encircling Dee in swirls of soot and licks of flame. Fingers thrust under the waist of his pants. Black Cherry wrapped her hands around Dee's cock. She babbled nonsense words, a woman possessed.
"I'm ready for your sister," Dee said.
"Fuck me, Master." Black Cherry released Dee long enough to wrench him around. Her eyes were nothing like Unyx's, Dee realized, which shone like a starry, cloudless night. Black Cherry's eyes were an unreflective black. Abysses that swallowed light and gave nothing back. Even as she sobbed, overcome—although Dee could not tell whether with lust, triumph, joy, madness, or something more dark and alien—her insectile eyes gave up no tears. She huddled herself against him, smearing her cheek on his blood-stained abdomen, one hand mauling his dick to life. "Fuck me."
The pain from his wounds had become a dull, pervasive ache. "Not in front of your sister," Dee said. She gaped up at him, her cherry-creamsicle colored cheek rouged arterial red with his blood. I've got to get this just right. "You wanted her to know," Dee explained, "but you want to share with her? In any way?"
Black Cherry glanced from Dee to the statue behind him and back again. Burning brandy drizzled her inner thighs. Her hand slipped out of his pants and onto his wrist. "Come with me, Master."
Dee followed her for a few paces but stopped short of the door. She tugged once. He shifted his weight and resisted her pull for a heartbeat before he tripped forward another pace. "The deal, Cherry," Dee reminded, bumping against her wing. "Release Galatea."
"Oh, right," she said, her customary, coy smirk returning. Her wings flourished in the air. "Galatea! I hereby release you from any and all binds, geasan, blood music, um, disharmonies, and, uh, etcetera etcetera." Her wings sagged and she gave Dee a helpless shrug. "Sorry. Look, Galatea, you're free to leave. I won't hold you here, or try to stop you. Any power I had over you is gone." She and Dee turned back to the statue, waiting.
Nothing happened.
"Well," chirped Black Cherry, scraping her palms together, "that was exciting. Worth the wait. Shall we go, now, Master?"
Dee frowned. "Release her, Cherry."
A wing waved at the door. "The door's open, Galatea. There's a storm door leading right outside. Don't let it hit you on the way out."
Nothing happened. Dee's hands curled into fists. "Release Galatea, Cherry."
"You want me to drag her back to your apartment like this?" Black Cherry folded her arms. "That's how I brought her here."
"What?"
Black Cherry rolled her eyes. "I found her this way, Master. I came in through your bedroom window, and there she was, frozen, just like that." A wing claw gestured. "Like she'd French-kissed Medusa." She arched a brow. "Oh, I tried to smash her to bits, believe me. Even dropped her out the window. Nothing worked. Ooh, I was so angry, Master."
A chill ran up his spine. "But the bedroom. All that red and green…"
"Oh, that," Black Cherry dismissed, waving a hand. "I was angry, Master. So you had to be angry, too." She twirled, wings drawn in tight. "Did you really think I used the whole bottle of green food coloring on me? I just needed a few drops. I used the rest on the walls, along with half the red bottle." She made wide swipes with her arms and wings, miming an artist splattering paint across a huge canvas. "When you, Yves, and I were in your apartment, Galatea was stuck headfirst in a Rhododendron bush outside your bedroom window." She waggled a foot at him, pumping her heel against her jelly clog. "With her feet in the air. The whole time."
Black Cherry sidled toward Dee. "So you see, Master, I have released her. I'm not the one keeping her like this. I never was. She could have gone to you any time she wanted." A wing claw caressed Dee's cheek. "But she doesn't want you like I do, Master. Well, she is free." Black Cherry kissed the center of his wound, painting her lips with blood. "The deal is sealed." She threw herself at Dee, wings crushing over his back, and kissed him hard on the mouth, thrusting her tongue between his lips. He tasted his own blood. "And you are mine."
She took him by the hand. "Just like you wanted, Master. Now, come." Dee felt hollow and numb. He followed her out the door, unresisting. "It's time, Master." She shut the door behind them, her glistening grin vanishing as the light fled. "It's my time."
Black Cherry led Dee into darkness. He reached for his chest. The sudden pain from contact made him wince, but the constant ache had become a distant throb, and no fresh blood flowed around his fingers. "How did you cut me, Cherry?"
"That raspberry-flavored floozy told me to 'eat shit and die,' I believe her phrase was," Black Cherry said, pulling Dee along. "But all I ever wanted her to do was fuck you, drain you dry enough to let me in." She stopped and pushed open a door. Pale light revealed her coquettish grin. "Now it's my turn to drain you, over and over." A wing claw skittered down his bare side, scratching and probing, but without piercing. "We will fuck and cut and fuck and cut, all day, every day, forever."
Dee could not decide what was more nauseating, her madness or his dick growing hard at her words. "Jesus."
"Never met him." A playful shove sent Dee stumbling through the door. "In you go, Master."
Grey light filtered through grimy slivers of glass set high in the wall above a row of boxy washing machines. The air was thick with lint and the sickly sweet scent of fabric softener. Baskets of half-folded laundry piled high in the corners while dozens of pairs of pantyhose and delicate exotica hung from dry-racks and clothes lines strung throughout the room.
Shadows flicked across the basement windows. It's time. Dee found his balance. It's time to stand, but I have so little strength back. How?
["…It will come when you call…"]
He spun about, skidding on the cement floor. "I'm ready for you, Cherry." A dangling silk strap snagged his hair and a brassiere fell on his head. "Ah, shit."
"You make an adorable demigod, Master." Dee heard an edge in her laugh. Black Cherry glanced behind her.
"You glitter not of gemstone," Dee said, uprooting the bra from his hair, "but of broken glass."
"Nice recovery," Black Cherry murmured, squinting at him. "Master?"
Dee loomed forward. "You dapple." His shoulder did not hurt at all. "You brittle."
Black Cherry dropped back toward the door, her wings trailing cobwebs of lingerie. "You sound strange, Master." A door banged open somewhere upstairs. She gazed up at the ceiling, frowning. "Something's wrong. What's happening?" She glanced down at the bulge in Dee's pants and squeaked, "Wait."
Dee took a slow, single step. "This…" His bare sole connected with the floor. "Is what you wanted." The washing machines lurched forward in the aftershock.
Black Cherry whirled, wing claws slicing through clothesline. "Wait!"
Dee caught a wing claw by the tip. "No." He hauled on the claw and twisted Black Cherry into his embrace.
"I'm ready for you, Cherry," he said, and kissed her hard enough to shred her lips with his teeth.
Black Cherry yanked her head back. She stammered, "I don't—mmf." Dee crushed her to him, his mouth covering hers. Her cherry-chocolate, cordial-candy taste cloyed his tongue. She pushed against shoulders as unyielding as granite slabs. "Mmm!" Dee reached under her ass and slung one of her legs over his hip, mashing her mons against the crotch of his pants. "Mmm…" His sweatpants slipped down around his thighs and the head of his prick slid up to her bellybutton.
Black Cherry's body reacted at once. Her gel-flesh stuck to his skin. Her wings perspired fat droplets of sanguine nectar. Her protestations dissolved into a fervid keening. Dee hooked his other hand under her ass and hoisted Black Cherry off her feet. She locked both legs around Dee's hips and wrapped her arms about his neck. Dee steamrolled toward the row of washing machines, his passenger clinging and crying.
Dee tossed Black Cherry down onto a washing machine. Its lid dented around her derriere. She clung to his neck, kissing and sobbing. Dee took her by the shoulders and slammed her back against the wall, fracturing the cinderblock.
"What's happening?" Black Cherry wailed. "What's happening?"
"I'm fucking you, Cherry," Dee said, kicking off one leg of his sweatpants. "Is that so hard to comprehend?"
"Yes. No. I…" She shook her head, the miniature wings above her ears whipping through the air. "Why are you, I mean, why am I—"
Dee cut her off, snarling, "Scared? Don’t you get it yet?" Dee pulled his sweatpants off his other leg. "You have to fuck me to hurt me." He raised his balled first. Black Cherry quailed. A wing whickered inward, not to strike, but to shield her as she shrank away.
Dee followed through with his swing, tossing his sweatpants across the room. "So I have to hurt you to fuck you." Dee's voice dripped with scorn. "Remember, back at the apartment? Out on the highway? You only got wet…" He twisted her sheltering wing. "…after I kicked your ass." Black Cherry barked a single yelp of fear and pain and let the wing fall.
"This is what you want," Dee said. He hiked one of Black Cherry's legs up high, her jelly clog shoe melting into a shapeless wedge, and held it tight to his shoulder. "This is what you want from me." Dee angled his erection at her pussy, ignoring her soprano screams. "This is what you think a 'master' is supposed to do. You sick, stupid bitch," Dee hissed, and invaded her.
Her arms and wings flung wide, Black Cherry shrieked, "Master!"
Dee smothered her mouth with his hand. "Shut up," he said, thrusting, "I'm not your master." He heard chaotic drumming across the ceiling; movement in the story above them.
He hitched his knee atop the washing machine and drove deeper into her searing sex. "This isn't what a master is." Black Cherry's head lolled, scarlet honey pouring off her wings in lazy waves. "This isn't what a master does." She screamed into his palm with each lunge. "Not your real master, Cherry."
More shadows danced in the windows. "But you don’t want the real thing, Cherry." Dee shoved her, rolled her onto her shoulder, and fucked her sideways. She batted her fists at the washing machine next to her, her gel-flesh splattering, raising red welts over the machine's metal casing. "Because you aren't the real thing. Even as a statue, Galatea's more real than you." The drumming above them grew louder, more directed.
Dee rammed into Black Cherry and bent over, one hand firmly clapped over her mouth, the other sinking into the wet mess that was once her hair. "Do you know how I can tell Galatea's real? That she's not some stupid princess trapped in a story?" Something pounded down the stairs in the hallway beyond. Dee raised his voice. "Waiting for a master? A hero? A rescuer?"
Eurydice burst through the door and into the laundry room, knees bent, hands splayed and ready. "Where?"
Dee looked back at her. "Down the hall. Last door on the left."
Eurydice turned about and fled without another word. Black Cherry's scream was so loud, vibrating through Dee's hand, it rattled the windows and washing machine lids in their frames. Black Cherry reared up.
"Oh no, you don't," Dee muttered. He whirled his arms across her fluid flesh, starting a standing wave that ended with her flipped over flat onto her stomach. He hopped off the washing machine, tugging Black Cherry's hips down. Her ass was a pert as ever. Dee pressed the head of his cock against the bud of her anus.
Black Cherry shuddered and fell quiet. Her silence was electric. Dee lifted his hand away from her mouth. "So," he said, "do you want to stop Galatea from rescuing herself, or do you want me to fuck you in the ass? This is probably your one and only chance, on both counts."
She whimpered for a while before Dee realized the soft sounds she made were words. "Fuck me, Master. Fuck me." Dee seized Black Cherry by the neck. "Fuck me."
"That's how I know," he said, and did.
Eurydice stormed down the darkened hall, struggling with each step. Nanomek swirled inside her, a maelstrom in microcosm. The air upstairs, overripe with sex and the pheromones of fear, had stirred them up. Here in the sorority basement buried halfway into the earth, she feared they would blow her apart. Scent traces of Dee's blood and Black Cherry's desire—She's cumming so much, she cuts him and Dee makes the bitch cum so much—churned in a molecular soup around her. She wanted to turn back, to go back to him, to forget Black Cherry and Galatea and just be with him. To be Eurydice and Dee, forever and always.
But not as much, she realized, her eyes fixed on the last door on the left, not as much as I want to do this. White light flooded behind her, lit her up neon green. "Now what?"
The strawberry blonde spilled down the stairs, naked save for her FedEx cap and a slick of sweat. She trembled, hands on her knees, panting and grimacing like a marathon runner. Her hair lay matted and limp over her face and neck. She wheezed, "Stop."
Eurydice narrowed her eyes. "You don't know when to quit, do you?"
The strawberry blonde shook her head, swallowing, finding her voice. "Nuh. Ugh. I…" Shadows flickered at the top of the stairwell and the strawberry blonde froze. "Oh boy."
Tendrils of living ink zigzagged down the stairs, swimming through the air like a coordinated school of fish with endless, liquid tails. The strawberry blonde crooned, eyes sliding shut as the first whorls of gleaming black crept across her hips. More and more of the substance slithered over her skin, tongues of obsidian spiraling down her legs, coursing up her back and between her breasts.
The black ribbons pulsed and the strawberry blonde's feet started kissing the ground. "Never mind," she sighed, suspended in mid-air, before the black ribbons reeled her in, floating her weightlessly up the stairs.
A bemused voice drifted down. "you? but - we - cured - you - already."
Eurydice heard the strawberry blonde reply, "I know. But, but, would you, um, do it, y'know, again?"
"hmm."
"Please?"
"'kay."
"Woo!"
Eurydice rolled her eyes, turning to her destination. My final destination. The last door on the left stood closed, lime-colored light trickling around its frame. The hallway echoed with Black Cherry's feral squeals. My destiny.
The green girl pushed open the last door on the left, and crossed the threshold into radiance. I love you, Dee.
She never looked back.
A Sister of the Frenzy blundered about the sorority house kitchen. When the blood music sang this loud behind her eyes, she forgot everything, including her name, living only for the irresistible song inside her head. There were always lyrics behind the blood music, the dulcet voice of Black Cherry, carrying subliminal suggestions, infectious moods, and the occasional direct command. In the early hours of the morning, the blood music had coaxed the Sister into a pair of pink hot pants, a white spandex shirt, and the insatiable need to fuck every last ounce of sperm out of some guy with the unlikely name of Deiter Detwiler. Now, almost twelve hours later, the pants' tight crotch had rubbed her sex raw, and the sweaty spandex was sandpaper against her nipples. But the blood music was worse.
She toppled against the kitchen counter. Empty Jell-O boxes, mixing bowls, aluminum utensils and tins tumbled into the sink and a scattered across the floor. The Frenzy Sister moaned, head bowed, riding a wave of panicky excitement that was not her own. The blood music soared, full of dissonant cords, random rhythms, and lousy lyrics. Black Cherry sang of being tricked, of a surprise attack, of enemies at the gate, and of Master's cock fucking her in the ass, as ironic as rain on her wedding day, which was to say, not ironic at all.
Filled with this nonsense, the Frenzy Sister went on automatic pilot. Black Cherry's song faded into background noise, like a loud party at a neighbor's house, but still informed the Sister's own ideas and desires. Her ass fell against the pantry door, one pink-clad cheek toggling the lock on the knob. The doorknob nudged between her cheeks, and the Sister decided she really needed some serious butt-fucking herself. She remembered the cable guy, catatonic but erect as a schoolboy on a vibrating bus seat.
She tottered toward the swing-hinged door. It opened inward before she reached it. A confusion of black coils billowed into the kitchen. Thick tentacles, their tips conical and smooth, flowed across the floor in the fluid, sideways wave-motion of an octopus unfurling across the ocean bottom.
Danger, Black Cherry sang through the music in the Frenzy Sister's mind. That's Unyx! Don't let her near your Sisters. And stop Eurydice! Come down to the base—ooh, damn, fuck my ass! Fuck it! More!
The Frenzy Sister clutched her head. "I don't understand."
Unyx glided into the room. Her glossy black lips parted in a languorous smile, her neck and chest flushed silvery white. An obsidian corset hugged the ribs below her breasts then stretched down into a gleaming bodysuit. The suit shone like latex, clung like velvet, and flowed like oil. Below the delta of Unyx's sex, the bodysuit bound her legs together into a seamless trunk, only to split again into dozens of snaking limbs, as if she had grown roots instead of knees. One of those roots found the Frenzy Sister's ankle.
The tentacle's touch was smooth and sleek. Dozens more lazed on the floor and crowded the air around the Sister, swaying inches away but not making contact. The Sister could only quiver, gazing mute into Unyx's eye-mask.
The delicate tip of a black tentacle traced the Frenzy Sister's jaw, ran down the line of her neck behind her ear. The physical strength behind the soft touch was immense. The strongest force she had ever experienced was giving her the most intimate and tender caress she had ever known. The Sister's sex, despite hours of non-stop stimulation, felt cavernous with need.
"let - us - in," Unyx said, her tentacle curling up the sister's neck and stroking her cheek, "and - the - music - will - stop."
The Frenzy Sister nabbed the tentacle with both hands and shoved it in her mouth. It tasted of licorice and power—a savage, unstoppable power touching her, filling her, yet treating her oh-so-gently. It made her feel delicate, precious, prized, and hornier than she had ever been in her entire life.
"whoa," Unyx said as the Sister deep-throated the tentacle with abandon. "you - ah! - you - like - that?"
The Sister chuckled and slurped hard. The tentacle in her mouth pulsed once. She froze, then pulled the sleek limb out of her mouth long enough to gasp, "Are you kidding?" She ripped open her hot pants, yanked them down around her knees. She begged, "Oh, God, fuck me," before inhaling the tentacle back into her mouth.
Unyx gulped, little jet beads of sweat pricking her forehead, as the Frenzy Sister pumped the tentacle in and out her mouth. A second tentacle brushed against the Sister's outer labia, and pulsed slowly inward. The Frenzy Sister screamed around the throbbing member in her mouth. An orgasm struck her like lightning, she felt so deliciously full, and all she could think was more, more, more. She reached for a third tentacle and rammed it up between the globes of her ass.
"wait - what?" Unyx licked her lips. "seriously?"
The Frenzy Sister, refusing to part from the tentacle pulsing down her throat, nodded vigorously enough to give herself whiplash. The tentacle tantalizing her pussy started to withdraw. The Frenzy Sister screeched in frustration, reached down, and clawed both tentacles inward.
Unyx's black raccoon mask drained away from her face. "I think," Ursula's voice trailed off. The Frenzy Sister sunk to her knees and elbows on the floor, eyes rolled over white, lost in an endless tide of power, pleasure, and triple penetration.
"I think I get hentai now," Ursula gasped.
"Um," Eurydice said. "Hi." She raised her palm in a little wave.
Galatea said nothing, showed no signs of life.
Eurydice contemplated her other self. The statue stood much taller than her, its bearing more fierce and proud, even with the sad, lost look on its face. A face so different from Eurydice's own. Not too much older: five years, ten years at the very most. And only in appearance, Eurydice had to remind herself. Galatea was merely six nights old, after all, and she did not share Eurydice's memories of the meliae that came before them, as confused and cloudy as they were. But the maturity of Galatea's visage, a true, elegant confidence that could never be confused with haughtiness, seemed deeper than appearance. Galatea wore no mask of womanhood. She was a woman down to the core. Eurydice felt mawkish and girlish—felt all sorts of negative words ending in –ish, in fact— in Galatea's presence.
Was Galatea present? Eurydice burned nanomek to examine the statue in minutiae. It was solid emerald, crystals of beryllium aluminum silicate arranged in an orderly, hexagonal molecular lattice, tinted green by trace elements of chromium. Aligned along the lattice were trillions of dormant nanomek. When a photon of light bumped into an iota of nanomek, the nanomek would absorb it, but that was an autonomous reaction. No information moved along the webs of mind and memory inside. At least, none that Eurydice could see without actually going inside the statue herself.
So Galatea was present, but asleep. More than asleep. Comatose? Dispirited? Somehow expired? Eurydice would only find out if she merged with the statue. But if Galatea's mind and memory web were truly expired…
Eurydice shut down that train of thought and returned to the visible light spectrum. "At least my boobs are as big as yours." She tried to smirk, glancing at Galatea's bare chest. "Maybe bigger, I…Oh." She saw the swooping X carved in Galatea's left breast. She glanced down at herself, realized she still wore the Dee-pleasing schoolgirl uniform. It melted away in the blink of an eye.
"I never thought about it," Eurydice said, her voice a watery whisper. Tears pattered down over her unmarked breasts, puddled in her cleavage. "Dee never mentioned it. Why didn't he ask about it, dammit? Why?" She glared at the statue. Although its expression had not changed, Eurydice felt as if its disappointment was focused on her. "Don't look at me like that. Look!" She pointed at the spattered floor. "Dee bled right in front of you." A red smudge dried on one of the statue's toes. "Dee bled on you! And you did nothing!" She balled her fists, gel-flesh fingers and thumbs melding into spheres atop her wrists. "It's so hard for me to just stand here. She cut him! She hurt him!" Sharp jagged knives flicked out of her fists, more thorns than fingers. "I want to kill the little red bitch!"
Eurydice raged in silence for a moment before the knives slid inward and her hands reopened with a metallic sigh. "But this is what I need to do. This is where Dee wants me to be." She glowered at Galatea. "This is where I want to be, damn you." She wiped her eyes. "Okay. Got that outta the way. I feel a little better." She sighed, closed the door behind her. "Let me start again. Okay?" She combed out her hair, jellied dreadlocks settling around her shoulders. "Okay. Hi." She repeated her little wave.
The Galatea statue remained motionless, recasting lamplight from a sunshine white to a crystalline green.
Eurydice twirled a dreadlock in her fingers. "I don't know if Dee or Black Cherry told you about me. Well, I bet Black Cherry did, and I can imagine what she said." She stepped forward, eyes on her fidgeting digits. "Anyway, I'm Eurydice. Dee wants me to talk to you, to try to convince you to come back to him. To us." She looked up.
Galatea did not move.
Eurydice's eyes fell. "For a long time, I thought that's why he made me. I thought he made me, just to bring you back. But that's not true." She stepped forward. "He loves me. That means he loves you, too.
"Dee doesn't really understand the whole nanomek-individuation thing." She gave the statue a crooked grin. "He's not the brightest guy in the Universe, you know that, and maybe he learned everything he knows from comics and cartoons and Internet porn and stuff—but, oh, he's clever, and he cares, and he understands us." She gestured back and forth "You. Me." She shrugged. "You know: art. Women."
Eurydice stepped into the field of light defined by the three sunlamps. The room fell into a green gloaming. Doubled shadows, shades of green and gray, played over every surface, transforming the spare basement room into a seashore grotto. "There are things you don't know, Galatea. There are things I don't know—like whatever made you decide to do this." She reached up to touch Galatea's cheek, hesitating at the last instant. "This thing to yourself, whatever it is. I want to find out." Her arm dropped to her side. "But I'm not going to force you to share with me. It can't work that way. But there's something you've got to know. I bet you know already." Eurydice peered deep into the statue's lifeless gaze. "He's the one, Galatea."
Galatea's eyes flicked their focus onto Eurydice. Her face leapt into life, millions of nanomek burning to rearrange the emerald construct, one molecule at a time, in a flurry of speed, control, and power Eurydice could scarcely comprehend. "He was the one," Galatea said.
Eurydice startled backward, knocking over the lamp behind her. Shadow and light swirled and spun. "He is the one."
Galatea towered over Eurydice, her face grimacing in contempt. "How would you know?"
This is it, Eurydice realized. Final choice. She thought of Dee, what it would mean to spend the rest of their lives together, what it would be like to never see him again.
Galatea said, "Well?"
Eurydice made her stand. "Let me show you," she said, and offered her hand.
Galatea's brow crinkled. "I should be able to share memories just by touch," she murmured, and Eurydice knew she had said it before, "but I haven't figured out how to do it yet."
"That's 'cause you have no limits, no boundaries," Eurydice said. "I do." She waggled her fingers. "Take my hand."
Galatea stretched toward her. Their fingertips brushed. Motes of silver and green light scintillated within, growing brighter and brighter as their hands entwined. Eurydice stood on tiptoe. Their linked hands outshone the sunlamps in an expanding flare of light. The two green girls' lips met and they outshone the Sun.
Eurydice watched the SUV pull away, drive under the overpass, up the onramp on the far side, and accelerate down the highway and out of sight. The engine's protests faded as the distance between her and Dee grew. Someone padded across the road behind her, quiet as a ghost. Eurydice spent a few thousand nanomek—she had so much now it frightened her, and she took every excuse to burn some—and heightened her hearing. She recognized the approaching heartbeat immediately.
"Eurydice?" Yves asked.
She turned to him, starry-eyed from weeping, her lips trembling.
"He didn't look back," she said.
Yves nodded, looking grim, until Eurydice bowled into him, laughing, "He didn't look back!" She grabbed Yves by the collar and tugged him into a friendly kiss and ferocious hug. She beamed, so happy she thought she might crack open. "Oh, Yves, he didn't look back." She blinked away tears. "He loves me."
Yves scowled, and in a patient, little voice he said, "Of course he does," and Eurydice laughed so hard she started crying again. "You were eavesdropping, then, I take it?"
"Huh?"
Yves made quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "Sounded like you two were having a Hell of an argument," he said in a passable imitation of Eurydice's voice. "Heard every word, didn't you?"
Eurydice hiccupped and sniffled, "Oh, yeah. 'Course I did." And that set off more laughter and waterworks.
Unyx sped toward them, running out of the field and across the road, boots whacking against pavement. A pair of wings unfolded from her back. The wings spread wide as they took shape, black feathers iridescent in indigo and midnight blue.
Raspberry raced behind her. "What the fuck is going on?"
Yves reached into his pants' pocket and drew out a set of stubby keys. He tossed them high. Unyx kicked off, great wings beating the air, snatching the keys before soaring up and banking above the overpass.
"Wow," Eurydice breathed.
Raspberry skidded to a halt. "You guys. Seriously: what-the-fuckage." She glared upward. "We're just standing there and suddenly Unyx gets this 'I-left-the-porn-in-the-DVD-player' look on her face, does a runner." Unyx circled higher until she appeared no bigger than a crow. "Next thing I know," Raspberry said, watching Unyx wheel away, "I'm in an Evanescence music video."
"Unyx's gone to get Dee's car," Yves said, watching the sky.
"How do you know that?" Raspberry asked.
"Those were Dee's car keys," Yves answered.
Eurydice daubed her eyes. "When'd you get those, anyway?"
"I picked Dee up at a gay bar yesterday," Yves shrugged.
Eurydice boggled at him, watched him fight to keep the smile off his face, ready to punch him in the nose if he failed.
"Okay," Raspberry drawled, brows raised. "But how does Unyx know that? When did you tell her?"
"About ten minutes from now," Yves said. The purple and green girls stared at him.
CeeCee sauntered up, slow and steady but with the energy of an avalanche. "Is it time to save the world yet?"
Galatea broke the kiss, her face flushed with snowflake-fire. "I don't understand." The sights and sounds of the underpass faded around them, dreamlike afterimages melting into soft white light.
Eurydice inched her free arm up around Galatea's neck. "I think you do." She tugged. Galatea did not resist. "But there's more." Gel-flesh met gemstone.
Ursula's head peeped over the trembling curves of Galatea's calves. She wore a mustache and goatee of glimmering green nectar, grinning like her own evil twin from an alternative universe. "It's called the Venus Butterfly."
"A Technique?" Galatea demanded, dumbfounded. "You are using a Technique on me?"
"Half of one." Ursula rocked forward onto her elbows, her rump bobbing high in the air and her milk-white, elfin face descending below the verdant swell of Galatea's cleft. "For a proper Venus Buttery, my thumb would go up in here—"
"Ah."
"—my middle and ring fingers would go down in there—"
"Yah!"
"—and my tongue, well my tongue would go—hmmph, hm-mm, mm."
"Ooh, fuck!" Galatea chewed on a fist to muffle a scream and then begged, "Enough. Enough!"
"Wait. Hey." Galatea frowned down as the walls of Ursula's bedroom resolved into the cinderblock of the sorority house basement. "That was my memory."
Eurydice hummed, eyes sliding shut. "So you did fuck the loli-goth." She giggles, eyes still closed. "I had to feel that for myself."
Galatea ran a hand over Eurydice's thigh. "You really are me, aren’t you?"
"Mostly." Galatea's hand traced up Eurydice's back, making the shorter green girl shimmy. "Mm. Solid."
"Then you need to know this," Galatea said, palming the back of Eurydice's neck before kissing her hard and open-mouthed.
"Aren’t you even going to listen to what I have to say?" Galatea asked, frustration and ire rising.
"Yes," Dee said, "but when I get back."
Galatea felt a gush of relief. "You mean," she said, "you mean you aren't leaving me?"
"No," Dee said, "maybe. I don't know. You've done something to me. You're doing something to me. I guess I'm a control freak, because I'm really freaking out right now."
"Dee, I haven't done anything—"
"You're changing me, Galatea." Dee marched to the front door. "But it would be stupid to make any decisions about us right now. I've got to go out. Alone. I've got to get away, by myself, to be myself, for a while. I'll be back. If I can still move. If I'm still alive."
"But Dee," Galatea wailed, hating herself for sounding so desperate, "I'm not changing you. I can't tell you now…there's so much I still don't understand…but you aren't changing."
Dee slammed the front door behind him, cracking the frame and ruining the lock.
"You're just becoming more you," Galatea whispered.
Eurydice tore free of Galatea's embrace. The eidolon of memory and light winked out. Eurydice quaked, disheveled dreadlocks falling everywhere, fists squeezed against her sides.
"I'm sorry." Galatea's smile was kind but sad. "But you had to know. He's not the one."
Eurydice said nothing.
"Another will come." Galatea's smile turned wry. "They always do."
"You're wrong," Eurydice said.
"What?"
"You were wrong." Eurydice flipped her hair back, a gesture both childish and defiantly strong. "Dee was changing." She stepped forward. Silver foxfire bloomed below her skin. "Dee has changed. Wait. You weren't wrong." Her eyes narrowed. "You're lying."
Galatea fell back between the two upright sunlamps. "No, I'm not."
"Of course you are. You lie all the time. You're lying right now." Eurydice's laughter rang like fey bells. "To me!"
"Dee can't change," Galatea insisted, but her eyes pled otherwise.
"I know something you don't know," Eurydice sang, glowing. She opened her arms wide. "C'mere, you big dummy."
Galatea rushed into her embrace and the world went white.
Yves and Dee were arguing in the copse of ruined trees at the edge of the wide flowerbed. Eurydice followed the fleeing Raspberry with her eyes, burned nanomek to smooth her ears into perfect parabolas, and homed onto Dee's dark vibrato.
"The decision has already been made, hasn’t it, Yves?" he said.
Yves' grin was mirthless. "I know that tone, Dee. You're starting a rehearsed hissy fit." Dee tried to protest but Yves cut him off. "'Bitch-bitch-bitch, walk out the door.' That means you're leaving."
Icy panic seized Eurydice. She shut down, terrified to move, ready to shatter.
A warm hand enfolded her shoulder, soft and soothing, creamy satin. "Keep listening, honey," CeeCee urged. "If they wanted to be out of earshot, they would have driven two counties away."
Eurydice drew a ragged breath, nodded, and swiveled her ears like a cat.
"…So it has to be me," Yves was saying.
"Agreed," Dee said, nodding gravely. "Black Cherry wants to live in a story? Fine. We're going to give her one."
Yves rubbed his chin. "What do you mean?"
"Black Cherry's holding all the cards," Dee said, "but she's not playing with a full deck."
"A little less hissy fit, a lot more exposition, please," Yves insisted, "time's a wasting."
"All right," Dee smirked, then ticked off each point with his fingers. "I head off, alone, to Easy House. I distract Cherry, make sure she can't use Unyx's hair. You guys catch up—still have my keys? Good. So I distract Cherry. The Easies go on automatic pilot." He dropped his hand. "Out of fingers. Anyway, Easies go on automatic pilot, Unyx cures the Frenzy."
"How?" Yves' cheek twitched. "This is another answer I don't want to know, isn't it?"
"Yes," Dee replied, "it really is. So Unyx cures the Frenzy. Raspberry finds Unyx's hair and the nanomek. CeeCee eats anybody trying to get away. You do…what you've got to do."
"And you rescue Galatea," Yves said, brow furrowed.
"No," Dee said, "that's Eurydice's job." He turned to the flowerbed. Eurydice contemplated her feet. "If she wants it. Eurydice deserves the chance to make up her own mind about Galatea," Dee finished. He turned away and Eurydice popped her head up, eyes wide.
"Two problems with that plan," Yves countered. "One, Eurydice doesn't know if she wants Galatea back."
"And two," Dee sighed, "Galatea probably doesn't want to come back. CeeCee said Cherry was lying about her. Cherry's setting me up with some sort of cruel irony gag. What else could it be? She thinks she's the villain in a fairy tale or vaudeville routine."
Dee shrugged. "But the Frenzy has got to be stopped, and Black Cherry will go berserk as soon as Unyx shows up. So I've got to keep Black Cherry busy, no matter what it takes. Oh." Dee raised his voice. "And I don't know how Unyx's precognition really works, but Cherry can hear through Unyx's ears, so I sure hope she hasn't been listening to any of this."
Eurydice, almost frozen with anticipation, managed, "Unyx, don't start listening five minutes ago."
"'Kay," said Unyx, Raspberry's head resting on her shoulder.
"No games, Dee," Yves dismissed. "Do you want Galatea back?"
"I want her to be happy," Dee said, "I want Eurydice to be happy." Dee relented. "Yes. God, Yves, I want them both to be happy." His Adam's Apple bobbing, he whispered, "I want them to be happy with me." Dee stood in teary silence.
Yves softened. "Dee?"
Every iota of nanomek in Eurydice's body latched onto her sensory web. Billions of green girls listened to Dee's breathing deepen and slow. Dee nodded, then spoke with such sudden conviction Eurydice nearly cried out. "This is how it has to happen. I won't second guess her or Galatea anymore. Whatever Eurydice and Galatea choose will be the right thing." Dee dried his face with his palm. "No looking back."
"You sure?" Yves asked, but he was already adjusting his scabbard, tightening the knot in his belt.
"Yes," Dee answered, and as if it were the easiest thing in the world, he added, "I trust her both."
The washing machine tore off its wall hookup. Water squirted up the basement wall. Black Cherry hissed and drank. Her gel-flesh seethed around Dee's cock. Candy-red froth poured off her back and flailing wings, sluicing over Dee's belly and thighs. "Had enough?" Dee growled, brutalizing her ass from behind. "You…sick…fucking…bitch?"
"Never!" Black Cherry smashed her ass against Dee's crotch, jabbing his cock into her very core. She howled in orgasm or agony or both. "Master! Cum in me now. Name me now." Her insane enthusiasm was infectious, the constant surf of her flesh impossible to deny, and Dee felt pressure rise within him. "Become me," Black Cherry moaned. "Now!"
"Dee?"
Dee whipped around. His dick gashed Black Cherry wide open. She twittered and gabbled, cumming so hard her wings fountained off.
A green face peeked at him from around the washroom door. Thin dreadlocks cascaded about the face in sheaves, hiding everything but a sensuous smirk. "This is what happens," the green girl said, tipping her head, revealing a sparkling emerald eye, "when you leave the house."
Dee's heart raced. "Eurydice?"
"Yes," said the green girl, and filled the doorway. She flipped her hair back, ducking to avoid the top of the doorframe.
Time stood still. "Galatea."
"Yes," said the green girl. "I am Eurydice." She swayed into the room. Dee was staggered by the grace and sumptuous promise in that single step. "I am Galatea. I am Venus." Her gel-flesh flowed, her curves tapered into a classical figure with hair falling down to her knees. "I am Lilith." The beauty grew fangs, her form fiendish and fleshy. She stepped closer, body diminishing as dragonfly wings sprouted. "I am Fée. I am all of them and more. But more than anything…"
She moved close enough for Dee to hear the metallic sigh as she morphed into the ravishing beauty that had greeted him at the washroom door, in the flowerbed by the overpass, in Bee's bathtub, and in Dee's apartment, rising up from the kitchen table, mischief and fantasy made flesh. Well, no, not exactly flesh.
The green girl's fingers crossed her left breast, cleaving an angled X, its curved lines suggesting a dancer in mid-leap.
"I am yours, Deiter Detwiler," she said, and kissed him. "Always."
Black Cherry backslid off the washing machine, splashed down into a ruddy lake. Her hips pumped in reflexive jerks on the floor. Little waves rippled through the soupy mess. "Master, master, master."
"You know," the green girl said, glancing sidelong at Dee's crotch. He was ramrod stiff and slicked with cherry syrup and sugary foam from his bellybutton to his knees. "This'd be so much more romantic if you hadn't just butt-fucked my sister."
Dee felt drunk with delight. "Or if you'd stop screwing every woman I introduce you to," he countered, grinning like an idiot. "What's going to happen when I take you to meet my mom?"
She poked him in the chest. "You're the one who slept with Yves!"
"No, I didn't."
"Yeah," the green girl pouted. "Still, I can dream, can't I?" She reached for a torn clothes line and mopped the gunk off Dee's gut with a silk camisole. Black Cherry flopped onto her back, gulping like a suffocating fish. The green girl swirled the camisole around Dee's balls, stepping close. "So." Her breasts pushed against his neck as she leaned into him, slowly stroking the silk material over his prick. Dee swam in a perfume of citrus-and-sex. She whispered into his ear, "Tell me: your mother." She pulled back. "She hot?"
Dee kissed the wicked grin off the green girl's face.
Yves sat in the idling Volkswagen, fingering the scabbard. Yves remembered mocking Dee when he had refused to hurt the mindfucked Easies under the highway overpass. He could sympathize now.
"C'mon," a coed whined. "Lemme in." She bounced on the balls of her feet, rattling the driver's side door handle, breasts spilling out from under her tank top and smearing the window with sweat. "I'll suck your dick."
He looked up into her rabid eyes. "Sorry," he said, turning away, "I just can't hit that."
The front door of the sorority house banged open. Raspberry jigged in the threshold. "Woo! I rock!" She brandished two long, braided ropes of black hair. "I got 'em!"
Yves swore. Nothing to do but to do it, he thought, and popped open the car's electric door lock. The coed bent down, fumbled the car door open. Yves swung the door out hard, wincing as the coed whacked her head against the window. He stepped onto the pavement, grabbed the reeling girl in a fireman's carry, and dragged her up the porch steps and into the sorority.
The foyer was crowded with idle coeds. Some looked miserable, others abashed, but all where exhausted and lost. "Need some help here," he said, hefting the girl to her feet.
A girl with a FedEx cap rammed down over unruly strawberry blond curls trotted up. "She okay?"
"She's still frenzied," Yves said. "Where's Unyx?"
"Upstairs," the strawberry blonde said, "there're still six or so sisters unaccounted for." She took the woozy coed from him. "This…oof…makes it five. I'll take her upstairs." She blushed. "I'm so sorry for all this."
"Where is she?" Yves felt hollowed out, coreless. "Where is Cherry?"
"Last I heard from her," the strawberry blonde answered, "She was in the basement, down that hallway. First door to your left." She wobbled but made her way toward the stairwell in the center hall. Her blush deepened. "Thank you, Mr. Valiancourt."
At the sound of his name, all the girls turned to him. No one told them my name. They just know, from Cherry. The Frenzy is gone but the cherry lives on. Yves swept from the foyer and down the hallway.
"Rage," SB had whispered to him on the boiled shore of the reservoir. "Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles."
"What would you have me do?" Yves had asked.
"Someone needs to die today, Yves."
"It's me," Yves had said. He had not intend it to be a question.
SB had said, "Yes, Yves. It's supposed to be you."
The door at the end of the hall led to a large kitchen. A clutch of coeds tended to a naked boy in his late teens sitting on the marble top of a utility cart. Yves watched a girl in torn pink hot pants hand him a satchel. "Here's your newspapers. What's left of them, anyway. And, uh, your two dollars." She dropped a fifty dollar bill into the satchel. "Keep the change."
"Thanks," the paperboy muttered, plopping the satchel in his lap.
"We're so, so sorry," said one of the other girls.
The paperboy shrugged. "S'okay."
"We mean it," the girl in the pink hot pants cupped his shoulder, then withdrew her hand. "Look, uh, I know this doesn't make any difference, but you were pretty good." The paperboy laughed dryly.
"Seriously," another girl insisted. "All those other guys are out cold. And Eddie ran away, I bet. You're the last man standing. I think that cable guy's going to need an ambulance." She blanched. "We're really sorry."
The paperboy sat up straight, laughing. "You know what I'm sorry about? I was a virgin. Hell, the only date I've ever had was to the prom. And we only necked. And this…" He waved his hand around at the surrounding gang of half-naked college girls, "This is what happens my first time. You won't believe it, I can't believe it, but do you want to know what I'm thinking? It's all downhill from here. What I'm sorry about? Nothing like this will ever happen again."
The girls glanced at each other.
"Yeah," the paperboy mumbled, "pretty stupid, I know. Thanks for listening to me, though." The girl in the pink hot pants coughed politely. The paperboy looked up at her.
"What's your phone number?" she asked.
Yves shook his head and trudged down the basement steps.
"Supposed to be," Yves had repeated to SB. "That's not the same thing as 'has to be,' is it?"
"No," SB had said, "it isn't. Dee's a rule breaker. His story is off course. You don't have to play by the rules, either. You can choose who dies this time around, Yves. It doesn't have to be you. But you have to pick." She had walked back to the water's edge. "So who's it going to be? You? Dee?"
She had turned to face him. "Me?"
"Wait," Black Cherry burbled. She sat up but her momentum and the weight of her formless wings drove her back down again. "Wait."
Dee broke his kiss. The green girl giggled and hummed, eyes closed. "If you're going to meet my mother," he said to her, "I'll need to know your name."
"Mm, a third name. That's your job." The green girl beeped him on the nose. "But don't name me here. It makes me orgasm so hard and I want some real romance for once."
"Shouldn't you name yourself?"
The green girl gazed at him. Behind them, Black Cherry thrashed, the crimson lake shrinking into a puddle as her wings took shape. "No, Master."
"That's so cornball," the green girl snickered, "I love it." She kissed him, slurring into his mouth, "But I cum rilly, rilly hard when you do it. You're the one."
"No." Black Cherry swayed on all fours, head bowed, the wings above her ears little more than red, wet noodles. "Master, no."
"You said that before," Dee told the green girl. "Back at the highway, you said, 'You're supposed to be the one.' But what does that mean? There some prophecy I don’t know about or something?"
The green girl laughed, "No, silly. It just means you're the one." She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him so hard his toes curled.
Black Cherry sat up on her haunches and shrieked like a wounded animal. "No!"
"The one for me," the green girl told Dee, and kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him.
"Cut the crap," Yves had told SB. "I don't believe in fate or destiny, and especially not some bullshit story."
"Black Cherry believes," SB had said.
"Exactly!" Yves had paced, hands balling into fists. "Fate didn't rape me. Black Cherry did. Fate isn't going to kill anybody. Black Cherry will." He had jabbed his finger at SB. "You're not talking about fate, you're talking about Black Cherry. Her actions, her choices. She's not going to stop until somebody dies. Because that's what she wants."
SB had reached for him but he had pulled away. "What do you want, Yves?"
"Stop ignoring me!" Black Cherry's voice was shrill enough to break glass. "Stop it. I'll kill you all!"
"Let's get out of here," Dee told the green girl, hooking an arm over her shoulder. "Your baby sister's being a real brat."
Dee and the green girl turned their backs on Black Cherry and made for the door. The scarlet girl flew at them, all her strength and fury funneling into her wing claws as she hurtled forward.
Yves stalked through the door, drawing his sword. He stepped around his friends and raised his blade. Its ghostly edge sliced through Black Cherry's wings like a razor through water. "Victory is not being cut," he said, angling his blade as Black Cherry stumbled into it.
He cut Black Cherry in half. "You lost."
Her belly unzipped. Yves' cut was clean and Black Cherry cracked open, torso canting backward like the lid of a cigarette lighter. Her face contorted. Her jet-engine scream switched off into total silence. Yves was convinced he had been struck deaf. Black Cherry's torso bent almost parallel to the ceiling and her entire body dissolved into a downpour. Sound returned to the world as the deliquesced scarlet girl sloshed onto the floor like an upturned barrel of claret wine.
"Yves," Dee called from the door. Yves nodded but did not look back. The rollicking red waves described a perfect circle on the floor before him. He took the time to find his center and relax into the Water Kamae ready stance.
"She needs a name, Yves," Dee said. Yves nodded again and heard the door shut behind him.
Black Cherry spindled up out of the waves, body hardening within a creamy red shell, beautiful and terrible. "Playmate's come to play." Her lips parted as she gave Yves's pale sword a sultry look. "Where did you get such a wonderful toy?"
"Your banter's lousy," Yves replied. "Derivative, too." He angled the tip of his sword to point at the bridge of Black Cherry's nose. "This is the endgame, Cherry. Bad time to get sloppy."
Black Cherry feinted with a right hook. Yves sidestepped, leaving his chest exposed. Black Cherry swung a roundhouse punch at Yves' breast powerful enough to pulverize his heart. His thumb prickled and Yves spun about, sword rising high. The scarlet girl's punch flew wild as Yves severed her right wing at the shoulder, then flicked his blade through her neck on the downswing.
"Stupid girl," Yves said over the deluge as Black Cherry rained down all around him. "I told you I never make the same mistake twice. I know you have claws."
Black Cherry scrabbled over the floor like a half-drowned swimmer dragging herself from the ocean. "How…H—how…"
"Nice triple-feint, though," Yves said. "Too bad you can't divide like your sister, or I'd really be in trouble." Black Cherry pushed herself up. She was nothing more than a head and torso above a choppy puddle of crimson melt. Yves brought his sword down.
The sword point bobbled close. Black Cherry stared cross-eyed and gasping. "What…" Yves slashed. "Wait…" Yves slashed. "Why?" she sobbed, and the sword finally fell still at Yves' side. Black Cherry crawled away from him, her wings lifeless and trailing rills of blood red gel. "Why are you doing this?"
"A few hours ago," Yves told her, his voice flat, "you were given a choice: sister or sword." He drew the pale sword up to the Water Kamae ready position. "There was no third option."
"You?" Black Cherry rolled onto her back, chest heaving. "It's going to be you?"
"What do you want, Yves?" SB had asked him.
His rage had boiled over, and he had thrown the sword into the woods. "I don't want to be a killer!"
"It was always me," Yves said. Hollow. I need to stay hollow. He glanced down and saw her exposed labia, engorged and overflowing with nectar. But I hate this, I hate this.
"So little nanomek left," Black Cherry gulped, fingers creeping cross her thigh. "Dee made me cum—you made me cum—so much. Just a little more and…" Her fingers shivered over her mons. "No, I can't." She jerked her hand away. "Not without Master."
Yves lowered his sword, training it on her belly. I hate this.
SB had said, "But you're so good at it, Yves." And Yves had cried, and SB had run to him.
"My master should have been my first," Black Cherry pled. "My master should be my last."
"I was." Yves moved to Black Cherry's side. After a moment's hesitation, he sheathed his sword. It slid into its scabbard with a silken sigh and click. "I will be."
Black Cherry frowned up at him, blinking. Her eyes grew wide. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she called to him, "Master?"
"I tried to give her a choice. Eurydice tried, too," SB had said, hugging Yves tight. "Eurydice risked her life to save her sister. But Cherry didn't want it. It's not Dee who won't change, it's Cherry. She wants to kill her master, or her master to kill her." She had gripped him by the shoulders.
"And that's you, Yves. Isn't it?"
"Yes," Yves said to Black Cherry. He pulled the scabbard from his belt and tossed it aside. "It's me."
"Oh, Master." Black Cherry wondered up at Yves. "Master, I'm sorry. I should have known. You were always ready for me. Ready from the very start. Even though you hated it." Her fingers scuttled into her sex again. "And you do hate it, don't you, Master?"
"Yes," Yves said. He reached into his sparkling white over-shirt, and drew out a stout, gray blade.
"Your tanto," Black Cherry sighed, one hand plunging into her sex, the other tracing little circles between her breasts.
Yves straddled Black Cherry's stomach, pinning her arms in place with his knees. "It's time."
"You hate me," Black Cherry purred. Yves could feel her arms move frantically beneath him. "You hate me enough to kill me."
"I hate you," Yves said, palming the tanto in both hands, trying to think of the words that would drive Black Cherry over the edge, trying to stay hollow. "Because I have to kill you. Not for what you did to me before, but what I'm doing now." He raised the short blade above his head, "I hate you more than anything in the world."
She shook beneath him, legs kicking, wings trembling. Nectar leaked everywhere from her. "Hate me, Master! Name me! Become me, Master!"
Yves thrust the tanto downward with all his strength, burying the blade between her breasts. "Die for me, Nemesis," he told her.
Nemesis cried out his name and died.
And I won't take from you
What you can't take from me.
—XTC, We're All Light
Dee and the green girl were sitting together on the basement stairs when Yves emerged. "It's over," he said, tucking the pale sword and scabbard into his belt. "Nothing left but Jell-O, and that's getting washed into a sump pump by a leaky washing machine. Still," he added to the green girl, "do you mind double checking? I don’t have super-senses."
The green girl rose. Yves marveled at her beauty, then startled at her height and megaton bombshell figure. "We think you're super, Yves," she said, patting him on the chest and kissing his cheek. "Thank you." She swayed into the washroom.
"That's Galatea?" Yves asked Dee.
"Kinda sorta almost," Dee smiled. "She's Eurydice and Galatea. She—well, we, I guess, she still wants me to officially do it—we haven’t decided on a new name yet."
"Eurydice was worried if they could re-assimilate, or what would happen if they did," Yves said.
"Eurydice's still there," Dee said, "more than ever. But so's Galatea." His brow furrowed in thought. "She says it's different than anything that's happened before. Their nanomek didn't just sum together, it multiplied. She's not Galatea plus Eurydice, she's Galatea times Eurydice. That's what she said, anyway."
"What the heck does that mean?" Yves asked.
"It means I'm fucked." Dee grinned, eyebrows arching. "And this weekend's going to be God-damned amazing."
Yves gave Dee a wan smile, then sat beside him. "You're naked again," Yves said.
"I'm used to it," Dee said. "Here're the pants I borrowed." Dee handed Yves a dripping, red and gray mass. "Sorry."
Yves pushed him off. "Keep them. My treat for helping me save the world." Dee sat with the sloppy sweats in his lap, saying nothing. Yves sighed. "Thanks for not asking if I was okay, Dee."
Dee nodded. "I know you're not okay, Yves. But I think you will be."
"Me too," Yves said. They sat together a while.
"Galatea, Eurydice, and Raspberry all fantasize about you and me fucking," Dee said out of nowhere.
Yves thought about this. "Who's on top?"
Before Dee could answer, the green girl, her face stricken, emerged from the washroom. "She's gone," she said. Dee moved to embrace her. "She's really gone."
"You tried everything," Yves told her.
"So did you," she said. "You know I don't blame you for anything, right?" Yves nodded and the green girl relaxed. "These are for you," she told Dee, handing over a clean tee shirt and pair of blue stretch pants.
"These are like three sizes too small," Dee protested.
"I know." The green girl's eyes glittered with gem-fire. "Put 'em on."
CeeCee's voice drifted down from the first floor. "Did anyone lose a guy who tastes like pizza?"
"I do not like the way she said that," Dee said, glancing up the stairs.
"You were the one who said she should eat anyone trying to escape," Yves said. He stood up, mimed dusting off his knees. "Come on, Green Girl, Nude Man."
"First thing we do when we get home," Dee grumbled, following Yves up the stairs, "is come up with some good superhero names."
"Second thing," the green girl said from behind Dee, leering at his ass as it bounced up the stairs. "Maybe third, or three hundredth."
A taxicab ambled down Campion Street. A green Volkswagen darted down the opposite lane, its windows burnished by the sunset. The cab's passenger, a redheaded coed, squinted from the glare. She sat in borrowed clothes rustled up from her stay at the state police station. The baggy sweatshirt and jeans reeked of cigarettes. At least she had underwear on again, even if they were voluminous granny-panties.
The cab rounded the bend of the cul de sac. "Hey," the redhead said, "that's my car! Aw, man, what happened to it?" The yellow SUV, windows smashed, roof rumpled, sat in front of the sorority house. She glanced around. Other than the SUV, the cul de sac looked abandoned. "Huh. No FedEx truck. Good sign."
"You talk to yourself a lot," the cabbie observed. "What they pick you up for? PI?"
"PN," she said, "public nudity." She tossed him a twenty and hopped out before the cabbie could comment further.
Dozens of Friday newspapers piled around the porch steps. "Weird." The redhead unlocked the front door, poked her head into the dark foyer and halloed. "Is it safe? I heard the message on my cell." She stepped inside, hunting for the hall light switch. She looked down. "Oh, hello. Who're you?"
"Ursula's a good name," said a girl with a massive pair of pigtails, thick handlebars tufted with big black pompoms. She looked barely old enough to drive, tarted up in white cake makeup and black lip and eyeliner.
"Art, or theater major?" the redhead asked, squinting at Ursula's outfit of black patent leather club gear.
"Post-grad," grinned Ursula, turning. "Women's Studies. C'mon!" She skipped out into the main hall.
Don't look at her ass. The redhead followed, frowning. "We're we going?" Don't look at her ass. Ursula flounced up the main stairwell. Oh my God, just look at that ass. And what did she do, paint those pants on? "Um, little girl?"
Ursula froze. Her outfit seemed to ripple in the shadowy half-light. "Yeah?"
"What happened?"
Ursula shrugged, an uncanny, almost liquid rise and fall of her shoulders; another trick of the light, perhaps. "Good guys won," she said, and started back up the stairs. "Duh. Don't they always?"
The redhead ascended after her. "So where is everyone?"
"Done a bunk. Bugged out. Vamoosed." Ursula whistled through her teeth and zipped her hand through the air.
"Why?"
Ursula reached the top of the stair and spun about, lips pursed. "Because I asked them to." The redhead's stomach flip-flopped. Ursula shook her head, raised a finger as pale as her face. "Ah, ah! Asked them to. 'Asked.' Not sang." She strutted down the hallway, boots clicking on the hardwood.
"How?" The redhead swallowed, then hurried to catch up. "How did you know about that?"
"We know all sorts of stuff," Ursula said, stopping at a closed door. "And here we are."
"But this is my bedroom," the redhead said.
"Really?" Ursula tipped her head. "Gosh." The door opened by itself. "After you, Madam Secretary."
A strawberry blonde squatted on the vanity bench, FedEx cap twirled backward on her head, like a relief pitcher waiting in a dugout. "Hi!"
Relieved to see a familiar face, the redhead rushed into the room. "What're you doing here?"
"I can't get enough of it," the strawberry blonde answered, plopping her chin into her palm, "but you're the last one, and that makes me sad. But Unyx said she was going to make it really special." She perked up, reaching to the vanity and clicking off the table lamp. The room gloomed. "And that makes me happy."
"Who?"
"Unyx." The strawberry blonde pointed to Ursula, who had slipped into the room as soon as the light when off, closing the door behind her. "You, know: snippy-snippy."
Unyx burst into giggles. "Not eunuchs. Unyx. U and Nyx."
Finally, something she understood. "Like the computer operating system thing," said the redhead.
Unyx gulped down a giggle. "The what?"
"UNIX, right?"
Unyx stared in the dark, then shook her fists around her head. "Ooh, dammit. They never told us! No wonder Yves and Dee kept smirking whenever we said it!"
"I'm lost again," the redhead groaned, flumping onto her bed.
"Nope." The strawberry blonde whipped off her cap and ruffled her hair. "You landed on target."
Unyx glided into the room. "We want to talk to you about Chapter Regulation 700: Citizenship, Morality, and Values."
Does she have rollerskates in those boots or something? "That's Reg 600."
The strawberry blonde shook her head. "She knows about the real one."
"Regulation 700," Unyx said, coming to a stop at the foot of the bed. "No licky-licky."
"So that's what this is all about?" The redhead clucked and lay back with her hands behind her head. Another dyke bitchfest.
"That, and stopping the blood music," Unyx said, folding her arms. Twice.
The redhead sat up. "Holy shit, you can do that?" Unyx nodded. "Oh, thank God. It's been so strange lately. I feel so, I dunno, disconnected, like I'm…"
"On automatic pilot," Unyx suggested.
"Yeah! Please, make it go away? I'll do any—Oh." A chill stole over her. "No. No fucking way."
The strawberry blonde sighed, standing up. "Well, here's the thing. While you were gone, the rest of us took a vote. And it was unanimous." She crossed the room to stand beside Unyx, putting her left arm around her. "No more Reg 700." Unyx put her right arm around the strawberry blonde. Twice. "No more code red hazing. Girls can ask and tell as much as they want, with no consequences."
"Doesn't matter," the redhead smirked. "You couldn't have had a unanimous vote. I know two sisters who'd never—"
"Jo Echo says you eat pussy like a pro," Unyx interrupted, eyebrow arched. "And she really knows her stuff. As for your cute blonde friend? Well, she and her amazing tits got here an hour ago. I didn't even have to ask. So it's unanimous, except for you, Madam Secretary."
The strawberry blonde peeled out of her top. "But, you know, Unyx, the Chapter Secretary has to approve or veto every vote."
"That's right," the redhead said, huddling at the head of the bed. "And I'll never change my mind. Never."
"Oh, I don't know." Unyx raised an arm and reached out. It reached and reached, stretching nine, ten feet to the wall switch. "Something tells me that it's time," Unyx said. and light flooded the room.
At first, the redhead wanted to scream. And then, she didn't. And a few minutes later, she was screaming her silly head off.
"I feel like I'm forgetting something," Dee said. He waggled the Volkswagen's steering wheel, felt it tug to the left as the car picked up speed. "Why is the alignment shot?"
"Unyx had to drive like a bat out of Hell to make it back in time for me to tell her to go get the car in the first place," Yves explained from the front passenger seat. "Compared to a time paradox annihilating our existence, I'd say wheel alignment was worth the price."
"Glad I won't see the future," Raspberry said from behind them, "I didn't understand any of that shit."
Dee frowned at her reflection in the rearview mirror. "Did you say 'won't'? But doesn't that mean…"
"It's a Raspberry thing, honey," said CeeCee from the opposite side of the backseat. She twirled her index finger about her ear and winked. "You wouldn't understand."
"Eat me, fatso," Raspberry said.
"I would, honey, I would." CeeCee glanced up at the face of the green girl sitting between them "If tall, green, and horny weren't in the way. Look." She placed a buttery yellow hand on the green girl's shoulder and slid right off. "I don't know what you've got going on over up in that lovely head of yours, Ms. Eurydice-that-was, but you've got more nanomek inside you than the rest of us combined. A lot more."
"And she's just sittin' here staring at the back of Dee's neck," Raspberry added.
"There's only one thing I want inside me," the green girl said in a voice so sultry it could melt lead.
They drove in anxious silence for a while. "So," Yves squeaked, coughed, and started again. "So, you feel like we've forgotten something."
"Yeah." Dee turned off Campion Street and onto the main throughway. "Something back at the apartment, maybe?"
Yves pointed at a black shape circling high in the twilight sky above them. "Unyx has already checked it out. All clear, no cops, no nothing. Nemesis didn't hurt anyone else. Just pulled a mild Jedi mindfuck on the guards, although we don't know how long it'll last."
"What about Viggo?" Dee asked. "Cherry Nemesis…"
"Just Nemesis," Yves interrupted.
"Nemesis really put the whammy on him," Dee said. "He probably has some nanomek left in him. And I wouldn't ask Unyx to go all hentai on a guy."
CeeCee peered around the green girl. "Sounds like you and I have an action item, Raz honey," she said.
"Sweeeet," Raspberry drawled.
"Hentai!" Dee thumped the steering wheel. "That's it!"
"What?" Yves sat bolt upright. "What?"
"My story," Dee said, "I was supposed to upload a goo girl story to the 'Net, and I'm almost a week late. Man, those guys are going to kill me." Yves glared at him. "What? Oh, come on," Dee mugged, "that was funny. I did forget all about that, though. So, I'm thinking: what else have we missed?"
"You were supposed to learn the true meaning of love," Yves said, folding his arms.
"Oh, that," Dee waved, driving onto the highway onramp. "I figured that out awhile ago, back at SRU."
"Is it something really trite," Yves hazarded, "like trust?"
"Friction?" suggested CeeCee.
"A butt that won't quit," insisted Raspberry.
The green girl just smiled. Dee met her eyes in the review mirror and said, "Teaming up to fight crime." The green girl glanced away, heavy-lidded.
"Um, wow. Okay. Then that covers everything. Listen," Yves said, emphasizing each point by rapping a knuckle against the dashboard. "I killed Nemesis. Unyx saved the world. You got the girl. Raspberry got the hair and the nanomek, and that's that." Dee nodded, smiling.
Raspberry said, "Wait. What?"
"Unyx's braids and the tin of nanomek from SRU," Yves said.
"Oh," said Raspberry, plucking at her shoulder.
CeeCee, the green girl, Dee, and Yves turned to stare at her.
"I got the braids," Raspberry said.
Dusk fell over the ivy-choked window of the Epsilon Sorority House kitchen. Shadows dappled the cluttered countertops, the empty boxes of Jell-O strewn across the floor, and the horizontal slats of the locked pantry door. The door jumped on its hinges.
"Hello?" Eddie's voice was muffled through the slats. "Is it over? There's a can of soup cutting the circulation off to my ass. Anybody? Dammit." A pair of slats trembled. "Ow, ow. Fuck." A finger wormed its way between them. "C'mon. Yes!"
A slat splintered then fell backward into the pantry, opening a narrow, lengthwise gap in the door. Two more slats soon clattered away. A hand fumbled out from the widened gap and wrestled with the knob. There was a click and the pantry door burst open.
Eddie staggered out of the pantry in a hail of canned vegetables and dry goods, kicking boxes and tins across the floor. "Thank God," he groaned, rubbing his naked rear end. "My butt is numb." He bent to massage the life back into his legs, then dipped his head to stare at the marble-top kitchen cart where he had been hogtied earlier that morning, although to Eddie it felt like a lifetime. "What's that?"
He hobbled over to the cart, rolled it aside, and stared in silence. He bent down, pushed away a tin of tuna, and picked something up. He shook it. It rattled, perhaps half-full of sand. He leaned over to the wall, flipped the light switch, turned the tin over in his hand, and read the yellowing label.
SRU THICKENING AGENT
"Oh, shit."
And the moral of this motherfucker is,
Ladies, make 'em act like they know:
You are, was, and always will be
Pussy control.
—Prince, Pussy Control
He remembered a kiss, the taste of cupcakes, a brief but blinding pain, and then a sensation peculiar in its familiarity but terrific in its intensity—the floaty-feely side effect from taking a strong decongestant. "Medicine head," the commercials called it.
He remembered seeing himself from above, seeing himself fall to the floor. For a moment he had wondered if he were already dead, if this were the out-of-body experience before the tunnel of light, but no light had come. As the world narrowed and his mind dimmed, it occurred to him that the wet, rag-mop mess atop his body's shoulders was missing something. This was no spiritual, out-of-body head-trip. This was the real thing. This was not the sort of disembodiment you came back from and then talked about on cheesy cable television exposés at one o'clock in the morning. This was not life after death. This was dying from having your head torn off.
But as his awareness of the world, of himself, and of the difference between the two fragmented and fell away, one thought remained. One white-hot ember of memory and emotion raged and burned until there was nothing else left:
"And his name is Dee," she had said, and that was the last sound he would ever hear.
"…His name is Dee," she had said, and those were the last words ever spoken to him.
"…Dee," she had said, and it would be the last thought he would ever have.
Dee.
And then he sat up and screamed, "Dee!"
Echoes died around him. Bee's hands flew to his ears. His fingers scrambled of his receding ginger hair, his cheeks and neck, squeezing and pinching. They were all there and in their proper place. His fingertip touched his teeth, and Bee realized he was grinning huge enough to hurt. "I'm alive."
He leapt up, bare feet slipping once on the cold, clean floor. "I'm alive."
He tried to make sense of the tall, twisty shapes all around him but an unconscious, protean fear gripped him with one overriding priority. He trust a hand between his bare legs and almost wept the relief to feel his manhood intact, balls and all. "I'm alive!" he cried, and ran headlong into a hard plane of thick glass, stumped backward and flopped onto his ass.
"Wait," someone said. The voice was muffled and musical but also amplified and strange, as if some girl were talking through a loudspeaker outside his bedroom window. "What was that?" The floor trembled a little whenever she spoke. "I thought I heard something."
Bee splayed his legs. The floor was convex, gently bulging upward, the apex beneath his butt. He glanced up and snapped his legs shut.
"Take your time," said another voice. "Looking is free. You break it, you buy it."
A metal disc capped the space Bee occupied some ten feet into the air, but the distorted shapes around him rose higher still. "Oh, no," Bee said, "Oh, no fucking way." He bent down and knocked on the floor. It clinked like glass.
"I knew I heard something," said the first voice. Shadow and light cut wide swaths around him as something enormous moved in the distance.
Bee stood. "No way is this happening." He reached out, tapped the glass in front of him, and traced the clear wall as it curved inward until he came full circle to where he began, and stared up through the glass and into a sensuous mouth as big as a queen-sized bed.
"Oh my God," the mouth exclaimed, and Bee's world vibrated. "It's a little man in a jar!"
"Hm? Oh, him," said the other voice and Bee looked up into a pair of dark, merry eyes the size of dinner platters and framed and enough lush, raven hair to fill a football stadium. "That's a homunculus. Very rare these days. Hardly anyone has what it takes to make one, and Catherine the Great's been rounding them up."
Bee suspended all disbelief and rethought his surroundings. Everything he had seen made perfect sense if he were stuck in a tall mason jar on a crowded shelf of a supply closet, being scrutinized by two towering femme fatales straight out of a Russ Meyer movie. He glanced down into two seas of cleavage, one the color of cream, the other coffee. But with bigger tits, he decided.
The first girl reached for his jar but stopped when he shrank back. Bigger tits plus the muscles of pro bobybuilders, Bee added, watching the girl's pectorals bunch and swell beneath her breasts.
"Tomoe," said the first girl, pointing. "You'd better punch some air-holes in that lid." She pouted. "Poor li'l guy."
"He doesn't need 'em, Jo," Tomoe explained, "homunculi are immortal, if you feed them right."
"Immortal?" Jo said, eyebrows rising. "What do you feed them?"
Tomoe smiled at Bee with infuriating inscrutability, then tipped her head up and cupped a hand to whisper in Jo's ear. Jo gaped, "What?" Her cheeks flushed red as Tomoe continued to whisper. "I, I don’t believe it. You're kidding." Tomoe stepped back and shook her head.
Jo bit her bottom lip and smiled, "Really?" Tomoe nodded. Jo glanced at Bee, her fingers tracing the overstressed bust-line of her coppery one-piece dress. "Well, he is six inches tall."
"Seven and a half." Tomoe's eyes danced with knowing mischief. "And he doesn't need to breathe, remember?"
"Wow," Jo sighed, and reached for Bee's jar with both hands. Bee braced himself against the curve of the jar and he soared through the air in a great glass elevator. "Wow," Jo said again, gazing at him. "Hi there, little guy."
This is impossible, Bee thought, the pit of his stomach filling with ice. This is insane.
"You want him?" Tomoe asked.
Jo nodded, hair flying, hugging the jar tight to her chest. Bee was embosomed in warmth and darkness. This is absurd. He thought he heard the glass creak. His legs wobbled like water. This is obscene.
"For you?" Tomoe asked.
"No," Jo insisted, her muffled voice more bass and louder than ever. "For us. All of us. For Epsilon Zeta. For all of my sisters now, and those yet to come. Forever."
Jo's heart hammered all around the jar. This is… Bee could not bring himself to complete the thought. This is…
"For y'all? Five dollar," Tomoe offered.
"This is Dee," Bee said.
Jo slapped a five dollar bill into Tomoe's hand. "Done!" Tomoe declared, then fanned her hand. "Ow, ow, ow. Good thing he's unbreakable."
Jo wrenched off the top of the jar so fast it made Bee's ears pop. Eager fingers closed around him. "Welcome home, little guy."
Bee closed his eyes. "Oh, shit."
Church of women is made out of milk
Which their love turns to butter.
Church of women will have you give praise
With a laugh, bark and stutter.
Like us men, like us men, they are nothing like us men
Men have gargoyles ’round their hearts.
Want to worship at the church of women
Breathe ’em in until my head goes spinning around
Want to worship at the church…
Let me worship at the church of women!
—XTC, Church of Women