"Dee? Dee! Is that you? What are you doing here?"
Dee glanced up at the tall, lean blond man threading his way through the crowd. "Hello, Yves."
"Hey," Yves greeted, kicking away a stool and reclining backward against the bar, elbows propped up on the mahogany countertop. "How are you? You look—"
"Drunk?" Dee brushed a few strands straying from Yves' low, long ponytail away from his whiskey glass.
"Well, yeah, a little. But I was going to say 'great.'" Yves waved at someone across the room. "No one's seen you at work for days," he told Dee. "We were all sorry to hear about your grandmother."
"She'll get over it."
Yves blinked. "Uh, okay. So, Dee, why are you here?"
Dee nursed his drink. "To get drunk and to get away from my girlfriend."
"Well, you came to the right place, then," Yves said. A man in a business suit approached but Yves shooed him off with a shy, polite smile. "On both counts. I didn't think you were seeing anyone, Dee. It's been almost a year since your last breakup, hasn't it? Who is she?"
"Galatea. I made her last Sunday."
"Jesus, Dee, that's a crude thing to say," Yves said.
Dee squinted up at him. "What are you doing here, Yves? This place is full of swingers on Thursdays, and that's not your scene. You're more…what's that dumb phrase you use? 'Serial monogamist?'"
"Existential monogamist." Yves shrugged, whipcord muscles rolling against the tight, tan, sleeveless tee he wore beneath an unbuttoned white dress shirt. "Friday is single's night, and that's no fun. On weekends, this place is full of kids."
"If you weren't six-foot-four, Y, I'd think you were twelve," Dee grumbled.
"You're a mean drunk. I'm glad you don't drink often."
"I'm not a mean drunk. I'm a stupid drunk. I told Galatea I needed some time alone, some time to 'be me,' and here I am, in a bar, drinking bourbon." Dee rolled the tall whiskey snifter over his fingers. The jigger of amber alcohol crawled up the glass.
"You're drinking it like a pro."
"But I hate bars." Dee took a tentative sip of whisky. "And I hate bourbon."
"Then why are you here? Did you two have a fight?"
Dee contemplated his half-empty snifter. "Sort of."
Yves leaned in. "What about?"
"My girlfriend thinks I'm a god."
Yves shook his head, chuckling. "I thought that's what all guys like you wanted."
"Maybe." Dee made a sour face. "But this is different. If Galatea thinks you’re a god, she makes you a god."
"Okay, you are a stupid drunk." Yves leaned back, arms folded. "But that still doesn't explain why you're here."
"I told you already."
"No, Dee." Yves rapped a knuckle on the mahogany bar. "I mean why are you here, in a gay bar?"
Dee surveyed the clusters of men around the bar and high tables. "It's safe."
"I beg your pardon?"
"It doesn't work with men," Dee said. "Or maybe it does, but I can control it better, because I understand men." He emptied the snifter in a single toss. "But I don't understand women," he coughed.
Yves eyes rolled. "I can't believe it. A drunk and bitter Deiter Detwiler. I never thought I'd see the day. C'mon, let me drive you home."
Dee slid the snifter across the countertop. "You don't believe me."
"It's more like I haven't understood a single thing you've said. You're absolutely crapulous, as my mother likes to say."
Dee tapped the snifter with a fingernail. "How many women are in here, Yves?"
Yves took stock of the crowded barroom. "About three or four."
"Notice anything about them?" Dee asked, not taking his eyes off the snifter.
"All right, I'll indulge you." Yves twisted around, surveying. "Well, now that I've made a jackass of myself," he said, frowning, "they're staring at me."
"Guess again," Dee muttered, but Yves was already speaking.
"Wait a minute." Yves frown deepened. "They're all staring at you. What's up with that? It's not like you’re the only cute guy in here. Or the only straight guy, for that matter."
"Watch them." Dee pushed himself away from the bar. "And then watch me."
Dee strolled across the room. Three pairs of eyes swiveled to watch his every move. The bartender licked her lip and dropped a shot glass. A woman in a booth in the corner scissored her legs, squirming in her seat. The girl by the payphone broke into a sweat, downed her beer, and retreated to the restroom.
"What the fuck?" Yves muttered.
Yves watched Dee bear down on a coed clad in a little black evening dress. She boggled, a deer in headlights, as Dee approached, ignoring the quizzical glares of the two men at her table. Dee stood opposite her, nonchalant, and said something. The coed clambered up onto the table, knocking over wine glasses and kneeling in a platter of tapas. Her two friends jerked back in shock.
Yves jumped away from the bar. "What the fuck?"
The coed clawed her way up Dee's denim shirt and dragged him into a clinching lip-lock. Dee backpedaled, arms windmilling, but the coed just hummed and squeaked and clung to him as he fell over backward. The bolted-down table stood fast while the coed in the tapas platter slid forward before both she and Dee hit the floor. She lay astraddle over him for a few more seconds before finishing off the kiss with a delirious, happy squeal. "Oh, wow! Um. Hi!"
"What the fucking fuck?" cried Yves, the only other sound in the barroom.
The coed looked up, noticed that everyone gawking at her, blushed redder than a beet, leapt to her feet, and fled out the front door. Her two stunned friends moved to help Dee up but he said, "I'm fine, I'm fine. God, I'm sorry, I didn't think—Look, just go after her and make sure she's all right, okay? Go, go!"
Dee stood and made his way back to the bar. The carousers slowly got back into the swing of things. Yves looked everywhere but the other three women had vanished. Dee bellied up to the bar, daubing tapas off his pants with a napkin. "What the fuck did you say to her?" Yves hissed.
"I said, 'Hi'," Dee sighed. "Just 'Hi.' It's getting stronger. Or maybe the less I say, the more powerful it gets?" He laughed. "That would fit. It would also mean the only way to control it is to yak my head off."
"Control what?" Yves asked.
Dee's eyes narrowed at the whiskey snifter. "My voice," he said in a deep register carrying strange harmonics and rattling all the glasses on the countertop.
Yves heard a few muffled cries from the women's restroom. "Okay, Dee." Yves swung his legs over a stool. "You've got my attention now."
Dee signaled to the remaining bald and beaded bartender for a refill. "I had a rehearsed hissy fit," he told Yves. "Bitch-bitch-bitch, walk out the door. You know what I mean."
"Famously," Yves agreed darkly.
"Anyway," Dee said, "I just wanted to go out for a walk. I circled the complex a couple of times and then headed north on Route Four."
Yves nodded. "I've been your neighbor for three years and I've carpooled with you for two. I know your routine."
"I'm flattered." Bourbon swirled in Dee's snifter. "So I'm walking up the bicycle lane on the side of the road, but every once and a while a car will slow down and honk at me. A few even pull over. After about half an hour, well…" Dee pulled a wad of crumpled post-its, chewing gum wrappers, receipts, and notepapers from a pants pocket. "About twenty women had gotten out of their cars—on the throughway—just to give me their phone numbers."
Yves fanned the papers scrawled with names and numbers over the countertop, examining each one in turn. "Huh."
"I didn't realize anything weird was happening—I've had much, much weirder things happen to me today, weird like you wouldn't believe—that is, until…" Dee sighed, and dropped two twisty sickles of dull steel onto the countertop.
"What are those," Yves said, "bent can openers?"
"Look closer," Dee said, warming the snifter between his palms.
"They're handcuffs," Yves observed.
"Correction: they were handcuffs."
Yves scrutinized the ruined cuffs. The chain between them had snapped, the hinges of the manacles torn and useless. "I don't get it."
"A couple of cops, female state troopers, pulled over," Dee said. "They told me they were looking for a suspect that had fled the scene of a domestic disturbance. I matched his description, they said. I was in such a funk I just followed directions, lying down on my stomach with my hands against my back, until they locked those handcuffs around my wrists, rolled me over, ripped off the tops their uniforms, and announced I was under arrest for 'public fuckability'."
"I don't believe it."
"Neither did I, until they yanked my pants down around my ankles. Now that I think about it, they were acting lot like that girl who just jumped me. I was answering all their questions and following their instructions with either a quick 'Yes ma'am' or a 'No ma'am.' The less I talk, the stronger it gets."
"So what the Hell happened?"
Dee stared down the barrel of his glass. "One rode my face while the other attempted an ambush blowjob. Which itself is no big deal. I had about twenty of those yesterday. But I'm in love with Galatea, and the two cops were maniac, out of control. So I broke out of the cuffs, pulled the psycho off my face and plopped her down over the cop on my cock. That brought them around. They were mortified. One of them was married. They broke the patrol car's concealed camcorder and drove off. What are you looking at me like that for?"
"You are so full of shit."
"I said I'm in love with Galatea and I damn well meant it. She couldn't piss me off so damn much otherwise."
"No," Yves said, "I believe that you're in love. It's the rest of your story that's pure bullshit. I'm driving you home."
Dee eyeballed him. "You're a black belt in judo or something, right? Nidan or whatever?"
"I'm an assistant instructor aikidoka," Yves said, skipping the usual lecture.
"What do you think of this, Y-sensei?" Dee reached down with one hand and raised the snifter to his lips with the other. A second later, Yves found himself perched on a stool on top of the bar, his head bumping against the ceiling. "Should I be able to do that?" Dee lowered his glass.
"Um. No."
Dee launched back into his narrative unfazed. "So being gang-raped by a couple of girls in uniform kind of bummed me out, and I decided to get drunk. At the first bar I tried, a jealous boyfriend punched me in the face and broke three of his fingers. Next, I tried Phase Five, thinking I'd run into Ursula's crowd there, but it must have been bi-curious night or something, and I barely made it out alive.”
"Last call," the bartender announced. "No table dancing, fella," he added to Yves.
"I've got to take my friends home." Yves leapt off the countertop, open shirt flapping like a cape, and caught the stool just as it started to fall. "You're in no shape to drive either, so give me your keys and come with me. And this time you're going to start the story from the beginning."
Dee handed him the keys to his Volkswagen. "It's a long story," Dee cautioned.
"I don't care. Tell me everything, from the fucking beginning, got that?"
"I got it, Yves." Dee downed the last of the bourbon and pulled the last of his cash from his wallet. "And it does begin with fucking, ironically enough."
"I don't care," Yves repeated.
"So it all started," Dee began, "when I decided to masturbate with a Jell-O mold to see what it would be like to fuck a goo girl so I could write some porn about it on the Internet."
"You can skip that part," Yves said.
Yves' silver Jeep sped down Rural Route Four. Dee stared out into the false dawn of Zodiacal light ghosting the horizon as he finished his story. "Bee wanted the nanomek so much he tried to kill me, and I wanted to be rid of it so badly—I could not stand to look at it a second longer—that I, well, I gave it to him. He ran off. I haven't seen Bee since. I hope he hasn't done anything stupid."
Yves grimaced, shoulders sagging, but he watched the road and said nothing.
"Then I drove Galatea home." Dee sighed. "And that's it. Now you know the whole story."
The Jeep's canvas top rustled for a minute before Yves spoke. "So, to sum up: You're in love with Galatea. Galatea is a meliae, a honey nymph of ancient myth."
"Yup."
Yves gave Dee a sidelong glance. "Made out of Jell-O," he added.
"The ancient myth isn't about Jell-O, obviously," Dee said. "The first honey nymphs were probably created from real honey or sweet tree sap. Something all-natural. Tomoe said I could look it up on the Internet."
The Jeep drew near a faded billboard advertising "The Channel Apartment Home Community: Efficient Luxury of Executive Living." I've driven by that damn sign twice every work day for four years, Dee thought. I still have no idea what that slogan means.
"But Galatea's made out of Jell-O," Yves repeated.
"She's more nanomek than Jell-O," Dee said, "although she keeps asking for collagen. That's the protein in gelatin. It would give her nanomek more raw material, or make her stronger, something like that. I don't really understand that part."
Yves shrugged. "Okay. But the myth of the meliae is just a cover-up for guys who are into goo girls, an Internet fetish that's been a secret part of human history for thousands of years, even during the age of Atlantis, which really existed until it was destroyed..." Yves glanced sidelong again. "…destroyed by said goo girls."
"Slow down," Dee cautioned. "There's always a cop with a radar gun right there. Always."
Yves coaxed a few more miles-per-hour out of the Jeep's taxed engine. "Probably not tonight."
"Why not?"
"'Public fuckability,'" Yves reminded.
"Yeah, yeah." Dee crossed his arms. "Anyway, yes, Atlantis really existed until it sank under a goo girl rampage. Unless Tomoe was lying, but I bet she has a rule against that."
Yves hit the brake and pulled the Jeep onto the off ramp. "Oh, right, Tomoe Exposition. I forgot that part: the myth is a cover-up for the fetish, but the fetish itself is just a scheme of this medical supply company to make a quick five bucks."
The Jeep lurched to a halt in front of a closed iron gate. A welded, green placard with flaking gold letters welcomed visitors to the Channel Apartments.
"You could say that, yeah," Dee said as Yves unrolled the driver side window and waved a keycard at an electric reader. The reader's red, LED eye winked and the gate rolled open.
"And Galatea's a lime meliae," Yves said, timing the Jeep's entrance through the yawning gate so closely Dee thought he might shear off a side view mirror. "The most powerful, dangerous, and horniest honey nymph of them all."
Yves drove by the deluxe apartment homes of Channel One and Two. "Every man that's ever made one becomes so overwhelmed by her insatiable, sexual appetite that he succumbs to sublimation, which in this case means he's consumed and destroyed—vaporized—by perpetual orgasm."
Channel Three, a complex of family suites, swooped in and out of sight as the Jeep bounced by.
"Every man, that is," Yves said, leveling a finger at Dee, "until Deiter Detwiler, who, despite his nice-guy exterior, is such a freaky sex machine that the he overwhelms her."
The Jeep rocked as Yves goaded it over a speed bump. "Uh," Dee said, "I'm not sure I'd put it that way…"
"I'm not finished." Yves pulled off a hairpin turn into a row of covered parking. "So this super-freak Dee and this super-nympho Galatea spend four days in a nonstop fuck-a-thon, each trying to one-up the other in a triple-X battle of the sexes to prove, once and for all, who's the most perverted: men or women."
Dee threw his hands in the air. "What the Hell—"
"Shut up. But while Galatea tries to drown Dee in sex and Dee tries to get Galatea so turned on she'll burn up and dissolve, they wind up learning a lot about each other and..." Yves paused for the most theatrical, sarcastic eye rolling Dee had ever seen. "...fall in love instead." The Jeep lurched into a narrow parking space. "In fact, Galatea loves Dee so much that she uses meliae magic or 'nanomek' or whatever to give Dee preternatural strength and endurance, which saves his life when Bee, that creep who lives on the first floor, tries to kill him."
Dee's shoulders sagged. "Um."
"It took days," Yves said, hauling up the emergency break, "days for Dee, as clueless as he is impervious, to finally realize she had given him these incredible gifts. For some stupid reason, this makes him bitchy. He treats her to one of his infamous, rehearsed hissy fits. He walks out on her, leaving her alone for hours, leaving her wondering if he's ever going to return, or whether he's going to dump her when he does return."
"Wow," Dee eventually said, "I really fucked up, didn't I?"
"Yes, Dee. You really did. If your story were true and not some delusional break from reality, that is. Good God, Dee, what you just told me makes my teenage wet dreams sound like Ibsen plays in comparison."
Dee sank in his seat. "You don't believe me?"
Yves glared at him but then shook his head. "I don't know yet, but I'm going to decide soon enough."
"What do you mean?"
Yves unbuckled his seat belt and leaned across Dee to pull on the passenger side door handle. "Dee," he said, pushing the door open, "do me the honor of introducing me to your beloved."
"I don't know," Dee said, unbuckling, "You'd be the first human being she'd ever meet." Dee blinked. "Other than me, I mean."
"I think you just made my point for me."
"You're right. Let's go." Dee hopped out of the car. "Whoa, I'm pretty woozy."
Yves joined him on the parking lot pavement. "You drank most of a bottle of bourbon on an empty stomach. I'm surprised you're still vertical."
Dee marched off down the footpath. "I need to apologize to Galatea for being a total jackass. Then I'll pass out. Come on, if you're coming."
"I'm coming," Yves said. His reserved parking space was closer to the side entrance of their apartment building than the front. "We should go by the front door and ask security if they've seen Bee. Hell, we should call the police."
"You'll want to see if Galatea is real first," Dee suggested, "and if she isn't you'll want to call the police about me, not Bee. That's what you're really thinking, don't deny it. I may be drunk but I've known you for years. You're always thinking at least three steps ahead."
Yves frowned, following. The sienna colored aluminum siding of Channel Four's three stories looked garish in the sour sodium floodlights. Dee tapped his keycard against the door's sensor and gave the security camera a curt nod. The metal door clicked open. Yves flashed his keycard past the reader before following Dee up the cement staircase. At the entryway to the second floor Dee stopped and turned. "Do you smell that?"
Yves inhaled. "Smells like a spa. It's nice. Is Ursula making perfume again? Why are you breathing funny?"
"That's Galatea's…scent," Dee said, flushing. "I didn't realize you could smell it all the way down the hallway."
"For a possible figment of your imagination, she smells great. She should bottle it and make a fortune."
Dee shook his head. "It's not her perfume. It's her, you know, scent. Up close it's pretty raunchy."
"Oh. Wow. Or, ew. I'm not sure which. Doesn't matter. Get going." Yves watched Dee mince down the hallway. "You're walking pretty stiff there, big guy," he smirked.
"Shut up," Dee said. The back of his neck prickled and he turned around. "Yves, what is it? You're in a ready stance."
Yves stood, shoulders squared, forward leg and elbows bent at relaxed angles. "Your front door is open."
Dee squinted down the hallway. The door to his apartment canted a hairbreadth ajar. "Good eye," he whistled. "I think I broke the door jam when I left. It's no big deal."
Yves did not budge. "Something is wrong."
Dee stepped back. "Yves, you're sober, you're a kung fu—"
"Budo," Yves muttered.
"—bad ass, and more importantly, you're you. If you think something's wrong, I believe you. But what should we do?"
"Just be ready for Bee to do something stupid."
Dee tensed, spinning. "If he's touched her I'll kill…"
Yves crossed the distance between them in one bounding stride and clapped a hand on Dee's shoulder. "No macho bullshit," he said. "From what you've told me, Galatea is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. If anything's wrong, your hero routine will just make it worse."
"You're right, as usual. Lead on, Macduff."
"No." Yves stepped aside. "I take point, you go see who's home. I'll be right behind you."
They moved down the hallway. "Wow, that smell is strong," Yves said. They passed a familiar door. "Ursula's home."
"How can you tell?"
"She's burning incense. Patchouli," Yves smiled. "And Galatea's scent is winning. Amazing."
"God, I'm so embarrassed."
"Don't be," Yves said, listening to the sounds of digitized combat and incidental music thumping through the next door. "Viggo doesn't seem to care. I don't think he's gotten off his couch since Final Fantasy XII came out."
"Should I knock?" Dee asked when he reached his apartment.
"On your own door?" Yves inspected the crack in the doorframe. "No. Announce yourself, though, and then announce me after you step inside. Jesus, Dee, you're really wigging out. Try to relax."
Dee sighed, combed his fingers through his hair, and opened the door. The full force of Galatea's citrus-and-sex scent washed over him. Yves gasped but Dee did not notice. My God, he thought, I missed this. I missed her. How could I have been so stupid? "Galatea? It's me."
The silence stretched long enough for Yves to glance sidelong at Dee one last time before Galatea's voice called back. "Dee? Is that Dee?"
"It's me," Dee said, stepping into the apartment hallway. Say something. "I'm back." Oh, bravo, genius.
"When you were not here," came Galatea's voice, "it made me so sad." He heard the bedroom door close.
"I'm sorry," Dee said, "I'm a complete idiot. I want to apologize to you properly, but a friend of mine drove me home. I'd like to invite him in, if that's all right."
"Of course, Master."
"Very funny," Dee said. "Okay, we're coming in."
A girl the color of lime finger paint paced the living room, fidgeting and wringing her hands. She appeared rough hewn, a living but unfinished statue in Galatea's likeness, the features of her face worn down from stark relief to soft impression by the passage of time. As bodacious as ever, her body lacked the level of detail Dee knew she preferred. He could not tell if she had chosen to confront him naked but with the anatomical vagueness of a Barbie-doll, or decided to meet him clothed in a clingy but concealing spandex jumpsuit. One look at Dee and she froze, blushing black, eyes sliding shut, lazy smile curling. "You're here. I waited so long. I thought you would never come, or come too late."
"Galatea?" Dee said. "Are you okay?"
She hugged herself tight, squeezing her shoulders and squashing her amble breasts until gel flesh overflowed and engulfed her crossed forearms. "But I should have known. Dee would come. My Dee would come to me." She peeped at him with eyes of frosted green pearl. "And he did." Yves stepped into the living room, gawking at her. The green girl smirked at him. "And he brought snacks."
Yves laughed. "My name's Yves, Galatea." He strode forward, arm extended. "I'm flattered, but I'm not on the menu."
Something is wrong. "Yves," Dee started, but the green girl's smile was warm as she shook Yves hand, and Dee relaxed a little.
"I hope you're not offended if I still find you delicious," the green girl said.
"Not at all."
The green girl gestured at the sofa. "Please do sit down. I would offer you something to drink but the only thing Dee keeps to eat or drink nowadays is, well, me." She arched an eyebrow at Dee. "Not that I'm complaining." Her wintry eyes shone. "Are you hungry, Dee? No? Well I'm famished."
"Is that why you're opaque?" Dee said. "And so, uh, shapeless?"
Yves rolled his eyes and reclined on the couch. "Real classy, I'm sorry, Galatea, but Dee's hammered, and evidently he is a stupid drunk after all. She looks awfully shapely to me, Dee."
"That's not what I meant," Dee said. "I meant formless. Abstract? Damn it, my mouth is talking faster than my brain can think." He turned to the green girl. "I'm sorry, honey. I'm worried about you. I left you alone for a long time, for no good reason at all, and I want to make sure you're okay but I keep screwing up. You're beautiful. You just look different, that's all."
"I will be perfect again." She stood on the tips of her toes to whisper in his ear, "Now that you're here." She kissed the curve of his neck, her lips as firm and smooth and cool as marble, before stepping back to take him by the hand. "It's my novilunium."
"Your nova-what?" Dee asked.
"I've heard Ursula use that word a few times," Yves said. "What does it mean?"
"My changeability," the green girl answered, her eyes never leaving Dee's. "My nanomek. You've been gone so long and I need…" She pulled Dee's hand, backing away toward the bedroom hallway. "I need more."
"Well," Yves coughed. "I drove your boyfriend home and I've met you, so my work here is done. I think this fifth wheel is going home. It's just upstairs, after all." He stood, ripping off a sarcastic salute. "Dee, it's been surreal."
The green girl craned her neck to look over and up at him. "No, stay," she said, her eyes urgent. "There's always room for dessert."
Yves shot Dee a fractional what-the-fuck? frown. Dee returned with a I-dunno microscopic eyebrow raising. Yves volleyed back a are-you-going-to-be-okay? slight narrowing of the eyes. Dee replied with an I'm-clueless half smile. Yves pouted what-now-then? and Dee flicked a just-go-along-until-you-think-of-something glance at the green girl. Their silent conversation, the kind that was possible only between close friends who were also longtime coworkers, took about two seconds.
"Okay," Yves said, over enunciating, "I guess I can hang out for a little while. Dee's movie collection is better than mine, after all." He sat back down, picking up the universal remote. The green girl led Dee by the hand and disappeared down the corridor to the bedroom. Yves tossed the remote aside, rubbing his fingers together and clucking with disapproval. "Sticky."
Dee moved to open the bedroom door but the grinning green girl pulled him into the bathroom. "This way, Master."
"What's going on, Galatea?" Dee asked her as she closed the bathroom door.
"Dee," she sighed loudly over the clicking of the lock in the doorknob. "When you said you wanted to make sure I was okay, did you mean it?" She whirled around, frosted eyes glowing. "Did you really mean it?" Oozy flesh spreading across the door.
"Of course, but—"
She surged into him, arms latching around his chest, her heavy breasts slapping against him with an audible —glomp!— noise, her gelled cleavage rushing up his neck and snuggling his chin. "Then take me." She pitched Dee backward and down onto the lidded toilet seat. "Take me and make me perfect." She kissed him with a fearsome hunger, cool lips parting to draw his tongue into her oven-hot mouth.
He met her peculiar, reverse French kiss with a boozy, forward one. She moaned, nibbling and suckling. Her strong, sticky fingers twined behind his neck and egged his kiss onward. He tried to pull away for a quick breath, but she murmured, "Nn-mm," and tugged him back, chewing on his tongue, her lips locking over his. Dee duel-kissed with her for a minute more, breath hissing through his nose, before pulling away again. She squealed "Mmm!" and rocked forward to follow him, grabbing him by the ears and clunking the back of his head into the wall. She sunk her full weight into his lap and refused to break the kiss. Dee chuckled and inhaled. The green girl's eyes popped open and she squeaked a puzzled "Hm?" as her sizzling, fluid tongue flooded into his mouth. Her lips still worked against his, but slowed. Dee arched an eyebrow at her. The green girl's gaze turned quizzical.
Dee bit down until his teeth clicked together.
The green girl's eyes rolled up into her head and she peeled away, swooning to the floor. "Master," she gurgled as Dee chewed thoughtfully. "Oh, Master." She writhed on the linoleum, rolling over to paw up his legs. "I'm in you now," she sighed, rising, "I'm in you."
Dee swallowed. "Why do you taste like a cupcake?"
The green girl's unwrought fingers fumbled with the zipper of Dee's khakis. "Now come into me," she said, giving up on the zipper and pulling the pants apart at the seams, "and I'll taste however you want." She yanked the khakis and underwear down around Dee's knees, the plastic of the toilet lid hard and cold against his ass. "Cum in me," the green girl said, "and we'll be perfect. Together. Forever."
Dee felt absurd sitting there, awaiting service like some enthroned king of fools. You've treated her like crap and now she's got you on the toilet. Take the hint, take your lumps, and do what she wants you to do for a change. "Is it time?" he asked, smiling.
"It's my time," the green girl growled, and devoured his cock.
Panic thrilled through Dee and he startled upward. The green girl sat up on her haunches, scooped up handfuls of his butt and aimed his hips at her mouth. Dee's jump away from the seat only drove his dick further down the velvety vortex of her throat. For a moment of woozy free fall the green girl held him suspended in the air, cradling his ass and slurping on his cock, treating his pelvis like a big, juicy wedge of watermelon—Strong. How could she be so strong?—before she slammed him back down onto the toilet hard enough to crack the ceramic. Her cold lips worried the base of his shaft, her fingers digging into the meat of his ass. She hauled him forward, pivoting her face against his lap—What is she doing—and Dee felt his rock hard dick plough up through the gel of her neck and stab, not down her throat, but upward until—Oh my God what the fuck—the green girl was literally giving him head. She groaned in delight, bobbing. The small bathroom filled with the bouquet of fresh cookies over-baked with too much chocolate.
"What's…going…on?" gasped Dee, sloppy pressure of a drunken orgasm building.
She gripped either side of the toilet lid and arched upward, hovering inches above him. Dee shuddered out of control as the green girl used his cock to furrow a gash down her neck and between her tits. She pumped him deep into her cleavage, her hands creeping up his back and locking onto his shoulders. "Yes," she hissed, dragging her self up to straddle him, his dick cutting a frothing wake down her belly before disappearing between her legs. With the slightest tilt of her hips she pushed him like a piston into her pussy. "Cum in me now," she said, rough-riding him. She pried open his mouth and filled it to bursting with sticky breast. "Eat me now." Gluey green gunk plugged his nose and Dee choked down a river of burning syrup tasting of chocolate cherry cordial candies. "Become me. Now!"
Dee shivered, muscle tension coiling before explosive release. The green girl's huge, smeary tits slapped and smacked against his smothered face. He caught a glimpse of the long wound his dick had sliced down her chest. He remembered—
["…Please, God, no. Let her be okay. Galatea, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…"]
—and he had to look away, tearing his mouth from her fountaining flesh. A few flakes of homemade soap stuck to the white porcelain of the bathroom sink. The mostly empty vials of food coloring clustered around the sink's silvered tap, their colorful, pinched plastic caps of blue, yellow, green, red—Empty. It's empty. The green vial is empty.
Dee's gaze flashed back to the green girl's face. "Pygmalion," he coughed.
"Hm?" The green girl's hips rocked in violent jerks. "Eat me, Master," she said, offering him a breast.
No X. Sober up right fucking now, you fucking idiot. He reached for her shoulders. "Pygmalion," he said, loud and slow.
Her mouth puckered into the grin of a knowing coquette. "Eat me, 'Pygmalion'."
Dee stood straight, pushing out, palms flat. The green girl splashed to the floor. "Where is Galatea?" Dee snarled.
The green girl sat up on all fours. "M-master?" she stammered in an astonished, breathy voice sounding nothing like Galatea.
The empty vial with the green lid shattered on the floor between her hands, slivers of plastic shrapnel peppering her face. "Where is Galatea?"
A translucent, ruby red blush spread over her as the solid green receded. "But I'm the one you really want, Master," Black Cherry said, her body streamlining, red batwings rising.
Dee's blood sang in his ears. "No. Never. You want a master? Go back to Bee or whatever creepy fuck was stupid enough to cook you up."
The scarlet girl backed away from him, the claws at the end of her wings working at the doorknob. "It should be you," she said, her eyes black and bottomless. The door opened behind her. "My master should be my first."
Dee raged. "Where. Is. Galatea?"
"It should have been you," Black Cherry said, whirling about, "but I have no time." Dee lunged for her but a wing claw lashed out and down, tripping Dee up with the tatters of his khakis. He fell forward, his reflexes dulled with bourbon. The scarlet girl vanished down the corridor.
"Oh, Yves," came Galatea's voice, "looks like dessert's being served early, and I have one Hell of a sweet tooth tonight."
You come out at night
That's when the energy comes
And the dark side's light
And the vampires roam.
—Sarah McLachlan, Building a Mystery
Black Cherry pelted down the little hall. Her wings, cramped in the narrow corridor, trailed straight behind her, the train of a jilted bride fleeing her red wedding. Wing claws carved channels into the plaster walls as she ran. Wasting novilunium, she thought, losing control, losing cohesion. Minutes left, maybe less. She burst from mouth of the hall and into the living room. The couch sat unoccupied. Where is the plaything Master gave me?
"'Mugger Fleeing the Scene,'" Yves muttered, moving in from his ambush point against the wall behind her to execute the maneuver.
In the bathroom, Dee attempted to stand but the resistance from the ragged clothing around his knees took him by surprise and he collapsed, his chin dinging the linoleum floor. Fire can't burn me, iron can't break me, but get me drunk and tie my shoelaces together and I'm fucked. He rolled over and sat up, every movement uncertain. No, I got myself drunk. I gave Bee the nanomek. I left Galatea alone. He started clawing himself free of the khaki material one strip at a time. I ripped yet another pair of fucking pants.
Yves flanked Black Cherry on the left. So, Black Cherry thought as Yves closed the distance between them, plaything wants to play.
Yves clamped his right hand down around her left wrist. His right foot slid out in front of Black Cherry's left leg as Yves gave her wrist a sharp twist. Was that supposed to hurt? Best act like it, Black Cherry decided, hunching over. Anticipating resistance of her bodyweight, Yves shifted his balance and poured energy into an inward turn, bringing her arm forward and around, trying to use her own momentum to throw her to the floor.
My turn, plaything. Black Cherry let her arm stretch and Yves' expertly planned wrist-throw became a clumsy taffy-pull. Yves stiffened in surprise, spinning in an unbalanced arc to face the wall. Relishing the feel of Yves' hand locking rigid around her wrist, Black Cherry followed through, her arm snaking out until her palm pushed against the wall. "I'll play with you," she said aloud, her fingers curling backward and down to grip the hand stuck to her wrist, "but by my rules." Her hand pinwheeled around his and she reversed their roles just as quickly, pinning Yves' wrist against the wall and moving close behind him.
She let go just to see what he would do. His right arm twitched but did not budge from where she had pinned it. His left arm curled against his chest beneath his unbuttoned button-down. He's scared, she realized, watching Yves' fingernails scrape against plaster. Just like Bee. Just like Galatea and all the others. All except Master. She pressed her slinky, naked frame against Yves' frozen form. Even on tiptoe she could not reach his neck, so she nestled her cheek in the small of his back, breathing deep. Plaything's fear smells sweet and precious, like a rare prize. Imagine how divine Master's fear must be. Imagine!
"You do not scare easily." Black Cherry snuggled in. "I can tell. I like that. Not like Bee. His fear was sour. Killing him just made it worse, and after eating him the aftertaste lasted hours. Blech," she spat, shuddering at the memory.
Dee heard something shatter and scatter in the living room, a jarring tuneful sound like the breaking of a pottery jug or a china plate. Sober up and think straight, damn it. He shook his head until the room stopped spinning. Your friends are in trouble. He rose and made for the door. A muddy, ruddy light gave Dee the strange, sickening impression that the short hallway was swollen and bloodshot. He steadied himself by grabbing the doorknob. He started to shout, "Yves—!" but was fuddled by sudden movement of something scarlet and leathery racing down the hallway. A red claw bit into the pressboard wood of the bathroom door and wrenched it shut. Dee jerked at the door, trying to keep it open, but pulled the doorknob and shaft out instead.
Yves pushed back, trying to spin around. He recovers quickly, Black Cherry thought. She clipped his right hand to the wall with a wing claw, knocking a Deep Space Nine commemorative plate off its hanger. It fragmented when it hit the floor. She craned her neck to peer down the hallway to the bathroom. As quick as Master.
"Yves—!"
Black Cherry sighed, sent her other wing hurtling down the hallway to drag the bathroom door shut as it sprang back. She turned to Yves and startled to see he held a short, wicked-edged knife in his left hand. Maybe quicker than Master. Black Cherry wrestled Yves' left arm into a painful pin behind his back. "Now where on Earth did this come from?" she asked, the claw from her returning wing plucking the knife away. She leaned hard against him to maintain the pin and slipped one hand between the wall and his chest. She found a nylon scabbard sewed below the left armpit of the tee shirt beneath his overshirt. "You must have been fishing for your little knife—"
"Tanto."
"—this whole time. Readying a strike, even through all that fear. Your little knife—your tanto—would be buried between my breasts now, wouldn't it?" She caressed a wing claw over Yves' cheek. "But you didn't know this little girl had claws."
A few drops of blood ran down Yves' cheek and beaded in the dimple of his chin. "I do now. I don't make the same mistake twice. Ever."
"Master didn’t bring me a plaything." Black Cherry reached up Yves' tee shirt and strummed her fingers across his washboard abdomen, purring. "He's given me a playmate. We'll have hours and hours of fun, you and I, but there's something I need first. I tried to get it from Master, but he's not ready for me. He will be, soon, but not yet, and I'm out of time. So, darling Yves," she said, undoing his belt and unzipping his fly, "it looks like you're on the menu after all. On the taster menu, at least."
Dee dropped the knob, hooked two fingers into the dark, round hole left in the door, and gave a tentative tug. The door stuck fast. Dee sighed. Two swings of his fist brought the door down in splinters and he stepped sideways into hall. A glob of red goop stained the ceiling lamp, casting everything in an unsettling florid light. A chest-high gouge in the plaster of both walls ran the length of the hallway. Whatever had cut them grooved the wood of his bedroom door and left it swinging loose on its hinges. He shuffled by, gave his bedroom a passing glance, and stopped dead. Blinking, he nudged the bedroom door open with outspread fingers.
When he last saw the room, it resembled a war zone, but now walking into his bedroom was like sticking his head inside a Jackson Pollock painting. Every surface was spattered with chaotic sprays and splashes of black ink and all imaginable shades of red. They fought here, Galatea and the scarlet girl. Dee lurched, taking it all in. The third color dominating the frenzied mess was green. And Galatea lost and the scarlet girl wiped the walls with her. Dee pivoted on his heels, his balance perfect, and stalked out, his fluid gate as steady and sure as a panther closing in on a kill.
And I'm going to murder the bitch.
Dee found the scarlet girl standing close to the wall. Her head lolled backward, eyes shut and lips parted in a whimper of relief. Her wide batwings were drawn tight around her petite form in a parody of a cardinal's crimson cloak, locked in place by wing claws stabbing deep into the gelled flesh of her shoulders. "Much better," she sighed, eyes still closed. Her claws withdrew, burgundy nectar weeping from the ragged wounds they left behind. "I can feel the novilunium. I can feel its music, its blood music." Her wings relaxed and unwound, slowly exposing a second figure squeezed so tight and close to the scarlet girl Dee had not noticed it before. "My compliments to the chef, Yves." The scarlet girl released her captive. "That was choice."
Yves staggered back from her, clothes haggard and wine-stained, his eyes incandescent with rage. "Fuck you," he replied, and punched her in the throat.
Her neck distended with the force of Yves' blow but her head remained perched above her shoulders. Her eyes opened, her wings swooped back in but hesitated, their long, needle sharp claws quivering inches from Yves' face. She met his unflinching glare for a second more before swiveling her gaze to Dee. "Master?" the scarlet girl said, her smile coy but sly. "I have time now."
"Dee?" Yves said, his eyes never leaving the two raptorial claws hovering close to his temples.
"Yes, Yves?"
Red nectar dripped down onto Yves face. "You're still standing?"
"Yes, Yves."
The scarlet girl chuckled, turning her head as each man spoke, like a spectator watching a tennis match.
"Well, then," Yves said, "Remember what I said about your stupid straight-guy hero routine?"
"Yes, Yves."
"I was an idiot." Yves fell back. The scarlet girl's claws clacked together in empty air as Yves flipped down and away in textbook, backward break-fall. "Kill the bitch," he panted, crawled a few feet closer to the front door before he collapsed, every muscle trembling and oiled in sweat.
"Way ahead of you, Yves," Dee muttered, moving between Yves and the scarlet girl.
The scarlet girl marveled at him, perfect breasts heaving. "You smell wonderful, Master; so angry." Batwings the color of blood and smoke luxuriated in the air of the living room. "I love it." Narrow rivulets of red nectar trickled from her sex to run down her inner thighs. "You won't regret coming back to me. I'm so much stronger for you now." She reached out to him, fingers flexing. "I'm ready."
["…I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready…"]
Dee advanced into the radius of her wingspan. "You're finished."
"Oh, Master," she gasped, agape with delight, before her eyes narrowed and her lips twisted into a thin, crooked grin. Her batwings snapped ready, their tiny twins above her ears fanning up and back until she looked like a helmeted Valkyrie who had fell to Hell. "Bring it."
Dee rushed her. The scarlet girl's wingtips meshed and merged behind him. Streams of gel pulsed out from her core to course through the membranes of her wings, ringing Dee in thick walls seeping with sanguine syrup, their bakery-oven smell overpowering. Dee crossed his forearms in front of his chest and hooked his fingers outward. The scarlet girl's crooked grin crept higher as Dee stormed closer and the gel walls surrounding them contracted inward like an iris. The drizzle of inner nectar dripping from her pussy surged, her legs lost in the torrent fueling the flood bearing down upon Dee. His hands stabbed into her dissolving shoulders just as the collapsing gel crashed down on all sides, a torrid kiss over every inch of his skin and a siphon over his cock, its smothering pressure building without plateau or any hint it would ever stop. Dee spun his fingers deep into her flesh and uncrossed his arms, drawing them downward and out behind him.
Dee tore the scarlet girl apart, opening a v-necked gully in the crushing red sea, and bulldozed through. He emerged clean as a whistle, not a single drop of cherry jam sticking to him. He skidded to a halt before bonking against the living room window and twirled about-face.
The scarlet girl funneled to the floor in a confusion of tangled limbs and funhouse-mirror distorted shapes. "Master," she sobbed when the two halves of her face zippered together the right way around, "it hurts. You hurt me." She curled into a fetal ball, wracked with spasm. "You hurt me so much."
Dee charged. The scarlet girl rolled onto her knees. Her wings plunged forward, their claws digging into Dee's underarms and hoisting him into the air. She leapt to her feet, her wings accelerating until Dee's back smashed into the ceiling. "Do it again!" she crowed through the rain of plaster, honey bleeding from both pairs of lips.
The scarlet girl twittered and flexed her claws, testing their grip, digging into Dee's armpits. Dee bared his teeth in a gritty, mirthless leer, wrapping his arms in the rubbery folds of her wings. Her murmurs melted into a lush, eager purr as she pulled her wings taut, stretching Dee's arms out wide until she had him crucified on the ceiling. "I want to do every sick, perverted, and twisted thing with my master."
Dee shrugged hard, his left shoulder rolling forward. A clockwise curlicue corkscrewed down the scarlet girl's right wing. A heartbeat later Dee shrugged again, rolling his right shoulder backward. A counterclockwise torque galloped down the left wing. The scarlet girl's cry of shock caught in her throat when the two opposing torsions met in her core and blew her to bits. She burst with a hollow, plosive pooch! noise, pelting Dee with stinging spray of black-and-crimson gunk as he plummeted to the floor like an Acme anvil. He tucked his legs in at the last second and punched feet-first through the coffee table. The table caved in, its faux mahogany pressboard top fractured and folded up at crazy angles. Dee stood in the wreckage, knees bent and arms akimbo, an earthbound Peter Pan.
Yves flopped onto his back. "Who won?" he asked, swabbing glop of his face with his stained outer shirt. "If this red stuff is your innards, Dee, I'll probably puke."
Grainy gobs rained down off the ceiling, slid down the walls, and dripped off the furniture. "It's hers," Dee said.
Yves wretched. "Then I'm certain to puke." He peeled off the sloppy shirt and shoved it aside, sitting up. "Who was that bitch? Why did she smell like, like Betty God-damned Crocker? I used to love the smell of cake batter, you know." His strength gave out and he plopped back down, groaning but sparing no energy for dignity. "Now I'm going to have nightmares about it."
The gobs settled in larger lumps on the floor. "Are you all right?" Dee said. "Did she really do what I think…"
"Don't believe what they say on the Internet," Yves interrupted, his voice flat. "Getting your prostate milked sucks."
"But she raped—"
"Enough, Dee. I know what happened, thank you very much." He tried to zipper his fly but the slider got caught on the first few bottom teeth. "That wasn't Galatea, I presume, but something that our boy Bee made. She told me she killed him because she didn't like the way he smelled, by the way."
"But if she is Bee's honey nymph," Dee said, "that doesn't make any sense." A beat later, he added, "Actually, it makes perfect sense."
Yves's glance was alarmed. "You keep referring to her in the present tense. It's not over?"
"Not if she can still move," Dee said. The slush-covered overshirt started to inch forward. "She's heard everything we've said. Yves, get the fuck out of here."
Yves watched his shirt wriggle past him. "She's not interested in me now that she's got you to play with."
"We're not playing."
"Then what—"
"Quiet," Dee snapped. A cherry chocolate mound gathered at his feet.
"Yes, Ooze-Sensei," Yves whispered.
Fed by dribbles and spurts of red and black goo, the mound ripened into a bloated beach ball. "Well?" Dee said, shifting his weight, "had enough?"
The scarlet girl's wings whipped back and she rocketed forward, snagging Dee by the throat with one hand as she ran past him in an almost casual gesture. His feet dangled a few inches off the floor for a moment of hurtling, horizontal flight before she rammed him into the far wall. Struts buckled and plaster powdered behind him, but the load-bearing structure of the apartment building's outer wall absorbed most of the blow. "I want," the scarlet girl panted, "to do every…sick, perverted, and…twisted thing with my master! And that," she wailed, "that was just one!"
Dee kicked out, his foot kinked at a curious angle, his movements slow but strong. The kick connected with gel flesh and amputated the scarlet girl's right leg at the thigh. Her wings smacked down onto the floor behind her, keeping her upright as she reeled. She recovered quickly, gobs of severed leg still pattering around the room as the grip around Dee's neck cinched shut and she threw a left hook at his jaw. Dee let his knees buckle and the scarlet girl punched a fist-size hole in the wall an inch above his head. He barreled forward, shoulder slamming into the scarlet girl's midriff, his hands pushing a strange pattern through her jellied substance. The force of the blow threw her backward in a disintegrating arc through the air until she fell among the ruins of the coffee table.
Her hand held fast to his neck, her arm stretching noodle thin until it snapped. The hand dissolved, its warm sanguine fluid running down Dee's chest. Lost cohesion when it separated from the whole, Dee decided. She can't divide like Galatea could, or maybe just not as well.
The melted gel rolled away in glistening beads of blood. The scarlet girl flailed in a mad tantrum, screeching, "You pushed me away! Never push me away!"
"Always," Dee said in a dead monotone and marched forward. "And you'll never get to have me."
The scarlet girl flew at him, a banshee blur of wings, claws, and rings of teeth. Dee cried out in wordless pain in the center of a red cyclone that tore away every last shred of his clothing. The scarlet girl coalesced and clung to him, wings wrapped around his ass and between his legs, fingers raking over his back. "I have a master," she hissed, hips humping furiously against his dick. "I'll always have a master."
Dee bobbed and weaved, broke free, and threw her melting form to the floor. "You have nothing," he spat, stumbling through trails of black and burgundy slime.
"I'm nothing," she whispered, a shaky wing claw reaching down to shiver against her clitoris. "I'm nothing." Her other wing claw dove into her sex.
"Jesus," Dee said. He stumped over to Yves. "Let's get you out of here, Yves."
Yves lay still on the floor, his neck crooked up and glassy eyes narrowed. "I've never seen anyone move like that."
Dee grimaced at the scarlet girl writhing in the living room. "That's because she's made of Jell—"
"Not her," Yves said, "you. And just what the Hell are you doing?"
"What you told me to do," Dee said. "I'm killing the bitch."
Yves craned his neck higher. The scarlet girl's face had grown gooey, her features unfocused and dripping with dew. Red rills coursed between her breasts before her hands, fingers fused into flippers, scooped and smeared the runoff across every softening curve. One wing pulsed deep in her pussy. She arched up, sheets of candy-apple red icing flowing down her back in a rippling mane, and the other wing curled under her rump and penetrated her from behind. All the while she twittered and muttered, "I'm nothing, I'm nothing, I'm nothing."
Yves head bumped down hard against the floor. "Sure doesn't look like it."
"Every move costs nanomek," Dee said. "Every reassembly burns even more."
The apartment filled with slurping, syrupy sounds as the scarlet girl drove herself to messy orgasm. "Nothing! Master! Nothing! Always! Master!"
"And that costs her the most," Dee added wretchedly.
"Christ, Dee, why?"
"Don't you get it? I'm going to burn all her nanomek away." Dee helped Yves to his feet. "Or die trying. Probably both. That's why I have to get you out of here, Yves. She can't have another source of sperm. I've got to burn all the bitch's nanomek away. Every last one. That's the only way to truly kill a meliae."
"Yes!" the scarlet girl burbled. "Kill me, master! Hate me enough to kill me!"
Dee fixed her with an empty stare, and in that terrible, lifeless monotone, he said, "That's how she killed Galatea."
The scarlet girl's slow dissolve froze. "That sentimental green simpleton?" Her features hardened along with her voice. "If my master doesn't choose me over her, I may kill her after all."
Dee blanched. "Galatea's alive?"
"Fear," the scarlet girl gulped. "I can smell it from here."
Dee advanced, face bleached and eyes blank. Yves blundered about but managed to sag against the apartment's front door. The scarlet girl bolted upright, fists squeezed against her checks. "Oh, Master," she babbled, "your fear. It's more incredible than I ever imagined…" Her squeal ascended into a piercing scream as Dee reached out and tore off both her wings at the shoulder.
Her wings liquefied, thundering to the floor in a crimson downpour. Dee stepped close to the scarlet girl shrieking in the middle of the red tide. "Tell me where she is," he said.
"You're so scared!" rejoiced the scarlet girl.
Dee ripped the little wings out of her head. "Tell me where she is."
The scarlet girl's trembling limbs locked rigid. "You'll never push me away again!"
Dee cradled her face in his hands. "Tell me where she is or die."
The scarlet girl twittered and drooped in a post-coital haze. "No," she said, abyssal eyes glowing.
Dee's arms twitched, and in that split second of indecision the scarlet girl slipped from his grip and laid Dee out flat with a lightning-quick uppercut. The red fluid on the floor roiled around and rushed up her back. New pairs of wings unfurled. "No," she yawned, "I don't think so. I was ready to die for you, Master, but now I think I've found a better way to ensure you'll never push me away again."
She swayed over him. "You pushed her away, remember? And she let you go. That's why she gave up and let me take her so easily. She knew you pushed her away to make room for me. I'll be better than she ever was, Master, because I never give up. And I never let go. And you're crying, Master."
"I'm sorry, Galatea," Dee whispered.
The scarlet girl shook her head. "You still don't understand. But you will." She sauntered over to the living room window and broke the pane with an effortless flip of a wing. "I've got to go now, Master."
"No, tell me—"
"See? You've accepted it a little already." The scarlet girl hopped onto the windowsill. "You can't push me away. But there's so much work to be done, now that I know what you need me to do. I'm going to make everything perfect for us, Master. Everything."
"No."
Red wings extended into the pre-dawn damp. "I live to serve and please my master," the scarlet girl said, "whether my master likes it or not."
"No!"
The scarlet girl's wing claws bit into the wall high above her and she clambered out of sight.
"Dee," said Yves, testing his balance, "get up."
Dee sprawled on the floor, head in his hands. "Galatea, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"Snap out of it and get up," Yves insisted, taking a few uncertain steps forward.
"But she's right. It's all my fault."
"No, she's not." Yves leaned against the archway to the kitchenette. "You're coming down off a serious adrenaline rush and she took advantage of it to fuck with your head and escape. It's a dirty trick that I've used myself a few times."
"That explains the headache," Dee groaned.
"No, that's probably the bourbon. If I can stand, so can you. Now get your ass up!"
Dee stood, flinching at the pain pounding in his temples.
"Jesus, Dee," Yves said. "Have you been working out or something?"
"'Four day fuck-a-thon,' remember?" Dee shrugged in an outspread gesture that took in the entire room. "What the fuck do I do now, Yves?"
"We find some clothes—Oh, grow up," Yves sighed as Dee cupped his hands over his crotch and blushed. "Anyway, we find some clothes and some coffee, and then we find Galatea and burn that devil cookie freak."
"'We?'"
Yves hobbled into the kitchenette. "If you don't want to help me, I guess I'll understand."
Dee's smile was grim. "Of course I'll help, Y-Sensei." He listened to Yves fumble with the electric coffee maker but knew better than to interfere. "Coffee's in the cabinet above the microwave."
"Thanks," Yves said, his movements growing confident. "Have you really gone five days without sleep?"
"Only if being comatose doesn't count."
Steam percolated in the coffee maker. "I doubt it does," said Yves, rinsing out a couple of corporate-logo coffee mugs. "But I haven't pulled a real all-nighter since college, so these are both for me. In about ten hours I'm going to be hit with a massive migraine and become utterly useless, so after we get our shit together we're going to have to move fast."
Coffee started sizzling into the pot. "Move where?" Dee asked. "Miss Devil Cookie could be anywhere. Where do we start?"
Yves watched the level of coffee in the pot rise. "If you told me everything before, then we've only got two places to go."
Dee thought about it for a moment. "You're right. Let's start close to home. Listen," Dee added. "I think I've run out of clothes."
"Clean clothes?"
"Yeah." Dee shifted uncomfortably. "But I think I'm completely out of pants."
"Ten years," grumbled Yves, pounding down the cement stairs.
"What?" Dee asked from a few steps in front of him.
"Ninety minute workouts, at least once a day, for ten years," Yves said, glaring at Dee's chiseled shoulders. "That's how long it took me to look good in these clothes."
"Really?" Dee reached the door to the first floor. "I thought you were born bishi."
"And you fill out a muscle shirt in four damned days."
"Feeling petty, Yves?" Dee turned the door handle. "Is that why you gave me these stupid M.C. Hammer pants?" He pulled at the elastic of a pair of sweats resembling gun-metal gray pantaloons.
"No, I'm feeling practical. You've been ruining an average of 2 and a half articles of clothing an hour in the past few days, and I need to cleanse the Nineties from my wardrobe. Besides, you need a lot of room for Goojitsu."
Dee held the door ajar. "What?"
Yves shrugged, then winced and rubbed his shoulders. "Would you prefer 'goo fu?'"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Your martial art," Yves said.
The door fell closed. "I repeat: what the fuck?"
"Come off it, Dee. When I said I'd never seen anyone move like you did, I meant it. And what you did to that cherry cupcake psycho…" Yves shuddered. "She may have felt like Jell-O to you, but to this mere mortal she was about three hundred pounds of wet cement."
"Yves, honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing or what's happening to me. You've always been good at this sort of thing; I've seen you guess the endings of movies like The Sixth Sense, Momento, and Seven from just watching the opening credits. Do you know what's going on?"
"Not yet," Yves said, joining Dee in the entryway to the first floor and pulling open the door. "But I'm working on it."
Dee peered down the empty hallway. "What can you tell me, then?"
"Well," Yves sighed, closing the door. "You've invented the world's first martial art designed not just for unarmed combat, but also for fighting when totally nude, with an entire school devoted to defense against rheodynamic attacks. The cherry cupcake girl is insane, but she has standards and lines she is unwilling to cross. She makes contingency plans, however, and is prepared to compromise when desperate. And Bee's really dead."
Dee goggled. "How do you know all that?"
"His testicles are in a jar outside his apartment's front door."
Dee cracked the door open. "Good eye," he said, squinting. "I thought those were marbles."
"Have some respect for the dead, Dee. That's the part of himself Bee probably wanted to stick in her mouth more than any other and it wound up being the only part of him that didn't end up in there. I guess nanomek really is programmed for irony."
"What are Bee's balls doing in the hallway?" Dee said.
"It's a message from that cherry devil cookie bitch—look, we need to come up with a good nickname for her," Yves said. "I don't like saying 'bitch' all the time, no matter how appropriate."
"Cherry Cupcake?" Dee suggested.
"Only if I get to call you 'Ellie Dee'."
Dee blinked. "Even I don't get that reference. But, whatever. Um, Betty Crocker?"
"Lawsuit waiting to happen," Yves said.
"Darth Cherry?"
"Please."
"Well," Dee said, "Devil Cookie has a familiar ring…Wait a minute. You're trying to distract me from something."
"It's working."
"Just tell me what message Bee's balls in a glass jar could possibly convey."
"I have no idea," Yves said. "Cherry Cupcake's crazy."
"'Crazy for me,'" Dee muttered in reverie.
"What? No, she's indiscriminately crazy. But the message, whatever it was, was meant for you."
"So?" Dee said, ire rising.
"So I don’t think Cherry Cupcake's there, but I also don't think you're going to like what's waiting for us in there, either,"
Dee startled and threw open the door. "You think Galatea's—"
"I don't know, Dee." Yves blocked the doorway. "But I need you to not think about Galatea for the moment. I don't want to belittle your feelings and I appreciate the gravity of your situation…"
"I know," Dee said.
"But we need to think big-picture right now, and that means the most important question is…"
"I know."
"Where the Hell is the rest of the nanomek?" Yves finished, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"I don't know," Dee said. "But I can guess."
The tin of SRU Thickener bounced around the metal mesh child seat of the shopping cart gamboling down the Baking Needs aisle. The burning red sunrise threw crazy shadows ahead of it. "Where's all the cherry Jell-O?" the pusher of the cart called out.
A sleepy reply came from a few aisles away. "Ma'am? We don't open until six o'clock, ma'am. The front door should have been locked."
"It was," said the customer, bobbing her head to peek into various rows of instant desserts and pie fillings. "I just slipped in." She adopted a breathy, pouting tone. "I hope you don't mind. It's only a few minutes before six. Could you help me with the cherry Jell-O? Please?"
"I'm sorry," said the sleepy voice, the squeak of sneakered feet approaching the Baking Needs aisle. "Some sicko came in last night and bought it all for who-knows-what."
"Oh, really?" the early customer drawled owlishly.
"Yah, really," the husky stock boy insisted, round the bend of the aisle. "We're all sold ow—wow-huh-how." He skidded to a halt, gawking.
Black Cherry's batwings stretched high and triangular like lateen sails, crimson blazing and black veins glistening as they drank in the dawn. Her fingers riffled through the uneven rows of gelatin boxes. "'Peach'," she read, picking up one box. "Maybe. If I had some schnapps." She put the box back on the shelf. "Hm. 'Grape'? Probably a boozehound. 'Mixed Fruit'? What the heck is that? Oh, who am I kidding?" A wing flicked down and scooped every last box into the shopping basket.
"I'll make as many as it takes for Master," she said, plucking out the boxes of lime Jell-O from the pile in her basket and pitching them into the next row, "give him more, and more, and more until he finally realizes I'm the only one perfect for him. Or they drain him dry, I suppose, and then I'll just claim what's mine. After all," she told the stock boy, "a girl needs her minions."
"Uh. Huh?"
"Ah," Black Cherry said, ignoring him, and pulled a handful of devil's food instant pudding boxes from the shopping cart. "Not cherry, but these will do for a start. Too unoriginal, though. She'll need something more. Time to think outside the box." She watched inky black swirls spiral across her wings. "Of course," she murmured. "She'll be perfect. Well, almost perfect."
Black Cherry fixed the stock boy with her bottomless stare. "What's your name?"
"Uh. Eddie."
"Do you sell paint, Eddie?"
"Aisle three," Eddie the stock boy said, unblinking.
She took a step closer. "Do you sell black paint?"
"Aisle three, freezer-side left," Eddie gulped, gooseflesh prickling his arms and neck.
She stepped closer still, her wings buffeting his hair. "Do you sell black latex paint?"
"Aisle three," Eddie croaked, "freezer-side left, center shelf. Just a pint or two, though."
"More than I need, thank you. Say, Eddie…" Black Cherry gave Eddie's cheek a friendly tweak, raising a bruise. "Has anyone ever told you that you look good enough to eat?"
"Do you really think meliae can make more meliae?" Yves wondered. "We're dealing with magic and dream-logic, here. There could be a rule against it."
"There's also a rule that nanomek never does what you expect," Dee said. "It's the most important rule, apparently, so maybe it applies to meliae too."
"I don't know what's worse," Yves said, scrutinizing the hallway again, "Cherry Cupcake planning to make more meliae or Cherry Cupcake making more meliae that don't turn out as planned."
"Jesus, I hadn't thought of that."
"I've run out of ideas, myself," Yves said. "We have to check out Bee's place eventually, anyway." He stepped through the doorway. "Let's get it over with."
They sidled down the hallway. "Who else lives down here?" Yves asked.
"Esteban. You know," Dee said into Yves blank stare, "good looking guy, always acts like he just broke up with his girlfriend, goes home with a new girl every other night? Not your scene, I guess. I doubt he's home."
"Is he Bee's next door neighbor?"
"No," Dee said. "That's Kay."
"Kay's back from Iraq?"
"Don't know, but don't worry," Dee whispered, "Kay sleeps like the dead, no amount of noise can wake him up—unless you're trying to be quiet or sneaking around, that is."
"Like we are now?"
"Shit," Dee said a normal volume. "Good point. Sorry."
Yves marched to the door with the jar sitting in front of it like something left out for the milkman. He nudged the jar aside with his foot, his eyes focused on the glass peephole directly in front of him. He rattled the knob. "Locked. Do your thing, Dee," he said, moving back, "and don't be sneaky."
Dee kicked out. The metal door refused to bend and Dee's right foot punched through it like an awl through leather until his leg pushed knee-deep. "Cheap door," Dee said, hopping on his left leg to keep his balance.
"That's what it's supposed to do, I think," Yves said, backing even further away. "Although I doubt the designers ever took into account someone strong enough to actually puncture the damn door."
"Okay, then," Dee grumbled. He reared up, shifting his full weight onto his trapped leg and butting the door with his head. The hinges groaned, the door caved in, and Dee toppled into the apartment.
"That would have woken the dead," Yves said after a long pause. "I don't think Kay's home."
"There're Styrofoam peanuts all over the place in here," Dee remarked.
"How does it smell?" asked Yves.
"The peanuts?" said Dee, lying atop the pierced metal door and crammed into the apartment's tiny foyer. Paint scraped off the walls whenever he tried to move. "Yves, I need a little help here. I think I'm stuck."
Out in the hallway, Yves fell into a ready stance. "Try thinking for a second, Dee, and tell me if you smell anything."
"It is a little ripe in here, now that you mention it. Sickly sweet, like—Oh, shit." Dee bucked, bending the door at a ninety-degree angle, only trapping his right leg tighter. "You don't think Bee made two of them, do you?"
"Sickly sweet like what?"
Dee shuffled, making no progress. "Not like cookies, thank God. Garbage and air freshener. No, not air freshener…Galatea."
The door shred like tissue paper under his hands and Dee stumbled into the apartment's living room. A moment later Yves followed, picking his way through the sharp strips of shorn sheet metal. "This place is directly below yours, Dee," he said, "so that makes sense. Check out the ceiling. It's tie-dyed mint green."
Dee relaxed enough to take in his surroundings. "The fridge's wide open but the light's out and I don't hear the compressor running. I guess that's where the smell's coming from. No sewage-meliae to worry about, thank God."
"I was thinking more along the lines of other bits and pieces of Bee," Yves said, rummaging through the clutter of old mail on Bee's coffee table.
"Ew. Thanks, I'll keep that in mind." Dee rifled through the cushions of Bee's black leather couch. "We're looking for the nanomek, I take it?"
"Yeah, on the odd chance we've lucked out and Cherry Cupcake doesn't have it, we've got to find it and put it somewhere safe. Man, look at all these mail-order catalogues. Did Bee collect anime action figures or something?"
"Trust me; you don't want to know," Dee said, "I'll check out the kitchen."
Yves contemplated the ceiling. "It's not seeping down," he pondered aloud. "It's spreading across."
"What?" Dee said from the kitchenette.
"I'll be in the bedroom," said Yves.
The refrigerator door was propped open by a massive, metal mixing bowl. Dee rolled it aside and shut the door, ignoring wilting vegetables spotted with mold and a burst, soupy package of ground beef. He hefted the bowl off the floor, testing its weight. Dee sniffed a hint of chocolate cherry cordial candy. "Speaking of magic and dream-logic," Dee called out, "you should see the bowl Bee made Cherry Cupcake in. It's a god-damned cauldron."
Dee caught a glimpse of the kitchen table and whistled. "Holy crap." The mixing bowl thudded onto the stove. "That's a lot of Jell-O. Yves! There must be two dozen empty boxes of cherry Jell-O in here. All that collagen; no wonder she was so strong…Wait a minute."
Dee bent down and picked a lone, empty box of Devil's Food instant pudding from the floor. Its cardboard was crusted with a dull russet stain. Dee wished it were ketchup, beet juice, or even Cherry Cupcake cum, but he knew better. "Devil's food." He turned to the mixing bowl. "Witch's cauldron." There was more russet on its rim. "I bet he bled a little into the mix, too." He glanced out the bay window into the golden dawn. "All on a night of the New Moon. Bee, you idiot."
"Dee," came Yves' shaky voice from the bedroom. "You'd better get in here."
Dee crossed the living room and trod down the little hallway to the bedroom. Galatea's scent mixed with the earthy must of mildewed plaster. Yves stood in the bedroom doorway. "Don't freak out," he said, moving back. "Just look and tell me if you think there's anything we can do."
The bedroom ceiling was pitted with lime-stained fissures and craters. Strips of greenish drywall formed stalactites around a broken plywood support beam breaching the spongy stucco and blemished the walls. The catastrophic water damage barely registered. Dee's attention was transfixed by dozens of containers. Salad and soup bowls, aluminum pots and steel pans, glass beer mugs and countless plastic cups littered every flat surface in the room. "He was collecting her," Dee whispered. The Devil's Food box tumbled to the floor. "Her, uh, runoff."
"I know." Yves picked up a nearby Pyrex measuring cup and handed it over. A rind of pale green powder coated the mouth and walls of the glass and a thick, florescent green sludge glazed the bottom. "They're all pretty much like this, mostly evaporated. Do you think there's anything we can do? If Cherry Cupcake knew about this, she wouldn't have left anything here if she thought we could."
"Maybe she didn't know everything," Dee said. He pressed a finger into the measuring cup. The sludge felt cold and lifeless, the fingerprint he left in it as unchanging as an astronaut's footprint on the Moon. "Maybe she didn't know what she never experienced."
"What are you thinking, Dee?" Yves asked.
["…nanomek always holds a little energy and some of your cum—maybe a milliliter or two—in reserve, out of instinct or something like that…"]
"You're so quiet I can't tell if you're freaking out or not," Yves added.
"I can't afford to freak out," Dee said, "now that I can bring Galatea back."
"How?"
"Three Ds."
"What?"
"The three Ds," Dee repeated, searching out glasses and clear plastic cups. "Remember? She said that's all she'd ever need."
Yves thought for a moment, then twitched with sudden recognition. "I can help you with the first two," he offered.
"I don't think we'll need more of the third."
Yves was collecting plastic cups near the bedroom window when he said, "What the Hell is this?"
Dee glanced up from his growing stack of glasses. "It's a webcam on top of a broom handle." He pointed at camera's winking LED light. "It's on."
Yves followed the camera's cabling to Bee's worktable. He fished a receipt out of a plastic bag crumpled by the keyboard. "Bee bought a three hundred gigabyte external hard drive a few days ago." He sat in Bee's mesh desk chair and brought his computer out of hibernation. "It's full." He hunched over Bee's computer monitor and called up an image viewer. "Oh my God," he said, mouse clicking furiously.
"What?"
"Well, Dee," Yves sighed as the monitor flickered. "I've always wondered, and now I know, thanks to you, Galatea, and a little help from Bee."
"Know what?"
Yves punched a key and a high resolution video filled the screen. "I am completely, one hundred percent, absolutely gay. This stuff isn't turning me on at all."
Dee came up behind him. "That's a prototype of her bed trick, I think. Too bad we never got to try the final version."
Yves pressed his palms against his cheeks, aghast. "I'm not turned on but I can't look away. How are you breathing between those?" He advanced the video a few minutes. "Or under there?" He advanced it again. "Or in that?"
"That's when I learned how to hold my breath for half an hour," Dee said, blushing. "At least. Never found out how long I could go. I, uh, kind of take over in a little while. That's part of the game…Yeah, there I go. Huh. Wow."
"'Wow?'" Yves laughed, hitting the fast forward button. "I see how you learned Goojitsu." He turned to face Dee. "Why aren't you angry? The Dee I know would be punching holes in walls and threatening to kill Bee."
"He's already dead," Dee said. He waved an arm over all the containers on the floor. "Besides, if this works, he's given Galatea back to me. I let all this happen—I gave him the nanomek and then I pushed Galatea away. And now thanks to Bee I have a chance to put things right."
"Except Bee will still be dead," Yves pointed out.
Dee shrugged. "I don't have a problem with that, to be honest."
Few minutes later they had almost a dozen cups and glasses filled with water catching the sunlight from the sill of kitchenette's bay window. In the cloudless dawn, the water looked polluted with algae and silt. "Maybe we should stir it? I mean her?" Yves suggested after staring for a long while. Silent minutes crawled passed and he added, "Uh, maybe I should lie down for a while and you could work on the third D. I'm beat. Literally."
Dee took up two cups, careful not to spill a drop. "The bathtub." He made his slow way to the bathroom. Dee placed the two cups gently on the bathroom's linoleum floor. He hunted down Bee's drain stopper and made sure the seal was air tight before he poured the cups' contents into the tub and started the tap running warm. Yves came in with two more glasses and Dee said, "You rest a while and I'll fill the tub. Maybe if I can collect enough together…"
In about an hour the tub was half full with warm limeade. "I'm going to have to call in sick soon," Yves called from the couch.
"Maybe you should go," Dee said, watching the random ripples of the green bathwater, hoping to see any kind of pattern. "It looks like she's going to need the final D after all—or maybe this just isn't working and I need to find where Cherry Cupcake's taken the rest of her. I still have to do that, no matter what happens. There's no way I'm going to let Cherry Cupcake hurt her—any of her—anymore. But I don't want her to hurt you again, either."
Yves shuffled in and put a kind hand on Dee's shoulder. "Forget that, I'm sticking with you." He took his hand away. "Although I will duck out for this last bit."
"Of course," Dee said, his smile wan.
"Maybe there's something I can do in the meantime," Yves suggested. "There's no window in here. What if I borrowed some grow lights?"
"Some what?"
"A natural light lamp," Yves explained. "You know, for tropical fish? Or indoor gardening? Or…"
"There's only one person I know who, uh, 'gardens' in a closet," Dee said.
"There's only one person I know who'd be crazy enough to believe us."
They locked eyes and chorused, "Ursula."
"I'll go talk to her," Yves said. "You should stay here in case Ursula is affected by your public fuckability."
"We definitely need a better nickname for that, too," Dee said. "Do you really think Ursula would be affected? I mean, she's gayer than you."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You came out of the closet five, six years ago, right? Ursula took a cheerleader to her junior prom."
Yves waved his dismissal. "Okay, okay. The truth? I hope not but I don't want to find out. Do you think your friendship with her would survive something like that? Plus, you've got things to do."
"Good points all," Dee said, sitting on the toilet. "Get going, and close the door behind you."
"You can keep those pants when you're done. Jesus, Dee," Yves said, "for a guy who's about to win back his true love, you look miserable."
Dee sat lost in thought. ["…When I fully split into separate, um, Galateas, I start acquiring separate memories…"] "When Galatea divides," Dee explained aloud, "her memories and experiences get split up, too." He turned toward the tub. "Even if I can bring her back, I can't know how much she'll remember." He pointed at the green, oily water. "It all depends on what memories are mixed up in there, how old all that stuff is."
Yves smirked. "Maybe you'll luck out and she won't remember your hissy fit." His smile faded fast. "Wait, even if you can bring her back? What are you not telling me?"
["…Let's see if little Miss Venus had anything worth remembering. And then it'll be your turn, Dee…"]
Dee did not look up. "The taste of tears."
Yves hesitated. "Dee?"
After a while, Dee whispered, "Just go."
Yves left without another word, closing the bathroom door behind him. Dee waited to hear the front door of the apartment to open and shut, but after a quizzical, silent minute he remembered the front door was now scraps of metal scattered in the foyer. He leaned forward, clicked the door lock, and dropped down to kneel at the foot of the tub. "Okay."
After a final moment of hesitation, he dropped a hand down into the tub. It made a loud slap when his hand hit the mixture and he jerked back, mournful. The liquid felt warm and tacky. His hand came away filmed with fluid.
Damn. That felt awful.
Resting his head against the cool ceramic lip of the tub, Dee said, "I can't do this."
Yves trudged up the cement stairs to the second floor. Pain flared from his waist with each step. He felt like someone had kicked him in the groin, but he had felt that way for over an hour now and was growing accustomed. You don't get good at Aikido, he thought, without spending many years being bad at Aikido first. I've been hurt before.
A stitch in the ribs took his breath away when he opened the door to the hallway. I've lost fights before.
He moved down the citrus-perfumed hallway, resisting the urge to limp and favor his left leg. I've been robbed of my dignity before. I've even been—His right leg folded up under him so he sat there in the middle of the hallway, searching for balance. Breathe. Victory is not getting cut. Breathe. Eight forces sustain creation: Movement and stillness. Breathe. Extension and contraction. Breathe. Unification and division. Breathe. Solidity and fluidity…"Oh, for Heaven's sake," he said with sudden realization. "If Aikido has anything to do with goo girls and solid boys I'm going to take up ballet instead."
Yves stood with composure and crossed the hallway to knock on Ursula's door.
"Just a minute," came Ursula's dreamy alto voice. "Who is it?"
"Yves Valiancourt."
"Yves?" Ursula asked. The door opened. The funk of patchouli unrolled in the air.
No one was there until Yves remembered to look down. Ursula slipped on her oversized, oval eyeglasses with wide, red, plastic frames and peered sleepily up at him, her angular face as pale as milk. Yves could see the mousy brown of the roots of her hair, dyed a lustrous black with some homemade henna concoction and pulled into two thick, braided pigtails curled over her shoulders and dangling down to her hips. She wore a tight set of boy's black sweats, a cat burglar's outfit ruined by an overstuffed pair of baby blue bunny slippers with long fuzzy pink ears. "Earth to Yves."
"Sorry," Yves said. "I've never seen you…well, anyone…dressed like that. Ever."
"I'm sleeping in today," she said as if that explained everything. "You look like Hell, Yves. Are you okay? What's going on?"
Yves glanced down the corridor. I should have come up with something to say before knocking. Oh, well, bean spillage time. "Actually, Dee sent me because—"
"Galatea's in trouble," Ursula said, not missing a beat.
"God damn, woman," Yves cried out, "how do you always do that?"
"Galatea," Dee said to the tub of sugary green soup. "I don't know if you can hear me. I don't know if you have any nanomek left in there. But I've realized something. I've realized why I couldn't do it that first time. It's the same reason why I can't do it now. And I want to explain."
He turned and sat with his back against the tub. "I love you and I know you love me, and I've got this thing for you too, just like you have for me. But I don't have a thing for Jell-O, or goo, or maybe even goo girls. I don't have a thing for things." He laughed. "I know this is sounding like one of my rehearsed hissy fits, but it's not. Please hear me out, if you're in there.
"In fantasy, and on the Internet—it is a blast, Galatea, just like you said—I can get turned on by almost anything. That's what fantasy is for. That's what the Internet is for. It's harmless, guiltless pleasure. But actually sticking my dick into a bowl of Jell-O that I didn't know was you, that I thought was just Jell-O? That isn't harmless, at least not to me, although I'm sure it is for some, and certainly doesn't harm the Jell-O. But masturbating over what is probably the corpse of the woman I love more than anything else in the world? That isn't just harmful for me. It's unimaginable."
"So, I can't do that." Dee stood up. "More than that, I won't do that." He pulled off Yves' muscle shirt and hopped out of the Hammer-pants and underwear. "But I will do this," he said, and slid naked into the tub.
The liquid sloshed over him, a warm green film sliming his hair, gumming up his nose, greasing his stomach, trailing over his legs and puddling in his crotch. Every inch of his skin felt pasty. Soon the rippling from his descent petered out. Other than the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, nothing moved in the tub. "I love you, Galatea," Dee said, his voice distant and muffled to his plugged-up ears. "I said it unthinkingly before, but I mean it now more than ever: you are a part of me."
On the inner curve of his left thigh, Dee felt a single, solitary nanogasm.
In the Blood of Eden,
We’ve done everything we can.
In the Blood of Eden,
So we end as we began:
With the man in the woman,
And the woman in the man.
—Peter Gabriel, Blood of Eden
"…Welcome to the club," Galatea was saying into the phone over the noise of the blender. Ice and Nyquil cemented into a thick, medicinal green slurry. "Listen, I've been thinking, and maybe you should tell him…"
"Thinking!" said the pixie voice over the phone, "Yeah, thinking's good! You go do that s'more. I gottagoseeyabye."
The line went dead. Galatea glanced at the digital readout on the microwave in Dee's kitchenette: 6:52 PM.
"God dammit."
She punched the power switch on the blender and poured some Nyquil slushy into a tall plastic cup. She took a tentative sip. The frozen stuff flashed down her throat, chilling her to the core, stiffening her nipples into ice the color of darkest myrtle. "Wow," she gasped, touching them tenderly. "God dammit," she said again after a moment. "I miss Dee."
Galatea emptied the contents of the cup back into the blender and lugged the full mixing bowl into the living room. She guzzled a long draught of slushy before extending a tendril to hit the Play button on Dee's DVD player. She giggled as the Nyquil took effect and the fuzzy logic of her nanomek mindweb grew downright hairy and humor impaired. "Dee's Dee Vee Dee."
On the television screen, a severed, human head grew a pair of slimy eyestalks and scuttled out a door on crab legs. Galatea howled with laughter until the copper-haired hero burned the head-crab to a crisp with flame-thrower. "Aw, poor little guy." She tipped the mixing bowl against her lips before realizing she had emptied its entire contents in that initial sip. She plopped in a huff onto the couch.
Something solid pushed between the pliant flesh of her legs and nestled against her sex. She yelped and rocketed upright. The hard intruder bounced and burrowed further into her with each resulting shockwave. "God," she whined, reached between her legs, and pulled Dee's square universal remote control out of her crotch with a shriek. "Dammit!" She throttled the remote. "Dee, Dee, Dee, everything here is Dee except Dee isn't here!"
She tried shaking the plastic gadget to pieces but gave up with a sigh, paused the movie, and then settled back onto the couch. She waited. She counted the ice crystals of slushy dissolving in her body. She waited. She toyed with the universal remote, counting the infrared wave-particles it shot around the room. She waited. She queried her memory web and tallied the number of times she had climaxed in the four days of her existence: one hundred seventeen. Then she counted the number of Dee's orgasms in the same period: three hundred forty two. "Typical," she grumped, glancing at the DVD's digital readout.
6:55 PM.
"I'm tired of waiting for Dee," she slurred, and burped. A rainbow bubble popped out of her mouth and burst against her nose. It smelled of Nyquil, citrus, sex…and homemade castile soap. Galatea growled, low and long, until the sound became a name, each syllable slowly toyed with and tasted before it rolled off her tongue.
"Ursula!"
A cascade of nanogasms started a fire in her belly. Waves of heated, melted gel gushed up into her chest and coursed through her legs. "Nanomek, do your stuff." Her body melted, slick and sticky, like a well-licked lollipop.
The heat peaked as her meltdown went critical, her surface tension becoming so diffuse she lost all feeling of where she ended and the couch and the air around her began. Her vision doubled, each thought and sensation became muzzy and echoed. "Mitosis," she panted, "is so much better'n Nyquil. Almost better'n sex."
"Nah," said another voice, "who you kiddin'?"
Galatea's sense of self and her surroundings swam back into focus. "Not you," she told the nectarous duplicate sitting in her lap, "obviously. Oh, crap. I'm half as drunk now. Thanks a bunch."
The duplicates' flesh was still so oozy her ass liquefied into Galatea's crotch. Gouts of molten honey rushed between them, making her dizzy. "What do you think it's like," wondered her duplicate, leaning back into Galatea's chest until her breasts melted into the duplicate's shoulders, "to have boundaries?"
"Other than freezing myself into a lime popsicle," Galatea mused, "I doubt I'll ever find out. But who needs boundaries when you can bifurcate? And speaking of being bi…"
Galatea pulled free from the duplicate, stood up, and shook loose the remaining filaments and stringy bands connecting the two of them. "Galatea," said Galatea to her duplicate, "are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so, Galatea, but do we have enough food coloring?"
Galatea swaggered down the hallway and into the bathroom. Plastic vials of food coloring scattered about the linoleum faux-tiled floor. She lined them up on the sink, pausing to stare at the last bottle. "Why the Hell did I bother to steal the green one?" She set the full vial of finger-paint green, edible dye next to the others. "I can be such an airhead sometimes."
She popped off the caps and kissed a dozen drops of dye from each vial into her mouth, skipping the green with a frown. "There's plenty to go 'round," she said between kisses. Clusters of nanomek swarmed in her tongue and made off with the dye one molecule at time. "A little goes a long way."
"Enough for me too?" asked the duplicate on the couch.
"Sure," said Galatea, making her way back to the living room. The nanomek sported with the dye and her body pulsed with psychedelic paisleys. "But one of us has gotta stay here in case Dee calls or shows up. Can I go? Dee's 'little Miss U' has been on my To Do list for a long time now. Yours too, though, 'course."
"You can go," her green duplicate cautioned, "on two conditions: No reassimilation until after Dee gets back and I fuck him first while you watch."
"Masochist," Galatea accused.
"I'm drunk, jealous, and horny as Hell," her duplicate said with a squirmy shrug. "Do we have a deal, or do we reassimilate now and risk Dee catching us?"
"Well, it is every man's fantasy to catch his girlfriend with another woman, isn't it? The Internet doesn't lie."
"Dee isn't Everyman," the duplicate pointed out. "And it pisses you off to see Dee even thinking about another woman."
Galatea conceded, "You have a deal."
"Great. Now get the fuck out so I can get all the way drunk again."
"Alright," Galatea nodded. "But first, some advice: what should I be?" With a metallic sigh her mass morphed into a slobbering tentacular horror, a purple demonic monstrosity with extra sets of oversized sexual apparatus and rows of teeth in some very strange places. "Legend of the Overfiend?" its ivory-tusked maws hissed in a ragged chorus.
Her duplicate flew into a fit of giggles.
"You're right," the abomination spoke in Galatea's voice, "too silly. Okay. Hm. Oh! What about…" There was another metallic sigh and the beast morphed into a tall, raven haired, Amazon princess wearing nothing but red, white, and blue underwear, a pair of polished steel bracelets, and a golden lariat coiled on her hip. "Suffering Sappho?" She tried twirling the lariat over her head but fumbled the third spin and somehow managed to lasso her own hands behind her back. "Suffering Sappho!" she swore. "Powerless! Again!" She wriggled and jiggled but remained bound. "Why does this always happen?"
Her green duplicate perked up. "Ooh, save that one for Dee. That will make him awfully quiet. Golden Age gals are his favorite."
"Something Dark Agey, then?" the Amazon suggested, morphing into a black vinyl clad sex kitten with a whip.
The duplicate buried her hands in her head. "We have got to stop listening to Dee's comic book lectures."
"You're right." Galatea morphed back into herself. "I'm thinking of Dee, not Ursula."
"We've been in her apartment a bunch of times," her duplicate noted, "and I didn't see any comic books. Lots of novels instead. And a whole shelf devoted to one author, remember? I don't know what the books were about, though."
Dee's white-box computer squat in the corner of the living room. Galatea stretched her arms to its keyboard and called up a web search engine. "'Anne Rice'," she enunciated, typing out the name and hitting the Enter key.
Galatea and her duplicate elongated their necks into emerald crazy straws to get a close look at what the search engine produced.
"Ah," said the duplicate.
"Heh," said Galatea.
Ursula was possessed of an antique vanity. A sheet of silvered glass, framed in dark cherry wood still stained with its original varnish, served as its mirror. Only the lining of its drawers and three dowels had been replaced in over a century since its manufacture in New Orleans by a journeyman carpenter whose accident while procuring matted felt for his masterwork from a nearby haberdashery resulted in mercury poisoning, Mad Hatter Syndrome, and subsequent suicide.
"I take pride in my vanity," Ursula said, as she always did whenever she sat before it. The vanity table's aged mirror cast her reflection in mottled brass, as if she were living inside a nineteenth century photograph. "But I hate my hair!" she added, grabbing up handfuls of her massive mane and shaking it in her tiny fists.
She spread her fingers and clouds of baby-fine, black-dyed hair unraveled past her waist. "Rapunzel I ain't." She cinched her silk dressing gown around her slender waist, plucked an ox horn comb from the selection of beautician's weaponry arrayed on the vanity table's blotter, and detangled herself without mercy. "Ow, ow, ow. Ow!"
A distressful hour later the battle was won. "There," she said, tying up her plaited pigtails with white satin ribbons and turning away from the mirror for the first time since she sat down. "I deserve a Hot Toddy."
The vampire attacked.
For a second of blinking incomprehension Ursula just sat there, staring at the virago vampiress towering over her—staring open mouthed at the buckles of a studded corset belt hovering inches away from her nose. The vampiress bent in a mockery of a curtsey, flashing a flawless, ivory leg as her black velvet skirt flared over the floor. Ursula caught another fleeting glimpse of skin guarded by a velvet choker and a severe neckline before the vampiress curtsied deep enough to look her in the eye and her mind went blank.
"Why hello there," the vampiress chuckled, her voice throaty and thrumming with a power that made Ursula shake like a leaf, setting her legs and loins aquiver like she was eleven all over again. The vampiress' tongue lolled over her curving, canine fangs as she tasted the words: "Little girl."
Ursula managed to produce a mousy Eep! noise from the back of her throat even as it tilted backward and to the side, exposing the curve of her milky neck, apparently of its own volition. The remaining shred of her pride and dignity seethed and hated her for it. The vampiress cocked an eyebrow at her, an expression so familiar—Dee, that's Dee, why does she remind me of Dee—that Ursula's raging pride boiled up and nearly broke through her paralysis of fear and arousal, but then the vampiress declared, "Let's move this to the bed," and hoisted Ursula high into the air, cradling her in both arms on the downswing.
Ursula squeaked in mindless passion, alarm, and assent.
The vampiress strutted over to the cast-iron, four poster bed catty-corner to the opposite bedroom wall. Ursula rocked in her strange, rubbery embrace. Squashed against her captor's imposing bust and swaddled in the cool velvet of the vampiress' cloak, Ursula felt suspended and enmeshed, enraged but enraptured. The vampiress brushed the bed's white lace canopy aside, unwound her cloak and rolled Ursula onto the mattress' plush quilt. She loomed above Ursula like a languorous lion. Spikes of flame-red hair crowned a flawless but cruel face as white as pure marble. Ursula turned away from the vampiress' cold, viridian gaze, shuddering but still presenting her neck.
The vampiress traced a fingernail under Ursula's chin, clucking. "The carotid artery is so cliché."
Ursula tried to curl into a ball but the vampiress pressed her flat against the bed and flicked the dressing gown off Ursula's shoulders. "I prefer the subclavian, myself," the vampiress said, dipping her finger down and over the clavicle above Ursula's left breast.
Her left nipple hardened and hurt as Ursula squirmed, the material of her dressing gown scrapping against it. The vampiress sat down on the bed as she nudged the top of Ursula's gown open to expose her shivering chest. The vampiress leaned down and in, breathing deep. She paused just long enough to blink twice and crinkle her brow. "Slim pickings," she said, shaking her head and recovering from the split second of confusion. "And I'm very hungry." She loosened the knot of Ursula's belt and finger-walked across the skin below.
"So," the vampiress said as her hand crawled passed Ursula's bellybutton, "tonight I'm in the mood for some profunda femoris." She skirted over Ursula's pudendum and clamped down on the meat of Ursula's inner thigh inches away from her sex. "That's quite an abbuctor magnus you've built up for yourself, little girl," she commented as she squeezed and Ursula squealed. "You must put it through the wringer. How many heads have you wrapped these babies around, hmm?"
The vampiress shunted down the bed, pried Ursula's legs apart, and bent low, only to start blinking again. "I could say just about anything right now," she said, a green blush tinting her cheeks, "and you'd just writhe and pant some more, right?"
Ursula writhed and panted like a puppy.
"Good." The vampiress padded down to the foot of the bed and knelt between Ursula's spread-eagled legs. She pulled the knot of Ursula's belt apart, yanking the gown wide open. "Where was I?" She stared at Ursula's creamy tummy and mousy brown mound. A few green beads of sweat spilled down her forehead.
Ursula tugged hard on her own braids, mewling in bewildered need.
"Arteries," the vampiress muttered. "Right. Arteries. Good." She grabbed Ursula's ankle and raised her toned leg high. She palpated behind the knee with her other hand and found Ursula's pulse singing like a humming bird's. "The popliteal artery…" she said, greenish pallor spreading and statuesque features softening. Ursula's bucked her hips, her eyes rolled over white. "The popliteal artery," the vampiress said again, mouth inching closer to the inner curve of Ursula's upraised knee. She gulped and tried one last time: "The popliteal artery is fine, too—Oh, God damn it and fuck!"
The vampiress let Ursula's leg drop and mopped away the runnels of green goo that had started to stream down her face. "Why the Hell," the vampiress cried, "why the fucking Hell do you smell like Dee?"
The ratcheting plateau-then-tension-then-plateau-then-tension buildup toward the fearsome orgasm twisting into a fist in Ursula's abdomen petered out in a grating, itching ache. "Huh? Wha'?"
The vampiress' clothes were melting into thick green syrup, or green syrup was eating through the vampire's clothes from the inside, Ursula could not tell which. The vampiress slopped down to all fours on the bed and crawled over her. Droplets of green nectar struck and stuck to Ursula's thighs, searing and sensuous like candle wax dribbled over her flesh. The burning rain raced up her belly and then between her breasts as the vampiress crawled up to look Ursula in the eyes.
"You smell," Galatea growled as her escalating passion burned up every last molecule of food-coloring vampire costume. "Just…like…Dee—Oh, God," Galatea moaned and plunged her head down to wallow in the aroma.
"God! My God!" Ursula gasped in agreement, orgasm uncoiling through her body as Galatea's gel-flesh flowed over her neck, across her shoulders and down her chest. It felt soft but insistent, weighty but delicate, smooth but clingy, its pervasive but delicious heat penetrating the bone. "My God," Ursula whispered again as Galatea suckled on the crook of Ursula's neck, blades of living hair reaching up to cup and caress Ursula's face, "it's, it's…"
Galatea broke her full-torso kiss and pulled up and away with a loud, popping slurp. "Better than vampires?" she asked, eyes twinkling.
"Yes." Ursula reached out, pushing her arms deep into Galatea's back for a piping hot, internal hug. It was Galatea's time to buck and mewl. "Yes. I'm never LARPing again."
Galatea laughed, shaking her head. "Now you even sound like Dee," she said, amazed. "And why do you smell like him? I don't understand this at all."
Ursula, lying prone beneath a living incarnation of carnality made of out lime gelatin, said, "I think it's only fair if I get to ask the first questions."
Galatea rolled her eyes. "God, you are such a man." She tried to roll over on the bed but the twin mattress proved too small and she splashed down onto the carpet instead. "Okay," she said, sounding muffled, "you can ask questions while I regain my dignity."
"How did you make me cum like that?" Ursula asked.
"You came?"
"Yes," Ursula said, examining the sticky green smears on her quilt, "when you kissed me."
"Really? Me too!" Ursula heard something slosh and slide about below the bed. "That's the wonder of nanogasms. Don't thank me; thank Dee for those. And no, I'm not going to explain that. Not yet, at least, 'cuz trying to explain it would probably fill a fuckin' book. Anyway, one more question before it’s my turn."
Ursula held the quilt up and over the side of the bed. "How do I get these stains out?"
Galatea's head peeked up. "What are you, some sort of Martha Stewart hippie?"
"I prefer the term 'Bohemian Bourgeoisie'."
"Fine with me," Galatea said, rising to her full height. "As to your question: I have no idea. I like keepin' Dee too busy to clean up. Now it's my turn, right?"
Ursula nodded and drew the quilt over her naked form. "Right."
"Okay." Galatea crossed her arms. "I can’t help but notice you haven't asked me my name, or what I am, so I'm thinking that you already know. Am I right?"
"I know just a little," Ursula confessed, "Galatea."
"I've also figured out why you smell like Dee," Galatea said, and disappeared below the bed again. Huffing with exertion, she hauled out a small steamer trunk. She snapped open the trunk's fasteners, popped the lip up, and pulled out a bunch of bars of homemade castile soap. "You bathe with this stuff too, right? So it’s not the case that you smell like Dee. Instead, Dee smells like you."
Ursula shifted, pulling the quilt tighter around her. "Right."
"Well," Galatea said, standing up again, "I've bathed with it, too. Sort of. I suspect you know 'just a little' about that as well. But let me tell you something I know: I know every single ingredient you've put into this damn stuff, and you can be sure as shit a bunch of it ain't soap. So I've just got one real question for you. Answer correctly and I'll fuck you so good that orgasm you just had will be a little nibble off a chocolate bar in comparison. Answer it wrong…"
Galatea surged onto the bed. Ursula clutched the quilt to her neck but Galatea just seeped under it from below and filled it out so Ursula suddenly found herself holding the quilt around Galatea's body rather than her own. "And I'll get creative," Galatea said, leaning in nose-to-nose. "My question to you, little Miss U:
"Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?"
"I'm a bad witch." Ursula dropped the quilt and scooted her round butt up against the bed's headboard. "Very bad. Terrible, in fact." Ursula saw a crinkle of confusion cross Galatea's brow, and added, "That is, I'm really bad at witchcraft." Galatea's silence felt like a vacuum and the lacey confines of the four poster bed became a confessional. "My older brother let me play Dungeons and Dragons with him and his friends when I was nine. After a couple of games the group thought my ideas were cooler than his and asked me to be Dungeon Master. I was still running the show in high school. One girl in my group, Marcie, had a real crush on me, but her character died…I think her name was Black Leaf or something…Marcie took it kind of hard. Anyway, that's how I got into the occult.
"I studied for years, became a pagan, started spelling 'magic' with a 'k,' went to Bryn Mawr College, you name it. At first, it made me feel good; gave me something to be angry and defensive about other than being a really short, big dyke, you know?" Ursula wrapped herself around a down pillow and chewed, absent minded, on a braid. Galatea just stared, eyes shining like polished moss agate. "But soon it became my routine and I just went through the motions, until something incredible happened: I discovered the Internet."
Galatea blinked. "Wait. What?"
"I moved here. This town is geek Heaven except, for some reason, the closest thing to a New Age store is the local Hobby Lobby. Dee built me a PC and Viggo let me splice into his broadband connection…Don't look at me like that, I'm so not Dee's type and Viggo isn't interested in any woman that comes without a combo attack….Now don't you start looking at me like that, either, that was a damn good pun. Anyway, I found this medical supply outlet online that had a huge selection of homeopathic and all-natural products for all kinds of stuff. Their wholesaler must be really great, because whenever I use their stuff as reagents or ingredients or whatever, my magic actually works! Although it never works exactly the way I expect. So I went from being no witch at all to a bad witch."
"Holy shit," Galatea said, letting the quilt slide off her slick back. "You talk a lot."
Ursula blushed, tried to hide her entire body behind the pillow. "I wanted to give the right answer."
"I was joking," Galatea laughed, "I was gunna fuck you senseless no matter what you said."
"Yes!" Ursula hissed, waving her fists high in the air.
Galatea spread out on the bed, her legs first fusing and then oozing out into a wide, low, jellied mound beneath her bellybutton. Ursula hugged the pillow, watching the glistening mass roll closer like liquid, green glass. "How does it feel?" she asked, staring down.
"Touch me," Galatea said.
Ursula's hazel gaze rose to meet Galatea's. "I mean, how does it feel to be you?"
Galatea smiled, and spread her arms out to her. "Touch me."
Ursula pushed the pillow away and sat cross-legged before Galatea. Ursula reached out and ran a hesitant finger around Galatea's right palm. "Smooth," she breathed, tracing a circle in Galatea's palm. A little ripple of gel raced ahead of her finger. "Silken." Emboldened, she slid her hand up Galatea's forearm. "Elastic and cool. I like it. What happened to all the sticky goop?"
Galatea reached over and took Ursula's right hand in hers. "Not a fan of sticky goop?"
"Don't get me wrong," Ursula said, squeezing, "it felt wild and downright wicked, but the little Martha Stewart inside me felt aghast."
"Let's give Martha a goo girl anatomy lesson," Galatea said, and pulled Ursula's hand to the lower swell of her breast. "Surface tension," she said, pressing Ursula's hand up and in. Her pliant flesh bulged but did not break. "Mm."
Ursula's jaw dropped. "Wow."
"Dee's favorite word," Galatea purred.
"Yours is 'fuck,'" Ursula said, slipping gel between her wriggling fingers.
"Hey, yeah, it is!" Galatea bubbled. "How'd ya know?"
"I hear you shout it whenever I'm in the hallway. You and Dee have been going at it all week, seems like, and you're not exactly modest."
Galatea giggled.
"So," Ursula said, and pressed her other hand over Galatea's stiffening nipple. Galatea's giggling trailed off into a contented sigh. "Lesson one: surface tension."
Galatea gathered up Ursula's hand again and brought it inches away from her mouth. "Lesson two," she cooed. Ursula jumped at the sudden burning breeze of her breath. "Inner gel," Galatea said and popped Ursula's hand in her mouth with a meowing nee-yum!
Ursula swooned but lurched forward into Galatea's awaiting lap as Galatea swallowed her arm up to the elbow. "My God," she cried from the confines of Galatea's cavernous cleavage. "My God, how does Dee take it?" Galatea's throat relaxed and Ursula's arm popped free. Ursula snuggled into Galatea's smooth, cool surface. "How does he stand it?"
"He stands tall, proud, and, mm, hard," Galatea said. "You didn't like it?"
"It was so warm and strong, I just…" She gulped, cheeks and neck flushed in crimson. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I can't imagine what it would be like to stick a dick in there."
"Oh? Wanna find out?"
Ursula bolted, causing a gel-quake. "Say what?"
"I'll save that for lesson five," Galatea said, arching an eyebrow.
"You're joking, right?" Ursula laughter developed a nervous edge as she peeled herself out of Galatea's lap and back onto the bed.
"We'll see." Galatea grabbed Ursula's hand again. "Ready for lesson three?"
"Um. No?"
"That's nice." Galatea pressed Ursula's hand into the gel of her tummy and pushed it down. "Lesson three." The Goth and the goo girl watched their entwined hands creep over the delta above Galatea's sex. "Nectar," Galatea murmured and eased two of Ursula's fingertips into her pussy, her eyes roving over Ursula in eager triumph.
A few moments later, Ursula said, "Hm."
Galatea's brow crinkled in confusion. "'Hm?' No fainting? Not even a 'wow'?" She let go of Ursula's hand.
"Don't worry," Ursula said, slipping her fingers in further, "I'm definitely wowing on the inside." She moved her thumb in quick little circles over Galatea's clitoris, making her shudder. "But this lesson I already know. I'm damn well versed, in fact," she added, and got down to business.
"Wow!" Galatea splashed down onto the bed, writhing and melting. Ursula leaned in and dropped her lips delicately down, replacing her thumb over Galatea's clit. "Oh, wow!" Ursula's thumb arced below Galatea's sex and probed the tender gel beneath. "Oh, fuck, wow!"
Ursula swayed on her knees as she caressed and kissed, coddled and invaded.
"What's happening?" Galatea whimpered. "What are you doing?"
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!"
Ursula scuttled back. "Don't you want to cum?"
Galatea burbled, "Look at yourself, girl."
"Huh?" Ursula looked down to find herself green and dripping from chin to bellybutton. "Whoa."
Galatea rose from the sodden quilt. "Can your inner Martha cope?"
"She's a bigger dyke than me," Ursula said, daubing a dollop of green honey off her left breast and rubbing it between her fingers. "That was well worth the mess. And you got so hot! Like paraffin wax, but delicious."
"Delicious?" Galatea repeated, wobbling past the vanity and through the bedroom door.
"Yeah," Ursula called out, licking her fingers. "It's like a combination of my two favorite flavors. When I was a kid, I loved this candy called Sweet-Tarts. Ate so many my tongue would bleed."
"And the other flavor?" came Galatea's voice down the hallway crowded with oil paintings in antique frames.
"Pussy, of course!"
Ursula heard Galatea laugh, followed by a loud grinding. "Dee can't say words like 'pussy' or 'cum'," Galatea said over the mechanical noise. "He just goes, 'Um, you know.'"
Ursula feasted on the nectar cooling on her body. "Yeah, I know he does," she said, her mouth full of sticky fingers.
"What?"
"Nothing. Why do you keep comparing me to Dee? And what's that noise?"
"Your ice maker," Galatea said as the grinding wound down. "And Dee's the only other person I know besides you." She spoke as if her mouth were full of pretzels. "Anyway, oo' were 'ucky to get to fird base wiff'out second degree burns. I've got to cool down for leff'on four."
Ursula's eyes widened in alarm. "We're still doing the lessons? I thought we settled those."
"Hell no, girl." Galatea marched back into the bedroom, her surface tension solid but shimmying from the cold, a living statute of green tourmaline crystal. "You may think you're little Miss Thing with your Venus Butterfly Technique, but you’re in the big leagues now, this is a five-round fight, and you have no idea what you've gotten yourself into."
Ursula boggled at Galatea as the green girl drew herself up to her favorite height of seven feet, her fists pressed to her hips, at the foot of the bed. Something complicated happened inside her neck. "'Yeah, I know he does,'" Galatea mocked in a perfect impersonation of Ursula's voice, her eyes narrowing into predatory slits.
"Wait a minute." Ursula sat up. "Fight? What fight?"
Galatea leveled an outstretched arm, ignoring her. "Lesson four…"
"Wait a minute!" Ursula yelped, her eyes squeezed shut, hands upraised and waggling like mad. Something cool and soft brushed across the fingertips of her right hand, slithered down her fingers, tickled her palm, and stuck to the pad of her thumb. "Huh?" She peeped open one eye.
A fluorescent lime green coating gloved her right hand, shining in the mellow glow of the twin Tiffany lamps on her vanity and bedside table. Ursula curled her fingers and felt the stuff resist but flow with the movement. She made a fist and it filled out into a perfect green sphere. She flexed and fanned her fingers out and the coating snapped back into a skin-tight glove. The lamplight refracted in dozens of translucent filaments that traced through the air from the tips of her fingers and lead back to Galatea's outstretched arm. "What the Hell?"
"Lesson four: advanced surface tension," Galatea said with a goofy smile and shrug. Ursula felt the gentle force of the shrug travel through the filaments connecting them, giving her hand a snug, squeezing tug, raising gooseflesh over her arms and neck. "How does that feel?"
Ursula rubbed her gloved fingers together. They squeaked. "Like liquid satin, fluid but not gooey."
"Not that…"
Beads of gel pulsed down the filaments, glommed onto Ursula's fingertips, and rolled down her hand. The glove grew, swallowing her forearm like a hungry lover, electrifying her flesh.
"This," Galatea said, shrugging and tugging as the glove slunk around Ursula's elbow and clamped down more tight and clingy than any garment or stocking Ursula had ever worn. It was as pliant and sensuous as it was confining and terrifying. Ursula could only blush, stutter and squirm her hips.
"Very interesting," Galatea drawled, and Ursula's blush burned brighter. "Well, then." Galatea leaned close, reaching out. "Let's get started."
Ursula started to protest but Galatea's questing hand stretched past her, drawing Ursula's enveloped arm back with it. She stared at the fun-house mirror reflection her flushed face cast in the sleek substance of Galatea's arm, shining like lime-tinted chrome. She did not notice Galatea flow silently forward until the green girl spoke again. "Well, what do ya know?"
Ursula sat up straight and the two girls bumped noses. Galatea's attention was focused on something behind her, her goofy smile sharpening into a wicked grin, her nose bobbling like Samantha Stephen's as she cast a spell on her hapless husband Darrin, her breath perfumed with the scent of green-apple flavored Sweet-Tarts. The smell is precisely perfect, Ursula realized, her mouth watering and mind flooding with awkward girlhood memories. She must be doing it on purpose. Again her dignity nearly surfaced but she heard a familiar clinking behind her.
"Looky what I found," Galatea taunted.
Ursula's stomach flopped but her sex throbbed, and she turned to follow Galatea's gaze. The green girl's thumb hooked into a wide iron ring, the last loop on a short chain soldered onto the bedpost. "What's this for, hmm?" Galatea asked, clinking the chain. "Martha Stewart living? Somehow I doubt it."
Galatea wrapped the cobweb-thin, carbon-steel strong filaments around and around the short length of chain, pulling Ursula's arm higher, farther back, and straighter with each twist. Ursula's vision doubled, then swam. "Galatea," she whispered, and it was the sound of her own voice that made her eyes brim over and spill their tears. She heard the voice of a shrimpy, pudgy preteen who chewed on hard candy until it hurt after sneaking behind the gym equipment shed during recess to coax lingering kisses from popular girls, only to be sneered at when she dared greet them in the school hallway. "Galatea, you win, you win."
The living glove swallowed her arm almost to the shoulder, its icy-hot grip tickling the skin right below Ursula's armpit. "Hm?" Galatea murmured as she cocooned the bedpost chain in a growing lozenge of green chrome, a giant Sweet-Tart.
"You win."
"No, kiddo," Galatea said before stage whispering to the green disc. "You got her?"
With a quick metallic sigh the disc morphed into a miniature green girl, legs wrapped around the iron bedpost like Stripper Barbie humping a flagpole, her teensy hands seizing bundles of the green tendrils trussing up Ursula's arm. "Oh, I got her," Sweet-Tart smirked. A surge of chromed gel pulsed down the sturdy webbing and the smooching, pinching, liquid velvet of the hungry glove swarmed over Ursula's shoulder and into her armpit. "Thanks for the extra nanomek," Sweet-Tart said over Ursula's barks of mad laughter.
"You win!" Ursula cried. "I'll leave Dee alone, I swear!"
"No, kiddo," Galatea repeated and sidled to Ursula's left. She fished the second bedpost's chain out of the lace canopy. "The safe word is 'Pygmalion,' not 'you win'."
She took the chain into her mouth and sucked on it like a lollipop. Even through the tingling, tickle-torture from Sweet-Tart, Ursula named another childhood candy favorite. Charm's Blow-Pop. The chain popped out of Galatea's mouth encased in a candy-apple green sphere. The sphere cracked open and morphed into another doll-sized green girl. "You heard the big woman," Blow-Bop huffed, loping up the chain and planting herself on the bedpost, "the safe-word is 'Pygmalion'…Well?"
Ursula blushed hotter than she thought possible. Already dizzy and giddy from the assault on her arm, the miasma of sensation threatened to drown her. Just as her body was choosing between falling faint or throwing up, her dignity finally surfaced and told her exactly what she needed to do. She clamped her mouth shut, squirming but dead silent, her eyes sparkling with tears and mischief. The original, queen-size Galatea just smiled and moved to a third bedpost at the foot of the bed.
Blow-Pop crowed in triumph. "Now we're talkin'!" She punched her tiny arms out, fingers curled in a peculiar but familiar hooked horn gesture. "Th'wip!"
Skeins of spun sugar sped from the little green girl's fingertips and lashed about Ursula's left wrist. "Ooh," Blow-Pop purred as the webbing raveled around the trembling hand, "you're just so dainty, so darling, solid but so subtle, so different…I want it." She reeled in her net of green silk, dragging Ursula's arm toward the bedpost. "Gimme, gimme," she giggled. "Got it!" Blow-Pop furled around Ursula's hand and a lazy river of satiny, molten candy trickled down her forearm.
The tickling under Ursula's right arm melted away into a lingeri