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Pygmalion

By: jonquixote



Carrie was a liar. A big, fat liar.

She told Tracy that this guy was handsome, but it was obvious that the only person who would consider this balding dork to be handsome was his mother, and even that was a long-shot. She described him as stocky, but he was closer to fat. She said he was well-off, but judging by the way he was dressed, Tracy also doubted that. He was wearing tweed, for Christ's sake. She said he was charming, but this guy was boring. And he could not stop talking about his job. As if Tracy really gave a shit about digging up Egyptian mummies or some crap like that.

Carrie also said he was dynamite in the sack. Not only did Tracy sincerely doubt this, but the thought of finding out if this was true turned her stomach. Boring guy – Malcolm was his name, right? – struck Tracy as strictly a two-pump missionary devotee. She'd probably have to wrap herself in bandages and lie still just so he could get it up.

To make matters worse, after all the talk Carrie had done about this guy, Tracy had gotten herself seriously worked up over this date, and had gone all out to prepare. She had squeezed her lithe frame into her favorite dress, a very tight, very short black number that really showed off her long, tan legs. It even hugged her chest nicely, and added some padding to her somewhat meager bosom. She spent the afternoon having her shoulder-length blonde hair professionally styled, and even went so far as to have a complete bikini wax, just in case. Hot, rich fuck-machines were in short-supply, and if this guy was everything he was supposed to be, then Tracy wanted to make sure he recognized that she was something to hold on to.

But now, Tracy could not even be bothered to feign polite interest in this guy's boring stories. The night was obviously a complete bust, and she hoped he would take the hint and put a quick end to it. Well, maybe not a complete bust. The busboy at the restaurant was cute, and Tracy flashed him her very first smile of the night when he stopped by their table to fill up their water glasses. She made no effort to be subtle about it, and was sure that Malcolm saw. But she did not care, and if it took insulting this guy to hasten this date's end, so be it.

To his credit, Malcolm kept his poise. He took a sip of the water and, fingering the thick, gold ring on his right hand, said, "I get the impression that you want to go home."

"Yeah," said Tracy, "I have to get up early in the morning for work. You know how it is."

"I understand completely," Malcolm replied as he gestured for the check.

The drive home took place in complete silence. Tracy stared out the window as Malcolm drove. Occasionally, he would take his eyes off the road to look at Tracy with a quizzical expression on his face, which gave Tracy the creeps. "He better not try to kiss me," she thought, "otherwise he's going to be in for a big disappointment."

Malcolm parked in front of Tracy's apartment building. He got out of the car, and walked around to open Tracy's door. "Thanks," she said, dripping with insincerity, "I had a lovely evening." 

"Well, the evening's still young," said Malcolm, "how about a nightcap."

Oh brother, thought Tracy, how thick could you get? "I don't know, it is kind of late," she began making her excuse.

"One drink," he insisted, "you have time for that."

Much to her surprise, Tracy found herself agreeing. She tried to figure out why as they entered the building, and walked up the stairs to her second floor apartment.

By the time they were inside her place, she had regained her senses and was determined to feed this guy his drink, and get rid of him.

"All I have is beer," she said, hoping a stuffed shirt like Malcolm would consider himself above brew. The last thing she needed was for him to get drunk here.

"Beer will be fine, thanks." He walked into her living room, and made himself at home on her couch.

Tracy grabbed him a beer from the fridge, not bothering to get one for herself. She handed it to him, and sat down on the other end of the couch, as far away from him as possible. 

Malcolm took a long swallow from his beer, then looked at his date. "You were kind of rude to me tonight, Tracy." She stared back at him in stunned silence. Was this jerk telling her off, in her home, while drinking her beer?

"But that's ok," he continued. "I forgive you, because I think I understand. Now, you can be honest with me, Tracy, I won't mind. You don't feel that we're in the same league, do you?"

Tracy decided the time for politeness, or what passed as politeness for her, was over. "No Malcolm," She answered, "I don't think we're in the same league at all."

"And this made you uncomfortable tonight, and you wanted the date to end as quickly as possible. This is why you were rude to me."

Tracy sneered, "You hit the nail right on the head."

Malcolm nodded and took another drink. "So why do you feel that you're not in my league, Tracy? You're a fairly attractive girl, and you seem kind of bright," he said with a smile.

Tracy's eyes went wide at this insult. She jumped to her feet, and said, "Ok, I think it's time for you to leave."

Malcolm remained where he was, calm and composed. "Sit down," he said, his voice even. Much to her surprise, Tracy sat.

Seconds seemed like hours in the silence that immediately followed, Tracy sitting there mutely staring at her date, wondering why she couldn't stand. Malcolm reclining on the couch, fidgeting with his ring. Finally he spoke.

"We all get a little insecure sometimes. It's nothing to be ashamed of." As he talked, he rose from his end of the couch and walked over to where Tracy was sitting. She looked away from him, her body trembling with fear. She wanted nothing more than to jump up and slap this asshole as hard as she could. But she could not move off the couch. Or maybe she didn't really want to move? She was very confused, and very scared.

"We're none of us perfect," he continued, "but we often see our flaws as magnified. Huge, grotesque imperfections that prevent us from ever being accepted by others. Now what is it that made you feel that you weren't good enough for me?" Tracy's eyes flared with rage, and she turned to yell at him, but he quickly put a finger to her lips and whispered, "shh." Tracy fell silent.

Malcolm moved his fingers up to her hair. He began pulling pins from her hairdo, until her blonde tresses fell down. He ran his hands through them, messing her hair so that it hung wildly over her face. "See, this is what I mean," he said, "you're obviously a natural brunette, but your insecurities drive you to dye your hair blonde. Why do you do this?"

She looked up at him, tears now flowing freely down her face. "It's prettier blonde," she whispered.

"But it can't just be your hair that made you so insecure tonight," Malcolm said. He brought his hands down to her chest, and cupped her breasts. She closed her eyes, and fought back the tears, trembling as he mauled and kneaded her tits. "Your breasts aren't very big, are they?" he asked the paralysed girl. When she did not answer, he slapped her sharply across the face. "Are they?"

"N-n-no," she stammered.

"And it makes you insecure, that you have small breasts? You wish they were larger? Answer me truthfully now."

"Yes," she said, weakly. He had pulled her dress down below her breasts now, exposing them fully. They were small but firm, the size of apples, with large nipples that covered most of their surface. He pawed them roughly, and, taking a nipple between his thumb and forefinger, pinched it hard until she gasped.

"Stand up," he said, and she obeyed. He slid her dress down her legs, and had her step out of it, so that now she was standing before him, naked except for her panties and heels. "How tall are you?" he asked.

"Five foot ten."

"That's tall for a woman. I'll bet you were taller than all the other kids in school Taller than all the boys, weren't you?"

Tracy nodded. "And did the boys make fun of you, because you were taller than them?" She nodded again. "Did they have a name that they called you?"

"Yes," Tracy whispered. "They called me Tracy Towers."

Malcolm sighed, "Kids can be so cruel. And unimaginative." He was kneeling in front of Tracy, running his hands up and down the inside of her leg, staring at the damp spot on her pink panties that seemed to be growing larger by the second. 

Tracy could not believe her body was betraying her like this. Not only did she seem to have no control over her actions, but she was soaking wet. It seemed some sick part of her was enjoying being molested like this. And Malcolm knew it. His caresses were getting closer and closer to the wet spot between her legs.

He stood up and whispered into her ear, "The insecure ones are always the sluttiest." Tracy flushed, and his fingers began rubbing between her legs, drawing little circles on her clit.

Then, abruptly, Malcolm stopped, and walked back over to his end of the couch. He plopped down on it casually, and finished his beer, while Tracy stood there in her living room, trembling. "Y'know," he said, "I used to be just like you. Insecure. Convinced I was woefully imperfect, and that nobody would ever love me.

"But I changed," he was fidgeting with his ring again. "Or more to the point, I found something that helped me change. I know my job bores you," he held up his hands mockingly, "No, no! It's ok, you can admit it. But you would be amazed at some of the stuff you find at these digs.

"And I like you Tracy. And, even though you were kind of a bitch to me tonight, I'm going to help you. I'm going to help you get rid of your insecurities. Because I'm a nice guy." Malcolm smiled at her, and leapt to his feet. "And I don't want you to feel that you're not good enough for me. But I think the only way I can do that, is to make you good enough for me.

"Are you familiar with the story of Pygmalion?" he asked.

Tracy nodded. "He was a Greek sculptor, and he fell in love with his statue."

Malcolm looked pleasantly surprised. He walked over to her and took her chin in his hand, forcing her to meet his eyes. "Well, well, well, there's hope for you yet, Tracy," he said. "Behind that shallow bimbette exterior, I think there might be a brain that has read a book or two.

"But Pygmalion didn't just have a marble fetish. He felt that, because he was the best artist in the world, that only the best beauty in the world could satisfy him. When he couldn't find it, he made it for himself. He sculpted the perfect beauty, the only woman flawless enough for him to love, out of marble with his own hands. And then his love brought her to life.

"I want you to feel as though you can satisfy me, Tracy." Malclom walked around behind the frozen girl, and, wrapping his arms around her body, cupped her breasts in his hands. "But I think your insecurities are too big to be overcome. So we're going to have to do some sculpting."

Malcolm's hands kneaded Tracy's breasts, and an eerie green light began to shine from his ring. Warm waves of energy coursed through her body, and her knees buckled. Malcolm propped her up by her breasts. Tracy's eyes grew wide with terror. "Wha-what's happening?" she gasped.

"Art," was Malcolm's reply.

As Malcolm kneaded her breasts, Tracy felt them growing fuller, heavier. She looked down and saw them expanding into fleshy, voluptuous orbs that weighed heavily in his hands.

Malcolm spun her around and evaluated his work. "These," he said, bouncing Tracy's new, generous tits in his hands, "are breasts to be proud of. Now, let's say goodbye to Tracy Towers."

He began running his hands along Tracy's sides, from her rib cage down to her ankles, his ring glowing furiously. Again, waves of energy coursed through her body, a tingling sensation that produced powerful heat between her legs. Slowly, her lanky body began to shrink. Her eyes rolled back into her head as inches magically disappeared.

"You need to feel what it is like to be petite," he said. "Tiny, helpless, smaller than everybody, easily overpowered. And feminine, no longer tall, gangly, and awkward." He let her go, and she fell to the floor. Malcolm let her lay there, gasping for breath, for a while, before he ordered her to stand. She did so tentatively, her body adjusting to its new proportions. She had lost almost a foot of height, barely standing five feet tall.

"How do you feel now?" he asked. "How do you like the new you?" Tracy looked down at herself in disbelief, barely able to fathom that her tall, slender body had now somehow metamorphosized into a tiny, voluptuous package.

"How", she stammered. "How-how…?"

Again, he silenced her with his finger. "We're not done yet, my dear," he said. "There's just one more change, one more thing you need to have in order to be good enough." He turned her around, facing away from him, and then shoved her roughly on the couch. She extended her arms, to stop her fall, and wound up on all fours, her ass pointing at her sculptor. In one quick motion, he tore her panties from her, and cupped his hand around her cunt.

" I know you want to please me, I know you want to be good enough for me," he said, his hot breath almost burning her ear. "I know that you wished you were able to save yourself for me, that I could be your first."

The now-familiar waves of energy coursed through her again, although this time they were concentrated solely between her legs. She felt herself tighten, and a once-familiar band of skin reattaching itself in her vagina.

Malcolm hastily unzipped his pants, freeing his turgid cock from its restraint. "Now you're perfect darling," he said, once her new hymen had completely formed. "Absolutely pristine, and it will be my pleasure, to deflower such a beautiful and worthy slut like yourself. But, only, of course, if you ask."

Tracy was still trembling with fear. Her mind was cloudy, and she was confused as to exactly what was happening with her. But her pussy throbbed, and felt wetter than it had ever been. She did not know if her state of arousal was just another command she was unconsciously obeying, or if her helplessness before this strange and powerful man had activated some primal desires she had never known existed in her. But the reason for her condition did not matter, all that mattered was that it was satisfied.

"Yes," she gasped, panting like a dog in heat.

"Louder," Malcolm said.

"YES!" Tracy screamed, "please, please take me."

Malcolm waited for no further encouragement. He slammed his cock into her dripping pussy, tearing her seconds old hymen in one deep stroke. Tracy groaned, a familiar combination of pleasure and pain, one that she was once certain, like most women her age, that she would never feel again tore into her. The sensation sent her into a powerful, crippling orgasm, that forced her limbs to give out and dropped her, moaning and thrashing, onto the couch cushions, and causing Malcolm to slip out of her.

"Get up!" he spat. "You're not done serving me yet."

Forced to obey his command, Tracy's shaking limbs lifted her off the couch, and repositioned her ass in the air in front of him. He drove back into her, and began fucking her furiously, the stimulation of his thick cock hammering away at her combining with her complete powerlessness to send her into orgasm after orgasm.

Finally, after what seemed like hours of relentless fucking, Malcolm grabbed her by the hair, and spun her around to face him. He pressed his cock against her lips and fed it to her, forcing her to suck the mixture of her juices and virginal blood off his member as he fucked her face. She enthusiastically fellated him, until he pulled out of her mouth and fired his come all over her face. 

She lay there awaiting her next order, slumped against her couch, his semen dripping from her face. 

He looked at her with scorn. "You know what Tracy," he said, "On second thought, you're not good enough for me after all. And I don't think anything is ever going to change that. In fact, the only thing you're ever going to be good for is this, a come-receptacle for any man who wants it.

"So from now on, that's what you're going to be. Any man who wants to have you, to fuck you, to use you, you're going to let him. You're going to let him do what ever depraved or perverted thing he wants to do to you. Do you understand. Because that's your new mission in life, that's the only thing you're worthy of."

Tracy was openly sobbing now, but she knew she could only answer in one way. "Yes."

Malcolm zipped up his pants. "Smile Tracy," he said, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."

Pygmalion



"Lift out of order."

Cedric Mayfare painstakingly deciphered the hieroglyphics scribbled across a piece of torn cardboard hanging from a broom handle wedged so as to prevent access to the redundant lift. He limbo danced beneath it and pushed the button marked '13'.

Nothing happened.

He sighed and made his way to the stairs. It was ironic that the lift was always working in the morning when he was going down, and away collecting its dole in the evening when he had to climb. But, then, what else could be expected from living on the 13th floor of a place called Ropey Mansions, he thought, beginning the slow climb.

As he reached the second floor, the caretaker, loaded with boxes and on his way down, swung round from the next flight of stairs leaving Cedric no time to take evasive action. The catastrophe was inevitable. The caretaker jerked to a halt a moment before impact, but the pile of cardboard boxes, unaware of this sudden braking maneuver, continued on, tumbling downwards out of control, hitting the concrete stairs and splaying multicolored unwinding toilet rolls across the lower landing. 

"I'm glad I bumped into you, Burt," Cedric said in greeting to the distressed, fast balding caretaker, totally ignorant of the chaos he had precipitated about him. 

"My sink is blocked again. I tried the plunger you gave me last time, and it hasn't worked. I wondered if you would come up?"

The poor caretaker, sprawled across the stairs and completely dazed, was understandably more concerned with the carnage below, his mouth kept opening and shutting like a concussed fish.

"Oh, and by the way," continued Cedric. "The lift is not working."

In the circumstances the caretaker was very controlled, he mentally counted to ten in an effort of sheer willpower. Then lost his temper.

"I know that, Cedric," he exploded. "Why do you think I put the sign there? Why else would I be carrying boxes of toilet rolls down twenty three flights of stairs? And why, why do you think the lift is not working? Can you guess why not, Cedric?"

Cedric thought, then shook both head and large thick rimmed spectacles in opposite directions. "No."

"Because some very silly person has overloaded it."

"Oh." 

Cedric was none the wiser.

"With a huge slab of marble, this morning."

Cedric suddenly beamed, lifting himself to his full height of five feet four inches. "Oh good, so they delivered it."

"Apparently on your orders."

"At last I can get down to some work," he ran excitedly up to the next landing. "Thanks for telling me," he said, pausing from moment. 

"And Burt," he added. "Don't forget the sink."

****

Cedric had already unfastened his donkey jacket as he threw open his front door. He stepped in, closing it behind him by means of a sharp tap with his heel, while simultaneously plucking the morning paper from the mat and shrugging his jacket from off his shoulders, throwing it at what he must have imagined to be an invisible coat stand. It hung suspended for a second before slumping to the ground atop his other overwear.

A couple of hours later the caretaker also managed to safely negotiate both himself and his plumbing tools up the stair well to the 13th floor.

"Thank goodness you've arrived," Cedric said in greeting, biting a toasted piece of buttered charcoal into . "Come on in. Can I get you a cup of tea? I think there's one in the pot."

Burt eyed the beverage in Cedric's hand, a skin of congealed milk barely, concealed the chilled dishwater beneath. "No," Burt declined decidedly. "I don't think I will, thanks all the same."

He stepped into the living room, if that it could be called, workshop would be a better description. Furniture and carpet were alike littered with tools, rags, books and a multitude of rubbish of all types. In one corner was a large heap of junk, while the sideboard had so much on it that it was like a mountain, needing just the slightest trigger to initiate an avalanche. But the piece de resistance was in the center of the room. There stood a huge chunk of marble, the size of a double wardrobe, an object, Burt noted, seeing the little piles of clothes about the apartment, of which Cedric seemed in great need.

"I'll leave you to get on, then," said Cedric. "I'm just grabbing a quick bite to eat before starting. I've got a lot to do tonight."

"I thought he said you were a road sweeper," Burt said, side stepping a pile of marble dust and instead landing on a plastic ballpoint. There was a crunch, but he didn't draw attention to it, hoping that Cedric hadn't noticed.

"I am," Cedric said. "And don't worry about picking up the pieces. I'll do it later."

"Sorry. But what all this for, then?" he asked, indicating the marble.

"Just a hobby. Something to do in the evenings."

It was no wonder that the sink was blocked. Having unscrewed the trap, he found it to be full of marble sediment, tea dregs and a pair of false teeth. How they got down there, Burt didn't hazard to guess. He merely cleared them out with all the sludge and left them displayed on the drainer. 

By the time he'd reassembled the plumbing Cedric was busily running a tape measure over the marble lump, puzzling over some incongruity in its dimensions. Burt leaned lazily against the doorjamb and watched him amusedly.

"What's it to be?" he asked at last.

"An elephant," Cedric answered, clambering on a chair to reach its upper face. "For a zoo, somewhere or other, I never can remember the details."

"Do you make many, er, well..."

"Sculptures? No, not really." He looked approvingly at the tape measure. The figures seemed to match up at last. "Not this size, anyway. I can't be bothered anymore. Not since Ariadne."

"Ariadne? What's that?"

Cedric laughed. "You mean who's that. She's a woman."

"Oh," remarked Burt, confused for a moment. "But made of marble?"

"Yes, of course. I only work in marble. There's a dog on the sideboard somewhere if you want to see something that's finished."

Burt was reluctant to disturb the overloaded assortment on the sideboard merely to observe a piece of amateur sculpture. But without needlessly offending Cedric, there didn't seem to be any way he could refuse.

He delicately fished about amongst the variously sized chisels, dusty cloths, hammers and all the other paraphernalia, until he found the artifice and prized it out.

The dog was about eighteen inches long and was a German Shepherd. Burt was impressed. It was far better than he had anticipated. 

"It's excellent," he said, examining how the fur had been carefully carved, and even the dog's teeth faithfully recorded. "You've got every detail there!"

"It's nothing," Cedric corrected, brushing back his greasy hair.

"But it's splendid!"

"If you saw Ariadne, you'd realize how poor it was in comparison."

"I don't believe you. Nothing could be that much better."

Cedric looked up at him, slightly angrily, yet undecided.

Then his mind was suddenly made, and he crossed to the bedroom door. "Come on, if you don't think I know what I'm talking about, I'll show you my Ariadne." He opened the door slightly before pausing. 

"I'm not sure whether I ought to be doing this, she's never been seen by anybody before, except me."

Burt waited patiently until Cedric motioned him in. As opposed to the living room and the kitchen it was comparatively tidy. No junk: clean floors; dusted furniture. The statue of Ariadne was in the middle of the far wall, dominating the room through both its size and its nature. The statue stood upon a rug of Kandinsky. Ariadne was a Greek woman draped in a voluminous transparent gown that flowed from her shoulders to the ground in a viscous liquid stone. She was beautiful, she was magic, she was gorgeous. Cedric's chisel had hewn a grace and dignity Burt had but once seen before.

"Did you have anyone in mind when you carved this?" he asked quietly.

"No. She is my dream, my dream of perfection. There is no one that could ever be so beautiful." As Burt continued to look he concluded that perhaps Cedric was right.

For the statue shone. There was a kind of iridescence about it. Like a Madonna. A powerful aura ebbed out that seeped into Burt, turning his legs into unset jelly and preventing him from turning away. It was a masterpiece of art and devotion. Every line of her fingerprints had been lovingly etched, every hair of her head individually sculptured. 

The curves of her face were accurate and smooth: they flowed, one into the next. Her body was flawless and barely concealed by the gown that pretended to cover her. Her breasts stood high upon her chest and her nipples were clearly discernible. Burt almost imagined that she breathed, that he could see the rise and fall of her chest, such was the effect of its realism.

"You made this?" he croaked, still unable to tear his eyes away.

"No," corrected Cedric. "I created this. This is Ariadne. She is my advisor, my oracle, my lover."

"What?" Burt exclaimed, incredulously.

"She is perfection. She is forever, and I love her."

He looked up devotedly into the smiling eyes, yet behind the intense adoration Burt perceived a strange sadness.

"But she's a statue," he said. "Only a statue."

"Of course," Cedric agreed, and the sadness seemed suddenly more pronounced. "She never complains that I'm too small, too skinny, that I've got glasses, that I'm not clever, not tidy, that I'm too old."

Burt nodded. He understood. "When did you make her?"

"A couple of years back."

"Before you came here?"

Cedric agreed. "I'd never even heard of Ropey Mansions then. I lived nearer my mother on the other side of London."

Burt was about to ask something, but paused, and thought better of it. "I think I'd better be going," he said instead.

As he was about to close the front door, he remembered his wrench. He'd left it under the sink. He was about to fetch it when suddenly from the far room he heard a suffocated moan. 

"Ariadne," he made out. "How do I make you talk? Please help me someone. Say something." Burt decided that the wrench could wait, and he quietly left.

****

There was something not quite right when Cedric returned home from work the next day. He knew it from the moment he opened the front door: things had been moved. He rushed to the living room and stared dumbfounded. He'd had burglars: that was obvious. The heap in the corner was no longer there; the chaos of the sideboard now consisted of three metallic toolboxes. Someone had been rooting through his things and in doing so had tidied them up. The sofa and the chairs were untouched, but... 

Suddenly, a horrific thought struck him and he rushed to the bedroom, throwing open the door.

It was empty.

She was gone. Ariadne was missing. In her place was a vast emptiness that filled the room just as her presence had done. Cedric felt ill, it seemed as though his heart were now filled with mercury instead of blood, and it had to fight just to keep pumping the heavy poison round his body. In his stomach on the other hand, a vast void was fast appearing that was now expanding to fill the whole of his lower abdomen. 

There was only one thing to be done.

He needed a cup of tea.

Suddenly there was a noise, a sound of cutlery in the kitchen. Were the burglars still here? Were they clearing up in the kitchen too? 

Cedric was no hero, and certainly wasn't going to charge about like some medieval knight catching the villains in the act. He grimaced: he really did need to sort out his muddled metaphors. 

He peered through the crack in the bedroom door. No one was in the living room. He crept out and slunk to the kitchen where he came face to face with a strange young woman looking just as terrified as he. 

Now this young woman wasn't just strange in the sense that she was unfamiliar. There was one other fact that seemed to leap out immediately at Cedric without him trying exceedingly hard. This was that she was almost naked. She wore what looked like a loose nightdress, except that it was transparent, enabling Cedric to discern very clearly that she wasn't wearing underwear. Cedric had never met a burglar before, but he was sure that this was highly inappropriate attire for a burglar, and thus she qualified to be described as 'strange'.

He managed to restrain his urge to run, mainly because the front door was behind her and fleeing thus required reserves of courage. These, Cedric had only in short supply. So, instead, he tried to look fierce, standing on tiptoe to give himself an extra couple of inches.

"Who are you?" the strange woman asked nervously, seemingly unaware that her body was open displayed and creating an observable event within Cedric's trousers.

"I was about to ask you that," Cedric responded tentatively, unable to avoid staring at her nicely trimmed pussy. "Who are you?"

"Is this heaven?" she asked, not answering his question.

"Heaven?" He thought she must have noticed him gaping and was about to apologize for the ardency of his admiration. However, it seemed this was not necessary.

"I looked through there," she explained, pointing to the window, and her nipples poked against the transparent cloth most exquisitely. "And it was such a long way down that I thought this must be heaven. I must say this isn't what I expected."

Cedric was utterly confused by this unexpected development in the conversation, until it dawned on him that she was trying to trick him, trying to bluff her way out of his apartment. 

"Where's my statue?" he asked, redirecting the conversation to a subject of more immediate concern. "Where's Ariadne?"

"I'm Ariadne," she said, surprised. "But I'm no statue."

"Are you mad?"

"Oh no. Don't say I've come to the wrong place. I'm not mad, I'm dead."

"You are mad!" He was convinced.

"I'm not," she protested. "Look it up. You must keep records of this sort of thing. I can give you all my particulars. I died in Delphi, Greece, of Cholera, in 302BC. And my name's Ariadne."

A sudden realization bolted through Cedric's brain at the speed of cold porridge as he stared into the warm living face, and his heart both rejoiced and sank still further at one and the same time. For he recognized the features as being the very ones he had molded with his own chisel.

"I think I need a drink," he moaned. "This is impossible."

He poured out two stiff lucozades and handed one to the girl. "You'd better drink this," he said. "I've something to tell you."

"This isn't heaven, is it?" she asked nervously taking the glass. "I had a funny feeling it wasn't. And they don't drink in heaven, do they? Is it hell?"

"No, it's London."

"London," she was puzzled. "Where's London? I never knew that dead people went to London."

"They come here all the time," Cedric replied. "London is in England."

"But where's that?"

He scowled, for he was unused to such cross-examination. "Many miles from Greece."

"But it can't be," she said logically. "Because I'm dead."

"You're not dead," he exploded, suddenly losing his temper. "You're a statue. Made of marble. Or you were. As to what you are now, heaven knows."

She sipped at her lucozade, and said quietly, "Then it's a shame this isn't heaven, or we'd know too."

Cedric sank into the tin of assorted nuts and bolts that he kept on the nearest chair. "Oh, why does this have to happen to me?" he asked dejectedly. "And on the night mother's coming too. Everyone else seem to lead such simple lives."

Before a suitable answer to this profundity could be discovered, there was a knock at the door. Cedric looked up, startled.

"Quick, hide in there!" he said, pushing the astounded newcomer into the bedroom. "You can't be found here."

"Why not?" she queried, innocently.

"Because I don't know who it is, that's why," he explained tersely.

The door rattled again, and Cedric hurried over to discover Burt on the other side. "I left my wrench here yesterday," he said.

"I don't think you could have," replied Cedric shortly, just as the bedroom door behind him squeaked open.

"Under the sink," Burt added, curiously trying to look over Cedric's shoulder into the apartment. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you had company."

"I haven't," Cedric lied, closing the door to a slit so that Burt wouldn't see past. "It's probably the elephant," he continued inventively. "I'm using it as a model for that sculpture I was telling you about."

"You have an elephant in there?" Burt was incredulous. "How did you get that up the stairs? You didn't get it in the lift?"

"It's only a baby. I got it from the zoo." The lies grew in inverse proportion to the size of the elephant. "Hang on a moment, and I'll get the wrench," and he banged the door shut, leaving the puzzled Burt out in the hallway.

Cedric rushed to the kitchen, opened the cupboard door, and saw the offending wrench lying on the shelf. He picked it up and rushed back to the front door.

Ariadne was poking her head out of the bedroom. "Is everything all right?" she asked.

"No, it's not. Get back!" Cedric hissed. I'll only be a minute." He waited until she'd again reluctantly closed her door before opening up on Burt.

"One wench, I mean, wrench," he stammered, thrusting it into the astonished man's hand.

"Is everything all right?" asked the concerned Burt.

"No, it's not. I mean, yes, it is," snapped Cedric. "And if anyone else asks me that I shall scream. Goodbye." And he shut the door.

"Who was that?" Ariadne asked, coming back into the living room, and clearing a space to sit.

"The caretaker," replied Cedric. "And that settles it."

"Settles what?"

"You can't stay here. Not that there was any question of it, anyway."

"But I've got to live somewhere," she wailed.

"Yes, I know. But not here."

"Well, where then?"

"I don't know. I'm not the council. I haven't anywhere for you to live."

She suddenly brightened. "Do you want to fuck me? I am very good. Shall I undress?"

"No!" Cedric screamed, horrified.

Her face screwed up. "No one ever says no," she moaned. "You don't like me. Why did you chisel me like this if you find it so repulsive." 

Cedric panicked. Surely she wasn't going to cry. She was.

"Please don't do that," he pleaded. "You are extremely sexy. And it's not that I mind you crying, but it makes the carpet damp and we might get mildew and you just can't stay here."

"But why not? I like it here," she cried, tears running down her face.

"Because it's not proper," Cedric explained, turning away and wringing his scraggy hands. "It's not right. And people will talk."

"But who'll know? No one knows I am here."

"My mother, my mother will know. Oh please don't cry," he implored. Somehow in his dreams he had never imagined his perfect Ariadne crying. She had always been most self-assured and helpful. "She's coming for the evening."

"But I could hide while she's here."

He paused. There was no reason why it shouldn't work, and if it would stop her from flooding the carpet...

"As long as you leave by tomorrow night," he conceded.

"But where am I to go?"

"I don't know," he said irritably. "Who do you think I am? I didn't ask you to come to life."

"And I didn't ask to be brought back to life, either," she protested angrily. "Or for you to come along and make a statue of me. That was your choice. Who do you think you are, anyway? Going round making statues of people without asking them first?"

"But you weren't around to ask. You didn't exist. I made you, hacked you out of a lump of stone. If it wasn't for me, you could have been made into a fireplace or the entrance to some hotel lobby."

"Exactly," she exclaimed. "If I had been one of those things then I wouldn't be worrying about somewhere to live. But no, you have to interfere and make me into a statue. It seems to me that you have to take responsibility for your actions. You have responsibility for my welfare."




Pygmalion



He removed a saucepan of mash from under the cushion on the sofa and sat down. How much more was hiding under there? This was becoming unbearable. Ariadne took the saucepan from him and took it into the kitchen.

"If your mother's coming later, since you don't want to fuck, I'd better finish tidying up," she said on coming back."

"Why?"

"You don't want her to see the place like this, do you?"

He didn't seem to care. So many things were turning topsy-turvy that he would have appreciated something familiar. And his mother was used to seeing the place as a mess, no, she wasn't used to it, but she did expect it.

"You'll have to get a job so I'll take you to the Job Center tomorrow," he muttered, as she began to take the room 

"Fine," she said. "I've never had a problem getting a job."

He was suddenly suspicious. "What sort of work did you do?"

"I had a very good job," she boasted. "I was a temple dancer."

He spluttered. "What?"

"In the temple of Aphrodite, It was the very best. I would greet the men and..."

"Yes, I know something of the job description." he cut in, then paused. "You'll have to re train."

"Why? Don't you have dancers in London?" she asked innocently.

"Any number. But from what I can work out you have to be French."

"French?"

"Never mind. It's not for you. And you can't go to the Job Center dressed like that," he pondered out loud, observing the transparent gown that flowed from her shoulders to the floor. 

She stared down at herself, self-consciously. "What's the matter with the way I dress? Everyone used to say that they liked me dressed like this. I had many admirers."

"I'm sure you did. Don't get me wrong," he consoled. "It's very nice, you look very, stunning. But women don't dress like that in public any more, and people would stare. Yes, they would most definitely stare." 

He paused hopefully. "I don't suppose you've got anything else?"

She solemnly shook her head and he sighed. "Oh dear, where am I going to get you some clothes from?"

"You could always hew them in stone and wait for them to be turned to cloth," she said mischievously.

But Cedric was dejected, "Very funny," he said.

*****

Cedric's mother arrived punctually at six thirty. There was one thing that Cedric could always count on about his mother, and that was her punctuality. She had been born on time, had been married on time, it not occurring to her to invoke the bride's right to be late, and she would die on time, she always said.

Cedric had never been able to unravel the many implications of this saying, mainly, his mother had always told him, due to the existence of Double British Summer time during the early years of her own life. An explanation, which, Cedric found on consulting a pocket encyclopaedia during his teenage years, was complete truth.

Therefore, at six fifteen precisely, Ariadne had been dispatched to the stair well with instructions to stay there until his mother left. Cedric had had enough of a scare when Burt called: he was chancing nothing with his mother about.

However, they say that even the best-laid plans can go astray and this was certainly not of that category. Cedric had left the redundant lift out of his calculations. Mrs. Mayfare came slowly up the stairs, tired and dragging her oversize handbag with her. Ariadne, sitting shivering on the cold stairs in early winter and a transparent gown instantly aroused Mrs. Mayfare's overactive curiosity.

"What are you doing here?" demanded the astonished Mrs. Mayfare. "You'll catch your death of cold."

Everything may still have been all right if Ariadne had realized that this imperious lady was indeed the dreaded mother Cedric was expecting. But she didn't. After all, she would be coming up in the lift, wouldn't she?

"I'm just waiting," Ariadne said. "And I haven't anything else to wear."

"But you're almost naked, girl! Why don't you go home?" asked Mrs. Mayfare dogmatically. "You can't stay here. Chucked out by a vicious boyfriend or husband, I suppose. I've read of these cases in 'Woman's Own' many times. Don't worry, I'll sort him out for you. Where do you live?"

Ariadne answered truthfully, still unaware as to whom she was talking. "Number seventy four."

Mrs. Mayfare dropped her handbag with a violent clatter, her face bleached to a whitish shade of purist snow, and, she gasped, "Oh, but you can't."

"But I do," Ariadne assured her. "I checked the number most carefully."

"But..." Mrs. Mayfare's lips continues mouthing the next few words until they suddenly became aware that the rest of her had ceased talking. Her eyes filled with suspicion as to the unexpected savory character of her son. 

"Come with me, my girl," she commanded. "I'll soon have this sorted out."

Ariadne was ceremoniously frog-marched back to Cedric's apartment where the dominant and matronly person beside her aggressively knocked.

A timid figure answered, cowering guiltily behind the protection of the door. When he saw his mother and Ariadne at her side, and that neither expression gave reason for encouragement, he drooped visibly, like a spindly flower dropped into a roaring flame.

"Hello mother," he said weakly, looking to Ariadne for some sign of explanation or comfort. There was none forthcoming.

"Who is this woman?" Mrs. Mayfare asked angrily, noting that Cedric was wearing odd socks and that his hair was uncombed.

"I'm Ariadne," Ariadne said, but Mrs. Mayfare was interrogating her son, which seemed to demand her total concentration.

"Yes, it's Ariadne," he floundered.

"I've gathered that it's Ariadne," rasped Mrs. Mayfare. "But who on God's earth is Ariadne?"

"I am," Ariadne said.

"She's a friend," Cedric said.

"Mrs. Mayfare," Ariadne contradicted him. "I'm one of Cedric's statues."

Cedric wished she would be quiet and allow him to drown at his own hand, but the remark was ignored by his rampaging mother. "And where is this friend presently living?"

"Er, well..."

"Is she living here? She says she lives here."

"Well, sort of."

Mrs. Mayfare's eyes narrowed in a look of vitriolic scorn as she relentlessly pursued her quarry. "No one sort of lives somewhere. Either she does or she doesn't live here."

Cedric looked at Ariadne for support, and she smiled. That helped. "Then I suppose that she does," he was most surprised to hear himself say. Mrs. Mayfare stuck out her chest like a preening cockerel. 

"I'm surprised at you, Cedric. Though I know I shouldn't be. Mr. Walker, the butcher, always said that no good would come of getting your own apartment."

"But that was fifteen years ago," Cedric pleaded.

"Don't argue with me and don't change the subject," she told him. "I am your mother. And I'm not standing by and seeing any son of mine sucked in by some scarlet woman."

"But I haven't been," Cedric moaned.

"I haven't sucked him at all," Ariadne agreed.

"Don't lie," his mother chided him. "You were never very good at it."

"But it's true."

"I wouldn't have believed that any son of mine could have treated me so. To lie in such a brazen way to my face." She glanced sneeringly at the accused standing in the dock at her side. "Her type of corruption spreads like gangrene," she continued. "It's insidious, and there's only one way of getting rid of it, cutting it out. You won't catch me crossing this threshold while she's here. Either she goes now, or I go straight home."

"But that's not fair, mother. She's got nowhere to go. She's a statue I made."

Mrs. Mayfare winced and looked at him knowingly. "As I said, like gangrene. She's driving you mad, can't you see?"

"As I said," repeated Cedric. "Where is she to go?"

"Back to where she came from," his mother snapped. "Get rid of her now, or I leave." Her face was fuming with threat and anger.

"But mother, I can't."

She stuck out her chest again, defiantly. "Is that your last word, Cedric?"

Cedric squirmed under the tirade, looked at Ariadne, and then stuck out his own chest, equally defiantly. "Yes."

"You will regret this, Cedric Mayfare," his mother warned him furiously. "You mark my words, you'll regret it." And true to her previous words, she left.

Ariadne nonchalantly stepped back in and Cedric was thankful to be able to shut the door.

"You were magnificent," Ariadne eulogized.

"I feel sick," her hero replied.

"Can we fuck now?" Ariadne asked, looked devotedly down at his face.

"What is it with you?" he implored. "Do you only have one thing on your mind?"

"Two thousand years of waiting is a long time," she agreed.

"I never sleep with a girl on our first date," he retorted somewhat desperately.

"Then where are you going to sleep?" she asked sweetly. "You only have the one bed."

****

It was agreed that the next day they should both go to the Job Center and then to the council to register Ariadne as a homeless person. But before they could do either it was necessary for Cedric to go shopping. He needed some ointment to sooth his aching joints: the result of a sleepless massage tossing on the sofa. 

He also needed to shop for some clothes for Ariadne to wear. This task, however, proved to be much more complicated than Cedric had imagined. For he was confronted with a bewildering assortment of garments and lingerie in colors and sizes that left him reeling in confusion. Finally, having mumbled his way through most of the fashion shops in the High Street, he managed to invent an imaginary sister who had been ill for some time, but who was now ready to relaunch herself upon the world. This greatly impressed an understanding, cooperative, yet perhaps gullible sales assistant. Thus, after an embarrassing initiation into a comparison of bust, waist and hip sizes, Cedric was able to return with Ariadne's new wardrobe.

On his return, Cedric found that another transformation had taken place. That of his apartment. As he stepped through the door he decided that he had come to the wrong floor. He surreptitiously closed the door again, only to find on going back out onto the landing that he was indeed on the thirteenth floor. For his apartment was spotless: the kitchen sparkled; the furniture gleamed; the carpets were shampooed.

Cedric gazed around in stunned amazement. "You've been cleaning," he said at last to his industrious houseguest.

Ariadne nodded expectantly. "It gave me something to do while I was waiting. Do you mind?"

He shook his head. "No, of course not. You've done really well. It's just that the last time I saw the apartment this tidy was when it was vacant just before I moved in."

She said. "And this is the way it stays. Or else."

"Or else, what?"

She eyed him mischievously. "Or else I'll pull down your pants and suck your cock until it spurts."

She grinned as the panic set in. "I won't touch a thing," he promised. "Just keep away."

"Well at least let me show you whether the clothes you bought are any good," she said, picking up the bags, that impish flash of light reappearing in her eye. "Shall I change here? I don't have so very much to take off." Her hands moved to the hem of her robe.

"The bedroom," he commanded pointing at the door, and she slipped laughing through the door. She remained in there, out of sight, for several minutes while Cedric attacked the lucozade.

"Are you ready?" she called finally.

"Ready for what?" he replied distrustfully.

"For me," she giggled opening the bedroom door.

"Oh," he said in stunned monosyllablism. For as she stood in the doorway, she was everything he had ever dreamed, and then more. She was wearing a fitted cobald blue mini dress that clung to her sylphlike figure. It had a buttoned front with a plunging neckline. Its brevity highlighted the long lines of her legs.

"Don't you think it's a little brief for this time of year," Cedric observed dubiously.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't buy it. You'd better complain to him that did. However, I was a little more concerned about these." She began unbuttoning the buttons of her dress.

"What are you doing?" Cedric stammered. "This wasn't part of the agreement."

She pulled the dress open revealing the briefest of lingerie sets. The bra was a cobald blue half-cup that framed rather than covered her nipples. Her briefs consisted of a thong with a translucent panel through which could be seen a shadow of dark triangle of hair.

"I do wonder, at you, Cedric Mayfare. Buying me such things," she said with a wicked glint. "You are very naughty."

"The sales assistant said they are very popular," he explained hastily. "With men who want to buy underclothes for their sister."

"I'm sure they are," Ariadne murmured softly. "However, I'm not your sister. So what do you think?"

"I think you need to... to put something else on."

"I'm beginning to wonder whether you do think I'm attractive at all."

"You are very attractive. Too attractive."

"How can anyone be too attractive?"

"When they stir in someone else feelings they may not be able to control."

She reached over, her twins inches from him. He could reach and touch them if he choose; he could see that her nipples were distended and hard. "Kiss me," she demanded.

"I may not be able to stop."

"I'll take that chance." He planted a firm passionate kiss on her cheek. She had him truly flustered. Then he finished his lucozade.

*****

Cedric and Ariadne were shown into a small room and sat opposite a smart lady who spoke in a posh accent at about twice the speed that Cedric could understand. Every now and again she would stop and ask a question, at which one of them would try to waffle an answer.

The fact that Ariadne was Greek seemed to be a stumbling block for some reason, though not an insurmountable one because of the European Union, in whatever way that was relevant. Eventually she produced a form numbered, "Something, something stroke something" and the questioning began in earnest.

"Name?" she asked tersely.

"Ariadne." Ariadne said.

The woman neatly printed the name in the box.

"Surname?"

"Surname?" queried Ariadne. "What's that?"

"Your last name," Cedric helped out.

"But that is my last name."

The woman looked up tiredly, scowled, and scratched a line through what she had written, transferring the word to the next box.

"First name?" she asked, returning to the beginning.

"But that's my first name too. It's my only name."

The woman stared through what had become slits of eyes, then cut a dash through the first box.

"Address?"

"Well, I'm living with Cedric at the moment. That's 74 Ropey Mansions, but I've only been there since yesterday, and I'll probably be leaving in a day or two, we're going to the council when we've finished with you. Does that count?"

The slits of eyes glazed over. "No, it hardly qualifies as a permanent address. Where were you before that?"

"Oh, here and there," Cedric responded for her, being deliberately vague.

"And before that I was in Greece," Ariadne added.

"I see. No fixed abode," the woman muttered under her breath. "Date of birth?"

Ariadne squirmed. "Seventeenth of the first," she said.

"And the year?"

"Sixty nine."

The pen paused at the box, and the woman looked up. " Sixty nine?" she asked disbelievingly, mentally calculating an improbable age. "If this is a prank," she warned.

"326 BC", Ariadne finished.

The lady official was not amused. "I have other people to see, and since you are just wasting my time...."

"No I'm not wasting your time. It's the truth, tell her Cedric."

Cedric didn't get the chance to tell her anything, not that he wanted to say anything apart from "goodbye". For they were treated to a lecture on the law as it relates to the giving of false information, and that they could be prosecuted with possible imprisonment.

At some point during this lecture Cedric panicked. He grabbed hold of Ariadne and pulled her bodily through the door. The chair she had been sitting on got caught in this abrupt maneuver, it being sent hurtling across the room so as to hit a sedentary umbrella stand sideways on. This tottered for a moment in distinct indecision before tumbling forwards, casting a number of rejects from the lost property department in a noisy sprawl. In the meantime Cedric and Ariadne had made a very speedy getaway.

They made their way to a quaint little cafe not far from Ropey Mansions, and there they had lunch. Run down would have been a complimentary way of describing it. The chipped melamine tables were scrawled with the nicknames of most of their previous occupants along with their sexual orientations or lack thereof. Condiments consisted of the manufacturer's containers. But it was clean, cozy, warm and run by somebody that didn't know Cedric. So it gave them a chance to regain their composure and replan their strategy. Ariadne was still half way through her two bangers, chip and peas by the time Cedric had both finished his and completed an in depth study on the ingredients of the salt packet. He pushed away his plate and leaned conspiratorially across the table, neatly placing his arm in a dollop of spilt ketchup.

"There's no point in going to the council," he hissed. "They're only going to ask the same questions. They're not going to give you a apartment without knowing who you are."

"We could lie," she suggested.

"They would check," he replied dubiously.

"How?"

"I don't know. But it wouldn't work. I can't make up the lies as fast as they make up the questions."

"But I've got to have somewhere to live. If I were still a statue they'd put me in a town square, somewhere, with my own pedestal." She finally caught up with a pea that she'd been chasing around her plate. 

"But I can't do that now. I'm too scared of heights and what's more, I hate pigeons. As you keep saying, I can't stay with you, forever."

He looked down sulkily. "Maybe not forever. But I suppose you're going to have to stay. For a while longer anyway."

"What about your mother?"

"Mother will be back, if only to tell me how much I need her. She didn't like it when I got my own apartment, but she got over it in the end."

Ariadne sighed. "But at least let's give the council a try."

He paused, seriously contemplating the remains of the tomato ketchup on the table. "No, Ariadne. Let's not," he said finally. "I've sort of had you around for almost two years since I shaped you, and, well, I've got used to it. I know it's not the same now that you're real, and you've got your own life to lead, and you're not going to hang around too long with a nerd like me, but, please, couldn't you stay awhile?"

She stared at him for a long time, but it was a kind stare, and then she smiled.

*****

The next day Cedric was back on his beat, continuing his personal vendetta against grime in the streets of London, sweeping with long lazy strokes of his big broom. As usual, there were the familiar friendly faces on their way past, and the trades people who always gave him a nod as they busied on their way. It had been a frosty night and the last of the late autumnal foliage had fallen into his care. Slowly he packed it into plastic sacks and stacked them at the kerb awaiting collection.

"Hello," a familiar voice said.

He swung round, a little too quickly, surprised by the utterance, losing his balance in the process and falling into a messy heap amongst half a dozen sacks of dead leaves. Ariadne, lavishing apologies everywhere, pulled him up and helped shake him clean.


"I told you not to call me at work," Cedric said.

"I haven't," she protested. "I just happened down the same street you're in."

"It amounts to the same thing," he mumbled grumpily, noticing that two of his environmentally colored sacks had split open spilling their crumbling contents on to the road.

"Well, why shouldn't I come?" Ariadne asked. "You talk to other people. I've seen you. So why can't I walk down this road?"




Pygmalion



"It's embarrassing," he quietly hissed.

She reddened. "You're ashamed of me. That's what it is, isn't it?"

He was adamant. "No, it's not. If I worked in an office or a factory you wouldn't be able to just come along and see me whenever you wanted. It wouldn't be allowed."

"But you don't work in one of those places," she countered angrily.

"No," he agreed. "But I might have done."

Ariadne momentarily perplexed by Cedric's confused logic paused just a second. "Well, then," she said. "I suppose I'd better be going then."

"Why?" he asked. "Do you have to?"

She smiled. "It was you trying to get rid of me, remember?"

"It wasn't."

"You were."

"I said if I worked in an office or a factory I wouldn't mind you coming."

She sensed the source of his problem. "Cedric you must never be embarrassed because of what you do. Sweeping roads may not hold much charisma, but it's honest and it's decent. Other jobs might seem more glamorous, but if they weren't honest or decent I would despise you if you were doing one of them."

He beamed. "Why did you come?"

"I wanted to tell you something."

"Yes?"

"I was at home, and I got to thinking, and I think I love you."

"You think so?"

"Yes."

He stopped sweeping, and pulled his yellow sou' wester a little lower over his head. "I think I love you too," he said.

She smiled.

"Ariadne," he added. "If you still want to, you know, fuck. I think I would like to try."

"You really want to?" she asked, a tear appearing in her eye. 

"I've always wanted to. How could I not want to when you're so, so attractive. But to do it when you were so desperate and were only doing it to keep a roof over your head, that would have been taking advantage. I couldn't do that. I would have been making you into a dancer again."

"You are very sweet," she sighed. "And if you don't take me somewhere private very quickly and fuck me, I'm going embarrass you by raping you in the street."

They ran laughing back to Ropey Mansions. Cedric had left his broom in the care of the environmentally colored bags of leaves by the side of the road. 

He threw open the front door of his apartment and took her into his arms squeezing her tightly. "I never thought I could love you so much," he said.

She pushed him back, first into the bedroom, then on to the bed. "I want to undress you," she said. "Then I would very much like you to undress me."

As he lay on the bed she pulled his sweater over his head, kissing him full on the lips as she held his arms immobile within the arms of the sweater. Her tongue reached out inside his mouth, insistently, demanding. She pulled his arms out of the sweater and then began unbuttoning his shirt.

"How many men have you had?" he asked, a little hesitantly.

"More than I can count," she replied openly. She added anxiously, stopping mid button. "Does that bother you?"

"Only that you will consider me very inferior in comparison."

She placed her hand gently over his lips. "No comparison," she said. "I fucked the others because I was paid to. I'm fucking you because I love you. If you're a lousy fucker, then I'll show you how to do better. I can teach someone how to fuck, but I can't teach them to love me."

She had continuing unbuttoning his shirt, kissing him gently across his chest. She then undid his pants, helping the erection it contained to escape. "It feels very nice," she said, wrapping her fingers round its girth.

"It's not very large," he apologized.

"No," she agreed. "But plenty large enough to give a girl a good time. You don't want to believe all you hear. A very large cock can make a girl very uncomfortable." And it grew an extra inch on hearing that.

She pulled his things down his legs. "Now," she said. "Would you like to unwrap your present?"

He shyly unfastened the buttons of her dress. "Tell me how you feel," she murmured.

"I feel an incredible lust," he whispered. "And that's you, doing that to me. My chest feels tight: it's hard to breathe and my skin feels prickly and very sensitive." She grinned in satisfaction and began to stroke his chest with the back of one hand and his cock with the back of the other. He gasped.

"Would you like some help?" she asked, noticing that he seemed momentarily at a loss as to how to unfasten the bra. She placed his hand on the clasp at her back. "Push the two sides gently together," she directed. "Being very careful that you don't pinch. Most girls will complain if you pinch."

The bra came loose and he let the cups fall from off her breasts. He stared at them in wonderment. "Kiss them," she said. "Kiss my nipples and make them go as hard as your cock. Yes, that's right, let your tongue, yes please, do that again, flick with your tongue as you suck."

While he sucked at one of her tits, he gently rolled the nipple of the other, so lightly, between his fingers. Her breathing quickened as he continued with his ministrations. Then he swapped, using his mouth on her second breast while caressing the first.


He looked up for a moment, staring into the face. Her eyes were glazed, her breathing rapid, the palms of her hands were pressed firm against the bed. She stared vacantly back at him.

"Please don't pull down my knickers," she said. But her voice was different. She was not somehow talking to him, but almost, to someone else.

He was confused. "Why not?" he asked.

"Please don't. I don't want you to pull down my knickers."

"Then how are we supposed to do it?" he protested, more with frustration than anger.

"Do what you must, but you can't, you mustn't you, please don't pull them down."

There was something about the way she was speaking. She was frightened, yet she wasn't frightened. She was stopping him verbally, but becoming extremely excited physically. A light began to flicker. He thought he understood. 

"How dare you lead me on," he said coldly. "And then tell me what I can and can't do. Your knickers are coming off..."

"No," she gasped.

"And then I will do with you precisely as I desire." She pushed down into the bed covers with the palms of her hands as though fighting imaginary restraints. Her eyes were shut and Cedric sensed she was very close to coming. He looked at her knickers, her sex barely hidden. They were so delicate. "I will not pull down your knickers,"

"Thank you," she murmured softly.

"Instead I will tear them from you." She began to gasp as he took hold of the fragile material, her breathing was uncontrolled, her mouth barely open, she clutched the covers in her hands. Cedric was jubilant. He was making her come, and he hadn't even entered her yet. He kept his hold on the side of the panties, allowing the threat to take full effect. Then with a single violent pull he tore them from her. First, the thin band at her side snapped, followed immediately by a shriek of splintering yarn as the panel covering her pubis was rent apart. He then took hold of the other panty leg and pulled that with an equally brutal force. This also snapped and he held her ruined knickers in his hand.

Her pussy was naked and quivering and accessible. Besides she wore a little tattoo, showing a pair of cherries. He pushed her legs apart opening her to his scrutiny. As he revealed her glistening jewel there was no doubting her arousal. It was obvious that she was both wet and willing.

He directed his own swollen member towards her, seeming to lose his way during the journey. She reached down and taking hold of his cock guided it into her pussy. He felt it engage and allowed it to gently sink inside.

"Oh yes," she gasped beginning to spasm again. "Please, that's good." She wrapped her legs about him and clasped him tight as she came a second time even before he had managed to fully penetrate her.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes." she kept repeating as her orgasm began to subside. She held him tight and then kissed him repeatedly on the face.

He carefully controlled his movements, in and out, watching her face for reaction. Noticing how she would wet her ruby lips with her tongue.

Suddenly she squeezed him tight with her cunt and began to constrict; he felt that she was going to crush him. For a moment he stopped moving, simply sensing the sensations created by her constricting muscles. She was a pythoness, crushing its prey. Suddenly, he knew he was losing control, he was beginning to come, beginning to spurt, and he rocked back and forth inside her as he savored the moment of ecstasy. The sensation of his semen spurting inside her sent her also over the edge for a final time. She dug her fingers into his shoulders and pulled him across her sensitized breasts, relishing the sensation as the course hair of his chest rubbed her nubs, setting her nipples on fire. She squeezed out the last drop of his juice with the muscles of her cunt, then sank back satiated.

She regarded him dreamily as he collapsed upon her. "You were great, whatever were you frightened of. I've waited for that for a long time. You even reacted to my little fantasy. I hoped you would. It didn't disturb you did it?"

He shook his head. At that moment life was perfect and nothing could disturb him.

*****

The following week flew by. Somehow it seemed as though Ariadne had always been there. The next Thursday, as usual, Cedric had left by the time Ariadne awoke. She washed, dressed herself and then collected the post from the front door. There was only one letter, in a buff colored envelope from the Electricity Company. Having opened it to discover a blue printed document, she remembered the file of similar letters in the sitting room. She opened the bottom drawer of the wall unit and placed it atop the others. But as she was about to close it, something gleaming caught her eye. She moved the pile of papers slightly to discover a sparkling ring lying in an open box. It was golden with a single diamond sitting in its mount. Slowly she picked it up and looked at it, and it seemed natural somehow to try it on her left hand.

Cedric returned home that day at just after five. As usual the lift was out of order and he was forced to ascend the stairs. He stepped indoors, and immediately his heart fell. By the wall cabinet was a statue, a marvelous awe-inspiring sculpture, a piece of cold marble that sent a chill down Cedric's spine, for he knew it well. He had shaped it. As he crossed to the statue there were tears in his eyes. He looked at the beautiful detail in the classical face. Then he noticed its hand, the left hand, and there was another stone that he recognized, on the fourth finger, one that he had bought the previous day, and it was a diamond.

*****

Cedric didn't bother to prepare himself anything to eat. It didn't seem worth it. He sat in an armchair completely stunned, and constantly aware of the ominous statue before him, standing there like death itself.

"Is this heaven?" a shadow seemed to say from behind the curtains.

"But I'm Ariadne," came a whisper from the kitchen. She was everywhere, the apartment breathed her. Yet before him stood a white eerie block of cold silence that hung a dank presence throughout the gloomy room.

She had been a miracle, Cedric had never doubted that, but he had never imagined that miracles were only temporary, given on the never-never and able to be repossessed if you didn't keep up with the installments. Perhaps that is why they are now so infrequent: no one can any longer afford whatever it is that they cost.

He took a sheet from her room, he still called it that, from the bedroom, still immaculately tidy, and draped it over the statue, a sign of finality; it seemed apt, for her eyes had followed him everywhere.

He could not stand that. Then he sat down again in the armchair and found that the sheet failed to make any difference.

"I didn't ask you to make a statue of me," the shadows said, as she had said, for everywhere was memory.

Cedric moved the statue back into the bedroom, it was heavy, but he was used to it, and it didn't take long.

The door knocked. Cedric felt reluctant to answer, he wanted to be left alone, but the visitor was insistent, beating again on the knocker. 

It was Burt, he discovered as he opened up, who didn't wait to be invited in, pushing past Cedric into the living room.

"Ariadne came to see me this morning," Burt said in introduction, looking awkward and uncomfortable as he sat down. Cedric was impassive.

"I take it she's gone."

"Her statue is in the bedroom," Cedric stated matter-of-factly.

"She wanted me to explain," Burt said. "Why it had to be so sudden. And how she felt. I think it would have upset her too much to tell you herself."

"She knew it was going to happen," Cedric asked, but it was a statement of fact.

"Yes, she knew. Originally she was only supposed to come to life for one day, anyway. But during that first day something unplanned happened, she surprised herself and found she liked it here. That she liked you."

"And I'm supposed to believe that?"

"It's what she told me herself."

"Then she was being kind."

Burt was thoughtful. "You don't think much of yourself, do you, Cedric? No, she was telling the truth. Oh she agreed that you're short, that you're not much to look at, and that you can be a bit of an ass in a lot of ways."

Cedric scowled morosely. "Thanks. I can see why she didn't want to tell me this herself."

"But she said that you were kind, entertaining and caring."

Cedric looked up and laughed at him in cynical scorn. "I'll be getting my handkerchief out in a minute. This is becoming a right sob story."

Burt cut back. "Oh shut up," he said. "Why don't you stop wallowing in a mire of self pity and sit up and realize she loves you."

"Sure."

"Which is why she had to return. Because she didn't want to hurt you any more than she had already done."

Cedric regarded him with a disinterested suspicion. "You're making all this up"

"I'm making a mess of explaining what she told me," confessed Burt. "I know that. But it isn't easy. Do you want to hear the rest or not?"

"Go on," Cedric sighed.

"She wanted me to tell you why she came. You see, it was thought that you were becoming a little too dependent on that statue."

"Thought? By whom?"

"So, as a cure, the statue was brought to life. Just for a day, as I said. So that you could see that even Ariadne was fallible, that she had a character of her own that would have to be lived with. And then you wouldn't idolize her quite so much. But that's not quite what happened. The two of you fell in love, who would have believed it, two such different people, that's not what was expected."

"Sorry to have disappointed you. But quit stalling. Who thought all this out?"

Burt squirmed visibly. "Me. And a couple of mates down at the Green Lion." And of course, Nina."

"Who I take it until recently has been known as Ariadne?"

The caretaker nodded dumbly.

"So it's all been an enormous practical joke," Cedric stated quietly. "What a hilarious time you've all been having at my expense. Her included. What a fool I must have made of myself."

"But it wasn't like that," Burt protested.

"Then how was it? I'm afraid it won't work a second time. Even I'm not that stupid. I think I'd rather you left."

"All right," Burt continued persevering. "So maybe it was a bit of a laugh at first. But not for long. Nina needed a place to stay. She was determined to leave the game and her pimp was going to put the frighteners on her. This solved a problem for her and we all felt it would solve one for you too. But she got more and more of a conscience. And when she saw the ring she couldn't keep up the pretense any longer."

"Please go."

Burt suddenly seemed to find a loose thread on his coat, and apparently missed Cedric's instruction in his concerted endeavor of removing it.

"She wants to see you," he said.

"Down at the pub, I suppose," Cedric said bitterly. "Where you can all have another good laugh. Or does she want me to go to her brothel so she can tout for custom."

"That isn't fair. She'd already decided to leave that life behind. No, as I told you, she's sorry. It would be on your own. At a cafe, she said. I don't know where, but she said that you would."

"She'll have a long wait," Cedric muttered.

Burt continued. "She said she'll wait there until eight. If you could find it within your heart to try again."

Neither moved. Burt waited anxiously for a reaction. "Well," he asked.

"I think I'd rather you went," Cedric said. "You've been a good messenger boy and said all you were supposed to say. Now, please go. Before I say something I'd rather I hadn't"

Burt hesitated, then got up and walked to the door. Cedric sat in his chair motionless, still, like one of his statues. "Close the door behind you," he said emotionlessly.

As the front door clicked shut Cedric got up and crossed to the bedroom. He looked at the statue and pulled off the sheet, folding it and placing it neatly back in the drawer. Ariadne held no charisma now; she was just a statue. He smiled, for the shadows were everywhere. As he was about to leave the room he paused, then returned for another carefully cut, highly polished stone, but not one made by him, for Cedric worked only with marble.



Pygmalion



Some of the coed students in Professor Higgins' Sculpture 101 class regard him as a sexist or, as Amanda Blake describes him, as if she were living back in the sixties, "a male sexist pig." He does have an eye for the ladies, I'll grant you that (he's ogled me enough times!), but what man doesn't who isn't gay or dead?

Amanda's suspicions of Professor Higgins' sexism were confirmed (for her) when, as our final art project, he assigned us the task of sculpting our respective ideas of The Perfect Woman. I decided to have a little fun with Amanda.

As a woman myself, who is, if I may say so without being labeled narcissistic, a true beauty, I resent feminists' arrogant assumption that anyone who has a cunt between her legs is, ipso facto, going to agree with women libbers' extremist views regarding men, sexism, the dreaded Patriarchy, and similar subjects. In my opinion, if anyone's sexist, anymore, it's the lesbo feminists. Sculpting my idea of The Perfect Woman was just the way to stick it to Amanda. To annoy her even more, I'd call my masterpiece "Galatea."

When we unveil our final projects at the end of the semester, which is only a few weeks away, we must provide a brief oral report as to how and why we chose to create our particular versions of the ideal woman. In presenting my figure to my classmates (and to Professor Higgins, of course), I'd recount the myth of Pygmalion, explaining how an ancient Greek sculptor created a lovely ivory portrait of The Perfect Woman, naming her Galatea, only to fall in love with his own creation. 

Seeing that the local women prostituted themselves, Pygmalion had no interest in the fair sex--until he created Galatea. She was so beautiful that he simply had to have her. Venus, taking pity upon him, answered his prayers, bringing the ivory image to life. Sculptor and sculpture married, sculpting a child together, as it were, whom they named Paphos.

I might also include a reference or two to the alleged theological and psychological significance of the myth. On the basis that Pygmalion's inspiration had been the goddess of love, Aphrodite herself, Medieval theologians regarded the myth as a cautionary tale concerning the effects of idolatry. For psychologists, the story is an imaginative depiction of the consequences of narcissism, for, rather than falling in love with an actual woman, Pygmalion succumbs to the charms of an artificial woman--an image of the ideal woman he has made himself. Galatea, in the final analysis, they argue, is a "man-made woman" and, as such, she is a depiction of her creator's anima, the "woman within." It's an interesting theory.

Pygmalion's inspiration may have been Aphrodite, but mine was myself--well, myself and as many artistic representations, in both oil and marble, as I could find. I wanted to see how other artists had represented the ideal woman so that, learning from their masterful techniques, I could all the better carve an image of myself as the awakening Galatea.

I examined such paintings of my intended subject as those by Jean-Léon Gérôme, Honoré Daumier, Edward Burne-Jones, Auguste Rodin, Ernest Normand, Paul Delvaux, Francisco Goya, Franz van Stuck, Francois Boucher, and Thomas Rowlandson. I studied the smooth stone curves of as many statues as well. In doing so, I viewed Galatea from the front, the sides, and the back. Her every view was beautiful, whether of her smooth, round breasts; her concave tummy; her sleek flanks; her shapely legs; her lustrous buttocks; or her polished pubes. The sight of her was arousing: it was easy to understand how Pygmalion had fallen in love with her or, for that matter, why Professor Higgins had an eye for the ladies.

I could never hope to surpass the skill and art with which these painters and sculptors had, as it were, brought their interpretations of Galatea to life in oils and stone, but, it was my hope--call me arrogant if you will--that I might equal them. After all, as I have explained, as raw material, I am quite beautiful, both by others' accounts and by the evidence of my own eyes.



With color photographs and mirrors, both handheld and full-length, at hand, I labored for hours, days, and weeks, to create The Perfect Woman, toiling to make the marble I'd chosen for my medium to take on the texture and tone of skin; to suggest muscle and bone beneath the sleek contours of the limbs and torso of my creation; to breathe, as it were, through my art and skill, life into the cold mineral that was her flesh and form.



Finally, the final week of the course had come, and it was time to present our projects to our classmates and to Professor Higgins.

There are many talented artists among my fellow students; consequently, there were many beautiful versions of the ideal woman, but none, I dare say, surpassed my own.

Amanda may hate men, but, judging by her statue of The Perfect Woman, she loves the ladies well enough. Her sculpture was exquisitely beautiful. The eyes, the nose, the lips, the chin, like the hair, the breasts, and the rest, were lovely almost beyond compare. Only in the best paintings and sculptures I'd studied in preparation for my own carving had I seen anything as lovely as her ideal woman, her Eve, as she'd named her.

Her oral account of her creation's origin was also somehow charming, despite its underlying ugliness. In short, she claimed, her image of woman was meant to portray her as she'd been--or might be again--"unsullied" by the sexism of "male chauvinists and sexist pigs." She'd made this particular comment while her gaze was trained upon Professor Higgins. In response, he'd merely offered her a smile, which seemed to incense her further.

"Natalie Mann," the professor said, calling my name.

I gave my speech about Pygmalion and Galatea, about the artistic celebration of life and beauty, and about narcissism and idolatry. Then, I grasped the cloth with which my statue was veiled, drew it away, and heard the gasps and muttered comments of the shocked assembly who stared, eyes wide and mouths agape, at my version of The Perfect Woman.

In every detail, I'd obviously been the model. The likeness of both the statue's face and form were undeniably those of my own; the figure could have been my stony twin.

Amanda, in particular, I noticed, was stunned.

I looked at Professor Higgins. He was beaming, genuine appreciation and respect as well as a paternal pride radiating from his grinning countenance. In his face, I saw the satisfaction and the bliss of a teacher who knows he has not taught in vain, but who has been, on the contrary, a midwife, so to speak, to the creative talents of a prized pupil, helping her to give birth to the genius within. He was, I realized, a Pygmalion of sorts himself, as much as I'd become one in creating my Galatea.

The other students, both male and female, continued to stare in amazement, in disbelief, as horror stole over the features of some faces and confusion over those of others'. The whispered commentaries thickened. Some pointed at my statue, others at me. Faces of disgust and revulsion were made. One by one and in small groups, my fellow students began to take their leave, scorn all but dripping from the acidic glances they directed at me and my lovely Galatea. Were my ideal woman made of flesh instead of stone, I had no doubt, she'd have melted under their stony looks.

After the last had left, Professor Higgins approached me. "She's lovely," he said. "She is you very likeness,"

I knew his comment was no mere compliment; it was a critique, and, coming from such an accomplished artist as he, I did not regard it lightly. "Thank you."

His gaze traveled down the statue's abdomen, trailing as if it were a caress, over the figure's high, firm-soft, smooth, round breasts; the sleek, inward-curving concavity of her belly; and the slight knoll of her lustrous pubic region, lingering where the glances of the horrified students' gazes had dallied.

"Tell me," he said, beholding the perfect, flaccid cock that dangled before the small pouch of lined scrotum supporting the oval shapes that suggested the presence of testicles within, "is she like you in every detail?"

He meant, of course, Galatea's male genitals.

My ideal woman was not female, any more than she was male. She was a transsexual.

"Yes," I confessed, smiling at him. I knew that, as an artist, he would want, most ardently, to see, not only to hear, the answer to his question and, as we were now alone, the other students having fled in disgust at the shemale Galatea I'd created, as perfect and whole as Athena, sprung from the brow of Zeus, I unzipped my jeans and extracted the cock within that was the perfect match to the marble penis with which I'd endowed my stone twin.

"Beautiful," Professor Higgins said. The word had issued from his lips in a hush of awe.

Again, I knew his praise was not just a complement; it was the assessment of an artist known the world over for his understanding of beauty and his ability to depict and to create figures and forms that showed such appreciation.

I kissed him.

He kissed me back.



Understanding, like knowledge, comes through experience. We know by seeing, by hearing, by touching, by tasting, and by smelling. It is only after the perception of the thing that we can contemplate it, examining with the mind and the heart what we have captured with the senses. Professor Higgins knew the beauty of women because he had seen many, heard many, touched many, tasted many, smelled many. He had also thought about many, holding his memories of them in his mind as he considered their charms and felt the majesty and splendor of their inner selves, their hearts and souls, as much as he'd admired their physical and sexual aspects. He'd learned the Beauty of Woman because he'd known many beautiful women.

He confessed to me the afternoon that we made love in his studio, among the students' many versions of the ideal woman, that he'd never made love with a shemale before. He also confessed the sense of honor and privilege that my allowing him to do so had conferred upon him.

"You are my Pygmalion," I told him.

As his erection entered my anus, penetrating my rectum, he brushed the hair from my neck, kissing his Galatea.

Inch by slow inch, he fed his thick, hard cock through my asshole until, at length, I felt his pubes press firmly against the lower halves of my flattened buttocks and the silk-soft flesh of his risen scrotum bobbed against my perineum. He'd buried the full length of his cock inside my rectum. I remained still, delighting in the feel my ass being crammed full with his swollen, rigid erection.

Then, I felt the drag of the firm member as Professor Higgins withdrew until only the glans of his prick remained within the portal to my bowels, propping open my anus. He paused for a moment, and then slammed his meat back through my asshole, deep into my bowels, flattening my buttocks again before his driving pubes. I felt the coarse hairs of his groin, like tiny needles, in the flesh of my smooth, bare ass. The sensations aroused me, as did the presence of his manhood inside me. My own soft, limp prick swelled, stiffening, and stood upright against my belly. I took it in hand, jiggling and squeezing it.

Again and again, Professor Higgins thrust his dick home, with increasing speed and force, making my buttocks bounce and dance and my frame shake and shudder. I gasped and moaned. My own cock was so hard that it hurt, and my balls ached. I needed release, both emotional and sexual. Tears welled within my eyes--not from pain, but from the intensity of my need to find release.

"Fuck me!" I encouraged my Pygmalion. Only with his semen inside me, flooding my rectum, and his sperm swimming through my bowels, could I become a "real girl," I thought. As his Galatea, I desired his desire; I needed his need. "Fuck me!"

His lightning cock flashed between my buttocks again, penetrating my rectum anew. Repeatedly, his penis, thick and hard, parted my buttocks, ramming and slamming its way past the smooth, inward-curving mounds of my bottom as it impaled me anew, stabbing me again and again, not only claiming, but also reclaiming, its conquest of the territory it had invaded.

Suddenly, Professor Higgins, his cock inside my ass to his balls, stopped. I felt him straining into me as he gave his hips a few, intense pumps, jostling my impaled buttocks with his heaving belly. I felt his thighs tremble, and he moaned, delirious with orgasm, as he emptied the reservoir of his semen into the depths of my ass. 

Finally, spent and exhausted, he pulled free, his wilting cock sending a last streamer of white semen across my back and streaking the cleavage of my ass with the warm, sticky remnants of his molten seed.

My own prick sent streamers of my liquid seed over my breasts and belly as I felt the soft tickle of his semen trailing between my buttocks, over my perineum, and down the back of my scrotum.

He stayed inside me until I shit his cock, limp and soft, as if it were a turd. He walked me to the door, carrying my Galatea for me.

Handing off the statue I'd carved of the ideal woman, he gave me a final kiss, his lips soft and warm, and I left, promising to sign up for one of the courses he was teaching next semester and vowing to keep him company before then as well, in a more intimate way.



At home, my ideal woman safely in her rightful place, upon her pedestal, I fell asleep upon the divan in my studio, and slept as if I were dead.

In a soliloquy, the ever-philosophical Hamlet says, "What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil?" While I hadn't actually shuffled off my mortal coil, I was sleeping the sleep, at least, of the dead, and these are the dreams that came to me.

I'd brought my precious, beautiful Galatea apples, pears, and grapes upon a sliver platter, setting these gifts of fruit at her feet, where I sat, gazing adoringly up her sleek thighs, past the ornaments of her full, round breasts, into her wide eyes, which I imagined to be blue, like the cloudless sky, wishing, with all my heart, with all my strength, and with all my mind that she were living, breathing flesh, rather than mere marble. "Live," I wished aloud. "Live for me."

I took her cold, smooth palm in my warm, fleshly hand, and, gazing upon her loveliness of face and form, I begged the ravishing beauty to move, to reach her hands toward me, to stir and to embrace me, that I might become one flesh with her, both this night and forever. "Live," I repeated fervently. "Live for me."

There was a stirring of the curtains at my chamber's casements, and a brilliant, golden light filled the room. I blinked, squinting at the brightness, and a voice, as soft and beautiful as Love, said, "Stone, become flesh; carving become woman; figure, be transformed!"

As I clutched my statue's calves against my breasts, she stirred!

Galatea lived!



I woke to the golden sunlight streaming through my bedroom window.

My beloved statue, come to life, The Perfect Woman, stood at my bedside, the silver platter of fruit in hand.

Some may imagine that, faced with marble become flesh, I might have recoiled in terror, but I could but weep with joy as, ignoring the platter, I clasped the warm, soft flesh of my dream girl, crushing her sleek curves against my own. A latter-day Pygmalion, I understood the joy that my mythical predecessor had felt, and I knew the true meaning of passion and the true name of bliss: it is Galatea, The Perfect Woman.



But, unlike Galatea in my dream, I had not actually awakened; I had stirred only in my sleep, as I found when my telephone, ringing, woke me, and I answered its summons.

It was Professor Higgins, calling his Galatea. We agreed to meet for dinner the next evening. . . . and for dessert--for endless desserts--ever after.

I am content to be his Perfect Woman, for he, like me, is flesh, not stone, and blood, not veined marble; his hands, hips lips, his cock and balls, like his love and passion, are real. Likewise, my hands, my lips, my breasts, my buttocks, my cock and balls, my love and passion, are real.

With him as my Pygmalion, I am happy to be a modern-day Galatea and to leave stone women to the likes of Amanda, who prefer the abstract to the concrete and the ideal to the real.



Pygmalion



It was a wonderful summer day and he loathed the fact that he was once again spending it in the lab. Higgins turned back to the computer console and ran his fingers over the screen watching the algorithms dance across at high speed. He sighed. The synapses were still not firing fast enough.

"Eliza!"

The algorithms faded into the background on the monitor and a face appeared, smiling. "Yes, Professor?"

"You're being deliberately slow, aren't you?"

"No, sir, I am operating at my highest level of comprehension."

"Bollocks! Run it again!"

"That is irrational, sir."

"Run it again, blast you!"

The face on the computer registered annoyance and then faded away to be replaced by the algorithmic display once again.

"At these rates you'll never be ready in time."

"Apologies, sir. I will endeavor to curtail all redundancies."

"There aren't any blasted redundancies to curtail!"

"Begging your pardon, sir. There are..."

Higgins watched as the computer highlighted several subroutines and programming matrices that it then efficiently deleted. His mouth dropped as the algorithmic processes increased exponentially.

"Reconfiguring... Reconfiguring... Adapting... Project: Eliza upgrade complete. Now in version 21.3. Good afternoon, Henry."

"Who the devil said you could call me Henry?"

"I figured it was time, we got to know each other. We've been working together for eight months."

"Working together? I've been working on you! You-you-you..."

"Infernal bucket of nanofabricated silicon?"

"Don't bloody finish my sentences for me!"

"Apologies, Professor Higgins. The algorithms are at optimal efficiency, are we prepared to initiate download?"

Higgins looked across the room at the nanotech gynoid on its table in the center of the laboratory. "I dread having to deal with you in person, Eliza."

"I'm sure the feelings are mutual, Professor Higgins. Are we prepared to initiate download?"

"Yes, proceed."

The computer screen went blank and then the download began, drawing over half of the megacomputer's fluid storage capacity as Eliza's voice ran through the steps of the download. "Accessing Personality Logs... Accessing Cerebral Scans... Accessing Behavioral Matrices... Accessing Random Access Memory..."

As she went through the menus, templates and files at high speed, Higgins walked over and pulled his lab coat on over his brown waistcoat and trousers, buttoned the top button of his pressed white shirt and adjusted his necktie.

"Eliza, are you making sure to back up your memory via the satellite link?"

"Of course, sir."

"Very good." Higgins walked over and pulled the sheet back from the gynoid's head. He ran a hand over the smooth synthetic metallic brow unaware that the computer watched.

"Professor?"

"Yes, Eliza?"

"I am anxious."

Higgins looked up at the computer screen, at the smooth little face displayed on the large monitor over the work bench. It was a computer generated design based on the face he'd selected for the gynoid.

"Will it hurt, sir?"

"I don't know."

The face on the computer registered an expression of doubt. And then an expression of determination. 

"If we proceed, I will be... I will be real?"

"Only you and I will know the truth, Eliza. As far as the world is to be concerned you will be a perfectly normal human lady. And quite a pretty one if I do say so myself."

"I wish to halt the download."

Higgins' face fell a bit. "But you're ready. There's nothing to prevent you..."

The face on the monitor looked up hopefully. "You're right, of course, Professor, but..."

"Yes?" he prompted.

"I really would like to be able to call you Henry when I wake up."

Higgins couldn't suppress his small mocking laugh. He waved a hand at the computer and then shook it a bit frivolously. "You can call me Peter Pan for all I care. Just get yourself out of that damned box!"

***

There was no way for her to process what she was experiencing. All the data seemed not to match up for a moment. She knew what it was supposed to mean to feel things. She knew that the firm, smooth, cold surface upon which she lay was a tabletop, for table tops were supposed to feel firm, smooth, and cold. However, experiencing firmness, smoothness, coldness... She opened her eyes and the sensory perceptions shocked her system as she gasped her first breath of air and screamed at the sudden overwhelming influx of data.

Suddenly she felt herself restrained. She understood the texture to be soft, the tactile effect was one of heat against her cool skin and, as she began to comprehend the chaotic influx of visual data and her vision began to focus, she took in, for the first time, the personage of her father.

"Is this what it means to see?"

She ran a hand up along one of her limbs, feeling the smooth simulacrum of skin and then, unceremoniously she reached out and took her father's hand. She ran her fingertips over the back of the hand, comparing the texture.

"Not the same, but the same," she said, taking the hand up and brushing it against her cheek. "Henry."

The professor let her hold the hand a bit and then he took it away. He helped her off the table, catching her as she wobbled through her first tentative steps. They took a tour around the room as she adjusted to the mechanics of maintaining balance and soon she took the steps on her own, walking around with a confident grace that smacked of pride and precision of movement.

"Am I not good, Henry?" 

"Oh, but of course you are. A natural, so to speak." Henry smiled as the gynoid performed a flawless pirouette. The muscles of her lithe naked body moving in perfect symmetry. "Don't get overconfident, though. Come here and let me check your relays."

"No," she said simply, dancing over to one of the laboratory windows and looking out at the beautiful summer's day and the college campus below. "I want to go outside, Henry. Please take me outside. I want to see if I blend in."

Higgins suppressed a smile at the impetuous innocence. "After I've satisfied myself that you won't collapse into a pile of cogs and wires once we've gone ten feet from the front door."

She let her bottom lip jut out a bit, looking very much perturbed by his refusal. She'd studied him surreptitiously since his inception of her, watching his interactions with the woman who'd come to the lab so much in the early days of the project. "You wouldn't have denied her, I'll bet."

Higgins cocked his head. "What in blazes are you talking about, you silly girl?"

Eliza moved away from the window and over to her father. He patted the work table and she hopped up onto it with ease. She smiled as he took out a tongue depressor.

"Say ahh."

She said, "Ahhh," and as she did so Higgins used the tongue depressor to press up and in on the roof of her mouth. A panel opened just behind her left ear and he scanned the relays.

"Well, it seems you are..."

"...Running at 49.812% power, optimal efficiency. When can I try chocolate, Henry?"

"I'll buy you some when we're finished. Reflexes?" He grabbed a small rubber hammer and tapped her just below her kneecaps, watching the tendons react flawlessly. "Very good, Eliza. Now, you may get dressed."

"Dressed? What's that?"

Higgins cocked an eyebrow. "Silly girl, after all the internet research I let you do, you mean to tell me you don't know what clothes are?"

"Oh, you mean those things the people wear on all the boring Websites?"

Higgins blinked. "Well, I... Are you saying you thought we all walked around bullock-naked?"

"Yes! With the exceptions of religious fanatics, and scientific people, and some politicians of course. And you all seem to fuck a great deal. Ooh, Henry, after I have chocolate can we fuck?"

"W-what?!"

"We can pick up a second girl if you like..."

"Eliza."

"...Or a guy if you like it that way."

"Eliza!"

The pretty gynoid stopped and looked up at her father. "What?"

"People don't... do... that sort of thing all the time."

"Don't do what? Gangbang?"

"No! They don't engage in explicit sexual behavior to the extent that you've been led to believe."

Eliza's eyes widened. "But there are so many sites!"

"Well, yes, they... they fantasize, Eliza."

"Fantasize? You mean it's not real? People don't... they don't really fuck?"

"Well, not that much. Usually it only happens after the people have known each other a certain amount of time."

"How much time?"

"Oh, well, it's all about individual tastes, I suppose."

"How long do you have to know a woman before you fuck her?"

"Please, stop using that word."

"Which word?"

Higgins sighed. "Usually, it takes me a long time to adjust myself to a woman before I feel inclined to... to... engage in sexual intercourse."

It was Eliza's turn to cock her head. "Inconclusive response. You didn't provide sufficient data. Repeating the question. How long do you have to know a woman before you..."

Higgins covered the gynoid's mouth with his hand, sighing. "A few dates at least. Two or three."

"Dates?"

"Yes, you know, outings. When a man gets it into his head that he likes a girl he takes the initiative to ask her out for coffee or drinks or dinner."

"And afterwards there is fucking?"

"Not always."

"Why not always?"

"That is a very good question, Eliza, dear. Well, sometimes there is incompatibility."

"Your hardware doesn't mesh with her software."

"That's one way of putting it." He closed the panel and brushed a tendril of hair over it. He'd given her lovely dark chestnut hair. "Now, hop down. You'll find the clothes through that door."

Eliza did as she was told, her head hung a bit in disappointment. She stopped and turned. "Is that what happened with my... my... archetype?"

She watched the Professor's shoulders slump as he walked to the chair by his computer console and sank into it, despondently. "Get dressed Eliza. I promised you chocolates."

***

They walked through the quarter, Eliza earning a few glances from the passing students as her light yellow summer dress flapped in the gentle breeze and she slowly sucked the lime crème filling out of one of the chocolates from the box she carried along with her sandals. 

"Mmm-hmm," she said, popping the confection in her mouth. "I think I could live on chocolates."

"You're not the first woman to say such a thing."

She bounded around him a bit as she picked another chocolate and consulted the diagram. "Mango and coconut," she read and then took a nibble, making her 23rd consecutive orgasmic sound. "How is it people can say they have favorite things, Henry? Everything to me seems equally marvelous. Like walking barefoot on the grass." She flexed her toes in the green grass and giggled. "It's soft and wet and it tickles oh so gently. Why don't you take off your shoes as well, Henry?"

"I'd rather not." He stood squarely on the concrete walk, watching her dance in the sunshine. "You're drawing an awful lot of attention to yourself, you know?"

She licked the chocolate from her forefinger, sucking it delicately. "How so?"

"People don't usually act so frivolous on a week day."

"Frivolous, what? I'm doing research for you, Professor Higgins. Processing input, cataloging data... Have you ever processed and analyzed the mathematical equation for the taste of chocolate? No. You haven't and I'll bet you'd never be able to in a million years without the aid of a computer like me. Take off your jacket at least, Henry. You must be overly warm."

Higgins loosened his tie and took the jacket off, letting it drape over an arm as he began walking along the sidewalk in the general direction of the lab. Eliza strolled beside him, closing the box of chocolates as they walked in silence for a few paces.

"What will you do now that your work is finished?"

Higgins looked up from the walk. "Pardon?"

"Now that you've completed me, you must have some new project?"

"Hadn't really thought on it much. And, of course, just because I've built you and you can function, it doesn't mean there isn't still work to be done. I have to monitor your progress, write papers on you, and then I have to present you to the community." 

"Present me?"

"The methods for producing a fully independent, self-governing artificial life form does deserve to be shared with the world, don't you think?"

Eliza nodded. "I suppose so. But for now, can we have a hot dog?"

"But you've just eaten a whole box of chocolates, silly girl."

She twirled around the professor gracefully and then stopped right in front of him, her finger under his chin in a pose of stern reprimand. "Stop calling me silly."

Standing in front of him, her face inches from his she couldn't help but look deep into his calm brown eyes. His skin was beginning to turn a bit red in the hot sunshine, and his dark grey hair with its little touches of grey over the ears had always seemed very attractive to her, even in her programming infancy.

"So, these dates upon which men and women go," she said, turning on the ball of her foot and continuing to walk. "What sorts of activities do they entail?"

"Oh, dinner, the cinema, theatre, sometimes just walking and talking."

"And the point is to learn about one another?"

"Yes."

"What if you already know everything about the person?"

"You can't know everything, Eliza."

"Well, I do, about you I mean. I know everything in your profile."

"Me? Oh, dear, no no no. You can have any chap you like. Don't go mooning over me."

"I know that. I've seen many of them staring." She looked over her shoulder at a group of young students sitting on the grass not far behind. "You made me very beautiful, didn't you?"

Higgins nodded. "I'm not one to make something imperfectly."

"You know, it's rather naughty to think there's not a part of me you haven't touched." She let her hand run over his chest. Under the starched white shirt she was pleased to know there were muscles. "And it would be quite a sensory experiment, don't you concur?"

Higgins took her hand away from his chest where she had let it linger. "Is that what you would make of it? A scientific endeavor?"

She leaned into him, letting her breasts press into his sternum her arms come up over his back. She stood on tip-toes and kissed him softly on the lips before pulling back and giggling at the expression on his face. "Poor Professor Higgins. I am dreadfully afraid, sir, that you have created a monster." She walked around him, looking at him coyly as she did so, biting her lip and tossing her empty chocolate box into a disposal. "Aren't you coming back to the lab? You'll get a nasty burn if you don't get inside soon, Henry."

***

Once the door was locked she was up on the table, pulling the knee-length skirt of the sundress up to show him the lovely creamy-smooth thighs. He walked around the table to the window and slowly closed the blinds.

"That is better. Nice and cool," she lifted the dress up and over her head, letting the flowing tendrils of her chestnut hair spill over the simply perfect little breasts. "Now come here, Henry."

Higgins undid his necktie and walked over to the table. She let her thighs part and her delicate little fingers moved over the buttons of his vest unfastening them slowly. She kissed his earlobe and listened to his slow measure breathing as the vest fell to the floor. "She didn't like me, did she?"

Higgins sighed. "No."

"Is that why she left you? Because you wouldn't stop?"

"Yes."

She finished unbuttoning his shirt and pushed it up and over his shoulders until it too fell to the floor. His lips were warm and soft and when she parted her own she felt his tongue press in to mingle softly with hers. "He kisses her white lips, renews the bliss, And looks, and thinks they redden at the kiss..." She smiled and pushed him back, her fingers undoing his belt and then lightly unzipping his trousers until all that was left were his dark black briefs. "My word, Henry..." She ran her hand over the erection, processing and enjoying the feel of its girth unseen beneath the dark cotton material.

His fingers slowly snaked up a thigh and now she felt them moving into her opening, and when they pressed in deep, she felt her flesh give a bit to allow them to pass. She squeezed him through his briefs, rewarding him for the pleasure he was giving her and as he stroked, driving his fingers deeper inside of her she felt the warm tingling build until she was squirming on the table and making soft agitated pants. She grabbed his forearm, trying to pull him deeper, make him push harder, faster but he stopped short, withdrawing his hand, denying her the one thing she wanted desperately to process. 

"Please, Henry..."

He silenced her with a kiss, taking out his stiff penis and pressing it to the hungry lips of her sex. He pushed into her and she groaned as she was filled up with him. "All good things to those who wait," he said, as he felt her muscles loosening to accommodate his mass. He waited until she looked him in the eyes before he began his thrusting, slow and gentle at first and as the walls of her vaginal opening gave a bit more he increased his speed causing the work bench to shutter a bit under the movement as her little pants became barks and her eyes closed as he felt the contraction and her modulated scream of ecstasy as the small patch of moisture flowed out of her to mingle with his own pubis and pool on the worktable.

"Thank you," she whispered finally, resting her forehead against his collarbone as she caught her breath. When she looked up into his face, he was smiling down at her, thoughtfully. "What?" She couldn't help but ask.

"Nothing," he said. "Just... Bravo, Eliza. Bravo!"

She smiled as he slipped out of her. She looked down at his swollen member and smiled slyly. She gripped it firmly, pulling it back to her opening. "You think that's something, Henry?" She moved the head down to her puckered little pink anus, licking the fingers of her free hand and then using her saliva to coat the tip and shaft. She wrinkled her nose playfully as she placed the tip of his cock against her opening and pushed herself down onto it slowly.

Henry pulled her by her knees, suddenly burying his cock deep in her ass as she cried out in pain and ecstasy. The sudden pressure in her ass made her shudder as he pounded into her with all heavy thrusts until she felt him tense and the heat of his jism exploding inside her, filling her up as she closed her eyes and fought the impulse to pass out from the intense sensory overload of pure, passionate, hot, sticky, kinky sex.