13 comments/ 99284 views/ 77 favorites It's Always Time Act 01 By: Oblimo Act One: Boy Meets Goo Chapter One: There Ain't Nothing in the World… Dee reached into the refrigerator, peeled off the cellophane sealing the wide mouth of the metal mixing bowl, and chickened out. "I can't do this," he said. He tipped the bowl and took a long, hard look at the Jell-O inside. The surface shone in the fridge's light but did not shift. The gelatin had already set even though the instructions said Dee still had two more hours to wait. "I'm not going to wait because I'm not going to do this." He slammed the fridge closed and stood there for a while. He stomped around the breakfast table to the kitchenette's bay window and shuttered the blinds. After another pause, he ran around his empty apartment, drawing the curtains on every window and double bolting the front door for good measure. The bowl was back in his hands again. "Okay." The bowl clattered onto the round, glass top of the little breakfast table. He glared down into the bowl's wide mouth. His wobbly reflection frowned back at him. After a final moment of hesitation, he dropped a hand down into the bowl. It made a loud slap when his hand hit the gelatin and he jerked back, embarrassed. I'm the only one here, he thought. Why the Hell am I embarrassed? The cool sticky stuff almost smooched his hand when he pulled, reluctant to let go. Because it shouldn't feel this good. He pressed his open palm back into the gelatin. The surface gave but did not break. The tension of the stuff felt, well, delicious. He waggled his hand. The gelatin tried to keep up and parted with another long, lazy, traveling smooch. He rubbed his thumb over the tips of his fingers. They weren't even wet. "Wow." So that was what it must feel like. He could write about that. He had even promised to write about that, to write some "goo girl" fiction for some Internet friends. Granted, he could not really call them friends, but they collected and shared as much Internet porn as he did. That created a strange solidarity, an Internet Freaks Anonymous where the twelfth step was drawing or writing your own crazy smut. Their latest discovery? Fantasies of fucking The Blob's hot younger sister. It proved the rule: if you could think it, someone, somewhere on the 'Net was wondering what it would be like to fuck it. Dee knew it as "Rule 34", and Dee considered himself Rule 34's Exhibit A. But when Dee first sat down to write his newest fic, he had no idea what touching a goo girl might feel like, how to make it sound sexy—or even if it really could be sexy in the first place. Hence, the I-Must-Be-Crazy Jell-O Experiment was born. Dee grabbed a cookie sheet from the cupboard. He pushed it under the bowl and twirled the bowl upside down with his fingers. He gave it a good shake and peeked under: nothing. He clanked the upside down bowl back onto the cookie sheet and whacked it on the top a few times for good measure. He slowly lifted the bowl. Nothing. "God damn non-stick coating my ass!" Dee throttled the bowl in both hands, shaking it like a stubborn ketchup bottle. He had paid fifty bucks for the stupid thing! He felt something in the bowl shift and the whole mass of gelatin, shaped like a giant, rounded gumdrop, plopped down onto the cookie sheet. The sheet juddered and knocked something off the table. Dee sat down on the rickety wicker chair and reached out both hands for the quivering mound. He surprised himself at how easily his imagination turned the rounded gelatin into a tap-worthy ass, or a massive breast. The object knocked off the table rolled to a stop by his foot. Dee looked down, saw the battered tin of thickening powder, and every thought of sex fled as he recalled the results of the I-Must-Be-Crazy Jell-O Experiment, Phase One: Procurement. * * * * The only place Dee thought might sell what he was looking for was a medical supply store. He found one, SRU Medical Technology. Getting there and back home added 40 minutes to his commute after some emergency Sunday troubleshooting in the corporate server farm. A square, whitewashed, brick building squat in the center of a paved parking lot far larger than it would ever need, out in the middle of nowhere. The only vehicles in the lot were a busted-up, generic white pickup truck and a rose red Morris Mini Coop. Not one of those trendy new ones, Dee noted, but an import at least 20 years old. Well, at least one person in there has good taste, he thought. He slunk through the front door. The bell hanging from the doorframe was loud and jarring. Petrified, Dee browsed the same aisle for fifteen silent minutes. He wondered, Do people browse in medical supply stores? They know what they want when they come in, don't they? He noticed the doughy clerk staring at him from a stool behind the glass counter. Dee looked at the products in the aisle he had been browsing for the first time: ostomy supplies. Oh, God. So this is what going to a porn shop with your mom must feel like. Dee shuffled over to the clerk behind counter. A short woman with long, black hair was busy in a supply closet behind him. "Do you sell thickening agent?" Dee asked. The clerk glanced up. "Excuse me?" "Thickening agent," Dee explained. "For liquids. You know, for people who have trouble drinking without aspirating?" "Sure." The clerk slid off his stool. Dee caught the woman's oval face peeking out at him as he followed the clerk down the aisle for food supplements. The clerk handed him a large tin of something called Thique-It and turned back to the counter, but Dee stopped him. "Does it, sorry, do you know if it works with Jell-O?" The clerk pivoted on his heels. "What?" "Does this stuff work with Jell-O?" After a long staring contest, the clerk asked, "Why would you need to thicken Jell-O?" "Because…" Dee began, his ears starting to burn. He swallowed. "Well, so the Jell-O stays thick, even after it gets…warm?" The clerk snorted, plucked the Thique-It out of Dee's hands, tossed it back on the shelf, and marched to the counter without even glancing back. Dee realized he was going to puke. Luckily, emesis buckets were in the next aisle. He whirled about, ready to run, only to find the young woman standing right next to him. "Oh, hey! You're a cutie." She craned her neck up to study his flustered face. "I've got what you want," she said, her dark eyes merry. She led Dee into the crowded supply closet, and pressed a battered, narrow tin into his hand. The yellowed label read, SRU Thickening Agent. "You guys have a generic label?" Dee asked. The woman pursed her lips in an inscrutable smile and gave a one-shouldered shrug that could have meant anything. "First time, start with something easy, like chocolate or vanilla pudding. That way, it's hard to mess the mixture up." Dee did not really understand, but he nodded anyway. "If you're feeling adventurous," she smiled, "you can try cherry. Or…" Her smile turned wistful, as if her mind were a thousand miles away. "Strawberry-banana." He asked her the price, but that just brought her out of her reverie. "But not lime," she insisted. "No lime. Too tricky, lime. Oh, how much? You want some? For you, five dollar. "But no lime!" * * * * Dee stared at the giant lime green gumdrop settling on his bistro breakfast table. He had been so mortified by the SRU ordeal that he had just grabbed the first Jell-O packet he found at the nearest convenience store and fled the place. Of course, when he got home he discovered it was lime Jell-O. There had been no way in Hell he was going back out there, so he made the lime Jell-O anyway, adding extra SRU thickener in case the crazy lady had a point. In the florescent light of his kitchen, the gelatin looked pearlescent and a bit opaque. Must be the thickener, he thought. Dee looked at the microwave's digital readout: 12:44 AM. Up past midnight, and on a work night, no less. It was now or never. He grabbed the side of the mound and squeezed. "Holy shit." It was pliant but firm, puckering around his palm and dimpling over his fingers. Cool, sticky and yet somehow smooth. He felt himself growing hard. It's official, he realized. I've got a new fetish. He stood, took off his shoes, and then sat on his knees in the wicker chair, crooking his legs into the chair's back for support. His crotch was now level with the breakfast table, his pants tenting toward the gelatin mound. I can do this. Dee pulled his pants and underwear down. The gelatin trembled, maybe from the air blowing through the ceiling vents, probably from Dee's shaky nerves. He could not find his balance. Dee carefully untangled himself from the chair. He grabbed the cookie sheet, one hand on each side, plucked it off the table, and lowered it down. "I can do this," he said, shifting his weight. His erection pointed straight at the gelatin mound. He could feel the cool air sliding of the gelatin around the head of his cock. "I can do this." The memory of the contempt on the clerk's face, how the clerk's eyes narrowed and dimmed as Dee talked rose unbidden in Dee's mind.      ["…So the Jell-O stays thick, even after it gets…warm…"] Dee's cock fell. "I can't do this." He dropped the cookie sheet back onto the kitchen table and marched to his bedroom. The door slammed behind him. In the kitchen, the lime gelatin sat on the tabletop, warming to room temperature. "Motherfucker," it said. * * * * "Late for work," Dee said as he came out of the bathroom the next morning, wrestling with his polyester-blend yellow tie. "Where the Hell are my shoes?" He remembered. "Oh, kitchen, right." He crossed the narrow living room. "Late for work, late again—Aw, what the Hell?" The gelatin had melted overnight, melted but not liquefied. The thickener apparently had done its job. Instead of sitting in a puddle of green water, the round table was coated in lime green frosting. A thick sheet of the icing had overflowed the glass top and pooled in rolls on the floor, draping the breakfast table in a cloth made from expensive, green ribbon candy. Dee could see one of his work shoes poking out from under the stuff. He stumbled into the kitchen and over to the table. "My only good pair of shoes." He reached for the black leather heel. The ribbon candy tablecloth around the shoe plucked itself upward, like a stage-curtain or the ruffles of a prom-dress, and a stiletto-heeled pump shot out from under the table and pinned his hand to the floor. Shocked by the sudden, sharp pain, Dee did not think to freak out as he took in some quick details. The fuck-me pump bruising his knuckles looked forged from green glass, an accessory for a horny Cinderella trying to spice up her flagging love life with Prince Charming. Before the ribbon candy tablecloth dropped down again, he caught the flash of a long, curvy leg, as green as the pump. Somewhere above his head, a woman spoke, her voice rich and dusky. "You little tease!" A green shape sprung up and out from the tabletop, reminding dumbstruck Dee of the liquid-metal, killer T-1000 robot from Terminator 2. Daggers of hair in a long, pixie-styled cut framed a heart shaped face with big, glittering eyes, a button nose, and a small mouth. The face glared down as it rose higher on a graceful neck. Narrow but square shoulders humped out of the stretching green mass engulfing the table. As the figure rose, the ribbon-candy tablecloth synched up, revealing more leg and taking on the appearance of a short ruffled skirt. From his vantage point, Dee could see that the green goop had coated the flat undersurface of the table, extending down into scissoring legs. As if aware he was looking, the green gel right under the table filled out into a pert derrière. Garters flicked down like cilia but no underwear formed beneath them. That's when the thought, I just might be in trouble, finally crossed Dee's bewildered mind. He lost his train of thought again as soon as the figure's breasts ballooned outward. They bobbled above him, as big as his head. "I see I've finally started to get your attention," the green girl said, lifting her heel. His hand free, Dee rocked back and fell on his ass. "But I want your full attention," the green girl breathed. She bent down toward him at an impossibly deep angle, draping dainty arms about his shoulders. She flashed a grin. Her teeth were big, slick, and as green as mint mouthwash. Looking back up at her through the valley of her breasts inches away from his face, his whole world narrowed to a fountain of hair, tits, and cupid-bow lips, all straining and swirling out of milky-green gelatin. Dee's engorged dick pressed painfully against his pants zipper. "Now," said that fiery voice, "how would you like it if I just marched into the bedroom to sleep the day away, hmm?" She arched an eyebrow at Dee. He thought for a minute. "Uh," he said. She rolled her wide, liquid eyes and hauled him up onto his feet. "Oof!" she said, rubbing a wrist. "You're a skinny fellow." She looked down and flashed that toothy, feline grin again. "Except where it counts, I think. That was harder than it should have been. Why am I so weak? Need energy." She reached back and above her head in a contortion that would kill a yoga master and flicked open the bay window blinds. The light of sunrise flooded the kitchen, and flooded through her. She sparkled like an old fashioned coca-cola bottle. "Oh!" she giggled. "I'm hollow. That explains it. You're not into balloons, are you?" She arched an eyebrow at Dee. He thought for a minute. "What?" "I didn't think so," she sighed. "I need more mass." She turned her face to the left bask in the Sun, her head haloed in a corona of limelight. "Well, I have the energy. Enough for now, anyway." Dee stepped back. Without turning her head, the green girl shot her arms out, grabbing his shoulders in a vice grip. "But I'm just a girl. A fertile girl, a fecund girl, sure, but even a fertile girl…" Her face turned to the left, again, to whip 360 degrees around, and met Dee's shaky gaze. Her canary-eating grin was so wide Dee thought the top of her head might topple off. "…Needs fertilizer." She arched an eyebrow at Dee. He thought for a minute. "Huh?" She stamped her feet. "Baka!" One green arm coiled around his neck, sinuous python-sure, while the other shot down to his groin. The tentacular arm around his neck felt deliciously cool. It sucked and smooched at his skin, looping around and around. The hand topping the tentacle swayed in front of his face for a moment before dipping down to rip off his tie and scuttle under his shirt. "Hey, bright boy," she said, "look down." Her other hand waved up at him from his crotch, her arm extended out and down like a hose. Five extra digits shot out of the hand, pseudopodia budding from an amoeba. All ten fingers wriggled up at him in greeting. They were all double jointed—no, they had no joints at all—and in split second they were all in his pants. She did not bother with niceties like unzipping his fly. She oozed around any obstacle. Dee and the green girl gasped in unison. "Ooh, bright boy is a big boy," she said. Dee tried to edge away but the loops around his neck and shoulders held him fast. Her sticky-smooth fingers rubbed the tip of his cock, circled under his glans, rippled over his shaft, pumped at his root, and kneaded his balls. Dee's knees buckled. His eyes rolled back into head and the room went dark. Somehow her warm breath washed over one ear as her gluey tongue went spelunking in the other. "Coup de gras," the green girl giggled as her left hand completed its lazy journey under his shirt to join the other below his belt. The room filled with syrupy sounds. "This is my Demonic Fifteen Point Fleshlight Palm Technique," her voice whispered into his ear as some other set of hungry lips closed over his mouth. His over-stimulated cock exploded and her greedy flesh milked it for all it was worth. White spunk swirled across the inner surface of her candy-glass torso. She purred in alien pleasure and let Dee go. He toppled over, out cold. She flowed off the table and her fuck-me pumps went thup-tup as she sauntered over to gaze down at him. His cum pearled and fell like rain within her. "Fuck all you want," she said, "I'll make more." * * * * Dee woke to the sound of sparkling, girlish laughter. He found himself in bed, morning sun warming the sheets, and for a moment he believed the encounter in the kitchen had been a dream. He had dreamt much stranger things before. After all, he had been jerking off to Internet porn for years, so a trip into his unconscious was like a Google Image search with the filter set to "The Goggles, They Do Nothing." He heard that pealing laughter again. Dee propped himself up and saw a dream made flesh. Well, no, not exactly flesh… Dee's bedroom was a sparse affair. His university diploma, a framed map of Middle Earth, and a few X-Men and Justice League pinups decorated the cheery wallpaper left by the prior tenant. His pride and joy, his custom computer gaming rig, lurked catty-corner from his bed. Another computer desk occupied the third corner of the room, where he kept his media server PC (a perpetual work in progress) and the generic WinTel box he used for surfing the Internet and telecommuting. The jellified girl sat in front of the second desk, facing his flat screen monitor. Each helpless giggle shot a burst of concentric ripples through her substance. There was a lot more to her now. She was solid, an erotic sculpture the color and clarity of green toothpaste gel. Hips flared out from a wasp-narrow waist into a single mass of green goop carved into leggy, curvy shapes ending in two wide tendrils wiggling on the floor and threatening to envelop the chair. When she threw her head back to howl in glee, green ooze would spill over the headrest and crawl down the back of the black task chair only to slurp back up again when she bent over in mirth. Doubled over, her upper body would merge into the lower in wide, lazy rolls. Only her spiky hair—no separate strands, just thick, spiky dreadlocks of gelatin—and the outward curves of her spectacular breasts remained defined. Even in this state, without a mouth or even a face, she could laugh, although the sound was little more than muffled echoes. An eruption of laughter brought her hourglass figuring shooting back out again. "Oh, my God, I love the Internet. This is just too funny!" Dee tried to find his voice. His parched throat closed. "What are you looking at?" She waved a wobbly arm at him, not turning around. "Morning, sunshine! What did you say?" He coughed. "What's so funny?" "Something I found in your Anime folder. Ahaha! It's funny because it's true! C'mere, you've got to see this! This schoolgirl stuff is so great!" He had the entire run of the comedy Azumanga Diaoh in there: funny, a little bit naughty, but mostly family friendly stuff. Maybe he wasn't in that much trouble after all. He almost smiled. "Which episode?" She literally collapsed into laughter again. When she gathered herself together, she replied between gulps of air, "Oh, I dunno. Something called 'Legend of the Overfiend.'" Oh, shit. She slowly came down from her giggle fit, her little barks of laughter—"Ah-ho! Ah-he!"—growing fewer and farther between. He shook his head to clear the static in his brain but it just made his temples throb. He had to get to get out of there. "I'm sorry, but I need to go or I'll be late for work." His monitor blazed a brilliant white as the green girl called up a Google search web page. She typed something in and his company's homepage popped up. "Nah, I took care of that." An arm of ooze fountained up and waved his cell phone at him. It's Always Time Act 01 "What?" Dee said. Two locks of hair extended into thin tendrils and mimed dialing on the cell phone. "Beep! Beep-boo-beep," she sang. The green girl's arm pressed the cell-phone to the side of her head, and then pushed the phone through the giving, jelled flesh until it floated in the translucent, emerald suspension behind her eyes. Something complicated happened inside her neck. "Hello," she droned, and Dee jumped at the sound of his own bass voice coming from her. "This is Deiter Detwiler. Can you put me in touch with HR? My…" She mocked-sighed. "My grandmother died, you see, and I need to ask about bereavement leave—" "You killed Nana?" Dee cried, leaping to his feet on the bed. His unbuttoned pajama top fell off, leaving him only in briefs. He lurched forward on the cheap spring mattress, tangled his feet in the thin comforter, slipped on the discarded top and toppled to the floor. "What?" his voice came from her again. She swung around to face him, her features performing about-face turn on her body. Even in his panic, he took pause to watch the entire back of the chair disappear into the deep valley of her cleavage. "Grandma," he choked, scrabbling to get up, to get away. "You killed—" She shouted in her own voice. ""What? Oh, Deiter: No! What kind of monster do you take more for? I just made up a story, that's all. I even faked a death certificate—thank you Internet!—but they didn't even ask for it. You've got three days of bereavement leave left. Calm down!" Dee sat up on his knees. "Sorry. I thought that—before you seemed so angry and I…" "That's okay," she said. "I did murder your girlfriend, though. It wasn't my fault, she dropped by without even calling and—" "You killed her?" Dee rose with fists clenched. "Oh my fucking God, how could—Wait a minute. I don't have a girlfriend." "You don't? Must've been the maid then." "I can't afford a maid." "Nosy neighbor, maybe?" "You're just making this up." "Of course," she cooed, and stood up, or at least elongated up to her apparent full height. The lower half of her hourglass figure spread less when standing than sitting, but only a deep, v-shaped dimple in the rounded bulk suggested separate legs. She glided close to him, undulating over the rug like a snake or snail. Dee stood about six feet tall, yet his nose was level with the base of her throat. She reached out to caress his shoulders. Her breasts got there first. The sensation blew his mind and nearly his load. It started when the nubs of her sticky nipples pressed into his collar bone. There was resistance and pressure but her tits did not push him back. They just kept coming, a tide of flesh. Two circles of gooey, cool, soft sensation grew and then merged and then surged around his arms and up his neck and down his belly and…"Oops," the green girl said, eyes twinkling with mischief. "Talk about overkill. Better reel these babies in." With a sliding slurp the tide of tits receded. She drew some of her chest's substance into the rest of her body, darkening to a forest green. "There we go," she sighed. "Big enough to shame any porn star, small enough to fit through the door. Where was I?" It took Dee a moment to respond. "You, uh, were making jokes about killing people." "Right." Her facial features rearranged themselves into a vision of sorrowful sincerity. Green, glistening oval teardrops brimmed from her pancake-sized eyes. "I'm sorry, honey," she breathed, caressing his shoulder. "Of course I didn't kill anybody. I've spent the past two days in here, with you." "Two days? That's right. Bereavement leave is five days and you said I had three days left. What happened?" Her face flicked into mischief mode again. "You don't remember the Demonic Fifteen Point Fleshlight Palm Technique, honey," she said, mocking sympathy this time. His nuts tried to draw up into his pelvis. "Oh yes I do." "No, Deiter, you just remember the first few minutes of it. It seems the human male's higher thinking functions shut down at certain levels of biochemical pleasure stimulus. We'll have to get you some beta-blockers, sweetie." "I…I don't understand." "The Demonic Fifteen Point Fleshlight Palm Technique lasts forty-eight hours." Dee plopped back down on the bed. The green girl's arm stretched down with him, her hand still tender on his shoulder. "Well that explains the hangover I guess," he said. "God, what a headache. Listen, just what the Hell is going on?" The green girl cocked her head to one side. "I bet you're thirsty." "Yeah, but what the Hell is—" "Me too!" A sine wave rocketed down the gel of her arm and the force of it pushed Dee prone on the bed. "You sit tight, I'll grab us something." She drew herself up and her outline snapped into focus, going from the suggestion of curves to very real curves in a matter of moments. Her legs were long, strong, and well defined as any runway model's. Those jade, sexy-Cinderella, fuck-me pumps popped out of her feet again, sending a wave rolling down her body as she heaved up few more inches, her breasts bobbing a mesmerizing rhythm above Dee's head. Her nipples stuck out, sculpted in a relief of smoky, opaque green in stark contrast to the milky-crystal translucency of the breasts they crowned. He could see a ghostly, fun-house mirror distortion of his gaming rig through those curved globes. "Ahem! What color are my eyes?" "A darkling green," Dee said before looking up to meet her impatient glare. "Emeralds on black velvet." She faltered a step back, a flush the color of a wine-dark sea painting her neck and cheeks. "That…that was a much unexpected thing for you to say, Deiter." Dee smiled for the first time since he walked into that SRU supply shop. "Your games and tricks are very distracting, but I do pay attention, you know. And call me Dee, please." "Games, Dee?" There was a sound like the fluttering of many wings as a crisp, maid's pinafore unfurled to just above her knees and a frilly tea-green apron crawled itself up to strain against her magnificent chest. "What games?" Pale stringy rivulets zigzagged around and down her legs to form fishnet stockings of liquid glass. To top it all off, a maid's bonnet with an elephantine bow jumped out of the top of her head with a loud, smacking pop. Dee groaned, rubbing his temples with one hand and waving her away with the other. "Okay, okay, you win. Do what you want, but promise me you'll answer some questions." She gave him the thumbs up, a broad wink, and thup-tupped out of the room. Dee heard her bustling about in the kitchen for a minute before her head peeked back into the bedroom's doorframe. The noise of busywork in the kitchen continued unabated. "You aren't hungry, are you?" she asked. "No thank you," he said. Realization dawned. "Hey, if you've been—if we've been doing—if I haven't eaten in the past two days, how come I'm not hungry?" A sly smirk puckered her lips. "Oh, you've eaten." Her head zipped out of sight. She sashayed back in the room laden with supplies, an extra pair of arms sprouted from her shoulders to carry it all. Dee had no tables other than computer desks in his bedroom, so she arrayed everything on the floor: a couple cartons of milk, four gallons of bottled water, the discarded instant Jell-O box, a shot glass, the tin of SRU thickener, two brown bottles of expensive ginger beer, and the old bottle of Nyquil from his medicine cabinet. Dee sat up on the bed and she handed him a ginger beer. He drank the bottle down to the dregs. "What's the Nyquil for?" he asked, stifling a belch. "Getting high," she said. She sat down cross legged and smoothed out her skirt. The extra arms drew back into her mass as she poured a thimbleful of the green medicinal into the shot glass. "I don't know what this does for you, but one snort of this shit and I'm flyin'." She slammed the shot glass back. The bow in her hair dissolved and her skirt crinkled up. "Woo, yeah!" Dee shook his head, hopped off the bed and helped himself to the second ginger beer. "Okay. Question time." She nodded. "Shoot." "What’s your name?" She shrugged. "Dunno." "Then how do you know my name?" She crooked her thumb at the WinTel box. "Innernet," she slurred. "How do you know how to use a computer? Or that bit about beta-blockers? Or English? Or fetish maid outfits?" "Dunno. Innernet?" Dee eyed the SRU tin. "Where did you come from?" She took one last hit of Nyquil before screwing down its bottle cap. "Fridge. You. Before that? Dunno." "What is that stuff?" Dee asked, pointing to the tin. "Nanomek." "Nanotech?" "Nanommmek." Dee gulped. "You haven't taken more of it, have you?" She swayed a bit, losing definition, oozing back into her abstract form. "Me? Nah, don' need it. Could use more collagen, though, but not that cheap stuff." She nudged the Jell-O box with a pseudo-foot. "Make me stronger. Let me do more. Have more fun." Her grin was wicked and wet, her teeth scimitars. She tried waggling her eyebrows lewdly, but her forehead just fell into her eyes instead. She smoothed it back with both hands, and for a minute her whole head was bullet-shaped before it bobbled back into the cherubic heart-shape she seemed to prefer. The ginger beer slipped from his fingers and fell fizzing to the hardwood floor. "Why? Why do you want to have fun? That is, fun with me?" "Love you." Dee sat dumbstruck until she socked him on the shoulder and added, "Dumb ass." * * * * Ain't nothing in the world like a green skin girl But that don't mean to say you can't look! —XTC, Omnibus * * * * Chapter Two: A Lovely Way to Burn Dee sighed and shook his head. A tip of a green tendril touched the puddle of ginger beer and siphoned it up. The green girl belched, straightened herself out and asked in the super-smooth, steady voice that only a drunk desperately trying to act sober thinks sounds normal, "Any more questions?" "Not right now. I guess I'll get more answers at SRU," Dee said. "The place I bought the 'nanomek'," he added when he saw her quizzical look. "Alright," the green girl said. "But not yet. You need more fluids." "You're right." Dee reached for the milk. "I'm still really thirsty." The green girl slid to block him. "Ah-ah!" "What?" "You accused me of playing tricks on you before," she said, tapping the tip of his nose. "That wasn't very nice. Want to see a real trick?" Dee thought it over. After watching the green girl get disarmingly drunk on a few ounces Nyquil, Dee thought she seemed more human now then ever. And then she'd said she loved him. What did that mean? Was it the Nyquil talking? How could she love him? How could she even exist? And how could she be so damned hot? "Well?" she asked. "Sure," he said, and she squealed and clapped her hands. The green girl seemed to sit up on her knees, her lower half forming a rounded wedge beneath the swoops and swells of her upper body. He could see the rounded tops of her legs and shadowy cleft where they met but the rest of the wedge was a solid, flowing mass. One arm stretched and snagged the carton of milk and she began to sing a wordless fanfare: "Dah dee dah-dah dee dah doo dah! Yah dee dee-dah yee dah yah dah!" She sloshed the full carton in front of his face, still singing. "An ordinary gallon of milk, ladies and gentlemen!" Dee crooned in his best radio announcer voice. Delighted, she nodded. Her fanfare built to a crescendo as she popped open the carton top—"Yah ner nah ner nah!"—but was cut short as she wrapped her lips around carton's spout. She held up a hand, four fingers and thumb snapping open and closed in the universal sign language for "yap yap yap." Her fanfare began again, quieter, from her hand. Dee thought he saw a small pair of lips moving on her palm when the hand yapped open wide. She drank the milk down, making ridiculous, cartoonish gulp! noises. The milk carton compressed and imploded until it was nothing more than an inch or so of crushed cardboard around her writhing mouth. He could see the white fluid gathering into a sphere deep in her belly. "She can suck a bowling ball through eight feet of garden hose," her hand confided to Dee on the sly, a sock puppet without the sock. The hand pivoted down. "Wow, this is getting you hard, huh?" Dee, abashed, adjusted himself in his underwear. The green girl plucked the defeated carton out of her mouth, discarded its ruined husk with disdain, and started draining the second. Even through his trauma-induced amnesia, a vague memory of the Demonic Fifteen Point Fleshlight Palm Technique stirred in him and the tiny voice of his conscience cried out an alarm. Did you see that? That's going to be you. Again. Run, run for the love of God! The thought just made him hornier. Tossing away the second empty carton, the green girl undulated with more sensuous fluidity than any belly dancer, her face plastered in a blissed-out trance. Dee watched rills of milk spiral and percolate up through her gluey interior. "You ever jerk off to a lava lamp?" the green hand asked. When Dee just shifted in silence it whined, "C'mon, talk to the hand!" When he saw where the milk was going, he scrabbled back on the bed in panic. "Oh, no. No-nuh-no-no-no-nuh-no." The green girl opened her arms in an inviting gesture, milk roiling in little pearls from fat nipples the color of black glass. Her already massive breasts were so gorged with milk she could not reach around them. "Come to momma," she cooed. Her hand cackled like a crone but she silenced it with a sideways glare. "I'm not ready for this!" Dee squeaked, gripping the head board. "It's too much!" The green girl sighed, sitting with arms wide and nipples weeping milk. A fat pseudopod arced out from her lower body and raced across the floor toward the bed. "Come..." she said as Dee watched a green gummy river flood over the bed frame, the bedposts cutting strange eddies in the current. "To..." The viscous assault lapped over and around his feet. He shut his eyes and felt it envelop his legs, cup his ass (he gasped as it goosed him once on each cheek), then crawl up his back and down his arm. "Momma!" she demanded. She tugged, gentle but relentless. The stuff made his grip too slick and he slid up and over the bed frame into her awaiting lap. He had lost his underwear along the way. He peeked with one eye and caught a glimpse of the talkative hand eating his shorts. Dee felt a cool, gentle touch on his forehead. "Not until you’re ready," the green girl’s voice promised. The edges of her lap spread out to accommodate him entirely and then folded up and over to snuggle him into a full-body embrace. She cradled his head in the crook of her shoulder and pressed his cheek gently against the underside swell of her left breast. A cool bulge on her lap tucked in around his feet and firmly massaged his soles and in between his toes. Strong, warm waves coursed over his shoulders and down his back, melting any points of tension they found. As his mind-melting massage continued, he felt a wide, warm, sticky softness settle against his scrotum and gently push his raging erection into his stomach. It pulsed in time with his slowing heartbeat, squeezing and relaxing, over and over, until he felt the sweet sting of precum production from his cock. After a few minutes, the voice of the green girl drifted through the kaleidoscope of sensation she had given him. "Ready?" He opened his eyes but her warm smile was eclipsed by the curve of her bosom. "Oh, fuck, yes," he whispered. The warm force lifted away from his groin, and he looked down only to discover it had been the sassy-mouthed hand. "She’s not a bad girl," the hand scolded, adding as it slid past his ear, "she's just flavored that way." A drop of warm milk splashed onto Dee's check. He reached out to caress and suckle a nipple—and laughed. She gulped. "What's wrong?" "Nothing. It's just, I'm so snuggled in and your breasts as so, well, awesome that I can’t reach." "I'm not built like normal girls," the green girl said. From the deep shade beneath her breasts Dee said, "I can see that." "No, silly," she said, laughing, "not like that. I mean I'm not built like normal girls. I'm not internally structured. I'm more...flexible." "Hm," Dee said. "What if I… " He reached out one hand down and around the bottom curve of her left breast, his fingers splayed out, sending ripples across the surface tension of the gel. "Oh," said the green girl. "Oh, that's, that's interesting." "That's right," Dee realized aloud, smoothing his other hand up along the upper swell of the breast. "This is the first time I've touched you, isn't it? The first time anybody has ever touched you?" "Y-yes it is," she stammered, "I—ooh!" Dee had discovered her nipple and tweaked it gently. It expressed a little milk that got in Dee's curly, chestnut hair. She started to apologize, but Dee interrupted, "Don't be. I'm nearly there." He stretched his arm as far as it could go and thought he found the top swell of her breast. "Ready?" "I guess so." Dee had never heard her nervous before. "But what…Oh. Oh my." Dee sunk his fingers into the giving surface of her jellied flesh, and pressed gently down with his palm. As he expected, the gel rolled over his hands and wrists, sealing them within the elastic substance of her breast. "Ready?" he asked again. She panted a moment. "Just stop asking and keep going. Whatever it is you're doing it feels incredible and I trust—" Dee pushed the hand reaching under forward while pulling the hand reaching over backward, ever so slowly. And, gradually, her nipple rotated downward into view. He could feel her body heave as she gulped for air. When the dark nipple was just inches away from his face, he said, "It's like the world's biggest trackball." Her whole body stiffened. "Oh, Christ, Dee," she wailed, "what a way to ruin the moo—" But he had kissed her nipple into his mouth, pressed it firmly with his tongue, and began to draw down milk. The liquid was hot, sweet, and tangy (lime?). She was dead silent as he drank. He had not realized how thirsty he really was. He gently withdrew his hands from her material—they came out sticky and wet and beaded with green droplets. His drought from her breast lasted a good ten minutes. Dee felt her change beneath him, around him, felt her lose cohesion. Her lap grew more sticky and cloying, and a runnel of hot green gelatin ran down his cheek. When he was finished, he tried to reverse the process of revolving her breast, but it was much harder going. He eventually had to nuzzle and nudge it back into its original shape and position. When he was done, he had to peel himself away from her body, and a coating of green gel came off with him. He looked at her face for the first time since he began, and saw that she was gasping for air, her surface dappled and dewy. "Are you all right?" he asked, although the ropey goop around his mouth, delicious and definitely lime, make it tough to talk. "I'm still thirsty, believe it or not, so if you want me to do the other—" The green girl reached down and hauled him up over her bosom to look him square in the eye, although her lap would not peel away from his back, and her tits refused to part with his chest. Speaking was even harder for her because her lips kept running together. "Deiter," she smacked, "shut up and look at me. You've made me so fucking wet I can't fucking stand it. I appreciate your nice, sensitive caring guy routine, I really do, but if you really want to know what I want, well right now I fucking want you to fuck my fucking brains out!" Dee grabbed handfuls of her hair, now a forest of runny ice-cream cones, and sought her lips with his. Muck bubbled over his nose and down his smooth chin, but her mouth was in there, warm and eager. He wiped just enough mess away on his forearm to whisper, "I'm just as soft as you are, here, in just this one spot," before squooshing his fingers into her melting hair and pressing back into her with a deep, French kiss. A mad moan reverberated through the green girl and her mouth collapsed into a thick, tangy, treacle that filled his mouth with a taste so heady and overpowering that he— It's Always Time Act 01 He broke the kiss and sat back. Eyes wide, he stammered. "I'm sorry I couldn’t help it, it tasted so good and I swallowed—" "I know," the green girl said, propping herself up and wrapping her legs around him. "But I just ate—" "I know and, oh, fuck do it again," she begged, arched her back, and pushed the sloppy mound of her pussy into his face. He had eaten a woman out before, but never like this. At first he worried he couldn't possibly find her slit in all the ooze but it found him instead, unfolding in delicate petals about his mouth and unleashing a torrent of sticky nectar. The green girl murmured nonsense words and incoherent phrases, her thrashing throwing long swathes of green gunk all over the room. Dee sunk his head in up to his ears and she gave a burbling cry. Freshets of the remaining milk coursed down her breasts and pooled in the curve of her belly. "No more, no more," she whimpered, crawling backward, away from him. The naturally kinky curls of his hair were slicked flat back, his head and chest completely coated in thick sheets of green icing. Sitting back with legs splayed, all Dee could think to say was, "Holy shit." The green girl snorted a weary laugh. "Understatement of the fucking year, bright boy." She ripped the caps off two of the plastic water jugs and upended them both into her gaping mouth. When they were depleted she did the same with the last two. She gargled, mouth stretching cavern-wide to prevent spilling a single drop—argle-bargle-gargle—and Dee had to laugh, despite his iron-rod erection. She did an about-face on all fours, locked her eyes on his, and padded silently toward him, the green gobs scattered across the room morphing forward to slurp into her body. Her definition and size sharpened and grew as she crawled closer, her hungry glare roving down his body to zero in on his dick. Her mammoth chest squashed against the floor, pushing out into cleavage that must have been a few feet deep. "Uh," Dee said as she crawled over him, sandwiching his legs between her tits. The green icing coating Dee's skin flowed over and around and into her chest, causing her breasts to bulge out and down even further, trapping his legs tight. Her hot breath burned his crotch as she hovered over him, nearly ten feet of predatory, feline femininity, for several silent moments. Looking down and through the top of her head, Dee tried to break the electric tension in the air: "What—" Not bothering to look up, she pushed him supine with a dismissive shove. "Mine," she growled, and smothered his dick with her mouth. Dee had always wondered what a porn starlet's blowjob might feel like, but he knew he would never fantasize about something so mundane again, not after being deep-throated by a living champagne whirlpool with the vacuuming force of a tornado. The green girl started by swallowing the tip of his prick into delicious, pressing warmth. He sighed. She looked up, raised one eyebrow, swallowed again, and this time he gasped as her lips sank over his entire shaft and the incessant suckling sensation began. Her lips munched on the base of his cock as she closed her eyes in happy concentration and added a rumbling, leonine purr to the concoction. "Oh, man, wow!" Dee said. "Wow! Wo—ohhshit!" he squeaked when without warning she swallowed again and took his entire pelvis into her mouth, balls, hips, ass, and all. "Not having a jaw really helps," she drawled through her chatty hand, her head starting to bob up and down with an ever increasing tempo. Dee managed a whimpering groan. "Ooh, that gives me an idea!" said the hand. "Be right back!" Her arm elongated to snake out of the room but turned to face him when it reached the doorway. Every impulse in his body demanded he buck and thrust but the weighty tits held him fast. "You're not going anywhere for a while, are you?" the hand asked. The slurping, slapping, and rumbling hum doubled in speed and volume. "Didn't think so," the hand said, and the arm stretched out the door. Dee was almost as amazed at his own resilience as with the cosmic blowjob. The slow pressure buildup of his orgasm only coaxed the green girl into increasingly inventive maneuvers. The imperative to thrust become unbearable. "Let me move!" he growled through gritted teeth. She whipped over onto her back, dragging him up and plopping him astride, almost inside, her chest. Uncontrollable, he fucked her mouth furiously up through the green valley between her breasts. Her eyes lost focus and crossed as she nodded her encouragement, sometimes grunting in between thrusts when his cock popped out of her mouth and slithered back into her cleavage: "Urgh. God. More. Yes. Fuck! More." Finally, Dee felt the throbbing inevitability of a crashing release. He could barely speak. "Gunna—" The green girl's form had grown soft and gooey again, but that didn't stop her grabbing his ass, lifting him up in the palm of one hand, and rocking forward with lightning speed, spattering a spray of gel emeralds in every direction. She dropped him on the bed and dropped into his lap. "Cum for me, Dee," she said, running a gooey tongue up and down his dick. "Cum for—" "Holy shit!" said the hand as it raced in, carrying a half-dozen small boxes. "I almost missed the best part." Dee and the green girl turned and shouted, "Shut up!" in perfect unison. "Sorry," the green girl panted. She rubbed her oozing cheek over his member, slopping and pumping with her more agreeable hand. "Cum for me, Dee. Please. I—I want—I need…" Dee trembled and went rigid. "Yes!" the green girl hissed, taking his entire dick in a single swallow just as it erupted. Dee shuddered as he spurted into her. He grabbed for her head and lurched upright and then over, thrusting down her throat as he spurted again, and again. He toppled back on the bed and she sucked down one final gush of spunk. She pulled her head away, wearing that blissful expression again, a steady stream of green gel running from her parted lips and coating his rock hard erection in slime. He propped his head up, staring at his still hard dick in disbelief. "What the fuck?" "That's my boy," she sighed, her ecstatic gaze never leaving Dee's crotch as she tore open the little boxes her hand had brought in. Somewhere, some part of her started up that wordless fanfare again. "Yah dah-dee dah yah-dah yah-dah…" She tipped a jumble of extra strength Alka-Seltzer out of the boxes and onto the bed. "I had to break into the five apartments to find all these," she said over the tuneless singing. "Why?" he asked, and watched in sinking realization as she popped a dozen of the effervescent tabs into her mouth. "Oh, no." "Oh yes," she replied. The fizz started behind her lips but soon filled her every crevice with bubbling, snapping, coruscating foam, making her hair stand on end and writhe in the air. "Woo! Does this tickle! So…you ready?" He shook his head but said, "You better fucking believe it." * * * * The guitar intro of the next song jangled from the media server's vibrant speakers. The green girl lying on her back on the floor bopped to the beat, stirring up some last few funnels of fizz in her jellified head and feet. Recognizing the song—it was her playlist queued up on the server, after all—she sang with the first verse, her pitch going sharp on every stressed word: "This bed is on fire with passionate love…the neighbors complain above the noises above…but she only cums when she's on top…" Staccato drums rattled. She swizzled a pair of fingers around the pool of semen cooling in the hollow between her breasts and popped them into her mouth, making a happy, smacking "Mm!" noise as she sucked down a little more of Dee's cum before belting out the next verse, badly out of tune: "My therapist said not to see yah no more…She said yer like a dizz-ease! without any cure…She said I'm so ob-sessed that I'm becomin' a bore oh no…" She smeared more spunk up and around her breasts, slathering and squeezing the saucers of green-black areola, puffed out thanks to all the fizzing, until his cum ran warm and clear around her neck. She tried to suck and shovel it into her mouth but didn't get far before her favorite verse started. She gave up trying to sing altogether and shouted like a demented William Shatner declaiming Beatles' songs: "Moved out of the house—so you moved next door! I locked you out—you cut a hole in the wall! I caught you sleeping next to me—I thought I was alone! You're driving me crazy when are you coming home?" She arched her back, clenched her fists, and the remains of Dee's cum simply slurped straight into her skin. She collapsed into a fit of giggles. Dee wandered back into the bedroom soon after, a flannel bathrobe plastered to his sticky skin, drinking ice water out of a big blue plastic cup. He asked, "What's up?" She tilted her head back so she could look upside down at him. The next song started ("Hey boy take a look a me let me dirty up your mind") but she kept silent, spreading her legs and pointing down at the cleft of her gelatinous crotch, where she had shoved the subwoofer. When the snazzy chorus kicked in, the bass pulsing from the subwoofer shook her body into a stereoscope. Thousands of little triangular waves spiked and frazzled. "You drank more Nyquil?" Dee asked. She raised a hand to salute him with the empty shot glass, her arm rendered fuzzy from the fractals shooting through her. "A little," she admitted. Dee drank in thoughtful silence for a while. A third song wound up. The green girl, her head still upside down, watched him as a voice with a piping brogue sang, "A rubber band hold me trousers up! A rubber band ponytails! If I could learn to twang like a rubber band, I'd be a Rubber Band Girl!" "I found some stuff in the living room," Dee said. ("A rubber band girl, me!") "Yeah?" said the green girl. ("A Rubber Band Girr-rl, me!") "You’ve been shopping. On eBay, I presume? With my account." ("Oh I wanna be a Rubber Band Girl…") "Only when you were unconscious." ("A Rubber Band Girl is she!") "Autographed posters; autographed commemorative plates; autographed figurines; autographed life-sized cardboard cutouts?" Dee said. The green girl shrugged, a Hell of a trick to do with your neck craned upside down on the floor. "He's number one on the list," she said. "What list?" "You know, The List. Where we each get to pick five different celebrities that we can sleep with, and the other one can't get mad. He's number one on mine," the green girl explained. "René Auberjonois?" Dee demanded. "So?" She shrugged again. "I bet the number one celebrity on your list isn't even real." "Jessica Rabbit," Dee said without hesitation. "Actually, none of the celebrities on my list are real. That's why it's perfectly okay for me to have a list, because I'm never ever going to meet…" The green girl rocketed up in showering fountain and a monochromatic Jessica Rabbit stood before him in a shimmering sequined dress. Dee probably would have ejaculated right on the spot except for cables running from a subwoofer stuffed up and pounding away at her box, ruining the effect. "You were saying?" she asked. She had to raise the timber of her voice just a bit for a perfect impersonation. With exaggerated care, Dee put down the cup, walked over to the media server and stopped the music. "Oh, you want summa this?" came Jessica Rabbit's voice again. With a few clicks of the mouse, Dee called up the media server's graphic equalizer, cranked its bass and volume to the maximum, and swapped out the song. A finger hovered over the "play" button on the keyboard. "Let's go home and I'll bake you a carrot cake," the jade Jessica baby-talk mocked, shimmying. Dee's finger drifted down. "Wah!" the green girl cried in alarm, pin wheeling around and losing all definition after the very first boom of thundering house music. In between shuddering thuds, the green girl barked pleas. "Gah! Help! Sorry! Dee! Help! Please! Sorry!" "… My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard…" "Ngh! Can't! Think! Help!" Leaving the house music to pound away, Dee stepped into the narrow hallway connecting the bedroom to the apartment's one bathroom and modest living room / dining room / you-can't-afford-a-real-kitchen room. He glared at the row of rattling Star Trek: Deep Space Nine commemorative plates now decorating the former tenant's cheerful wallpaper. The green girl's pleas turned into wordless, monosyllabic cries: "Yah! Eee! Whoa! Oof!" Something thumped in rapid succession up from beneath his feet; Dee's downstairs' neighbor banging with a broom, he had no doubt. Cardboard cut-outs of René Auberjonois in full Odo makeup (Dee christened them "The Auberjon-eoises") dominated the living room. Dee lost a staring contest to the silent, mournful gaze of the one in the middle, the one with the fluorescent green lipstick imprint smeared on its cheek. "Oh, shut up," he told it before stomping into the kitchenette. Dee was refilling the blue plastic cup from the tap in the kitchen sink when the green girl gave one single, piercing shriek followed by a tremendous splattering noise. He spun on his heels. The blue cup flung away, end over end. He raced through the living room, mowing down the lip-printed Auberjonois, and skidded through the bedroom door. He dove for the media server like it was home plate. The speakers hummed and popped before falling silent. The server toppled over. Dee came to a painful, sliding halt, the media server's power cord in his hand. Dee stared. The green girl sat on the subwoofer in the middle of the room. Her teeny feet, wrapped in tight ballet slippers, dangled over the subwoofer but her stubby legs didn't reach the floor. A pale green, silk taffeta tutu flowered around her bottom, an opaque leotard hiding her boyish figure. With hair done up in spiky pigtails, her head was the same size as ever, almost dwarfing the rest of her. She pouted, wide saucer eyes thunderous, on the verge of a terrible tantrum. But instead she lowered her gaze, scuffed her feet and muttered a squeaky protestation. "That wasn't very nice." Dee stared. A thick coating of green goop painted the ceiling. It gathered into a central mass high above her and distended downward. A pear-shaped dollop of the stuff snapped off the bulge and plopped onto her head. She grew a bit taller and her feet touched the floor. She skooched around so Dee couldn't see her face. "You were mad." "Yes," Dee said, although he knew it had not been a question. Another gobbet fell, and she grew another inch. She turned back, pigtails whipping about eyes twinkling liquidly with tears or rage, Dee couldn't tell which. "Why?" she demanded, her voice a bit deeper now. "Was it because I spent your money? You got mad at me about your money?" She stood up and kicked the subwoofer away. He opened his mouth to say, "But I have so little of it!" but instead he shouted, "No!" A few more big drops fell. She glared at him, morphing into puberty. The bands holding her pigtails in place snapped back and her hair stabbed out into its familiar frizz. The silent treatment she gave him reminded Dee so painfully of his boyhood experiences with girls he started to panic. "I thought you'd like it," he said, scrambling to his feet, bathrobe falling open. "Really! You know, because of the vibrations, and how you'd stuck—I, I—there's this Howard Stern movie, see, and I—" The remaining stuff on the ceiling crashed onto, then into, the green girl in a series of wobbling spheres. As each one splashed down, she would make a quantum leap in size and age and take another step toward him, her voice double-pitched for a split second then dopplering down into a more adult tone, until with a final splash she stood almost as Dee first met her, cherubic yet mature, proud, and only inches away. "You -splash- dumb ass! Don't you -splash- get it? Things don't turn me on, just -splash- you! Your -splash- touch, your -splash- smell, your taste! You, -splash- you, you! Just stupid -splash- fucking -splash- you!" … -splash- She glowered up at him for another long moment, but then cocked her head to one side. "Well," she sighed, "you and maybe René—" He heard a voice scream in rage. It was his. "God damn it! God damn Auber Jon Woo—Abujer—Abu—God damn fucking Odo!" She took a step back. Her hair stood straight up. Her hand fluttered around her throat. He pressed his fists to his temples. "I can't believe I'm so fucking jealous of Odo! Stupid Deep Space Ni—" She launched like a tsunami up into him, slamming his mouth with hers, her arms shooting up into the air behind his head before clamping down around his neck. Her lips worked feverishly and both legs kicked up high behind her. He teetered backward into the wall but her forward momentum refused to stop. She sloshed over him and for an incredible moment his body was entirely engulfed in an electric kiss before she bounced back and broke away with a gasp. She panted, her bare, small, pert breasts heaving. He looked down and cracked up with mirth. Her mouth opened into an angry O to shout at him again but confusion clouded her face and, crinkling her forehead, she looked down. She was stark naked. Except, of course, for the tutu. The green girl stamped her feet and the tutu flipped into her like a pull-shade. "You fucking asshole," she said, laughing. His laughter wound down. "You're shorter." "There's less of me now," she explained. Dee looked panicked. "Was it me? Was it the music? Are you alright?" "I'm fine," she said. "It wasn't the music. It was the Alka-Seltzer. A bunch of me evaporated, that's all." "It can grow back?" "Oh?' She arched an eyebrow. "You like me big, eh?" Dee said, "I like you big and small." The green girl flicked open his robe and ran a finger up and down his bare chest, leaving a light trail of slime. "I can be anything you want …" Dee heard the pregnant pause. "If?" She looked up, grinning daggers at him. "If you do everything I say." Dee nodded as he if knew what to expect. "Okay," he said. "How does this work? What are the rules?" She stepped into the middle of the room and twirled about, her body whipping itself into its usual, voluptuous figure, although it forced her to stand a few inches shorter. "Simple." Her feet squeaked to a sudden standstill. She watched him watch her breasts collide and rebound off each other for a minute. Then two. Then she sighed and squished her tits together with her elbows, snuffing out their gyrations. "Eyes?" she scolded, but lolled her hands lazily over her breasts, cupping and squeezing, until those globes melted a bit to appear smothered in baby-oil. She watched Dee's thick dick begin to engorge. "Emeralds," said Dee, not taking his eyes of her self-ministrations. "Black velvet. Deep enough to drown in. Yadda yadda." "Simple," she started again, arcing an arm under a heavy tit and heaving it to her mouth. She wriggled her lips and tongue around the dark nipple. The lower half of her face was soon coated in rolling oil, like a baby eating a gooey chocolate chip cookie. "Lithening?" she lisped, erect nipple in her mouth. "Uh. Yeah." His dick peeked out of his robe. Her breast fell away from her mouth with a loud wet slap. She ran her hands around the upper curves of her breasts, gathering big waves of green oil between her fingers. Her hands met and pushed the roll of goo down her tight cleavage. She rocked her hips out a bit so she could slide the stuff across her tummy, working it into the taut plain just above the delta of her sex. "I just need the three Ds." It's Always Time Act 01 "Three Ds," Dee repeated, entranced. His manhood jutted out to its full length, and the green girl's mouth watered so much her lips brimmed over in a steady stream of green that flowed down her chin only to be absorbed by her slowly swelling chest. Dee didn't seem to notice. "Vitamin D," she said, waving to the open window. The light of the afternoon glistened off her in a buttery sheen. "Sunlight," Dee said. She tilted her head, listening to the still-running kitchen sink. "Dioxy hydrogenate." Dee blinked. "Water," he said, "that's a long way to go for a pun but okay." She rocked her hips out even farther to run the oil over her mound and down her inner thighs. "Mm," she said, the fountain from her mouth forming a viridian puddle on the floor, "and vitamin D." "You said 'Sun' already," Dee reminded. "No, smartass," she said. She squirmed down a bit more then quickly stood up—and kept surfing up, her abdomen stretching high into the air and then downward in a graceful, fluid curve that brought the upper half of her body right onto Dee's cock. "Vitamin Dee," she cooed, and gobbled him down. The green girl growled, mashing her swollen tits around Dee's thighs, burying her head so deep between his legs that her button nose ground into his pubic hair. An inhuman, hydraulic pressure thrummed deep in her chest and his dick was vacuum-locked tight within her rapacious flesh. Even in the throes of knee-buckling blowjob, Dee realized that "rapacious" was the perfect word. This was like being sexually assaulted by an angry key-lime pie in a pneumatic press. He tried to backpedal but only succeeded in wallowing deeper in her cloying cleavage, an insect drawn further down the throat of a pitcher plant by its own futile struggles. "Wait a minute," he said, laughing. She rolled back a bit to give him the teeniest margin of breathing room. When she spoke her lips would brush the tip of his cock with syrup on every other word. "It's been over ten minutes since my last titfuck already!" She groused, brow furrowing. "I want more." Her mouth opened wide to utter a guttural "Now!" and countless rows of green, serrated, shark-teeth unfurled behind her sloppy lips. He winced as she brought them down on his defenseless glans only to fall to his knees in helpless delight as hundreds of those rubbery points wriggled and gnawed over the head of his cock. That little prudish, frightened voice from the back of his mind returned, trying to be heard over the green girl's demanding, meowing cries of "Nowwwnyum! Nowwwnrrrum!": You've been doing this non-stop for two and a half days, remember? And she can't even wait fifteen minutes! Hold on, I'm just turning you on more, aren't I? You’re a lost cause! I hope she makes you orgasm so much your penis turns inside out. That turns you on too? What kind of sick fuck are you? That Blue Fairy can kiss my chitinous, cricketty ass. I'm outta here. "Wait a minute," he said again. "Wait-a-minute!" She sloshed up and away, rolling her eyes. Her tummy still stretched long through the air, her bellybutton somewhere in the middle of its lazy arch. Her feet tapped an impatient rhythm on the other side of the room. "Jesus, you are such a girl! What, you want dinner and a movie first?" "Well, no, but—" "Okay," the green girl said, "some wooing, maybe?" Her face glided back down close to his crotch. She crossed her eyes in a vapid gaze. "Hello, darling," she said to his dick in a dreamy singsong. She clasped her hands to her bosom. "Oh, I missed you ever so much!" Dee tried his best to frown but found himself smiling instead. She met his smile with an impish grin. "Formality, then," she said, and turned back to speak to his dick. "Hey there, handsome!" She pumped his cock in a quick, hearty, gushy handshake. Dee yipped and bucked against her ambush hand-job but she just grabbed his shaft with both hands, pumping away like a crooked politician desperate to make a good impression. "Nice to meetcha! What's yer name young fella?" Dee lurched, rigid and awkward. His erection flagged. "It doesn't have a name," he said. The green girl stopped the attack but did not let go. She looked up at him in that crinkle of confusion Dee suddenly realized he found adorable. "I thought every guy named his dick." "I don't. I'm just me. It's a part of me. I know that sounds stupid, but it's important to me." She looked back down at his dick, treating it to long languid strokes, slowly bringing it back to throbbing life. "I think it should have a name," said the green girl, "because it's important to me." Dee shook his head, distracted by the luscious, languorous sensation of her working him over. "Well, you don't have a name, and you’re a part of—I mean you're important to…me," he trailed off, realizing what he'd said. Her face and neck flushed so dark they turned black. The lower half of her body tiptoed over and her top rocked back onto it, standing beside him. "You got your minute," she whispered. Then, louder, "You have a suggestion, I take it?" "Uh-huh," he said, turning to face her. "First, no tricks or Techniques, please." She nodded. "All-righty." "Promise?" She furrowed a curved X-shape in the swell of her left breast. "Cross my heart." "Okay, here's my proposal: You can name my penis, if I get to name you. But before that…" Dee cupped the green girl's chin in his right hand and gently turned her head to her left before wrapping his other arm around a her cool, rubbery back. His lips pushed into her ear. The ear immediately began to burn and melt. He dropped the palm of his right hand onto the gel-flesh below her sternum (or where her sternum would be if she had one). His hand ran down her, the pressure of his caress gradually increasing so that by the time he reached her now-sopping sex his curling fingers were raking deep inside her yielding substance. Her whole body wracked in shivering spasms, the green girl wrapped both hands around his wrist to push his hand in even deeper. She mewled and sobbed in desperate pleasure. The spikes of her hair collapsed into green velvet ribbons of icing coursing down Dee's neck. "We fuck," he finished. * * * * The green girl's pussy was unwrought but ravenous like no other, her womb craving to devour not conceive. It drank up Dee's hand, then his wrist, then his forearm in three lurching whorls of her innermost gel. Dee reeled under the pressure and heat but his G-rated, Jimminy Cricket of a conscience that had kept him ashamed of his own deviant desires for so long, was now long gone. He felt no fear, only a humbling joy of being the subject of a desire so strong it wanted to swallow him whole. Well, all right, only a humbling joy and the urgent need to screw the living fuck out of the most glorious cunt in the world, which just so happened to belong to the sexiest girl in the universe, whose one desire just so happened to be his cock. I guess it isn't so humbling after all, he decided. The green girl, however, had cried out in lust salted with fear and alarm after each reversed contraction, as if betrayed by her own flesh laying her deepest secrets bare. She pressed her fists into her mouth, trying to muffle her whimpering babble. Dee thought most of her mutterings sounded like the whispery glossolalia that had overcome some of his past lovers when approaching orgasm, but then she shakily reached out to him, batting at his chest one instant and pawing at it the next, and he heard her clearly. It worried him. "It's time? It's time? Is it time? It's time?" He held her close, but she wouldn't stop trembling. "Is it time? It's time? It's time? It's time? Is it time?" He kissed her on a forehead as pliant as most women's lips. "Only if you want it to be," he said, and tenderly withdrew his arm. She moaned in despair but did not move to stop him and his arm slid free, gloved in molten green gunk so hot it steamed when touched by the cooling air. The stuff radiated up his arm then splayed across his shoulder and chest in ever-thinning tendrils, until nothing but blots like tiny green beads of mercury rolled over every curve and crevice of his body before vanishing to nothing. It wanted to surround me, Dee thought, to embrace me, but there wasn't enough of it. He stepped back. The geek and the green girl regarded each other. Dee stood tall and lanky, an unruly tangle of tightly curled, chestnut hair tufting his head, his relaxed, ready stance belying a hidden grace and strength. The green girl was as curvaceous as ever, but to keep her figure with her reduced mass, some lost to the champagne blowjob and the rest sluicing away now from her passion, she barely stood over five feet tall. Her arms thrust down and out, fists shaking. She couldn't seem to dare meet his gaze, or even look down at his erect manhood. Her stormy eyes roved over him, unseeing. She spoke in a stage whisper, hoarse yet high-pitched, sad yet anxious. "I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready." The curved X still furrowed her left breast like a raw wound that refused to heal. A recollection of something she had said ["…Fridge. You. Before that? Dunno…"] and a realization of what he had done, or rather, what he had failed to do, hit Dee hard. "This is just like before, isn't it?" he asked. "This is exactly your first memory: of me like this, and you, like that." He stepped forward. "But it's not. Not really, because I'm different now. I'm not afraid, or ashamed, anymore, and I was never ashamed of you." The green girl fell onto her hands and knees which soon lost their form to the growing green lake, now lapping at Dee's feet on the floor. She turned about, pressed her head to the floor, and presented her gushing sex to him. "Please," she whispered. "Please. Is it time?" Dee waded to her. "It's time," he said, kneeling behind her. "It's always time." He reached out and hugged her deliquescing body close. She arched up into his chest, throwing her head back to spatter him in searing green honey. A bubbling cry of wordless delight tore from her throat. "It always will be time." Dee slid his arms under her stomach and cupped her breasts, his hands drowning in their curtaining flood. The green girl groaned, swung her head from side to side, her hair nothing but waves of warm sugary froth. Dee kissed the ambrosia off the nape of her neck. "You are Galatea, and it's always time," Dee said, rocked forward on his haunches, and entered into her. Galatea went nova with his first thrust. She reared, arms thrown wide, screaming in raw abandon. Dee locked his arms betwixt her breasts, cheek turned against the flat of her back, and rode the foaming wave. He tried to call her name, but her liquid interior clutched and blazed around his cock, reducing him to snarling need. The cresting of her thrash forced Dee to his feet and threatened to engulf him completely but did nothing to satisfy the primal demand to drive himself even deeper. His hands clawed, breaking the surface tension of Galatea's gel-flesh chest to get a strong grip, and he spun about, whipping her around and splattering her face-down onto the bed, never withdrawing from her consuming sex. He pulled his arms through and out so he could straddle her ass, then pushed his palms down and in to find purchase for each lunge. Galatea found her voice, dreamy and feverish. "Oh, my God, it's so solid." She propped herself up, trapping his arms within her, to slosh and grind her body against his, reaching back to run a sticky hand over Dee's neck and through his hair. "He's. So. Fucking. Solid!" Dee never imagined that a word like "solid" could sound so pornographic, but it burst from her lips like it was the bluest dirty-talk in the world. He tried to call her name again—"Gala—" but she drew his head down into a blistering, citrus kiss that obliterated any rational thought. He wrenched an arm free from the honey-trap of her viscid flesh, twined the frothing sickles of her hair in his fingers, and rammed her back down onto the bed. "Yes!" Galatea barked as her head hit the bed with a resounding splat. "So good. So deep. So solid!" The green lake around the rutting lovers turned tidal. White-capped waves churned in a miniature maelstrom then leapt into the air in long, jetting ribbons that corkscrewed around Dee at break-neck speed before stabbing down into Galatea, refueling her fluidity. Dee felt pressure build within him. "What's my name?" moaned Galatea. Dee tried to speak but only growled, ploughing his fingers through her back. Galatea yelped in ecstasy but pushed herself up off the bed, leering at him over her shoulder. The green streamers hurtled around Dee, cracking like whips, funneling down to feed Galatea's coalescing form. Dee felt the pressure begin to brim. "What's my name?" called Galatea. Dee could only hiss through gritted teeth. He gathered her up in his arms to hug her close, feeling her flesh press tight against him as she grew. He bit down on her neck so hard his teeth met in her throat. She lurched away just enough to cry, "God! Yes!" before rutting hard against him. A great crescent of green flashed into her and suddenly his hips joined his dick inside her scorching cunt. "What's my fucking name?" demanded Galatea. A final thrust and Dee's legs locked. "Galatea!" he bellowed, and flooded her with his cum. * * * * Fever, when you kiss them, Fever if you live and learn Fever! 'Til you sizzle What a lovely way to burn. —Peggy Lee, Fever * * * * Chapter Three: That Wave The green girl startled with Dee's first spurt, giving him a searching glance over her shoulder. Her eyes soon glazed, lips parting in a lazy, helpless smile, watching as Dee's orgasm ebbed and Dee pressed a fist into the sopping mattress to hold himself up. She rolled gently on her side, her gaze heavy-lidded and unfocused, and slipped away from Dee's cock, making him shudder and gasp. Galatea curled up to hug her knees and nestle them under her neck. Three throaty, breathless giggles bubbled through her, "Ah-hah, ah-hum, hm-mm." Dee splashed down into the bed next to her. Galatea rolled over to face him, watching his chest heave as he gulped for air. "We are definitely going to do that again," she told him, "a lot." He smiled. "It was good, then? You liked it?" He lifted a hand off the bed. It was slick with her fluid. He dropped his hand back down and the soaked coverlet squelched. "Kinda hard to tell." She just arched an eyebrow and hummed. She sat up, spread her legs, and rubbed a hand over her raw sex. "I was wondering what this was for," she joked. Dee rolled his eyes to the ceiling, reached for a pillow, and plopped it over his head. "Lord all-mighty," he sighed. Galatea's fingers came away sticky with Dee's sperm. She stared at them for a while. With a quick check to make sure Dee wasn't looking, she pressed them deep into the folds of her pussy, her face a mask of sublime longing. She shook the expression off and bounced out of bed. Dee pulled the pillow away from his eyes. "Goodbye?" he said. "I'm thirsty," she said. Dee watched the spectacular orbit of her ass as she padded away from him. "I'm always thirsty after sex. Probably." "What about…?" Dee asked, and squeezed the coverlet with both hands. It burbled. "I'm using it already." The citrine stuff was flowing to follow her to the door. "I'm going to go get a drink," she said, adding in perfect deadpan, "and when I come back, I am going to fuck the ever living shit out of you." Dee blinked. "Uh," he chuckled uncertainly, "I really don't think I can go another round right now." She dismissed him with a wave of her arm, and walked out into the hallway, green rivulets chasing after her. "Pfft. Yeah, right. Tell that to mine." "Mine?" Dee asked. "Not yours, 'Mine,'" came Galatea's voice. The sound of the kitchen sink, a constant background noise for some time, stopped. "I don't understand," Dee called out over the loud splashing and gurgling sounds coming from the kitchen. "What's 'mine'?" "The name of your dick." He glanced down at Mine, still pointing straight at the ceiling. "Oh, fuck me." "You got that right, bright boy." Dee gingerly inspected the head of his dick. It was as sensitive and primed as ever. "Seriously. I think something's wrong with me. A guy can't keep going like this, no matter what you've read on the Internet. I think I need to see a urologist or something." "Nah." Galatea's voice drifted down the hallway. "Just stop thinking with the wrong head. Your dick knows what's coming, even if you don't." "What's coming?" Dee sat up. "Remember, you promised—" "Man," Galatea said, ignoring him, "you really did a number on your kitchen." The splashing and gurgling continued, as if Galatea were playing in a giant but slowly draining bathtub. "There's a lot of water in here." Glad for the change of subject, Dee said, "There goes my security deposit." Dee heard something creak and groan, metal stressing under pressure. "Oh, don't worry," Galatea called, her voice oddly amplified and doubled (tripled?) with echoes, amused but sinister. A rushing roar started up, the bedroom floor atremble. "I took care of it." A green deluge decanted into the bedroom, an endless, hollow, curling wave of melted Jell-O. It broke into s sleeting spray against the opposing bedroom wall until the floor seethed with spume. Dee sat agog on the bed, possessed by the giddy illusion that he had been cast adrift on an aquamarine gel sea. A pair of supple hands reached out of the sea-foam teeming at the foot of the bed. The hands entwined, back-to-back, palms facing out. Sinuous arms arose. A face of Hellenic beauty soon followed, turned away from Dee in blushing, virginal modesty. When her mouth broke the surface of the foam she gasped, orgasmic, scraping her sensuous lips over an upraised forearm. Wild locks of the woman's mane billowed in an unfelt breeze. Only a mark branded upon her left breast, a curving X, disrupted her perfect, symmetrical beauty. Emerging from the foam, she untwined her arms, gathered up overflowing handfuls hair, and slowly drew them down and around her breasts and hips, fingertips kissing her skin. Swaying in post-coital lethargy, an apple-green Venus from the fever-dreams of Botticelli was born at Dee's feet. Dee blushed, blood singing in his ears. "I'm not worth this," he said, a bitter smile breaking through smarting tears. "I've done nothing to earn anything like this." The jade Venus stepped up onto the bed and knelt beside him to his right, taking his hands in hers. Dee could not bear to meet her gaze and shut his eyes tight, spilling the tears that brimmed in his eyes. "Kiss me," she said in Galatea's steamy voice, planting a series of quick, open-mouthed kisses on Dee's face, drinking up the teardrops. "Just kiss me," she whispered, raining those same succulent little kisses on his lips. Venus was holding his trembling hands in her lap when someone cupped his chin and gently turned his face away from her in mid-kiss. Dee blinked open his stinging eyes. A lithe feminine form the pale green color of absinthe sat cross-legged to his left. Her ears tapered to high points above a mop of thick, loose curls. Her dragonfly wings, green but translucent, stretched out from her back, buzzing the air when he gaped at her. The green fairy's face was as exotic and inscrutable as the Moon, her left breast branded with the curving X. She wound her other hand through his hair. "Drink me," she said in Galatea's voice, and pulled him down onto an upturned nipple that filled his mouth with a burning liqueur. Head spinning, Dee swallowed once, then twice. Venus tugged his hands, pulling him back, and tongued the remaining liqueur from his mouth, only to lose him to the strong embrace of the green fairy again. The green fairy cradled his head in one hand and guided a cordial-seeping nipple to his lips with the other, while Venus tugged impatiently at his arms—and a third pair of hands grabbed his by the shoulders, wrenched him down onto the bed, and wedged his head tight between fleshy green thighs. It's Always Time Act 01 The newcomer's wicked, fanged grin flashed down at him. She smoothed over the hair on his forehead with a sharp, talon-tipped finger. "Eat me," she said in Galatea's voice, and wriggled her heady, sultry mound onto his face. Delirious, Dee did his best to appease the succubus straddling him, probing, nibbling, and nuzzling. He felt her laughter ripple through her, and she just pressed down harder. His ears plugged and vision distorted by the hot gel-flesh swaddling him, he caught a wavering, milky-green glimpse of Venus leaning out to soul-kiss the creature straddling him. They broke the kiss and the succubus bit down on Venus' neck, Venus' moan vibrating through the mattress. Dee closed his eyes, sure he would faint from the liquid fire burning in his belly and the overpowering aroma, pressure and heat of the sex smothering him, but he felt the buzz of the green fairy's wings as she crawled over his legs, and when she cried "Feed me!" loud enough to be heard through all the gel oozing around him and slurped his cock into her greedy throat, he thought: No, I'm not going to faint. I'm going to die. After a few wonderful, terrible moments, the assault on his senses and sanity came to an abrupt stop. The green fairy groaned in disappointment and released his dick in a mournful, reluctant huff. The creature riding his face just made a clucking noise, lips parting from Venus' neck with a final, gurgling, "M'wah!" She slid back, knelt behind him, grabbed him under the armpits, and propped him up on her wide lap. He peeked up at her and she smirked, pointing to her left breast. He startled, seeing it bore the brand. She winked lewdly, hugged her strong arms over his shoulders, and held him down. The green fairy sat next to her, and clasped one of his hands to her bosom, holding it fast. Venus sat on the other side, plucked up his other hand, kissed the palm, and rubbed it over her cheek—but when he tried to pull back, she grabbed his wrist with both hands. Below the foot of the bed, something said, "Kiss me." Galatea welled up from the illusory depths surrounding Dee, as slow and unstoppable as the lunar tides. Dee could only make out the vaguest hints of the familiar features – heart-shaped face, daggers of hair, darkling emerald eyes, heart-stopping figure – in the green torrent that surged around her, off her, through her, a Möbius strip of a waterfall folding back into itself. He knew well enough by now that this quickening signaled her excitement, and probably imminent orgasm. "Kiss me," Galatea said again. "Kiss me, drink me." Dee just couldn't wrap his mind around how large she had become. Dee and the three green women holding him down followed Galatea with their eyes as she rose up, and up, and up. "Kiss me, drink me, eat me, feed me," she said, planted a hand on the floor on either side of the bed, rocked back to sit on her knees, and smashed her head into the ceiling. "Kiss me," Galatea said, swinging her head down until a sumptuous mouth large enough to swallow Dee whole was just inches away from his face, the swirling of her passion whipping up gale force winds around him. "Drink me, eat me, feed me, fill me, fuck me!" Dee glanced down. The waterfall she wore like a cape and cowl rushed too thick and fast to see the curving X on her left breast, if one was there at all. He craned his neck up to meet her gaze, and realized that he couldn't care less. "Is it time?" Galatea asked. The two green women on either side released his arms. He reached up and ran a caressing hand over the luscious bow of Galatea's bottom lip. Her eyes slid closed, her mouth curled into a rapturous smile, and those three, little, helpless giggles escaped her: "Ah-hah, ah-hum, hm-mm." Dee said, "It's always time." And it was. * * * * Dee's brain buzzed with absinthe. His bedroom engorged with foam-capped waves of melted green gel that raced up the walls and smeared over the ceiling, submerging every surface in the room except Dee's bed itself. Galatea's titanic body stretched and distended down from the green cyclone above him. Dee lay eclipsed below Galatea's mouth. The succubus clutching Dee to her lap unwound from him, and he was free. But free to go where? "Let's start with 'kiss me,'" Dee said, swaying to his feet to stand on the bed until Galatea’s lips were inches away and filled his drug-addled universe, "and move up from there." Dee immersed his head in the satin of the titaness Galatea's lips. He felt baptized in liquid sex. A flick of her fingertip knocked him flat onto the bed. Her face swung down, mouth poised above his cock. When she spoke, a sound more akin to distant thunder than a human voice, a torrid downrush lathered him from nipples to knees. "Let's skip straight to 'Feed me,'" she rumbled. "Hold it!" someone cried. The succubus stood up behind him. Galatea pulled back to give her a little room. "There is no way I'm waiting a single second to experience this," the succubus insisted. "I'm coming home, now." The sea of green gel started to shift and reform, its central mass sliding backward from the ceiling and redistributing itself over far wall and across the floor. Galatea's giant shape regrew from green chaos. Her titanic tits breached the surface of the roiling green syrup coating the far wall, diamond-hard, fist-sized nipples pointing straight at Dee, followed by Galatea's face, her mouth agape and gasping with lust. Waterfalls of melted gel poured off her emergent form, rushing around in a maelstrom before being reabsorbed to feed further growth. The floor groaned as it took on the weight. The downstairs neighbor must be banging away like mad now, Dee decided, his thoughts slow as molasses. Legs extended spread-eagle across the floor. Feet that Dee might otherwise call “dainty” if not for their fifty inch insoles pushed into the wall on either side of the bed's head board. Dee had a front row seat before Galatea's towering sex, and with the erotic view came a sudden vision of the near future with startling clarity. Galatea would lock her legs together around the bed, draw them close, ram Dee into her ravenous pussy, bed and all, and that would be that. Venus and the green fairy scooted aside a bit, allowing the succubus to stride over him, making the soggy mattress quaver and squish. "What are you doing?" he asked them, scraping the green goop off his stomach and legs. The succubus turned to flash him an angry smile. "Stalling, dumb ass," the succubus said, sounding more like Galatea than the titaness Galatea now did herself, "until somebody can think of a way outta this. If you try and fuck that cunt — and I know you wanna, you should see the look on your face," she added, shaking her head. "Anyway, you fuck that, there's no coming back." The succubus cast off from the bed, fighting the currents of the green storm surge surrounding the titaness Galatea's body. "What's happening?" Dee said, watching the succubus make slow headway. The green fairy scooted closer. "I'm going to share memories with myself," she said. "I don't understand," said Dee. "You're Galatea too?" "Duh," the green fairy answered, "Who else? There was so much water in the kitchen, I hardly knew what to do with it, other than fuck your brains out, of course. So I split up." Dee must have looked as confused as he felt because the green fairy rolled her eyes and started lecturing. "Once I divide, I mean fully divide, not just like this…" Dee nearly leapt out of his skin when another green fairy partially peeled herself away from the original, a pair of identical twins conjoined at the hip, streamers and strings of beading, liquid gel running between them. The new green fairy, still runny and quasi-molded out of the first fairy's inner nectar, pecked Dee's cheek with a sloppy kiss before the twins oozed back together into a single creature. The succubus had reached the half way point between the bed and the awaiting titaness. "But like this," the green fairy continued, puckering up her absinthe-stained lips and blowing out dozens of little green bubbles. Each bubble popped in the gusty breeze to reveal a thimble-sized sparkling green fairy. They took flight and soon Dee, speechless with wonderment, was haloed with them. "When I fully split into separate, um, Galateas," said the big green fairy, "I start acquiring separate memories." One of the haloing little fairies went itinerant and zipped close to Dee's dick. "Holy shit!" it said, in a high-pitched, super-squeaky version of Galatea's voice. "Look at the size of that thing!" "And when I re-assimilate," the original green fairy began, hands outstretched. The little fairies orbiting Dee flit back and alighted onto her open palms—except for the wayward fairy, who just hugged her body close to his shaft, humping it feverishly but only managing to give Dee the slightest of tickles. "No! No! No! Mine! Mine! Mine!" she squeaked. The succubus had closed in on Galatea's thighs. "And when I re-assimilate," the green fairy repeated, annoyed. The little wayward fairy sighed and flew up to join her sisters in their creator’s palm. The green fairy pressed her hands together, as gentle as a kiss. When she pulled them apart, all her tiny duplicates were gone. "I re-remember," she said. "I think I should be able to share memories with my other selves just by touch, but I haven't figured out how to do it yet." Her face wrinkled in concentration for a moment before her eyes nearly popped out of her head. She stammered, "Big, it was so fucking big," and then dissolved into giggles. Dee did not know whether to laugh of freak the fuck out. The succubus had reached the tall delta of Galatea's mound. She turned to shoot Dee a parting glare, but her cruel and angry smile melted into a melancholy grin. "See you real soon, solid boy," she said, and dove between the folds of Galatea's sex. She had wriggled in only up to her shoulders when she liquefied under the heat and was siphoned in. Dee chose to freak out. "I think," Dee squawked, "I think I'm having a bad trip." Venus laid a cool palm on his brow. "I'm here," she said. A moment after the succubus disappeared, Galatea's chest heaved. She mashed her pussy with both hands. "Dee," she groaned, "I was just putting you on. You give awesome head." He turned to the green fairy. "Share memories? Reassimilate? What are you, the Borg or something?" The green fairy shook her head. "At a time like this, you still think about Star Trek?" With a sudden downwash of air, Galatea loomed close. "Did he polish you off?" she asked the green fairy. The green fairy glanced down, cupped her breasts and the healthy curve of her pot belly. "No," she said, "he drank a lot, but I—Whoop!" Galatea plucked the green fairy up by the legs, reared back, and dangled the fairy upside down over her mouth. "O-okay," the green fairy stuttered, "okay, just—" The green fairy burst into giggles when Galatea sloped her wide tongue across her breasts. "Wait a minute," the green fairy stammered, "that really tickles." "I'm not a group mind," Venus said, moving to block his view of Galatea lapping and ladling at the green fairy's breast. "I'm an individual," she continued, raising her voice over the green fairy's shrieks of laughter, "with an individual consciousness spread over a group, not a group consciousness spread over many individuals." "You're the Trekker, not me, if you can come up with some bullshit like that," he told her, but it made sense, especially after almost a pint of refined absinthe on an empty stomach. "So you're her," Dee said, looking at the giant Galatea. "Yes." He returned Venus' soft gaze. "And she's you." "Yes." Dee grinned. "Then I trust you both." The green fairy's laughter died down, and Venus, long hair whipping in wind, turned to glare up at the titaness. "I don't," she said. Galatea's fist plummeted down, suspending the green fairy in the air an arm's length away. The green fairy's wings poked out between two of Galatea's fingers. "Dee," the green fairy gulped, "make me wet. Please. Just once, before I'm gone. I want you to touch me when I'm just me, when I'm on the outside." Dee began "How should I…" but stopped, reached out, and then hesitated. As gently as he could, he grazed four fingers around the edge of a fragile wing and brushed across its gossamer face. This time, the green fairy's laughter was deep, throaty, and exultant. Green honey streamed out around Galatea's fingers. "So…solid," the green fairy sighed as Galatea wrenched her away. Dee frowned, turning to Venus. "You don't trust yourself?" Above him, the green fairy shouted, "Drink me now, you bitch! I got what I wanted." Venus watched Galatea suckle on the green fairy's runny legs. "The three of us split off back in the kitchen," Venus said. "Lilith, la Fée Verte and me, I mean." Seeing Dee's confusion, Venus added, "The chick with the fangs and the tramp with the wings? I’ll show you them on the Internet later if you want—if there is a later for either of us. Anyway, I split off back in the kitchen, so I can't tell what the rest of me is thinking, but I can guess. And I don't want it to happen." "Why?" Galatea drew the green fairy back out of her mouth. There was very little of her left, a lozenge down to its last lick. "Is that the best you can do, bitch?" the green fairy said, her voice weak but unafraid. "Because that part of me doesn't know something that this part of me knows," Venus said, glaring up again. "Doesn't know what?" Dee said. Galatea popped the green fairy in and swallowed her down. She reached out wide to run her hands along imaginary wings. "Oh, that did feel good," she said, "definitely worth the wait." "Doesn't know what?" Dee said again, but Galatea dropped close, and boomed, "Come little sister." Venus stood on the mattress to face the titaness. "'If human beings are not drowned,'" asked Venus to Galatea, as if reciting from a book, "'can they live forever? Do they never die as we do here in the sea?'" Galatea's face crinkled in confusion. "'Yes,'" she replied, also speaking as if conducting a ritual recitation. "'They must also die, and their term of life is even shorter than ours, but when we cease to exist here we only become the foam on the surface of the water, and we have not even a grave down here of those we love.'" "'So I shall die,'" recited the jade Venus, turning back to face Dee, her eyes bright and sad, "'and as the foam of the sea I shall be driven about never again to hear the music of the waves, or to see the pretty flowers nor the red sun…'" Venus raised her supple arms high above her head and entwined her hands, back-to-back, palms outward, in one single, fluid motion. "Wait," Dee said, his heart in his mouth, his vision blurring. He scrambled to reach out to her, the absinthe in his system and the glop all over the bed making every movement unsure and flailing. "…Nor know the taste of your tears," Venus said, her fingers dissolving into foam, floating up and lost among the crashing surf surrounding them. "I love you, Dee." "Wait!" He finally found his balance and rose to his feet. Venus evaporated into foam that unfurled out into the wind and was gone. "I can be such a drama queen," Galatea said, her booming laughter carrying over the surf. "Let's see if little Miss Venus had anything worth remembering. And then it'll be your turn, Dee." Dee stood on the ruined, saturated bed, and watched her grow. Eyes shut tight in concentration, she drew more and more of the storm surge into the outline of her own body. Had she torn the roof open to stand thirty feet tall, or had she stretched out long across the ceiling and walls? Surrounded by a chaos of inrushing waves and foam, his mind on fire with the hallucinatory liqueur, Dee could not tell the difference. The hint of a smirk puckered one corner of her mouth. "Hm." She reached above her head, entwined her hands, back-to-back, palms out… The fall of silence was so sudden it felt like a crack in the air. The gathering waves locked into rigid sea-glass. Galatea's eyes flew wide, her burning stare searching some far, imaginary distance. A hand dropped to her mouth, its fore and middle fingers traced a timid circle over her lips and tongue before pulling away, quaking wildly. Her startled eyes fell to her trembling hand, and then to Dee's upturned face. "Dee?" It sounded more like a choking sob than a name. Galatea swooned. The noise of the storm returned. The standing tsunami crested and broke. The force of the downpour threw Dee to the floor and in an instant he was submerged. The fluid was too airy to float in, too viscid to swim in, too dense to breathe, too hot and silken for his overloaded senses to tolerate. * * * * That wave Pulled me right overboard Into permanent morgasm Emotional action painting —XTC, That Wave * * * * Chapter Four: Your Ocean Dee woke on his waterbed. His cottony mouth tasted of rotgut tequila, his eyes gummy with sleep. He felt coated in a rind of sweat. Or was it sweat? "Damn waterbed leaking again," he groaned, rolling onto his stomach, the mattress rocking in mushy waves. "You don't have a waterbed, Dee," someone said. He smeared the sleep away from his eyes. It was green. His chin pressed into the mouth of a long valley between two green, translucent, perfectly proportionate but utterly titanic breasts. He pushed down with his palms to lift his head to speak—"Wha—" but rather than support his hands, the supple green material beneath him gave inward and the tits rolled forward, the valley of cleavage becoming a warming, hugging cave, so instead he just went, "Mmf!" The earth shook; a marshmallow-quake. The towering breasts rolled back he heard a few peals of loud, girlish laughter before the green swells rushed back in to nuzzle his head again. Thinking fast—fast for him, at any rate—Dee laid stock still until the laughter and seismic cleavage activity died down. He opened his arms and legs wide to spread his weight over as much of the pliant surface as possible, and gently scooted and spider-walked away from the snuggle-trap. His dick slid down the cool, smooching surface and was iron-stiff in moments, dimpling but not breaching the surface tension of the slick stuff. "Oh, that's good," said the voice. "I love to feel your cock get hard." His searching foot found another, smaller, gentler swell, and suddenly sunk into steamy, slurry folds. The voice cried out in alarmed delight. "O-oh, yeah! And all this time I thought you were obsessed with foreplay." "Galatea?" Dee said. "No, the Queen of England," said Galatea, "who the fuck else would it be? Are you fooling around with another giant Jell-O girl behind my back? I can see through my back, you know, so I wouldn't recommend it. I plan on being one possessive, jealous bitch. That dick is Mine." Dee pulled his foot out of Galatea's sex. Her pussy was very reluctant to let it go, so he had to work it back and forth a bit to slide it free, prompting a few squeals of "Ooh!" followed by a forlorn "Aw!" like a naughty schoolgirl having her candy taken away by a headmistress. Dee swung his legs around and padded his palms up to sit astraddle a proportionately wasp-narrow waist that was nevertheless over three feet wide. "What the Hell happened to you?" They were still in his bedroom. His poor mattress, a few bedsprings poking out and looking tie-dyed with green paint, stood on its side against the door. A couple of electric, oscillating fans had been set up in a futile attempt to blow-dry it. A few large, lumpy garbage bags were littered about. A cloudy night sky darkened the window. Galatea sprawled on her back on the floor, nearly thrice as tall as Dee himself, her head reclining up against the wall beneath a destroyed X-Men poster. A large, arcing X crossed the wide curve above her left breast. "I think I went a little crazy for a while there," she said, her smile sad. "Oh, Dee, I'm so sorry." It's Always Time Act 02 Ch. 01 Book Two: Secret Origins Chapter One: Weird Science "You promised, Galatea." "I lied." "You don't lie." "Yes I do! I lie a lot! I lie all the time! I'm lying right now!" "I mean you don't make false promises. You lie about them, but you never break them. There's a difference." "All right, Dee, you win. You can go to that stupid store. But I still think you need to work on your priorities. Priority one: fuck me. Mm. Priority two: fuck me. Mm, God, you taste good. Priority three: fuck m—oh, fuck me, Dee, just fuck me!" "I have! I will! Wait a minute, I think I am—Ga-Galatea! No more ambush sex, you promised!" "We've had this conversation already! It ends with—mm—you fucking me so—ooh—so why stop now?" "You know, I think you've got a point …" "Mm—God, Dee! Yes. Fuck! More. God. More." * * * * Dee examined his profile in the bathroom mirror. It was hard to be sure through the grimy crust accumulated over three days worth of nonstop, sweaty sex with an amorphous, amorous, dangerous, nymphomaniac dessert foodstuff, but he had to ask. "Galatea," he called, "do I look any different to you?" "Say what now?" she called back from the bedroom. He traced a few fingers over the line of his jaw and pushed up his cheek. "Do I look any different to you?" "I've only known you for three days. Dee," she added, petulant, "come back to bed." Dee performed the unflattering half-twist everyone makes when failing to catch a glimpse of their own butt. "We broke the bed when you tried to tie me to the bed frame," he said, twisting the other way. He heard a sighing, slurping noise. "Oh, I've made you a bed," Galatea said, her voice so smoky it gave him goose-bumps. "Come here and let momma tuck you in nice and tight." "I'm serious," Dee said, "I mean, all my zits are gone, for instance. Even that big one that just seemed to move around on my ass for the past five years." "Will the wonders of nookie never cease. C'mon, let's have s'more before it gets a chance to grow back." Dee struck a few silent poses. He scratched his head, his hair a calcified mass overdosed on green hair gel. Galatea huffed in frustration. Dee heard a loud slosh and then the patter of dainty feet. "Alright, then, what do you think is different?" "I'm not sure. I think I look sort of 'streamlined,' maybe?" He shrugged wide, surprised to see the muscles in his mirror-imaged arms and shoulders bunching. He had been getting a Hell of a workout lately, he admitted to himself. "Maybe I lost weight? I mean, I haven't eaten anything but, well, you, for a while now." Galatea stood, stark naked, her back pressed against the bathroom doorframe. She slid down the frame like a pole dancer, bending at the knees, rolling her fingers through her hair, head swaying, hips rocking. "'Doesn't just taste good—it's good for you too!'" she baby-talk mocked. She pressed her palms to the floor between her legs and sat like a cat. "You look like you've always looked to me," she said, her voice tender. "I don't see any difference. Honestly." She gave him a sly upward glance. "But the view from here is mag-fucking-nificient." "All this attention is making me feel self-conscious, and I must be coming off as really self-absorbed. I'm sorry," Dee said, smiling. "I'm sure it's nothing." "Think of it this way," asked Galatea, standing tall. "Is your dick any bigger?" Dee panicked. He looked down. "No," he sighed, relaxing. Galatea whirled around and threw her hands in the air. "Then who cares?" she said, marching back into the bedroom. She grinned wide at the sound of Dee's laughter and leaned back in to wink at him in the mirror. "You coming? You really oughta give my new bed trick a shot. A money shot, I mean. Maybe a dozen." "Definitely," said Dee, "but please, later. If I go to bed now I'm sure I won't come up for air until midnight—" "At the very least, bright boy." "—And I really want to get to SRU today, and it's already, what, eleven o'clock?" Dee plucked a purple bathing scrubber out from beneath the sink and tossed it into the tub. "After today I've only got one more day of bereavement leave and then I've got to go back to work on Monday." "You've got two other grandparents, two parents, and a sister yet to kill," Galatea said, "I'm going to keep you locked in here for a fucking month." Dee unwrapped a new bar of soap. "You know that won’t work." "I know," Galatea sighed, "but I'll think of something! What are you doing in there anyway?" Dee's hand froze above the shower tap. Had he really not been in the bathroom in three days? "Got to get clean," he grunted, twirling the tap. "Got to go back to SRU," he said, pulling the mildewed, plain plastic shower curtain across the tub to avoid the freezing first jet of water. "Got to figure out what the fuck is going on." Galatea pelted into the bathroom, her rubbery feet squeaking on the cheap linoleum floor as she came to a juddering halt. She started to bounce and clap her hands. With her elasticity and curves, it was like watching an Orion slave girl porn starlet jumping on a trampoline in slow motion. "Shower scene! Shower scene!" she sang after each bounce. Dee, a mere mortal, ogled the spectacle for a good long while before remembering what language he spoke. "Galatea," he said, "we can't. You're water soluble." "Nuh-uh," she scolded, reaching a hand into the showering spray. "I'm water absorbent." Her breasts fluxed and filled out two extra cup sizes. "How big you want 'em?" she asked, turning her back to the shower to give her burgeoning bust some room and sticking both hands under the water. "Just say 'when.' Oh, you're just going to stand there with your mouth open? Well then step back because it's going to get awful crowded in here. You might get tucked into my bed trick after all. And then momma's gunna tuck and tuck and, mm, tuck until she tuckers you out. And then she'll just keep on tucking. That's what happens to naughty boys when they say no to momma—" "Enough games," Dee demanded, hurling the bar of soap into the sink. It smashed into perfumed shards. Galatea tried to cross her arms but settled on drumming her fingers atop her glutted tits, lips compressed into a grouchy moue. "You take all the fun out of having a sex slave," she said. She pried her fingers between her breasts and peered down. "Can you see my bellybutton? I can't." Pushed corset-tight by water pressure, her cleavage only gave about an inch before springing shut over her nose. "I can't even see my feet," she said, voice nasal and plugged. Dee grinned, exasperated and world-weary. "A minute more under the shower and no one would be able to see your feet. Honey, I love your games, but I—hey, what's wrong, honey?" Her gaze glistened. "You never called me that before." "What, you mean 'honey?' You don't like it?" "I…love it." He stepped close and took her hand. The top points of her hair tickled under his chin. "But it's such a little thing." "Not to me." The tips of his fingers kissed the curve of her hip. "I have an inner vocabulary when I think of you. Do you want to hear it?" "I…I'm not sure," she whispered. "Nectar, jade," he said, stealing quick kisses from her trembling mouth, "Ocean, emerald, wine." Galatea's tears ran free. "Darkling, thunder," Dee said, kissing, "fire, river, rain." "But more than anything," he said, and cradled her face in his hands. "Honey," he said, and kissed her deep. "Honey," he said again and she threw her arms around him and crushed her lips to his, sobbing into his mouth. "Honey," he whispered, and held her tight until the shaking stopped. "You know," she sniffled, "this would be so much more romantic if…" "You're breasts weren't shoved up my armpits," Dee said. She nodded, adding "…and if you didn't smell like ass." Dee snagged a shard of soap from the sink. "I think the stupid shower is finally warming up," he said, watching steam rise. Galatea leaned close, sniffing. "Hey," she said, "that smells damn good. Wuzzat?" "Homemade castile soap, olive oil and cream tallow and stuff. Don't look at me like that, the goth girl who makes the absinthe in her bathtub made it for me…Now don't you start looking at me like that, either. Ursula isn't interested in guys like me. Little Miss U isn't interested in guys, period." "Hmf," Galatea grumped, hugging herself to Dee's chest. A moment later she perked up. "Let's get you cleaned up." She maneuvered Dee over to the toilet, checked the lid was closed, and pushed him down. "You sit here." "Okay," said Dee, curious. She skipped over to the tub and turned off the tap. "What's—" Dee started, but was struck dumb by the gleaming emerald smile Galatea threw over her shoulder. "You just sit right there," she said. She stood straight, and inhaled deeply, her furled fingers tracing a circle around her tummy. A strong fluxion in her fluidic gel pulled water down from her chest into her abdomen. An inner waterfall transformed her from a pornographic titty queen to a beatific gravid maiden in a matter of moments. She ran her hands over her taut, round belly. She hummed in thought. "It does not make you look fat," Dee marveled. She bedazzled him with that starry smile again. She swayed close, plucked the shard of soap, now warm and molded, from Dee's hand. "Thank you," she chirped, and popped it in her mouth. "What's—" Dee tried again, but Galatea shushed him, and a soap bubble burst against his chin. Galatea rummaged through the sink, feasting on select slabs and crumbles of soap. She collected the few slivers that remained into a little pile and vigorously poked them down the drain. "Pfft. Ursula. Hmf," she grumped again. "Now," she said, whirling back to face him, hands clasped to chest, her smile beguiling. "Gimme fever." Dee moved in to kiss her, but she said, "That would taste pretty soapy right now." Dee met her gaze for a moment. He pushed her chin up and scraped his parted mouth down the entire length of her graceful neck and across to her shoulder blade in one, slow, warm, breathy exhalation. He sat back, coming away with a swath of runny green icing from his nose to his chin. "You mean something like that?" "Yeah," she gulped, eyes closed, chewing hard on her lip. "Something—ah—something like that, yeah." She stepped back, her ample belly blooming into turquoise like milk swirling into green tea. The curious color spread until her entire substance turned an opaque, pale jade. "Now," she panted, "come close to me." Dee did as he was bid. "Yes. Good. Stand right there. Give me your hands." She cupped his hands together, palms up, and positioned them level with his chest. "Hold them just like that," she said, stepping back. He felt supplicant and embarrassed until she bent down, kissed his fingertips, and blew cool, citrus-perfumed air over his palms. His hands started to tingle and the citrus bouquet grew very strong. Galatea stepped back, eyes shining. His hands had been filled with creamy pale jade foam. "Wow," Dee said. "How does it smell?" Galatea asked, biting her thumb. Dee shut his eyes to concentrate on the aroma. "Soothing. An orchard of citrus trees in blossom." He smiled. "I bet this is what really expensive spas smell like." Dee felt her step close and push his hands up onto his chest. "How does it feel?" she cooed, moving his hands over his skin gentle arcs, spreading the stuff around, before pulling his hands away again. "Oh, God," Dee said, eyes squeezed shut, chest heaving. "Uh. Tingly—no, stupid word, not strong enough. Electric. Searing. But gentle, all at once. Like—" He gasped as he felt her finger trace a thread of the foam down his abdomen. "Like dozens of nibbling little lightening kisses. No. Hundreds. Thousands. I, I can’t describe—" "Shh," whispered Galatea, gathering up his hands. "Those," she said, kissing his fingertips again, "are nanogasms." She blew cool, citrus-perfumed air over his palms. They started to tingle again. She pushed his hands back toward him, this time massaging the sensuous foam in his stomach. He nearly doubled over from the carnal thrill it drove into him. He still could not open his eyes. "You're…you're not covering me in my own, uh…" "No," Galatea purred. He heard her exhale through puckered lips for a long moment. "I'm covering you …" she said, and a pair of hands smeared foam down his thighs. Dee groaned and fell to his knees. While her hands worked their creamy way toward his groin, another pair of hands started slathering even more across his back, making him arch and bark, senses running wild. "… in me." Galatea was working foam into his hair and down his neck when Dee cried, "I can't—" "Yes you can." "No, I can't take it!" He fell to all fours as a dozen foamy hands rove over his feet, his arms, his ass. For some reason they really liked playing with his ass. "Yes you can!" Galatea smoothed the foam gently around his face. "You're about to experience what the female orgasm feels like, Dee." Her many hands gently pushed him down and rolled him onto his back. "That's all." She massaged it deep into his calves, the pits under his arms, and between his toes. "If any man could take it, it would be you. You can do it. I love you. I love you. Okay. It's time. Here we go." Galatea blew cool, citrus-perfumed air over his dick, and Dee flew mad. Dee flailed, every muscle jittery with wave after wave of tension and release, his cream-covered body slapping and slopping the floor with foam. Galatea coddled his cock, kneading the jade elixir deep into his very most sensitive skin. "What does it feel like, Dee?" she asked, and blew, heaping his lap with more sizzling foam. She rolled and folded it over his balls, her hands slipping up his shaft and down into the crack of his ass. Dee could only groan. "Talk to me, baby," she said, blowing and working in more cream, "even just a little. Tell me how it feels," she said, and blew. "Flying," he managed, "flying. It really is just like…" Dee could say no more for a few minutes, as she blew and salved every inch of him with more and more cream. "It's," he said, his eyes flickering open. "It's not stopping." Galatea lay down and cuddled up against his side, sleeking herself with foam. "It hasn't happened yet," she said, her chin on his shoulder. "You're still plateauing, baby." "Oh my God," Dee said, his laughter warm. "How long does it last?" "That depends," Galatea said. Her hand skated down his stomach and settled over his raging dick. "How long do ya wannit?" "I don't think I can take much more." "Mm." Galatea slid atop him, her breasts and big belly sandwiched in cream against his chest, her knee pushing his slippery erection into his stomach. "You got it, baby," she said, spreading her legs over him. She scooted down and guided him into her, frictionless as silk. Galatea glided on a thick layer of cream. "Cum in me," she said, humping faster, "cum in me, baby." Each upstroke slicked a heavy breast across his face, a cream-covered nipple popping in and out of his mouth. "Cum for momma. Come on. That's it. Yeah, you're doing it." She pivoted against him, sitting up. "I can feel it coming." She grabbed his hands and clamped them on her tits. "Let is happen, baby, there's nothing you can do." She rocked her hips in topsy-turvy circles, keeping pace with Dee's racing pulse. "Momma's gunna make you cum. Momma loves to make her baby cum. Momma always—ah." Dee's violent shaking suddenly stopped. "Ooh, good baby," Galatea said. "Baby's giving so much cum to mommy." She let his hands fall to the floor where they pawed feebly at the tile. "Baby's got so much cum for mommy." Her rocking slowed, lingering on each arching upstroke. "Yes. There. Baby's filling momma up to bursting. Such a—mm— good baby," she said, hugging her round tummy. Her downward thrusts grew faster, harder, each agonizing upstroke lasting longer and longer. "But momma wants more … Nuh-uh," Galatea fussed, shaking her head, treating Dee's dick like a piston buried deep within her pumping hips. "Stay hard for mommy. Momma knows her baby has more. Baby has much more cum to give, and momma wants it all. Momma's gunna take it all, there isn't anything baby can do to stop it. Oh, baby's gotten so hard again. Oh, oh! Baby's cumming so fast! Mm, and so much more than last time, too. Was baby holding back from mommy? I bet he was. Naughty baby. Is baby holding back now? I bet he is. Oh, look, baby's so tired he can barely move a muscle … but momma's got him hard again. Momma knew he was holding back. Baby should know better. Momma's never gunna stop. Not until she—gets—what—she—wants." * * * * Dee guessed the plastic, battery powered clock hanging sideways on the bathroom wall read one o'clock. Or maybe two. The jade foam dripping from the clock face made it hard to read. Galatea flattened herself out a bit to fit into the tub behind him. Dee tried to pop the stopper in the tub's drain but it zipped out of his cream-coated fingers and skittered out into the hallway. "Don't bother," Galatea said, rubbing Dee down with the purple bathing scrubber. "I've got enough of the three Ds in me right now to sink a battleship, so a little nanomek down the drain is no big loss. Besides, it almost always finds its way home." She blew cool air against his back and rolls of the soapy, jade cream poured over his shoulders and filled the tub. "Can you handle it?" Dee hugged his knees, feeling countless nanogasms coursing through him. "Yes, it's wonderful." He leaned back and stole a kiss. "Thank you. You gave me an incredible gift. Thank you, thank you." Galatea just smiled, humming tunelessly, and scrubbed him down. "I wish I could go with you," she said after a while. "To go out in broad daylight and be seen with you, I mean. I want everyone to see us together—especially that Ursula bitch." Dee laughed. "Speaking of U, I need to remember to pay her back for all that absinthe. Wait a minute." He turned to face her. "Food coloring," he said. "Huh?" "You wanted to go out and be seen," Dee said, "Ursula has got to have some food coloring in her apartment. Maybe we can—" "Hey, yeah," said Galatea. "Why didn't I think of that. RGB, right? I've got the G, I just need some R and B." "I don't think it works that way…" "Shut up," Galatea said. "And you, move your lazy ass!" "What—" Dee began, but startled when the background nanogasms suddenly vanished. The jade foam boiled out of the bathtub and onto the floor, leaving Dee spotless and squeaky clean from head to toe. The foam whisked up fluffed out and a willowy, ghostly Galatea rose above him, an abstract apparition sculpted from curling arabesques of cloud and cream. "I'm going, I'm going," the apparition said, its wispy voice little more than a crackle of bursting bubbles. It wafted down the hallway. "I'll get it." Dee shook his head, and called after it. "Don't forget to leave Ursula some money! My wallet's in my pants, wherever they wound up." "Okay!" it bubbled back. Galatea slipped sideways around him, pancake flat, and filled out to sit in his lap. She grinned like a cat. "I can see through you again," Dee said. "As much as I ever could, which wasn't really all that much was it?" She just grinned at him, as translucent as green glass. "Was it—that is, were you—aware and awake this whole time?" "Yes!" she said, bouncing. "Covering every scrumptious, solid inch of you." She cupped Dee's face, kissed him, and pinched his cheek. "Getting into every pore. Giving you all those nanogasms." She drubbed merrily on his chest with her fists. "Oh my God, I can't wait to remember it. It must have been awesome." "It was," the apparition said, drifting back in through the door, a handful of colorful plastic vials suspended in the core of her vaporous body. Dee thought it looked much less substantial. "But getting these was a real pain in the ass. Thank God Ursula leaves her window cracked open. And the gardening crew almost saw me. And I almost blew away in the wind. And I nearly burned all my nanomek just carrying these things around." The vials dropped through her to the floor. It's Always Time Act 02 Ch. 01 "And I couldn't give a shit," said Galatea, leaping out of the tub. "I can't wait any longer." She knelt beside the apparition, eyes closed, mouth open, and tongue peeking out over her bottom lip like a shameless Catholic schoolgirl awaiting a communion wafer from a really cute priest. The apparition pressed her spectral sex around Galatea's tongue. Galatea ate her out and then ate her way in. "Why does this always make me so freaky-hot?" Dee asked. "Because you’re a freak," Galatea said, sucking on the apparition's left breast from the inside-out. The apparition soon disappeared down Galatea's gullet. "C'mon, c'mon," she muttered. "Fuck, I'm too excited to concentrate. Wait. Oh. Oh my." She unraveled in long, coiling curlicues, the daggers of her hair leading the way. "Galatea?" Dee said. The green curlicues sewed themselves back up and Galatea was lying face down on the floor, her disheveled hair curtaining her head. "I think I'm just going to lie here for a while, Dee, if that's okay," she said, hushed and muffled. Dee listened to her giggle and sigh for a while before sneaking out of the tub and into the bedroom. It looked like a paintball war zone. Galatea had moved Dee's computers and equipment into the living room before really letting herself loose. The bedroom was entirely her territory now. It reeked of citrus-and-sex and a hint of Nyquil, her essence permeating the plaster behind peeling wallpaper and the stucco ceiling and eating through the varnish of the hardwood floor. The bedroom closet door had come off its hinges. He moved it aside and inspected the closet's contents. Much of his clothes, kept in cheap plastic closet organizers, had been spared, although Galatea had taken to wearing his underclothes and all of his ties had been lost to her bondage/tickle experiment earlier in the day. Dee still could not remember how he managed to snap the bed frame in half. He picked out undamaged pairs of briefs, socks, blue jeans, an undershirt and a melon-colored polo. Dee was threading a black leather belt through the loops on his jeans when he heard Galatea crow, "Tah-dah!" She struck a classic "tah-dah!" pose in the bedroom doorway, emptied food coloring vials born aloft in an upturned hand. She wore a tight, white, tube-top jumpsuit that clung to every accentuated curve and starkly announced her utter lack of bra and panties. Her skin was the color of peach ice-cream, her hair orange as flame, her lips red as blood. "Check this out!" Dee said, "Um." "What," Galatea said, her ivory-white smile blinding. "Can't even manage a 'wow'?" "Wow," said Dee. "Definitely 'wow.' But, um, I don't think it's going to help us in the lets-be-seen-together department." "What?" Galatea said again. "Why not?" "Um…" Galatea's eyes narrowed. "What? And you better not make me say 'what' again, motherfucker." "…Have you looked in the mirror?" Dee said, and shut his eyes. He heard dead silence for a moment, then the slap-slap-slap of open-toed sandals, and finally a mortified scream from the bathroom. "Oh my God," Galatea wailed, "I look like a fucking 'toon!" Dee hustled after her. "Actually," he said, his brain kicking into automatic pilot and launching a routine lecture, "the signature stylization of anime is very different from American cartooning in several key—" "Shut up, dumb ass! Okay, okay. Let me think. What if I try imitating somebody?" Her gel morphed and color-cycled with a soft, metallic sigh. "Nooo! I wanted Betty Paige and I got Betty Rubble!" Dee stood, frozen and staring, from the hallway. Complement, complement, he thought desperately, think of a complement. "Betty Paige as Betty Rubble," he heard himself say. Okay, which brain cell came up with that one? Because when I find out, you're fired. Galatea squeezed her fists over her eyes and morph-cycled again. "I can't look," she said. "Tell me: is it Angelina Jolie, or…" Honesty works, right? Try honesty. "No," he gulped, "it's Lara Croft, but the rendering is quite impress—" She pounded against the mirror, morph-cycling on each punch. "No! —Punch! Carmen San Diego— This is so fucking —Punch! GI Joe's Baroness— humiliating! I could never —Punch! Jessica Rabbit— be seen like this! I could die, Dee, I could just —Punch! Princess Jasmine— die! Dee, don't look at me! Dee? Dee, why are you so quiet—Oh." She cycled back to her jade self. "Oh," she said again, the sound drawing out as realization dawned. "Don't worry about going out," Dee said sotto voce. He stepped into the bathroom and gently closed the door behind him. "Now isn't the time." Galatea giggled, "Ah-hah, ah-hum, hm-mm." * * * * "Dee," Galatea called out, "how long will you be gone?" Dee was back in the closet foraging for a second set of clothes. His first attempt at getting dressed in three days had wound up in the laundry hamper soaked through with pastel rainbows of honey. "It's an hour round-trip to the SRU place," he said, scraping flecks of green icing off another pair of jeans with a fingernail, "so I'll get there right around six. In all honesty, I'd like to stay until I've gotten all my questions answered, but they will be closing up by then, I don't think they'll be very forthcoming, and I really don't want to force anybody to tell me anything—I'm not even sure if I can—but I'm going to try." He buttoned down a yellow shirt. "That makes it two hours, tops. Is that okay?" "No," Galatea sighed, "but you gotta do what you gotta do. I'll miss you." He wrestled into his black leather jacket. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'll make it up to you." "Ooh, I like the sound of that." "Did you ever find my wallet?" Dee asked. "Yeah, it's on the kitchen table." Dee rummaged around the kitchen, filling his pockets. "Honey," he asked, "what's up with the Auberjon-eoises?" "The what?" "The Odo cut-outs," Dee said, staring. "What about 'em?" "Why are they all standing in the recycle bin?" "Forget 'em," Galatea said. "That was just a school girl crush. Baby-girl, really. I'm onto solids now." Dee found the tin of thickener next to his wallet on the kitchen table. "Hey, this thing feels lighter than I remember. You sure you didn't take any more nanomek?" "I told you, I don't need it. It wouldn't do me any good. I've got the three Ds, remember?" Dee joined Galatea in the bathroom to give her a quick squeeze. "I remember." She kissed him before turning back to the mirror. She restyled the swooping X above her left breast, giving it a slight slant and staggering the curves a bit, its shape evocative of a dancer with arms upraised. "What do you think?" "It's very sweet," Dee said, "but you don't have to wear it at all. I trust you." "I know," she said, turning this way and that, looking at the mark from all angles, "but I want to. I like it." "All right," he said, hugging her. "It's just…wait. Are you going to stick with that design?" She nodded. He squeezed tight, making her sigh. "Can I add another hour?" "What? Why?" "I've got an idea. You'll see. You'll like it." "Okay," she pouted, "but you gotta make it up to me twice as hard, you got that?" "I got it." He goosed her. "And you're going to get it." "Good," she said, slapping his hands away. "Now get the fuck outta here. I've got Internet porn to catch up on." "Actually," he said, handing her a thin box, "I found an old DVD for you. It's a comedy." "'John Carpenter's The Thing?'" she read aloud. "Is it funny?" "Trust me; you'll love it." * * * * Dee's banged-up Volkswagen drove past fields of wild grass, land zoned for commercial use decades ago but left fallow thanks to its invisibility from the elevated highway. No signs were posted to name the local roads and the MapQuest print-out proved just as wrong now as it did four days ago. Dee half expected never to find the place, or if he did, to find it boarded up and seemingly deserted for years. After all, his previous excursion to SRU Medical Technology had taken him across the Twilight Zone and beyond the Outer Limits to that little curtained-off cubby in the far corner of the video store of cosmic reality that the likes of Rod Serling, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and Clive Barker visited in their imaginations but knew better not to write about it. A much-relieved Dee pulled into the oversized SRU Medical Technology parking lot just a few minutes before six o'clock. The pickup truck was nowhere to be seen, but the old Mini still sat exactly where Dee remembered it at the very edge of the lot. A dusty blue van rumbled past, its driver apparently lost, the only other traffic Dee had seen since turning onto the local off-ramp. Dee parked one space away from rose-colored Mini Cooper out of some ancient herding instinct. He listened to the click and clack of the cooling engine, trying to screw up his courage. He might have to shout, he realized, or even threaten violence, to get what he wanted. But could he? He glared at the Mini Cooper. The owner had taped a "For Sale" sign in the passenger-side rear window. Instead of a price, someone had written "What are YOU looking at?" in an elegant longhand calligraphy. Below that was a phone number: (555) GET-LOST. "I know the feeling," Dee said, but got out of his car and made a bee-line for the store anyway. A "Help Wanted – Inquire Within" sign hung amid the clutter of collapsible crutches, orthopedic pillows, home blood pressure kits, and posters for various medical manufacturers crowding the glass storefront. The bell hanging on the front door clattered even louder than Dee remembered. The elevated counter ran down along the wall to the left; the cash register perched on the countertop just a few feet away from the front door, providing the occupier of the stool behind it a clear view of the remaining three corners of the store. The stool's occupant, however, was currently frowning over a book of Sudoku puzzles as thick as a phone directory, rubbing down the open page with an eraser worn away to the nub. Dee stepped over to the counter directly in front of her, but she did not look up until the puzzle box on the open page was clean. When her eyes eventually met Dee's, however, she startled with a lightning-quick double-take, as if surprised at being surprised at who she saw, but her poker faced mask of happy inscrutability flicked back in an instant. "Oh, hey!" the young woman said, sounding delighted. "Thick Jell-O boy. How'd it go?" Her dark eyes twinkled. "Let me guess: chocolate, right?" "Who are you?" Dee asked. She brushed pink eraser shavings off her white blouse. "You can call me Tomoe Exposition." "What kind of name is 'Tomoe Exposition'? Other than the obviously fake kind, I mean," Dee said. Tomoe made that all-inclusive, one-shouldered shrug again. "What's your name?" "Deiter Detwiler. Who are you, Tomoe, really?" "Oh, hey!" she said, exactly as before. "Deiter Detwiler. How'd it go? And what kind of name is 'Deiter Detwiler'?" Dee sighed. "Call me Dee. Who are—" "Oh hey!" she said, a pitch perfect repeat. "Dee. Now are you going to tell me how it went or am I going to have to call in the big guns?" Dee reached into a jacket pocket. The SRU Thickening Agent tin clicked onto the countertop. Anticipating a samurai staring contest, he did his best to match her inscrutable smile, trying to act cool but certain he looked like a terrified dweeb. "Call in whoever you want," he said, hoping it did not sound as stupid to her as it did to him, "I don't kiss and tell." They matched stares. Dee's stomach knotted as the moment stretched. "Do you?" he said, thinking: I'm not going to get anywhere with her. This is her Mysterious Foreign Shopkeeper schtick, she is a master at it, and she knows that I know and vice versa. I'm never going crack it, and I'm never going to hurt her, or even bluff about it, because I like her too much. How can I not like her? She set me up, all right, but she set me up with the best thing that's ever happened in my entire life— Tomoe blinked and swiveled her gaze down to the floor. "No, I don't," she said. Dee, bewildered over winning the standoff, said, "Huh?" "I don't kiss and tell," Tomoe said, her grin wide and very real. "But for you…" She held out a small hand. Dee clasped it, expecting a handshake, but instead Tomoe used his arm as leverage to stand on the stool. Dee wondered at her strength and grace. "For you, Dee," Tomoe said, "I will show and tell." She pumped her fist three times at the window. "Wait a minute," Dee said as the Mini Cooper started forward. "What's going on?" he asked, as the little rose-colored car picked up speed. "Look out!" he shouted as the Mini Cooper showed no sign of slowing down, but Tomoe just stood there. Dee guessed the little car had accelerated to at least thirty miles per hour before hitting the curb of the sidewalk and his mind shut down while his hindbrain kicked in. He stepped up onto the countertop in a single, glass-crunching stride, Tomoe turning to face him just as the front tires cleared the curb. "What—" Dee plucked her up into the air by the armpits as the front tires bit down on the sidewalk "—the—" Dee spun about, carrying her in both arms as the car's rear tires cleared the curb "—fuck—" Dee leapt and ran into one of the aisles across from the counter, laying her flat on the floor and shielding her body with his "—do you think you're doing!" Tomoe shrieked at him as the car careened into the front door. The doorbell clattered and for one vertiginous moment Dee thought that a strawberry jam factory must have exploded nearby. "What the Hell is going on?" he cried as great bows of rose colored jelly zipped and ricocheted throughout the store. Tomoe, still pinned beneath him, batted her fists against his shoulders as the springy bows of gel bounced one by one behind the counter. "I'm trying to introduce you to my girlfriend you idiot! But, uh…" Her battering slowed, her fists unclenched and Dee had the sneaking suspicion he was being felt up. "Thanks for trying to save my life, I guess. No, no, don't get up," she added, grabbing his collar. "You, ah, really knocked the wind out of me. You wouldn't mind picking me up…again…would you?" "Hey," someone said, voice soft but warm and sparkling, "you totally ruined my entrance!" Dee glanced up and Tomoe's hands returned to their surreptitious roving. An aquiline, angelic face chiseled from the pure pink of flawless rose quartz watched them from behind the counter. "What are you two doing?" "Dee thought you were trying to run me over," Tomoe said. "Dee? Meet SB. SB, this is Dee." SB stood, shaking out a long, thick mane of narrow dreadlocks spun from cotton candy. Where Galatea had the overripe, fit-to-bursting figure of a Hollywood bombshell from the Fifties, SB took on the lithe power and athleticism of an Olympian. Her coppery spandex one-piece, however, made damn sure everyone knew she had all the curves and swells anyone could possibly want. Her eyes narrowed. "So this is the latest Jell-O aficionado, huh? How's about you standing up and getting the Hell off my merchandise?" Dee stood and helped Tomoe to her feet. SB did that same quick double-take Tomoe had given him earlier but resumed her "what-are-you-looking-at" glare just as fast. "You can turn into a car?" Dee asked, not even believing the words were coming out of his mouth. "It's a dick thing," SB said, but Dee did not understand what she meant until she stepped out from behind the counter and, suddenly, he did. "He's gone pretty pale, T," said SB. "Probably feeling a little inadequate, SB," Tomoe said. Dee had read too much hardcore manga not to know where this was headed. "It's not that," he said, but, looking down at the gargantuan bulge in the overstressed crotch of SB's one piece, confessed, "Well, I guess it kind of is. No, it just is. But that's not important." "That was refreshingly honest," said SB, binding up her dreadlocks into a thick ponytail. "If that's not the important part, though, what is? Go on. You can see you have my full attention." Dee took a step back. "Actually, I bet I don't. I suspect your attention can get a lot, er, fuller." "You'd win that bet," Tomoe said, her inscrutable smile back in place. Honesty seems to be working, Dee thought. It had better, or else I am truly fucked. "I jerk off to comics about dickgirls as much as the next man," Dee said. "But when I do, I don't fantasize about being with a dickgirl, you see, I fantasize about being the dickgirl. I hope you don't take offense." "Interesting," said SB, cupping her chin. "I think I'll let this one live, T." "You want to be a dickgirl, Dee?" said Tomoe. "Why didn't you say so before? I've got just what you need, SRU-label hormone supplements. Right in there." She pointed to the supply closet behind the counter. "You want some? For you? Five dollar." Dee opened his mouth, waiting for his conscience to voice an objection, but then he remembered he did not possess a conscience any more, at least when it came to sex, so he just turned to the supply closet with a thoughtful, "Hm." "Go on in and take a look around," Tomoe said. "Don't worry, nothing in there will bite you, at least not until you get it home." Dee wandered into the supply closet and SB pulled Tomoe aside behind the counter. "You said he was cute!" she whispered. "He was!" whispered Tomoe. "You didn't say he was so panty-soaking fucking fine!" SB hissed, teeth gritting. "He wasn't!" Dee clambered up the short ladder at the far end of the closet to get a better look at something and SB yanked at the collar of Tomoe's blouse. "Oh, lover-girl, would you look at that ass!" "I am! I am!" "I don't see any more thickener in here," Dee said. "You wouldn't," Tomoe called back, trying to keep the anxious quaver out of her voice, "not when you don't need it. One of the rules." "I see you have some SRU-label herbal-enzyme male enhancement supplements. I bet I know what those might do." "You want some?" asked Tomoe as SB chewed on a fist and whispered, "God, no, what if he took some right here in the store I don't think my mind could take it," but Tomoe steamrolled ahead out of habit and arcane ritual. "For you? Five dollar." She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, "No, no, please say no." "No thanks," said Dee. The two girls relaxed. "Maybe later." The two girls clutched each other in fear. "We've got to get a grip!" SB said. That seemed to snap Tomoe out of her panic. "Like this?" she whispered and grabbed SB's dick. Her slight hand barely wrapped half-way around its girth but her grip was long-practiced and ironclad. "You guys okay?" said Dee, coming out of the closet. "I thought I heard someone shout. What's so funny?" "Nothing, nothing," said SB, coughing to smother her case of the giggles, walking away from the counter, Dee shrugged and turned to Tomoe. "'Rules,' you said? What 'rules'?" "I can tell you rule number one," Tomoe said "We get to ask the first questions around here." "Very well." "So," said the well-endowed rose girl, "What flavor did you start with?" SB wriggled out of her one-piece, rolled it into a jelly donut, and ate it. She pirouetted, with the elegance and dignity of a Bolshoi ballerina apart from the monster cock flapping like a windsock glued on her groin. She rode the momentum of the revolution to spin and reweave her gelled body into the form of a slinky, doe-eyed bimbo lying supine on the store's checker-tiled floor. She bent her legs at the knees and spread them, obscenely wide, dick replaced with a pink and puffy pussy. She turned her head away bashfully and bit down hard on a curled knuckle. "Vanilla?" she asked through clenching teeth, her voice shuddery with anticipation. It's Always Time Act 02 Ch. 01 "Eh," said Tomoe, shrugging. "He doesn't look like the vanilla type." SB clucked impatiently and rolled onto her belly, facing Dee. The color of her crystal-polished skin cycled down to a rich, ruby red. She clasped her hands behind her back, wide leathery bands snaking around her arms to bind them tight together. She scooted up on her knees, rump rising in the air, two ruby pseudopodia morphing into bloated, knurled, thrumming dildos that stuffed themselves up her cunt and down her ass. "Ch-cherry?" she managed to sob before a ball gag popped itself into her mouth. Outside, something clattered like a garbage can overturning. Dee looked out in alarm but a purring croon from Tomoe drew back his attention. "Ooh," she said, eyes locked on SB's reddening, violated derriere. "I don't know about him, but I could go for the cherry-treatment right about now." SB swallowed the ball gag and blew Tomoe a petulant raspberry. Then she chuckled and leapt up, filling out into a toothsome Amazon, round ass pressed up against the glass counter, proud tits mashed together with her elbows. "Chocolate?" she asked in honeyed, fiery voice, drawing out the first syllable as she leaned in toward Dee, leering. From behind the counter, Tomoe looked down and wolf-whistled. "That's my bet," she said. "Bet you five dollar he's a chocolateer, SB. But don't answer yet, Dee!" SB bounced up to sit on the countertop and quivered back into her original, chisel-perfect form with one glaring exception. "Strawberry?" she asked in her own voice, "or…"—with a crick of her neck and a jut of her jaw, her dick billowed out, a tumescent fire hose—"…Strawberry-Banana?" Dee sighed, took the crumpled, soggy, empty Jell-O box out of his jacket pocket, and placed it on the countertop next to the tin of SRU thickener. SB took one look and toppled over backward into a display of vitamin supplements, her massive manhood weighty and elastic enough to stick tight to the countertop as she fell. Tomoe backpedaled away from the box, swearing a blue streak in Japanese. The pull of the SB's fall eventually caught up with her enormous dick and sack and they squeaked over the countertop glass, flipping up and then slapping down behind the counter with a loud thwap! and a muffled oof! from SB. "Lime?" Tomoe cried, nearly twisting an ankle on a Vitamin C bottle SB had sent spinning her way. "Lime?! Doaho! What did I say? What. Did. I. Say!" SB peeped up from behind the counter. "You went lime?" she whispered, eyes wide in wonder. "You went lime…first time?" Dee flushed. "It was an accident." "No way, José," Tomoe said. She jerked a thumb back toward the SRU supply closet. "Once you take something from there, nothing is accidental. That's one of the rules." "So there are rules?" asked Dee, while SB murmured, "Wow, a real lime-guy." "Hundreds and hundreds," Tomoe said, "and I hardly know half of them. Lost the franchise manual a day after I assumed the place, although I bet that was just a rule in action, too." She glared at the gaping SB and gave her an annoyed kick, "Pick your jaw up off the damn floor, SB." SB pouted but pulled herself together. "Anyway," said Tomoe, turning back to Dee, "I'm glad you got away. She'll lose cohesion quickly without that first infusion of sperm." Dee shuffled his feet. "What?" Tomoe said while SB breathed, "Uh-oh." "She got that four days ago," Dee said. "Four days," Tomoe said. "Four days? You've been with lime for four days?" She drew close to SB who gave her a loving, reassuring squeeze. "Never mind about me," Tomoe said, shaking her head, "Who the Hell are you?" "I'm not answering any more questions until you answer some of mine," said Dee. He tapped a finger on the top of the thickener tin. "What is nanomek? Is … SB … made out of it too? SB, if you're made out of Jell-O, how come you're so, well, cut? And how does it all work?" "You want the long answers or the short ones?" asked Tomoe. "Short will do." "Okay. Nanomek is a magical powder, some 'techno-alchemical' handwavium stuff or something. I don't really know, I'm not science fiction fan. It's a basic component of a lot of the SRU gimmicks and gimcracks. When used as a thickener for sweet liquid, it makes meliae." Seeing Dee's confused expression, Tomoe repeated, "Meliae. Honey nymphs. Goo girls. Just look it up on the Internet later, will you?" "Why goo girls?" Dee said. "Nanomek is entirely female," Tomoe answered. SB cleared her throat, and Tomoe looked up at her, smiling, "even if the meliae it makes aren't." "So that's why it needs sperm," said Dee. "That makes sense, I guess." Then, after a beat: "No, that actually doesn't make any sense at all." Tomoe continued, "As to your second question: yes, SB is a meliae. And as to why she's 'cut,' as you so delicately put it: I cut her collagen-based gelatin powder with the polysaccharide pectin when I made her." She nestled further into SB's protective embrace. "So that means she's my meliae, Dieter, and don't you damn-well forget it." "I'm a one-woman man-woman," SB told her, "you know that, lovey." Dee said, "So then how do you get … well, you know …" "We used to steal from sperm banks," said SB. "But that was too complicated, random, and not a very nice thing to do in the first place." Tomoe smirked, running a finger up and down SB's breastbone. "So now, every once in a while, we go to a club and make some guy really, really, lucky." SB stepped back, rolled her trim, broad shoulders, and stood proud, fists pressed to outthrust hips. "Any very, very surprised." The couple collapsed together in a fit of cackling laughter. Dee found himself grinning like an idiot. After a minute, SB brushed tears away from Tomoe's eyes with her thumbs. "You okay, lovey?" "I am now," Tomoe said, bussing SB's lips. "This just isn't the way it's supposed to work. When they go lime, they're not supposed to come back at all. Something is going on here." "He's a real lime guy," SB told her with a shrug. "We always suspected there had to be some out there, somewhere." Dee felt like he was intruding on something that should have been very private, but the questions were burning too brightly in him, and he had to interrupt. "I'm sorry," he said, giving them a moment to drift apart, "But what's the deal with lime?" "Let's start with how the nanomek works, how the meliae is born." Dee felt a flash of panic at hearing the word 'born,' although he did not know why, but Tomoe must have read something in his eyes and added, "I mean made, or summoned, if you prefer." "Sure," said Dee, relaxing. "The goo girl takes on characteristics associated with the flavor you make her with, often with unexpected results," Tomoe explained. "Huh?" said Dee. "The nanomek metamorph assembles by a process of allopoeis informed by a collaborative-learning neural net filter trained in the recognition of poetic justice and irony," SB girl translated. The coppery one-piece fanned out from her shoulders to cover her Olympic diver's physique again. "Oh," said Dee, one of nature's nerds. "Duh. You should have said. So what's so bad about lime? Lime meliae are tarts or something?" One of the women in the store harrumphed indignantly. "What's Latin for 'slime,' Dee?" Tomoe asked. Dee thought for a moment. "Uh. 'Oblimo?'" Tomoe and SB shared an awkward, embarrassed glance. "No," Tomoe said slowly, "that's the verb." "Latin has a verb meaning 'to slime?'" "Forget about 'oblimo,'" Tomoe said, waggling her hands. "The Latin word for slime is 'limus.'" "'Limus,'" Dee repeated. "Yep." "'Limus' as in 'lima?'" Dee said. "Yep." "And 'lima' as in lime," Dee said. He got it now. "And lime as in lye. And lye as in 'will burn your face off.'" "Lye's also used to make pickles," Tomoe said. "Your dick pickled yet, Dee?" "I'll say," said Dee. "The nanomek won't make the same associations with the flavor as you do," SB explained. "It won't behave as you expect. It never does. Rules are rules." Dee thought about it. Why had he wanted the thickener in the first place? Oh, right, to keep Jell-O thick when it warmed up. Instead, the nanomek gave him a girlfriend that melted faster the hotter she got. "When you went lime," Tomoe said, "you jumped ahead few dozen chapters of the story, like trying to graduate from kindergarten with a PhD in fucking." Dee felt foolish for asking so many questions, but that was why he came here in the first place, so he said, "There's a story?" "There's always a story," Tomoe said, rolling her eyes. "Once you buy something from SRU, you're subject to the rules. And the rules demand a story. They won't just let us skip straight to the fucking." She grabbed SB's hips and mashed herself against SB's package. SB purred and tugged playfully at Tomoe's hair. "Believe me, we've tried. Instead it's always talk, talk, talk, romance, romance, heroes, villains, yadda yadda. The gods have hard-ons for melodrama, seems like. "Anyway," Tomoe continued, "you deserve to know how your story was supposed to go. It's a fairytale. Lonely guy buys magic powder for mysterious stranger. She promises it will bring him riches and delights the likes of which he had never experienced—" "You didn't tell me anything like that. You didn't really tell me a damn thing, if you care to recall." "Shut up," Tomoe said, "I'm on a roll. 'But,' the mysterious stranger says, 'there is one thing you must never do: you must never mix the magic powder with lime.' So the lonely guy goes off and has all sorts of wild adventurers with honey nymphs, trying different flavors and concoctions that never seem to work as he intended, and much zaniness ensues. And then the story ends in one of two ways." Tomoe held up her thumb. "First, the Disney lovey-dovey ending. Our lonely guy learns about the true meaning of love, goes on some grand quest to truly earn the love of his beloved honey nymph, and in the process she turns out to be a warrior princess under an enchantment or something equally trite, his true love for her sets her free, and they live happily ever after and all that kind of dumb crap, at least until the straight-to-video sequel is released." Tomoe's forefinger joined her thumb. "Two, the Grimm's Tales cautionary ending, which seems to be getting more and more common these days: lonely guy fucks his way through dozens of honey nymphs, getting more depraved, bored, and even lonelier with each dalliance, until he finally decides that the mysterious stranger was full of shit and lime must really be where it's at, so he makes a lime honey nymph and he…" She rubbed her extended thumb and forefinger together, making a soft sandpapery sound, and mimed flicking away something tiny and distasteful. "Well, he sublimes." Dee had a brief flash back ["…keep you cumming and cumming…"] and admitted, "It almost happened to me. A couple of times, in fact." SB moved close, hands splayed on the countertop, her almond-shaped, diamond eyes narrowing as they hunted for something deep within Dee. "But it didn't. No man comes back from lime. No man denies sublimation. God damn it, Dee, Lime could probably devour me in a matter of minutes. Who are you? What did you do to Lime?" Two more flashbacks ["…The fridge. You. Before that? Dunno…" "…It's time? It's time? Is it time?…"] brought Dee to the verge of tears. He tore his gaze away from SB and watched the autumnal gold sunset through the storefront window for a long, quiet moment. "Her name was never 'Lime,'" he whispered. "She is Galatea." He turned back to face SB wearing a smile so inscrutable Tomoe wanted to photograph it for future study and practice it in front of a mirror. "She's back at my apartment," Dee said, and touched his palm to the tips of SB's fingers. "I can introduce you if you'd like." Little drops of sport-drink florescent red sweat pricked across SB's brow, and she started to stutter. "S-s-s—" Dee arched his eyebrow in an unconscious but perfect imitation of Galatea herself. "Solid?" he said, and lifted his hand. It dripped like it had been dipped in red grapefruit juice. SB took a few jerky steps backward, eyes glazing an opaque, milky pink. The fingers where Dee had touched her ran together into a formless flipper. The plum-sized tip of the bulge in her one-piece crept up past her bellybutton and a candy red, gooey stain spread over her stomach. Tomoe reached out to her but hesitated. "Your precum is maraschino cherry syrup?" Dee said but shook his head. "I'm sorry, that was going too far. I haven't been myself lately." Tomoe glared at him. "Maybe you just didn't know who you really were before now. Dee, you need to learn how to control it." Dee matched her glare. "Control…what?" Dee growled in a deep, bass register. Tomoe wilted, knees buckling, palms flat against her inner thighs. "Please, Dee," she said, gnawing the flesh of her bottom lip. "Call it back. Dial it down. Do whatever you want—" Dee snarled wordlessly and Tomoe's eyes fluttered up as her head lolled down "—ah, God, do anything you want, just please, stop playing games," Tomoe begged. "Games?" Dee said, gripping the countertop. "What games?" A tracery of cracks raced away from his clutching fingers, weaving an irregular spider web in the counter's glass. I've said that before, he thought, haven't I? No, it wasn't me…One of his earliest memories of Galatea hit him hard. He blinked. "Tomoe? SB?" But the two women just gawked in fear. Fear of me, he realized. He slumped over the countertop. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I wouldn't. I would never…" And this time he let himself cry for a while. Someone stepped close. "SB," Tomoe said, "you were right." Her petite but strong fingers ruffled Dee's hair. "He is a real lime-guy." SB strutted up, and gave Dee's shoulder a friendly punch. Dee stood and she greeted him with a wide, knowing grin, "Go on home, hero," she said and struck out her right hand. "Galatea is waiting." He nodded, straightened out his coat, and shook her hand. "Man," SB marveled, "what a grip." She threw her other arm around his shoulder and slapped him hard on the back, taking the opportunity to bury her face in his neck and drink in his scent. Dee felt a very unfamiliar pressure against his groin. His absent conscience was dead silent about it and his raw sex drive did not care what was touching his dick as long as it got him off. Dee himself chose to postpone his final opinion for a later date. "Dee," SB sighed as she broke the oddly-mixed embrace, "if one day Tomoe and I invited you to go…clubbing…" "I'd be sorely tempted," Dee interrupted, grinning, but SB just laughed. "I was going to say, 'do you think Galatea would kill us,'" she said, peeking over his shoulder into the shadowy aisle behind him. "I don't think so. Not for just asking, anyway," he smirked. "Now scram, sport," Tomoe said, "but don't forget your nanomek." She held out the tin of SRU Thickening Agent. "Galatea doesn't need any more," Dee said, "and I don't want any more meliae, just her. Can't you put it back wherever it came from?" "No way, José," Tomoe said, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, Dee, but you brought it forth. You paid five dollar. It's yours, and whatever happens with it is your responsibility, your karma. I wish I could rewrite the rules, but I lost the stupid policy-and-procedure manual. Keep it close, keep if safe – and for God's sake keep it dry. One schmuck poured his down the drain and the next thing he knew his city was crawling with tentacled, sperm-stealing, sewage she-demons. That's how Atlantis sank, don't you know." "No, I didn't know." He took the tin of thickener from Tomoe, carrying it as gingerly as he would a live grenade. "And I really didn't need to know, either. And please, don't let anyone else know. I do not want to see fan art of that on the Internet." The bell clattered as he opened the front door. He paused. "Tomoe?" Tomoe was counting out the money in the cash register. "Yeah?" she said, and turned to SB who was flipping through the Sudoku puzzle book and muttering in befuddled anger. "You had done them all wrong, so stop bitching," Tomoe told her. "There were three questions I forgot to ask," Dee said. "Go on," Tomoe said, working on a tall stack of bills. "One five dollar," she muttered, "two five dollar, three five dollar…" "Why did you fire the other guy?" "I didn't like him," said Tomoe, "and besides, I didn't fire him. I just said, 'Whatever you do, don't take anything from the supply closet.' Never fails." "Oh," Dee said. "Tomoe?" "Yes, yes, two more questions, I know, I'm listening. Galatea must have to sit on your face to shut you up." Dee turned the tin over in his hands. "What would happen if you ate some nanomek?" "Me?" Tomoe said, about halfway through the stack of five dollar bills. "Probably nothing. Unless I guzzled semen at the same time, then I might turn into a cum-powered hose-beast monstrosity or something. Remember, it never works as expected." The silence stretched. Tomoe and SB looked up at him. "Dee?" Tomoe asked. The nanomek powder scrapped and scratched the inside of the tin. Dee tried to steady his hands. "What if…what if I ate some nanomek?" Dee asked. "Don't," said Tomoe, jumping out her seat and scattering the pile of bills, "don't even think about it. You can eat Galatea out as much as you like, but don't swallow any raw, non-patterned nanomek. That's even crazier than making a lime meliae." "That would be giving nanomek its own source of sperm," explained SB. "Take me, for instance. I can cum. I can cum gallons. I'm a one man-woman bukkake extravaganza." "She really, really is," breathed Tomoe. She reached out and twined a cotton-candy dreadlock around a lazy forefinger, her eyes roving up and down SB's crystalline angles and jellified curves. SB flushed russet under Tomoe's hungry gaze. "Any-anyway," she stammered, as Tomoe slid her other hand down the front of SB's one-piece, "I c-cum seminal fluid, not semen. Letting nanomek—ah!—have its way with your balls would be—oh, yeah—no-don't-stop! Just, just keep doing that. Oh, wow." Dee shuffled uncomfortably. "You, uh, could've just told me to get lost. I would've taken the hint." Tomoe disappeared below the countertop. SB started, "I—" but gave a little yelp and threw her arms wide to clutch at the counter, the fat puzzle book flapping to the floor. "I-thought-I-told-you-that-when-we-first-met," she squeaked as fast as she could before a small, delicate hand with an iron grip reached up and hauled her down by the ponytail behind the counter. Dee listened to the couple murmur and gasp for a moment before whispering, "Good night, guys." He shut the door as slowly as he could to keep that horrible bell from clattering. A few seconds later, Tomoe, topless but with her blouse gathered up to cover her chest, jogged out from behind the counter. "T, you devil-bitch, get back here!" SB cried from behind counter. "Fuck you I want to watch him walk," Tomoe said. "Huh? Oh, yeah, me too!" SB ran to join her. "Christ, SB, cover up, he might notice a three foot erection bouncing in the window." "Oh, shit, sorry. Um. Do you have a tarp or something?" "Never mind, SB, just let me look. God, what an ass." "He's got a cute butt, though, T." "Oh, hardy-har-fucking-har-har." "Seriously, T. What's going on? What is she doing to him?" "Her? Nothing. Him? Everything. Rules." "I've known you for three thousand years, T, if you include the future and all those temporal continuum anomalies, and I don't even know what the fuck you just said." The odd couple watched in silence as Dee started up his car and pulled away. "He had company, you know," said SB. "An entire entourage, seemed like." It's Always Time Act 02 Ch. 01 "I know," said Tomoe. "One I expected, the other I didn't. Still, it's best not to warn him. These things just get worse if I meddle. More than my usual meddling, I mean." "What happens now?" said SB. Tomoe reached up and wrapped her arms around SB's shoulders. "You know how this goes," Tomoe sighed, "they think they're in love, but all they have in common is sex, sex, sex. So, their love must be tested. You remember." SB's eyes narrowed. "Yeah. You and your stupid rules." "I didn't write them, SB." "Bullshit. You're forgetting who you're talking to, T." But SB cradled Tomoe's head on her shoulder. They stood in silence as twilight fell, a dusty blue van rumbling down the access road providing the only movement and noise. Tomoe stepped back to look SB in the eye. "Tell me truthfully, SB: Would you fuck him?" "What, you mean would I fuck Dee?" "Do you want to fuck him? Tell me true, now." Tomoe asked. Her eyes twinkled with the potential of tears. SB glanced out to the window and sighed. "Yes, T. I would fuck him. I want to fuck him. In fact, lover-girl, I would fuck him and fuck him until his ass was as red as mine and then I'd keep fucking him until my dick fell off." SB turned back to Tomoe and locked her in a clinch, mashing their breasts together. Tomoe's legs had to bow slightly to let SB's cock slide tight against her crotch and under her ass. Now fully engorged, SB's dick curved like a scimitar, its head pushing into the small of Tomoe's back. SB's pale crystalline eyes flashed brighter than the stars. "But I'd much rather do that to you." "Oh, honey," cooed Tomoe, flipping the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED. "You say the sweetest things." * * * * My creation, is it real? It’s my creation, I do not know No hesitation, no heart of gold Just flesh and blood, I do not know From my heart and from my hand Why don’t people understand My intentions... Weird science!! -Oingo Boingo, Weird Science * * * * It's Always Time Act 02 Ch. 02 Act Two: Secret Origins Chapter Two: Anything That You Can't Break The gloom of a New Moon twilight settled over long stretches of grassy, undeveloped commercial lots. The elevated highway loomed ahead, but the onramp was nowhere in sight. Dee flipped on the car's high beams, switched off the radio, and drove into the whistling wind, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It took about two minutes. Dee heard a metallic sigh. "First this Ursula woman is giving you bars of homemade soap," Galatea grumbled from the back seat. "Now I find that a lipstick fem from Japan and a chick with a three foot dick made out of rock candy want to take you 'clubbing' and treat your balls—which, I'm sure I don't need to point out, are named Mine Too and Mine Also—as their personal sperm banks." Dee smiled into the rearview mirror. "So?" He saw no sign of Galatea in the rear shadows. "So? So? So what is it with you and lesbians?" she demanded. "I collect gay friends," Dee shrugged. "Everyone needs a hobby." A chilly silence descended in the creaky cabin of the old Volkswagen. He glanced up at the mirror again, but the reflection of a high-riding pair of headlights ruined his night vision. Dee sighed and tried again. "Would you believe I'm a butch trapped in a man's body?" The cold silence seemed to turn thoughtful. "You know," Galatea said after a while, "I just might." Her voice sounded a little closer. "How did you know I was here, anyway?" "I didn't," Dee said, peering ahead for the elusive onramp, "until SB tipped me off by looking right at you." "Your lesbians are conspiring against me!" Galatea cried. Dee heard a rapid, unhappy drumming. "Oh, come on," Dee laughed. "Besides, I should've known. You just said 'I could never be seen like this.' You didn't say that you weren't coming with me. Oh, there you are. Where's the rest of you?" A diminutive Galatea lay on her back on the passenger side headrest, no bigger than a Barbie doll but twice as curvaceous. "At home," she fumed, "and probably so horny I'm raping the next door neighbor. Think he'd put the X-Box controller down long enough to notice?" "Possibly. But I think Viggo's safe. " "How do you know? This is the longest I've gone without touching you, or kissing you, or, or tasting you—" "Or tying me down and tickling me to death." "Exactly!" She punctuated her exclamation by fracturing into dozens of little emeralds, pelting down into the passenger seat and reforming with her head squashed shapeless against the grey cushion and her doll-sized, heart-shaped rump wiggling a few inches the air. "And I need you inside me so much it...it hurts. It actually hurts..." Dee took his foot off the accelerator. The headlights behind them drew close but soon receded. Dee reached for her but she seemed so small and so fragile he did not know where to put his hand. "Honey," he soothed, "honey, what is it? What's wrong, really?" Galatea sat up on her knees, rubbing her eyes. "Can't cry," she said, "too small. Not liquid enough." Dee's car was rolling down the road little faster than twenty miles per hour. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," he said, his fingertip alighting against her cheek. She nestled the pad of his fingertip to her face as if it were a favored pillow. "Back at the store," she said, "it felt like you had more in common with those two women than you did with me. I watched the three of you become friends. We never became friends like that. They were your friends, and I was just a fuck buddy. It made me feel so lonely." "Do you want to know why I asked for the extra hour? It wasn't for clubbing." She hugged his finger closer. "I know," she sighed and shivered for a second. Then she perked up, "and yes, I want to know." He pried his finger away and pulled a grubby, folded piece of printer paper out of a jacket pocket. "I'm going to get one of these," he said, handing it over. Galatea's face crinkled in confusion as she unfolded the paper. She stared, and stared, and stared, and then leapt into the foot well of the rear seat. "Where is it?" she grunted. Dee treated his car like a purse. Maps, empty cans, CDs, and more detritus flew high in Galatea's frantic search. "I know I saw one here somewhere!" "What's wrong?" Dee said, stomping on the accelerator. "I'll try to get home as fast as possi—" "No!" Galatea screamed, and then: "Yes! Yes. Got it. Yes!" She lugged a plastic water bottle, an inch stouter than her pint-sized form, back into the passenger seat. She wrenched off the white bottle cap, crammed her unhinged jaw over the mouth of the bottle, and plopped down onto her back. Dee found the onramp to the highway at last and gunned for it. "Hang on, honey," he said, watching the plastic bottle crunch and accordion down as she sucked it dry. The crumpled, empty bottle fell away from her face. She wobbled up. A smidge taller than twelve inches high, she had plumped from voluptuous to positively zaftig, a figurine of a fertility goddess carved of mint jelly, the swells of her breasts and hips as wide as she was tall. "Okay," she gulped, "okay. Okay...Wah!" She cried like a lawn sprinkler. Tears squirted in curved trajectories all around her. Dee's car roared onto the highway. "Honey?" "That's so romantic!" Galatea sobbed, spilling over onto her back again. Saccharine, green water rained down inside Dee's car. "Galatea, it's not that big a deal. I just thought you'd appreciate it." She undulated up and over to hunker on all fours. "I love it," she groaned, starting a deliberate, rippling crawl toward Dee's crotch. She had lost much of her water weight but she was still so stacked it looked like her tits and hips were creeping along and her arms were moving just for show. "It's also," she panted, "the hottest fucking thing I've ever fucking heard in my entire fucking life." "Uh," said Dee, checking the rearview mirror and shifting uncomfortably as Galatea oozed over the emergency break between the two front seats, "you've said that already. Uh. Remember? Galatea?" "No," she cooed, flowing into Dee's lap like a fat, hungry cat, her outline swallowed by the shadows beneath the steering column, "this tops that by like a fucking mile." Dee felt hundreds of questing, urgent fingers slip over his belt, into his pants, behind the elastic band of briefs, and wrap snuggly around his dick. The fingers squeezed a pulsing rhythm. His hands jerked on the wheel and the car swerved. "Why the Hell are you still wearing pants?" Galatea said. Dee tried slow the car down but felt thick rubbery bands bind his foot tight to the accelerator. "Oh, no," Galatea chuckled from the darkness below the steering column. "You're going to make sure you keep moving as fast as you can." Dee's belt flew into the back seat. The top button of his jeans, trailing thin shreds of denim, soon followed. "And I'm going to make sure you keep cumming as hard and as fast and as much as you can." The long, narrow fingers encircling his manhood braided together into flexed, snaky ropes. "I think I'll start you off with a quickie," Galatea said as more ropes threaded into position, wedging the fly of his jean open and ripping his briefs in half. "I'm gunna need a vitamin Dee pick-me-up for what I've got planned." Dee tried concentrating on the dark highway ahead. The braids twisted over him, their knots clicking out a quiet percussion. The rhythm sounded familiar and he did his best to act terrified. "Not the Nest of Twenty Rattlesnakes Technique!" he improvised. "The very same!" reveled Galatea, her impression of a vaudevillian villainess pure perfection. "What the Twenty Rattlers lack in subtlety—" Dee's lap began to purr like a snare drum "—they make up for in speed." "Do your worst," Dee said, laughing as the bumping, tickling, rippling percussion droned on, faster and faster, "but I'll n-never reveal the location of the hidden..." A dark green tendril uncoiled out of the foot well and drifted over the dashboard. "Uh," Dee gulped, "r-rebel...base..." The tendril popped the cover off the electric cigarette lighter next to the radio. "Oh fuck," he managed before the pointed tip of the tendril dipped into the socket. "And that," said Galatea from the darkness of the driver's side foot well half-a-minute later, "is what the Nest of Twenty Electric Eels Technique feels like." Her lips smacked. "God, what a rush. Nanogasming is so much better than Nyquil. I'm never ever going this long without a fix of vitamin Dee again. Now we can get started." Dee heard a metallic sigh. He toggled on the overhead light, keeping one shaky hand on the wheel. A murky green, moony face the size and shape of a silver dollar peered up from between his legs. "Hey, Dee," said the green fairy with Galatea's voice. She slicked a loose curl back into the gooey, vibrant mop of hair she wore like a crown of moss, "long time no see." "Hi, Fée," said Dee. "Galatea let you out?" She crept up into his lap. "I am Galatea, dumb ass," she said, dragonfly wings buzzing. "I don't have to let myself out. I'm here all the time." She squat crossed legged before his cock, gazing up at its swollen head. "Man," she said, "déjà fucking vu." "Yeah," Dee said, distracted by another car speeding up to pass them on the right, "but when you're on the surface, things really start getting weird." "Hmph," Fée Galatea said and stood to lean over Dee's dick, one arm draped over its head, her perky tits cool against the corona of his glans. "Does this feel weird?" She spread her legs wide to squeeze his shaft between his knees. "It feels wild," Dee said, catching glimpses of her while he drove. Fée Galatea rested her chin on head of Dee's cock, and breathed deep, her eyes heavy lidded, smile dreamy. "That smell. When I was really small and pressed up against you like this, that smell – the smell of, of you – seemed to fill the world. It—oh, God." She nipped at his meatus, the slit on the head of his dick. It was wider than her mouth. The car swerved. "It makes me want to bite something." She nipped again. "Stop!" Dee begged. "Stop, it's too sensitive. And your teeth are kind of sharp." Galatea squeezed her knees tighter. "Wow, you're really firm," Dee said, adding with a smile, "almost solid. It's different. I like it. How are you doing it?" "Nanomek density," Fée Galatea said. "When I'm bigger—ooh, that smell makes it so hard to think, I just wanna squeeze and squeeze...Hey, watch the road! Anyway, when I'm bigger, the replicating nanomek has to spread out more. When I'm this tiny, the nanomek's much more packed together. I can do all sorts of stuff when I'm pint-sized. Or..." She stood in his lap and measured the girth of Dee's dick with her hands. Keeping her hands the same distance apart, she moved them down over her hips. There was plenty of room to spare. "Or maybe not," she muttered. She took a slow, cleansing breath, pushed her arms out and flexed deep at the knees in a fluid, balletic grand plie. She grew a few inches as she completed the graceful move, her arms and legs stretching, breasts and hips swelling, and the mop of her hair thickening. She measured Dee's girth again, and this time each hand landed squarely on her thighs. "Ooh," she said, giving her own thighs a rough squeeze, "much better. Yes, I can do all sorts of stuff when I'm quart-sized." "Like what?" "Let's find out," Fée Galatea said, stepping back after giving his glans a final nibble. She wedged herself into the steering column. Her pert derriere, as round, wide, and green as a Granny Smith apple, covered the VW emblem in the dead center of the steering wheel. She hooked her elbows around the outer bends of the wheel, her gauzy wings buzzing across Dee's wrists. "Alley-oop!" she said, swinging her shapely legs up and wide like a gymnast practicing on rings. The Volkswagen's horn beeped and she had a quick giggle fit, her teensy toes wiggling in the air. Her legs swung out and she locked ankles behind the head of Dee's dick. "You know," she said, cinching his dick closer, "I spent the ride to SRU hiding behind you, watching the back of your neck. Just staring at your neck – the whole trip – right where those last few curls of your hair brush against your bare skin, thinking about how your neck moved beneath my hands when I held you, when you fucked me, remembering how strong...It made me so hot. But not wet. The other hot, like—ooh, how do you explain this to a man?—like really, really itchy." Her legs crossing, she aimed and angled Dee's cock at her crotch. "It started like a little tickle against my clit," she said. She rocked her hips up. Ignoring the beeping horn, she clamped her legs down on either side of Dee's shaft and thrust herself onto him. The head of Dee's dick scrunched against her sex and even her bellybutton. "But it got intense and moved in deep. And I mean deep. Imagine a prickly itch inside you, deep in the middle of you, that just went on and on and you knew you could never scratch. But, God, am I gunna scratch it now." Her arms locked around the steering wheel, Fée Galatea began to belly dance, head titled, moving to a sensuous beat only she could hear, rolling her lower body over Dee's primed glans in slow, constant oscillation. Soon she was greased from tummy to ass in his precum. "You're awfully quiet, Dee," she said, head rocking and never meeting his gaze, her smile distant but wicked. "I bet you're itching now too; itching to wrap a, mm, big hand around me and just ram me down." She rolled around his dick faster. "And I could take it all in, too." She tipped her hips up even higher and ground her fleshy ass around and around the tip of his cock. "I want to take it all in. Sure, I could stretch, I could grow, but I want it tight." She swiveled down and smeared her pussy around the slit of his meatus. "I think, I think I even want it to hurt. Anything to scratch that damn itch. It's itching so hard and, ah, deep now, Dee, it's like a, a burning wire running from my clit into my cunt and up between my tits. I want you in me so bad, Dee. I need you to fill me, to fuck me, and I want to feel it hard and tight and right now—but don't you take your fucking hands off that fucking wheel!" Her upper two wings, so sheer and gentle against his wrists until now, lashed out and around his hands, strong as nylon. Her entrapping wings gave just enough to let him steer, but if he moved so much as an inch away from the wheel they clapped down like irons. "This is my ride," Fée Galatea snarled, humping even faster. "Just me and Mine. All Mine. You wanna drive? Drive the fucking car." A leg kicked out and stomped on his knee, forcing his foot and the accelerator pedal beneath it to the floor. "But drive it fast." Dee's teeth grit together so hard it sounded like kernels of corn popping in his mouth. "Pygmalion," he hissed. Fée Galatea's wings and legs released him even before he uttered the third syllable of the safe word. "You want to stop?" she asked, disappointed but kind. Dee shook his head with whiplash violence. "No," he said, teeth clenched, "Hell, no. Fuck, no. I just don't want to die." His passion ebbed a tiny bit, permitting him more complex thought. "You're turning me on so much I can't see straight. Although it would be a great death, and I'd have bragging rights in Heaven for centuries, I don't want our relationship to end after only four days." "I need it bad," Fée Galatea admitted, "I mean I need it bad and I need to be bad, but I want you to feel good. Do you have any ideas?" "How about I pull over and we pretend I'm about to die in a ten car pileup? You can fuck me to death when I'm ninety five, I promise." "You mean we're only going to fuck twenty-four-seven for a lousy seventy years? I won't even make it through half my Techniques!" "I'll take that as a 'yes,'" Dee said. He squinted through the windshield. "That off-ramp has a rest-stop. And I think this neighborhood has the kind of place we're looking for, for this," he said, waving the rumpled, tear stained piece of paper. "Then you've got a deal. Wait a minute," she said, excited, "if it's just pretend, does that mean I get to be even nastier?" "Oh, yeah." "Awesome. Pull over, solid boy. Right now. I can feel that damn itch behind my damn eyes." Fée Galatea hopped into the driver's foot well, watching Dee watch the road. "C'mon, c'mon," she said, snuggling up to Dee's cock. "Mine's raring to go and I don't want...to..." Her voice grew more pensive with each word "...lose...his...interest..." She buried her face against the side of Dee's glans, muffling her babbling cry, "Oh my God it smells so good and it's so fucking big!" She smeared her mouth and her flushed cheeks over it until her face was painted in precum. "So good," she muttered mindlessly, "so good." Dee pulled the Volkswagen into the darkest corner of the rest stop. He jerked up the handle of the emergency break hard enough to crack its plastic cover. He stared at her, never saying a word. "You're as silent as the grave," Fée Galatea wondered up at him. "This is going to be the greatest fuck I've ever had." Dee reached for her. "Nuh-uh," she said. "You keep your hands—" a wing stretched out to snag his hand "—on the damned wheel." Her wing wrestled his hand back onto the steering column. "Don't make me have to tie you down," she said, wing unwinding. "See if you can keep your hands to yourself." Dee nodded and grabbed the wheel, hands placed at nine and three o'clock, knuckles crunching. Fée Galatea scrabbled up to stand in his lap. She vaulted up and over and passed his dick in a wild game of leapfrog, her tiny feet plunking down into his wiry pubic hair. "Nice shirt," she taunted, reaching for the lowest shirt button. "Lose it." She had to squat for leverage, her ass sliding against his shaft, angling it down, and tore at the yellow fabric. The white plastic button bounced off the windshield. She pulled herself up to the next shirt button leaving a trail of little, green finger-paint handprints. She grabbed with both hands, planted a foot against his chest, and wrenched the second button free. A sharp knee pressed into his sternum as she knelt to yank his shirttails out of his pants. She gathered each shirttail in her hands and rent the shirt in twain, scattering the remaining buttons, and revealing Dee's undershirt, now spotted with sweat. She sat down on Dee's belly in a huff. "I love wearing your tees," she said, leaning close, "especially after you've already worn 'em." She held up two fingers and they merged, the conjoined edge gleaming like a shard of glass. "But this one's got to go," she sighed, and sliced the shirt open in a single sweep. She gathered the split undershirt, ready to wrest it off his shoulders, but froze, finger-blade dulling. "No, wait." She pressed her cheek against his slick chest, drinking in his scent. "Oh, yes," she said, curling up like a cat. "Oh, God," she sighed, wrapping herself tight in the two halves of the undershirt. "Oh my God, oh my God," she gasped, snuggling in as close as she could. "Dee, Dee, you're everywhere, you're every..." She shuddered, let go of the undershirt and pressed her fists to her temples. "I came, Dee," she whimpered, "I came, just being with you like this made me cum. Oh, Dee," she sobbed, "you can't imagine, you can't imagine how incredible this is. I want to feel like this forever." Dee wanted to tell her he knew exactly how it felt ["...cumming and cumming..."], but the force necessary to break through the crushing, silent fury of his need to have her would probably rip the steering column right out of the dashboard. Fée Galatea tucked herself in, trembling. After few moments, her uncontrolled movements took up a steady rhythm. "Can't sit still," she said, rolling onto her stomach, pelvis pumping, one hand wrapped in the undershirt to keep herself nestled into his chest. She reached between her legs with the other hand and plunged her fingers deep into her sex. "Deeper," she said, and her pulsating, flexible fingers obeyed. "Deeper," she commanded, humping against Dee's chest to ram her hand in further. "God damn it. No good, it's no good. Gotta fuck." She glared up at him. "Gotta fuck you." She rolled onto her back, her spider-silk sticky wings pinioned under his arms. "Fuck me, Dee," she implored, straining then buckling as she masturbated, "please, please fuck me, Dee. Dee, why won't you fuck me?" It's Always Time Act 02 Ch. 02 Heart pounding, eyes squeezed shut against stinging sweat, Dee locked his elbows and kept clutching at the steering wheel, fighting the impulse to try and twist it into a pretzel. Tiny hands clawed handfuls of hair on either side of Dee's neck. Fée Galatea kicked out and swung up, back curving, until her legs pressed hard over his ears, her feet hooked together behind his head, and her pussy smashed into his mouth. "If you're not gunna fuck, you are gunna eat," she growled. Her nectar was so tart that a single droplet against his tongue made Dee's eyes water and nose run. Fée Galatea let go of Dee's hair and clamped her legs tighter around his head. She arched high, throwing her arms out in a swan dive, only to plop supine and upside down against Dee's chest and stomach. "Eat me, damn it," she said, pressing her miniature mound into his mouth hard enough to cram her apple-sized ass between his lips before launching another nibbling, pawing assault on the head of his dick. Dee lanced his tongue into her cunt. The searing sour-sweet flavor of concentrated Galatea overwhelmed every other sensation. His arms jerked, his hands itching to cradle her little ass so he could suckle her in earnest. His fingertips were just clearing the steering column when he snarled, curled his fists around the wheel again, and stabbed his tongue into her as far as he could. He felt the flesh of her jellied hips spread and compress against his lips to accommodate the invasion. Fée Galatea shrieked, "Yes!" She pushed up with her hands lost in his pubic hair, bucking and grinding to take his tongue in deeper. "Yes! Harder. Deeper. Yes! Yes." She rode his tongue and Dee was lost in the taste of her. "No," she said, head shaking, "no, damn it. Fuck! Not deep enough. Not big enough. I need Mine. I need Mine in me right fucking now." She slipped out Dee's mouth, leaving his tongue coated and lips gummy with potent green honey, and rolled into his lap before bounding on all fours back up Dee's stomach to position her steamy sex above his cock. Dee felt tension gather in her arms and legs. "Mine," Fée Galatea said, "all of Mine. Now!" She thrust herself down and sat up on the head of his dick. She compressed his glans between her thighs to give her purchase. Her thrumming wings blurred the air to aid her balance. Her hands seized his open shirt to give her traction. "Don't you dare let go of that wheel," she said, tugging on the yellow shirttails like they were reigns on a thoroughbred. She began her tormenting belly dance again, panting hard and sighing heavy, unable to spare the breath for dirty talk this time. A lubricating mix of her nectar and his precum spread all around Dee's glans and Fée Galatea's pubis, thighs, belly, and ass. Dee reclined against the head-rest, trying to ease the stresses building his neck as his hindbrain and muscle-memory insisted he should be hurling the little hellcat into the backseat to cleave her with his prick. He let the strain express itself by worrying his fingers over the steering wheel. That helped a little, and Dee closed his eyes to focus on the surreal sensations she was giving him. At first, he only felt the slippery folds of her sex circling the very tip of his cock, teasing the slit of his meatus. I'm getting fucked by a thimble, Dee decided, knowing better than to speak his mind for once. His tension ebbed further at thought, giving him the willpower to sit still while Fée Galatea gyred and gimbaled atop his manhood. Her molten, innermost nectar tugged tighter and swirled stronger than he could ever remember. Hungry folds crept over the dome of his glans, and Dee's thoughts were consumed in a torrent of anticipation. "Oh, this is good," Fée Galatea whispered, working Dee into her one millimeter at a time. "This so fucking good. I can feel myself stretching—I usually don't feel it, Dee, I just do it. And when I'm fucking you, there's like nothing I can't do. But, but now it's like I'm stretching toward a limit—ah!—stretching past my limit. And you're letting me go there. You're taking me there, Dee." Her pussy captured the dome of Dee's glans and started its slow, widening descent to the corona of Dee's cock. It felt so intimate and tender that Dee sensed orgasm building from just this tiniest of embraces. "I've never had, had boundries before," he heard Fée Galatea say, her voice indistinct against the foreground of rising pressure, "but you've given them to me, and now you're breaking them, just by holding still, and letting me fuck you." Dee's sensorial world focused to the sweet sting of her embrace and the urgency welling up inside him. "It hurts, but only a little, and I love it," Fée Galatea said. "I love you. I love you, Dee, I—Oh my God, you're gunna cum!" Dee thought: I can't hold onto the wheel. "I can feel it, Dee! You're going to cum so much!" The crashing over to release was seconds away. I can't hold onto the wheel anymore, not a single second longer. I'm going to cum and I've got to hold her and kiss her and tell her I love her but I can't speak I can't ever speak why can't I— "You're going to fill me! Oh, God, I'm going to be full. I never ever thought I could be full. Oh Dee, thank you, thank you. I love you so much. I love you so much! Cum, Dee, cum in me. Cum now!" I'm going to let go—I'm cumming—there's nothing I can do—I'm cumming—unless—cumming— unless I can— "I love you, Galatea," he whispered, hearing her cry out in wordless delight at the sound of his voice, and he came. And he never let go of the wheel. The spasm of orgasm relented into afterglow, allowing Dee to open his eyes. Fée Galatea rode rigid upon him, a statuette of green agate marbled with mother-of-pearl, and while she did not move a muscle, milky veins riled across her like the banded clouds of Jupiter. The intrusion of his glans gave her a pot belly, distended hips, and bloated thighs. Again she reminded Dee of a Stone Age fertility idol, the dragonfly wings only heightening the impression of being ridden by an ancient, primal divinity. The image both aroused and disturbed him powerfully. What did Tomoe tell me? "That's how Atlantis fell, don't you know." SRU has been in the honey-nymph business a very, very long time. But Tomoe and SB were scared. ["...You went lime...first time?..."] Scared of me. The opalescent veins spread across her hair and even into the gauze of her wings. "I'm full," she said. "I'm more than full. I'm, I'm happy." She gaped at him, starry eyed. "Dee, I'm happy!" "You sound like you never were happy before." The stars in her eyes fell as tears. "I wasn't. I was always in need, need of you, and afraid that need would drive me mad and I'd do something horrible, something terrible to you." ["...so he makes a lime honey nymph and he, well, he sublimes..."] "I've always trusted you," Dee said. Fée Galatea hugged her ballooning belly. "I know." The white veins began to fade as the nanomek worked its strange magic with Dee's sperm, the transparency of her gel slowly returning. Dee wanted to hold her but she had not given him leave to release the wheel. Instead he asked, "Do you want to stop? I want to keep going, but I'm okay with stopping if you want to." She flashed her wicked, dagger-toothed grin at him. "Are you fucking kidding me?" She dried her eyes with a ragged shirttail. "Of course I don't want to stop. I said I didn't need it, dumb ass. I still want it." She started belly dancing atop his dick again. "Actually, I want it now more than ever. While you were doing your stupid new-age nice-guy impression—'Golly gosh, honey, I'd sure like bang you so hard that your head might pop off, but not if you don't want me to, because I'm so sensitive and enlightened and stuff'—I had about half a billion nanogasms. I'd've had more if you'd've kept quiet for once." Their eyes met and her grin softened. "Oh, shut up," she told him, wriggling, "I wanna get busy." Dee slumped against the head-rest and sighed, "Lord all-mighty." "No, you always say that after sex," Fée Galatea said. "We're just gettin' started. I've got so much nanomek inside me right now I've go no idea what to do with it. I could grow fifty feet tall and carry you to the top of the Empire State Building and screw you stupid. I could fill this parking lot with a few hundred duplicates and line up to screw you stupid, but I doubt any of us could be that patient and we'd just pin you to the pavement with pussy and screw you stupid. Or with a little more food coloring we could first morph into every female character in those comic books hidden in your closet and then pin you down and screw you stu—Holy shit, this is really turning you on, isn't it?" Dee groaned. "Don't pretend...you didn't know...what you were...doing." "I could do all that, you know," Fée Galatea said, convincingly coy and demure—or as coy and demure as any woman could sound with a fire hydrant shoved up her cunt, "but not if you don't me want to, because I'm so sensitive and enlightened and stuff." "Fuck...you," Dee croaked, laughing. "That's...your...job," Fée Galatea mocked. She started another wisecrack but the head of Dee's dick slid into her another millimeter and she could only quake and mewl. After a while she started an excited babble. "I love being so tight. I could just stretch or grow but this feels so good I don't wanna but this is taking so long and I want all of you in me right now but I don't wanna stretch I want it tight and oh, it's so tight, Dee! But I want it all and I want it hard and I want it fast and I want help—" Dee's arms twitched "—but not from you! This is still my ride. Let's see what this extra nanomek can do." She frowned in concentration for a moment. A penetrating heat flowered around Dee's cock. "Oh, yeah," Fée Galatea said. The air grew sultry as the blooming fever within her belly radiated into the close cabin of the car. She bent over double, pulling Dee's shirttails to her chest. Dee baked in a sudden burst of heat. "Now we're talkin'." Two new pairs of wings unfolded out of her back, dewy and shapeless as a true dragonfly's after molting. The cabin suffused with the unmistakable smell of her innermost gel, the windows steamed up, and the Volkswagen became a citrus-and-sex sauna. "I'm so tight," Fée Galatea said, green sap trickling from her mouth and puddling into Dee's bellybutton, "and you're so big that I can feel every little pulse and twitch of your cock. Your cock jumps when I say 'tight.'" The second set of wings tautened and thinned. "Or is it 'so'? So tight. Mm. So big. So good. Ooh, Mine really likes it when I say 'So gooood.'" Eight filmy dragonfly wings stewed up the balmy air. "You wanna know what I said that made your cock jerk and thump the hardest, oh so hard, against my clit, Dee?" Her shoulders softened and wept green honey. "'Pin you,'" she said as her shoulders sprouted a second pair of arms like a vine sending out fresh shoots. "'To the pavement...'" The new limbs glommed to the steering wheel and a twin fairy formed of pure, runny honey spilled away from her and sloshed into the foot well. "...'With pussy,'" burbled the new fairy, peering up at them. "Hey," she said, trying to point an accusing finger at Fée Galatea, but her oozy, indistinct arm merely flopped in her progenitor's general direction. She harrumphed in indignation and shimmied like a dog shaking itself dry. A rind of surface tension spread across the new fairy, bringing definition and strength with it. "Hey," the new fairy tried again, stabbing an accusing finger at Fée Galatea. "Those are mine." "Oops," Fée Galatea said, plucking the four extra wings from her back and passing them down. "Sorry." The new fairy snapped her wings into place. Dee gaped in awe. "My God." "That's right," said the new fairy, climbing up to sit upon Dee's left knee. "You've never really seen me divide before." She wrapped her arms around Fée Galatea, still astride Dee's dick and now squirming with impatience. "Whatcha think?" "It's beautiful," Dee said. "Mythic. Poetic." "How sweet," Fée Galatea said. "Now shut up and prepare to be screwed stupid." "Mm," agreed the new fairy, hugging herself close to Fée Galatea. "But I was expecting his usual 'wow.' Does that mean he's not turned on?" "Oh, he's turned on." Fée Galatea squirmed faster. "You wouldn't believe how hard Mine throbbed when you showed up. C'mon, let's make him throb like that again—" a second duplicate peeled away, filaments glistening, to slop down onto Dee's right knee "—and again—" a third pulled itself away and scrambled up the steering column to laze across the plastic cover over the speedometer. "And again," Fée Galatea said, and this time all four green fairies split right down to their juicy centers. The cabin of the car became a furnace, the smell of sex overwhelming. Dee reeled. "What's, what's happening?" he mumbled as urgent voices whispered, "...and again...and again..." "Mine is in for the riding of his life," Fée Galatea said. "Open your eyes, Dee, and look at me, at all of me. And remember, you know the safe word, and you know it works, so relax, yes, that's it, just relax—but keep those hands on the wheel. Thank you. Now, open your eyes, take a good look, and tell us: Is it time?" * * * * The phone rang. "Hello?" "You. Have. A...Collect...Call. From ...Hey, Galatea, it's me Ga—Do you accept-the-charge? Say 'yes,' or, 'no.'" "Yes." "...I'm sorry, I did-not-understand. Please say 'yes' or 'no.'" "Yeeesss. Bitch." "Thank you. Caller, your call has gone-through." "Hey, Galatea! It's me, Galatea." "No shit. Where are you?" "I dunno, at a payphone in some parking lot somewhere. Dee's in the car and some of me snuck away to make sure you haven't gone batshit-insane horny yet." "It's pretty touch and go with me right now. What's going on?" "Dee's getting us a gift. He showed me. Oh, it's wonderful, it's so romantic, and then he like really, really fulfilled me and—" "And so you've kidnapped him to see if he can die fucking." "Huh?" "Don't give me that crap. Dee can make me cum by just saying 'Hello.' If he was stupid enough to actually try something that romantic with me I'd get so turned on I'd suck and fuck him until his head caved in." "Eh-heh, yeah, he is kinda tied up at the moment. Sorta. That's why I'm calling. We're going to be a little late, but don't worry, he's with you. I mean me. Us." "That's exactly why I'm worried." "Oh, c'mon, Galatea. Dee can't die. He's Dee. He's the one." "Yeah, yeah. The one you've got and I don't." "Think of it this way: When we re-assimilate, we'll have both the denial and the satisfaction of the exact same experience. Won't that be awesome? What's that noise?" "The blender. You get Dee and I get Nyquil slushies." "It'll be great. And wait to you feel what it's like to be full. Do you think any of us has ever been full? Ever? In all these years? No way, not until Dee. You'll see...look, I, uh, I wanna get back there. It sounds like the party's gettin' started. Just thinking about it makes me kinda, uh..." "Welcome to the club. Listen, I've been thinking, and maybe you should tell him—" "Thinking! Yeah, thinking's good! You go do that s'more. I gottagoseeyabye." —click— "God dammit." * * * * Dee opened his eyes. Almost three dozen pairs of burning emerald eyes glittered back at him in the murky glow from the overhead light. Thirty-two cupid-bow lips puckered into identical, knowing smirks. "Of course," he said, setting aflutter many dragonfly wings at the sound of his voice, filling the cabin of the car with the buzzing of a beehive. "It's always time." Dee sat at the center of a semi-circle of quart-sized green fairies. Fée Galatea still capped his cock with her outspread sex but now a horde of hands held her in place. Fairies stood in the foot well to lug on her hips. Fairies thread themselves through the steering column to grapple her arms. Fairies overhung the dashboard above the wheel to push down on the top of her head. Fairies sat on Dee's knees to cling to her chest. Fairies huddled in his lap to tug at her legs. "Oh fuck. Oh shit. Oh God," Fée Galatea said, hyperventilating. All the fairies shifted their weight against her. "Do it, do it, do it," she hissed, "just fucking do it." Moving as one, the fairies pressed down on her shoulders, pushed down on her head, yanked on her arms, hauled on her hips, heaved on her legs, and drilled Dee into her, her body bulging as Dee's dick squeezed up, and up, and up. Fée Galatea gaped at Dee, gawking and mute, as she descended. After a few breathless, silent seconds, her ass touched down on Dee's balls and she screamed a single, fervid, "Yes!" The tide of the fairies' efforts turned and Fée Galatea slid up, leaving Dee's cock coated in molten green honey. Her frenzied gaze sought his. When his glans finally slipped out of her sex, she wept. "Please," she whimpered. "Please, please, oh, please...More." The fairies brought Fée Galatea glissading down over Dee's nectar-painted dick, fast and hard, grinding her ass and sex against the base of his shaft—"Yes!"—before wrenching her back up and off. The fairies tilted her about in tiny, teasing circles over his glans. "More, more, more," she begged. The fairies slammed her down and rocked her hips around. "Oh my God, ohmyGod..." They hiked her up, slow and steady. "N-no," she said as she rose. "Please, no. No! I want him in me." Dee's dick fell free. "God, no! I want him in me! I need him in me plea—Yes! Yes! I—No, bring him back, bringhimback! Dee, fuck me, oh, please, fuck me, Dee!" The blanketing heat, the overpowering smell of Galatea's sex, the teasing, squeezing, embrace of her pussy, and the little sounds of her pleasure, pleading, passion, and agony had already driven Dee wild, but her last words pushed him over the edge. His hands flew from the steering wheel and flung dozens of green fairies into the far corners of the car. A fairy bounced off the overhead light and Dee and Fée Galatea found themselves together, alone, in a green-tinted world. Fée Galatea reached out and wrapped Dee's hands around her. "Fuck me, Dee," she sighed, kissing the curves of his fingers. "Take me. Forever. Love me. Forever." "Always," Dee said, curled up to kiss her, and entered into her. Fée Galatea tucked her head under Dee's breastbone and pulled the shorn undershirt over herself like a shawl. "I love you," she whispered as they moved against each other. "I love you. Cum in me now, Dee." Dee's pace quickened. "Yes, Dee. You've made me cum so much already. Let yourself cum. I'm full, Dee. I'm happy. You've made me so happy. Cum for me, Dee. Let yourself go. You won't hurt me. You would never hurt me. Fuck me as hard as you want." Dee fell back into the seat and mashed her into his stomach. "Yes," Fée Galatea said, "as hard as you want. I can take it. I want it. I want you to cum in me." He jammed her over his dick. "Yes," Fée Galatea whispered again, "do anything, everything that feels good." She kissed the flesh of his muscled belly when he pumped her down, cradled the undershirt against her cheek when he jerked her away. "I want to make you feel good. I want you to feel so good, Dee. I want you to—Oh my God!" Dee rammed her down, again and again. "So hard, so strong, so solid!" He squeezed her close enough for her gelled flesh to ooze out and spill over his fingers. "Yes, fuck me!" His hands rippled inside her. "Always!" Fée Galatea cried, and Dee seized up and came. The fit passed. Dee's hands and dick were coated in a mix of spunk and formless green gunk. "Galatea," he said, "did you like it? Did I go too far? I thought you wanted—" The green goo in his lap just giggled at him: "Ah-hah, ah-hum, hm-mm." It's Always Time Act 02 Ch. 02 Dee laughed as Fée Galatea coagulated out of green, slimy chaos. "When you said you needed it bad," he said, "and you needed to be bad, you weren't fooling around." "You did it, Dee. You fucked me apart," Fée Galatea said. "You fucked me to itty bitty pieces. I knew this was going to be the greatest fuck I've ever had, but I never imagined how out-of-control it would really feel..." In miniature, her wicked knife-toothed grin looked full of needles. "Let's do it again!" Dee dropped the crook of his arm over his eyes. "Lord all-mighty," Dee said. Fée Galatea nuzzled his dick. "You know you can," she said. Dee glanced at the dashboard's digital clock. "But it's almost seven." He watched her wriggle and dance against him for awhile. "Well," he pondered, "I suppose that at this size it would only take me a few minutes to screw you senseless—" Someone interrupted him with a polite cough. It rebounded around the car over two dozen times. Thirty-one green fairies arched their eyebrows at him from shadowy wells and corners. "Oh, shit," Dee said. "I'm sorry, guys. Girls. Galateas." A few green fairies crawled out onto the passenger seat. "What are you sorry about?" one fairy demanded. "That was awesome. You were awesome. And you know it." Agreement echoed around him as the green fairies crept out from hiding. "Yeah!" "Fuck, yes." "Totally blew my mind." "Really? Mine too!" "Well, duh." "But what we really want an explanation for," said a green fairy standing on the cluttered backseat, "is this." She pushed aside a silvered solar reflector, rifled through a small tote bag, and tossed an overstuffed, zipper-locked freezer bag at him. Fée Galatea's neck elongated so she could get a better look. "You brought along a second set of clothes," she said, "you vacuumed sealed a second set of clothes. You second-guessed me? Again?" "I didn't know," Dee said, "I only suspected. I know how much you like ambush-sex, and I know you know how much I like ambush-sex, and I really can't walk around in shredded clothes covered in green slime where we're going, even the kind of place that's open late at night. You're not mad, are you?" Dee felt the pressure of thirty-one silent needled grins. "So, uh," said Dee, looking to Fée Galatea in desperation. "What happens now?" She glared at him but soon relented. "Okay, okay," she said, turning to her duplicates. "How are we going to work this out?" "Work what out?" said Dee. A green fairy swung over the head rest and onto his shoulder. "How's about I pick a number from one to one hundred?" she suggested. "Pfft," dismissed one of the green fairies standing on the passenger seat. "That would never work." The fairy on his shoulder crinkled her face in confusion. "Why not?" Thirty-one pairs of eyes rolled, and the green fairies all chorused: "Sixty-nine." The fairy on his shoulder giggled. "Oh, yeah!" She slung down into Dee's lap next to Fée Galatea. "Let's wrestle for it!" The other fairies hissed and catcalled. "Boo!" "Lame!" "No Jell-O wrestling jokes!" "Wait a minute," said Dee, aghast. "You don't really mean you all want me to—" The catcalls got louder. "As if you didn't know!" "As if you didn't want to!" "No playing hard to get!" "Actually, I like it when he plays hard to get." "Yes, yes, everyone knows that already. Now shut up." "But," Dee said, "couldn't you all just re-assimilate and re-remember?" "No way!" "It's not the same!" "I want to re-remember being fucked apart for the first time, thirty-two fucking times!" "Ooh, yeah!" came the resounding, unanimous reply. Then: "Holy shit, why didn't I think of that?" "There's no way he can argue around that one." "Wow, wow!" "Hey, uh, I came just thinking about it. Did you? Anyone else? No? Hm." The green fairy standing next to Fée Galatea started to hop and clap. "I got it, I got it!" she cried. "Dirty talk contest! Whoever turns Dee on the most goes first!" "Good idea." "That'll work!" "Let's do it!" "Um, I still cum whenever I think about the whole 'getting fucked apart for the first time thirty-two times' thing. Maybe I should go first before I go, like, bugfuck nuts or something?" "I don't believe this," Dee muttered. Fée Galatea batted playfully at Dee's cock. "You love it," she said. "Yes, I love it," Dee said, leering, "but I still don't believe it." Dee heard the patter of tiny hands rapping against the driver side's rear door. "I made the phone call. The Galatea back at the apartment is just fine. What's goin' on? Don't make me go through the tailpipe again. Lemme in!" * * * * Galatea loosened her throat and the rubbery, peach-colored cock flopped out of her mouth. "It's not the same," she moaned, sagging back into the couch. She snatched up an empty bottle of Nyquil and filled it with a few feet of coiling tongue, searching out every last drop. "You should try it from this end," said Dee's voice. "It really sucks." "'Oo don' eefin thound wike him," Galatea lisped around the bobbling Nyquil bottle. "Not wealy." "This was your idea, if you care to recall," said Dee's voice. "I believe your exact words were: 'I'm tired of waiting for Dee.' Then, a couple hours later, you said, 'I'm sick and tired of eating pussy. How's 'bout we flip a coin, and the loser has to morph into Dee and do whatever the winner wants?'" "Thath a wittle bettah," Galatea lisped, "but it dothent make me wet." Her tongue rolled back between her lips and the bottle fell free. She stood up. "Maybe I should sit on your face?" The cartoony Dee clone, naked skin the color of a politically incorrect "flesh" crayon from the 1970s, tried to shrug, but it was hogtied to the coffee table with torn strips of bedclothes and doing its best to impersonate solidity. "Maybe we should talk," it suggested. Galatea wobbled over to the other end of the coffee table and braced the clone's head between her thighs. "What've we got to talk about?" "That's exactly my point," said the clone. "We—me and you, Galatea, I mean—don't ever just talk with Dee, do we? I don't mean talking dirty, or roleplaying, or warm fuzzies. Just talk." Galatea glowered down at it. "Is it because we don't have anything to tell him," the clone said, "or is it because there's too much we want to tell him?" Galatea squeezed her knees shut, concaving the clone's jellified head into an hourglass shape. "Now you sound too much like Dee. He is such a girl, I swear," she grumbled, glaring at her fist as she shook it. "I mean, it's past nine o'clock already, and I bet he's still asking for foreplay with me in that stupid car. And he resisted fucking me for three days. Three days! He wanted nonstop foreplay for three whole days!" "It was a nightmare," the clone agreed, speaking in Galatea's voice this time, the peach souring into a pickled green. The clone slipped out of the restrains and fluffed up into full femininity. "And now he wants to fuck and fuck and have hours of foreplay. He's insatiable. Inhuman. Monstrous. He just wants more, and more, and more." Galatea knelt to give the clone a fierce bear hug. "I love it," they both sighed. Galatea and her duplicate spoke in an exchange so quick she had trouble figuring out who said what: "He's incredible." "He's unstoppable." "He's perfect." "She was right, he's the one." "He'd better be; if he's not, then the real one would kill me." "Do you think she learned anything at SRU?" "I hope so, I know so little, and there's so little time." "So what do we do?" "We tell him." "Now?" "No, but soon." "You're right, we need to move beyond sex first." "Dinners and movies and meeting the parents, stuff like that?" "Stuff like that, yes, but nothing so...so mortal." "You don't mean—" "Oh shit, he's back!" Keys rattled on the other side of the front door and the deadbolt slid back. A quick green oil slick seeped in between the door and the floor, congealed into a Thumbelina-sized green fairy and sprang into the air. She zipped into the living room, dragonfly wings blurring faster than a humming bird's, as the keys rattled and clicked into the doorknob. "Re-assimilate. Now," the green fairy told Galatea. "Eat me. Now." "But," said the Galatea on the coffee table as the doorknob began to turn, "we agreed we'd wait until after we—" "No," the tiny green fairy said, and zipped close. Galatea saw she was crying. The front door cracked open. "Now. You need to re-remember. Now." "What—" the standing Galatea said, but the green fairy flew into her open mouth, shouting, "Now!" Galatea swallowed the green fairy down as Dee came through the front door. The little fairy dissolved in an instant but it always took a few moments of concentration for the nanomek of two duplicates to reintegrate into a single web of mind and memory. Galatea waited for the flood of vivid flashbacks she called "re-remembering" until Dee stepped into the living room. She saw the haunted, unreadable expression on Dee's face and could not think of anything at all. He wore different clothes from when she saw him last, a weathered denim button-down and a pair of khaki pants. He held a long grey cardboard box in one hand and a crooked tire iron in the other. The duplicate on the table huddled close to Galatea. They exchanged worried glances and merged without any of Galatea's usual theatrical, kinky flair. "Dee," she whispered, wishing the memories would come, "what's wrong?" A full sized green fairy crept around Dee and took her by the hand. "He's leaving," she said. Galatea tore free of the fairy's grasp. "I don't want to remember," she said, stumbling back. "I don't want to remember!" "I don't think you have a choice. Fée remembers," he said, pointing with the bent tire iron. "It's already happened to her, to you. And you and I need to talk. No games, no lies. Just talk, right now, or I leave, right now." The green fairy reached for her again. "It's time," she said. Galatea fell into the couch. "No," she said, hands fluttering about her throat. "No, no, no, no." The green fairy turned to Dee. Dee pulled a balled-up piece of printer paper from a pocket of his leather jacket and handed it over. The green fairy smoothed it out, kissed it, and pressed it into one of Galatea's palms. Galatea looked down. Under the green lip-print, she saw a pencil sketched X, its thick, staggered curves swooping in a slight slant to evoke the impression of a dancer with arms upraised. She glanced at the very similar mark on her own left breast. "I don't understand," she said. The green fairy joined her on the couch. "You will," she said, sliding sideways into Galatea's gel like someone slipping into a heavy fur coat. "You will," the green fairy said again, and disappeared into Galatea, leaving only concentric rings rippling out from her chest. Galatea gasped—so much nanomek! More nanomek than ever before, more than she ever imagined could exist within her, swarmed and swam and rewove the web of her memory. Dee was right, she realized, as the overabundance of nanomek forced a cascade of flashbacks, I don't have a choice. She re-remembered a ferocious jealousy quickly replaced by such joy, such fulfillment, such happiness, and then an eternity of agonizing anticipation followed by so much amazing, mind-blowing sex that her mental web almost unraveled. He is the one, she thought. But the re-remembering continued, the flashbacks unspooling closer and closer to the present, and somewhere within her, the melancholy green fairy thought, He was the one. * * * * Fée Galatea saw little value in the virtues of patience. She tried to develop an appreciation of patience once, during Dee's first blackout four days ago, but it took too damn long and she discovered how Dee could cum (and cum and cum) even while unconscious so she chose to put off developing a sense of patience until Dee's balls gave up the ghost, which they never did. Now that Dee had fucked her apart into itty bitty pieces for the first time, thirty three times over, she decided that good things cum to those who say "fuck this waiting shit—that's Mine, and I'm takin' it." But Dee did not want her to see her present until it was done and she had promised to wait in the car. Every hour of every day, he thinks up new ways to tantalize and tease me. My God, I love this man. Re-assimilated into a petite but human sized pixie, Fée Galatea sat quietly in the passenger seat of the Volkswagen as Dee circled their destination, looking for a place to park, or rather the perfect place to park, since there was an open spot right in front of the damn place. "I need to find somewhere I can change clothes," he said. "It's not even eight o'clock, and I bet they're open all night." You magnificent bastard, Fée Galatea thought, as Dee milked this explanation to excuse driving by the place three times. First he drove past on the left, forcing her to bob and weave to get a peek at it through the driver's side window. On the return pass it was on her right so she got a long, slow look. On the final pass it was on the left again, and Fée Galatea just glared at him. Dee hid all awareness of what he was doing to her behind the inscrutable smile he initially picked up from that lipstick lesbian Tomoe Exposition before improving it a hundredfold. You magnificent, tormenting bastard. Dee pulled into an unlit, rubbish cluttered alleyway a few blocks away from their destination, parking the Volkswagen against the chain link fence on the far end. He took the keys out of the ignition and picked up the plastic pouch containing his second set of clothes. "Oh, snookums," Galatea imagined him saying, "I didn't know you were going to sneak in and jump me in the car, I only took the precautions all us sensitive-enlightened-and-stuff types do. I was only thinking of you, because I wuuuv you so." Dee twisted some knob on the dash and the headlight's low beams snapped back on, powered by the car's battery. "Would you turn those off when I'm done?" he asked, stepped out of the car. "The battery's out of warranty and I had to jump start the car twice last week." "Huh?" said Fée Galatea, but he pecked her on the cheek, shut the door, and walked into the glow of the low beams. Oh my God, he's not wicked enough to do that, is he? He popped open the pouch and pulled out a washcloth before dropping it to the pavement. He is. Dee shrugged off his buttonless button-down and flipped it into a trash bin. He really, really is. Dee peeled out of the ruined undershirt. The white spotlight of the low beams highlighted every line and relief of a chest slick with baby oil—No, slick with me. The nanomek in her pussy went nuts at the thought and churned up a prickly heat between her legs. She gaped as Dee rubbed himself down with the washcloth, her core temperature rising. He turned his back to her and toweled off his arms, his shoulders working in strong rhythm. Keeping his back to her, he kicked off his jeans and ruined underwear, and set to clean up his crotch. Helpless to look away, she watched the cords in his neck flex and strain, the firm gel of her pussy melting into runny honey. And when Dee bent over to fish around in the pouch lying on the pavement, Fée Galatea, upper and nether lips gumming together, gurgled, "This man has got to be the biggest cunt tease on the face of the Earth." Dee turned back around and shimmied into a new pair of snug briefs that accentuated rather than concealed. Fée Galatea's eyes narrowed as the elastic band snapped over Dee's crotch. God damn it, he's made me jealous of a pair of underwear. Dee pulled a clean undershirt over his head and arms and down his chest. "That should be me," Fée Galatea sighed. Dee wrapped himself in a distressed denim shirt. "That should be me," Fée Galatea sighed again. Dee stepped into a pair of khaki pants. Fée Galatea groaned as he dragged them up over his legs and around his waist. "That really, really should be me," she whimpered, arching back, eyes shut tight, hands snaking down to sink into her sex, where they melted. He's made me so fucking hot I can't get myself off. "Honey," Dee called. Fée Galatea pulled her gluey eyelids open. Dee was buckling his belt, not even looking at her. "Would you turn off the headlights now?" She opened her mouth to scream but heard herself stammer, "O-okay." She pawed at the dashboard, too gooey to form fingers, coating the knobs and switches in thick green icing. The headlights flicked off. "Thanks," said Dee. His grin disappeared. "Hey, are you okay?" No, dumb ass, if it weren't for this bucket seat I'd be a puddle on the fucking floor. "Sure. Heh heh. No problem. Get goin'. See you, ah, when you get back." I hope you brought a few extra sets of emergency clothes, solid boy. You are so fucked when you get back. The New Moon night held no secrets from Fée Galatea. Her eyes lit with gem-fire, their scintillating clusters of nanomek going to work. Don't watch him walk away, at least have the willpower not to watch him walk—Oh who am I kidding, it's just too much fun. The nanomek clusters filtered out various spectra to give Galatea her favorite view of Dee's loping, instinctive strut.Especially in five dimensions. After a quick backward glance over his shoulder, Dee disappeared up the main drag. Fée Galatea cranked down the passenger window and ramped up her olfactory input to bathe in the lingering scent of Dee's musk, a trace molecule cocktail of soap, pheromone, sweat, spunk, and her own cum. She imaged herself stepping up to a podium: "My name is Galatea, and I'm a Deiter Detweiler addict. This is my first DDAA meeting." "Hello, Galatea. I'm Ursula. I spent hours making Dee soap with my bare hands but he never got the hint." "Hello, Galatea. I'm Tomoe. Dee made me cum at the sound of his voice, twice in a row, and he didn't even notice." "Hello, Galatea. I'm Strawberry Banana, and I'm gay for Dee. Or is that straight? Anyway, he only had to brush against my fingers and I almost bukkake'd all over myself. But, hey, at least with me, he got the fucking hint. Although, it was kind of hard to miss, you've got to admit." "And we're just the first three women you've ever met or heard about. How many more will there be? Just how big is the DDAA going to get if you keep doing what you're doing? You do know what you're doing, don't you?" Fée Galatea met her own frowning reflection in the rearview mirror. "I'm not doing anything." You sure 'bout that? Then at the very least you're letting things happen. That's a mighty fine distinction you're drawing, lady. "Do all women talk to themselves like this, or just the divisible ones?" Go fuck yourself. Her train of thought cooled her pussy down to a low, itching simmer, her liquefying gel retaining some definition again. "Don't mind if I do," she said, squelching both hands into her sex. She grew a third arm to give herself something to suck and chew on so she would not have to face the humiliation of talking dirty to herself. Whenever her pussy got attention—especially from Dee—it was as if her mouth got jealous and demanded to be full of flesh or it would fill itself with words, words, words. How can Dee be so silent when he fucks me? He just gasps and growls and grits those solid teeth or fills my mouth with his thick, delicious, solid tongue—oh God Dee fuck me, come back and fuck me! Fill me! Destroy me! Fuck me! Holy shit, I'm dirty-thinking. Finger-fucking kept her busy for about fifteen minutes before the itch moved inward to where only Dee's cock could scratch it. When I really turn him on, it's as thick as a fucking MagLight. Her extra arm siphoned down into her shoulder. "Shut up before you drive yourself nuts," she muttered. All right, girl, think, think, think. Mmm, MagLight...no, no, not about that. This is yet another one of Dee's cat-and-mouse games. There's gotta be a way outta this. Okay. I promised to stay inside the car, right? No, he asked me to, and I said that I would. No, wait a minute, what were his exact words? "Please don't follow me inside." That's it! Not "stay in the car" but "don't follow me inside." He wants me to get out and watch from across the street! And, so help me, I'm horny enough to do it! It's Always Time Act 02 Ch. 02 Fée Galatea bounced out of the car and burned some nanomek in an extended fingertip to lock the door. Mossy and forest green were the perfect camouflage colors for urban shadows on a moonless night. She rolled up the alley, her lower body a single mass of suggestive curves, not making a sound. Sneaking down a busy thoroughfare would be trickier, however. She opted to run in a long, winding rivulet up a drainpipe and along bundles of electric cabling strung between telephone poles down the street. The main street turned out to be not very busy after all. A brood of goths eyeballed a flock of art majors, debating whether etiquette permitted both groups to patronize the neighborhood head shop at the same time. Fée Galatea could only tell the difference between the rival gangs by the black duster coats on the former and the black mock turtlenecks on the latter. A couple of cars jammed full of frat brothers jounced past an idling, dusty blue van. Pretty quiet for a Thursday night this close to campus. She pooled into a darkened doorway across the street from Dee's destination, and started her stakeout. Sample stencils and inks covered the storefront windows, forcing Fée Galatea to filter out visible light and focus on infrared and electromagnetic radiation. Dee's heat signature was unmistakable but he was standing in the middle of the shop rather than in one of the dentist's chairs like she thought he would be. A burly man even taller than Dee tried to hand over something. Dee stood stock still, flushing hotter than Galatea had ever seen him. What the fuck? She burned over thirty thousand nanomek to eavesdrop, focusing on the microvibrations in the storefront window caused by the noises inside. "You take them," the big man rasped. "I certainly can't use them any more, and, honestly kid, I never want to see them again for the rest of my damn life." "I'll pay for them," Dee said, voice hollow and monotone. Fée Galatea felt a stab of fear. "No need," the man said. Dee took a step toward him and the man flinched. "Sorry, kid," the man said, palms raised, "but you scare me, and I don't scare easy. Do whatever you're going to do and go." Dee said nothing and made for the door. "Hold up," the man said, shaking his head, "I thought you'd come in here for a laugh, to fuck with my head and stir some shit up, but you're just as scared as I am, aren't you?" "Yes." "Let's make a deal, then, you and me," the man said. The object in his hand rustled. Fée Galatea guessed it was a cardboard box or maybe a plastic envelope. "I'll keep one. I've got a safe in the backroom. It has a false bottom, just in case some asshole ever manages to get past me trying to rob the place. I'm going to put this in there and forget about it. I've got a couple of grandkids. They're rugrats now and their ma doesn't speak to me, hasn't even called in years. But if she ever comes around and lets them visit, I'll take them back there, show them what's under the false bottom of that safe, and tell them the story. You keep the rest, 'cause the story will be cooler if I can tell them you only let me keep the one. That'll make us square. Deal?" Dee smiled, but Fée Galatea could tell it was thin and forced. "It's a deal." He stuck out his hand. The man stared at it. "Shake my hand," Dee choked out. "It won't be right otherwise. I won't feel human otherwise." The man stared a minute longer. "Damn, I can't end the story with, 'And I was too much of a chickenshit to shake his hand,' now can I?" They shook hands and Dee pocketed the container. "Done deal," the man sighed, relaxing. Fée Galatea did not realize how tense and terrified he had been beforehand. "You've got a Hell of grip, there, kid." "My name's Dee—" "Don't," the man interrupted. "Don't tell me. You never know when a secret identity might come in handy." Dee nodded and moved for the door. Fée Galatea spooled up a rain gutter and threaded across the electric cables intersecting overhead before Dee stepped onto the sidewalk, keeping a few paces ahead of him, vision clusters scattered to provide a three hundred and sixty degree view of his amble back to the car. I've seen him scared, worried, angry, confused, and even weepy, she thought, but I've never seen Dee unhappy until now. What happened? The goths and art students had made peace and crowded the head shop. The driver of the dusty blue van had made a poor effort at parallel parking before abandoning it. A sporty yellow SUV drove by but screeched to a sudden stop about half a block after it past Dee. What now? Fée Galatea protracted a thin pseudopod for a better look and listen. The SUV brimmed with a gaggle of girls in college skank-wear: tight black jeans, white v-necked, one-size-too-small men's tee-shirts, and gaudy gold necklaces. They gabbed at each other: "Who is that? Who is that?" "Holy shit. Hole. Lee. Shit!" "I've found a piece a paper, anyone got a pen?" "I've got lipstick." "Okay, who's going to give it to him?" "Not me." "Me neither." "But we've got to. He's getting away!" "Let's go together." "Okay." The passenger doors of the SUV popped open and three girls dropped onto the pavement. They scampered after Dee. "Hey. Hey!" one shouted, but when Dee turned around she blanched. "Um. Uh. Um." Her brunette companion pulled a piece notepaper scrawled with lipstick from her purse. "We're, uh, having a party at our sorority tomorrow. Epsilon Zeta. This is, uh," said, brandishing the paper at him, "this is the address. And my phone number." The blanching blonde had enough presence of mind to elbow her in the ribs. "Oof, uh, I mean our phone numbers." "What?" said Dee. The girls startled at his voice. "Why?" "To Hell with the party," mused the third. "How about tonight? How about right now? Our car's pretty full but we can make room." "You can sit in the middle," said the brunette. "I'll sit in your lap," gushed the blonde. Her face drained even paler. "Oh God," she whispered. "I'm an idiot." Dee shook his head. "I don't—" "Don't say another word. Just think about it," the brunette insisted, pushing the notepaper into Dee's hand. "And call. Or come by. Whatever. Whenever. Okay?" The blonde tugged at the brunette's shirt, dragging her back toward the car. "Okay. We got to go," she said and fled. The three girls piled into the car, giggling and groaning in turn. "'I'll sit in your lap,'" Fée Galatea heard the brunette mock. "Fuck that. I'll sit on his fa—" The engine roared and the SUV lurched into gear. The DDAA just doubled its membership. Through her panoramic view, Fée Galatea saw Dee blink at the notepaper and crumple it into a jacket pocket. She had to race ahead of Dee to sneak back into the car before he reached the mouth of the alley. She practiced an unworried smile in the rearview mirror. "Hi!" she said when Dee opened the driver side door. "Did you get it? Can I see?" "No," Dee said, leaning in to turn the key in the ignition. The radio and cabin lights flickered on. "I mean, I didn't get it." He found the cigarette lighter and pushed it into its socket. "I couldn't get it." Don't sound scared. That will only make him feel worse. Look confused. He loves that thing you do with your eyebrows when you get confused. "Why not?" Dee stood just outside the open door. He reached in. Fée Galatea did her best not to shrink back. "What's that?" she said, staring at the rattling, grey cardboard box in his hand. "See for yourself." Fée Galatea peered into the box. A handful of long, hollow needles rolled around inside. She plucked one out. Its tip was bent flat. She picked out another. Its tip had broken off. "I don't understand," she said, pulling out a third. This needle's tip curled back around on itself in a snail shell spiral. "I think you do," said Dee. The tip of the fourth needle flared like an umbrella turned inside out by the wind. "Honest," Fée Galatea said as the cigarette lighter popped up from its socket. "I don't understand. I'm, I'm scared." Dee pulled out the lighter, its coiled wire filaments glowing orange-hot. He pressed it against the lipstick covered notepaper. The paper smoked. "There's something I've got to do," he said, blowing on the paper to keep it burning, "and then you and I are going to talk. If you lie to me again, if you lie just one more time, we're through. Do you understand?" No, no, God no. It's much too soon. "Yes." Dee shut the door and crossed the alley to where someone had stood a steel metal drum on its end. Dee dropped the smoldering paper onto the lid of the drum, feeding the growing flames with discarded newspaper and old flyers advertising garage bands. After coaxing a modest but steady blaze out of the rubbish, he stepped back and produced the tin of SRU thickener from a jacket pocket. "Don't get it wet, right, Tomoe?" he said, unscrewing the lid. "Let's see if the damned stuff will burn." A strangled cry echoed down the alley. "No! Please no!" A man in a black tee-shirt staggered out from shadow. The baleful light of the burning trash lent a demonic cast to his bulging eyes and unkempt tufts of red hair. "Please, no," he said again. "Bernie?" Dee said, unbelieving. "Is that you?" "Bee," the man said. He moved closer, one hand behind his back. "Everyone just calls me 'Bee.' Except you, Deiter." "You look like you haven't slept in days." Bee swiped a forearm across his brow. A tire iron dangled from his loose grip. "Snape killed Dumbledore, you know," he said. "What the Hell is that supposed to mean?" Dee asked. "Are you talking about this?" He held up the tin of thickener. "I guess you must know about this. You're my downstairs neighbor, the guy who keeps banging away." Bee laughed, nodding, stepping closer still, his grin maniacal. "This isn't magic, Bernie," Dee told him. "It's not kid stuff, at least. It's dangerous, possibly deadly. I've got to get rid of it." "Do you know how Snape killed Dumbledore?" Bee cackled, pointing the tire iron like wizard about to duel with a wand. "I don't have time for this," Dee said, turning his back to Bee, holding the tin over the greasy flames. "Avada kedavra," intoned Bee, swinging the tire iron in a lethal, downward arc. Fée Galatea threw herself against the shatterproofed window. Too far it's too far I'll never get— The heavy, socketed tire iron accelerated to almost thirty miles per hour before it connected with the base of Dee's skull with enough force to smash through bone and sever the spine in an internal decapitation. "Ow," Dee said, "quit it." Bee collapsed. The tire iron thunked on the pavement. "My wrist," he hissed, rocking, "I think you broke my fucking wrist." Fée Galatea flattened her face against the window. What's going on? she thought. Dee stared down at Bee, then at something on the pavement. What the Hell's happening? Dee reached for the tire iron. Oh God. Oh no. He scrutinized the iron in the wavering firelight. The end of the iron bent sideways at a crazy angle. The cracks in the floor. He rubbed his unblemished neck, as if puzzling through a twisty riddle. The busted tattoo needles. After a moment's hesitation, Dee let go of the iron and dropped his hand into the fire. I get it now. Dee held up a handful of burning newspaper, flames licking about his unharmed fingers, until the paper curled and crumbled into soot. He's so solid. This is way too dangerous, she thought, and way too soon. Fée Galatea peeled away from the window, trails of her gel sticking to the glass in strings and streamers. And turning me on way too much. What kind of sick fuck am I? Wait. What is he doing? The tin of thickener was in Dee's hands again. "Do you really want this?" he asked, sounding dazed. "Do you really want it that much?" Bee glared at him. Dee secured the lid. "Take it," he said, and tossed the tin end over end. Bee's hands shot out to grab it. He yelped in pain but held on tight, faltered to his feet, and stumbled up the alley and out of sight. Fee Galatea shrank back into the passenger seat. Oh, shit. * * * * "Cherry, cherry, cherry," Bee said, chucking tiny boxes into his shopping cart one at a time. "God damn it, is that all the cherry Jell-O you assholes have?!" The husky stock boy down the aisle stared at him. "We close at nine, sir," he advised, "that's in fifteen minutes." Bee struggled with his cart and winced at the flaring pain. He fumbled for the padded wrist splint he nabbed from the first aide aisle earlier. "I said, where's all the God damned cherry Jell-O!" He ripped the splint's plastic packaging apart with his teeth. Grunting and whimpering, Bee inexpertly bound his swollen wrist. Just a sprain, he thought. I would've broken his fucking neck, but that pussy Dee wasn't even man enough to break my wrist. The stock boy sighed. "Try the restock carton at the back of the shelf," said he, keeper of secret grocer lore, "behind the pudding mixes." Bee pushed past instant pudding. The soft splint made him clumsy but eased the pain. "Cherry," he muttered again, dropping another box into his cart. "Cherry—ow. Cherry, cherry—ow!. Fuck it," he said, rubbing his wrist. "What're going to do with all that stuff?" said the clerk. "Make Jell-O shots?" "Fuck it," muttered Bee again and emptied the contents of the restock carton into his cart. "Host a Jell-O wrestling contest?" the clerk hazarded. Bee fixed the clerk with his berserk grin, exposing every tooth. "Are you deaf? I told you, I'm going to fuck it. Now ring me up or I'm going to fuck you." * * * * The last of the green fairy's experiences integrated with Galatea's memory web: the terrible, silent drive back to the apartment followed by the strange mix of pity and envy she felt when facing a version of herself that knew nothing of SRU, how it felt to be horny yet happy, how it felt to no longer need Dee but to want him more than ever, and how close they were to losing everything. Fingers slippery and unsteady, she traced the curves of the X sketched on the printer paper. "You wanted a tattoo," she whispered. Dee fell into the couch next to her. "It felt weird," he said, "seeing that mark on you but not on me. I thought getting a tattoo of your cross over my heart would be a goofy, romantic trifle. I wanted your mark on me, not just the other way around. But you had marked me already, hadn't you?" The tire iron clunked onto the table and Dee placed the box of needles next to it. "When the first tattoo needle bent against my skin, Jack—that's the name of the guy who owns the tattoo parlor—Jack didn't say anything," Dee said, opening the box. "When the next two needles broke, he just laughed, said something about getting a bad batch, and picked out a new needle kit. After the fourth blew out, he switched machines to something he called a 'Custom Iron.' It looked like a cross between an antique sowing machine and something out of a cyberpunk story. It scared the crap out of me." Dee pulled out the needle with the spiral tip. "Anyway, Jack leaned close and swore he actually saw this thing curl up. And when I said, 'I thought the machine was breaking them; I haven't felt a thing,' he just swore and rolled away from me on his dental stool like I had the plague. I gather you know the rest." Galatea nodded. "I think," Dee sighed, "I think I need to have a little scene now. I've been rehearsing it my head the whole trip back." Galatea nodded again. "Okay, here goes: I wanted your mark on me, but you had marked me already, hadn't you? You just didn't tell me." "I—" "That's right, you did tell me. 'Oh, you've eaten,' you said. 'I told you, I don't need it,' you said. And when you told me that I made you boil, you weren't exaggerating, were you? You actually boiled." "Yes, but—" "What were you thinking when you fed me nanomek? It was during the Fifteen Point Fleshlight Palm Technique, wasn't it? That's what I don't remember, you force feeding me the nanomek, and what happened to me after. What did you want the nanomek to do, give me a bigger dick, bigger sperm count, something like that?" Jeez, Galatea thought, he says he wants to talk but doesn't let me get a word in edgewise. "Dee, you've got to understand that that was before—" "I understand. I don't care, but I understand. It's who you doesn't understand. Tomoe told me the nanomek never does what it's expected to do. Ever. Not for her, not even for you. It's not just thickening my cum..." He must be really mad, Galatea thought as Dee snagged the tire iron, he said the word 'cum' without blushing or even blinking. "...it's thickening me," he said, and tied the groaning tire iron into a knot before snapping it in half with a quick twist of the wrist. Galatea wanted to say, You're solidifying, you mean, but she let Dee scowl at her for a minute and instead said, "Are we finished talking now?" "Sorry for the angst-ridden soliloquy," Dee said, standing up. "I've been rehearsing it for a while, like I said. Anyway, I'm going out." "Aren't you even going to listen to what I have to say?" Galatea asked, frustration and ire rising. "Yes," Dee said, "but when I get back." Galatea felt a gush of relief. "You mean," she said, "you mean you aren't leaving me?" "No," Dee said, "maybe. I don't know. You've done something to me. You're doing something to me. I guess I'm a control freak, because I'm really freaking out right now." "Dee, I haven't done anything—" "You're changing me, Galatea." Dee marched to the front door. "But it would be stupid to make any decisions about us right now. I've got to go out. Alone. I've got to get away, by myself, to be myself, for a while. I'll be back. If I can still move. If I'm still alive." "But Dee," Galatea wailed, hating herself for sounding so desperate, "I'm not changing you. I can't tell you now...there's so much I still don't understand...but you aren't changing." Dee slammed the front door behind him, cracking the frame and ruining the lock. "You're just becoming more you," Galatea whispered. * * * * Don't believe in fear, Don't believe in faith, Don't believe in anything That you can't break. —Garbage, Stupid Girl * * * * Interlude: She'll Sho'nuff Show You The bulky, express mail package waited outside Bee's front door. "Always thinking ahead," Bee muttered, fumbling his keys into the lock. Plastic grocery bags bulging with boxes of gelatin dangled from his left thumb. He pitched the bags through the door and made a grab for the package, but a sharp spark of pain from his wrist floored him. Too heavy. He kicked the box into his apartment, shuffled in on his knees, and bumped the door closed with his butt. Bee found the box cutter in the kitchen. A green water stain spread over the ceiling but nothing leaked through like it did in the bedroom. Bee knelt over the package and carved it up with the box cutter, spilling Styrofoam peanuts across the floor. A stainless steel, sixteen gauge, sixty quart mixing bowl rolled out of the wreckage. "I'm such a badass eBay sniper," Bee said. Bee piled the Jell-O boxes onto the kitchen table before pinning the cauldron between his forearms. "Brilliant, grasshopper," he said and brought the bowl crashing down onto the stove. "Okay, let's see. I've got about 30 packets. One packet needs, what," Bee pondered, squinting at the instructions on the back of a Jell-O box, "one cup of boiling water, then one cup of cold water. That's sixty cups...aw, fuck, only 15 quarts? I spent four hundred bucks on this damn thing!" He punched the mixing bowl and promptly passed out from the pain, whacking his face against the metal rim on the way down. It's Always Time Act 02 Ch. 02 A quarter hour later, Bee, his splint reset and a cold compress tied over his blackened, bleeding left eye with an ace bandage, poured almost eight quarts of tap water into the mixing bowl. He cranked a dial on the stove past 10 to HI. The coils under the bowl reddened with heat. "Oh, Christ, this is going to take forever." I could add salt to speed things up, he thought, but salty cherry? What kind of honey nymph would that make? Maybe I'd wind up with a dick girl like that freak at SRU. Too risky. Stick to cherry. Lots and lots of cherry. Opening all thirty boxes and emptying their packets into a measuring cup proved to be a long nightmare of sharp pain and clumsy failure. His one good eye blurred with tears as he relieved the last few boxes of their contents. All of this is your damn fault, Dee. Well, screw you. Fuck you. The water boiled. The powdered gelatin went in. Bee stirred, watching the clock for two minutes, before adding another eight quarts of tap water. Better use a double dose of nanomek, just in case I screwed the proportions up. He tipped a few teaspoons of nanomek from the SRU tin into the cauldron. Is that really a double dose? He checked the instructions on the bottom of the tin. Yes it is. He shook the tin. Jesus, there's so much left, I could make dozens more. And Dee gave it all up for that pushy green bitch? What an idiot. Bee pulled out all the shelving and threw out half the food in the fridge just to make the mixing bowl fit. He set the refrigerating unit to maximum before slumping at the kitchen table, listening to the clock tick. It's ten o'clock already and I haven't slept more than a few hours in the past three days. But it's all over. In four hours I'll have my Cherry. I did it. I beat Dee... A clattering racket startled Bee awake. Empty boxes of Jell-O tumbled off the kitchen table as he sat back. The cold compress fell away but the eye beneath was swollen shut, giving him a two dimensional view of the world and halving his peripheral vision. His one good eye glanced up. Twelve o'clock already? Christ, I thought I just closed my eyes for a second. After one more loud bang, the refrigerator door swung open. Holy shit. Bee stood. It's time. It's finally my time. A slender, cherry-red foot slid toward the floor beneath the refrigerator door but hesitated an inch above the linoleum tile. Toes wriggled and the foot plumped out into a platform Mary Jane clog. Another clog joined the first and Bee's creation pussyfooted into view. "What am I?" she murmured, her voice breathy and bashful. Bee ogled. Perfect. Other than the thick clogs elevating her to average height, the scarlet girl wore only the come-and-get-it grin of a baby-faced coquette. Perfect. The bangs of her pageboy haircut fell in occluded angles as she inclined her head to look up at him through lush lashes and thick eyebrows. Perfect. She noticed where he was staring and draped an arm over her pert, full breasts in a seemingly shy gesture that gave her the opportunity to tweak her nipples erect and left nothing to the imagination. He glanced down and she covered her cleft with her other hand, taking care to press her middle and ring fingers deep into her sex so the folds of her labia peeked around them. "Perfect," Bee said aloud. "I am perfection," the scarlet girl said, sounding satisfied with his answer, and unfolded her wings. Bee took a step back. Her webbed wingspan filled the width of the kitchen with the colors of black shadow and crimson flame. She's cherry, he thought, and you made her. That makes her yours, so start acting like a man. "I am your master," he told her. Her smile widened. "I have a master." She's got to know I'm in charge here. "You will serve me," Bee said, "You live to please me, whether you like it or not." "I will serve my master," she said, stepping closer. "I live to serve him and please him, like it or not." "You will do anything, any sick, twisted, perverted thing, I want," Bee said, "and I want to do everything." "I want to do every sick, perverted, and twisted thing with my master," she said, slinking over to the kitchen table and encircling Bee with batwings. She tilted her head and a second pair of wings, tiny twins of the first, fanned out from behind her ears. That didn't sound right. And what's with the wings? That's the sort of stupid shit Dee's into. "I'm not Dee!" Bee shouted. This is all going wrong. I'm too tired and hurt to think straight. He massaged his temples with his good hand. Not realizing he was speaking aloud, he said, "All of this is your damn fault, Dee. Well, screw you. Fuck you. I beat you." "Screw Dee. Fuck Dee. Beat Dee." the scarlet girl agreed, resting a sympathetic arm on Bee's left shoulder. She fingered through the pile of empty Jell-O boxes on the kitchen table. "You used so much," she whispered. "You've made me so strong." Warm wings enfolded him in a crushing, full-body embrace from head to toe. "How shall I thank you?" "You need cum now," Bee wheezed as the scarlet girl squeezed. "My cum. To keep you...cohesive. Without it, you'll melt. Fall apart." She stood on tiptoe to mash her mons against his crotch. "My master should be my first, shouldn't he?" Bee gazed into the obsidian, abyssal black of the scarlet girl's eyes. "I'm your master," he pled as she reached out with both hands to cup his face. "I'm your only master," Bee said. She pressed her forehead against his. "I have a master," she whispered, and kissed him. Her lips were cool and firm but her aggressive tongue was creamy, bittersweet, and scalding, like a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie still gooey and piping hot from the oven. When she broke the soul kiss, Bee said, "You taste like...like a cupcake." "Mm," the scarlet girl purred, nibbling Bee's bottom lip, "and you taste like collagen." She picked something off the table. "I have a master," she said, and pushed it into Bee's hand. "Only one master." Bee looked down. She had given him an open Jell-O box, its coloring different from the rest. Frowning, he turned it over. Jell-O Instant Pudding: Devil's Food "And his name is Dee," Black Cherry said, broke Bee's neck, and tore off his head. * * * * The castle started spinning Or maybe it was my brain I can't tell you what she did to me But my body will never be the same Her lovin' will kick your behind (Oh, she'll show you no mercy) But she'll sho'nuff, sho'nuff show you how to grind —Prince, Darling Nikki * * * * It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 01 Act Three: There's Always Room Chapter One: The Dark Side's Light "Dee? Dee! Is that you? What are you doing here?" Dee glanced up at the tall, lean blond man threading his way through the crowd. "Hello, Yves." "Hey," Yves greeted, kicking away a stool and reclining backward against the bar, elbows propped up on the mahogany countertop. "How are you? You look—" "Drunk?" Dee brushed a few strands straying from Yves' low, long ponytail away from his whiskey glass. "Well, yeah, a little. But I was going to say 'great.'" Yves waved at someone across the room. "No one's seen you for days," he told Dee. "We were all sorry to hear about your grandmother." "She'll get over it." Yves blinked. "Uh, okay. So, Dee, why are you here?" Dee nursed his drink. "To get drunk and to get away from my girlfriend." "Well, you came to the right place, then," Yves said. A man in a business suit approached but Yves shooed him off with a shy, polite smile. "On both counts. I didn't think you were seeing anyone, Dee. It's been almost a year since your last breakup, hasn't it? Who is she?" "Galatea. I made her last Sunday." "Jesus, Dee, that's a crude thing to say," Yves said. Dee squinted up at him. "What are you doing here, Yves? This place is full of swingers on Thursdays, and that's not your scene. You're more…what's that dumb phrase you use? 'Serial monogamist?'" "Existential monogamist." Yves shrugged, whipcord muscles rolling against the tight, tan, sleeveless tee he wore beneath an unbuttoned white dress shirt. "Friday is single's night, and that's no fun. On weekends, this place is full of kids." "If you weren't six-foot-four, Y, I'd think you were twelve," Dee grumbled. "You're a mean drunk. I'm glad you don't drink often." "I'm not a mean drunk. I'm a stupid drunk. I told Galatea I needed some time alone, some time to 'be me,' and here I am, in a bar, drinking bourbon." Dee rolled the tall whiskey snifter over his fingers. The jigger of amber alcohol crawled up the glass. "You're drinking it like a pro." "But I hate bars." Dee took a tentative sip of whisky. "And I hate bourbon," he groused. "Then why are you here? Did you two have a fight?" Dee contemplated his half-empty snifter. "Sort of." Yves leaned in. "What about?" "My girlfriend thinks I'm a god." Yves shook his head, chuckling. "I thought that's what all guys like you wanted." "Maybe." Dee made a sour face. "But this is different. If Galatea thinks you’re a god, she makes you a god." "Okay, you are a stupid drunk." Yves leaned back, arms folded. "But that still doesn't explain why you're here." "I told you already." "No, Dee." Yves rapped a knuckle on the mahogany bar. "I mean why are you here, in a gay bar?" Dee surveyed the clusters of men around the bar and high tables. "It's safe." "I beg your pardon?" "It doesn't work with men," Dee said. "Or maybe it does, but I can control it better, because I understand men." He emptied the snifter in a single toss. "But I don't understand women," he coughed. Yves eyes rolled. "I can't believe it. A drunk and bitter Deiter Detwiler. I never thought I'd see the day. C'mon, let me drive you home." Dee slid the snifter across the countertop. "You don't believe me." "It's more like I haven't understood a single thing you've said. You're absolutely crapulous, as my mother likes to say." Dee tapped the snifter with a fingernail. "How many women are in here, Yves?" Yves took stock of the crowded barroom. "About three or four." "Notice anything about them?" Dee asked, not taking his eyes off the snifter. "All right, I'll indulge you." Yves twisted around, surveying. "Well, now that I've made a jackass of myself," he said, frowning, "they're staring at me." "Guess again," Dee muttered, but Yves was already speaking. "Wait a minute." Yves frown deepened. "They're all staring at you. What's up with that? It's not like you’re the only cute guy in here. Or the only straight guy, for that matter." "Watch them." Dee pushed himself away from the bar. "And then watch me." Dee strolled across the room. Three pairs of eyes swiveled to watch his every move. The bartender licked her lip and dropped a shot glass. A woman in a booth in the corner scissored her legs, squirming in her seat. The girl by the payphone broke into a sweat, downed her beer, and retreated to the restroom. "What the fuck?" Yves muttered. Yves watched Dee bear down on a coed clad in a little black evening dress. She boggled, a deer in headlights, as approached, ignoring the quizzical glares of the two men at her table. Dee stood opposite her, nonchalant, and said something. The coed clambered up onto the table, knocking over wine glasses and kneeling in a platter of tapas, her two friends jerking back in shock. Yves jumped away from the bar. "What the fuck?" The coed clawed her way up Dee's denim shirt and dragged him into a clinching lip-lock. Dee backpedaled, arms windmilling, but the coed just hummed and squeaked and clung to him as he fell over backward. The bolted-down table stood fast while the coed in the tapas platter slid forward before both she and Dee hit the floor. She lay astraddle over him for a few more seconds before finishing off the kiss with a delirious, happy squeal. "Oh, wow! Um. Hi!" "What the fucking fuck?" cried Yves, the only other sound in the barroom. The coed looked up, noticed that everyone gawking at her, blushed redder than a beet, leapt to her feet, and fled out the front door. Her two stunned friends moved to help Dee up but he said, "I'm fine, I'm fine. God, I'm sorry, I didn't think—Look, just go after her and make sure she's all right, okay? Go, go!" Dee stood and made his way back to the bar. Yves looked everywhere but the other three women had vanished. Dee bellied up to the bar, daubing tapas off his pants with a napkin. The carousers slowly got back into the swing of things. "What the fuck did you say to her?" Yves hissed. "I said, 'Hi'," Dee sighed. "Just 'Hi.' It's getting stronger. Or maybe the less I say, the more powerful it gets?" He laughed. "That would fit. It would also mean the only way to control it is to yak my head off." "Control what?" Yves asked. Dee's eyes narrowed at the whiskey snifter. "My voice," he said in a deep register carrying strange harmonics and rattling all the glasses on the countertop. Yves heard a few muffled cries from the women's restroom. "Okay, Dee." Yves swung his legs over a stool, "you've got my attention now." Dee signaled to the remaining bald and beaded bartender for a refill. "I had a rehearsed hissy fit," he told Yves. "Bitch-bitch-bitch, walk out the door. You know what I mean." "Famously," Yves agreed darkly. "Anyway," Dee said, "I just wanted to go out for a walk. I circled the complex a couple of times and then headed north on Route Four." Yves nodded. "I've been your neighbor for three years and I've carpooled with you for two. I know your routine." "I'm flattered." Bourbon swirled in Dee's snifter. "So I'm walking up the bicycle lane on the side of the road, but every once and a while a car will slow down and honk at me. A few even pull over. After about half an hour, well…" Dee pulled a wad of crumpled post-its, chewing gum wrappers, receipts, and notepapers from a pants pocket. "About twenty women had gotten out of their cars—on the throughway—just to give me their phone numbers." Yves fanned the papers scrawled with names and numbers over the countertop, examining each one in turn. "Huh." "I didn't realize anything weird was happening—I've had much, much weirder things happen to me today, weird like you wouldn't believe—that is, until…" Dee sighed, and dropped two twisty sickles of dull steel onto the countertop. "What are those," Yves said, "bent can openers?" "Look closer," Dee said, warming the snifter between his palms. "They're handcuffs. They were handcuffs." Yves scrutinized the ruined cuffs. The chain between them had snapped, the hinges of the manacles torn and useless. "I don't get it." "A couple of cops, female state troopers, pulled over," Dee explained. "They said they were looking for a suspect that had fled the scene of a domestic disturbance and I matched his description. I was in such a funk I just followed directions, lying down on my stomach with my hands against my back, until they locked those handcuffs around my wrists, rolled me over, ripped off the tops their uniforms, and announced I was under arrest for 'public fuckability.'" "I don't believe it." "Neither did I, until they yanked my pants down around my ankles. Now that I think about it, they were acting lot like that girl who just jumped me. I was answering all their questions and following their instructions with either a quick 'Yes ma'am' or a 'No ma'am.' The less I talk, the stronger it gets." "So what the Hell happened?" Dee stared down the barrel of his glass. "One rode my face while the other attempted an ambush blowjob. Which itself is no big deal. I had about twenty of those yesterday. But I'm in love with Galatea, and the two cops were maniac, out of control. So I broke out of the cuffs, pulled the psycho off my face and plopped her down over the cop on my cock. That brought them around. They were mortified. One of them was married. They broke the patrol car's concealed camcorder and drove off. What are you looking at me like that for?" "You are so full of shit." "I said I'm in love with Galatea and I damn well meant it. She couldn't piss me off so damn much otherwise." "No," Yves said, "I believe that you're in love. It's the rest of your story that's pure bullshit. I'm driving you home." Dee eyeballed him. "You're a black belt in judo or something, right? Nidan or whatever?" "I'm an assistant instructor aikidoka," Yves said, skipping the usual lecture. "What do you think of this, Y-sensei?" said Dee, reaching down with one hand and raising the snifter to his lips with the other. A second later Yves found himself perched on a stool on top of the bar, his head bumping against the ceiling. "Should I be able to do that?" Dee lowered his glass. "Um. No." Dee launched back into his narrative unfazed. "So being gang-raped by a couple of girls in uniform kind of bummed me out, and I decided to get drunk. At the first bar I tried, a jealous boyfriend punched me in the face and broke three of his fingers. Next, I tried Phase Five, thinking I'd run into Ursula's crowd there, but it must have been bi-curious night or something, and I barely made it out alive.” "Last call," the bartender announced. "No table dancing, fella," he added to Yves. "I've got to take my friends home." Yves leapt off the countertop, open shirt flapping like a cape, and caught the stool just as it started to fall. "And you're in no shape to drive either, so give me your keys and come with me. And this time you're going to start the story from the beginning." Dee handed him the keys to his Volkswagen. "It's a long story," Dee cautioned. "I don't care. Tell me everything, from the fucking beginning, got that?" "I got it, Yves," Dee downed the last of the bourbon and pulled the last of his cash from his wallet. "And it does begin with fucking, ironically enough." "I don't care," Yves repeated. "So it all started," Dee began, "when I decided to masturbate with a Jell-O mold to see what it would be like to fuck a goo girl so I could write some porn about it on the Internet." "You can skip that part," Yves said. * * * * Yves' Jeep sped down Rural Route Four. Dee stared out into the false dawn of Zodiacal light ghosting the horizon as he finished his story. "Bee wanted the nanomek so much he tried to kill me, and I wanted to be rid of it so badly—I could not stand to look at it a second longer—that I, well, I gave it to him. He ran off. I haven't seen Bee since. I hope he hasn't done anything stupid." Yves grimaced, shoulders sagging, but he watched the road and said nothing. "Then I drove Galatea home." Dee sighed. "And that's it. Now you know the whole story." The Jeep's canvas top rustled for a minute before Yves spoke. "So, to sum up: You're in love with Galatea. Galatea is a meliae, a honey nymph of ancient myth." "Yup." Yves gave Dee a sidelong glance. "Made out of Jell-O," he added. "The ancient myth isn't about Jell-O, obviously," Dee said. "The first honey nymphs were probably created from real honey or sweet tree sap. Something all-natural. Tomoe said I could look it up on the Internet." The Jeep drew near a faded billboard advertising "The Channel Apartment Home Community: Efficient Luxury for Executive Living." I've driven by that damn sign twice every work day for four years, Dee thought. I still have no idea what that slogan means. "But Galatea's made out of Jell-O," Yves repeated. "She's more nanomek than Jell-O," Dee said, "although she keeps asking for collagen. That's the protein in gelatin. It would give her nanomek more raw material, or make her stronger, something like that. I don't really understand that part." Yves shrugged. "Okay. But the myth of the meliae is just a cover-up for guys who are into goo girls, an Internet fetish that's been a secret part of human history for thousands of years, even during the age of Atlantis, which really existed until it was destroyed..." Yves glanced sidelong again. "…destroyed by said goo girls." "Slow down," Dee cautioned. "There's always a cop with a radar gun right there. Always." Yves coaxed a few more miles-per-hour out of the Jeep's taxed engine. "Probably not tonight." "Why not?" "'Public fuckability,'" Yves reminded. "Yeah, yeah." Dee crossed his arms. "Anyway, yes, Atlantis really existed until it sank under a goo girl rampage. Unless Tomoe was lying, but I bet she has a rule against that." Yves hit the brake and pulled the Jeep onto the off ramp. "Oh, right, Tomoe Exposition. I forgot that part: the myth is a cover-up for the fetish, but the fetish itself is just a scheme of this medical supply company to make a quick five bucks." The Jeep lurched to a halt in front of a closed iron gate. A welded, green placard declared "Welcome to The Channel Apartments" in flaking gold letters. "You could say that, yeah," Dee said as Yves unrolled the driver side window and waved a keycard at an electric reader. The reader's red LED eye winked and the gate rolled open. "And Galatea's a lime meliae," Yves said, timing the Jeep's entrance through the yawning gate so closely Dee thought he might shear off a side view mirror. "The most powerful, dangerous, and horniest honey nymph of them all." Yves drove by the deluxe apartment homes of Channel One and Two. "Every man that's ever made one becomes so overwhelmed by her insatiable, sexual appetite that he succumbs to sublimation, which in this case means he's consumed and slowly destroyed by perpetual orgasm." Channel Three, a complex of family suites, swooped in and out of sight as the Jeep bounced by. "Every man, that is," Yves said, leveling a finger at Dee, "until Deiter Detwiler, who, despite his nice-guy exterior, is such a freaky sex machine that the he overwhelms her." The Jeep rocked as Yves goaded it over a speed bump. "Uh," Dee said, "I'm not sure I'd put it that way—" "I'm not finished." Yves pulled off a hairpin turn into a row of covered parking. "So this super-freak Dee and this super-nympho Galatea spend four days in a nonstop fuck-a-thon, each trying to one-up the other in a triple-X battle of the sexes to prove, once and for all, who's the most perverted: men or women." Dee threw his hands in the air. "What the Hell—" "Shut up. But while Galatea tries to drown Dee in sex and Dee tries to get Galatea so turned on she'll burn up and dissolve, they wind up learning a lot about each other and..." Yves paused for the most theatrical, sarcastic eye rolling Dee had ever seen. "...fall in love instead." The Jeep lurched into a narrow parking space. "In fact, Galatea loves Dee so much that she uses meliae magic or 'nanomek' or whatever to give Dee preternatural strength and endurance, which saves his life when Bee, that creep who lives on the first floor, tries to kill him." Dee's shoulders sagged. "Um." "It took days," Yves said, hauling up the emergency break, "days for Dee, as clueless as he is impervious, to finally realize she had given him these incredible gifts. For some stupid reason, this makes him bitchy. He treats her to one of his infamous, rehearsed hissy fits. He walks out on her, leaving her alone for hours, leaving her wondering if he's ever going to return, or whether he's going to dump her when he does return." "…Wow," Dee eventually said, "I really fucked up, didn't I?" "Yes, Dee. You really did. If your story were true and not some delusional break from reality, that is. Good God, Dee, what you just told me makes my teenage wet dreams sound like Ibsen plays in comparison." Dee sank in his seat. "You don't believe me?" Yves glared at him but then shook his head. "I don't know yet, but I'm going to decide soon enough." "What do you mean?" Yves unbuckled his seat belt and leaned across Dee to pull on the passenger side door handle. "Dee," he said, pushing the door open, "do me the honor of introducing me to your beloved." "I don't know," Dee said, unbuckling, "You'd be the first human being she'd ever meet." Dee blinked. "Other than me, I mean." "I think you just made my point for me." "You're right. Let's go." Dee hopped out of the car. "Whoa, I'm pretty woozy." Yves joined him on the parking lot pavement. "You drank half a bottle of bourbon on an empty stomach. I'm surprised you're still vertical." Dee marched off down the footpath. "I need to apologize to Galatea for being a total jackass. Then I'll pass out. Come on, if you're coming." "I'm coming," Yves said. His reserved parking space was closer to the side entrance of their apartment building than the front. "We should go by the front door and ask security if they've seen Bee. Hell, we should call the police." "You'll want to see if Galatea is real first," Dee suggested, "and if she isn't you'll want to call the police about me, not Bee. That's what you're really thinking, don't deny it. I may be drunk but I've known you for years." Yves frowned, following. The sienna colored aluminum siding of Channel Four's three stories looked garish in the sour sodium floodlights. Dee tapped his keycard against the door's sensor and gave the security camera a curt nod. The metal door clicked open. Yves flashed his keycard past the reader before following Dee up the cement staircase. At the entryway to the second floor Dee stopped and turned. "Do you smell that?" Yves inhaled. "Smells like a spa. It's nice. Is Ursula making perfume again? Why are you breathing funny?" "That's Galatea's…scent," Dee said, flushing. "I didn't realize you could smell it all the way down the hallway." "For a possible figment of your imagination, she smells great. She should bottle it and make a fortune." Dee shook his head. "It's not her perfume. It's her, you know, scent. Up close it's pretty raunchy." "Oh. Wow. Or, 'Ew.' I'm not sure which. Doesn't matter. Get going." Yves watched Dee mince down the hallway. "You're walking pretty stiff there, big guy," he smirked. "Shut up," Dee said. The back of his neck prickled and he turned around. "Yves, what is it? You're in a ready stance." Yves stood, shoulders squared, forward leg and elbows bent at relaxed angles. "Your front door is open." Dee squinted down the hallway. The door to his apartment canted a hairbreadth ajar. "Good eye," he whistled. "I think I broke the door jam when I left. It's no big deal." It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 01 Yves did not budge. "Something is wrong." Dee stepped back. "Yves, you're sober, you're a kung fu—" "Budo," Yves muttered. "—bad ass, and more importantly, you're you. If you think something's wrong, I believe you. But what should we do?" "Just be ready for Bee to do something stupid." Dee tensed, spinning. "If he's touched her I'll kill—" Yves crossed the distance between them in one bounding stride and clapped a hand on Dee's shoulder. "No macho bullshit," he said. "From what you've told me, Galatea is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. If anything's wrong, your hero routine will just make it worse." "You're right, as usual. Lead on MacDuff." "No." Yves stepped aside. "I take point, you go see who's home. I'll be right behind you." They moved down the hallway. "Wow, that smell is strong," Yves said. They passed a familiar door. "Ursula's home." "How can you tell?" "She's burning incense. Patchouli," Yves smiled. "And Galatea's scent is winning. Amazing." "God, I'm so embarrassed." "Don't be," Yves said, listening to the sounds of digitized combat and incidental music thumping through the next door. "Viggo doesn't seem to care." "Should I knock?" Dee asked when he reached his apartment. "On your own door?" Yves inspected the crack in the doorframe. "No. Announce yourself, though, and then announce me after you step inside." Dee sighed, combed his fingers through his hair, and opened the door. The full force of Galatea's citrus-and-sex scent washed over him. Yves gasped but Dee did not notice. My God, he thought, I missed this. I missed her. How could I have been so stupid? "Galatea? It's me." The silence stretched long enough for Yves to glance sidelong at Dee one last time before Galatea's voice called back. "Dee? Is that Dee?" "It's me," Dee said, stepping into the apartment hallway. Say something. "I'm back." Oh, bravo, genius. "When you were not here," came Galatea's voice, "it made me so sad." He heard the bedroom door close. "I'm sorry," Dee said, "I'm a complete idiot. I want to apologize to you properly, but a friend of mine drove me home. I'd like to invite him in, if that's all right." "Of course, Master." "Very funny," Dee said. "Okay, we're coming in." A girl the color of lime finger paint paced the living room, fidgeting and wringing her hands. She appeared rough hewn, a living but unfinished statue in Galatea's likeness, the features of her face worn down from stark relief to soft impression by the passage of time. As bodacious as ever, her body lacked the level of detail Dee knew she preferred. He could not tell if she had chosen to confront him naked but with the anatomical vagueness of a Barbie-doll or decided to meet him clothed in a clingy but concealing spandex jumpsuit. One look at Dee and she froze, blushing black, eyes sliding shut, lazy smile curling. "You're here. I waited so long. I thought you would never come, or come too late." "Galatea?" Dee said. "Are you okay?" She hugged herself tight, squeezing her shoulders and squashing her amble breasts until gel flesh overflowed and engulfed her crossed forearms. "But I should have known," she said. "Dee would come. My Dee would come to me." She peeped at him with eyes of frosted green pearl. "And he did." Yves stepped into the living room, gawking at her. The green girl smirked at him. "And he brought snacks," she added. Yves laughed. "My name's Yves, Galatea." He strode forward, arm extended. "I'm flattered, but I'm not on the menu." Something is wrong. "Yves—" Dee started, but the green girl's smile was warm as she shook Yves hand, and Dee relaxed a little. "I hope you're not offended if I still find you delicious," the green girl said. "Not at all." The green girl gestured at the sofa. "Please do sit down. I would offer you something to drink but the only thing Dee keeps to eat or drink nowadays is, well, me." She arched an eyebrow at Dee. "Not that I'm complaining," she said, wintry eyes shining. "Are you hungry, Dee? No? Well I'm famished." "Is that why you're opaque?" Dee said. "And so, uh, shapeless?" Yves rolled his eyes and reclined on the couch. "Real classy, I'm sorry, Galatea, but Dee's hammered, and evidently he is a stupid drunk after all. She looks awfully shapely to me, Dee." "That's not what I meant," Dee said. "I meant formless. Abstract? Damn it, my mouth is talking faster than my brain can think." He turned to the green girl. "I'm sorry, honey. I'm worried about you. I left you alone for a long time, for no good reason at all, and I want to make sure you're okay but I keep screwing up. You're beautiful. You just look different, that's all." "I will be perfect again." She stood on the tips of her toes to whisper in his ear, "Now that you're here." She kissed the curve of his neck, her lips as firm and smooth and cool as marble, before stepping back to take him by the hand. "It's my novilunium." "Your nova-what?" Dee asked. "I've heard Ursula use that word a few times," Yves said. "What does it mean?" "My changeability," the green girl said, her eyes never leaving Dee's. "My nanomek. You've been gone so long and I need…" She pulled Dee's hand, backing away toward the bedroom hallway. "I need more." "Well," Yves coughed. "I drove your boyfriend home and I've met you, so my work here is done. I think this fifth wheel is going home. It's just upstairs, after all." He stood, ripping off a sarcastic salute. "Dee, it's been surreal." The green girl craned her neck to look over and up at him. "No, stay," she said, her eyes urgent. "There's always room for dessert." Yves shot Dee a fractional what-the-fuck? frown. Dee returned with a I-dunno microscopic eyebrow raising. Yves volleyed back a are-you-going-to-be-okay? slight narrowing of the eyes. Dee replied with an I'm-clueless half smile. Yves pouted what-now-then? and Dee flicked a just-go-along-until-you-think-of-something glance at the green girl. Their silent conversation, the kind that was possible only between close friends who were also longtime coworkers, took about two seconds. "Okay," Yves said, over enunciating, "I guess I can hang out for a little while. Dee's movie collection is better than mine, after all." He sat back down, picking up the universal remote. The green girl led Dee by the hand and disappeared down the corridor to the bedroom. Yves tossed the remote aside, rubbing his fingers together and clucking with disapproval. "Sticky." Dee moved to open the bedroom door but the grinning green girl pulled him into the bathroom. "This way, Master." "What's going on, Galatea?" Dee asked her as she closed the bathroom door. "Dee," she sighed loudly over the clicking of the lock in the doorknob. "When you said you wanted to make sure I was okay, did you mean it?" She whirled around, frosted eyes glowing. "Did you really mean it?" she said, oozy flesh spreading across the door. "Of course, but—" She surged into him, arms latching around his chest, her heavy breasts slapping against him with an audible —glomp!— noise, her gelled cleavage rushing up his neck and snuggling his chin. "Then take me." She pitched Dee backward and down onto the lidded toilet seat. "Take me and make me perfect." She kissed him with a fearsome hunger, cool lips parting to draw his tongue into her oven-hot mouth. He met her peculiar, reverse French kiss with a boozy, forward one. She moaned, nibbling and suckling. Her strong, sticky fingers twined behind his neck and egged his kiss onward. He tried to pull away for a quick breath, but she murmured, "Nn-mm," and tugged him back, chewing on his tongue, her lips locking over his. Dee duel-kissed with her for a minute more, breath hissing through his nose, before pulling away again. She squealed "Mmm!" and rocked forward to follow him, grabbing him by the ears and clunking the back of his head into the wall. She sunk her full weight into his lap and refused to break the kiss. Dee chuckled and inhaled. The green girl's eyes popped open and she squeaked a puzzled "Hm?" as her sizzling, fluid tongue flooded into his mouth. Her lips still worked against his, but slowed. Dee arched an eyebrow at her. The green girl's gaze turned quizzical. Dee bit down until his teeth clicked together. The green girl's eyes rolled up into her head and she peeled away, swooning to the floor. "Master," she gurgled as Dee chewed thoughtfully. "Oh, Master." She writhed on the linoleum, rolling over to paw up his legs. "I'm in you now," she sighed, rising, "I'm in you." Dee swallowed. "Why do you taste like a cupcake?" The green girl's unwrought fingers fumbled with the zipper of Dee's khakis. "Now come into me," she said, giving up on the zipper and pulling the pants apart at the seams, "and I'll taste however you want." She yanked the khakis and underwear down around Dee's knees, the plastic of the toilet lid hard and cold against his ass. "Cum in me," the green girl said, "and we'll be perfect. Together. Forever." Dee felt absurd sitting there, awaiting service like some enthroned king of fools. You've treated her like crap and now she's got you on the toilet. Take the hint, take your lumps, and do what she wants you to do for a change. "Is it time?" he asked, smiling. "It's my time," the green girl growled, and devoured his cock. Panic thrilled through Dee and he startled upward. The green girl sat up on her haunches, scooped up handfuls of his butt and aimed his hips at her mouth. Dee's jump away from the seat only drove his dick further down the velvety vortex of her throat. For a moment of woozy free fall the green girl held him suspended in the air, cradling his ass and slurping on his cock, treating his pelvis like a big, juicy wedge of watermelon—Strong. How could she be so strong?—before she slammed him back down onto the toilet hard enough to crack the ceramic. Her cold lips worried the base of his shaft, her fingers digging into the meat of his ass. She hauled him forward, pivoting her face against his lap—What is she doing—and Dee felt his rock hard dick plough up through the gel of her neck and stab, not down her throat, but upward until—Oh my God what the fuck—the green girl was literally giving him head. She groaned in delight, bobbing. The small bathroom filled with the bouquet of fresh cookies over-baked with too much chocolate. "What's…going…on?" gasped Dee, sloppy pressure of a drunken orgasm building. She gripped either side of the toilet lid and arched upward, hovering inches above him. Dee shuddered out of control as the green girl used his cock to furrow a gash down her neck and between her tits. She pumped him deep into her cleavage, her hands creeping up his back and locking onto his shoulders. "Yes," she hissed, dragging her self up to straddle him, his dick cutting a frothing wake down her belly before disappearing between her legs. With the slightest tilt of her hips she pushed him like a piston into her pussy. "Cum in me now," she said, rough-riding him. She pried open his mouth and filled it to bursting with sticky breast. "Eat me now." Gluey green gunk plugged his nose and Dee choked down a river of burning syrup tasting of chocolate cherry cordial candies. "Become me. Now!" Dee shivered, muscle tension coiling before explosive release. The green girl's huge, smeary tits slapped and smacked against his smothered face. He caught a glimpse of the long wound his dick had sliced down her chest. He remembered— ["…Please, God, no. Let her be okay. Galatea, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…"] —and he had to look away, tearing his mouth from her fountaining flesh. A few flakes of homemade soap stuck to the white porcelain of the bathroom sink. The mostly empty vials of food coloring clustered around the sink's silvered tap, their colorful, pinched plastic caps of blue, yellow, green, red—Empty. It's empty. The green vial is empty. Dee's gaze flashed back to the green girl's face. "Pygmalion," he coughed. "Hm?" The green girl's hips rocked in violent jerks. "Eat me, Master," she said, offering him a breast. No X. Sober up right fucking now, you fucking idiot. He reached for her shoulders. "Pygmalion," he said, loud and slow. Her mouth puckered into the grin of a knowing coquette. "Eat me, 'Pygmalion.'" Dee stood straight, pushing out, palms flat. The green girl splashed to the floor. "Where is Galatea?" Dee snarled. The green girl sat up on all fours. "M-master?" she stammered in an astonished, breathy voice sounding nothing like Galatea. The empty vial with the green lid shattered on the floor between her hands, slivers of plastic shrapnel peppering her face. "Where is Galatea?" A translucent, ruby red blush spread over her as the solid green receded. "But I'm the one you really want, Master," Black Cherry said, her body streamlining, red batwings rising. Dee's blood sang in his ears. "No. Never. You want a master? Go back to Bee or whatever creepy fuck was stupid enough to cook you up." The scarlet girl backed away from him, the claws at the end of her wings working at the doorknob. "It should be you," she said, her eyes black and bottomless. The door opened behind her. "My master should be my first." Dee raged. "Where. Is. Galatea?" "It should have been you," Black Cherry said, whirling about, "but I have no time." Dee lunged for her but a wing claw lashed out and down, tripping Dee up with the tatters of his khakis. He fell forward, his reflexes dulled with bourbon. The scarlet girl vanished down the corridor. "Oh, Yves," came Galatea's voice, "looks like dessert's being served early, and I have one Hell of a sweet tooth tonight." * * * * You come out at night That's when the energy comes And the dark side's light And the vampires roam. —Sarah McLachlan, Building a Mystery * * * * It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 02 Act Three: There's Always Room Chapter Two: We End as We Began Author's note: This chapter contains more violence than previous chapters as well as implied but not depicted nonconsensual sexual activity. Black Cherry pelted down the little hall. Her wings, cramped in the narrow corridor, trailed straight behind her, the train of a jilted bride fleeing her red wedding. Wing claws carved channels into the plaster walls as she ran. Wasting novilunium, she thought, losing control, losing cohesion. Minutes left, maybe less. She burst from mouth of the hall and into the living room. The couch sat unoccupied. Where is the plaything Master gave me? "'Mugger Fleeing the Scene,'" Yves muttered, moving in from his ambush point against the wall behind her to execute the maneuver. * * * * In the bathroom, Dee attempted to stand but the resistance from the ragged clothing around his knees took him by surprise and he collapsed, his chin dinging the linoleum floor. Fire can't burn me, iron can't break me, but get me drunk and tie my shoelaces together and I'm fucked. He rolled over and sat up, every movement uncertain. No, I got myself drunk. I gave Bee the nanomek. I left Galatea alone. He started clawing himself free of the khaki material one strip at a time. I ripped yet another pair of fucking pants. * * * * Yves flanked Black Cherry on the left. So, Black Cherry thought as Yves closed the distance between them, plaything wants to play. Yves clamped his right hand down around her left wrist. His right foot slid out in front of Black Cherry's left leg as Yves gave her wrist a sharp twist. Was that supposed to hurt? Best act like it, Black Cherry decided, hunching over. Anticipating resistance of her bodyweight, Yves shifted his balance and poured energy into an inward turn, bringing her arm forward and around, trying to use her own momentum to throw her to the floor. My turn, plaything. Black Cherry let her arm stretch and Yves' expertly planned wrist-throw became a clumsy taffy-pull. Yves stiffened in surprise, spinning in an unbalanced arc to face the wall. Relishing the feel of Yves' hand locking rigid around her wrist, Black Cherry followed through, her arm snaking out until her palm pushed against the wall. "I'll play with you," she said aloud, her fingers curling backward and down to grip the hand stuck to her wrist, "but by my rules." Her hand pinwheeled around his and she reversed their roles just as quickly, pinning Yves' wrist against the wall and moving close behind him. She let go just to see what he would do. His right arm twitched but did not budge from where she had pinned it. His left arm curled against his chest beneath his unbuttoned button-down. He's scared, she realized, watching Yves' fingernails scrape against plaster. Just like Bee. Just like Galatea and all the others. All except Master. She pressed her slinky, naked frame against Yves' frozen form. Even on tiptoe she could not reach his neck, so she settled her cheek in the small of his back, breathing deep. Plaything's fear smells sweet and precious, like a rare prize. Imagine how divine Master's fear must be. Imagine! "You do not scare easily." Black Cherry snuggled in. "I can tell. I like that. Not like Bee. His fear was sour. Killing him just made it worse, and after eating him the aftertaste lasted hours. Blech," she spat, shuddering at the memory. * * * * Dee heard something shatter and scatter in the living room, a jarring tuneful sound like the breaking of a pottery jug or a china plate. Sober up and think straight, damn it. He shook his head until the room stopped spinning. Your friends are in trouble. He rose and made for the door. A muddy, ruddy light gave Dee the strange, sickening impression that the short hallway was swollen and bloodshot. He steadied himself by grabbing the doorknob. He started to shout, "Yves—!" but was fuddled by sudden movement of something scarlet and leathery racing down the hallway. A red claw bit into the pressboard wood of the bathroom door and wrenched it shut. Dee jerked at the door, trying to keep it open, but pulled the doorknob and shaft out instead. * * * * Yves pushed back, trying to spin around. He recovers quickly, Black Cherry thought. She clipped his right hand to the wall with a wing claw, knocking a Deep Space Nine commemorative plate off its hanger. It fragmented when it hit the floor. She craned her neck to peer down the hallway to the bathroom. As quick as Master. "Yves—!" Black Cherry sighed, sent her other wing hurtling down the hallway to drag the bathroom door shut as it sprang back. She turned to Yves and startled to see he held a short, wicked-edged knife in his left hand. Maybe quicker than Master. Black Cherry wrestled Yves' left arm into a painful pin behind his back. "Now where on Earth did this come from?" she asked, the claw from her returning wing plucking the knife away. She leaned hard against him to maintain the pin and slipped one hand between the wall and his chest. She found a nylon scabbard sewed below the left armpit of the tee shirt beneath his overshirt. "You must have been fishing for your little knife—" "Tanto." "—this whole time. Readying a strike, even through all that fear. Your little knife—your tanto—would be buried between my breasts now, wouldn't it?" She caressed a wing claw over Yves' cheek. "But you didn't know this little girl had claws." A few drops of blood ran down Yves' cheek and beaded in the dimple of his chin. "I do now. I don't make the same mistake twice. Ever." "Master didn’t bring me a plaything." Black Cherry reached up Yves' tee shirt and strummed her fingers across his washboard abdomen, purring. "He's given me a playmate. We'll have hours and hours of fun, you and I, but there's something I need first. I tried to get it from Master, but he's not ready for me. He will be, soon, but not yet, and I'm out of time. So, darling Yves," she said, undoing his belt and unzipping his fly, "it looks like you're on the menu after all. On the taster menu, at least." * * * * Dee dropped the knob, hooked two fingers into the dark, round hole left in the door, and gave a tentative tug. The door stuck fast. Dee sighed. Two swings of his fist brought the door down in splinters and he stepped sideways into hall. A glob of red goop stained the ceiling lamp, casting everything in an unsettling florid light. A chest-high gouge in the plaster of both walls ran the length of the hallway. Whatever had cut them grooved the wood of his bedroom door and left it swinging loose on its hinges. He shuffled by, gave his bedroom a passing glance, and stopped dead. Blinking, he nudged the bedroom door open with outspread fingers. When he last saw the room, it resembled a war zone, but now walking into his bedroom was like sticking his head inside a Jackson Pollock painting. Every surface was spattered with chaotic sprays and splashes of black ink and all imaginable shades of red. They fought here, Galatea and the scarlet girl… Dee lurched, taking it all in. The color dominating the frenzied mess was green. …and Galatea lost and the scarlet girl wiped the walls with her… Dee pivoted on his heels, his balance perfect, and stalked out, his fluid gate as steady and sure as a panther closing in on a kill. …and I'm going to murder the bitch. Dee found the scarlet girl standing close to the wall. Her head lolled backward, eyes shut and lips parted in a whimper of relief. Her wide batwings were drawn tight around her petite form in a parody of a cardinal's crimson cloak, locked in place by wing claws stabbing deep into the gelled flesh of her shoulders. "Much better," she sighed, eyes still closed. Her claws withdrew, burgundy nectar weeping from the ragged wounds they left behind. "I can feel the novilunium. I can feel its music, its blood music." Her wings relaxed and unwound, slowly exposing a second figure squeezed so tight and close to the scarlet girl Dee did not notice it before. "My compliments to the chef, Yves." The scarlet girl released her captive. "That was choice." Yves staggered back from her, clothes haggard and wine-stained, his eyes incandescent with rage. "Fuck you," he replied, and punched her in the throat. Her neck distended with the force of Yves' blow but her head remained perched above her shoulders. Her eyes opened, her wings swooped back in but hesitated, their long, needle sharp claws quivering inches from Yves' face. She met his unflinching glare for a second more before swiveling her gaze to Dee. "Master?" the scarlet girl said, her smile coy but sly. "I have time now." "Dee?" Yves said, his eyes never leaving the two raptorial claws hovering close to his temples. "Yes, Yves?" Red nectar dripped down onto Yves face. "You're still standing?" "Yes, Yves." The scarlet girl chuckled, turning her head as each man spoke, like a spectator watching a tennis match. "Well, then," Yves said, "Remember what I said about your stupid straight-guy hero routine?" "Yes, Yves." "I was an idiot." Yves fell back. The scarlet girl's claws clacked together in empty air as Yves flipped down and away in textbook, backward break-fall. "Kill the bitch," he panted, crawled a few feet closer to the front door before he collapsed, every muscle trembling and oiled in sweat. "Way ahead of you, Yves," Dee muttered, moving between Yves and the scarlet girl. The scarlet girl marveled at him, perfect breasts heaving. "You smell wonderful, Master; so angry." Batwings the color of blood and smoke luxuriated in the air of the living room. "I love it." Narrow rivulets of red nectar trickled from her sex to run down her inner thighs. "You won't regret coming back to me. I'm so much stronger for you now." She reached out to him, fingers flexing. "I'm ready." ["…I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready…"] Dee advanced into the radius of her wingspan. "You're finished." "Oh, Master," she gasped, agape with delight, before her eyes narrowed and her lips twisted into a thin, crooked grin. Her batwings snapped ready, their tiny twins above her ears fanning up and back until she looked like a helmeted Valkyrie from Hell. "Bring it." Dee rushed her. The scarlet girl's wingtips meshed and merged behind him. Streams of gel pulsed out from her core to course through the membranes of her wings, ringing Dee in thick walls seeping with sanguine syrup, their bakery-oven smell overpowering. Dee crossed his forearms in front of his chest, palms forward, fingers hooked outward. The scarlet girl's crooked grin crept higher as Dee stormed closer and the gel walls surrounding them contracted inward like an iris. The drizzle of inner nectar dripping from her pussy surged, her legs lost in the torrent fueling the flood bearing down upon Dee. His crossed hands stabbed into her dissolving shoulders just as the collapsing gel crashed down on all sides, a torrid kiss over every inch of his skin and a siphon over his cock, its smothering pressure building without plateau and no hint it would ever stop. Dee spun his fingers deep into her flesh and uncrossed his arms, drawing them downward and out behind him. Dee tore the scarlet girl apart, opening a v-necked gully in the crushing red sea, and bulldozed through. He emerged clean as a whistle, not a single drop of cherry jam sticking to him. He skidded to a halt before bonking against the living room window and twirled about-face. The scarlet girl funneled to the floor in a confusion of tangled limbs and funhouse-mirror distorted shapes. "Master," she sobbed when the two halves of her face finally zippered together the right way around, "it hurts. You hurt me." She curled into a fetal ball, wracked with spasm. "You hurt me so much." Dee charged. The scarlet girl rolled onto her knees. Her wings plunged forward, their claws digging into Dee's underarms and hoisting him into the air. She leapt to her feet, her wings accelerating until Dee's back smashed into the ceiling. "Do it again!" she crowed through the rain of plaster, honey bleeding from both pairs of lips. The scarlet girl twittered and flexed her claws, testing their grip in Dee's armpits and tickling him without mercy. Dee bared his teeth in a gritty, mirthless leer, wrapping his arms in the rubbery folds of her wings. Her murmurs melted into a lush, eager purr as she pulled her wings taut, stretching Dee's arms out wide until she had him crucified on the ceiling. "I want to do every sick, perverted, and twisted thing with my master." Dee shrugged hard, his left shoulder rolling forward. A clockwise curlicue corkscrewed down the scarlet girl's right wing. A heartbeat later Dee shrugged again, rolling his right shoulder backward. A counterclockwise torque galloped down the left wing. The scarlet girl's cry of shock caught in her throat when the two opposing torsions met in her core and blew her to bits. She burst with a hollow, plosive pooch! noise, pelting Dee with stinging spray of black-and-crimson gunk as he plummeted to the floor like an Acme anvil. He tucked his legs in at the last second and punched feet-first through the coffee table. The table caved in, its faux mahogany pressboard top fractured and folded up at crazy angles. Dee stood in the wreckage, knees bent and arms akimbo, an earthbound Peter Pan. Yves flopped onto his back. "Who won?" he asked, swabbing glop of his face with his stained outer shirt. "If this red stuff is your innards, Dee, I'll probably puke." Grainy gobs rained down off the ceiling, slid down the walls, and dripped off the furniture. "It's hers," Dee said. Yves wretched. "Then I'm certain to puke." He peeled off the sloppy shirt and shoved it aside, sitting up. "Who was that bitch? Why did she smell like, like Betty God-damned Crocker? I used to love the smell of cake batter, you know." His strength gave out and he plopped back down, groaning but sparing no energy for dignity. "Now I'm going to have nightmares about it." The gobs settled in larger lumps on the floor. "Are you all right?" Dee said. "Did she really do what I think—" "Don't believe what they say on the Internet," Yves interrupted, his voice flat. "Getting your prostate milked sucks." "But she raped—" "Enough, Dee. I know what happened, thank you very much." He tried to zipper his fly but the slider got caught on the first few bottom teeth. "That wasn't Galatea, I presume, but something that our boy Bee made. She told me she killed him because she didn't like the way he smelled, by the way." "But if she's Bee's honey nymph," Dee said, "that doesn't make any sense." A beat later, he added, "Actually, it makes perfect sense." Yves's glance was alarmed. "You keep referring to her in the present tense. It's not over?" "Not if she can still move," Dee said. The slush-covered overshirt started to inch forward. "She's heard everything we've said. Yves, get the fuck out of here." Yves watched his shirt wriggle past him. "She's not interested in me now that she's got you to play with." "We're not playing." "Then what—" "Quiet," Dee snapped. A cherry chocolate mound gathered at his feet. "Yes, Ooze-Sensei," Yves whispered. Fed by dribbles and spurts of red and black goo, the mound ripened into a bloated beach ball. "Well?" Dee said, shifting his weight, "had enough?" The scarlet girl's wings whipped back and she rocketed forward, snagging Dee by the throat with one hand as she ran past him in an almost casual gesture. His feet dangled a few inches off the floor for a moment of hurtling, horizontal flight before she rammed him into the far wall. Struts buckled and plaster powdered behind him, but the load-bearing structure of the apartment building's outer wall absorbed most of the blow. "I want," the scarlet girl panted, "to do every…sick, perverted, and…twisted thing with my master! And that," she wailed, "that was just one!" Dee kicked out, his foot kinked at a curious angle, his movements slow but strong. The kick connected with gel flesh and amputated the scarlet girl's right leg at the thigh. Her wings smacked down onto the floor behind her, keeping her upright as she reeled. She recovered quickly, gobs of severed leg still pattering around the room as the grip around Dee's neck cinched shut and she threw a left hook at his jaw. Dee let his knees buckle and the scarlet girl punched a fist-size hole in the wall an inch above his head. He barreled forward, shoulder slamming into the scarlet girl's midriff, his hands pushing a strange pattern through her jellied substance. The force of the blow threw her backward in a disintegrating arc through the air until she fell among the ruins of the coffee table. Her hand held fast to his neck, her arm stretching noodle thin until it snapped. The hand dissolved, its warm sanguine fluid running down Dee's chest. Lost cohesion when separated from the whole, Dee decided. She can't divide like Galatea could, or maybe just not as well. The melted gel rolled away in glistening beads of blood. The scarlet girl flailed in a mad tantrum, screeching, "You pushed me away! Never push me away!" "Always," Dee said in a dead monotone and marched forward. "And you'll never get to have me." The scarlet girl flew at him, a banshee blur of wings, claws, and rings of teeth. Dee cried out in wordless pain in the center of a red cyclone that tore away every last shred of his clothing. The scarlet girl coalesced and clung to him, wings wrapped around his ass and between his legs, hands raking over his back. "I have a master," she hissed, hips humping furiously against his dick. "I'll always have a master." Dee bobbed and weaved, broke free, and threw her melting form to the floor. "You have nothing," he spat, stumbling through trails of black and burgundy slime. "I'm nothing," she whispered, a shaky wing claw reaching down to shiver against her clitoris. "I'm nothing." Her other wing claw dove into her sex. "Jesus," Dee said. He stumped over to Yves. "Let's get you out of here, Yves." Yves lay still on the floor, his neck crooked up and glassy eyes narrowed. "I've never seen anyone move like that." Dee grimaced at the scarlet girl writhing in the living room. "That's because she's made of Jell—" "Not her," Yves said, "you. And just what the Hell are you doing?" "What you told me to do," Dee said. "I'm killing the bitch." Yves craned his neck higher. The scarlet girl's face had grown gooey, her features unfocused and dripping with dew. Red rills coursed between her breasts before her hands, fingers fused into flippers, would scoop and smear the runoff across every softening curve. One wing pulsed deep in her pussy. She arched up, sheets of candy-apple red icing flowing down her back like a mane, and the other wing curled under her rump and penetrated her from behind. All the while she twittered and muttered, "I'm nothing, I'm nothing, I'm nothing." Yves head bumped down hard against the floor. "Sure doesn't look like it." "Every move costs nanomek," Dee said. "Every reassembly burns even more." The apartment filled with slurping, syrupy sounds as the scarlet girl drove herself to messy orgasm. "Nothing! Master! Nothing! Always! Master!" "And that costs her the most," Dee added wretchedly. "Christ, Dee, why?" "Don't you get it? I'm going to burn all her nanomek away." Dee helped Yves to his feet. "Or die trying. Probably both. That's why I have to get you out of here, Yves. She can't have another source of sperm. I've got to burn all the bitch's nanomek away. Every last one. That's the only way to truly kill a meliae." It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 02 "Yes!" the scarlet girl burbled. "Kill me, master! Hate me enough to kill me!" Dee fixed her with an empty stare, and in that terrible, lifeless monotone, he said, "That's how she killed Galatea." The scarlet girl's slow dissolve froze. "That sentimental green simpleton?" she said, her features hardening along with her voice. "If my master doesn't choose me over her, I may kill her after all." Dee blanched. "Galatea's alive?" "Fear," the scarlet girl gulped. "I can smell it from here." Dee advanced, face bleached and eyes blank. Yves blundered about but managed to sag against the apartment's front door. The scarlet girl bolted upright, fists squeezed against her checks. "Oh, Master," she began, "your fear. It's more incredible than I ever imagined—" but her babbling squeal ascended into a piercing scream as Dee reached out and tore off both her wings at the shoulder. Her wings liquefied, thundering to the floor in a crimson downpour. Dee stepped close to the scarlet girl shrieking in the middle of the red tide. "Tell me where she is," he said. "You're so scared!" rejoiced the scarlet girl. Dee ripped the little wings out of her head. "Tell me where she is." The scarlet girl's trembling limbs locked rigid. "You'll never push me away again!" Dee cradled her face in his hands. "Tell me where she is or die." The scarlet girl twittered and drooped in a post-coital haze. "No," she said, abyssal eyes glowing. Dee's arms twitched, and in that split second of indecision the scarlet girl slipped from his grip and laid Dee out flat with a lightning-quick uppercut. The red fluid on the floor roiled around and rushed up her back. New pairs of wings unfurled. "No," she yawned, "I don't think so. I was ready to die for you, Master, but now I think I've found a better way to ensure you'll never push me away again." She swayed over him. "You pushed her away, remember? And she let you go. That's why she gave up and let me take her so easily. She knew you pushed her away to make room for me. I'll be better than she ever was, Master, because I never give up. And I never let go. And you're crying, Master." "I'm sorry, Galatea," Dee whispered. The scarlet girl shook her head. "You still don't understand. But you will." She sauntered over to the living room window and broke the pane with an effortless flip of a wing. "I've got to go now, Master." "No, tell me—" "See? You've accepted it a little already." The scarlet girl leaped onto the windowsill. "You can't push me away. But there's so much work to be done, now that I know what you need me to do. I'm going to make everything perfect for us, Master." "No." Red wings extended into the pre-dawn damp. "I live to serve and please my master," the scarlet girl said, "whether my master likes it or not." "No!" The scarlet girl's wing claws bit into the wall high above her and she clambered out of sight. "Dee," said Yves, testing his balance, "get up." Dee sprawled on the floor, head in his hands. "Galatea, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." "Snap out of it and get up," Yves insisted, taking a few uncertain steps forward. "But she's right: it's all my fault—" "No, she's not." Yves leaned against the archway to the kitchenette. "You're coming down off a serious adrenaline rush and she took advantage of it to fuck with your head and escape. It's a dirty trick that I've used myself a few times." "That explains the headache," Dee groaned. "No, that's probably the bourbon. If I can stand, so can you. Now get your ass up!" Dee stood, flinching at the pain pounding in his temples. "Jesus, Dee," Yves said. "Have you been working out or something?" "'Four day fuck-a-thon,' remember?" Dee shrugged in an outspread gesture that took in the entire room. "What the fuck do I do now, Yves?" "We find some clothes—Oh, grow up," Yves sighed as Dee cupped his hands over his crotch and blushed. "Anyway, we find some clothes and some coffee, and then we find Galatea and burn that devil cookie freak." "'We?'" Yves hobbled into the kitchenette. "If you don't want to help me, I guess I'll understand." Dee's smile was grim. "Of course I'll help, Y-Sensei." He listened to Yves fumble with the electric coffee maker but knew better than to interfere. "Coffee's in the cabinet above the microwave." "Thanks," Yves said, his movements growing confident. "Have you really gone five days without sleep?" "Only if being comatose doesn't count." Steam percolated in the coffee maker. "I doubt it does," said Yves, rinsing out a couple of corporate-logo coffee mugs. "But I haven't pulled a real all-nighter since college, so these are both for me. In about ten hours I'm going to be hit with a massive migraine and become utterly useless, so after we get our shit together we're going to have to move fast." Coffee started sizzling into the pot. "Move where?" Dee asked. "Miss Devil Cookie could be anywhere. Where do we start?" Yves watched the level of coffee in the pot rise. "If you told me everything before, then we've only got two places to go." Dee thought about it for a moment. "You're right. Let's start close to home. Listen," Dee added. "I think I've run out of clothes." "Clean clothes?" "Yeah." Dee shifted uncomfortably. "But I think I'm completely out of pants." * * * * "Ten years," grumbled Yves, pounding down the cement stairs. "What?" Dee asked from a few steps in front of him. "Ninety minute workouts, at least once a day, for ten years," Yves said, glaring at Dee's chiseled shoulders. "That's how long it took me to look good in these clothes." "Really?" said Dee as he reached the door to the first floor. "I thought you were born bishi." "And you fill out a muscle shirt in four damned days." "Feeling petty, Yves?" Dee turned the door handle. "Is that why you gave me these stupid M.C. Hammer pants?" He pulled at the elastic of a pair of sweats resembling gun-metal gray pantaloons with his free hand. "No, I'm feeling practical. You've been ruining an average of 2.5 articles of clothing an hour in the past few days, and I need to cleanse the Nineties from my wardrobe. Besides, you need a lot of room for Goojitsu." Dee held the door ajar. "What?" Yves shrugged, then winced and rubbed his shoulders. "Would you prefer 'goo fu?'" "What the fuck are you talking about?" "Your martial art," Yves said. The door fell closed. "I repeat: what the fuck?" "Come off it, Dee. When I said I'd never seen anyone move like you did, I meant it. And what you did to that cherry cupcake psycho…" Yves shuddered. "She may have felt like Jell-O to you, but to this mere mortal she was about three hundred pounds of wet cement." "Yves, honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing or what's happening to me. You've always been good at this sort of thing; I've seen you guess the endings of movies like The Sixth Sense, Momento, and Seven from just watching the opening credits. Do you know what's going on?" "Not yet," Yves said, joining Dee in the entryway to the first floor and pulling open the door. "But I'm working on it." Dee peered down the empty hallway. "What can you tell me, then?" "Well," Yves sighed, closing the door. "You've invented the world's first martial art designed not just for unarmed combat, but also for fighting when totally nude, with an entire school devoted to defense against hydrodynamic attacks. The cherry cupcake girl is insane, but she has standards and lines she is unwilling to cross. She makes contingency plans, however, and is prepared to compromise when desperate. And Bee's really dead." Dee goggled. "How do you know all that?" "His testicles are in a jar outside his apartment's front door." Dee cracked the door open. "Good eye," he said, squinting. "I thought those were marbles." "Have some respect for the dead, Dee. That's the part of himself Bee probably wanted to put in her mouth more than any other and it wound up being the only part of him that didn't end up in there. I guess nanomek really is programmed for irony." "What are Bee's balls doing in the hallway?" Dee said. "It's a message from that cherry devil cookie bitch—look, we need to come up with a good nickname for her," Yves said. "I don't like saying 'bitch' all the time, no matter how appropriate." "Cherry Cupcake?" Dee suggested. "Only if I get to call you 'Ellie Dee.'" Dee blinked. "I don't even get that reference. But, whatever. Um, Betty Crocker?" "Lawsuit waiting to happen," Yves said. "Darth Cherry?" "Please." "Well," Dee said, "Devil Cookie has a familiar ring…Wait a minute. You're trying to distract me from something." "It's working." "Just tell me what message Bee's balls in a glass jar could possibly convey." "I have no idea," Yves said. "Cherry Cupcake's crazy." "'Crazy for me,'" Dee muttered in reverie. "What? No, she's indiscriminately crazy. But the message, whatever it was, was meant for you." "So?" Dee said, ire rising. "So I don’t think Cherry Cupcake's there, but I also don't think you're going to like what's waiting for us in there, either," Dee startled and threw open the door. "You think Galatea's—" "I don't know, Dee." Yves blocked the doorway. "But I need you to not think about Galatea for the moment. I don't want to belittle your feelings and I appreciate the gravity of your situation—" "I know," Dee said. "—but we need to think big-picture right now, and that means the most important question is—" "I know." "—where the Hell is the rest of the nanomek?" Yves finished, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I don't know," Dee said. "But I can guess." * * * * The tin of SRU Thickener bounced around the metal mesh child seat of the shopping cart gamboling down the Baking Needs aisle. The burning red sunrise threw crazy shadows ahead of it. "Where's all the cherry Jell-O?" the pusher of the cart called out. A sleepy reply came from a few aisles away. "Ma'am? We don't open until six o'clock, ma'am. The front door should have been locked." "It was," said the customer, bobbing her head to peek into various rows of instant desserts and pie fillings. "I just slipped in." She adopted a breathy, pouting tone. "I hope you don't mind. It's only a few minutes before six. Could you help me with the cherry Jell-O? Please?" "I'm sorry," said the sleepy voice, the squeak of sneakered feet approaching the Baking Needs aisle. "Some sicko came in last night and bought it all for who-knows-what." "Oh, really?" the early customer drawled owlishly. "Yah, really," the husky stock boy insisted, round the bend of the aisle. "We're all sold ow—wow-huh-how." He skidded to a halt, gawking. Black Cherry's batwings stretched high and triangular like lateen sails, crimson blazing and black veins glistening as they drank in the dawn. Her fingers riffled through the uneven rows of gelatin boxes. "'Peach,'" she read, picking up one box. "Maybe. If I had some schnapps." She put the box back on the shelf. "Hm. 'Grape?' Probably a boozehound. 'Mixed Fruit?' What the heck is that? Oh, who am I kidding?" A wing flicked down and scooped every last box into the shopping basket. "I'll make as many as it takes for Master," she said, plucking out the boxes of lime Jell-O from the pile in her basket and pitching them into the next row, "give him more, and more, and more until he finally realizes I'm the only one perfect for him. Or they drain him dry, I suppose, and then I'll just claim what's mine. After all," she told the stock boy, "a girl needs her minions." "Uh. Huh?" "Ah," Black Cherry said, ignoring him, and pulled a handful of devil's food instant pudding boxes from the shopping cart. "Not cherry, but these will do for a start. Too unoriginal, though. She'll need something more. Time to think outside the box." She watched inky black swirls spiral across her wings. "Of course," she murmured. "She'll be perfect. Well, almost perfect." Black Cherry fixed the stock boy with her bottomless stare. "Do you sell paint?" "Aisle three," the stock boy said, unblinking. She took a step closer. "Do you sell black paint?" "Aisle three, freezer-side left," the stock boy gulped, gooseflesh prickling his arms and neck. She stepped closer still, her wings buffeting his hair. "Do you sell black latex paint?" "Aisle three," the stock boy croaked, "freezer-side left, center shelf. Just a pint or two, though." "More than I need, thank you. Say…" Black Cherry gave the stock boy's cheek a friendly tweak, raising a bruise. "Has anyone ever told you that you look good enough to eat?" * * * * "Do you really think meliae can make more meliae?" Yves wondered. "We're dealing with magic and dream-logic, here. There could be a rule against it." "There's also a rule that nanomek never does what you expect," Dee said. "It's the most important rule, apparently, so maybe it applies to meliae too." "I don't know what's worse," Yves said, scrutinizing the hallway again, "Cherry Cupcake planning to make more meliae or Cherry Cupcake making more meliae that don't turn out as planned." "Jesus, I hadn't thought of that." "I've run out of ideas, myself," Yves said. "We have to check out Bee's place eventually, anyway." He stepped through the doorway. "Let's get it over with." They sidled down the hallway. "Who else lives down here?" Yves asked. "Esteban. You know," Dee said into Yves blank stare, "good looking guy, always acts like he just broke up with his girlfriend, goes home with a new girl every other night? Not your scene, I guess. I doubt he's home." "Is he Bee's next door neighbor?" "No," Dee said. "That's Kay." "Kay's back from Iraq?" "Don't know, but don't worry," Dee whispered, "Kay sleeps like the dead, no amount of noise can wake him up—unless you're trying to be quiet or sneaking around, that is." "Like we are now?" "Shit," Dee said a normal volume. "Good point. Sorry." Yves marched to the door with the jar sitting in front of it like something left out for the milkman. He nudged the jar aside with his foot, his eyes focused on the glass peephole directly in front of him. He rattled the knob. "Locked. Do your thing, Dee," he said, moving back, "and don't be sneaky." Dee kicked out. The metal door refused to bend and Dee's right foot punched through it like an awl through leather until his leg pushed knee-deep. "Cheap door," Dee said, hopping on his left leg to keep his balance. "That's what it's supposed to do, I think," Yves said, backing even further away. "Okay, then," Dee grumbled. He reared up, shifting his full weight onto his trapped leg and butting the door with his head. The hinges groaned, the door caved in, and Dee toppled into the apartment. "That would have woken the dead," Yves said after a long pause. "I don't think Kay's home." "There're Styrofoam peanuts all over the place in here," Dee remarked. "How does it smell?" asked Yves. "The peanuts?" said Dee, lying atop the punctured metal door crammed into the apartment's tiny foyer. Paint scraped off the walls whenever he tried to move. "Yves, I need a little help here. I think I'm stuck." Out in the hallway, Yves fell into a ready stance. "Try thinking for a second, Dee, and tell me if you smell anything." "It is a little ripe in here, now that you mention it. Sickly sweet, like—Oh, shit." Dee bucked, bending the door at a ninety-degree angle, only trapping his right leg tighter. "You don't think Bee made two of them, do you?" "Sickly sweet like what?" Dee shuffled, making no progress. "Not like cookies, thank God. Garbage and air freshener. No, not air freshener…Galatea." The door shred like tissue paper under his hands and Dee stumbled into the apartment's living room. A moment later Yves followed, picking his way through the sharp strips of shorn sheet metal. "This place is directly below yours, Dee," he said, "so that makes sense. Check out the ceiling. It's tie-dyed mint green." Dee relaxed enough to take in his surroundings. "The fridge's wide open but the light's out and I don't hear the compressor running. I guess that's where the smell's coming from. No sewage-meliae to worry about, thank God." "I was thinking more along the lines of other bits and pieces of Bee," Yves said, rummaging through the clutter of old mail on Bee's coffee table. "Ew. Thanks, I'll keep that in mind." Dee rifled through the cushions of Bee's black leather couch. "We're looking for the nanomek, I take it?" "Yeah, on the odd chance we've lucked out and Cherry Cupcake doesn't have it, we've got to find it and put it somewhere safe. Man, look at all these mail-order catalogues. Did Bee collect anime action figures or something?" "Trust me; you don't want to know," Dee said, "I'll check out the kitchen." Yves contemplated the ceiling. "It's not seeping down," he pondered aloud. "It's spreading across." "What?" Dee said from the kitchenette. "I'll be in the bedroom," said Yves. The refrigerator door was propped open by a massive, metal mixing bowl. Dee rolled it aside and shut the door, ignoring wilting vegetables spotted with mold and a burst, soupy package of blackening ground beef. He hefted the bowl off the floor, testing its weight. Dee sniffed a hint of chocolate cherry cordial candy. "Speaking of magic and dream-logic," Dee called out, "you should see the bowl Bee made Cherry Cupcake in. It's a god-damned cauldron." Dee caught a glimpse of the kitchen table and whistled. "Holy crap." The mixing bowl thudded on the stove. "That's a lot of Jell-O. Yves! There must be two dozen empty boxes of cherry Jell-O in here. All that collagen; no wonder she was so strong…Wait a minute." Dee bent down and picked a lone, empty box of Devil's Food instant pudding from the floor. Its cardboard was crusted with a dull russet stain. Dee wished it were ketchup, beet juice, or even Cherry Cupcake cum, but he knew better. "Devil's food." He turned to the mixing bowl. "Witch's cauldron." There was more russet on its rim. "I bet he bled a little into the mix, too." He glanced out the bay window into the golden dawn. "All on a night of the New Moon. Bee, you idiot." "Dee," came Yves' shaky voice from the bedroom. "You'd better get in here." Dee crossed the living room and trod down the little hallway to the bedroom. Galatea's scent mixed with the earthy must of mildewed plaster. Yves stood in the bedroom doorway. "Don't freak out," he said, moving back. "Just look and tell me if you think there's anything we can do." The bedroom ceiling was pitted with lime-stained fissures and craters. Strips of greenish drywall formed stalactites around a broken plywood support beam breaching the spongy stucco and blemished the walls. The catastrophic water damage barely registered. Dee's attention was transfixed by dozens of containers. Salad and soup bowls, aluminum pots and steel pans, glass beer mugs and plastic cups littered every flat surface in the room. "He was collecting her," Dee whispered. The Devil's Food box tumbled to the floor. "Her, uh, runoff." "I know." Yves picked up a nearby Pyrex measuring cup and handed it over. A rind of pale green powder coated the mouth and walls of the glass and a thick, florescent green sludge glazed the bottom. "They're all pretty much like this, mostly evaporated. Do you think there's anything we can do? If Cherry Cupcake knew about this, she wouldn't have left anything here if she thought we could—" "Maybe she didn't know everything," Dee said. He pressed a finger into the measuring cup. The sludge felt cold and lifeless, the fingerprint he left in it as unchanging as an astronaut's footprint on the Moon. "Maybe she didn't know what she never experienced." "What are you thinking, Dee?" Yves asked. It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 02 ["…nanomek always holds a little energy and some of your cum—maybe a milliliter or two—in reserve, out of instinct or something like that…"] "You're so quiet I can't tell if you're freaking out or not," Yves added. "I can't afford to freak out," Dee said, "now that I can bring Galatea back." "How?" "Three Ds." "What?" "The three Ds," Dee repeated, searching out glasses and clear plastic cups. "Remember? She said that's all she'd ever need." Yves thought for a moment, then twitched with sudden recognition. "I can help you with the first two," he offered. "I don't think we'll need more of the third." Yves was collecting plastic cups near the bedroom window when he said, "What the Hell is this?" Dee glanced up from his growing stack of glasses. "It's a webcam on top of a broom handle." He pointed at camera's winking LED light. "It's on." Yves followed the camera's cabling to Bee's worktable. He fished a receipt out of a plastic bag crumpled by the keyboard. "Bee bought a three hundred gigabyte external hard drive a few days ago." He sat in Bee's mesh desk chair and brought his computer out of hibernation. "It's full." He hunched over Bee's computer monitor and called up an image viewer. "Oh my God," he said, mouse clicking furiously. "What?" "Well, Dee," Yves sighed as the monitor flickered. "I've always wondered, and now I know, thanks to you, Galatea, and a little help from Bee." "Know what?" Yves punched a key and a high resolution video filled the screen. "I am completely, one hundred percent, absolutely gay. This stuff isn't turning me on at all." Dee came up behind him. "That's a prototype of her bed trick, I think. Too bad we never got to try the final version." Yves pressed his palms against his cheeks, aghast. "I'm not turned on but I can't look away. How are you breathing between those?" He advanced the video a few minutes. "Or under there?" He advanced it again. "Or in that?" "That's when I learned how to hold my breath for half an hour," Dee said, blushing. "At least. Never found out how long I could go. I, uh, kind of take over in a little while. That's part of the game…Yeah, there I go. Huh. Wow." "'Wow?'" Yves laughed, hitting the fast forward button. "I see how you learned Goojitsu." He turned to face Dee. "Why aren't you angry? The Dee I know would be punching holes in walls and threatening to kill Bee." "He's already dead," Dee said. He waved an arm over all the containers on the floor. "Besides, if this works, he's given Galatea back to me. I let all this happen—I gave him the nanomek and then I pushed Galatea away. And now thanks to Bee I have a chance to put things right." "Except Bee will still be dead," Yves pointed out. Dee shrugged. "I don't have a problem with that, to be honest." Few minutes later they had almost a dozen cups and glasses filled with water catching the sunlight from the sill of kitchenette's bay window. Even in the cloudless dawn the water looked polluted with algae and silt. "Maybe we should stir it? I mean 'her?'" Yves said after staring for a long while. Silent minutes crawled passed and he added, "Uh, maybe I should lie down for a while and you could work on the third D. I'm beat. Literally." Dee took up two cups, careful not to spill a drop. "The bathtub," he said, making his slow way to the bathroom. Dee placed the two cups gently on the bathroom's linoleum floor. He hunted down Bee's drain stopper and made sure the seal was air tight before he poured the cups' contents into the tub and started the tap running warm. Yves came in with two more glasses and Dee said, "You rest a while and I'll fill the tub. Maybe if I can collect enough together…" In about an hour the tub was half full with warm limeade. "I'm going to have to call in sick soon," Yves called from the couch. "Maybe you should go," Dee said, watching the random ripples of the green bathwater, hoping to see any kind of pattern. "It looks like she's going to need the final D after all—or maybe this just isn't working and I need to find where Cherry Cupcake's taken the rest of her. I still have to do that, no matter what happens now. There's no way I'm going to let Cherry Cupcake hurt her—any of her—anymore. But I don't want her to hurt you again, either." Yves shuffled in and put a kind hand on Dee's shoulder. "Forget that, I'm sticking with you." He took his hand away. "Although I will duck out for this last bit." "Of course," Dee said, his smile wan. "Maybe there's something I can do in the meantime," Yves suggested. "There's no window in here. What if I borrowed some grow lights?" "Some what?" "A natural light lamp," Yves explained. "You know, for tropical fish? Or indoor gardening? Or…" "There's only one person I know who, uh, 'gardens' in a closet," Dee said. "There's only one person I know who'd be crazy enough to believe us." They locked eyes and chorused, "Ursula." "I'll go talk to her," Yves said. "You should stay here in case Ursula is affected by your public fuckability." "We definitely need a better nickname for that, too," Dee said. "Do you really think Ursula would be affected? I mean, she's gayer than you." "I beg your pardon?" "You came out of the closet five, six years ago, right? Ursula took a cheerleader to her junior prom." Yves waved his dismissal. "Okay, okay. The truth? I hope not but I don't want to find out. Do you think your friendship with her would survive something like that? Plus, you've got things to do." "Good points all," Dee said, sitting on the toilet. "Get going, and close the door behind you." Yves smirked. "You can keep those pants when you're done. Jesus, Dee," Yves said, smile fading, "for a guy who's about to win back his true love, you look miserable. Dee? Is there something you want to tell me?" After a while, Dee whispered, "Just go." Yves left without another word, closing the bathroom door behind him. Dee waited to hear the front door of the apartment to open and shut, but after a quizzical, silent minute he remembered the front door was now scraps of metal scattered in the foyer. He leaned forward, clicked the door lock, and dropped down to kneel at the foot of the tub. "Okay," he sighed. After a final moment of hesitation, he dropped a hand down into the tub. It made a loud slap when his hand hit the mixture and he jerked back, mournful. The liquid felt warm and tacky. His hand came away filmed with fluid. Damn. That felt awful. Resting his head against the cool ceramic lip of the tub, Dee said, "I can't do this." * * * * Yves trudged up the cement stairs to the second floor. Pain flared from the muscle and tendons of his waist with each step. He felt like someone had kicked him in the groin, but he had felt that way for over an hour now and was growing accustomed. You don't get good at Aikido, he thought, without spending many years being bad at Aikido. I've been hurt before. A stitch in the ribs took his breath away when he opened the door to the hallway. I've lost fights before. He moved down the citrus-perfumed hallway, resisting the urge to limp and favor his left leg. I've been robbed of my dignity before. I've even been—His right leg folded up under him so he sat there in the middle of the hallway, searching for balance. Breathe. Victory is not getting cut. Breathe. Eight forces sustain creation: Movement and stillness. Breathe. Extension and contraction. Breathe. Unification and division. Breathe. Solidity and fluidity—"Oh, for Heaven's sake," he said with sudden realization. "If Aikido has anything to do with goo girls and solid boys I'm going to take up ballet instead." Yves stood with composure and crossed the hallway to knock on Ursula's door. "Just a minute," came Ursula's dreamy alto voice. "Who is it?" "Yves." "Yves?" Ursula asked. The door opened. The funk of patchouli unrolled in the air. No one was there until Yves remembered to look down. Ursula slipped on her oversized, oval eyeglasses with wide, red, plastic frames and peered sleepily up at him, her angular face as pale as milk. Yves could see the mousy brown of the roots of her hair, dyed a lustrous black with some homemade henna concoction and pulled into two thick, braided pigtails curled over her shoulders and dangling down to her hips. She wore a tight set of boy's black sweats, a cat burglar's outfit ruined by an overstuffed pair of baby blue bunny slippers with long fuzzy pink ears. "Earth to Yves." "Sorry," Yves said. "I've never seen you…well, anyone…dressed like that. Ever." "I'm sleeping in today," she said as if that explained everything. "You look like Hell, Yves. Are you okay? What's going on?" Yves glanced down the corridor. I should have come up with something to say before knocking. Oh, well, bean spillage time. "Actually, Dee sent me because—" "Galatea's in trouble," Ursula said, not missing a beat. "God damn, woman," Yves cried out, "how do you always do that?" * * * * "Galatea," Dee said to the tub of sugary green soup. "I don't know if you can hear me. I don't know if you have any nanomek left in there. But I've realized something. I've realized why I couldn't do it that first time. It's the same reason why I can't do it now. And I want to explain." He turned and sat with his back against the tub. "I love you and I know you love me, and I've got this thing for you too, just like you have for me. But I don't have a thing for Jell-O, or goo, or maybe even goo girls. I don't have a thing for things." He laughed. "I know this is sounding like one of my rehearsed hissy fits, but it's not. Please hear me out, if you're in there. "In fantasy, and on the Internet—it is a blast, Galatea, just like you said—I can get turned on by almost anything. That's what fantasy is for. That's what the Internet is for. It's harmless, guiltless pleasure. But actually sticking my dick into a bowl of Jell-O that I didn't know was you, that I thought was just Jell-O? That isn't harmless, at least not to me, although I'm sure it is for some. And neither is masturbating over what is probably the corpse of the woman I love more than anything else in the world." "So, I can't do that." Dee stood up. "More than that, I won't do that." He pulled off Yves' muscle shirt and hopped out of the Hammer-pants and underwear. "But I will do this," he said, and slid naked into the tub. The liquid sloshed over him, a warm green film sliming his hair, gumming up his nose, greasing his stomach, trailing over his legs and puddling in his crotch. Every inch of his skin felt pasty. Soon the rippling from his descent petered out. Other than the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, nothing moved in the tub. "I love you, Galatea," Dee said, his voice distant and muffled to his plugged-up ears. "I said it unthinkingly before, but I mean it now more than ever: you are a part of me." On the inner curve of his left thigh, Dee felt a single, solitary nanogasm. * * * * In the Blood of Eden, We’ve done everything we can. In the Blood of Eden, So we end as we began: With the man in the woman, And the woman in the man. —Peter Gabriel, Blood of Eden * * * * It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 03 Act Three: There's Always Room Chapter Three: A Way So Familiar "…Welcome to the club," Galatea was saying into the phone over the noise of the blender. Ice and Nyquil cemented into a thick, medicinal green slurry. "Listen, I've been thinking, and maybe you should tell him…" "Thinking!" said the pixie voice over the phone, "Yeah, thinking's good! You go do that s'more. I gottagoseeyabye." The line went dead. Galatea glanced at the digital readout on the microwave in Dee's kitchenette. 6:52 PM. "God dammit." She punched the power switch on the blender and poured some Nyquil slushy into a tall plastic cup. She took a tentative sip. The frozen stuff flashed down her throat, chilling her to the core, stiffening her nipples into ice the color of darkest myrtle. "Wow." she gasped, touching them tenderly. "God dammit," she said again after a moment. "I miss Dee." Galatea emptied the contents of the cup back into the blender and lugged the full mixing bowl into the living room. She guzzled a long draught of slushy before extending a tendril to hit the Play button on Dee's DVD player. She giggled as the Nyquil took effect and the fuzzy logic of her nanomek mind web grew downright hairy and humor impaired. "Dee's Dee Vee Dee." On the television screen, a severed head grew a pair of glistening eyestalks and scuttled out a door on crab legs. Galatea howled with laughter until the copper-haired hero burned the head-crab to a crisp with flame-thrower. "Aw, poor little guy," she said, tipping the mixing bowl against her lips before realizing she had emptied its entire contents in that initial sip. She plopped onto the couch in a huff. Something solid pushed between the pliant flesh of her legs and nestled against her sex. She yelped and rocketed upright. The hard intruder bounced and burrowed further into her with each resulting shockwave. "God," she whined, reached between her legs and pulled Dee's square plastic universal remote out of her crotch with a shriek. "Dammit!" She throttled the remote. "Dee, Dee, Dee, everything here is Dee except Dee isn't here!" She tried shaking the plastic gadget to pieces but gave up with a sigh, paused the movie, and then settled back onto the couch. She waited. She counted ice crystals of slushy dissolving in her body. She waited. She toyed with the universal remote, counting the infrared wave-particles it shot around the room. She waited. She queried her memory web and counted the number of times she had climaxed in the four days of her existence: one hundred seventeen. Then she counted the number of Dee's orgasms in the same period: three hundred forty two. "Typical," she grumped, glancing at the DVD's digital readout. 6:55 PM. "I'm tired of waiting for Dee," she slurred, and burped. A rainbow bubble popped out of her mouth and burst against her nose. It smelled of Nyquil, citrus, sex…and homemade castile soap. Galatea growled, low and long, until the sound became a name, each syllable slowly toyed with and tasted before it rolled off her tongue. "Ursula!" A cascade of nanogasms started a fire in her belly. Waves of heated, melted gel gushed up into her chest and coursed through her legs. "Nanomek, do your stuff." Her body melted, slick and sticky like a well-licked lollipop. The heat peaked as her meltdown went critical, her surface tension becoming so diffuse she lost all feeling of where she ended and the couch and the air around her began. Her vision doubled, each thought and sensation became muzzy and echoed. "Mitosis," she panted, "is so much better'n Nyquil. Almost better'n sex." "Nah," said another voice, "who you kiddin'?" Galatea's sense of self and her surroundings swam back into focus. "Not you," she told the nectarous duplicate sitting in her lap, "obviously. Oh, crap. I'm half as drunk now. Thanks a bunch." The duplicates' flesh was still so oozy her ass liquefied into Galatea's crotch. Gouts of molten honey rushed between them, making her dizzy. "What do you think it's like," wondered her duplicate, leaning back into Galatea's chest until her breasts melted into the duplicate's shoulders, "to have boundaries?" "Other than freezing myself into a lime popsicle," Galatea mused, "I doubt I'll ever find out. But who needs boundaries when you can bifurcate? And speaking of being bi…" The duplicate pulled free and shook loose the remaining filaments and stringy bands connecting the two of them. "Galatea," said Galatea, "are you pondering what I'm pondering?" "I think so, Galatea, but do we have enough food coloring?" Galatea swaggered down the hallway and into the bathroom. Plastic vials of food coloring scattered about the linoleum faux-tiled floor. She lined them up on the sink, pausing to stare at the last bottle. "Why the Hell did I bother to steal the green one?" She set the full vial of finger-paint green, edible dye next to the others. "I can be such an airhead sometimes." She popped off the caps and kissed a dozen drops of dye from each vial into her mouth, skipping the green with a frown. "There's plenty to go 'round," she said between kisses. Clusters of nanomek swarmed in her tongue and made off with the dye one molecule at time. "A little goes a long way." "Enough for me too?" asked the Galatea on the couch. "Sure," said Galatea, making her way back to the living room. The nanomek sported with the dye and her body pulsed with psychedelic paisleys. "But one of us has gotta stay here in case Dee calls or shows up. Can I go? Dee's 'little Miss U' has been on my To Do list for a long time now. Yours too, though, 'course." "You can go," her green twin cautioned, "on two conditions: No reassimilation until after Dee gets back and I fuck him first while you watch." "Masochist," Galatea accused. "I'm drunk, jealous, and horny as Hell," her twin said with a squirmy shrug. "Do we have a deal, or do we reassimilate now and risk Dee catching us?" "Well, it is every man's fantasy to catch his girlfriend with another woman, isn't it? The Internet doesn't lie." "Dee isn't Everyman," the twin pointed out. "And it pisses you off to see Dee even thinking about another woman." Galatea conceded, "You have a deal." "Great. Now get the fuck out so I can get all the way drunk again." "Alright," Galatea nodded. "But first, some advice: what should I be?" With a metallic sigh her mass morphed into a slobbering tentacular horror, a purple demonic monstrosity with extra sets of oversized sexual apparatus and rows of teeth in some very strange places. "Legend of the Overfiend?" its ivory-tusked maws hissed in a ragged chorus. Her twin flew into a fit of giggles. "You're right," the abomination spoke in Galatea's voice, "too silly. Okay. Hm. Oh! What about…" There was another metallic sigh and the beast morphed into a tall, raven haired, Amazon princess wearing nothing but red, white, and blue underwear, a pair of polished steel bracelets, and a golden lariat coiled on her hip. "…Suffering Sappho?" She tried twirling the lariat over her head but fumbled the third spin and somehow managed to lasso her own hands behind her back. "Suffering Sappho!" she swore. "Powerless! Again!" She wriggled and jiggled but remained bound. "Why does this always happen?" Her green twin perked up. "Ooh, save that one for Dee. That will make him awfully quiet. Golden Age gals are his favorite." "Something Dark Agey, then?" the Amazon suggested, morphing into a black vinyl clad sex kitten with a whip. The twin buried her hands in her head. "We have got to stop listening to Dee's comic book lectures." "You're right." Galatea morphed back into herself. "I'm thinking of Dee, not Ursula." "We've been in her apartment a bunch of times," her twin noted, "and I didn't see any comic books. Lots of novels instead. And a whole shelf devoted to one author, remember? I don't know what the books were about, though." Dee's white-box computer squat in the corner of the living room. Galatea stretched her arms to its keyboard and called up a web search engine. "'Anne Rice,'" she enunciated, typing out the name and hitting the Enter key. Galatea and her twin elongated their necks into emerald crazy straws to get a close look at what the search engine produced. "Ah," said the twin. "Heh," said Galatea. * * * * Ursula was possessed of an antique vanity. A sheet of silvered glass framed in dark cherry wood still stained with its original varnish served as its mirror. Only the lining of its drawers and three dowels had been replaced in over a century since its manufacture in New Orleans by a journeyman carpenter whose accident while procuring matted felt for his masterwork from a nearby haberdashery resulted in mercury poisoning, Mad Hatter Syndrome, and subsequent suicide. "I take pride in my vanity," Ursula said, as she always did whenever she sat before it. The vanity table's aged mirror cast her reflection in mottled brass, as if she were living inside a nineteenth century photograph. "But I hate my hair!" she added, grabbing up handfuls of her massive mane and shaking it in her tiny fists. She spread her fingers and clouds of baby-fine, black-dyed hair unraveled past her waist. "Rapunzel I ain't." She cinched her silk dressing gown around her slender waist, plucked an ox horn comb from the selection of beautician's weaponry arrayed on the vanity table's blotter, and detangled herself without mercy. "Ow, ow, ow. Ow!" A distressful hour later the battle was won. "There," she said, tying up her plaited pigtails with purple satin ribbon and turning away from the mirror for the first time since she sat down. "I deserve a Hot Toddy." The vampire attacked. For a second of blinking incomprehension Ursula just sat there, staring at the virago vampire towering over her—staring open mouthed at the buckles of a studded corset belt hovering inches away from her nose. The vampire bent in a mockery of a curtsey, flashing a flawless, ivory leg as her black velvet skirt flared over the floor. Ursula caught another fleeting glimpse of skin guarded by a velvet choker and a severe neckline before the vampire curtsied deep enough to look her in the eye and her mind went blank. "Why hello there," the vampire chuckled, her voice throaty and thrumming with a power that made Ursula shake like a leaf, setting her legs and loins aquiver like she was eleven all over again. The vampire's tongue lolled over her curving, canine fangs as she tasted the words: "Little girl." Ursula managed to produce a mousy Eep! noise from the back of her throat—which was tilting backward and to the side, exposing the curve of her milky neck, apparently of its own volition. The remaining shred of her pride and dignity seethed and hated her for it. The vampire cocked an eyebrow at her, an expression so familiar—Dee, that's Dee, why does she remind me of Dee—that Ursula's raging pride boiled up and nearly broke through her paralysis of fear and arousal, but then the vampire declared, "Let's move this to the bed," and hoisted Ursula high into the air, cradling her in both arms on the downswing. Ursula squeaked in mindless passion, alarm, and assent. The vampire strutted over to the cast-iron, four poster bed catty-corner to the opposite bedroom wall. Ursula rocked in her strange, rubbery embrace. Squashed against her captor's imposing bust and swaddled in the cool velvet of the vampire's cloak, Ursula felt suspended and enmeshed, enraged but enraptured. The vampire brushed the bed's white lace canopy aside, unwound her cloak and rolled Ursula onto the mattress' plush quilt. She loomed above Ursula like a languorous lion. Spikes of flame-red hair crowned a flawless but cruel face as white as pure marble. Ursula turned away from the vampire's cold, viridian gaze, shuddering but still presenting her neck. The vampire traced a fingernail under Ursula's chin, clucking. "The carotid artery is so cliché." Ursula tried to curl into a ball but the vampire pressed her flat against the bed and flicked the dressing gown off Ursula's shoulders. "I prefer the subclavian, myself," the vampire said, dipping her finger down and over the clavicle above Ursula's left breast. Her left nipple hardened and hurt as Ursula squirmed, the material of her dressing gown scrapping against it. The vampire sat down on the bed as she nudged the top of Ursula's gown open to expose her shivering chest. The vampire leaned down and in, breathing deep. She paused just long enough to blink twice and crinkle her brow. "Slim pickings," she said, shaking her head and recovering from the split second of confusion. "And I'm very hungry." She loosened the knot of Ursula's belt apart and finger-walked across the skin below. "So," the vampire said as her hand crawled passed Ursula's bellybutton, "tonight I'm in the mood for some profunda femoris." She skirted over Ursula's pudendum and clamped down on the meat of Ursula's inner thigh inches away from her sex. "That's quite an abbuctor magnus you've built up for yourself, little girl," she commented as she squeezed and Ursula squealed. "You must put it through the wringer. How many heads have you wrapped these babies around, hmm?" The vampire shunted down the bed, pried Ursula's legs apart, and bent low, only to start blinking again. "I could say just about anything right now," she said, a green tint beginning to rouge her cheeks, "and you'd just writhe and pant some more, right?" Ursula writhed and panted like a puppy. "Good." The vampire padded down to the foot of the bed and knelt between Ursula's spread-eagled legs. She pulled the knot of Ursula's belt apart, yanking the gown wide open. "Where was I?" She stared at Ursula's creamy tummy and mousy brown mound. A few green beads of sweat spilled down her forehead. Ursula tugged hard on her own braids, mewling in bewildered need. "Arteries," the vampire muttered. "Right. Arteries. Good." She grabbed Ursula's ankle and raised her toned leg high. She palpated behind the knee with her other hand and found Ursula's pulse singing like a humming bird's. "The popliteal artery…" she said, greenish pallor spreading and statuesque features softening. Ursula's bucked her hips, her eyes rolled over white. "The popliteal artery," the vampire said again, mouth inching closer to the inner curve of Ursula's upraised knee. She gulped and tried one last time: "The popliteal artery is fine too—Oh, God damn it and fuck!" The vampire let Ursula's leg drop and mopped away the runnels of green goo that had started to stream down her face. "Why the Hell," the vampire cried, "why the fucking Hell do you smell like Dee?" The ratcheting plateau-then-tension-then-plateau-then-tension buildup toward the fearsome orgasm twisting into a fist in Ursula's abdomen petered out in a grating, itching ache. "Huh? Wha'?" The vampire's clothes were melting into thick green syrup, or green syrup was eating through the vampire's clothes from the inside, Ursula could not tell which. The vampire slopped down to all fours on the bed and crawled over her. Droplets of green nectar struck and stuck to Ursula's thighs, searing and sensuous like candle wax dribbled over her flesh. The burning rain raced up her belly and then between her breasts as the vampire crawled up to look Ursula in the eyes. "You smell," Galatea growled as every last molecule of food coloring burned up in her escalating passion. "Just…like…Dee—Oh, God," Galatea moaned and plunged her head down to wallow in the aroma. "God! My God!" Ursula gasped in agreement, orgasm uncoiling through her body as Galatea's gel-flesh flowed over her neck, across her shoulders and down her chest. It felt soft but insistent, weighty but delicate, smooth but clingy, its pervasive but delicious heat penetrating down to the bone. "My God," Ursula whispered again as Galatea suckled on the crook of Ursula's neck, blades of living hair reaching up to cup and caress Ursula's face, "it's…it's…" Galatea broke her full-torso kiss and pulled up and away with a loud, popping slurp. "Better than vampires?" she asked, eyes twinkling. "Yes," Ursula said, reaching out and pushing her arms deep into Galatea's back for a piping hot, internal hug, and it was Galatea's time to buck and mewl, "yes. I'm never LARPing again." Galatea laughed, shaking her head. "Now you even sound like Dee," she said, amazed. "And why do you smell like him? I don't understand this at all." Ursula, lying prone beneath a living incarnation of carnality made of out lime gelatin, said, "I think it's only fair if I get to ask the first questions." Galatea rolled her eyes. "God, you are such a man." She tried to roll over on the bed but the twin mattress proved too small and she splashed down onto the carpet instead. "Okay," she said, sounding muffled, "you can ask questions while I regain my dignity." "How did you make me cum like that?" Ursula asked. "You came?" "Yes," Ursula said, examining the sticky green smears on her quilt, "when you kissed me." "Really? Me too!" Ursula heard something slosh and slide about below the bed. "That's the wonder of nanogasms. Don't thank me; thank Dee for those. And no, I'm not going to explain that. Not yet, at least, 'cuz trying to explain it would probably fill a fuckin' book. Anyway, one more question before it’s my turn." Ursula held the quilt up and over the side of the bed. "How do I get these stains out?" Galatea's head peeked up. "What are you, some sort of Martha Stewart hippie?" "I prefer the term 'Bohemian Bourgeoisie.'" "Fine with me," Galatea said, rising to her full height. "As to your question: I have no idea. I like keepin' Dee too busy to clean up. Now it's my turn, right?" Ursula nodded and drew the quilt over her naked form. "Right." "Okay." Galatea crossed her arms. "I can’t help but notice you haven't asked me my name, or what I am, so I'm thinking that you already know. Am I right?" "I know just a little," Ursula confessed, "Galatea." "I've also figured out why you smell like Dee," Galatea said, and disappeared below the bed again. Huffing with exertion, she hauled out a small steamer trunk. She snapped open the trunk's fasteners, popped the lip up, and pulled out a handful of homemade castile soap. "You bathe with this stuff too, right? So it’s not the case that you smell like Dee. Instead, Dee smells like you." Ursula shifted, pulling the quilt tighter around her. "Right." "Well," Galatea said, standing up again, "I've bathed with it too. Sort of. I suspect you know 'just a little' about that as well. But let me tell you something I know: I know every single ingredient you've put into this damn stuff, and you can be sure as shit a bunch of it ain't soap. So I've just got one real question for you. Answer correctly and I'll fuck you so good that orgasm you just had will be a little nibble off a chocolate bar in comparison. Answer it wrong…" Galatea surged onto the bed. Ursula clutched the quilt to her neck but Galatea just seeped under it from below and filled it out so Ursula suddenly found herself holding the quilt around Galatea's body rather than her own. "…and I'll get creative," Galatea continued, leaning in nose-to-nose. "My question to you, little Miss U: "Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?" "I'm a bad witch." Ursula dropped the quilt and scooted her round butt up against the bed's headboard. "Very bad. Terrible, in fact." Ursula saw a crinkle of confusion cross Galatea's brow, and added, "That is, I'm really bad at witchcraft." Galatea's silence felt like a vacuum and the lacey confines of the four poster bed became a confessional. "My older brother let me play Dungeons and Dragons with him and his friends when I was nine. After a couple of games the group thought my ideas were cooler than his and asked me to be Dungeon Master. I was still running the show in high school. One girl in my group, Marcie, had a real crush on me, but her character died…I think her name was Black Leaf or something…Marcie took it kind of hard. Anyway, that's how I got into the occult. It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 03 "I studied for years, became a pagan, started spelling 'magic' with a 'k,' went to Bryn Mawr College, you name it. At first, it made me feel good; gave me something to be angry and defensive about other than being a really short, big dyke, you know?" Ursula wrapped herself around a down pillow and chewed, absent minded, on a braid. Galatea just stared, eyes shining like polished moss agate. "But soon it became my routine and I just went through the motions, until something incredible happened: I discovered the Internet." Galatea blinked. "Wait. What?" "I moved here. This town is geek Heaven except, for some reason, the closest thing to a New Age store is the local Hobby Lobby. Dee built me a PC and Viggo let me splice into his broadband connection…Don't look at me like that, I'm so not Dee's type and Viggo isn't interested in any woman that comes without a combo attack….Now don't you start looking at me like that, either, that was a damn good pun. Anyway, I found this medical supply outlet online that had a huge selection of homeopathic and all-natural products for all kinds of stuff. Their wholesaler must be really great, because whenever I use their stuff as reagents or ingredients or whatever, my magic actually works! Although it never works exactly the way I expect. So I went from being no witch at all to a bad witch." "Holy shit," Galatea said, letting the quilt slide off her slick back. "You talk a lot." Ursula blushed, tried to hide her entire body behind the pillow. "I wanted to give the right answer." "I was joking," Galatea laughed, "I was gunna fuck you senseless no matter what you said." "Yes!" Ursula hissed, waving her fists high in the air. Galatea spread out on the bed, her legs first fusing and then oozing out into a wide, low, jellied mound beneath her bellybutton. Ursula hugged the pillow, watching the glistening mass roll closer like liquid, green glass. "How does it feel?" she asked, staring down. "Touch me," Galatea said. Ursula's hazel gaze rose to meet Galatea's. "I mean, how does it feel to be you?" Galatea smiled, and spread her arms out to her. "Touch me." Ursula pushed the pillow away and sat cross-legged before Galatea. Ursula reached out and ran a hesitant finger around Galatea's right palm. "Smooth," she breathed, tracing a circle in Galatea's palm. A little ripple of gel raced ahead of her finger. "Silken." Emboldened, she slid her hand up Galatea's forearm. "Elastic and cool. I like it. What happened to all the sticky goop?" Galatea reached over and took Ursula's right hand in hers. "Not a fan of sticky goop?" "Don't get me wrong," Ursula said, squeezing, "it felt wild and downright wicked, but the little Martha Stewart in me felt aghast." "Let's give Martha a goo girl anatomy lesson," Galatea said, and pulled Ursula's hand to the lower swell of her breast. "Surface tension," she said, pressing Ursula's hand up and in. Her pliant flesh bulged but did not break. "Mm." Ursula's jaw dropped. "Wow." "Dee's favorite word," Galatea purred. "Yours is 'fuck,'" Ursula said, slipping gel between her wriggling fingers. "Hey, yeah, it is!" Galatea bubbled. "How'd ya know?" "I hear you shout it whenever I'm in the hallway. You and Dee have been going at it all week, seems like, and you're not exactly modest." Galatea giggled. "So," Ursula said, and pressed her other hand over Galatea's stiffening nipple. Galatea's giggling trailed off into a contented sigh. "Lesson one: surface tension." Galatea gathered up Ursula's hand again and brought it inches away from her mouth. "Lesson two," she cooed. Ursula jumped at the sudden burning breeze of her breath. "Inner gel," Galatea said and popped Ursula's hand in her mouth with a meowing nee-yum! Ursula swooned but lurched forward into Galatea's awaiting lap as Galatea swallowed her arm up to the elbow. "My God," she cried from the confines of Galatea's cavernous cleavage. "My God, how does Dee take it?" Galatea's throat relaxed and Ursula's arm popped free. Ursula snuggled into Galatea's smooth, cool surface. "How does he stand it?" "He stands tall, proud, and, mm, hard," Galatea said. "You didn't like it?" "It was so warm and strong, I just…" She gulped, cheeks and neck flushed in crimson. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I can't imagine what it would be like to stick a dick in there." "Oh? Wanna find out?" Ursula bolted, causing a gel-quake. "Say what?" "I'll save that for lesson five," Galatea said, arching an eyebrow. "You're joking, right?" Ursula laughter developed a nervous edge as she peeled herself out of Galatea's lap and back onto the bed. "We'll see." Galatea grabbed Ursula's hand again. "Ready for lesson three?" "Um. No?" "That's nice." Galatea pressed Ursula's hand into the gel of her tummy and pushed it down. "Lesson three." The goth and the goo girl watched their entwined hands creep over the delta above Galatea's sex. "Nectar," Galatea murmured and eased two of Ursula's fingertips into her pussy, her eyes roving over Ursula in eager triumph. A few moments later, Ursula said, "Hm." Galatea's brow crinkled in confusion. "'Hm?' No fainting? Not even a 'wow?'" She let go of Ursula's hand. "Don't worry," Ursula said, slipping her fingers in further, "I'm definitely wowing on the inside." She moved her thumb in quick little circles over Galatea's clitoris, making her shudder. "But this lesson I already know. I'm damn well versed, in fact," she added, and got down to business. "Wow!" Galatea splashed down onto the bed, writhing and melting. Ursula leaned in and dropped her lips delicately down, replacing her thumb over Galatea's clit. "Oh, wow!" Ursula's thumb arced below Galatea's sex and probed the tender gel beneath. "Oh, fuck, wow!" Ursula swayed on her knees as she caressed and kissed, coddled and invaded. "What's happening?" Galatea whimpered. "What are you doing?" Ursula's head peeped over the trembling curves of Galatea's calves. She wore a mustache and goatee of glimmering green nectar, grinning like her own evil twin from an alternative universe. "It's called the Venus Butterfly." "A Technique?" Galatea demanded, dumbfounded. "You are using a Technique on me?" "Half of one." Ursula rocked forward onto her elbows, her rump bobbing high in the air and her milk-white, elfin face descending below the verdant swell of Galatea's cleft. "For a proper Venus Buttery, my thumb would go up in here…" "Ah." "…my middle and ring fingers would go down in there…" "Yah!" "…and my tongue, well my tongue would go—hmmph, hmm, mm." "Ooh, fuck!" Galatea chewed on a fist to muffle a scream and then begged, "Enough. Enough!" Ursula scuttled back. "Don't you want to cum?" Galatea burbled, "Look at yourself, girl." "Huh?" Ursula looked down to find herself green and dripping from chin to bellybutton. "Whoa." Galatea rose from the sodden quilt. "Can your inner Martha cope?" "She's a bigger dyke than me," Ursula said, daubing a dollop of green honey off her left breast and rubbing it between her fingers. "That was well worth the mess. And you got so hot! Like paraffin wax, but delicious." "Delicious?" Galatea repeated, wobbling past the vanity and through the bedroom door. "Yeah," Ursula called out, licking her fingers. "It's like a combination of my two favorite flavors. When I was a kid, I loved this candy called Sweet-Tarts. Ate so many my tongue would bleed." "And the other flavor?" came Galatea's voice down the hallway crowded with oil paintings in antique frames. "Pussy, of course!" Ursula heard Galatea laugh, followed by a loud grinding. "Dee can't say words like 'pussy' or 'cum,'" Galatea said over the mechanical noise. "He just goes, 'Um, you know.'" Ursula feasted on the nectar cooling on her body. "Yeah, I know he does," she said, her mouth full of sticky fingers. "What?" "Nothing. Why do you keep comparing me to Dee? And what's that noise?" "Your ice maker," Galatea said as the grinding wound down. "And Dee's the only other person I know besides you." She spoke as if her mouth were full of pretzels. "Anyway, oo' were 'ucky to get to fird base wiff'out second degree burns. I've got to cool down for leff'on four." Ursula's eyes widened in alarm. "We're still doing the lessons? I thought we settled those." "Hell no, girl." Galatea marched back into the bedroom, her surface tension solid but shimmying from the cold, a living statute of green tourmaline crystal. "You may think you're little Miss Thing with your Venus Butterfly Technique, but you’re in the big leagues now, this is a five-round fight, and you have no idea what you've gotten yourself into." Ursula boggled at Galatea as the green girl drew herself up to her favorite height of seven feet, her fists pressed to her hips, at the foot of the bed. Something complicated happened insider her neck. "'Yeah, I know he does,'" Galatea mocked in a perfect impersonation of Ursula's voice, her eyes narrowing into predatory slits. "Wait a minute." Ursula sat up. "Fight? What fight?" Galatea leveled an outstretched arm, ignoring her. "Lesson four—" "Wait a minute!" Ursula yelped, her eyes squeezed shut, hands upraised and waggling like mad. Something cool and soft brushed across the fingertips of her right hand, slithered down her fingers, tickled her palm, and stuck to the pad of her thumb. "Huh?" She peeped open one eye. A fluorescent lime green coating gloved her right hand, shining in the mellow glow of the twin Tiffany lamps on her vanity and bedside table. Ursula curled her fingers and felt the stuff resist but flow with the movement. She made a fist and it filled out into a perfect green sphere. She flexed and fanned her fingers out and the coating snapped back into a skin-tight glove. The lamplight refracted in dozens of translucent filaments that traced through the air from the tips of her fingers and lead back to Galatea's outstretched arm. "What the Hell?" "Lesson four: advanced surface tension," Galatea said with a goofy smile and shrug. Ursula felt the gentle force of the shrug travel through the filaments connecting them, giving her hand a snug, squeezing tug, raising gooseflesh over her arms and neck. "How does that feel?" Ursula rubbed her gloved fingers together. They squeaked. "Like liquid satin, fluid but not gooey." "Not that…" Beads of gel pulsed down the filaments, glommed onto Ursula's fingertips, and rolled down her hand. The glove grew, swallowing her forearm like a hungry lover, electrifying her flesh. "…This," Galatea said, shrugging and tugging as the glove slunk around Ursula's elbow and clamped down more tight and clingy than any garment or stocking Ursula had ever worn. It was as pliant and sensuous as it was confining and terrifying. Ursula could only blush, stutter and squirm her hips. "Very interesting," Galatea drawled, and Ursula's blush burned brighter. "Well, then." Galatea leaned close, reaching out. "Let's get started." Ursula started to protest but Galatea's questing hand stretched past her, drawing Ursula's enveloped arm back with it. She stared at the fun-house mirror reflection her flushed face cast in the sleek substance of Galatea's arm shining like lime-tinted chrome. She did not notice Galatea flow silently forward until the green girl spoke again. "Well, what do ya know?" Ursula sat up straight and the two girls bumped noses. Galatea's attention was focused on something behind her, her goofy smile sharpening into a wicked grin, her nose bobbling like Samantha Stephen's as she cast a spell on her hapless husband Darrin, her breath perfumed with the scent of green-apple flavored Sweet-Tarts. The smell is precisely perfect, Ursula realized, her mouth watering and mind flooding with awkward girlhood memories. She must be doing it on purpose. Again her dignity nearly surfaced but she heard a familiar clinking behind her. "Looky what I found," Galatea taunted. Ursula's stomach flopped but her sex throbbed, and she turned to follow Galatea's gaze. The green girl's thumb hooked into a wide iron ring, the last loop on a short chain soldered onto the bedpost. "What's this for, hmm?" Galatea asked, clinking the chain. "Martha Stewart living? Somehow I doubt it." Galatea wrapped the cobweb-thin, carbon-steel strong filaments trailing from her fingers around and around the short length of chain, pulling Ursula's arm higher, farther back, and straighter with each twist. Ursula's vision doubled, then swam. "Galatea," she whispered, and it was the sound of her own voice that made her eyes brim over and spill their tears. She heard the voice of a shrimpy, pudgy preteen who chewed on hard candy until it hurt after sneaking behind the gym equipment shed during recess to coax lingering kisses from popular girls, only to be sneered at when she dared greet them in the school hallway. "Galatea, you win, you win." The living glove swallowed her arm almost to the shoulder, its icy-hot grip tickling the skin right below Ursula's armpit. "Hm?" Galatea murmured as she cocooned the bedpost chain in a growing lozenge of green chrome, a giant Sweet-Tart. "You win." "No, kiddo," Galatea said before stage whispering to the green disc. "You got her?" With a quick metallic sigh the disc morphed into a miniature Galatea, legs wrapped around the iron bedpost like Stripper Barbie humping a flagpole, her teensy hands seizing bundles of the green tendrils trussing up Ursula's arm. "Oh, I got her," Sweet-Tart Galatea smirked. A surge of chromed gel pulsed down the sturdy webbing and the smooching, pinching, liquid velvet of the hungry glove swarmed over Ursula's shoulder and into her armpit. "Thanks for the extra nanomek," Sweet-Tart Galatea said over Ursula's barks of mad laughter. "You win!" Ursula cried. "I'll leave Dee alone, I swear!" "No, kiddo," Galatea repeated and sidled to Ursula's left. She fished the second bedpost's chain out of the lace canopy. "The safe word is 'Pygmalion,' not 'you win'." She took the chain into her mouth and sucked on it like a lollipop. Even through the tingling, tickle-torture from Sweet-Tart Galatea, Ursula named another childhood candy favorite. Charm's Blow-Pop. The chain popped out of Galatea's mouth encased in a candy-apple green sphere. The sphere cracked open and morphed into another doll-sized Galatea. "You heard the woman," Blow-Bop Galatea huffed, loping up the chain and planting herself on the bedpost, "the safe-word is 'Pygmalion'…Well?" Ursula blushed hotter than she thought possible. Already dizzy and giddy from the assault on her arm, the miasma of sensation threatened to drown her. Just as her body was choosing between falling faint or throwing up, her dignity finally surfaced and told her exactly what she needed to do. She clamped her mouth shut, squirming but dead silent, her eyes sparkling with tears and mischief. The original, queen-size Galatea just smiled and moved to a third bedpost at the foot of the bed, but Blow-Pop Galatea crowed in triumph. "Now we're talkin'!" She punched her arms out, fingers curled in a peculiar but familiar hooked horn gesture. "Thwip!" Skeins of spun sugar sped from the little green girl's fingertips and lashed about Ursula's left wrist. "Ooh," Blow-Pop Galatea purred as the webbing raveled around the trembling hand, "you're just so dainty, so darling, solid but so subtle, so different…I want it." She reeled in her net of green silk, dragging Ursula's arm toward the bedpost. "Gimme, gimme," she giggled. "Got it!" Blow-Pop Galatea furled into a sphere around Ursula's hand and a lazy river of satiny, molten candy trickled down her forearm. The tickling under Ursula's right arm melted away into a lingering squeeze. She felt a feather light caress in the hollow of her right collar bone. "How do you want it?" Sweet-Tart Galatea asked. Her arms trussed wide, Ursula managed to tip her head. "Huh?" "Do you want it warm…" Sweet-Tart Galatea asked, and suddenly Ursula's arm was bathed in a luxurious heat. Ursula sighed. "…or cold?" Ursula shrieked as the green sleeve iced over. "Warm! Warm, please!" Heated green gel surged down both her arms and melted together into a sultry collar around her neck before inching down her back, rubbing and soothing. "Oh, that's wonderful." The hot gel crawled up over ribs. "Warm? Here too?" Sweet-Tart Galatea asked as the living suit lapped around the curves of Ursula's breasts. Ursula gulped. "I…I don't know." The gel rolled up and over her sensitive skin. "Ooh, yes, warm, definitely, yes." "So this is what a solid girl's nipples feel like," Sweet-Tart Galatea mused. Points of pressure dimpled the gel covering the gentle but wide rise of Ursula's breasts, like pinches from the Invisible Man. "So much bigger and stiffer than Dee's—ha, there's something I'd never thought I'd say." "Oh, ha, ha—Ah! Not that rough, please!" Ursula squeaked, chest heaving. "Shit, sorry." The dance of dimples disappeared. "Hm. Pfft, what am I thinking, I've got an expert. What do you do?" "What do I do?" "When you get past second base for the first time with another woman," Sweet-Tart Galatea said. "You know," said the queen-sized Galatea at the foot of the bed, "we were starting to feel left out of all the fun." Two more miniature green girls, dangling from the bedposts near Ursula's feet, crossed their arms in identical gestures of impatience, using the loops of chain as stirrups to keep themselves steady. "But I really wanna hear this." "Yeah," her tiny twins echoed. "The very first time," Ursula said, trying to concentrate as the clutching gel cupped the small of her back and nestled into the plane of her abdomen below her ribcage, "I'm gentle and slow, because you never know. I kiss her areola into my mouth, my open mouth, and then I—" "Like this?" Sweet-Tart Galatea interrupted. The gel crowning Ursula's breasts plumped and rippled for a long moment, sparking the electric current connecting her chest to her bellybutton that always ran whenever her nipples were over-stimulated. "Yes," she stuttered as the current ebbed, "but not, um, both at once like that." "Well, duh," Sweet-Tart Galatea said. "Shut up," full-sized Galatea said as her flanking twins leaned in and chorused, "Go on." "I kiss her areola into my open mouth," Ursula whispered, "and press her nipple to the roof of my mouth with my tongue two, three times, a baby's suckle really—Oh, God, yes, just like that." The green body glove puddled into Ursula's bellybutton and pressed a finger between the globes of her ass. The electric current became a live wire. "Mm, ngh, not so long, not so long without stopping." The live wire turned white hot. "Please…please…" "That's funny," Sweet-Tart Galatea said, "because I was wondering how it would also feel here…" "Oh, oh God." "…and under there and there…" "W-wait, please…" "…and then everywhere at once…" Ursula arched her back, locked her legs, and whipped her head back and forth just once before collapsing her weight against the elastic green gel supporting her shoulders. "What the Hell was that?" Sweet-Tart Galatea marveled. "Breast orgasm," Ursula breathed. "For me, very sharp, really fast, and fucking hard. I can only do it after lots of over-stimulation, so it actually kind of hurts—" "Do it again!" "Pygmalion!" "Aw, okay." Sweet-Tart Galatea scissored her legs around the bedpost, working the strands of gel stretching from her fingers as if playing a very complicated game of Cat's Cradle. "Your whole body changes after you cum, did you know that? Your skin gets even softer and smoother." She wiggled her fingers and green gel roiled across Ursula's rounded belly in tandem, pinching and pushing in waves. "Fuzzier and sleeker." She sucked a few candied strands into her mouth. "And the taste—" It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 03 Ursula heard a wordless screech of frustrated rage from the foot of the bed. The teeny twin of Galatea dangling from the left bedpost raked her spiky pixie-cut mane—Pixie stix, Ursula decided—until it looked like a nest of pine needles. "Shut up!" she cried. "Shut up, shut up, shut up! I can't take it any more!" Pixie-stix Galatea hooked her feet into a loop of chain and dove headfirst for Ursula's foot. "Lemme at her!" Uncontrollable laughter racked Ursula's body as Pixie-stix Galatea dug doll-sized fingers into the sole of her foot for purchase while growling and gnawing on the goth girl's ticklish toes. The gel slathering her from neck to belly shimmered and fixed into an adamant candy coating, freezing Ursula in mid-convulsion. Molded to every millimeter of her musculature, her candied prison buoyed and supported her body in exquisite, comfortable immobility that somehow magnified every twinge and twitch of her toes a hundredfold. Her laughter cycled up into a wolf-cub howl. Ursula kicked like a chorus girl, her leg pivoting past vertical—"Damn, girl," queen-sized Galatea whistled, "you could kick a Rockette in the freakin' face."—but Pixie-stix Galatea stretched and followed, a rubber snake, her legs glued to the bedpost and her worrying mouth vacuum-sealed against Ursula's foot. Ursula's leg hurtled downward and splattered Pixie-stix Galatea against the mattress, the force of the blow spreading the little green girl's malleable gel-flesh around Ursula's foot like a slipper. "Works for me," Pixie-stix Galatea muttered. She melted into a sheer, glossy stocking, one end knotted about the bedpost and the other swirling up over Ursula's buttery calf. The body glove holding her captive relaxed, allowing Ursula to sag, sway, and catch her breath. "Oh, no," said the fourth miniaturized Galatea, hunkering down into the loops of chain on the bottom-right bedpost. The jelly stocking that was once Pixie-stix Galatea glided up and over Ursula's left knee in smug silence. "There is no fucking way you're grabbing that awesome ass without me." She squeezed herself into a dense ball the color of food additive Green Dye #3. Ursula's sensory-overloaded, oxygen-starved brain danced with green M&Ms and sugary jaw-breakers until the green ball spewed jets of gluey resin, enveloping her right leg in an instant, crushing hug. "Hold it," queen-sized Galatea commanded, and the gel on her legs set firm like a pair of lime green, vinyl thigh-high boots. "Upsy daisy." Ursula was hoisted into the air, the glop binding her limbs taking up slack until she bobbled a foot above the mattress. She rolled her shoulders and scissor-kicked her legs and felt nothing but bouncing gel. Ursula cooed and sighed in her floating prison. The frozen moment stretched long. She blinked and rocked her head up. Galatea stood, arms folded over her breasts, mouth curled into a triumphant grin of sharp sickles. Ursula started, "What—" but Galatea whispered, "Now," and gel swept in from all four corners—across and through her inner thighs, down and over her pubis, up and around her ass—to tickle, burn, freeze, pinch, prod and squeeze Ursula's pussy. "'Venus Butterfly,'" Galatea clucked over Ursula's screams of mindless delight. "Pfft. Amateur." Suspended in the air and coated neck-to-toe, Ursula's sensorial world focused on her ravaged sex. She felt an impossibly large gulf between her legs, swollen and agape. "Fuck me, Galatea," she begged, her hips and abdomen trembling and relaxing in plateaus of increasing tension. "Fuck me, fuck me." Galatea surged to the side of the bed and filled Ursula's mouth with the sweet, tart, citrus honey of her searing kiss. Ursula moaned and bit, drank and swallowed until her lips brimmed over. The fiery nectar trickled down her chin and dripped onto her neck. The gel-suit sucked it down, took up the kiss, and spread its urgent suction over every inch of Ursula's skin. When the kiss reached her clit she came, hard and abrupt, tension releasing in sudden, fierce waves. "Please," Ursula whimpered into Galatea's molten mouth. The void between her legs seemed to yawn empty and wide. "Fuck me. Fill me." Galatea reached down. Her hand merged with the green suit assaulting Ursula's sex. Slicked with Galatea's and Ursula's own honey, Galatea's fingers drove deep into Ursula's pussy, fluxing but firm. Their body-kiss never broke, and Ursula flew. * * * * Ursula luxuriated in her body glove, rocking and recovering. "So that was lesson four," she pondered. "Just lesson four?" Galatea sat at the vanity, staring as Ursula bopped up and down. "Yep." Ursula watched Galatea watch her. "What are you looking at?" "Your ass," Galatea said, unabashed. Ursula chuckled. "It’s my best feature." "It's spectacular," Galatea agreed. "I want to borrow it. Copy it, I mean. Do you mind?" "Friends are supposed to borrow each other clothes, not body parts." "You're doing both right now," Galatea pointed out, then blushed dark. "Thank you for calling me your friend," she murmured and turned away. "It means a lot." "You sound lonely," Ursula said. She waited for Galatea to say something but gave up as the silence lingered and asked, "Where's Dee?" "Out," Galatea grumped, "getting his brains fucked out." "Oh, Galatea," Ursula gasped, "I'm so sorry. Are you sure? That's so unlike Dee." Galatea whipped around, eyes narrowed and sparkling wet. "I'm sure." "That jackass," Ursula hissed. "Yeah." Galatea boiled off the vanity bench and paced the room "Yeah! Imagine! He's out there…" She threw her hands in the air. "…Somewhere, letting me fuck him as much as I want when he knows perfectly well the rest of me ain't getting any!" Ursula rocked in thoughtful silence. "You know," she said after awhile, "if we are going to commiserate about our love lives like proper girlfriends, you are going to have to explain the basic physics of yours." Galatea paused mid-oozing-stride. "I thought you knew all that stuff." "How would I?" "I dunno," Galatea said, pacing again. "Magic? You're the damn witch. How did you know my name?" "I heard Dee shout it once," Ursula admitted. Galatea froze. "Say what?" "'What's my fucking name?'" Ursula mock-screeched, then dropped her voice a few octaves: "'Galatea!'" Galatea glared, gemmed eyes aflame. "I'm not spying on you," Ursula insisted. "You two are the loudest lovers I've ever heard. Everyone on the second floor can hear you." Galatea giggled. "Viggo said he purchased some 'acoustic full-spectrum noise-canceling ear-speakers,' whatever the Hell those are, so he can play his video games in peace." Galatea clapped her hands over her mouth but the giggles shot oscillating spikes through her jellied fingers and down her arms. "He said, 'I heard them break their fucking bed, I swear to God'." Galatea rocked back and fell on her rubbery rump. When she thought Galatea's silent giggle-seizure died down, Ursula asked, "Still with me?" "Yeah," Galatea said, sitting up. "But I hate answering questions; I get way too many from Dee as it is." She stood. "I follow this rule that always shuts him up." "What rule?" "Show," Galatea declared, swaying her Ursula-inspired ass over to the bed, "don't tell." "Good rule," Ursula agreed. She caught a glimpse of Galatea's saber-toothed grin and her eyes bugged in sudden realization. "Oh, shit: Lesson Five." "Mm-hmm," Galatea hummed, nodding and leaning close. "Wait," Ursula said. Galatea sighed theatrically and plopped her chin between Ursula's breasts. "I want the lesson," Ursula insisted, "but there's something I want to do first." Springy daggers of lime-colored hair drummed on Ursula's forehead like impatient fingers. "What's up?" Galatea asked. Ursula pulled at her elastic restraints. "I've been dying to see what I look like in this. In you. Can I walk over to the mirror? Then you can Lesson Five me all night if you want." The bodysuit slackened its hold on the bedposts and Ursula drifted down onto the mattress. "It's a deal," Galatea said, standing up straight, chin stretching as it tore away from the gel coating Ursula's chest, "but I will have to go back sooner rather than later. Dee won't be gone much longer, and there's no way I'm ever going to let myself fuck him again unless I'm there too." Ursula alighted upon the mattress. "I almost understood that." She felt a gentle gush down her arms and legs as the gel glued to the bedposts gave up the ghost and glissaded into the rest of the bodysuit. "Oh, that was yummy." "Likewise, I'm sure," Galatea said, stepping back. Ursula sat up, swung her legs over the edge of the bed—and collapsed, mewling. Galatea loomed over her again. "What happened? Are you okay?" Ursula rolled over onto her stomach. "You mean—ah, God—" Her hips pumped and gyred over the mattress. "You mean you don't know?" "No, you're wearing a discrete me," Galatea explained. Ursula moaned, pushed a gel-gloved hand into her bed-humping crotch, and Galatea added, "Maybe 'discrete' isn't the best word. What's going on?" "Can't talk," Ursula murmured, her hips juddering against her hand, "getting off. God, I'm so wet. The suit, it's so damn slick…" The goth girl waggled her middle finger against her clit in furious little circles. Galatea blushed, feeling more surprised and shocked from being embarrassed than from watching Ursula masturbate. "I'm sorta superlubricative," Galatea mumbled. Ursula shuddered one final time and sunk into the quilt. "If I lie still, I think it'll stop." Curiosity overcame embarrassment. "What'll stop?" Ursula did not even risk turning her head to one side. "The suit," she muttered into the quilt. "It moves when I move, but it keeps moving, slipping and sliding all over me but still hugging me really tight, like a, like a—fuck, it's like nothing else I've ever felt, but it's amazing. Too amazing. Another orgasm like that and I'll go into cardiac arrest…Can you talk to it? Her? You know, the suit?" "Sure." Galatea shrugged. "Just as you can, and a few other ways, like bursts of short-wave electromagnetic radiation or aerosolized nanopackets or whatever, but I'm sure she's listening aurally, too, in case you say the safe word." "Dee would never cheat on you," Ursula said after a long pause. "You are the great love of his life." "Really?" Galatea bubbled. "You've got a vocabulary more technical than his—I haven't understood half of anything you've said—and you've got tits bigger than your head. It's like you were made for him." Galatea's voice iced over. "Is it now?" "Damn," Ursula said, "I'm sorry I insulted you. You really were made for him, weren’t you?" "I wasn't made for him." Galatea wrung her hands into a fused ball. "He made me." Ursula slowly turned her head to watch Galatea pace the room. "Like Pygmalion?" Galatea dropped down onto the vanity bench. It disappeared inside her gelatinous translucent bulk. "No," she said, staring at her dappled reflection in the antique mirror, "nothing like Pygmalion. I looked the myth up on the Internet. In one version, Pygmalion jerks himself off between the statue's legs, did you know that? He'd talk to it and even buy it dinner and presents first, but then he'd dry hump it—when it was just a statue, just a thing. He was so pathetic that Aphrodite brought the statue to life. Love took pity on Pygmalion, you understand?" "Yes," Ursula answered. "The uncensored version of the story always creeped me out a little, honestly." "Well," said Galatea, lost in reflection, "Dee didn't do that. He made me, but I chose him." She shrugged and turned around. "So don't you dare pity me. Got it?" "Got it," Ursula nodded. "Hey, the suit didn't move. I think she's listening. Maybe she's as pissed at me as you are." "I doubt it," Galatea said, then laughed. "I mean, I'm not pissed off at all. Having a girlfriend to talk to is awesome. So get up and shake that thing already." Ursula arose. "Mm, she's still the kinkiest thing I've ever worn, but I can move without cumming now." She took a few tentative steps. "Ooh, damn." She strode around the bed, her hips rolling in a liquid rhythm. "But I can still think of nothing but sex…Galatea, stop staring at my ass." "Stop moving it like that," Galatea said. "Like what?" Galatea detached herself from the vanity bench and oozed aside. "Check us out." Ursula sashayed up to the vanity, ogling her own reflection. "Holy shit." The sepia tones of the mirror could not dull the electric effect the bodysuit had on her figure. Ursula gleamed, a lime green fetish queen, every curve, bump, and line standing out in stark, polished relief. "I look more naked now than I do when I'm really naked." She rocked her ass toward the mirror and whistled. "Not bad." "It's a-frickin'-mazing," Galatea said, moving in toward the mirror to get a better view, "but then I'm an ass-man." "Oh, ha, ha," Ursula said, turning the other cheek and swinging her pigtails. "I love how she doesn't stick to my hair." "I'm serious. I love to play with his dick, but I'm always staring at Dee's ass." "So are half the women at the office," Ursula said dryly, but jolted into the air when Galatea screamed. "I knew it!" Galatea jammed her fists through her temples. "He's such a clueless idiot. He says he hasn't had a date in over a year." "He hasn't," Ursula said, shying away. "That is, he hasn't asked anyone out in over a year." "Dee? Ask a woman out?" Galatea raged. "Oh, no, of course he wouldn't. That's too obvious for him to even consider. He just hangs out waiting for someone to jump him." "That's Dee, alright." Ursula shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "Well," Galatea muttered darkly, "if he keeps that up he's not going to have to wait much longer." "Huh?" Ursula said, shifting her weight back. "Never mind. Why are you…squirming…like that?" "I'm sorry, Galatea, it just feels too damn good." Ursula ran her hands down the inside of her thighs. The bodysuit squeaked. "I don't want to talk about boyfriends right now." Galatea broke into a sweat watching Ursula wriggle. "You're, ah, putting on quite a show there." "I know," Ursula giggled and sauntered around Galatea. "Every move I make pulls the whole suit across my body." She reached high before curling her arms down to hug her shoulders in one lurid, languid motion as she strutted her stuff in a lazy circle. "I just take a breath and the suit kisses me…everywhere." She scraped her lips down her gel-coated forearm. "I wish I could kiss her back." She sucked on her gloved fingers. "I wish I could kiss her back everywhere…Hey, what's happening? Where's she going?" The bodysuit dissolved into a growing green puddle on the floor, leaving Ursula naked and dripping fat droplets of green nectar. "I think you really turned her on," Galatea said. Her hair started to drip like melting icicles. "Hell, I got turned on just by watching you two go at it." "That was 'going at it'? But I was just walking…No, you're right, it was more than that. It really did feel like sex. Constant, nonstop sex." Ursula pouted. "And I could've done that all night. Hell, I'd've locked myself in my apartment and never come out. Did she like it?" The puddle raced away from Ursula in a citrine stream. "I'll remember soon enough," Galatea said as the stream ran up her legs and slurped into her core. Galatea stood still for a moment, then blushed black as night. "Wow." She backpedaled until she crashed like ocean surf against the bedroom wall. "Oh, fuck, wow." "Does that mean she liked it?" "I liked it," Galatea gulped, her voice dreamy and low. "I fuckin' loved it." Ursula grinned and bit her thumb. "What was it like?" "Like been carried, cradled." Galatea's body slipped down the wall into a sticky huddle on the floor. "It was…total surrender." "I don't understand." "Whenever I speak," Galatea said, "whenever I move, when I do anything, it burns some nanomek. It costs me magic," Galatea explained when she saw Ursula's puzzled expression. "I've got a lot of…magic…but I'm spending it all the time, and if I ever really run out, I'm probably gone for good." Ursula thought it over. "How do you recharge, then, by ancestral ceremony? Sacrificial rite? Invocation of the gods? Abjuration of angels?" "Uh, something like that; I go and fuck Dee's brains out." Ursula bit her lip but Galatea could see the laughter in her eyes. "That explains a lot," Ursula said when she caught her breath. "But what does that have to do with me?" "When you were wearing me, and I held still while you moved, I didn't burn any magic." Galatea's eyes slid closed as she clutched at her breast and started to ramble. "But I could still feel you—taste you, touch you, smell you—and you pulled me and pushed me and stretched me and…and fucked me. There's no better word for it. You were touching every part of me. I had no core, no reserve, no backup, no body, just you, you, you, everywhere. I could feel your tits bounce and you pussy drip and your ass rock and your legs swing, and when you put me into your mouth…I came, and came, and came apart." Galatea pulled her gluey eyes open. Ursula stood stark naked before her, face flushed, lips wetted and parted. "Galatea…" "I could use some ice," Galatea said, her tremulous tone on the verge of hysterics. "You want some ice?" She squelched toward the bedroom door, leaving a wake of frosted mint icing. "I think I'll go get some ice." Ursula flopped onto fluffy, green-stained quilt. "It's the story of my life," she groaned. "After years of searching and hoping and waiting, I finally experience my first supernatural encounter. The sex is amazing, but she turns out to be only bi-curious." Galatea turned in the doorway, her frown pensive and sympathetic. "Oh, Ursula, I'm sorry. Are you angry? You don't sound angry." "It's okay," Ursula said, rolling onto her back, her legs dangling so her toes dusted the floor. "I'm used to it by now. Almost. But it would never work out between us anyway." "Why not?" Galatea's brow crinkled in confusion for a second before Ursula kicked a dollop of green icing right between her eyes. "You’re a slob," Ursula gibed, giggling until Galatea licked her eyebrows clean with a forking pair of tongues. "Damn, girl." "I guess you won't be wanting lesson five then," Galatea said, her sibilants hissing long like a cartoon snake's. "No need to be hasty," Ursula said, sitting up. "If the you out there fucking Dee is anything like the you in here fucking me, there's plenty of time." Galatea harrumphed, "I need ice," and marched down the hallway. "Just what are you doing here anyway?" Ursula hollered after her. "I came for a catfight." The whirring clatter of the kitchen icemaker started up. "You know, like on those talk shows: 'Stay away from my man, you slut!' That sorta thing." "What? Why?" "Made perfect sense when I was plastered. Hm, outta ice. Do you have any in the freezer?" Ursula heard the freezer door clunk open. "Holy shit, look at all this crap! What's in all the Tupperware?" Ursula scrunched her nose. "Soup. I'm on a kind of soup kick lately. Last month was vegetable and bisque. I've moved onto fruit." A plastic top popped. "What's the frozen purple stuff?" Galatea asked. "Probably borsht." Ursula rubbed the bridge of her nose with the palm of her hand. "Could be plum coulis." Something thunked onto a countertop. "Any ingredients from SRU in either?" "No." Ursula massaged the sinus pressure points below her eyes for a moment before perking up. "Hey, wait a minute. How did you know the name of my Internet wholesaler?" "Educated guess." Ursula heard something slap and slop. "Guh—Woo!" "What are you doing to my borsht?" It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 03 "Mm. It's the plum. And you don't wanna know." Ursula shook her head, then cradled it in her hands. "Ow. Galatea, I don't know if I'm up for lesson five. I think I'm getting a sinus headache." "It's not a sinus headache," Galatea's voice drifted over the sounds of Tupperware being resealed and restacked in the freezer. "Don't worry, though. It won't last long." Ursula squeezed her temples. "But why did it start?" "Because lesson five is starting." Galatea glided into the room, her green, frosty gel-flesh sporting a purple patina like the rind of an avocado. "And I'm permeating your blood-brain barrier." Ursula gawked. "What? Why?" Galatea affected a professorial cough. "Ahem. Lesson five: the mindfuck." The pain ringing Ursula’s skull vanished into a heavy, beery buzz. She keeled to the left but propped herself up against an iron bedpost. "Oh, shit." Galatea swooped in to stand a few feet from the foot of the bed, her starlit eyes dancing over Ursula’s face. "So that’s what getting drunk is supposed to feel like? I think I’ll stick with the green stuff." The world wobbled worse when she shut her eyes so Ursula kept them peeled. She picked out her panicky reflection looking back at her from the vanity mirror on the other side of Galatea’s translucent, purple-green shoulder. "You can read my mind." Galatea squinted, focusing her gaze somewhere directly behind Ursula’s nose. "No, not really. Just hindbrain echoes. You didn’t swallow enough nanomek, enough magic, I guess. Thirsty?" “No,” Ursula said with a sloppy shrug. Galatea arched an eyebrow. Ursula blinked and swallowed. “Yes,” she choked out, clasping her throat. "Christ, yes." Galatea smirked and pressed forward, pursing her gelid lips against Ursula’s right ear, her breasts brushing Ursula’s naked lap with a deliciously cool, powdery weight. "How thirsty?" she purred, the frozen floe of her breath skating down Ursula’s neck. Ursula’s mouth worked but no words came out. Galatea shushed her, resting her chin or Ursula’s shoulder. Icicled hair skimmed her chest and back. "Don’t worry, little girl," Galatea whispered between quick freezing kisses on the curve of Ursula’s skull behind her ear. “You may still say 'Pygmalion.'" Galatea pried Ursula’s hand off the bedpost, slid it down her chilled gel-flesh and planted it on the slope of her ass. "If you want to." Ursula trembled in silence. "Good," Galatea said. She nudged Ursula prone onto the bed, spanning over the goth girl like a bridge of arctic ice. Ursula's trembling grew violent as she felt the slithery gel grow and expand beneath her hand. "Because you're so thirsty—and hungry now too, aren't you? Ah, but those words are too plain, too weak for what you're feeling now." Ursula shut her tearing eyes. "You feel emptied. Not in the way your pussy gets when you're desperately horny—the swollen, greedy pit between your legs. You feel…hollow with hunger." Galatea stretched higher until a nipple, purple as a plum and pearling with wine-dark nectar, brushed against Ursula's shivering lips just hard enough to splash a tiny drop of nectar between Ursula's parted teeth and onto her tongue. Ursula’s eyes rolled back behind fluttering lids. Mindless and whimpering, she wrapped her arms around Galatea’s suspended back and dragged herself up. She latched onto the engorged nipple above her mouth, burying her head in Galatea's lush breast until jellied flesh clogged her ears and filled the world with her own pounding heartbeat and the taste of— "'Ambrosia,'" Galatea sighed in Ursula's voice as Ursula drank, and drank, and drank. The word thrummed through the green girl's inner gel. "Promise you'll give me the recipe for your plum coulis after dinner, okay?" Between swallows, Ursula went, "Mmf." "No," Galatea chuckled, "for some reason I can't read or direct the part of your mind that cooks. Go figure. Maybe if you drank more, drank faster—Oh, oh my. You didn't need any h-help with that idea…" "Mm," Ursula agreed, blush nectar dribbling down her chin. A few overeager swallows later and she fell back, her lips painted in pink-purple honey but her face scrunched in pain. "Nnf!" "No," Galatea laughed again, "that's not me; I've opened enough ion channels already." She contracted her arcing back a bit to look Ursula in the eye. "It's just an ice cream headache. Relax." She patted Ursula on her gurgling belly. "Just relax and let me in your mind some more. All you need to do is trust me. You can trust me. I'll prove it. You can't speak, can you?" Ursula opened her mouth but nothing came out so she shook her head. "Nnf." "But you can say the safe word. Try it, if you wish. It won't count, this one time." Ursula grinned. "Pygmalion." Galatea returned her sweet smile. "So you trust me." Ursula nodded and closed her eyes. "Good. Headache gone? Good. Now relax." Ursula felt Galatea's heavy tits press against hers and drag slowly up her chest and neck, nipples weeping an icy trail of plum-and-citrus ambrosia across her skin. "And let me in some more." Unwilling to wait, Ursula heaved a breast to her lips and pressed the nipple against the roof of her mouth with her tongue until it expressed a trickle of ambrosia down her throat. "Mm, a little more." Ursula sucked the wide areola into her mouth and the trickle became a steady stream. "A l-little more." Ursula reached up, snaked a hand over Galatea's stomach, and sank a couple of fingers into the green girl's pussy. Galatea's innermost gel was as molten as her ambrosia was frozen. Ursula pulled her fingers free, smeared the searing honey over their tips before running them over the lips of her own sex, never stopping the rhythm of her suckle. "Oh, holy shit, yes," Galatea grunted. She slammed her gooey pelvis down. Ursula ground her sex up against it. The ice of Galatea's ambrosia and the fire of Galatea's pussy collided somewhere deep inside Ursula's body and being, churning until the boundaries between the sensations of cold and heat, the concepts of mind and body, and even the identities of "Ursula" and "Galatea" dissolved and lost all meaning to the goth girl, leaving nothing but the rush-and-gush of multiple orgasm. "Let me in a whole fucking lot more, and I'll mindfuck you straight into the fucking loony bin." * * * * Ursula floated on air. "That was incredible." "Did you cum?" Galatea asked. "Well, duh, yeah," Ursula said, "but…" "But what?" "It's weird," Ursula reflected. "It was either the fastest, hardest orgasm I've ever had in my life, or a bunch of little climaxes that seemed to go on, I don't know, for about a hundred years. I can't tell which…" "That's because it's still happening," Galatea said. Ursula drifted closer. "What?" "Look down, little girl." Ursula swiveled her attention downward. The gauzy white top of her bed canopy hung a few feet below her. Dropping her focus down through the canopy lace, Ursula spied Galatea, the green girl with the proportions of a porn-starlet and the height of a pro-league basketball player, writhing on the mattress beneath. Galatea's translucent curves played optical tricks on the much paler, leaner, and shorter girl thrashing under them, making the girl's limbs appear almost as boneless and bendable as Galatea's own. "Oh my God," Ursula said, "I've been fucked right out of my body." "Sorta," said Galatea, her voice coming from somewhere between Ursula's ears, or where Ursula's ears would have been if her point of view still coincided with her eyes. "You've entered an ecstatic trance. You're much stronger than you give yourself credit for. There's some serious shamanic mojo in here." "Where? Where are you?" "Inside you." "Where inside me?" "Everywhere." On the bed, Ursula's arms clasped Galatea's back tight enough to break the surface tension and sink into the glue of the green girl's inner gel. "Ooh," Galatea's disembodied voice murmured, "I'm so glad I taught you lesson two." Galatea's body on the bed threw back its head and howled. "I love the feel of something solid inside me." Ursula hovered higher. "If we're down there," she said, "why are we also up here?" "You and I need to have a little talk." "Can't you just read my mind?" "That's what I'm doing now," Galatea explained. "But you're too powerful for me to just take what I want." Ursula followed her lead. "Well, what do you want to talk about?" "Your soap, for a start. What does it do?" "By itself, nothing," Ursula confessed. "But I always keep a little of the base left over from each batch I make, and I bathe with it, too, so I've got a sympathetic link to whoever uses it in case I need one. The law of contagion, you see, is a keystone force in sympathetic magic and I don't need to explain how magic works to a mind-reading, six foot tall girl made of green goo, do I?" "Not really," Galatea admitted, "although I bet there's a lot you can teach me. I don't know how I know the things I know, but I must at least half-remember the things I don't know, because I know enough to know I don't know them, you know?" "No." "Oh. Besides, I'm six-foot-six, usually, thank you very much. Dee likes to look up into my eyes. Usually. Anyway," Galatea continued, "who've you given the soap to?" "Let's see," Ursula said, ticking off the list with imaginary fingers, "Granddad, my mom and dad, my big brother—to keep tabs on them. Diane and Joy from work—Oh, and that girl who works at the Starbucks because she's got a great…uh, personality. And I tried to give some to Bee, because he worries me." "Bee?" Ursula nodded, or at least the focus of her vision bobbed up and down. "Your downstairs neighbor. Quiet guy, very intense. He wouldn't take any soap. Wow," Ursula added, distracted, "look at us down there. We're still cumming." "Why did you offer Bee soap?" "Like I said, I worry about him. Hasn't he complained about the racket you and Dee make yet? If I were your downstairs neighbor, I'd be calling the cops so I could get some sleep." "Is that why you gave some to Dee?" Galatea asked, unfazed. "Because he worried you?" "No," Ursula said. "Because Dee terrified me." "Good," Galatea said. "But did you know why?" "No," Ursula said again. "He's gabby, friendly, and utterly clueless. Most straight women I know think he's charming and disarming, but after a few months of waiting for him to make a move, they add 'frustrating' or 'infuriating' to the list." "That's not terrifying," Galatea pointed out. "That's just geeky." "True. On the night he set up my computer, I saw him disappear into his work. Have you ever seen Dee get worked up about something? Well, as he was assembling all the boards and wires and junk, he got this, this look, and at first I thought he was acting very quiet and intense—very Bee-like, actually—but then I noticed he wasn't the one getting quiet and intense, not really. It was the air around him, the room, and even the noise from outside. Hell, it was me. I was getting quiet and intense, just watching him make some dumb machine. If he were a girl I would've whacked off thinking about it when he left. No wonder some women at his office follow him around with their tongues hanging out. Galatea, you've never let me talk this long without making a joke or making me cum or something." "Oh, I'm taking it out on your body, believe me," Galatea hissed, "It just had its fourth consecutive breast orgasm. But keep talking or I'll make you cum so hard you won't be able to sit in a chair for months." "If more people released their aggression by making other people cum," Ursula observed, "I think the world would be a much better place. Have you ever mindfucked Dee?" "Nope," Galatea snapped. "Can't." "Why not?" "His nanomek won't let me." "You mean his magic won't let you," Ursula translated. "Yeah," Galatea said, uncertain. "I guess I do." "Then, if you ever see Dee work, you'll know what I mean. But that wasn't what scared me. When he was finished, he looked up, looked me straight in the eye and said, 'It is done.' And that's what terrified me. His voice…'It is done'…it was like a pronouncement from God. God, that sounds stupid." "Not really," Galatea said, her disembodied voice managing to sound meek. "Not to me, anyway." "I guess it wouldn't. So Dee declares, 'It is done,' and stalks out of the room. Literally stalks, a panther moving to its next kill—maybe to repair a hard drive or something. Whatever he does when he gets worked up." "He writes," Galatea said, meeker still. "Dee writes? He never mentions it when I talk about my poetry. " Galatea's voice was so meek it could inherit the Earth. "He writes porn. On the Internet." "Oh, Jesus, never mind. I don't want to know. Just let me finish. I never really planned on using the computer. I'd always hated the things. But Dee's performance was so melodramatic that not trying out the computer he made for me at least once would've been like shooting a puppy. So I sat down, started messing around on the Internet, and—bam!—I found SRU in under a minute. With the stuff from SRU, I was finally real witch. 'It is done,' he said, and it was. He did it. Dee made me a witch…and now he's made you, so I was right to be terrified, wasn't I?" "Yes," Galatea said, sounding stronger, "but Dee didn't make you a witch, at least not in the same sense he made me. And he didn't make me, not exactly. And that's what we need to talk about. Dee and me." "What about Dee and you?" "Sooner or later we're going to get in trouble, serious trouble, and we're going to need your help." * * * * Galatea glared at Dee's blender and wondered how it would feel to be pureed. "Prob'ly like getting blown apart by house music." She glanced at the kitchenette microwave's digital readout. 9:03 PM. "God dammit," she said, hefting a half-filled jug of Nyquil onto the countertop. "This is the last of the green stuff." The front door of Dee's apartment trembled as sheets of green icing sleeted through the cracks on all four sides of the doorframe. Galatea poked her head around the kitchenette's doorway, squinting. "Izzat me?" The growing ziggurat of icing darkening the front door filled out fuller than Jane Mansfield. "That's me," Galatea decided, and wobbled into the living room. "About damn time too. You were gone two freakin' hours. I thought we just wanted to scare Ursula. What were you doing all this time?" "I'm sick and tired of eating pussy," the returning Galatea responded. "How's 'bout we flip a coin, and the loser has to morph into Dee and do whatever the winner wants?'" * * * * Last time I saw you We had just split in two. You were looking at me, I was looking at you. You had a way so familiar, But I could not recognize, 'Cause you had blood on your face; I had blood in my eyes. But I could swear by your expression That the pain down in your soul Was the same as the one down in mine. —Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Mitchell & Trask), Origin of Love It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 04 Act Three: There's Always Room Chapter Four: Ask Me to Enter "…God damn, woman," Yves was crying out, "how do you always do that?" The morning sun threw strange shadows in the doorway. Ursula shrugged, opened the door wide and stepped aside. "Come into my parlor." "Very funny," Yves grumbled, crossing the threshold and barging into Ursula's living room. "Oh, wait," he said, glancing at the antique French settee and matching oaken end tables, "this really is a parlor." He tapped a thoughtful rhythm on a lace-covered tabletop. "Doilies, even." Ursula stood in front of a glass display case full of porcelain dolls. "I've never invited you to tea?" Yves eyes watered from the patchouli incense and a lemony, astringent smell lingering in the air. "You have," he said, blinking. "I've always had to RSVP in the negative for…varying reasons." Ursula waved a hand at the homey clutter of her living room. "You think all of this is affectation." Yves pursed his lip and whistled through his teeth a bit. He espied a purple kitchen glove poking out of Ursula's sweatpants pocket. "You don't have a cat," he eventually said. He folded his arms, a gesture both defiant and protective. "Rooms like this are supposed to have cats in them." Ursula smirked. "Black cats?" "Maine coon cats," Yves countered. "One named Alabaster and the other Fusspot. This isn't a witch's parlor. It's my grandmother's." Ursula laughed hard enough to snort through her nose. The tension in Yves' shoulders melted and he folded himself onto the settee. "Sorry," he sighed, "it's been a long night." "Fuck the tea," Ursula said, her smile warm, "what about a hot toddy?" "Only if it's a coffee toddy and not warm milk. I'd pass out." "I'll grind some beans," Ursula said. Her bunny slippers scuffed the floor as she moved into the kitchenette. "Any roast preference?" "Ursula, the only coffee I have in my apartment is made from instant crystals." "That would be a 'no,' yes?" "Yes," Yves called, peering into the kitchenette before settling into the settee, one arm draped over his forehead. The coffee grinder grumbled and an undercurrent of freshly ground coffee added to the complex, reeking bouquet in the air. "Quit trying to smother it," Yves said. "I know already." Ursula stopped puttering in the kitchen. "Know what?" "You had sex with Galatea." Ursula stumbled out of the kitchen, tripping over bunny-ears. "How did you—" Yves sat up. "You've taken the day off…to clean. You're taking excuses to use every classic masking scent in the book. And your bed linens are hung out to dry in your kitchen. Either Galatea's gotten busy in your bed or you broke your hookah and got bongwater everywhere." "What are you," Ursula said, "Sherlock Holmes?" "No. Holmes was bi." Ursula stared for a second before scuttling back into the kitchenette. "I'm going to use more brandy." "Good idea." * * * The solitary nanogasm burst against Dee's inner thigh and vanished faster than a top quark in a particle accelerator, a split-second lightning kiss barely strong enough to trigger a single nerve ending in Dee's skin. The surface of the green serum filling the tub remained placid and dead. Dee closed his eyes, trying to remember the first time Galatea told him about nanogasm. ["…One sperm makes one nanomek replication…"] "Please, Galatea." Dee's voice rang, amplified by the porcelain tub. "Come back to me if you can." The thin lime liquid stuck to his skin and congealed into scum as it cooled. Caught in reverie, listening to Galatea's technobabble pillow-talk in his head, Dee felt no urge to wipe it away. ["…One replication gives me one nanogasm and produces two more nanomek—at least two, more if you really get 'em turned on…"] A cluster of nanogasms trilled against his thigh in a sudden, brief salvo before the brackish bathwater fell inert again. Dee smiled, his eyes still shut. "I bet you thought I was going to say, 'but only if you want to.' What did you call me? 'Sensitive and enlightened and stuff.' Well, add 'selfish' to that list. I don't want you back only if you want to come back. I just want you, period." ["…which combined with three more sperm gives me three more nanogasms and produces six more nanomek, which gives me nine more nanogasms and, well…"] The next flurry of nanogasms arrived quicker and stronger than the last, zipping over Dee's skin like dozens of marching, electric ants. The ripple-tickle-tingle abated, petering out like the last few superheated kernels of popping corn, before surging in a cascade of strengthening waves thrilling Dee down to the bone. His eyes flew open and he cried out in uncontrollable laughter. "Galatea!" ["…after a few minutes of that I'll be back in shape…"] The green syrup between his legs fizzed and radiated warmth in a room-temperature-but-rising boil. "I love you, Galatea! I—Whoa." ["…and hot and horny as Hell. Literally…"] Thousands of nanogasms ran rampant into Dee's crotch. * * * "And after that," Ursula said, curled up in the wicker rocking chair across the parlor from the settee, her hands wrapped around an oversized, steaming mug of coffee hot toddy, "we talked." Yves lounged on the settee. "Galatea sounds like the sort of person who hates to chat unless it's really, really important." His empty mug bounced on his stomach when he spoke. "So what did you two talk about?" "Oh, this and that." Ursula slurped from the mug. "You know, girl talk." "Uh-huh." Yves folded his arms behind his head. The mug on his belly wobbled. "Sure. Girl talk. So Galatea didn't tell you anything more about meliae?" Ursula perked up. "About what?" "Dee asked me to figure out what's going on, and I'd already gotten a few ideas on my own, but if I just had a little more information…" "Wait," Ursula said, setting her half-full mug on the silver tea service. "What's this about meliae?" Yves rolled onto his side to look at her, catching his mug as it fell and balancing it on his hip. "You don't know about meliae?" Ursula sat back. "Sure I do. Nymphs of the ash tree, and pollen dust, I believe. Very sacred tree, the ash. Fermented ash sap is the most potent—" "Dee said Galatea is a meliae," Yves interrupted, frowning. "He called her a 'honey nymph'." "Honey nymph? Really?" Ursula sat back up. "Interesting. A few texts mention 'honey nymph' meliae as the nursemaids of Zeus. I wonder…Yves, what's wrong? You've gone all white." Yves' coffee mug toppled and smashed against the hardwood floor. Ursula stood up. "Yves, what is it? What are you thinking?" ["…My girlfriend thinks I'm a god…"] "I've just figured out what's going on," Yves said, his voice distant. Ursula stared at the broken bits of mug. "Well, that's a good thing, isn't it?" She shifted her weight as if resisting the urge to scratch an annoying itch, her eyes never leaving the shattered pottery. "I'll just go get the dustpan, shall I?" "I've just figured out what's going on," Yves repeated, his attention focused far away. ["…If Galatea thinks you’re a god, she makes you a god…"] "And I don't think I can fucking stand it," he groaned, "at least not sober." Ursula bustled back into the parlor armed with a horsehair bristle dust mop and bronze dustpan. "Do you have any more mugs? I'd like more brandy. Neat, if you please." Ursula bent over and swept. "Er, that's not what I meant," Yves stage-whispered. "No shit, Sherlock," Ursula stage-whispered back, her ass bobbing as she chased after the last pottery fragments as diligently as an archeology intern on a dig. Yves eyes followed the orbit of Ursula's derriere through the air. "Damn," he whistled, "has anyone ever told you you've got an incredible—" "Pygmalion!" Ursula growled. "What?" "That means shut up! The next person who mentions my ass is going to wear it for a hat, I swear." * * * Dee's fingers crunched through the lip of the bathtub, the porcelain providing no more resistance than cracked eggshell. Green syrup bulged through the fracture but held just enough tension on its surface to keep from spilling over. The electrifying gel pulsed and churned in his crotch, nanogasms redoubling. Dee trembled, groaned, and grew rock hard. "God, I wish I could see you, Galatea." A dome of foam rose from the surface of the fizzing gel. Dee could see outlines take shape before the crackling bubbles of foam boiled them away. "No," he insisted, "don't. Don't burn away your nanomek for me like that. You must have so little left." The dome dissipated. The ambient temperature in the tub continued to rise, washing Dee head-to-toe in waves of increasing warmth. "It's like you once said. I want to see you, but I don't need to. I know you're there now. I should never have doubted it." The jade gel started to steam. You've got a plan, remember, Dee reminded himself. Stick to it, or she won't come back. "I want to be here for you, Galatea. And besides…" Fragments of porcelain fell to the floor as his right hand slipped into the viscous substance lapping against his ribs. "I've never masturbated for you before." His grin was slick and sly. "Time for you to learn the Dee Technique." The mirror above the bathroom sink fogged over in the suddenly sauna-hot air. Dee pushed his hand through the pliant gelatin trembling around his cock. "It's an underhanded technique." He laughed. "I mean an underhand, not underhanded. Palm underneath, thumb on top, like this. Start with the shaft. Don't work the head until it's primed—Christ, I suck at this dirty talk stuff." His shoulder rolled in a rugged rhythm as his hand ranged over his cock. "And you're so fucking good at it, Galatea. Even listening to someone talk dirty in a porn flick used to embarrass me and turn me off. But you, Galatea…The way your eyes glint and flick to the left whenever you say 'fuck' or how you get a little cross-eyed whenever you talk about my dick." His shoulder started to jerk. "You think my neck is hot, you think I'm a breast man, but it's your eyes, Galatea." Dee's voice dropped to a trailing whisper. "Your eyes." Dee kicked as he came, shearing off the tub's stainless steel faucet and shooting it across the room with his heel. Dee arched and flexed, gasping. "Holy shit. I talked. I dirty-talked. I can't believe that I…" A slurping suction threatened to raise a hickey over his entire body as the foam rolled back and compressed at his feet, giving Dee the fleeting impression of a maddened mare rearing for a berserk charge. Galatea erupted, fully formed and finely figured, from the sea green froth gathered at the end of the tub. Her jelled flesh shimmered and shone, pure as green amethyst. She clambered over him, her hair twisting and braiding in nesting knots, her eyes unfocused and incandescent with lust. Galatea gushed, "Neither can I now shut the fuck up," and soul-kissed him hard enough to implode a bowling ball. Dee threw his arms around her, hooked his right leg over the perfect arc of her ass, and hauled her down over him. Her kiss became a smothering, traveling smooch as their bodies met. Dee swiveled his hips and drove his cock deep into her sex. Galatea threw her head back in a delirious scream that rattled Dee's teeth and shattered the glass mirror above the sink. * * * Yves lurched out of the closet, natural-light grow lamp in hand, knocking over a small hydroponic tank of marijuana plants in the process. "What the fuck was that?" Ursula scuffed into the bedroom, belting down brandy from a narrow, crystal glass. "That's just Galatea getting her magic back. Now you know what my life's been like these past few days—Oh, fuck, my pot!" Yves, his eyes still wide in alarm, demanded, "You want me to what?" Ursula wound her arm back to hurl the empty glass at him but just shook her head and rocked back on the balls of her bunny-slippered feet. "I want you to clean that shit up, asshole! That was going to be two months' rent!" * * * Dee got a brief glimpse of Galatea's cherubic, girlish face—Why does she look so young?—before her medusa's hair and eyes of burnished gemstone filled the world and her tart, honeyed tongue sought his again. He nuzzled and bit. She whickered into his mouth and rode him ragged. A thick cushion of gel buoyed Dee up to the middle of the tub. Dee shut his eyes tight and they fucked in freefall. The only resistance and weight was the slipping friction of flesh against flesh. The only sensation was Galatea's pussy sliding over his dick and the fervid, breathless French kiss that went on and on until the sweet sting of a second orgasm crashed through Dee and his cum poured into Galatea's core. Her lips, still pressed over Dee's mouth, parted in a frenzied smile and three bubbling giggles escaped them: "Ah-hah, ah-hum, hm-mm." She tipped her head and kissed Dee slantwise. He heard a metallic sigh. The weight atop him shifted in a single, pulsing wave and the folds of Galatea's sex flowered around his mouth as her thighs sunk around his head. He felt her sultry breath bathe his crotch. With a guttural, mewling "Mrriiine," Galatea wrapped her pillow-soft hand around Dee's balls and sword-swallowed his prick up to the hilt. Her hips ground her pussy into his face and Galatea sixty-nined Dee toward a cataclysmic third orgasm. Galatea pulled off his cock just long enough to whine, "Cum for me, Dee," before clamping down again. Dee's eyes rolled over white as he felt the pressure build again. Still bobbing on a weightless, plush cushion, he reached out for purchase against the tub but his hands only met molten gel. Citrus-perfumed breath tickled the hair curling around his ear and another voice whimpered, "Cum for us, Dee." Dee unglued his eyes and turned his head. Above him, Galatea keened, vibrating the cock buried in her throat, and shimmied to keep his lips and chin muzzled in her sex. Below him, the lathering gel in the tub had welled up and overflowed the cracked porcelain rim, a soft and silent river of orchids, bearing Dee aloft and slowly spreading its kelly-colored cream across the tiled wall and linoleum floor. Galatea's keening dropped down into an impatient, thrumming growl and she pushed both her upper and nether lips hard against his flesh. The gel beneath him sighed, shifted and took form. The swell of a heavy bosom pressed into his shoulders and neck. An hourglass waist arched into the small of his back. A pair of perfect jade legs rose and crossed in the air above his thighs, sandwiching his hips to Galatea's head. Delicate hands reached up from below his ears, hefted Galatea's squirming rump a fraction higher, and slid their fingers deep into her pussy. Above him, Galatea mewled and doubled her expert efforts on his dick, head bobbing merrily. Lush lips kissed Dee's ear and Galatea's green twin begged, "Cum for us, Dee." Dee's third orgasm crested at last. He bowed upward as Galatea drank down another flood of his cum, chuckling and suckling, her rhythm unbroken. The shock of afterglow wracked him for only a second or two before the I-can-do-this-all-night sensation of primed glans returned. Dee pumped against Galatea's lips. Above him, Galatea mewled, shivered, and melted. Searing honey drizzled down from her pussy and spattered his cheek. "Nay," said the green twin cradling him from below, affecting a brogue. "Nay, boy; don' move. You feel so good we'll burn up and melt away if ye do." Dee almost laughed at the strange, sudden accent, but the sight of the green twin prying and plunging her fingers into Galatea's sopping, steamy sex hovering just a few inches above his eyes sealed his throat with something a little like awe but a lot more like Aw, fuck, yeah. "Don' move, boy," repeated the green twin below him, her fingers working. "Just cum. Come again!" The more she whispered, the more the impish burr in her voice rang true, less Hollywood and more archaic highland. "Sweet love doth now invite thy graces that refrain to do me…" She thrust her fingers knuckle-deep and above him Galatea screamed, bucked and sucked harder than ever. "Due delight," the green twin whispered, her lips tracing a wicked grin against the back of Dee's neck. This isn't just a sixty-nine, Dee realized. His fourth orgasm edged nearer. I'm in the middle digit of an honest-to-God six hundred nineteen. "To see," the green twin below him said, and spread the sex quivering above him wide. "To hear." She rocked her thumb on the ridge of the clitoral hood poised to ride Dee's nose and Galatea wailed in mindless delight around his cock. "To touch." The green twin below arched her back, forcing Dee's neck to tip up and his dimpled chin to push between the folds of gel-flesh above him. Galatea above wept and rode his chin. "To kiss." The green twin below pulled down and back just a bit and Galatea's sex closed over Dee's mouth. Mind reeling, Dee kissed as deep as he could. The green twin below let go of Galatea's ass above him. The full weight of Galatea settled over his jaw and she rode his face without mercy. "To die," the green twin below him cooed. Her hands snaked down Dee's sides and slithered into his crotch. Galatea's hands were already there, pumping madly at his shaft whenever she rose up to loll her tongue against the head of his dick. The green twin left his overworked shaft alone, one hand cupping and squeezing his balls while the other slipped below them to do some dirty work. "To die with thee again," the green twin purred as Dee's fourth orgasm rocketed down Galatea's throat, "in sweetest sympathy." * * * Yves wrung the sodden mop into the kitchen sink. He paused, blinking, before putting his ear to the gurgling drain. "Ursula?" His voice rang loud in the steel sink. "Either Galatea's gotten into the plumbing or your garbage disposal is reciting John Donne love poetry." Ursula scooted into the kitchenette. "I get echoes and noises in the kitchen from downstairs all the time. Kay sings in the shower. Never heard anything from Bee's bathroom before, though. Let me listen." Yves pulled back and Ursula leaned in. "Something about 'sweet sympathy.' You sure it's Donne?" "Yeah, I sang it one year for All State Choir. Yes, I was a closeted choir fag, feel free to yuck it up." Ursula shrugged. "I was an orchestra dyke myself." Yves nodded. "Cello." Ursula squinted at him. "How did you guess?" "It's mournful and vibrates between your thighs harder than a washing machine." "Oh, piss off," Ursula dismissed him with a wave, grabbed the mop and wrung it hard. Water expressed into the sink. "You don't know Galatea. She's not the type to recite poetry; she screams 'fuck!' a lot, instead. Maybe something's up." * * * The afterglow of orgasm lasted a little longer the fourth time in rapid succession. Dee rocked in the body-hugging embrace of the green twin below him while Galatea above giggled and butterfly-kissed his cock back to life. The vibrantly green, gelled cream continued to gush over the lip of the tub, covering the bathroom floor in a rippling, jellied shag carpet and creeping halfway up the tiled wall next to the tub. "Do you have enough nanomek now?" Dee asked "Ou'pote!" cried Galatea above him, her accent unrecognizable to Dee. She wrapped her arms around Dee's hips in a childlike, possessive gesture, sandwiching his dick between her breasts in the process. "Never," the green twin below agreed. "Ou'pote," Galatea above sighed, nodding, chest heaving against Dee's cock. Dee groaned and Galatea hugged her arms to her breasts, squeezed them in a pulsing rhythm, and smirked a smug, "Eureka," as Dee's dick engorged and twitched. "I mean." Dee's throat closed for a long moment when his glans emerged from Galatea's cloying cleavage and she popped it in her mouth. "I mean may I move now?" It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 04 The green twin below him treated Dee to an undulating massage by shrugging her shoulders. "Aye, ye may." She pressed her hands to his ribs. "That is, if ye can." Dee fluttered his legs and rolled his arms. The green twin below him gasped "Oh, ye Gods," and Galatea above cried, "Ô sunte'leia," as a roaring cascade of green foam washed them together into a hunkered heap in the foot of the tub, leaving Dee standing tall beneath the showerhead. Melted gel glistened on his skin like oil, making every muscle stand out in gleaming relief. The wall of foam crashed down over the two huddled girls, rolled off their shoulders and dripped through their hair. One green girl, her chin resting in her open hands and daggers of gelled hair drooping over her forehead, gaped up at him and breathed, "Ecce vir." The other green girl untangled herself, trying to smear away the honey gumming her eyelids. Her gaze locked squarely on Dee's crotch, her wide grin slick and shark-toothed. "Ecce virga," she crowed, elbowing her twin in the ribs. * * * Ursula frowned into the drain of her kitchen sink. "She's switched from Greek to Latin now. 'Ecce vir'. That's like ecce homo, 'behold man,' except—" "Considering the context," Yves muttered, "I think she just said, 'Check out the stud.' And I can guess what a virga is." Ursula grinned. "I'm less worried now." "Why?" "That's definitely our girl," Ursula explained, shaking her head. "Even when speaking in tongues, she's still a bimbo." * * * Dee settled into a feral crouch. Vivid green ooze swirled around his haunches and overflowed the tub to join the silent tide insinuating itself over every surface of in the bathroom, swallowing the sink and toilet and stealing up the far wall. "Something's gone wrong." The two green girls clutched at each other as he drew close, trembling from the stress of his regard. "Something with your re-assimilation," Dee said, the kinky curls of his chestnut hair falling in lustrous ringlets over his eyes. "Or with your re-remembering, maybe, with so little nanomek to start with, maybe even just one." "Ille mi par esse deo uidetur," one green girl babbled to the other, hiding her face in her twin's hair. Dee palmed the shy green girl's cheek. "Could you come back from just one nanomek, Galatea, and still be you?" He tipped her face toward his. "The Galatea I know hasn't looked this young since I…well, since I hurt her pretty bad." The shy girl's bottom lip quivered and her eyes brimmed. Dee brushed a fat tear away with his thumb. "And she never spoke Latin. That is Latin, right?" The shy girl turned to her twin. "Denuone Latine loquebar?" "Me fallit," her twin shrugged. They turned their open, wondering faces to Dee. Their brows crinkled in confusion, mirror perfect replicas of one another, and Dee's heart leapt into his throat. * * * One story above, Ursula cupped her ear to the drain. Her head all but vanished into the deep sink, giving Yves the peculiar impression that the kitchen counter had sprouted massive, Rapunzel-length pigtails. "What's she saying now?" he asked, staring. "'He seems to me to be equal to a god,'" a hollow voice echoed from the sink. "That sounds familiar, like she's reciting again." Yves backed away, arms raised. "Jesus, we shouldn't be listening to this…should we?" "'I dunno.'" Yves jostled against a copper colander dangling from a hook. "Don't you think this sort of thing should be private?" "No," said the sink. "I mean that's what Galatea said. 'Was I speaking Latin again? I dunno.' Dee's right; something's wrong." * * * Dee sat up, drew the shy Galatea into his arms and kissed her hard. The exaggerated, cartoony wrinkles of perplexity on her forehead smoothed, her eyes glazed and heavy-lidded, one green hand slipping around to fondle the back of Dee's neck. She squeaked in happy surprise when he reached down and scooped her into his angled lap, planting her legs square around his, squeezing her close to his cock. "I know there's something wrong," Dee said as he broke the kiss, "but it doesn't matter." He shifted his legs back and forth a bit and the tip of his cock pressed against the outer folds of her sex. He arched an eyebrow. "After all, it's nothing a little more nanomek couldn't fix, isn't it?" She matched his grin. "Non multa." She hitched her hip and gasped as she slid over him. "Sed multum." Dee crossed his arms behind shy Galatea's back and rocked forward to kneel on one knee. She cried out and slumped over him, gabbling and riding blind, only to yowl again as he stood up straight, cradled her against him, and bore into her. "O! Aio!" She locked her ankles in the small of his back and buried her head in the crook of his neck. "Plus!" Her green twin ogled them, mesmerized and slacked-jawed. She paddled forward, her legs little more than curtaining ripples in the green tide still pouring out and about the tub. The rutting lovers took no notice as she swam through Dee's wide-spread legs. She took a long moment between his legs to gape upward and treat herself to an extreme close-up. "By the Gods…this lad will last long." She shook the dreamy expression of her face and snuck past Dee to the tub's water taps. She glanced sidelong behind her. Shy Galatea, bouncing madly with Dee's every thrust, managed to raise her head and stammer, "Pluvia scaenae—Puh-pluvia suh—scaenae," at her twin. Her twin gave her a cagey grin. "Shower scene," she sang, spinning the taps and sending stuttering jets of water splashing down from the showerhead. "Finally: shower scene!" The freezing water shocked Dee's flesh. He yelped. His body seized up. He staggered in a sudden wash of fever. "What's happening?" Whorls of vapor rose off shy Galatea as she entwined about him. "Pluvia scaenae!" She rode him, savage and exultant, even as steam hissed from her mouth. "Aquae vitae!" Dee hooked one arm around her waist, raising the other into the freezing spray. "Holy shit." Droplets sizzled against his skin when they struck, boiling away faster than fat on a griddle. No longer shy, Galatea glared, bit her lip, and bounced against him with the eager impatience of a Hell's Angel kick-starting a stubborn motorcycle, looking younger than ever. Dee twisted about, his bewilderment overcoming the desire to fuck the frown of her face. "When did the shower curtain melt? How hot are we?" "With you," the green twin behind him blew superheated steam into his ear. "'Tis a pleasure to burn." The young Galatea astride Dee's cock grabbed a fistful of his hair and arched impossibly back, breasts and wild mane bobbling. She kicked a leg sideways to the slime-covered wall running the length of the shower stall and balanced herself with her other arm. She breathed deep. An inrush of boiling vapor poured down her throat and Galatea grew. Dee felt new pressure and weight push against his hip and spread around his waist in a constricting ring. Galatea's legs bore down upon him, building in strength and taking up new bulk. She locked her knees around his ass, hooked her heels against his shins, breathed deeper. Galatea's milky-green flesh turned opaque as it literally built up steam. The spikes of her hair grew thick and glossy, a forest of jelly dreadlocks. The hand maintaining her Kama Sutra balancing act now pressed against the ceiling. Her shimmering hair brushed against the wall behind her. Her breasts tipped back against her chin. A canary-eating grin vanished from sight behind her expansive cleavage. She giggled and the resulting body-quake took Dee's breath away. Galatea had gone from slender nymphet to stacked femme fatale in less time than it took Dee to think, Wow. She pushed off the wall, slid her hands across his back, and attacked his face with burning kisses. He stumped a step or two to keep his footing and anchored her in place on his pelvis by taking up handfuls of her meaty rump. Galatea squealed between kisses. She slapped her free hand over Dee's own and squeezed, encouraging his fingers to sink hard into her flesh. She purred and pitched her hips in tight, jolting circles. Dee tried to match her thrust for thrust but she just picked up the pace, faster and faster, until Dee could not keep up with the punishing rhythm while remaining upright. He squeezed her ass and hung on for dear life, the delicious friction focused on his dick pushing him toward yet another orgasm. The green twin hugged him hard from behind. "Surely a lad like you can cum five times in a row." Her voice had dropped a full octave since last she spoke, her brogue more smoky and sexy than ever. She leaned in closer and Dee stood sandwiched between febrile green flesh. Galatea broke the sucking assault on his face and tipped her head to the side. The two Galateas kissed, opened mouthed and ungentle, a hairsbreadth away from Dee's ear. The satiny pumping of his prick never let up. "Six times?" wondered the green twin. Dee got another earful of sloppy lips smacking as the two green girls swapped spit again. "Seven?" And again. "Eight?" And again. "Eighteen?" Dee came hard enough to knock himself off his feet. The green twin let Dee topple back a few inches before propping him up by the armpits. The Galatea straddling Dee swung her legs out and around the legs of the green girl behind him. Their legs merged and surged until they stood like twins joined at the hip and thighs with Dee stuck in the middle, swaddling him in gel from his feet to his belly. The Galatea straddling him ground against his cock, the gel flesh of the green twin behind him jerked and swirled in syncopation. The two green girls gulped and gasped in tandem. In stereo, Galatea pled, "Eighty?" Dee stretched his arms high behind his head. The green girls sighed and squished closer still. "Oh," the twin behind him sighed, "how do ye move as…why does thy every move make me…" Dee twined his fingers through her jellified locks of hair and pulled her lips to his. She peeled away from him, uttering a shuddery, "Ye Gods." Her gel flesh withdrew and decoupled from Galatea's, leaving raw, runny green honey where they had fused. Dee bent over backward and dragged her down for another soul kiss. She muttered muffled nonsense into his mouth, pawing against his shoulders. Galatea nibbled at his neck, then his chest, nipping her way downward, only to discover his dick was already ramrod stiff again. "Vah!" She stared, cross-eyed, as it bobbed before her. She shrugged and sucked it down with a throaty, hungry hum. The green twin behind him broke away. "Nay, I can't…" She ran shaking fingers over his back. "I…I can't…" Dee squeezed the back of her neck and their eyes locked. "Don't worry." He smiled. "I can." The green twin cradled his head between her breasts and lay back, pressing down on his chest to recline him atop her. Galatea followed them down, feasting on his cock. The green twin's eyes closed in alien ecstasy, her face upraised beneath the showerhead. The cascade of water boiled away, flashing into vapor from contact with the superheated air around her. The plastic showerhead cracked into molten shrapnel, leaving a rusty spigot spouting steam. The ooze flowing from the bathtub completed its circuit of every bathroom surface and all four walls. It raced across the ceiling in a constricting iris. The domed, florescent light at the center of the ceiling crackled and died under the smothering slime and the bathroom became a living cave. Motes of gold light scintillated just beneath the citrine surface of the surrounding gel. Dee chuckled. "We've really got the nanomek turned on, haven't we?" Galatea popped his cock out from her throat, a champagne bottle expelling a thick, coarse cork. She panted in maddened need, every inch of her gel flesh dripping and nectarous. She crawled over him, angling her sopping pussy over his dick. She poised above him, eyes roving and confused. Her fevered voice stumbled as she spoke: Lepton d'autika chro pur upadedromeken, Oppatessi d'oud'en oremm', epirrhombeisi d'akouai kad de m'idros kakcheëtai, Tromos de paisan agrei, Chlorotera de poias emmi, Tethnaken d'oiligo 'pideues phainom'em…auta… Dee waited for her glossolalia to fade before reaching out for her hips. "I love you." For once, the words came easy. Perfect timing, as usual, genius, he thought. "I'm ready." She's worth it. He lowered her over him. "It's time." Isn't it always? Her mouth fell open in a gummy O. She rocked against him, once, then twice. The pressure, friction and heat overwhelmed Dee and he came before her pelvis completed its second orbit. She stifled her own screaming by raining down sticky kisses hot enough to melt lead. He drank them down, eager for more. Beneath him, her green twin whimpered wordlessly, squeezing him tighter into her full-body bear hug, a crushing velvet vice almost as greedy for every inch of his skin as Galatea, undulating above him, was for his cum. "Love me," the green girls begged in staggered chorus, their accents thick and strange. "Forever. Fuck me, forever." Another shattering orgasm sizzled through Dee, unleashing a torrent of cum into Galatea's core. Together, the two green girls whined, unsated, "Fill me." The assault on Dee's flesh redoubled. Galatea kissed and cooed, coddled and caressed from below. Her twin clawed and humped, bit and pumped from above. "Fill me, fill me. Forever." * * * Ursula dipped her head into the sink. "Non multa, sed multum . 'Not many, but much'," she translated. "It's an old Roman proverb. And now…" Her long pigtails rustled as she repositioned her ear over the drain. "Now they're…Well, now they're fucking each other's brains out." She stood up straight, rubbing the back of her neck. "You're right, Yves. We don't need to hear this bit." Yves frowned at the kitchen floor. "But we've got to go down there." "Why?" "There are two Galateas in the bathroom with him, right?" "Sure sounds like it. She's as amorphous as she is amorous, so I can't be sure." Ursula shrugged. "Don't make me guess, Sherlock. If you've thought of something then spit it out." Yves pinched the bridge of his nose. "Did any of her nanomek stay with you when she went back to Dee's place?" "No." Ursula rolled her eyes. "This is like pulling teeth. Be fair, Yves. I've had three hot toddies and I weigh less than a hundred and twenty pounds. I've got a thirty-second attention span." "Why didn't any of her stay?" "Fine!" Ursula threw her hands in the air. "I'll play along. Let me think, damn it." She paced the narrow kitchen. "Oh, I remember, she said something about…" ["…there's no way I'm ever going to let myself fuck him again unless I'm there too…"] Ursula stopped dead. "She said something about hating it when only part of her gets to fuck him." She wheeled around to face Yves. "Okay, so a threesome is a little weird. Maybe we should check in on them." Yves nodded and matched her gaze. "Before we go, there's something you need to know. Dee's changed. A lot, and not just physically. He's learned a, uh, kind of kiai, and he can't control it." "Dee's channeling chi with his voice?" Ursula asked. "Oh, don't look so surprised. I'm the neighborhood new age hippy chick, remember? In my neck of the woods we call that a charism." She bounced on the balls of her feet. "What can he do? Can he prophesy? Banish demons? Sway the hearts of men?" "That's the one. Sort of." Yves toyed with the collar of his shirt. "Yves, you're blushing. Wait, you can't seriously mean…" "It works the strongest on women," Yves muttered, his cheeks strawberry red. "And I'm not blushing." Ursula laughed so hard she gave herself a serious case of hiccups. "Are you telling me that Dee received the gift of the gods and he's using it to score?" Yves gave her a helpless smile. "Come on, U. You know Dee. This is the guy who thinks a good way to hit on a girl is to sit near her and sigh." "True." Ursula pushed the flat of her fist into her tummy and failed to stifle her hiccups. "Galatea said something about that too, now that you mention it. Oh! It just so happens I have the classic remedy for that sort of thing in my crafts trunk—straight from Hobby Lobby, no less." Ursula bopped out of the kitchen, pigtails swinging and bouncing against her butt, and disappeared down the little hallway to her bedroom. "A little bit of this and Dee's voice won't bother you anymore," she called over the sounds of furious rummaging. Yves stamped into the living room. "It doesn't bother me! Whatever you're getting, it's for you, not me." He pulled the fabric of his tight undershirt away from his chest and let it snap back. Ursula bopped back into the living room carrying something rolled between layers of wax paper and bound with black ribbon like a scroll. Her eyes danced. "Come on. You mean you've never been attracted to Dee?" Yves shrugged hard enough to strain his shoulder. "Never. Not my type." "You don’t like them tall, tawny and goofy?" "It's not that. Dee's just. He's…" Yves reached for the right word. "Dee's impenetrable." Ursula stared. Yves blinked and replayed the conversation in his head. "Oh, fuck you. I meant 'impenetrable' as in 'oblivious'." "Uh huh." Ursula wagged the scroll at him. "Then why are you still blushing?" "I'm not blushing, damn it." Yves flapped his overshirt. "You're too juiced to notice, but it's getting damn hot in here." Ursula frowned and walked passed him into the kitchenette. Her head disappeared into the sink for a moment before she yanked it back out again, hissing through her teeth, braids flailing. "Fuck, that's hot. I'd rather stick my ear against a steam pipe." Yves followed and felt the waves of heat rolling up from the sink with his hand. "Did you hear anything?" "Yeah. Galatea's quoting again. Sappho this time, in the original Greek, believe it or not. Good old fragment thirty-one." "You could tell that from listening just for a couple of seconds?" "Duh. It's Sappho. One of her most famous, too, because it's jumbled and the literal translation is weird so everyone argues over exactly what it…" Ursula's snowy cheeks blanched bone white. "Oh my God." "What?" Ursula pulled the work stool away from the counter and sat down hard, head in her hands. "Oh my God." Yves patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. "What?" Ursula tilted her head toward the ceiling and recited: Already a subtle fire runs beneath my skin My eyes see nothing, my ears roar Sweat pours down me I am everywhere seized with trembling Greener than the grass am I And so near as death Yves spun, punched the wooden door of the kitchenette pantry, muttering. "Christ, I'm an idiot. No, Dee's an idiot. But I stood there and saw the look on his face and I should have known…" "'Greener than the grass am I'," Ursula interrupted. Her voice broke into a lamenting whine. "Sappho wasn't a lyric poet. She was just some Greek chick with a thing for goo girls." "Everyone had a thing for goo girls," Yves snapped. "Keep it together." "But—" "Yeah, everything you know is wrong. Welcome to the club. Now shut up." Yves plucked Ursula off the stool and set her on her feet. "We've got work to do. I fucked up big time." Ursula tucked the scroll into her shirt and kicked off her bunny slippers. "You? How?" Yves pulled a pair of oven mitts of their hooks and stuffed them into his pants' pockets. "I left Dee alone down there. I even asked him, 'What are you thinking?' And I left without getting an answer." The tips of the mitts flopped around like puppy ears. It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 04 "So?" Ursula had jogged over her hall closet and squat on the floor, slipping on a pair of running shoes. "So he knew this might happen. Dee's still in dumb, straight-guy hero mode." Ursula ran over to Yves and poked him in the solar plexus. "Stop being a drama queen and tell me what the fuck is going on!" "Dee's giving Galatea whatever it takes for her to come back," Yves said, pushing her away and massaging his chest. Ursula's frown turned thunderous. Her outstretched finger hovered over Yves' sternum. Yves raised his hands in surrender. "He's subliming," he said. * * * Galatea rode Dee's cock, thrust a fist against the ceiling and bore down hard, hips jerking in wide, drawn out ellipses. She mashed her other hand into her mouth but pleas of bottomless need burbled through on every upswing. The slime on the ceiling bowed in around her, bloated with burning motes of green-tinged, silvered light, an aura of a million fireflies, the alchemical glow in their bellies gone critical. Beneath, her green twin stroked and cuddled against Dee's back, hugging flesh crammed into every conceivable crevice to sample the all the flavors of Dee's skin, tugging stronger than a waterlogged blanket bog. Dee's back broke through her surface tension into the quagmire of inner gel. The twin sighed and sobbed in relief, as if some terrible burden had at last been lifted, and push down on Dee's abdomen with both hands. Molten honey inched up his ribs and shoulders. The green girls fucked and sucked him closer to his seventh orgasm. They dragged him through a cycle of carnal sensation: a touching-tasting-pulling-pushing, sighing-slurping-slipping-screaming, up to a clinging-clenching-tonguing-cresting—cumming-cumming-cumming—and then down to an afterglow of kisses and caresses. The girls' fervor rose anew. Dee lay splayed between them, too dizzy to notice the urgency build in their murmured, wicked words. Soon they were touching-tasting-pulling-pushing and driving through the cycle again, and again, and again, each phase a little longer and stronger than before. Dee lost count of the number of times he gave the green girls what they wanted. Dee lost the ability to count, to care, to think. He only wanted to feel Galatea live again, and she came to life all around him. * * * Yves wrestled two-handed with the bathroom doorknob. His fingers squeezed the thick oven mitts over the metal knob. Heat prickled through the mitts' spun lace fabric insulation. Thank God Ursula keeps her kitchen high-tech, Yves thought. The doorknob twisted to the right. Damn thing is hotter than a branding iron. Yves braced with his feet and pushed at the door. "Pygmalion!" he shouted. A sliver of green-and-gold light dazzled him. The heat seeping through the oven mitts started to sting. Yves pushed harder. "Pygmalion!" The light blazed around the doorframe. "Pygmalion, you fucking idiot!" The door thumped shut and Yves sprawled on the floor, arms shielding his head. His face felt raw, pins-and-needles numb. He was flash-burned: an instant sunburn slapped across his skin. Must only be first degree, because I can still see. Yves rolled onto his back, knocking over the pots and pans dotting the floor of Bee's bedroom. He pulled the mitts off his hands by jamming them into his armpits. Sweat dripped into his eyes. "Ursula, it's not working." Ursula's reply came from the living room down the hallway, somewhere out of sight. "It's got to. It's the only thing I can think of." Yves pushed himself up onto one shoulder. Shadow and light danced in the bathroom doorframe. "God damn it, Urusla, it's like a scene from Poltergeist. Get your psychic midget ass in here!" "I can't. The beeswax will melt." Yves kicked a coffee cup. "Just leave it." "I can't! I put it in my ears already. Look, you told me to do it, Sherlock...What's that noise?" * * * "Pygmalion!" The shouting voice penetrated Dee's delirium. Dee blinked, bleary eyed, and tried to focus. He saw no signs of the bathroom he remembered. The sugar walls of gel surrounding him had grown thick and brilliant with snowflake fire. He was trapped with the two green twins in a luciferous cave, a glowing green grotto. The shout came again from somewhere outside: "Pygmalion!" Dee glanced up through a deep valley of green cleavage. Galatea's brow crinkled in confusion at the sound of someone yelling, rattling and thumping beyond the walls of the verdant world-womb she had made for her and Dee, for just her and Dee, for always and forever. "Pygmalion," cried the distant voice. "Pygmalion, you fucking idiot!" Galatea shrugged and sunk back down to touch-taste-pull-push… Something in that shrug, something missing in the little careless smile she gave him and the dimming light of her eyes, jarred Dee out of his sensorial stupor. You had a plan, remember? To snap her out of it before it's too late? She loves it when you second-guess her. Well, it's now or never. Dee rolled his shoulder and pulled one arm free of the embrace of the twin beneath him. His head swam in the strain and effort to lift his hand toward the green girl riding him, pointer finger extended, and furrow a swooping X in the gel above her left breast, its staggered curves evoking a dancer in mid-leap. The green twin beneath him fell silent and still. Dee had not noticed her constant, rumbling purr of pleasure until it stopped. He tilted his head back, translucent, pale tendrils of gel slithering off his neck and chin. The twin's gaze traced the path the ragged X had cut into the green girl's breast. She bent over and kissed Dee's forehead, her lips chaste and trembling. "Thou canst die," she whispered in that sexy brogue, kissing him again. "I know to leave this world behind is death." She glanced around them. Firefly-filled columns bulged from the floor to merge with stalactites of shining slime drooping from the ceiling. "But when thou from this world wilt go…" She shook her head, her lime dreadlocks falling heavy in the sultry air. "The whole world vapours with thy breath." She cupped his cheek. "Say it." Dee let the silence stretch. Galatea rode his cock and narrowed her eyes but her rhythm never skipped a beat. "No," he said. Galatea's leer was feral and her pace quickened. The twin below him gasped, "Say it. Thou must say it." Dee shrugged, wobbling as the twin's gel flesh rocked. He tried to imitate her accent. "I canst not." He failed miserably. She stared, eyes wide. Around them, the world-womb began to collapse, a cave-in coming at them in slow motion. "Then I shall." The green twin leaned in, locking eyes with Galatea, breasts inadvertently rolling over Dee's head. "Pygmalion." Galatea closed her eyes, squashing her sex over Dee's dick. "Ne." The green twin sat up, her belly stretching long and pulling Dee's head free of the tit-trap. She slapped Galatea square in the mouth. The twin's voice rang, "Pygmalion!" Galatea snarled and hunched over Dee's crotch, a school girl caught hiding something naughty. "Nunquam!" The green twin reared to slap again, but the Galatea flinched and fell against Dee's chest. Her eyes wide and imploring, she worked her mouth a while before any words came out. "You won't say it," Galatea said, although her accent was so mangled ("Hew want sigh ate") that at first Dee did not realize she was speaking English. Dee smiled, nodding. "I won't." Galatea cackled, rode his dick with newfound passion. The collapsing walls of the slime cave surged inward. The green twin below Dee melted away into the onrushing ooze. It swallowed up Dee's legs and much of his crotch, leaving a bubble of air only a few feet across, just enough room for Galatea to press her head against Dee's chest. The firefly glow flowed into her. Galatea became nothing more than a protrusion from the surrounding, smothering gel: a inch or two of abdomen, a pair of breasts, shoulders, arms, a sneering face and writhing hair. The tendril tips of her dreadlocks toyed with Dee's nipples. "You want this," she said. ("Hew went tees.") "For me." ("Fear may.") "To be a part of me." ("Tao bay pert ovum eye.") "Always." ("All wise.") "Yes," Dee said, curling his fingers around her playful hair. Galatea shuddered, whispering, "Always." ("All wise.") "I'll do this," Dee said (and she whispered, "All wise.") "I'll lock myself deep in side you…" Galatea whispered, "All wise." "I'll lock myself away…" She whispered, "All wise." "…And I'll keep cumming and cumming in you…" She whispered, "All wise." "…Until there's nothing left of me," Dee finished. Now. His other hand shot out. It has to be now. He scooped up Galatea's head until they were eye to eye. He cocked an eyebrow at her, his face full of false, doe-eyed innocence. "But only if you want me to, because I'm so sensitive and enlightened and stuff." Galatea gawked. The fireflies inside her burst into blinding light. "You dumb ass!" she cried, yanked back and socked him in the nose. Her voice rebounded in the bubble, pitch perfect and accent free. Galatea listened to her own echoes. A goofy smile dawned across her cherubic face, and she flew at Dee, delighted laughter peeling until her lips locked over his. "Welcome back," Dee said when she let him up for air. She pulled back, seeming to notice their predicament for the first time: she a mere torso slowly dissolving into a wall, he enwombed in some two hundred cubic feet of nuclear powered gelatin. "Oh, shit." She turned to kiss him again, and this time she left viridian tears streaking his cheeks. The slowly encroaching wall had eaten away at her until only her head, shoulders, and upper curves of her breasts breached its surface. She looked like a busty supermodel posing in a hot tub suspended sideways in the air, the froth from the Jacuzzi jets capping her nipples. "I...I can't stop it." More green tears pattered down. "Dee. Oh, Dee...I'm not me." Dee brushed a few tears from her eyes. "I've figured out that much. What went wrong?" "I'm not sure." The wall slurped over her breasts. "I can't get all my nanomek to work together, or even talk to one another. Each one does what it wants, and each one wants you." The wall of goo crawled over her shoulders. "Stop them, Dee, before they do something terrible to you. Stop me." Galatea sank up to her neck and she panicked. "Can you stop me?" "I can. But it's going to hurt." Galatea's eyes shone with fear and Dee added, "Not me, I mean. It's going to hurt you." He sat up, his hair sticking to the top of the shrinking air bubble, his butt all but gobbled up by the hungry goo. "A lot." The wall of ooze slipped up over Galatea's chin. "Shut up and stop me," she said before her mouth vanished. "I love you," Dee said. He coiled, a panther gathering energy for a final pounce. "Ready?" Galatea's button nose slipped under the wall of ooze, but she still managed to roll her eyes heavenward. Dee struck. * * * Yves stared at the juddering door. "I changed my mind." His face fell into shadow. "It is working, and get your ass out of here, Ursula. Now." "Don't you start with the hero macho bullshit," Ursula said. "No." Yves stood and backed away, every move slow and exact. "I'm coming too." A minty stain spread out from the doorframe and over the wall. Fissures grew where plaster dissolved or crumbled to the floor. "I am officially..." The paint on the door blistered and peeled. "...utterly and completely..." The stain ate away at the stucco ceiling and the cracked ceiling strut sagged down until its tip bumped against Bee's bed. "...out of my depth." The door snapped inward. "Run!" Yves barreled through the bedroom door, his ears filled with the sound of splintering wood. Adrenalin surged and he centered himself just as quick. His perceptions entered that zone of distanced, startling clarity he had relished for years as an aikidoka but his geeky friends took for granted as "bullet time" ever since The Matrix debuted. He studied Ursula as she dashed past the hall toward the front door, long braids whipping out behind her. The floorboards beneath Yves feet started to shake as he reached the mouth of the hallway. He rounded the corner into the living room and the air behind him exploded forward, threatening to hurl him into the floor with the force of a giant hand striking him across the back. He rode the concussion instead, spinning away from the mouth of the hallway an instant before it spat a blast of steam, lethal as any dragon. Yves followed Ursula's trailing pigtails out the front door. Ursula panted in the long hall. Yves held out his hand. She stared at it and then up at him through fogged-over glasses. Her face beaded with perspiration, her tight black pajamas stuck with sweat. Yves realized he must look the same. He could not have felt more drenched if he had walked through a hurricane. Behind them, soupy mist licked through the ruined doorway and the air grew heady and citrus perfumed. Around them, the world fell silent and still. Even the noise of morning rush hour on the nearby expressway vanished. Ursula's whisper was urgent and awed. "Dee." Yves reached for her again. "It's just Dee." The words rung hollow and false, even to him, and he withdrew his hand. Ursula pulled his hand back and held it between her breasts. Yves felt her heart fluttering. "I want it to be Galatea, too," Ursula said, squeezing his hand as hard as she could. At first, Yves thought someone had turned on a slow, thudding subwoofer, but Ursula whispered, "Dee's coming." She pushed their clasped hands into Yves abdomen. "You're trembling," she said. "I'm terrified," Yves confessed. The footfalls drew nearer. "What if I'm wrong? What if it's not Dee or Galatea, but something else? There's something you don't know…" She shushed him and they turned, standing side by side. Dee strode stark naked across the threshold, each step scorching the floor. Plumes of steam rose from his bare skin. The curls of his hair were slicked and sleek around his face. His every movement was so strong and sure that Yves knew the thrill of standing in the middle of the tracks before an onrushing train. The green girl clung to Dee's neck, her head buried in his chest. She trembled and turned away from Yves and Ursula, curling in modesty but presenting the hourglass curves of her back and flaring hips. Her skin shone with gem fire, polished and pure as a flawless emerald. Dee held her close. She murmured and shivered and pressed against him. The intimate desire expressed in her embrace was palpable and dizzying. Yves felt as if he somehow partook in it just by watching. "It is done," Dee said. The green girl sighed and kissed his neck. ["…If Galatea thinks you’re a god…"] "I hate being right," Yves said. * * * Love is the temple. Love the higher law. You ask me to enter, But then you make me crawl. And I can't be holding on To what you got When all you got is hurt. —U2, One * * * Interlude: Let Me Get Into You The morning sun blazed high above the chapter house of Epsilon Zeta Sorority as a yellow SUV crept up the horseshoe driveway. The brunette driving the boxy car dragged up the emergency brake and plopped her head into the steering wheel. "We're here." The blonde coed sprawled on the backseat did not budge. Her hair stuck out everywhere, a mess of tangles at strange angles. "What time is it?" The brunette's eyes roved over the dashboard. "A little after eight." She scraped a pasty lip with her teeth and made a hissy-kissy noise. The blonde dunked her head into the footwell. "We were out all night. I can't believe we spent all night with those frat guys—" The redhead in the passenger seat spun around. "Shut up. This is all your fault." "But my cell phone battery died," came a voice from the footwell full of blonde hair. "And all I did was ask if you guys thought that really cute guy had called yet." "Don’t you dare start talking about him again," said the redhead, eyes narrowed. "But he was sooo cute." The blonde peeked up at her friends in the front seat. "Remember how his hair kept falling into his eyes? Those little, whatdoyacall'em, ringlets? Ooh, and his eyes. Brown, but they like burned, you know? He looked at me and I felt so small." The brunette clapped her hands over her ears and sang wordlessly, rocking her head against the steering wheel. Her redheaded friend just stared into space. "And…" The blonde sat up, fists curled in her lap. "And, oh God, didn't you watch him walk? I thought runway models knew how to walk but this guy moved like he owned the whole world." "I will not get horny again," chanted the brunette. It became her mantra. "I will not get horny again." Sweat began trickling down the blonde's neck. "And when he spoke," she said, pressing a palm against her neck, "It was like he owned me." "He only said one word," whispered the redhead. She glared at the floor. "One fucking word." Squirming in the back seat, the blonde cleared her throat and tried to imitate Dee's voice. "…'What'?" "Deeper," sighed the brunette, throwing herself back into the driver's seat. The blonde cleared her throat and tried again in a lower register. "Wha—" "Deeper," insisted the redhead. "Like, way deeper." The blonde closed her eyes and scissored her legs. "'What'?" The brunette murmured, "Deeper." Her hand inched under the waistband of her black denims. "No!" She bolted up. "Not again!" "I can't help it," the blonde whined, falling over and hiding her face. "I'm a slut." "We are not sluts," the redhead said, emphasizing each word by stabbing a finger at the blonde. "We're skanks," added the brunette. "That's right," nodded the redhead. "No, wait." "We're skanks." The brunette looked down at her white tee shirt. "My nipples are hard." The blonde pushed her rump up into the air. "My panties are wet. Again." The two girls turned to their redheaded friend. She bowed her head. "I had to throw my panties away." "Well." The brunette jingled the car keys. "We're not going back to the frat, are we?" The redhead said, "No." The blonde pulled her self up. She gave both her friends a coy, unsure look. "We're not going to, uh—" "No!" The redhead held up both hands and gave her friends their marching orders. "We are going to do the walk of shame. Together. Then we're going back to our rooms..." The blonde perked up "…Separately." The blonde's face fell. "And we're going to whack off. Then we'll take a quick nap, finally get out of these sticky clothes and go to class. It'll be like last night never happened…We didn't tell those guys about tonight's party, did we?" "Hell, no," the brunette said. "Good. Walk of shame time." The redhead peered at the big brick house with Ε-Ζ emblazoned on its whitewashed porch. "No one's up yet, looks like. Good. Weird, but good." She popped open the passenger door. "Let's go." The three girls skulked through the front door into the foyer. The blonde ran over to the whiteboard next to the phone on the far wall. She scanned the magic marker scribble on the board. "No messages." She punched buttons on the phone's integrated answering machine until it beeped. "Aw, he didn't call." "Shh!" The redhead waved a frantic hand up and down. "Oh, stuff it," hissed the blonde. "No one's around." She minced through the main hall, into the central stairwell and out of site. "I'm going to go scratch this itch. Later, guys." "Me too," said the brunette. She tiptoed into the main hall before turning back. "You coming?" she asked the redhead. It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 04 "In a minute." She cracked open a side door. "I'm going to the kitchen." "What? Why?" The brunette giggled. "You're not serious." The redhead sniffed. "Not everybody owns a vibrator. I've got to make do." "Whatever," the brunette shrugged and dashed upstairs. "I'm going to need extra batteries." The redhead slunk down the narrow corridor passed the basement stairwell. Now that her friends were gone, she could let her guard down. Without panties, the crotch of her jeans had harnessed her sex. The rigid seam rubbed her raw from her clit down over her slit and around into the crack in her ass. She chewed her bottom lip and whimpered as she walked. At the far end of the corridor the door to the kitchen sat crooked on a swinging hinge. Florescent light flickered through the gap above the door into the dark hallway. The redhead held her breath and stood still. Her lungs began to ache but she heard a scuffle of feet and furniture from the kitchen and air whooshed out of her. Someone was in the kitchen. In a way, the prospect of getting caught came as a relief. She shook out her hair, rubbed away ruined mascara, squared her shoulders, and stormed through the kitchen doorway. A husky boy in a jelly-stained grocer's smock sat on the floor, hands hogtied behind his back to the granite top kitchen cart. His eyes bugged at redhead. "Oh, Christ, not yet." He kicked at the floor and the cart rolled away from her. The work pants and boxers wrapped around his ankles and the friction of his bare ass against the hardwood floor reduced his retreat to a comical butt-scoot. "I won't be able to get a boner again for another hour. I swear to God, lady." She stared for long moment before calmly turning to her left and pulling a carving knife from a wooden block on the counter. Only then did the redhead allow her self to scream. "Who the fuck are you?" The husky boy crossed his eyes watching the tip of the long knife quiver at him. Lavender lip prints smeared his face and gobs of purplish jelly matted his hair. "You're not one of them?" "Who the fucking Hell are you," demanded the redhead, "and..." She pointed the knife downward. "And why the Hell is your dick covered in custard? Are you some sort of autoerotic-bondage-food freak? Oh, wait." She relaxed and dropped the knife on the counter. "Hazing is illegal, you know. So are panty raids." She glanced around. "Where are your pledge brothers?" The kitchen cart bumped up against the stainless steel refrigerator. "You're not one of them." The boy shook his head. "Jesus, lady, you got to get out of here." The redhead slouched against the counter on the opposite wall and recited in bored singsong, "Epsilon Zeta Sorority does not encourage and will not condone hazing. We have a zero tolerance policy. As chapter secretary, I am obliged to ask you for the names of any Ep-Zed sisters who have collaborated with your frat's hazing activities in any way." "I don't know what the Hell you're on about lady. I'm not from a frat. I work in a supermarket." The kitchen cart bumped against the refrigerator again. "So stop talking Moon language and get the fuck out." "I can't," the redhead sighed. "I have to call the provost's office with those names. And I, uh, want something from the fridge…Look, can you stop bumping against it like that?" The cart and refrigerator door clunked against each other again. "What? I'm not—" The cart whacked into the boy's head. The color drained from his face. "Oh, God, no." The purple gel on his paling cheeks stood out like kiss-shaped bruises. He twisted his neck to gawk at the refrigerator. "It can't be. The other two weren't ready this fast. It's too soon." The refrigerator door slammed against the kitchen cart. The boy's ass squeaked over the floor as the cart dragged him to the side. He butt-scooted away from the refrigerator with surprising speed. "This one won't be like the others. This one's hers." The redhead frowned at the fridge. "Is a pledge in there or something?" The husky boy kicked her in the shins. "We've got to get out of here!" The redhead stood transfixed as the steel door swung open. A dark nebula billowed out to fill the widening space, black ink bleeding into the air as if seeping into water. The living patch of night shone, glossy and faceted, in the harsh florescent lamplight. It unfolded in clusters of wedges and confusing shapes, an origami blossom of impossible complexity and size. The obsidian thing bloomed bigger than the industrial refrigerator behind it and the planes of its outer petals filled out in familiar shapes. "Wings," the boy groaned. "Wings. I told you. This one's hers." The epicenter of the geometric eruption swelled into a fat, shiny balloon. It burst and two legs shot out, skinny but shapely. They touched down on the floor on toeless feet, rounded and tiny like a child's ballet slippers. The collapsing balloon gathered into narrow but curving hips and a tight little behind. The black mass of the ass stretched into a flat tummy, budding breasts, slender shoulders, graceful arms, curiously long neck, and a head as shiny, bald, and faceless as an egg dipped into black latex paint. The winged obsidian girl stood with arms akimbo and feet tapping. She was brume. She was sepulchral. She was midnight. She was a size 2. The redhead flailed her arm backward, feeling for the door. "Oh, fuck me." "No," sighed the boy as the obsidian girl scampered over to his prone form. "It's going to be me." The obsidian girl tilted her head. The overhead lamp reflected in her eyeless, featureless face as two round pools of white light and she regarded him with an alien curiosity. The boy looked into her illusory gaze and shuddered. "Again." The redhead inched backward. The obsidian girl bent forward. The boy squeezed his eyes shut and cringed. The obsidian girl held still for a long moment. Her arm drew a dismissive zigzag in the air and her smooth, conical fingers snap-snap-snapped in his flinching face as she stood up and turned away. The redhead's shaky, searching fingers brushed across the door and she whipped around, threw all her weight into it—and cracked her head against it, rebounding when the door refused to budge. She faltered around the kitchen, one hand cradling her smarting forehead. The obsidian girl leapt up the refrigerator and perched on top with wings furled, watching her with the patience of a stone gargoyle. The kitchen door swung inward. The blonde and the brunette coeds lurched in wearing nothing but their tight white tee-shirts and panties soaked sheer at the crotch. Red and black gel ringed their mouths, as if they had been feasting on chocolate covered jelly donuts. Between the brunette's legs came a muffled, buzzing noise. "Aw, shit," the boy said as the two girls ambled toward the redhead, "she knows you're here now. Sorry, lady, I tried to tell you." The two girls seized the redhead, one on each arm. "Wait," the redhead said, glancing back and forth between them, trying to catch their unfocused, glassy eyes. "Wait! What the Hell…Oh my God…" Black Cherry boiled into the room, wings snapped taught behind her. "Guess again." She licked her smirking lips and a fat drop of sanguine honey dripped from the corner of her mouth and sizzled on the floor. The redhead swooned but her two friends propped her up. Black Cherry stormed close. She traced the curve of the redhead's cheek with one wing-claw and tickled her nipples erect with the other until the girl was awake and squirming in her friends' unyielding arms. "Stop, stop." Black Cherry sliced away the redhead's flimsy top with the tip of a finger. "I never stop." She turned to the brunette as she ran both claws down the redhead's exposed ribs. "So this is the other girl who met Master?" The brunette's voice was hushed and distant. "…Yes." The redhead barked with painful laughter. "Stop, stop!" She wrestled with her captors but they stood, unmoving and unblinking. "Help me, someone help me!" The obsidian girl unfurled her wings and tapped a foot on the metal refrigerator. Black Cherry glanced upward and startled. "So soon? Wonderful! I'm glad I used so much extra nanomek, then." She leveled a quivering claw at the hogtied boy. "That one's yours." She dipped a wing claw below the redhead's belt and the girl shrieked. "But this one is mine. I need to taste her memories of Master. Now then…" She went to work on the fly of the redhead's jeans. The kitchen door swung open and the sisters of Epsilon Zeta trickled into the room. The redhead cried out, "Oh thank God—Help me! Call the cops! Do something? Why aren't you…Oh, no." Half-dozen coeds, their expressions blank and lips stained blood red, took places around the room. When another sorority sister bumped her way through the door, the redhead glimpsed the narrow corridor filled to capacity with glassy-eyed girls. "No, no, no." "I tried to tell you, lady," the boy said. "Look, I'm real sorry." The redhead slumped and trembled in her captors' arms. She whispered at the floor, "Help me. Help me." "There, there, no need to cry." Black Cherry plucked the redhead's chin up with a wing and unzipped the girl's jeans with her hands. "After all, you're not scared. I could smell it if you were. But I smell something else, instead. Now, open wide." Black Cherry yanked the redhead's jeans down and giggled. "Oh, I see that you have already. So all you need to do…" Black Cherry leaned close, her fingers pressed deep into the redhead's sex, her lips drizzling searing honey over the girl's ear. "…is let me in." * * * Stone aged love and strange sounds too, Come on, baby, let me get into you. Bad nights causing teenaged blues, Get down ladies—you've got nothing to lose! Hello, Daddy! Hello, Mom! I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch cherry bomb! —The Runaways with Joan Jett, Cherry Bomb It's Always Time Act 04 Ch. 01 It's Always Time Act Four: Food for Thought Chapter One: A Hole for the World "Yves, Ursula," Dee said to the odd couple goggling at him in the hallway. "You guys okay?" He scrutinized Ursula's face. Her eyes were hidden behind the fog filming her wide, oval glasses. "Ursula?" Yves followed Dee's gaze. "Ursula, how're you doing?" Her hand squeezed his until his knuckles ground together. "Everything okay?" "Yeah," Ursula gulped. "Still gay." She nodded. "I'm impressed but still gay." She surrendered Yves' hand. "Just having a strong flashback, sorry." "Ursula?" The green girl peeped over her shoulder. "Oh, it's the pharmaceutria from two doors down. Hey." Ursula started at the term but raised a palm. "Uh. Hey." The green girl shifted her weight in Dee's arms to leer up at Yves. A sheaf of agate dreadlocks fell over her eyes. "Why hullo there," she drawled. "You're Vigo? A guy like you, staying home playing computer games all night?" She shook her head. "What a crime." Yves laughed, massaging his hand. "I'm Yves. Upstairs neighbor. Favorite video game: Ms. Pac-Man." She tipped her head. "Nice to finally meet you two." Ursula turned away, muttering, "Pharmaceutria." Dee held the green girl away from his chest to look her in the eye. "I would've introduced you to my friends if you'd ever let me out of the apartment." "Friends?" The green girl's brow wrinkled. "You have friends?" "Very funny." Dee rolled his shoulders. The green girl gasped, giggled, and decanted from his arms onto the floor. The cheap carpet wilted and browned under her feet. Yves marveled at how she moved, sumptuous, feline and somehow familiar. Dee. The green girl sinuated herself under Dee's right arm and nested in the hollow of his shoulder. She moves like Dee does. She purred, her gel flesh smooching against his, a leopard lazing against her favored tree. Or does Dee move like her? He's always moved like that, at least a little or whenever he gets worked up about something, hasn't he? Dee grinned down at her. "Meet my girlfriend, guys. Honey, these are the guys." "Just after the nick of time," the green girl sighed, "like always." Dee's right hand disappeared behind her back and she squealed, jumped, and wriggled—No, she's oscillating, Yves realized. Her jelled curves rollicked in the aftershock. It's not a sex kitten act; it's colloid physics. She moves that way even standing still, the poor girl. Ursula wiped the dew from her glasses on a sleeve. "Galatea, you don't look anything like…" Yves pinched her on the elbow. "…Yves said you would." She glared at him and dodged a second pinch. "You're years younger and a lot shorter than I expected." The green girl, still undulating against Dee, arched an eyebrow at Yves. "Real subtle." Yves shrugged. "I'm not worried about subtle. I've got two accomplices. Right, Dee?" Dee tore his gaze away from the green girl's shimmying chest. "Huh?" The green girl's face clouded over. "See?" Yves grinned. "We were just wondering if Galatea was all right, considering everything that happened." His smile fell when he saw the green girl's expression. "Galatea, what is it?" The green girl fluttered a hand around her throat. "You called me 'Honey,'" she said, staring up at Dee. "You've never called me that before. Have you?" "I have." Dee cupped her chin. "I'm sorry." She trembled. "I've lost the first time you called me 'Honey.'" "We'll get it back," Dee told the green girl. "We'll get all of you back." "Is it amnesia?" Yves asked. The green girl shook her head and clung to Dee's side. "It's a lot more complicated than that," Dee explained. "There are things that happened to Galatea that she's never experienced. And she hasn't just lost Galatea's memories; she's got a bunch of the wrong ones." "I don't understand," Ursula said. Yves nodded in agreement. Dee sighed. "It's best if we start over, with proper introductions." He gave the green girl a reassuring squeeze. "Okay?" "Okay," she said, sniffled and stepped forward. "Ursula, Yves," Dee said, "I'd like you to meet my beloved, Eurydice." * * * A myrtle blush flushed Eurydice's bare breasts and flashed up her throat. Yves and Ursula recoiled from a sudden flare of heat, retreating sideways into the dingy dead-end of the long hall. Dee turned but Eurydice squirmed and fled behind him, yipping, "Sorry, sorry!" Yves could only see the daggered points of her hair quivering behind Dee's neck as she spoke. "I'm so sorry. Dammit, Dee!" Dee flinched under a splattered drubbing against his back. "Ow. What, what?" "Dee, I can't believe you named me in front of your friends! You know how much that turns me on!" A few rivulets of green syrup spilled over Dee's hunching shoulders and rolled down his sinewy, naked frame. "So few men ever live long enough to name me and the one that gets to name me twice turns out to be an idiot." "I understand even less now," Ursula said, pressing her palm against her forehead. "You’re not alone." Yves sidled as close as he could in the baking heat. "Dee, Ursula and I just risked our lives saving you and your girlfriend's asses, and I know it's not over yet—but I have no idea what happened in there." He stood on tiptoe to stare down at Eurydice from over Dee's shoulder, "Are you Galatea or not?" "Hey," Dee started. "Shut up," Ursula said, her back still flat against the beige wall. "Let Sherlock do his thing." Eurydice propped her chin on Dee's brawny back to glare up at Yves. "I am Galatea." Her brow crinkled. "And a few others, too. Dee brought us back." The nervous writhing of her medusa's hair grew more purposeful, the tips of her snaking dreadlocks exploring the cords of Dee's neck. "I mean Dee brought me back from just a few nanomek…" Ursula said, "What's—" but Yves muttered, "Magic powder, raw material for meliae magic, makes girls out of goo. Move on." "Oh!" Ursula jumped away from the wall and babbled. "There's a material component for summoning nymphs? Is it the massa confusa? Does it only make female things? Can I have some?" "Massa what?" Dee said, "Cherry Cupcake called it novilunium." "Novilunium, really? Why doesn't anyone tell me these things? Can I have some?" Ursula bounced on her feet. "Actually, that connection makes a lot of sense. Seriously, though, can I have some?" She frowned. "Wait, who's Cherry Cupcake?" "Oh my God," Dee cried, "you mean you don't know?" Yves and Eurydice chorused, "Shut the fuck up!" Yves blinked. Eurydice poked her head around Dee's left arm and grinned like a madwoman up at Yves. "They talk way too much, don't they? How do we get rid of them?" Yves shook his head. "I'd shake your hand if it weren’t three hundred degrees." "Time to cool off, then." She stepped out from Dee's shadow. "Dee, go hose yourself down and then bring me some ice. I don't need much—I'm very energy efficient—but only if you're not around getting me hot and bothered." Dee glanced down to give her a wry smile. "Yes, dear." Eurydice slapped him on his bare rump when he turned about-face and marched back into Bee's smoldering apartment. "Ooh, I shouldna done that," she said, touching the tips of her fingers to her lips. The gelled blades of her hair stuck together and a green sugar glaze ran down her forehead. "I'll need more ice, solid boy!" Ursula whistled. "Wow, I knew you'd got it bad, but not that bad." "Have you seen that man's ass?" Yves asked. "I wasn't looking," Ursula admitted. Eurydice hooked her thumb at the apartment door. "Go check it out." Ursula rolled her eyes. "Fine, I get the point." She disappeared into the misty apartment and squeaked, "Holy shit!" Yves and Eurydice exchanged worried looks. "Look at this mess!" Yves gave Eurydice the thumbs-up. "So," Eurydice sighed, peeling her sticky clumps of hair apart into a forest of shimmering dreadlocks. "How much time we got, do you think?" Yves watched her shake out her jade mane. She's green. She's made out of Jell-O. She's real. "Just a few minutes, but that's not the real worry." The real worry is you're God-damned made out of God-damned Jell-O. He glanced down the hallway. "The real worry is morning rush hour." No, the real worry is I'm talking to a girl made out of Jell-O as if I meet one every day waiting in line at Starbucks. Well, at least this one isn't fisting my dick and my ass at the same time like the last one did. "There are only two other apartments along this hallway since the rental office is on this floor, and both Kay and this Esteban guy are…gone…but someone's bound to notice all this collateral damage. We're supposed to have security, but somehow they've missed all this. So stop showing off and give it to me straight." Eurydice cocked her head to one side at a ninety degree angle. "If you stop feeding me a line of bullshit, and tell me what you're really thinking, I'll stop showing off." "I'm thinking security didn't notice because Cherry Cupcake ate them, like she ate Bee, and possibly Esteban, Kay, and God knows how many other people. Ate them for their collagen; human bones and fibers are loaded with the stuff. That's why she was as strong as Dee, maybe stronger, when they duked it out." Eurydice's eyes clouded and brimmed. "Did Dee…I mean, was he—" "Ready? Yes. He was ready. Galatea prepared him well. I saw the video." Yves smiled as kindly as he could. "It was a pornographic version of the Karate Kid training montage, a black belt in goojitsu via four day fuck-a-thon. My turn: How many men sublimated before you found Dee, found the one that could go all the way?" Her sadness flipped into a visage of shock. "Dee videotaped us?" Yves snorted. "Dee? Never, and you know it. Bee rigged a webcam from his bedroom into yours. It's hosed now. Melted into slag." Her mock shock downshifted into real regret. "Aw, damn. I would've loved to see that." Yves smiled but his eyes were hard. "Answer the question: How many men?" Eurydice shrugged. "Most of them, I guess." Yves laughed. "That's not the kind of answer I was looking for." "That's the only kind you're going to get," Eurydice said, "because I don't know. I don't remember everything, even now. Especially now." "But you said 'most,' so a few meliae-makers before Dee have gone all the way with you instead of sublimating. Dee isn't the first, after all." That might explain her speaking in tongues. She smirked. "You really like that pun." Yves shushed her. I bet I can put it all together now. "You remember at least three. Let me guess:" Greek. "Hercules." "Now who's showing off?" she said, but nodded. "And it's 'Heracles,' if you please. He had thirteen labors, you know, not twelve. No one ever remembers the first one." "Very funny." Latin. "Romulus." "And Remus, too." She winked at him. "My one and only twosome, other than Gilgamesh and Enkido. Tag-teaming's more trouble than it's worth. Dee's already made me cum more than all four of those bozos ever did, and we're just getting started and I've lost half my memories of him." She's trying to distract me. "And, uh…" It's working "Damn, I don’t know." "Oh yes you do, Yves." She stressed his name and arched her brow. "Better not be John Donne," Yves said. "No," Eurydice laughed. "Gawain." Her grin was wistful. "He was almost as hard and good as Dee. Mm, almost. His friend was kinda cute, too." "Wait. 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.' The green knight. You?" "Kinda sorta almost," Eurydice said, rocking to and fro on every word. "The same way you're kinda sorta almost Galatea?" Her hips froze in mid swing and her smile vanished. "I am Galatea." "You mean Galatea is in there with you." Eurydice stamped her foot, setting off temblors in her many curves. "That's not how it works at all." Yves crossed his arms. "Then tell me how it does work." Eurydice huffed and heaved. "You can stop the T and A show. Dee and Ursula will be back any minute now, though, and you'll get a captive audience out of the two of them, I promise you." "Fine, fine." The turbulence in her tits and ass smoothed out. "Nanomek memory is holographic." "Handwritten?" Eurydice flicked a hand at him. "Pfft, don't you start. I mean one iota of nanomek contains enough info to reconstruct the whole shebang." "But when Dee brought you back," Yves said, "something went wrong, the nanomek went down the wrong reconstruction path a few times and brought back fragments of the wrong shebang before it found Galatea. Hey, that's your pun, not mine, so don't blame me for using it. So what went wrong?" Eurydice turned away. "I don't know." "Was it Galatea?" Yves guessed. Eurydice shivered but stayed silent and Yves plunged ahead. "Galatea's not sure she wants to come back." Eurydice spun to face Yves, hair writhing, her glare thunderous. "I wanted to come back. I did come back. I am Galatea." "But you don't remember how Dee left you." He reached for her shoulders and found them shaking and cool as marble. "What he said, what he did, and what happened after. But there is a part of you—the whole of you, really, because you're the part and she's the whole—there's a Galatea out there that does remember. And Cherry Cupcake has her. And Dee wants her back." "I hate you," Eurydice sobbed. "I hate you. I could ask Dee to kill you. And he would!" She batted her fists against Yves' stomach as she cried. "Gilgamesh killed Enkido, Romulus killed Remus, Gawain killed Yvain, and Dee will kill you!" "Is that how this always ends?" Yves demanded. Eurydice wriggled in his grip but Yves would not relent. "A tragic fairy tale? Galatea divided? Friends and brothers dead?" 'Yvain?' Who the Hell was Yvain? "I don't know. I don't know!" Eurydice threw her arms around Yves and hugged herself to his chest. Her face and breasts were cool but her core still burned. "What if Dee finds Galatea and she wants him but we can't re-assimilate? I couldn't share him, I'd go mad. Or, God, what if we do re-assimilate and I don't want him any more? That would be worse, so much worse." Yves cradled her head as she wept. "It won't end that way," he told her, "not this time. Dee's different than the others, you said so yourself. And I'm different, too." Eurydice snuffled and looked up at him. "What do you mean?" "Cherry Cupcake," Yves said, pulling away from her a few inches to escape the furnace below her belly. "She's always involved too, right?" "That depends," Eurydice said. "Is Cherry Cupcake Dee's psycho bitch ex-girlfriend from Hell?" Yves nodded. "Yeah, that's her. Like Gawain and Morgan le Fey. Hercules…I mean Heracles and, uh, Medea." Eurydice laughed once between sniffles. "You've got your myths all mixed up." "This is Ursula's area, not mine," Yves said. "I took English for Engineers in college. The names don’t matter, but listen: Dee did not screw around with Cherry Cupcake. She came to him disguised but he figured it out and rejected her before anything was fully consummated. That's not why he and Galatea broke up. Hell, they didn't really break up at all. They had a row, a lover's quarrel, that's all." Eurydice gasped and leapt away, her fingers fluttering about her throat. "He didn't…You mean they didn't…?" "Dee figured out Galatea fed him nanomek. He freaked. They had their first fight, and Dee stormed out to get roaring drunk." Eurydice's eyes were as wide as saucers. "And he didn't sleep with Cherry Cupcake? With you? Anybody?" "No, although he had to fight off potential psycho ex-girlfriends with a stick." And now I know why: to fit the fairy tale. "I wasn't one of them, thank you very much." "Then what the fuck happened?" "What usually happens when women throw themselves at Dee: absolutely nothing. It just made him mopey and piney…for you." Relieved laughter bubbled out of her. "I knew he was different! I knew he could be the one!" She jumped up and kissed Yves on the cheek, leaving a warm, gooey green lip-print. "I wish he could have done it some other way than moping and pining. You're not smiling, Yves," she realized. "What are you not telling me?" "When Dee rejected Cherry Cupcake, she raped me," Yves said, voice flat. "Oh my God. Oh, Yves, I'm so sorry." She nestled back into his chest and held him close for a long while before muttering, "I'm going to kill the bitch." Yves hesitated before he ruffled his fingers through her hair, a mop of thick, velvety rope. "No macho bullshit." Ursula staggered through the doorway to Bee's apartment, shreds of metal scraping across the floor. Green flakes of plaster speckled her hair. "It's Hell on Earth in there." Eurydice winked up at Yves and turned to face her. "How's Dee?" "The walls are gone," Ursula said. "Just green gunk, stained cement, and support beams. Like walking inside the ribcage of a giant, rotting corpse." Eurydice revolved a finger in an unmistakable wrap-it-up gesture. "How's Dee?" "There's water running everywhere," Ursula said, staring past Eurydice's left ear. "All the porcelain and plastic in the bathroom melted into lumps. Even the toilet." "Ursula," Yves said, "where's Dee?" Ursula ran shaky fingers over her braids, knocking out the plaster. "He stood in the water splashing into the hole where the tub should have been. The water was cold." She met Eurydice's gaze for the first time. "I could hear things…cracking…inside him as he cooled off. He said it felt great, like whole-body chiropractics. When he was done, he reached up and pinched the pipe shut." She reached above her head and pinched the air with a thumb and forefinger. "Sorry," Yves said, "I should have warned you." "What did you think of his ass?" asked Eurydice. "I've got ice," Dee declared, waltzing through the doorway with a mostly-melted plastic bowl full of ice cubes. "The freezer shorted out a few minutes ago, so there's a little more if you need it." He stepped around Ursula and passed the bowl of ice to Eurydice. "I've stopped the leaks in the bathroom, but there's like three inches of water in the bedroom." Eurydice grabbed a modest handful of ice from the bowl and munched on it like popcorn. She tipped her head to regard Ursula. "Well?" Ursula blinked and glanced downward, pulling her glasses to the very tip of her nose. "Nice ice." She straightened up. An ice cube bounced off her forehead. Eurydice catcalled and threw another cube at her. Ursula ducked and it sailed overhead. Dee stood still, a naked, human maypole, as the two girls bobbed and weaved around him, ice cubes flying. "What now?" he said over Eurydice's howls and cackles. "I go get you some clothes," Yves said. He deflected an ice cube with a casual swipe of his open palm. Eurydice readied her last cube, squinting at Yves. "Shove it, samurai." The icy projectile flew. Yves caught it an inch in front of his eyes and Euyrdice said, "Ooh—ow!" when the returned volley struck her in the nose. Dee frowned. "Clothes." "You are buck naked, you know," Ursula pointed out. Dee's frown deepened. "Yeah." "Last time you were naked in front of me," Yves said, "you blushed like a school girl." Eurydice leered at Dee, eyes roving. "He's meant to be naked. Wait." She turned on Yves. "Naked in front of you? You weren't naked, too, right?" Her eyes narrowed and she readied the empty bowl. "Right?" "You'll need some clothes as well, green girl," Yves told her. "We've got to get out of here before anyone can connect us with Bee's disappearance and all this destruction." "If you look up in Bee's bedroom," Ursula said, "you see Dee's bedroom ceiling. It's green, too. And arterial red. Security's not going to call the super; they're going to call the fucking cops." It's Always Time Act 04 Ch. 01 "Worry about it later," Dee insisted. "Yves's right; we've got to go. We've got to go to SRU." Eurydice leapt between the three of them. "How's this?" She reached behind her neck and pulled. An olive, pullover hoodie stretched over her head and down to her waist. Drab, baggy fatigues unrolled over her legs and tucked themselves into green army boots, dark enough to pass for black. Eurydice reached into a pocket of her fatigues and drew out an oversized pair of tea-green, wraparound, Onasis sunglasses. She pushed them over her face, tucking a few stray tentacles into the olive hood. Yves swore and stepped back. Ursula just boggled in silence. Eurydice turned to Dee, one hand on her hip, twirling the plastic bowl with the other. "Well?" "You look like the Unabomber." Dee glanced down. "With a really nice rack." The bowl clomped upside down onto the carpet before Dee's feet. Eurydice hopped atop her makeshift pedestal and bussed his forehead. "I can be anything you want," she said, her kiss on Dee's mouth lingering until Yves cleared his throat, "as long as it's green." Dee looked at her with his inscrutable smile. "You don't remember the food coloring." "Ooh, food coloring?" Eurydice clapped her hands. "Wuzzat?" Yves cleared his throat louder. "The, uh, Unabomber thing will work great at a distance, but up close the clothes look, well, rubbery. That's not the right word. Fluid?" Ursula found her voice. "Cartoon. She looks like a living cartoon." Eurydice turned a sly eye to Dee. "Do I?" Dee placed a hand on her hip. "Yes." Eurydice reached down and slid Dee's hand back from her hip to the seat of her pants. "That's a good thing, isn't it?" "God, yes." Dee pulled her off the pedestal. She squealed into his mouth, her legs kicked up into the air. "God help us," groaned Yves. "They're worse than teenagers." Ursula moved over to Yves. "Give them a minute—we've got a minute, right? Well, give it to them. You didn't see Galatea in full cartoon cosplay mode. It sticks in your head." She shifted her weight. "And other places." "Still," Yves said, "all she needs is one genuine article of clothing and no one other than the cops or campus patrol will look twice. Do you have anything to give her?" Dee murmured into Eurydice's ear and she sighed and giggled quiet replies. Yves felt the urgent need to brush his teeth. "Are you kidding?" Ursula clutched the air before her chest, fingers curved inward. "Dee likes her big and busty, and all she's thinking about is him. Besides, I'm a size 2." "We'll risk it, then," Yves decided. "But no food coloring or we'll have to hose Dee down." He raised his voice. "Guys, I'm going to my apartment to get Dee something to wear. You need to stay here, it's the most isolated place in the building and everyone's heading off to work now. Hopefully. Ursula, unless you need anything from your apartment, you should stay with them." "I'd really like to change," Ursula said, "and if you want me to find Galatea, I'm going to need a few minutes to prepare the divination." Eurydice sprang out of Dee's arms. "Wait. What?" "You can find Galatea?" Dee asked. Yves dropped a hand on her shoulder but Ursula shrugged it off. "Sure," she said. "Galatea established a sympathetic connection with me when she, ah, used the soap I made you." "A sympathetic connection," Dee repeated, uncomprehending, while Eurydice said, "You made him soap?" "At the trace stage of saponification process," Ursula explained, "I add an extra series of distilled oils and herbal essences—not that shampoo bullshit, the real thing, camphor basil, Jupiter's Beard, myrrh oil—anyway, a series of oils and essences that resonate with my nativity." She glanced around. "None of you understood a word I just said, did you?" "Translation, please," Yves said. "Let me revel in the moment for a second." Ursula bopped back and forth, humming. "It's wonderful to be on this side of a conversation for once. Okay. I gave Dee some soap. The soap has a magic tracer in it. Galatea ate it. I can use magic to trace her. I'm an apothecary, a pharmaceutria, a 'sorceress'," she said, enunciating each syllable and drawing out each sibilant, as if tasting the word for the first time. She threw her hands in the air. "I'm a witch!" She stood in silence, arms high. "Oh," said Dee. Eurydice shrugged. "Meh." "I'm going upstairs," Yves said. "Fuck you," Ursula said, arms dropping. "Fuck you all." * * * "And then Dee said, 'Ready?'" Eurydice recalled. Yves' Jeep bounced over a deep pothole and it took a few moments for the green girl in the backseat to regain her composure. "And then," she said, sunglasses and mouth settling into their proper places and proportions, "it was like giving birth and being born at the same time. He tore me apart. He tore me open. He tore me free. He burned away all the nanomek that I couldn't control, anything that fought back." She blushed black, the flush spreading through the substance of her sunglasses and hoodie. "I gain nanomek by making Dee cum, but I burn nanomek whenever he makes me cum. Everything I do costs me nanomek, but an orgasm costs the most. I don't remember telling him that, but he must have figured it out, because…because he ripped and shredded and fucked me into pieces. The pain was worse than anything I'd ever experienced but I kept cumming and cumming, harder and faster and, God, stronger than anything I've known, than anything any of us have ever imagined in all our thousands of years. It was awful. It was terrific. It was …" "Sublime," Yves croaked from the driver's seat. "I was wrong. I thought you were sublimating him. I thought you, Dee," he said, turning to Dee in the passenger seat, "had planned to sublime into Galatea in order to bring her back. But I was wrong, wasn't I?" Dee stared at him but said nothing. "When you kicked me out of the bathroom, you already knew. To get Galatea back, you would have to sublimate her." Eurydice muffled a gasp with the palm of her hand. "Oh, Dee, is that true? Was that sublimation? Was that what subliming feels like?" Dee twisted in the passenger seat to treat her to his inscrutable smile. "It's a good description of what I've been through a few times, yeah, but I've never gone as far as you did." Ursula, her eyes shut tight, her voice drifting in from some other world, said, "Two miles to the north, two to the east, one behind the Sun." She shifted in the back seat next to Eurydice. "But don't worry about that last one." Eurydice's voice barely rose above the rumbling of the road and the Jeep's engine. "All these years. All those men. I don't really remember, I mean, it wasn't really me, but…" She held her head in her hands. "There are echoes of them all in my head." "Don't feel guilty," Yves told her. He tapped the touch-screen of his GPS navigation gadget. "It's what they wanted." Eurydice pulled the sunglasses away from her teary eyes. "What?" "Make a right at next traffic light onto Campion Street, then proceed two point oh three miles," said the clipped, synthetic voice of the GPS. "Yves is right," Dee said. "You never forced me to do anything, not really. I bet no lime meliae ever forced sublimation onto anyone, either." Eurydice shook her head hard enough to sprinkle Ursula and the window with tear drops. "The Demonic Fifteen Point—" Dee bent backwards to grab her hand. "I loved it." Eurydice stared at his hand wrapped around hers. "I never said 'No'," Dee said. "Believe me, I know how to say 'No'. You may not remember, but I've said 'No' to you a few times. And 'Pygmalion,' too." Eurydice opened her mouth to speak but Ursula shouted, "Stop the car!" Yves swore, hit the brakes, and wrestled the Jeep to the side of the road. "You're worse than this thing," he said, jabbing the GPS. Ursula turned her head this way and that, eyes shut and lips parted, as if sampling the air. "Galatea's a few hundred yards to the right of us." She opened her eyes and squinted out the plastic window. "We're on fraternity row?" Yves called up a map on the GPS screen. "The next right turn doubles back into a cul-de-sac. We've found her." Eurydice shrank into the back seat. "Galatea?" "And Cherry Cupcake," Yves said, "If we're still assuming she's got Galatea imprisoned somehow." Dee nodded. "I'm shooting for the Disney lovey-dovey ending: free the enchanted princess." He saw Yves' expression and smiled. "I'll explain later. Listen, should we leave the car here and sneak up?" "I wouldn't," Yves said. "In case we need to cut and run." Dee frowned. "I don't want Cherry Cupcake hurting anyone else. Maybe I should go alone." Eurydice cried out, "No!" Yves growled, "No fucking way." "I slept with Galatea," Ursula said. Eurydice glanced up, agog, before creasing her brow. "Yeahbuhwha'?" Ursula's mouth worked wordlessly as Dee leaned further into the back of the Jeep. She gawked back at him, transfixed and aghast. Yves worked the gearshift, speaking as fast as he could. "I have an idea—let's circle the block once and—say, when was the last time you ate—I'm starved and I think I saw a Waffle Shack around here somewhere—" "I know," Dee said. He twisted sideways and engaged the emergency brake. His gaze did not leave Ursula's shocked face. Yves flinched but relaxed when the brake handle did not snap off in Dee's hand. "You know…where the Waffle Shack is?" Dee ignored him. "I know," he told Ursula again. Ursula swallowed. "What?" "How?" Yves asked. Eurydice sized Ursula up, a petite moppet in a black poncho, distressed jeans, and Doc Martins. Plaited ponytails tied up with white-lace ribbons arced away from her head and into the foot well. "I fucked the loli-goth?" "I'm twenty-two," Ursula murmured. "How did you know?" Yves demanded, pushing the gearshift forward into park. "Still," Eurydice said, eyeing Ursula up and down. "You're really not my type, no offense, but…" Ursula folded up one side of the poncho and held a bare, porcelain-white forearm under Eurydice's nose. "Oh," Eurydice breathed, mouth watering. Dee turned to Yves. "What color are Ursula's eyes?" "Oh. Um." Eurydice's eye's crossed. She brought her mouth within an inch of Ursula's flesh. "Oh." "Green," Yves said without looking. "Darkling green," Dee agreed. "Emerald on black velvet." Ursula blinked, pulling her arm back. Eurydice's lips smacked together over empty air. "But…" Ursula began. "They're usually hazel," Dee finished. He broke the sun visor off the windshield, flipped its flap open to reveal an oblong mirror, and passed it back. "They were last week, at least." Ursula snatched the visor out of his hands, scrabbled the eyeglasses off her face, and glared at the mirror, eyes wide. "Holy shit." Eurydice leveled a suspicious finger at Ursula. "She smells just like you, Dee. Except, you know, girly." Yves shook his head. "You're paying for that mirror, Dee. How did you notice something like that when I didn't?" "Give me some credit, Yves." Dee rolled his eyes and settled back into his seat. "It's an easy mistake to make, the two of you have hardly spoken before today, and I've got a thing for girls' eyes." Eurydice grinned. "He does, you know," she sighed. "Listen," Ursula said, her glasses slipping in her shaking fingers as she pushed the red frames over her face, "I didn't mean to tell you. I mean, I wanted to tell you, but telling you now would've been insanely stupid." Yves nodded. "It was." "Fuck you." Ursula flipped Yves off. "Dee, listen, maybe it was the divination trance. I've been concentrating on my memories of Galatea and they're pretty, uh, specific. Anyway, the words just popped out. I'm sorry." "You have nanomek in you," Dee said, not turning around, "Galatea's nanomek." "Dee, I'm really sorry." "You don't understand. I'm not jealous at all. That's not the point. You have Galatea's nanomek inside you." He turned around again. "Eurydice?" Eurydice squinted, looking deep into Ursula's eyes. "Yeah," Eurydice agreed, "she's been royally mindfucked, alright. It's amazing she isn't a zombie." Eurydice straightened Ursula's glasses. "You've got some serious firepower between your ears, sister." Yves sat bolt upright. "Oh, crap, I get it now." "That's not all she's got between her ears," Dee said, grinning like an idiot. The Goth and the green girl crinkled their brows in confusion and chorused, "What?" Yves met Eurydice's gaze in the rearview mirror. "Dee wants you to re-assimilate with Ursula's nanomek, Eurydice." Eurydice blanched a pale celadon. "You know what I'd have to do to go in and, uh, get it, right?" Dee's grin puckered into a smirk. "You've done it before, apparently." "Whoa, whoa!" Ursula waggled her hands, pressing herself up against the window. "I'm not ready for Lesson Six." Eurydice locked onto Yves' reflection in the rearview mirror. Yves read her silent, abject plea, nodded, and tapped Dee on the shoulder. "You know, Dee, you're acting awfully cruel for someone who says he isn't jealous." Dee's smile vanished. "What?" "I'll do it," Eurydice muttered, downcast, "if you want me too." "You mean you don't want to?" Dee asked, reaching for her. Ursula scooted forward and took his hand instead. "What do you want, Dee?" "A show?" Yves suggested. Dee shook his head. "No." Ursula shrugged. "Revenge?" "No, Jesus, what's with you guys?" Eurydice caressed his arm, bare and cool in Yves' spare muscle shirt. "Then what do you want?" "Damn it," Dee spat. He lurched back into the front seat. "Isn't it obvious? I want you to re-remember what happened, what happened between you and me." He sighed, quiet and sad. "So I can say I'm sorry. I guess that's pretty selfish." Yves hauled the Jeep into gear. "No." He toggled the turn signal. "Wanting her to not remember would be selfish. Wanting her to remember your acting like an idiot, just so you can make it up to her is so hopelessly romantic I think I vomited in my mouth a little." Eurydice slid the sunglasses back on her face in silence. Dee grumbled, "Thanks." "Ignore him, Dee," Ursula said as the Jeep pulled away from the curb. "Besides, the nanomek stuff in me wouldn't help." Eurydice sat up, the oversize sunglasses hiding any emotion. "Really?" Dee toyed with the GPS touch screen, zooming in on the cul-de-sac Yves had flagged as their destination. "Why not?" "Well," Ursula said, "Galatea didn't mention anything about a breakup or even a fight to me. She was just pissed off that you were having sex with her, somewhere else. It didn't make much sense to me then." She glanced at Eurydice, who was watching her with the expressionless cool of reflective lenses. "But it does now. Plus, from what Yves' told me, whatever happened between the two of you happened late last night, after Galatea's visit to my apartment. So I all have inside me is Galatea's memories…of me." Yves made a hard right at the next light. Eurydice rode the Jeep's momentum and sidled over to Ursula, faster than a sidewinder. "Really?" she said again, drawling, one brow arching high above the rims of her sunglasses. Eurydice's breath was warm against Ursula's cheek. "Now that's interesting." Ursula blushed and squirmed away but Eurydice just inched closer and wedged herself against the retreating Goth girl. She finger-walked a jelled hand up Ursula's thigh and wondered, "Did you smell as good then as you do now? Like Dee, but, you know…" Eurydice dipped her head to coo into Ursula's ear, "…girly?" "Dee? Hey, Dee?" Ursula stammered as Eurydice wriggled and giggled against her. "Your Unabomber's sticking her tongue in my ear." Dee turned around. Ursula sat sandwiched between one side of the Jeep and Eurydice's supple gel-flesh. Eurydice clasped one arm around Ursula's back, squeezing the Goth girl in a sideways hug. The green girl's hoodie had grown a zipper while the garment shrank two sizes too small. Dee watched Ursula's shoulder sink into Eurydice's corseted cleavage. The gummy fingers walking up Ursula's thigh flicked at the hem of the poncho and crept under and upward. "Uh, Dee?" Ursula implored while Eurydice tittered, "Ooh, perky." "The safe word is 'Pygmalion'," Dee said, facing forward again. "She knows that already," Yves said, keeping one eye on the road ahead and the other on the GPS readout. "I figured," Dee said, looking back over his shoulder. Ursula's eyeglasses dangled askew on her face. Eurydice nibbled her way down Ursula's jaw line, casting frequent wicked grins in Dee's direction. "You guys okay back there?" "Yeah," Ursula said. Eurydice's arm rippled fluidly under Ursula's poncho and the Goth girl added, "Oh, yeah. Definitely." Eurydice pivoted her head and pouted, "Maybe we should pull over and—" The Jeep rocked to a halt. "We're here. I think," Yves announced. Eurydice whispered, "Dammit." Ursula pushed Eurydice's hands away with a quick kiss. "It will be alright," she whispered back. "Where are we?" she asked, louder, leaning between the two front seats to get a good look. "Oh, you have got to be shitting me." Eurydice peered forward at the imposing, brick building and its columned façade. "What?" "This thing is working fine," Yves said, tapping the GPS. "What about the one inside your head?" Ursula shut her eyes for a second, gasped, and unclosed them again. "Galatea's dead ahead. This is it. She's in there, somewhere." "We're fucked," Dee groused. "What is it?" Eurydice urged. "Research lab? FBI satellite office? Culinary institute?" "Worse," Yves said. Ursula sighed, resigned to doom. "It's the Epsilon Zeta sorority house." Eurydice glanced around the cul-de-sac. The E-Z house grounds were flanked by far less grand, unaffiliated student housing. A sporty, yellow SUV squatted in the U-shaped driveway in front of the E-Z house door. A gravel road branched from the paved driveway to an overcrowded parking lot on the sorority grounds, housing a few dozen more cars. "I don't get it," Eurydice conceded. "E-Z's the biggest sorority in town," Yves said. "Over a hundred active members. Very active, well-funded, and well-to-do." "Very homophobic," Ursula muttered. Eurydice looked quizzical. "The Easies have been drubbing out gay girls for years. Even got a professor fired back in the Sixties. Someone blew the whistle a while back and now, a couple of discrimination suits later…they're just more polite about it." "Okay," Eurydice shrugged, "a bunch of rich, asshole coeds. So? Dee can just punch his way through the walls and…Oh." "Exactly." Dee waved a hand at the sorority house. "I can't get in there, and get out again, without innocent people getting hurt, thanks to my public fuckability." Ursula swallowed a bark of laughter and hiccupped. "Your what?" Dee sunk into his seat. "Public fuckability." Eurydice stretched to glower out the window at the sorority house. "We're using the term 'charism' now, Dee," Yves said, smirking. Ursula could not suppress her giggle fit. "Public fuckability!" Dee twisted in the seat, face burning. "Take the wax out of your ears," he growled, "and see if you're still laughing…little girl." Ursula flinched and Yves cursed and thumped a fist against the steering wheel. "Oh, shit," Dee said, paling. "What happened?" "I don't need to take the wax out," Ursula said, her voice small. "I felt that in my teeth." Yves reached out an open palm. "Pass me the wax." "Jesus, you too?" Dee said, head in hands. "It's getting worse!" "Yes." Yves blinked. "Wait: No. Not like that, anyway. You didn't turn me on. You gave me a migraine." He ran a fingernail down a fault in the driver side window. "And nearly broke the window. I'm pretty sure this crack wasn't here a few minutes ago. Before this is over, we need to get you to SRU and get your charism, kiai, or whatever-it-is, under control." It's Always Time Act 04 Ch. 01 "Yeah." Dee shook out his hair, exhaling. "Yeah. So, anyway, Eurydice, I can't go in there without innocent people getting hurt." Ursula coughed and Dee added, "Innocent of this matter, I mean, and too many people've gotten hurt already. Cherry Cupcake could not have picked a better spot to take Galatea." "If Cherry Cupcake's in there," Yves pointed out. Dee shook his head. "She's definitely in there. I can tell." "How can you tell?" Yves asked. "Are you sure?" ["…Oh, Master. I'm in you now. I'm in you…"] "I don't know," Dee lied. "But I'm sure." Eurydice still glared out the window. "We're being watched." Yves threw the gearshift into reverse but pushed hard on the footbrake. "We’ve got a choice: leave at the first sign of trouble or at the last possible moment. Staying is not an option; we are not ready for a fight." "Leave at the last possible moment," Dee said, "and try to learn as much as we can." He turned around. "Is that okay with you two?" Eurydice nodded. Ursula said, "You can just leave Galatea?" "No," Dee answered, "but if Yves says we're not ready, I believe him. I don't want anyone else getting hurt because of my mistakes." "What about Cherry Cupcake hurting Galatea?" Ursula asked. "She won't do anything to Galatea until after we make our move," Yves said. He sought confirmation in Dee's eyes. Dee nodded, shivered at the memory. ["…You'll never push me away again…"] "She wants my attention," he said. "She wants me thinking about her all the time. Right now, we've got no plan and little information. Charging in blind would mean I'm not taking her seriously, and that would put Galatea in real danger. Plus, the parking lot is full, so I can't go in there without being buried in Easies. Eurydice, what are you smiling about?" "I'm thinking of you fucking your way out of a mob of frenzy-sisters." Her teeth were daggered. "It's an interesting mental image. I bet you could do it." Eurydice sat up and pulled the sunglasses off her face. "Orpheus couldn't handle it, they fucked him apart instead, but you'd get through, Dee…Ursula, you okay?" Ursula groaned, clutching the sides of her head. "My worldview hurts." "We've got company," Yves said, his hands worrying the steering wheel. The three passengers followed his gaze. The heavy front door to the sorority house bumped open and a tall coed in ragged jean shorts and a white tee-shirt shuffled through. Her hair was a bird's nest of red tangles. "That's the worst case of bed-head I've ever seen," Yves said as the newcomer stumbled down the porch steps. A brunette coed in the same outfit tottered out of the building behind her and Yves quipped, "Okay, second worst." A blonde carrying a plastic bucket followed, fumbling the door closed behind her. "Christ, it's a makeover emergency." The trio bumbled around the yellow SUV. The blonde upended the bucket and a flurry of towels fell onto the driveway. The brunette pulled one end of a garden house from the shrubbery and blasted the SUV with a jet of water. Her aim was unsure and wild. She stood with the hose shooting water straight up into the air as her friends divvied up the towels. Water splashed down over everything. Ursula kneeled in between the front seats of the Jeep, squinting. "Are they stoned?" "I know them," Dee said, and as soon as he spoke the trio of coeds turned to face the Jeep, their motions fluid and synchronized. The brunette kept the hose firing into the sky. The trio was sopping wet in moments, their shirts slick and translucent. The redhead pulled a bottle out of her shorts and squirted its contents into the bucket. "There's no fucking way they heard you from there," Yves hissed. "They couldn't, all by themselves," Eurydice murmured, "but maybe someone else is helping them." "I'd vote for the blonde in a wet tee-shirt contest," Ursula said. "Just look at those. Damn, I can see her nipples from here…What?" She poked Dee in the shoulder. "C'mon, back me up on this." "What the Hell is going on?" Dee asked her. The three coeds triangulated their attention to the front passenger seat of the Jeep. "Not another word, Dee," Yves said. The brunette brought the hose down, training its spray at the bucket. The jet of water caught the redhead in the ear as it arced downward. Her hair flew wild. She did not flinch or move an inch. Ursula swore. Dee opened his mouth but Yves punched him in the arm. "Shut up, Dee," Yves barked. "They're putting on a show, trying to get you to…" Yves' eyes watered. "Ow, Jesus, ow." Yves cradled his right hand in his left, massaging his knuckles gingerly. "It's like punching a brick wall." "Marble," Ursula corrected. She poked Dee's shoulder again. "His skin gives." Dee turned and made a sour face at her but she ignored him, exploring the hollow of his collarbone instead. Her fingers worked under the narrow strap of the muscle shirt. "His skin gives as you'd expect but the musculature underneath is marble." Dee grumbled and folded his arms. Ursula gasped as his shoulder flexed beneath her palm. "Stone sliding against stone," Ursula stuttered, voice hushed. "Polished granite or greased marble…" Eurydice cleared her throat in the sudden, icicled silence. Ursula withdrew into the back seat. "Look," she told Eurydice, "I'm gay, but I'm not dead. I can see the attraction of that sort of thing but I don't want it." Dee grimaced and rooted around the Jeep's glove compartment. Ursula pointed out the window to the driveway where the coeds, their expressions cockeyed but otherwise blank, were busy soaping up their SUV and each other with sudsy towels. "I'm much more interested in the Night of the Living Coed Carwash going on out there." "They've been 'mindfucked,' right?" Yves asked. "Cherry Cupcake's gotten into them. How much nanomek does that cost?" Dee found a pen and waved it around in silent triumph before diving back into the glove compartment. "It depends on what you want to do," Eurydice explained. "Opening someone to suggestion costs just a little, enthralling someone takes a little bit more plus a really good, hard screw, but remote control zombies? A metric fuckton. What's Dee doing?" Dee scribbled with his pen on the back of an old gas station receipt. "It looks like he's trying to tell us something. What is it, solid boy?" Dee shoved the receipt in Eurydice's face. She read the back of the piece of paper, and passed it to Ursula in stunned silence. "'Don't objectify me'," Ursula read as Eurydice burst into giggles. Eurydice made little, happy snerk! noises. "You left out the three exclamation points." Ursula peered up at Dee's silent, wounded-puppy expression. Her chin trembled, lips working to hold back laughter. "I'm s-sorry, Dee. But…" She held up the little slip of paper. "But this is just so cute." Eurydice plopped sideways into Ursula's lap, hooting. Ursula's composure cracked and she laughed right into Dee's face. "So zombifying three girls would take a shit-load of nanomek," Yves said. He eyed the sorority house. "Yeah," Eurydice chuckled, her head propped on Ursula's knees. "How about three dozen?" Yves asked, his voice cool and steady. Ursula looked up and out. Her mirth died in her throat. Dee turned to sit face forward, moaned in wordless dejection, and hid his head in his hands. Eurydice rolled upright and yelped. "Gah! Where the fuck did they come from?" The sorority house porch was packed with girls. The crowd spilled down the porch steps and ringed the horseshoe driveway, evenly spaced as if posed for a yearbook photograph, with the original trio, dripping and foamy, serving as a vanguard. The sisters of Epsilon Zeta stood at attention in various clubbing outfits, curve-hugging bellyshirts, and low-rise jeans, all staring at the passenger side of the Jeep with the blank, empty intensity of a camera lens. "Holy shit," Eurydice said after she took the whole scene in, "that's a lot of skank-bots." "There are probably several dozen more," Yves said, scanning the building's windows for other signs of life. "Reserves. These are just the ones Cherry Cupcake thinks will make the biggest impression on Dee. I mean, look at them. They could all be featured in a Girls Gone Wild video." "They're just standing there, waiting," Ursula said, eyes wide. "And everything's so quiet. I feel like we're in a Hitchcock movie." "There's just one thing I don't get," Yves said, scratching his smooth chin. "Just one?" Ursula cried. Yves pondered aloud. "Cherry Cupcake's blown so much nanomek without attacking, without even making an appearance. She's just being cute—well, psycho-bitch cute—playing around. But she knows she's going to need even more nanomek if she and Dee face off again, and that's what she wants most of all: Dee versus Cherry Cupcake, round two." "Electric boogaloo," Eurydice mumbled. Dee scrabbled about, gathering more receipts. "I hate it when he does this," Ursula told Eurydice. "Get to the point, Yves." "Where's she planning to get it all?" Yves said. "How? Jump the mailman? Send her skank-bots to knock over a fertility clinic?" Dee wrote with stabbing furious strokes on a receipt. He gave the message to Yves who read it and passed it around. PARTY "She had a party," Yves said, dubious. Dee threw another receipt at Yves. TONIGHT "She's going to have a party," Ursula said, uncomprehending. "Oh, for God's sake," Dee spat, making everyone in the Jeep jump. The mob of girls pitched forward with every word. "I met those Easies yesterday and they said that they were holding a big party Friday night, and that's tonight—" Eurydice's arm shot forward, stretching across the length of the Jeep's cabin. Her hand clamped down over Dee's mouth. "That's enough, dear. Cherry Cupcake knows that you know that she knows about the party now. Please stop making the zombie horde horny." The sidewalk fronting the sorority house lawn swarmed with coeds. The vanguard trio and a half-dozen other girls perched on the curb. The redhead ran her tongue over her teeth. A blob of soap suds fell from her chin onto the hood of the Jeep. "Do you have the air condition vents open, Yves?" Ursula asked. A girl in pink hot pants panted great wet gulps of air by Ursula's window. Yves checked the dashboard dials. "Yes." A spreading patch of moisture darkened the crotch of the pink pants outside her window as Ursula said, "Would you set the AC to recirculation, please." "Yeah," Eurydice piped up, her head bobbing in time with the blonde coed's heaving, tee-shirt plastered chest, "or in about 30 seconds this whole car is going to reek of skank-bot pussy and…" Her brow crinkled in confusion. "…Tollhouse cookies?" Yves slammed the vent toggle shut and turned the air conditioner on full blast. "This feels like the last possible moment to me," Ursula said, checking her seat belt. Dee shook his head and passed around another note. MONOLOGUE "What the heck does that mean?" Eurydice asked. Yves tried to scope out the sorority house through the throng of coeds. "We're waiting for Cherry Cupcake to make her appearance and gloat. Hopefully she'll tell us her grand plan or something." "That doesn't happen in real life," Ursula insisted. "No," Yves replied, "but Cherry Cupcake isn't a real person." Eurydice kicked the back of the driver seat. "Watch it, samurai." "Not like that," Yves told her via her grumpy reflection in the rear view mirror. "I mean she's detached from reality. She doesn't want real life, she wants the story. What about you, Eurydice?" Eurydice said nothing and Dee wrote a new note. WTF? "Later, Dee," Eurydice whispered. "I promise. At least until after the psycho ex-girlfriend gives her monologue." A winged shadow passed over the Jeep. Eurydice eyed the sky. "And here she comes, flying in right on schedule." Yves blanched. "Oh, fuck." "Wha—" Eurydice started, but leapt out of her seat as Dee cried, "Go!" There was a knocking clamor of a dozen pairs of hands slapping against the Jeep as the mass of coeds surged forward. Dee exchanged a nod with Yves, then punched out the passenger window with an almost effortless backhanded swing. "What the Hell?" Ursula cried. A multitude of hands pushed their way into the Jeep, heedless of the broken glass, to tug at Dee's collar, yank on his hair, and feel up his pectorals. "We're getting out of here," Yves announced. Dee leaned out through the window. Arms scrambled over his shoulders, urging him farther out. The redhead's lips descended over Dee's mouth with a vacant but bottomless hunger. Eurydice panicked as the thumping and drumming of arms and bodies against the Jeep grew louder and harder. "Oh my God, ohmygod." Yves jammed two gobs of beeswax into his ears. "Now." Dee broke the zombie kiss, turned his head and shouted. "Get off." A guttural groan resounded from many throats. The redhead's eyes rolled over white. She fell backward a few paces before she toppled over. All around the Jeep, girls followed suit, zombies attempting to tap-dance and landing on their asses. Dee craned his neck. "You've got a path. No idea how long it'll last." Yves took his foot off the brake and the Jeep rolled backward as Dee shouted directions. "Keep it straight, keep it straight. Okay, clear, turn around." The Jeep performed a quick K-turn in the mouth of the cul-de-sac. "Now floor it!" Eurydice trembled and shook. "What. Why. What." "Next time you two boys plan an escape," Ursula said as the Jeep sped down the side-road, "you damn well better let us in on it." Dee buckled himself in. "It's not over. Left, go left. We need to head for the highway, south." Yves ran a red light. "What happened to staying for the monologue?" Eurydice demanded. "There wasn't going to be one," Dee said. He kept watching the skies. "This isn't her style, but I guess she wanted to surprise us, instead." "But Cherry Cupcake…" "Weighs in at over three hundred pounds of cherry-chocolate flavored wet cement," Yves interrupted. "There's no way she can fly with those wings. She can only fall with style." "So it wasn't Cherry Cupcake," Dee said, "but something else." The shadow fell over the Jeep again. "Drive faster, Yves." * * * My heart had a problem, in the early hours, So I stopped it dead for a beat or two. But I cut some cord, and I shouldn't've done that, And it won't forgive me after all these years. So I sent it to a place in the middle of nowhere With a big black horse and a cherry tree. Now it won't come back, 'cause it's oh so happy, And now I've got a hole for the world to see. —KT Tunstall, Black Horse and the Cherry Tree * * * It's Always Time Act 04 Ch. 02 Act Four: Food for Thought Chapter Two: Take Me Down Author's note: This chapter uses some unconventional formatting for some rather unconventional dialog. * * * * The bronze bell above the glass door jangled and tolled. The door remained unmoved. The rose girl watched the bell jounce about. "Someone's coming." Tomoe did not look up from the fat Sudoku puzzle book. "Mm." Her pencil skittered across the open page. The rose girl sighed and hopped off the countertop. As she padded barefoot up to the front door, a copper-colored, one-piece dress sprouted out from her waist to clothe her translucent, cut-crystal flesh. The bell jerked around like a jumping bean. She smoothed out the oblong lump between her legs, swung the door wide, and stood in the threshold. She surveyed the empty parking lot. "They're a long way off. An hour, maybe?" The bell continued to clatter above her head. "This damn thing won't shut up." "Yeah, yeah." Tomoe flipped the page. She harrumphed at the next grid of math puzzles, chewed on the pencil, then shrugged and started to fill in the empty boxes. "Piece of cake." "So?" The rose girl turned about face. "Who is it?" "Whoever it is," Tomoe said, "they're going to have to wait." "Why?" Tomoe wagged her hand over the puzzle book. "I'm not finished yet." She made a fist and bonked herself lightly on the head. "Duh!" The rose girl stepped back into the store. The bell rang louder while the door closed. She tiptoed over to the counter, the bell chattering in the background. "Why do you still keep secrets from me, lovey?" she asked, sifting Tomoe's shining black hair through fingers of polished rose quartz. Still writing with one hand, Tomoe reached up with the other and pulled the rose girl's palm against her cheek. "SB, do you want to be my partner, my darling, my cheeseburger?" Their eyes met. "Or my familiar, my slave?" "I felt like a slave last night, cleaning and dragging those stupid dumpsters around." Tomoe gave the rose girl's hand a friendly but firm squeeze. "Seriously, now: slave or cheeseburger?" The rose girl's smile was full of diamonds. "I want to be your cheeseburger, T, whatever that means. Unless I can be your slave and still get on top, that'd be kind of hot." Tomoe returned to her book. "Then let me have my secrets. That way you can get miffed at me, like you are now." She tilted forward, gathered a handful of the silk of the coppery dress, and squeezed it around the lump in the rose girl's crotch in long, unhurried strokes. "And I can make it up to you." * * * * "Take the next exit," Dee said, collecting shards of glass from the window frame into a plastic pouch he had found in the Jeep's glove compartment. Yves surveyed the empty stretches of overgrown lots on either side of the elevated highway. "We're in the middle of fucking nowhere." "This is it," Dee insisted, "I'm certain." "That's not what I'm worried about," Yves said. The Jeep careened through the tight curve of the exit ramp. Ursula sat on her knees, ass-backward on the backseat, keeping watch out the rear window. "I haven't seen anything for at least twenty minutes now." "Of course," Eurydice added, contemplating Ursula's jean-wrapped rear-end, "we don't know what we're looking for." "Right at the end of the ramp," Dee told Yves. "Go under the overpass. Maybe we lost it." The Jeep emerged from beneath the overpass, roaring down the grayed pavement of the back road. In the side mirror, Yves watched the shadow beneath the arch of the overpass seem to peel away from the cement and swoop into the air. "Unless," he sighed, stomping on the accelerator pedal, "it's smart enough to ambush us when we do something cosmically stupid like getting off the highway in the middle of fucking—" The rear window flashed black. Ursula shrieked and ducked but the fluttering darkness swooped up and out of sight. The wind whistled through the broken passenger-side window. Ursula spun around, frantic, latching her seatbelt in place. Yves, Dee, and Eurydice looked at one another. The obsidian girl touched down onto the hood. She made no sound. She crouched before the windshield, arms splayed, the manifold curvature of her wings flared out wide on either side, blocking any view of the road ahead. She shone in the cloudless, morning sunlight, a living architecture of blackest volcanic glass. Dee and Yves' awestruck expressions were reflected back at them in the featureless, glossy tar oval of her face. Yves recovered, found his center, and hammered down on the brake. The obsidian girl bled off the excess momentum into her wings, letting them unfold behind her in topologies that confused the eye. The Jeep's tires squealed and burned in the sudden deceleration but the obsidian girl perched unfazed on the hood. She waggled her pointer finger from side to side in a metronomic rhythm. The speedometer's needle dropped below the fifty miles per hour mark and Dee popped open the passenger door. "Get them out of here," he said, and rolled out of the car. Eurydice screamed his name. The speedometer needle hit the thirty miles per hour mark. Dee hit the pavement elbow-first. The asphalt cracked and burst and bounced him a foot back up into the air. The obsidian girl punched her knuckles against the hood and swung after him, wings rippling behind her in billows of ebony ink. Eurydice snarled, "He's mine, you fucking gimp," and sprung out the still-open door, a bounding wildcat. The speedometer needle fell under ten miles per hour. Ursula rebounded off her seatbelt. A swinging braid knocked her glasses clean off her face. "Um. What the Hell just happened?" The passenger-side door fell off. "I'm getting you out of here," Yves said. The rear tire kicked against the fallen door as the Jeep pulled away. "No, you're not." Ursula fumbled her glasses back onto her face. "But, uh, we're getting out of this car. Right now." Yves glanced into the rearview mirror. Ursula nodded her head toward the rear side window. A little gush of viscid, lavender fluid ran down from the roof like spilt shampoo. "Yeah, I guess we'd better." Yves pulled the Jeep over to the curb, wincing at how false his nonchalance sounded to his own ears. A fount of creamy champagne poured over the lip of the Jeep's canvas top through the gaping hole left by the lost door. A confusion of golden hues—marigold, saffron, school-bus yellow—filled the passenger-side front seat. The air inside the car grew heady with the dizzying bouquet of caramel and melted creamsicle. The storm of melted sherbet made little sound, just a satiny susurrus, as more and more of the lush stuff piled into the bucket seat, drew itself up, and filled itself out and then further out. "You can't leave yet, honey" purred the plump amber woman, "I haven't even started to sing." * * * * Eurydice bounded onto the pavement with arms outstretched and her back arched high. She brought her legs down with her knees bent the wrong way. Only wrong if you plan on being a biped, she thought, running with a sinewy, feline gate. Ahead of her, Dee skimmed the road as he tumbled, the asphalt rumpling beneath him like the surface of a lake under a skipping stone. Solid boy's giving the road a case of road-rash. Despite Eurydice's cheetah speed, the obsidian girl's powerhouse wings won the race. For a few seconds Dee and the obsidian girl danced in a horizontal, martial ballet, Dee feinting even as he fell. The obsidian girl played the game just as well, counter-feinting with scissor kicks and dancing pseudopodia, and Dee disappeared down a funnel of enfolding wings. A host of clashing emotions welled up in Eurydice's jumbled mind-web: panic, fear, fear for Dee, fury--jealousy. This is jealousy, she realized, watching the obsidian girl cocoon Dee until the two of them rolled over the road like a giant, licorice jelly bean. Why am I jealous? She's trying to kill him! The black ovoid rocked as it slowed. Isn't she? Eurydice slid to halt on all fours as the ovoid cracked open. Layers of liquid black wing peeled away and Dee struggled to his feet. He bucked and flexed, trying every goojitsu trick Eurydice knew, and then a few she did not know, to shake his opponent loose. The obsidian girl clung to him, head buried in his chest, her arms hooked under his in a desperate but chaste hug. Dee flushed and floundered in the obsidian girl's embrace. "Gerroff me!" * * * * A wicked, single-edge blade appeared in Yves' hand in the time it took Ursula to blink. She had learned enough about her upstairs neighbor these past few hours to know he had his own brand of macho bullshit—Yves will never back down when he's afraid—and now she watched it kick into gear as he raised the weapon high. In her peripheral vision, a second trickle of translucent purplish goo seeped down the side window. The amber woman raised her pudgy, open hands close to her head at a "raise-the-roof!" angle. She had a stout neck and a roll of double chin that wobbled as she chuckled, "Whoa, cowboy." Ursula could not place the drawn-out twang in the amber woman's accent. Boston? Virginia? New York? "Does this look like a combat chassis to you?" The amber woman primped her coiffure, a lick of golden pudding plastered atop her head. Her hip spilled over the bucket seat and smothered the emergency brake and gear shift. "Besides," she said, "you'd get a lot further with an ice-cream scoop than that knife." The surface of her substance was mellow yellow and satiny, like whipped frosting, with no elastic tension to hold her together. She churned perpetually, inside and out, in a constant, slow boil of luscious mush. "I'm not a stick of butter, I'm buttercream." Yves lowered the blade but kept it ready at his side. "I don't think I can take much more of this kind of thing." A purple glaze shellacked the window to Ursula's side. "We've got another guest on the roof, Yves," Ursula said. A muffled but acid voice razzed down from above the Jeep's canvas top. "Put a cork in your cakehole, you cunt, or you'll ruin my entrance." "You've done that all by yourself, honey," the amber woman sighed. "The things that come out of your mouth are positively criminal." "Got that right, fatso," said the voice. The purple glop gumming the window slurped up and out of sight. "Things should be coming in my mouth." The amber woman treated Ursula to a conspiratorial wink of a canary diamond eye. "I spoon feed her straight lines out of charity." Her face was wide but regal and carved from lemon meringue. "Poor girl wouldn't notice a double entendre if it came with cherry on top." An elfin, lavender face popped into view, upside down, in Yves' window. "I don't get it." Her hair tumbled around her head, an unruly mass of pale orchid petals. She shouted at Yves through the glass. "Hi! Wanna fuck?" Yves reddened and spluttered. Before he could recover, the amber girl came to his rescue. "No, honey," she said, sizing Yves up like a piece of meat. "This tall drink of water is a man's man." "Well, fuck me gently with a chain saw," the lavender girl said. "No wonder that Black Cherry twat is out of her gourd. 'Master' is gay." She spat the word "master" as if it were the crudest, most vile thing she could ever think to say. "I'm not Dee," Yves said. The lavender girl crooked her upside-down head to eye the back seat, captivating Ursula with her inhuman, ethereal beauty until she opened her mouth. "Who's the dinky-dyke?" "I came with the car," Ursula grouched. "Hey, me too," the lavender girl said, slopping down onto the pavement in a spray of indigo. "But only when your nancy chauffeur drove above sixty." She stood, tall and haughty and nude, the lips of her pouty sex peeking out from a frill of orchid petals in her cleft just as the tapered tips of her ears poked from her dryad's mane. Ursula thought the lavender girl looked the part of the honey nymph more than Eurydice or even Galatea. I could fall in love with something like that, Ursula realized, tracing the lines of the lavender girl's classical figure, if she'd only stay quiet. The lavender girl looked around and did a quick double take. No, no. Her mouth gaped open. Not yet. Her vulgar purple nipples hardened into cherry-pits. Hush, now, and let me drink you in. Dew dampened the insides of her thighs. Let me memorize.... "Oh, sweet merciful mother of fuck," the lavender girl marveled as Dee approached. "I'm creaming in my jeans." Damn. The amber woman shifted in the front seat as Dee drew near. "Oh my, now that is emotion in motion." Ursula strained to see. Dee steamrolled toward the Jeep, falling into his unstoppable, predatory march. Ursula felt a flutter deep within her. It was a visceral but not a truly sexual thrill, like riding the crest of a rollercoaster. She remembered feeling it once before, when Dee emerged with Eurydice in his arms, and a small spark of it even earlier, when he had set up her computer. "Can you get her to let go of me?" Dee asked the lavender girl. "I'm fine, really." The obsidian girl, her geodesic wings compactly folded against her shoulders, stood on Dee's feet with her hands latched onto his back. I used to dance with my father just like that, Ursula remembered, and the recollection somehow shocked her. The amber woman slipped sideways out of the car, legs oozing down and taking shape as she rolled. She moved by relaxing and letting her bulk fill the space of her destination. Like an amoeba, she simply grew in the direction she wanted to go, lending her an alien but smooth and mesmerizing grace. "Ask her yourself, honey," the amber woman told Dee. "Or better yet, say you're sorry. You were the one who took one look at her and jumped from a moving car." "He thought he was protecting his friends from her," Eurydice said, padding on all fours around Dee from behind, a jade sphinx with Medusa's hairdo. "From you." Eurydice's appearance woke the lavender girl out of her horny reverie. "Jesus Christ, it's a lime, get in the car!" The lavender girl vaulted over the Jeep's hood, one cheek of her perfect ass squeaking on the silver metal, planting herself between Eurydice and the amber woman, arms upraised like a traffic cop's. "Get the fuck back into the fucking car, CeeCee," she hissed to the amber girl before turning to Eurydice. "Look, limey, we didn't come here looking for a catfight." Ursula pushed the passenger seat forward. She nodded to Yves and clambered out of the Jeep. Yves hopped out the driver's side door, putting the car in park but leaving the engine running. "We figured you weren't gunning for a fight when little Miss Midnight here tried to save my life," Dee said, patting the obsidian girl on her featureless pate. She snuggled in even closer. "Now how do I get her off?" Eurydice flashed him a leonine glare and he mutterred, "Um, wow, that didn't come out right..." "Quiet, you," Eurydice huffed. She pawed a hole Dee left in the pavement and turned back to the lavender girl. "So, whose side are you on, then?" "Ours," said the amber woman, CeeCee. "Not hers," the lavender girl added sourly. The obsidian girl snuggled. "I'm confused," Ursula said, maneuvering around the amber woman with the curves of pin-up girl from the Forties but the girth of a professional football linebacker. The obsidian girl prised her head away from Dee's chest and pivoted her shoulders in Ursula's direction. Ursula looked into the obsidian girl's blank face and saw only her own convex reflection gazing back at her, as if the obsidian girl had put on an Ursula mask. "I'm confused," she repeated, unsettled. "'Her' who? I'm having pronoun trouble." Yves answered her. "Cherry Cupcake." He worked his knife into a pouch below the armpit of his undershirt. "She made you?" "Black Cherry made her," CeeCee said, gesturing to the obsidian girl. The lavender girl reached back to wrap a protective arm around CeeCee. It sank into the rich batter of CeeCee's shoulders. "The psycho-twat made Eddie make us. Oops, shit, I'm stuck in you again." "What can I say, honey," CeeCee cooed as the currents of velvet-soft flesh dragged the lavender girl closer and deeper into CeeCee's side, "we go together well." The obsidian girl stepped down and away from Dee. She still wore Ursula's face but did not say a word. Not counting the wings, Ursula thought, she's no taller than I am. Why is she staring at me? Wait, that's just my reflection, which means I'm the one staring at her. Oh, great, now I can see myself blushing. Yves sidled in front of the Jeep, never turning his back to the group of goo girls. "I don't understand. Who's Eddie?" The lavender girl's arm sucked into CeeCee's side until the two goo girls stood shoulder to shoulder. "Your tits are even softer on the inside," the lavender girl told CeeCee. "What does this feel like?" The lavender girl rolled her shoulder, tongue peeking out between her teeth. She gave a little yelp and squished into CeeCee, head-to-toe. The obsidian girl skipped forward. Ursula backpedaled, keeping a few paces away. The obsidian girl flourished a wing, and Ursula could not help but follow its tip with her eyes as it traced over trim, inky black flesh, the long line of a willowy neck to narrow shoulders to budding breasts to a flat tummy to—Snap! Snap! The obsidian girl's fingers snapped together, loud as pistol shots. Ursula dragged her eyes back up into the obsidian girl's face, the Ursula-mask face. Licks of sunny yellow crawled over lavender hips. "It feels so good," CeeCee said, "you'd better pull out or you're coming in." "All the way?" the lavender girl asked, watching a creamy tendril swirl between her breasts. "Mm-hm." "Again?" "Mm-hm." "Hm," the lavender girl hummed. She glanced at their audience. Yves, Dee, and Eurydice seemed struck dumb by the display of the golden web spinning across her body, coiling around her nipples and vanishing into the cleft of her sex. "What about—Ooh!—saving the world?" The obsidian girl inched forward. Ursula's blush deepened but she stood her ground. A gentle wave rippled up from the obsidian girl's neck and her face dusked into a matte black. The Ursula-mask vanished. Yes, Ursula thought as the obsidian girl's wings excited the air, I'm still staring. The obsidian girl held a hand out for her. I'm staring at you, not the me-in-you. Ursula tentatively reached for those smooth, conical fingers. I want to touch you, not the me-in-you. "That was short, dark, and creepy's idea," CeeCee said. "But it looks like she's found something else to think about now." "Wait." Ursula spun around. "What? Saving the world?" In her peripheral vision, Ursula saw the obsidian girl smack herself in the forehead and stalk away. "The world needs saving?" "Break it up," Eurydice snarled, "and make with the exposition." CeeCee and the lavender girl pulled apart, purple-red-gold filaments and filigree unraveling and snapping. Yves looked ready to retch but would not look away as they rewove themselves. "Start from the beginning," he gulped, "and don't do that again." When the lavender girl's surface tension sealed over her nectarous insides she intoned, "In the beginning." She looked into the Sun. "In the beginning there was this..." She opened her arms to the sky "...There was this biiiig refrigerator." "What the Hell is this," Yves demanded, "goo girl religion?" "No," Dee said. "She's being literal. Going back to her first memory. Hey, Yves, you look like crap. You okay?" "Yeah," Yves puffed, "I will be, yeah. This is just a lot of goo for me, right now. Sorry," he told the lavender girl. "So you were in a refrigerator." It's Always Time Act 04 Ch. 02 "I was in a bowl in the refrigerator. An aluminum bowl." When Yves did not react to this revelation she soured. "Look, you fucking faggot, you wanted the whole story and I'm giving it to you. You ever bit on a piece of tinfoil? Well, that's what it was like, but my whole body was in that fucking bowl, and my whole body is one big mouth. And it was cold." She shivered at the memory. "So cold." "Honey," CeeCee stage-whispered, "you can't call a man a faggot and then expect any sympathy." The lavender girl waved her off. "Okay, okay. So there I was, in the dark, in the cold, tasting nothing but that fucking aluminum, for like for-fucking-ever. And then there was light." She glared at Yves. "There was light and air and—Whoosh!—these big red hands grab me out by the bowl and flip me upside down and drop me—Splat!—right onto this kid's cock. And then, I mean, what would you do? The bowl was so cold and tasted so bad but here was this cock and it was so warm and tasted so good. I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven." "Whose cock?" Yves asked. "Dee left me there," Eurydice mumbled. CeeCee paled. "He left you in the bowl? Oh, you poor thing." "No," Eurydice said, "worse." She paced on all fours and started to babble. "He took me out of the fridge and he saved me from the bowl and then he took out his dick and it was huge and I could feel the heat pouring off it. And then he held me so close to his cock, so close I could taste, I could almost taste...and then he dropped me on the table and left me there until I melted." CeeCee and the lavender girl were silent and saucer-eyed. The obsidian girl's wings trembled violently. Yves breathed, "Jesus Christ." "I'm sorry," Dee begged. Ursula stomped over and kicked him in the shin. "You asshole!" It felt like kicking a boulder, but her clunky Doc Martins absorbed most of the resistance. "I'm sorry." He fell to one knee if front of Eurydice, "Honey, I didn't..." "It was amazing!" Eurydice crooned. Dee blinked. "Huh?" "You teased a lime," CeeCee said, awed. "Hours and hours," Eurydice gabbled, "and all I could remember was your cock. All I could think about was your cock..." "You cunt-teased a fucking lime," the lavender girl said. "...What you would taste like," Eurydice was saying, "How you would feel, how warm you would be...and how much I would make you cum, over and over and over. Nothing but you, your cock, your cum, for hours." Dee looked lost. "Was that a good thing or a bad thing?" Eurydice sighed. "It was a good bad thing, Dee." She hid her head in her forepaws. "A very, very, very good-bad thing." Ursula and Yves exchanged looks. "Maybe it's a hetero thing," Ursula hazarded. Yves shrugged and cleared his throat. "Whose cock? This 'Eddie' guy?" "Yeah, Eddie; a guy from a grocery store," CeeCee said. "He must've been with her when she mindfucked all those Easies. Then she tricked him into cooking up Raz and me. After that, she trussed him up in the kitchen with us. For us, I mean. We kept getting his rocks off until he cried. We thought we were just giving him what he wanted, poor dear. He eventually started to scream, and we finally figured things out and left him alone. We thought Eddie was you, you see," she said to Dee. "No," Dee said, "I really don't. So Eddie made you, not Black Cherry?" "Yeah, sorta," the lavender girl said. "We found Black Cherry and confronted her about it afterward. She'd convinced Eddie to pick a couple of flavors—Cheesecake, here, and Raspberry, that's me..." "No shit," Yves said, eyes wide in mock surprise. "Shove it, spooge mouth." Raspberry flipped him the middle finger. "You fuck cows in retrospect. Where was I? Oh, yeah, she said some bullshit about a curse, how the person who uses the novilunium never gets what they want, so she got him to make us instead." "Did that work?" Dee asked. "I told her to eat shit and die," Raspberry crowed. "I'm nobody's minion and I'll never call anyone master." "We demurred," CeeCee said, "and she scooped us up and threw us in the store room. She's so powerful, Mast—er, Mister Detwiler, we were too scared to run away. But we heard about the party tonight, and we had to do something, so we snuck onto the roof when you made your surprise inspection." The obsidian girl rushed over and poked CeeCee in her ample belly. Her finger came away batter free. "Well, we did have to do something," CeeCee insisted. "We, Raz and me, had to skedaddle. Then darkwing showed up and offered to bust us out in exchange for helping her find you. Find Dee, that is. We didn't expect a...band, or league, or whatever it is you've put together. And we certainly didn't expect another lime. Black Cherry was convinced she had the only one." "She does." Eurydice stood and morphed into her busty Unabomber disguise again. "I am Galatea, and Galatea is me." "You can divide? Sweet," Raspberry whistled. "That is so hot. I tried dividing and all I got was me and a puddle of jam that was dumber than a sack of wet shit. I can hawk a mean loogie, though." "Where is she keeping Galatea?" Dee asked in a voice so calm and mild it frightened Ursula to the core. "We don't know," CeeCee said. "We'd only been alive for a few hours before you showed up, and it's a big house. We didn't see her. Can we ask a question, now? Just one, other than these two?" After a long pause, and in that same mild voice, Dee said, "All right." "Where the fuck are we going?" asked Raspberry. "SRU," Yves said as Dee nodded, "the place where everything started. How many men are supposed to show up to the Easies' party tonight, do you know?" "About fifty eligible bachelors," CeeCee said. "I think Black Cherry plans to drain, kill, and consume them all." Raspberry thought this over. "And probably not in that order." She grinned. "You see what I meant about spoon feeding her straight lines," CeeCee told Ursula. "We're on a timetable, then." Yves hustled back into the Jeep driver's seat. "Let's get moving." Ursula groaned at the prospect of another ascent into the Jeep. The two-door vehicle's high wheels and narrow access to the rear cabin were not designed with petite women in mind. She awkwardly swung up and hauled her butt high and vulnerable into the empty space that the Jeep's fallen passenger door once shielded—and a stinging tingle shot through one ass cheek and grounded itself in her clit. She stumble-hopped away from the car, chirping a staccato of swearwords: "What-shit-fuck-crap!" She almost tripped over her own clunky boots before she regained her balance, braids flopping. "Dammit, who pinched me?" And who knew exactly where to pinch me? She whirled to face the assembled mob. Dee wore his inscrutable smile. Eurydice frowned at Raspberry as the lavender girl, unabashed, undressed Dee with her eyes. CeeCee was contemplating the sky but pointing an oozing finger at the obsidian girl. "You," Ursula said. The obsidian girl steepled her fingers against her neck. "Don't give me that 'C'est moi?' look," Ursula seethed, advancing. "How do you know her 'C'est moi' look?" CeeCee asked as Ursula stormed past. "How can she have a look when she doesn't have a face?" Raspberry wondered as Ursula drew nose-to-oval with the obsidian girl. Ursula narrowed her eyes at the Ursula-mask reflected in the midnight gloss of the obsidian girl's head. "Well?" The obsidian girl danced back, stood still a moment, and then gave a helpless shrug. She wriggled her fingers, hands level with her hips, in febrile, grabby flexions. "Of course you think I have a great ass," Ursula sneered. "Everyone thinks I have a great ass. In fact, the next..." Ursula faltered. "The next person...the, the next..." She flushed, remembering. ["...the next person who mentions my ass is going to wear it for a hat, I swear..."] Ursula chewed on a braid. "Uh, never mind. Just...wait." The gloss drained from the obsidian girl's face and the Ursula-mask vanished. "What are you doing?" The obsidian girl's skin clouded. Her wings unfolded into drooping, paper-thin tatters. "What's wrong?" Obsidian skin grayed and the faceless girl collapsed to the ground, swaying on her knees. Ursula pulled back, hands clapped over her mouth. "Oh, God, I'm sorry." A heavy, uneven weight rolled over Ursula's shoulder. CeeCee was stroking it with her thick fingers. "It's not your fault," she said. "This is her choice. There's something we didn't tell you." Raspberry knelt beside the fading obsidian girl, hesitating to touch her. "It's fucking amazing she lasted this long, after what she's been through. She's different from us, somehow." Dee uttered his favorite refrain, "What the Hell is going on?" but Eurydice tapped him on the arm, muttered, "This isn't about you. C'mon," and tugged him away, whispering into his ear. "She didn't just bust us loose," CeeCee explained. "She fought Black Cherry while we got away. Those two had been at each other's throats ever since she refused to touch Eddie." "When Black Cherry concentrates on the Easies," Raspberry said, "she can make them do pretty much anything. If our little batgirl hadn't kept Black Cherry busy by opening up a can of whup-ass all over that psycho-twat, this Jeep and everyone in it would still be suffocating under a ton of zombie pussy right now." The obsidian girl's legs spread out into uneven puddles of ink and Raspberry added, "Oh, Christ, here she goes. I can't watch." Ursula's stomach flipped. "I don't understand." CeeCee shook her head, "She's used up most of her novilunium and she's taken nothing to balance the scales. She's losing cohesion. "She's dying." Ursula took another shaky step backward. "Are you saying she used the last of her magic—nanomek, novilunium, whatever you want to call it—to grope my ass?" CeeCee gave Ursula's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "I suspect the prospect of touching your derriere was the one thing that kept her going." CeeCee clucked. "And, honey, that thing is fine." The obsidian girl lolled her head and shrugged, but Ursula shushed her. "No. Don't move. Every time you move, it costs you more magic. Wait." She knelt on the ground next to Raspberry. The obsidian girl's legs had deliquesced up to her knees. She appeared to be standing thigh-deep in a pool of glistening black ink. "If you can still move, that means you still have some magic left. How much?" The obsidian girl held her finger and her thumb in a shape of L on her forehead, waited for Ursula to crack a nervous smile, and then closed the gap between the two digits until they were about an eighth of an inch apart. Ursula's stomach settled. "Okay, we just need to get you a bucket, or something, and you'll be fine until I get you some...Oh, Jesus." "Never heard it called that before," CeeCee said. Her arm withdrew but left a residue of buttery yellow cream on Ursula's poncho. "Oops, sorry honey. That's cashmere, isn't it?" "Doesn't matter," Ursula muttered. "Whoa." Yves leaned over and poked his head out of the Jeep. "Ursula, you're in deep." "Fuck you and find me a bucket!" she cried. "Don't," Raspberry said. "It wouldn't work, not for long." "Why the fuck not?" Eurydice tiptoed into the orbit of the conversation. Ursula was surrounded by goo girls, enclosed on all sides by living walls of shimmering, slobbery, sticky glop. The air infused with a miasma of citric and cloying scents. Ursula did not give a damn. "Why the fuck not?" she demanded again. Eurydice spoke softly. "Brownian motion. The energy has to come from somewhere." "Oh come on," Yves said, "You are making that up." Three pairs of gemmed eyes—canary diamond, purple amethyst, darkling emerald—blazed at him and he fled into the relative safety of the Jeep. "Fine, Brownian motion burns magic, so no bucket." Didn't Galatea say something about 'burning magic'? Ursula gasped, "I know what to do." Yves poked his head back out. "What?" ["...When you were wearing me, and I held still while you moved, I didn't burn any magic..."] She rocked back onto her ass and pulled her knees up. "I know exactly what to do." She pulled at the laces and buckles of her boots. Eurydice, Raspberry, and CeeCee exhaled at once and tension bled out of the air. "What?" Yves groused again, but Dee had circled around to the driver's side of the Jeep and made a furtive, Zip it, will ya? gesture. Ursula hitched up her poncho. The obsidian girl bobbed in her tarry pool as the ascending cashmere garment revealed a milky-white abdomen and a lacy black bra. Ursula glanced down at her own curves and then looked around. Raspberry's a viola, Eurydice's a cello, and CeeCee's a full-blown double bass, so I guess that makes me a violin. You're a violin, too, Ms. Whatever-Your-Name-Is. She surveyed the obsidian girl's svelte figure and sighed. No wonder I gave up the cello in high school. I should have known. Ursula pulled her right foot free of its boot before locking eyes with the reflected Ursula-mask. I'm a violinist. "Wear me," Ursula said, rolling her sock down and tossing it away. Her bare foot hovered over the slowly expanding perimeter of the obsidian girl's liquefying lower body. The inky pool caught the delicate heel's reflection, a moon trapped at the bottom of a well. The revelatory image hit Ursula with an epiphany, and she could only whisper in benediction. "Wear me, Nyx." Nyx shuddered and clawed at the blacktop, disappearing up to her waist into the pool. Eurydice tugged off her sunglasses. "You named her." She turned. "Dee! Ursula named her." "It's okay, Nyx," Ursula soothed, "I know this will work." She scooted backward over the pavement to avoid soaking her butt in the advancing, iridescent stain. "But let's start with my toes, alright?" Nyx's eyeless face fixed on Ursula's bare foot. Ursula wiggled her toes at her. "Lesson one: Ursula's toes." Thank you, Galatea, Ursula thought, for talking me through this first, for making sure I was ready. "Ursula's ass will be in lesson two, I promise." Her cheek still stung where Nyx had pinched her. She concentrated on the sensation and her sex ached. And, God, am I ready. "This is so fucking hot," Raspberry gawked. The orchid petals of her hair dewed and stuck together in unkempt clumps. "I don't know what to say." CeeCee swaggered back a few steps, giving Ursula a little more personal space. "Keep doing what you're doing, honey," CeeCee told her. "Anything that shuts Raz's trap is fine by me." Yves moved out of the way and Dee called to Eurydice through the Jeep. "So?" "I thought only you could do that," Eurydice said. Ursula dipped her foot down. "Here we go." The tip of her big toe kissed the surface of the ebon pool. "There. You feel cool and...and dry." She squished the stuff between her toes. "Fluid yet dry." She swallowed. "Slick but not sticky at all." She smiled, hoping she looked demure and in control despite the meltdown in her pants. "I like it." Like it? I love it. I want to jump in and God-damn wallow in it. The surface of the pool shook from Nyx's trembling, and Ursula knew she had to take it slow. "I like it a lot. Now..." And take charge. "...little girl: cover my foot." Black ink lapped over Ursula's toes and crept up her ankle in a slipper softer and smoother than silk. "Tighter." The slipper drew snug. "Tighter." "So...hot," Raspberry droned. "Shut...up," CeeCee drawled. Dee shrugged. "What name?" Green, glassy beads dripped from Eurydice's chin and rolled off the blades of hair poking out from the hoodie. "Huh?" The droplets sizzled when they hit the pavement. "Oh. Um. Nyx." The black slipper grew to swallow Ursula's calf. "Tighter, little girl, tighter." The slipper clamped down just below the knee. Ursula felt it grip hard, even between her toes, to become a sleek, flawless, second skin. Ursula rolled up her pant leg and caressed the glassy surface of the stocking connecting her leg to the ebon pool. "Perfect." Oh, God, I'm actually purring. "Hold it right there for a minute." Ursula squirmed and tugged at her remaining boot. My underwear is sopping. Dee is oblivious, I bet Yves is suspicious, but the meliae are bloodhounds for sex. They must know exactly how I feel. Including Nyx. "Let me take my other boot off and then we can start lesson two." Ursula giggled and leered. "Getting into Ursula's pants." "Nyx's a good name," Dee told to Eurydice. "I don't see the problem. What's going on?" A balled-up sock sailed over Eurydice's shoulder. "Uh. Y'know. Stuff." Ursula plunked her bare foot into the ebon pool. Nyx needed no further encouragement. Lurid fluid raced over Ursula's ankle and disappeared under the pants cuff. Ursula relaxed recumbent. The creamy flesh peeping from rips in Ursula's distressed jeans vanished into shining black. A cool bath crawled over her knees. She sighed and scissored her legs. The Nyx-stocking clinched and flexed. Ursula mewed. "Sooo...slinky." The delicious sensation stole higher across Ursula's thighs and Nyx's body sank into the pool of pitch up to her chest. Ursula thought Nyx looked more like an imperiled heroine sinking into a jungle tar pit than a dissolving meliae. Then the velvet tide poured into her panties, engulfing her ass and sex in a single, siphoning, suckling kiss, and Ursula did not think or see anything at all. Eurydice's sunglasses melted in her clenched fist. She spun and shuffled around the front of the Jeep, her gummy army boots sticking to the pavement and leaving a trail of smoking green footprints. "Dee." She spoke in hoarse monotone. "Dee let's go." Dee turned to face his advancing girlfriend. "Huh?" Jellied dreadlocks tumbled out of Eurydice's hoodie and fell over her eyes in a chaotic, steamy mass. "Let's go fuck." "What?" Ursula's soft mewling drifted over from the other side of the Jeep. Eurydice grabbed Dee by the elbow and urged him into a copse of scrub trees clustered close to the road. "Let's go fuck now." "O-okay." Yves shouted after them, "We've got a time table, remember? Cannibal skank-bots? World in jeopardy? Hello?" He tried another tactic. "Jesus, Dee, I can see your dick...No, that doesn't help, Eurydice, I can see through your ass." A swash of black gushed out from beneath Ursula's belt to fill the narrow hollow of her belly. She pushed against the road, hips pumping the air, and coils of black lashed over the small of her back. She drifted down from the height of ambush orgasm into a muzzy mind and a world in soft focus. I came so hard it knocked my glasses off. The black bodysuit stretched to taste and tickle her ribs even as more swirled up from the pool, coursing under her knees to swirl between her thighs and the globes of her ass—but something was missing. What was it? Oh, yes. "Tighter." Raspberry groaned, sat up on her knees, and drove gluey fingers into her pussy. She threw her head back—and did a double take at CeeCee, who was just standing there. "How can you not be whacking off right now?" Raspberry demanded. "Can't you fucking smell it?" "Don't mistake composure for ease, honey," CeeCee said, "I'm hot enough to sit on a fireplug." The silken bodysuit slurped up Ursula's chest, swallowing one rib, sucking against the skin to fill every pore, and then moving onto the next. Ursula sighed and reached between her breasts to unhook her bra. "Won't be needing this for a while." The bra unsnapped and fell away. Raspberry pulverized her sex with her fingers but still had the presence of mind to grit her teeth and quip, "You didn't need it in the first place." Nyx's molecule-thin pseudopodia slithered over Ursula's breasts. Ursula cried out when the bodysuit vacuumed against the tender flesh. Her nipples hardened under the second skin, each crinkle made to stand out in sharp relief by the glistening coating. A familiar, burning wire stretched down from Ursula's chest and stabbed deep beneath her bellybutton. It's Always Time Act 04 Ch. 02 Nyx descended into her contracting pool until only her shoulders breached the surface, covering Ursula in a thickening shell of liquid night. Wanting to look Nyx in the face before that face disappeared, Ursula swiveled her hips in an effort to sit up. The whole bodysuit sloshed and the goth girl was lost in a raging surf of overstimulation from toes to clit to tummy to tits to neck to chin to lips-teeth-ear... thank -- you -- named -- me -- you -- saved -- me -- named -- and -- saved -- me -- thank -- you -- thank -- you... The voice was so quiet, small and quick that Ursula could barely distinguish it from the oceanic thrum of her heart in her stoppered ears. Ursula tried to speak, "Ny—" but the black fluid filled Ursula's mouth with the taste of licorice, anise and absinthe. yes -- me -- Nyx -- yes -- name -- life -- thank -- you -- let -- me -- thank -- you... Panic fluttered in Ursula's stomach as the bodysuit surged thick and fast over her face, sealing her lips and eyes. no -- never -- hurt -- you -- never -- would -- never -- oh -- let -- me -- thank -- you -- let -- me -- fuck -- you... Licorice ambrosia poured down her throat. Nyx's gel-flesh nuzzled Ursula's clit and vulva. The goth girl spread her legs in mute assent but could not hope to match the cavernous pit of need her sex had become. The swath of bodysuit covering Ursula's cleft concaved, throbbed deep into her core, and set her to flight. Ursula's inner eye buoyed into the sky. Her body sprawled on the road below. The last vestige of Nyx, a dome of jet black on otherwise faded asphalt, liquefied and flooded up Ursula's kicking legs. The lustrous coating gave Ursula's skin and angular profile the perfection of a masterwork sculpture of polished black granite. "I wish I had taken off those stupid blue jeans," Ursula sighed. "I bet our legs look fantastic." "Ursula..." The voice was mellow and warm. "Ursula..." It was fatherly and familiar. "Ursula! You will go to the Dagobah System." It was Alec Guinness. Ursula's adrenal gland was stuck in the body flopping on the pavement far below her mind's eye, but she still felt an insurgent urge to jump out of her skin. "Wah!" Ursula's point of view spun, taking in the road, the roof of the jeep, Eurydice on all fours and impaling herself onto Dee's cock, and the blazing, mid-morning sun. She was alone in the air. "Wait. Dagobah System?" "Ha! Kidding, kidding," said Obi-Wan Kenobi's voice. "It's me, Galatea. I left a little bit of nanomek in your head—" Ursula spluttered and swore but the voice continued without interruption "—to give you a message in case the shit hit the fan. If you're hearing this, it means you've gone astral and I'm in trouble, so you need to—" hello -- hello -- where -- did -- you -- go -- ah -- there -- you -- are -- hello -- hey -- um -- getting -- crowded -- got -- company? The disembodied voice of Alec Guinness paused. "What the fuck was that?" "You said you were just a recorded message," Ursula accused. "I am," said the voice, growing edgy and strangely modulated, "but..." jesus -- ha -- it's -- a -- lime -- ha -- ha -- get -- in -- the -- cranium -- ha -- ha -- ha! "That's really freaking me out!" Galatea cried out her bewilderment in her usual fiery alto. "What's going on?" Ursula wrapped herself in blanket of smug silence before speaking. "You're the uninvited guest, Galatea, not her, so you explain yourself first." "Oh, all right," Galatea grumped. "But we've talked about this already, remember?" "I wasn't expecting any of this." Ursula's point of view righted. "I can handle the astral-body stuff better now, thanks to your coaching, but how the Hell are you out here with me?" "Damn," said Galatea's voice. "I thought I'd explained this bit. You said it would be okay. And this message is running out of nanomek fast. Playing around in here costs a bundle." yes -- Ursula -- yes -- so -- strong -- your -- mind -- is -- so -- strong -- your -- body -- so -- sweet -- come -- back -- and -- feel -- me -- fuck -- you -- please -- sweet -- strong -- please! "I gotta be honest, Ursula," Galatea confessed, "your new girlfriend's creeping me out. Anyway, I asked you to give me, a newbie me, a power-boost from me, the old me, in case something bad happened to me, the whole-me. That boost was me, a kinda mini-me. See?" "Uh, yeah," Ursula said, her point of view bobbing in a cameraman's nod, "that's the part I didn't understand the first time, either. Sorry." "When I mindfucked you," Galatea explained, exasperated, "I left a little message-web and a big wad of energy, a backup magic battery and a message in a bottle explaining how to use it. This message-web's almost gone, now, you know. Just a few thoughts left." Ursula mused, "A backup magic battery? A big wad in a bottle? But you said you recharge your magic by fucking Dee's brains out...Oh my God, you put Dee's sperm in my brain!" ew -- ew -- ew -- um -- no -- wait -- hold -- on -- magic -- battery? "Don't be silly." It was Galatea's turn to be smug. "You don't put sperm in your brain, you put it in your—" found -- it -- found -- it -- lime -- thank -- you -- found -- it -- just -- enough -- keep -- me -- going -- keep -- me -- fucking... "Hey." Galatea grew faint. "That's not yours." "Nyx, no," Ursula insisted. "The, uh, power level of that battery must be so small." Galatea's furious screech echoed as if from miles away. "It's over nine thousand!" "Okay." Ursula astral-shrugged. "Maybe more than a little. Still, Nyx, don't waste it fucking yourself to death." worth -- it -- worth -- it -- worth -- it -- to -- thank -- you -- to -- love -- you... Ursula aspired into the air, stunned. "Nyx..." "It's easy to for people like us to die for love, little sister." Galatea's wistful, distant voice crackled with static. "Ursula wants you to take the harder path." don't -- understand -- don't -- want -- to -- stop -- want -- to -- thank -- want -- to -- fuck -- want -- to -- love... Ursula focused on the source of the whispery non-speech. While Galatea's astral message emanated from the surrounding air, Nyx's words flittered from somewhere deep within, from between the eyes and beside the heart. "Live for me, Nyx." will -- try -- will -- live -- will -- love -- live -- love -- oh -- love... Galatea's voice strained even as it broke apart. "It...yours...lit...sister. Ursula...tell...love him. Tell Dee...no matt...happens. I love...always." And Galatea was gone. so -- sad -- so -- strange -- Dee -- cute -- kind -- caring -- but -- too -- solid -- almost -- stolid -- yuck. Ursula scudded down toward the Jeep, laughing. "I thought all goo girls were into solid boys." Dee -- too -- hard -- CeeCee -- too -- soft -- Ursula -- just -- right! She drew close to her body, marveling at the mummifying corset of Nyx's embrace. It smoothed out every uneven line or asymmetrical curve, molding her flesh into its ideal shape—not a generic twiggy, Hollywood starlet ideal, but an ideal Ursula shape. Her ebony-glued braids were giant, bendy licorice sticks. Her legs twitched, her gummed lips curling in a rictus of carnal bliss. "Nyx, how am I breathing?" no -- need -- you -- opened -- yourself -- to -- me -- and -- let -- me -- flood -- within -- you -- now -- you -- breathe -- the -- blood -- music. "You mean you're oxygenating my blood?" bah -- science -- babble -- no -- mystery -- no -- romance -- come -- back -- come -- sing -- the -- blood -- music -- with -- me! or -- just -- cum -- that's -- fine -- too. Ursula wafted close enough to see the stretchy black membrane covering her tongue and teeth. "I need to breathe to get back in, to inspirit my body." ah -- yes -- inspiration -- yes -- mystery -- yes. The liquid shadow drained from Ursula's face in fingers of running fluid. Her mouth swallowed its contents down in a sensuous gulp. Ursula heard her own post-orgasmic laughter for the first time—a deep, slow, mind-blown chortling. "Damn," she said, watching her body luxuriate on the ground and feel itself up. "I never imagined myself like this." how? "So...sexy. Hold on, that reminds me of something I can't believe I forgot." ["...That was 'going at it'? But I was just walking...No, you're right, it was more than that. It really did feel like sex. Constant, nonstop sex..."] The bodysuit peeled away from her head completely, forming a thick band below Ursula's chin, more choker necklace than turtleneck. "Oh, Nyx," Ursula sang, ethereal voice dripping with mischief. "In order for you to wear me, to use my body's motion to conserve your magic, you're going to have to hold still, to not burn nanomek, and let me move you." understood -- that -- sounds -- strange -- but -- fun -- so? "So, I did it with Galatea once, and she said it was a little...intense." ["...When you were wearing me, and I held still while you moved, I didn't burn any magic...But I could still feel you—taste you, touch you, smell you—and you pulled me and pushed me and stretched me and...and fucked me. There's no better word for it. You were touching every part of me. I had no core, no reserve, no backup, no body, just you, you, you, everywhere. I could feel your tits bounce and you pussy drip and your ass rock and your legs swing, and when you put me into your mouth..."] A spiky shiver shot through the obsidian substance of the bodysuit. wait -- what? constant -- um -- nonstop -- sex? pull --and -- pussy -- and -- tits -- and -- push -- and -- legs -- and -- stretch -- and -- fuck -- every -- part? Ursula bobbed back up a bit. "You can read my flashbacks? I mean, hear my memories?" when -- they -- make -- your -- heart -- beat -- this -- fast -- and -- your -- sex -- get -- this -- wet? yes -- but -- but -- constant -- nonstop -- sex? Ursula could not wait to get back into her body so she could leer properly. She hovered, poised above her pouting mouth. "Oh, yeah." but -- but -- for -- how -- um -- long? Ursula dipped down. "If I have any say in the matter..." Her body's lips parted. "...I am going to make it last..." She pushed her astral-presence close and an electric thrill shocked through her as she tasted her own lips "...for the rest of our lives." oh -- God -- oh -- God -- oh -- my -- God... Ursula threw her head back, gasped, and became inspired. * * * * Take me down where the love honey flows, Kiss you nice--nibble your toes. Take me down where the good stuff grows, Love you nice--tickle your nose! —B-52s, Good Stuff * * * * It's Always Time Act 04 Ch. 03 Act Four: Food for Thought Chapter Three: That Fine Line "Shit," Dee said over dry crackling, "I broke another tree. Sorry." He let go of Eurydice's waist, slipped out of her nectarous sex, and stepped back. Eurydice threw him a lazy, cross-eyed smile over her bare shoulder. "S'okay," she panted, clinging to the listing tree for dear life. "I'm goo—oop!" The tree groaned and gave way, dragging her down with it. She lay there, bent over the fractured tree stump, her rump high in the air. "Man, am I good." Her giggles sent shock waves through her heart-stopping apple of an ass. Dee ogled her rear-end. Green syrup wept down the insides of her squeezing thighs. The translucent flesh of her ass, her pussy, and her tenebrous inner gel, churned a milky, pale jade as his cum suffused her substance. He ran three fingers up the inner curve of a thigh and the liquid of her sex ran down the back of his hand as hot mint jelly. Eurydice cooed and rocked back, squashing his fingers between her legs. Dee grinned, angled his fingers up, and eased them further in. Eurydice whimpered and thumped the ground with her fist, stirring a little flurry of twigs, leaves and earth into the air. "No fair," she whined as he slid his hand about, "don't tease me." Dee bowed over her. She groaned, propped herself up, and crushed her back into his chest. "I thought you liked it," he scolded into her ear. "I do. I like it too much." She plopped back down to the ground in a viridian puddle. "And we're running out of trees," Dee admitted. Eurydice glanced around, frowning. The four toppled trees gave her a clear view of the road and the Jeep. "I finally get to fuck you in public, and nobody's watching, dammit. Yves is just sitting there reading a roadmap." "Yves is not a voyeur," Dee said. "'Unless there're two dicks involved, and one of them's mine, I'm not interested,' he says. It's part of his 'existential monogamy' nonsense." He tapped her on the ass. "C'mon, hon. He's waiting." "It's not just that," Eurydice said, watching Yves comparing notes between the hardcopy map and talky GPS. "He's wound so tight." She turned to Dee, eyes glistening. "You know why, right?" Dee nodded and she faced forward again. "And now he's surrounded by goo girls. It isn't his wet dream, it's a nightmare. What are we going to do?" Dee cleaned himself off with the muscle shirt. "The only thing we can do." He plucked his briefs and borrowed sweatpants off a broken branch. "Be his friends and help him save the world. Oh, and ruin another one of his shirts. I grabbed a bunch of his old clothes from his closet and stuck them in the trunk." Eurydice smirked. "I like your priorities. Let's go." She pulled herself upright, her chest stamped with the zigzag of tree bark. Gel pulsed down her legs in a fluidic reflex, splashing into the puddle of piping hot apple jam at her feet. Teeny whitecaps formed on the puddle's surface and soon Eurydice stood in the center of a minute maelstrom. She huffed and closed her eyes in concentration. The whitecaps peaked and spun, higher and faster. Eurydice clenched her fists at her sides. "C'mon, dammit, c'mon, keep it together." Dee could see the anxiety painted across her face. He tried to ask if everything was all right, but she spat, "I can do this, dammit." She hefted her fists up, arms trembling with the effort, as if struggling to raise heavy, invisible dumbbells. The whitecaps stabbed into the air, rising and wriggling like fingers—"Got it!"—Eurydice snapped her fists up to her shoulders and the whirligig of goo funneled up her legs, feeding her core. "Got it, God damn it." Dee pressed a gentle hand against her back. He felt currents racing below the surface tension of her gel-flesh. "Are you in control?" "Aye. I mean, yeah." This time, the smile she gave Dee over her shoulder was crooked but nervy. "But if you ask which me is in control, I'm going to kick you in the crotch." Dee nodded. "It's a fair cop; that's exactly what I was thinking." He hitched up his briefs. "But is there anything I can do?" Eurydice winked. "Lower your sperm count?" Dee snapped the elastic band of his briefs. "I'm already wearing really tight undies." "I can see that," Eurydice breathed, eyes shining as she glanced down. She sighed and shook her head. "Better put Mine away, Dee, unless you brought Hazmat suits for your friends along with those extra clothes. I lose a little control with each nanogasm." "You kind of always have," Dee said, pulling on the pair of baggy Hammer pants. "But not like this. Too many nanogasms at once and I, um..." She groped for the right word. "I fragment, I guess." Dee perked up. "Like a hard drive." "You are such a dork." Eurydice mugged and morphed into her Unabomber disguise. She took care to smooth out tufts of unruly, violent green cilia that erupted from random crevices, sprouting from the tops of her boots and struggling out from between her tits. "I'm in love with a Great Old One," Dee mused as the last writhing mass vanished into her disguise. "What would Lovecraft say?" "Howard? Dunno," Eurydice shrugged, "he kept passing out. Had to take notes from Clark and Rob." Dee's eyes bugged out of his head. "You're shitting me." Eurydice crooked an eyebrow at him and popped her sunglasses on. "I don't kiss and tell." She sauntered out of the devastated copse and onto the road. Dee hopped after her. "Aw, come on, you've got to be kidding. Right? Right?" Eurydice swung her hips, crying out a preposterous, overacted fake orgasm. "Ia! Ia!" Ursula swaggered into view around the Jeep and Eurydice froze mid-swing. "Ia—whoa." Dee's jaw dropped. Ursula scissored down the road, a proverbial walking streak of sex. She had abandoned her clunky Doc Martins for a pair of gleaming, black vinyl go-go boots that hugged her ankles and disappeared up the bellbottomed legs of her jeans. Thick, six-inch heels whacked-whacked-whacked! on the pavement as Ursula brought one foot down right in front of the other. Without the poncho, the waist of her jeans smiled wide under her flat stomach, riding low enough to expose the mouth of the valley of her crotch. Dee saw no flash of flesh, just more of that same glossy black PVC-like material. It rose up out of her pants in a seamless one-piece, sealing off her entire body below the neck in a hard candy shell that yielded and flexed with her every movement and breath but never stretched or creased. An Emma Peel cat-suit with muscle memory. "How do we look?" "You have to ask?" Dee managed. Ursula ground to a halt. Her fingers, gloved skintight, toyed with a long, plaited ponytail as she muttered. "Yves wouldn't look up from the map. CeeCee wouldn't stop wisecracking. Raz couldn't stop frigging but that's okay because she says the most awful things anyway." Dee interrupted but soon found himself at lost for words. "Ursula, you've got nothing to worry about. You look, well, I don't quite know how to say this, but you look..." "Damn, girl," wowed Eurydice. "Yeah," Dee agreed. "What she said." Ursula blushed, beamed, and flounced back to the jeep. Dee watched her braids pendulum across her ass. "I wonder how that feels for Nyx," he said. "Mm, I can't even imagine," Eurydice sighed. When Ursula disappeared around the Jeep, Eurydice asked him, "Should I be jealous?" "Excuse me?" Dee crooked his thumb. "You were the one who fucked her, apparently." "No," Eurydice said, swaying close and running her hands over Dee's ribs. "I mean, have we ever tried that? Have you ever, y'know..." She left a curlicue finger-trail of green frosting over his abs. "...worn me?" "Not like that," Dee admitted. "Not exactly." Eurydice pouted. "Then I am jealous." Dee waggled his eyebrows. "You don't remember the Nanocream Bubble Spa Technique." Eurydice pulled off her sunglasses to wonder at him wide-eyed. "Whuzzat?" Dee scooped the frosting off his skin and popped it into his mouth, lips smacking at the tangy taste. "I don't kiss and tell, either." Eurydice mocked shock and Dee added, "You'll remember. You'll remember everything, I promise." Dee smiled as confidently as he could and made his way past her toward the Jeep, pretending not to hear the anxious way her voice fell as she mustered, "Yeah, I know I will." * * * * "This is an utter indignity," CeeCee protested from the trunk of the Jeep, a cramped gap between the backseat and the vehicle's rear hatch. "I like restraint if it doesn't go too far, but a woman of my stature should not be so confined." "Get your boobs out of my head," Eurydice huffed. Dee, intrigued by the peculiar phrasing, twisted in the front seat to get a good look. Eurydice mashed her elbows against the avalanche of confection-flesh billowing over the lip of the trunk. The speeding Jeep jolted. CeeCee's butter yellow tits bulged around Eurydice's arms and flumped against both sides of her head, orange areola smothering the green girl's ears through the hoody. "Great," Eurydice said as stiff nipples slipped through the surface tension of her own citrus gel, "now all I can think about is tight, scratchy sweaters, baby binkies, and—for some reason—Graham cracker crumbs." "Unless your man's hankering for a slice of Key Lime pie," CeeCee told her, "we'd better get to this 'SRU' place in a hurry." "Would you rather be stuck on the roof with Raspberry?" Eurydice threatened. "I'm fucking the wind!" Raspberry hollered from above. Lavender Ghostbuster slime spattered the windows. Yves flicked on the windshield wipers, launching a spray of wiper fluid. "Oh, bugger off, you butt-pirate." Yves snarled and pumped the brake. Raspberry cried out with each lurch. "Oh, yeah! Harder! Give it! Aw, was that the best you got?" "I think I'm beginning to hate her," Yves said, pinching the bridge of his nose. Eurydice shot Dee a worried look. Dee put a hand on Yves' arm. "I'll be okay," Yves muttered. "That caffeine headache must be kicking in early. Are you sure you know where we're going? The GPS thinks were in middle of the county reservoir." Dee gave Yves a reassuring shoulder squeeze and Yves sagged in the driver's seat. "Look, I'm know I'm not 'great' or even close to 'fine,' but I will be okay, so let's just get this thing done. I swear I'll let you know if I get in trouble. Hell, you'll probably know before I do. All right?" Dee nodded and Yves glanced into the rearview mirror and spoke to Eurydice. "You too, all right?" Eurydice nodded and fought back another landslide of cheesecake. Yves rolled his eyes, frowned, and angled the rearview mirror. "Ursula, what's up? Carsick?" Ursula sat in the backseat next to Eurydice, flushed and agape, her face prickled with sweat, her oval eyeglasses askew at the tip of her nose. "N-no, not really, I'm fine. Really. Just..." She shifted in her poncho. The rubbery collar around her neck looked dappled and slick. "Just don't bounce and jerk the car around like that again, okay? All that cum, um, commotion caught us by surprise, that's all." Yves shrugged, scanning the road ahead. Eurydice, arms spread wide to hold back the marshmallow tide, grinned at Dee but said nothing. Ursula turned to look out the window, cupping her chin with a gloved hand. She ran two black-lacquered fingertips over her lips. A single, impish giggle escaped her and she sucked her fingers into her mouth. The inky material of the glove wrinkled and wriggled in frantic motion, but Ursula just worked her fingers in and out, her slurping laughter deep and muffled. "Do I want to know?" Yves asked as Dee spun to face forward. "No," Dee said, blushing scarlet, "you really don't." "Good," said Yves, pulling the Jeep into a wide, empty parking lot with a white brick building squatting in the middle of it, "because we're here." "No Mini Coop," Dee observed, "but the sign says 'Open,' so SB is probably inside. Don't park too close. We don't want to interrupt anything." "Mm, listen," Ursula said, pulling her wet fingers out of her mouth. "They've got a bathroom in there, right? Because I really gotta pee—Eeep!" She sat up, stiff as a board and thunderstruck. She blinked, blushed, and relaxed. "Uh, never mind." Eurydice edged away from Ursula as Yves picked a parking space halfway into the lot. The Jeep's engine cut off and Dee heard a discordant ringing at the edge of hearing. The car ticked as it cooled. "Well," Yves said, waving a hand at the cluttered storefront window. "Now what?" The ugly claxon grew loud as the door with SRU MEDICAL stenciled in fading blue ink opened inward. A lean, muscular girl with skin the color of Ruby Red grapefruit juice and cornrows of cotton candy stepped out onto the sidewalk. Her coppery, sleeveless dress rippled in the wind, tracing the sleek physique beneath. "Dee, I thought you said Strawberry Banana was hung like a horse," Yves said. The rose girl stepped down onto the pavement. Dee nodded. "Some dick-girl," Yves scoffed, eyes narrowed. "Where's her dick?" The rose girl raised her right arm parallel with her shoulder. She furled her fingers and a forest of fractals sprouted from her palm. The pale, rainbowed lines and wedges zigzagged through the air, reminding Dee of the sudden, geometric spread of ice crystals captured with time-elapsed photography. The cloud of chaos whirling away from her fingers grew random and fractured and unrecognizable, but at some hidden instant collapsed into solidity and certain, deadly shape. The rose girl held her scimitar aloft. Its wide, curving blade of pale pink crystal dazzled with sunlight. She wrapped her left hand around its huge pommel and brought it down before her chest in the imposing two-handed grip of a harem guard from the decadent flights of Arabian fantasy. Her diamond eyes were cold and expressionless. The sickle tip of the sword towered above her head. For a long while, Dee heard no sound other than that horrid bell, blessedly muffled behind the closing door. Then came the crunch of dust and lose pavement as the rose girl advanced on the Jeep. Yves stared ahead. He clucked his tongue. "Do something, Dee," Eurydice whispered, huddled into CeeCee's pliant flesh. "What should I do?" Dee asked as the rose girl drew closer." SB could probably kick my ass six ways to Sunday. Maybe I could talk to her?" He shook his head to clear it. "Wait, what are we worried about? She's made out of Jell-O. That sword is made out of Jell-O. It's useless." The rose girl swept the sword out and down in an underhand grip. Its tip connected with the pavement. Sparks flew. She stepped over the charred, smoking scar the sword left in the blacktop. The swing followed through and the sword slapped back into both hands again, unmarked. "I just shat my pants," Raspberry announced from the roof. The rose girl had crossed half the distance between the store and the Jeep. "I had to grow pants just to pinch a loaf in them. Somebody better appreciate the effort I went through before we all die by shish kabob." "I think," Yves said calmly—and Dee knew that Yves at his calmest was also Yves at his most dangerous—"I've had enough of this sort of thing for today." Yves clicked open his seatbelt, eased out the driver's side door, and ambled into the rose girl's path. He walked with an unhurried gate, shoulders squared, his knees and arms kept bent at a relaxed angle. "Yves' in trouble," Dee said. "Don't let her hurt him, Dee," Eurydice pled. Dee hunkered in the Jeep's busted doorframe, ready to leap out at the two figures closing ranks in front of him. "I won't." Damn it,, he thought, none of this makes any sense. SB wound her scimitar back, a batter ready to swing for the bleachers. Dee coiled to jump. I can't think of any reason for SB to act this way... "I've sparred with a Swiss Flambergé," Yves said, never breaking his stride as he stepped within striking distance, "a Zweihänder sword almost as tall as I am, even a stupid Klingon bat'leth." He did not stop until he and SB stood toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye. "But that..." Yves nodded at the crystal bladed scimitar glinting high above their heads. He let the silence stretch, his observation incomplete. SB cocked one eyebrow. The sword dropped a fraction of an inch, and Yves said, "...is just gay." Dee thought, Unless this is another test? "And that," Yves finished, "is coming from a guy who voluntarily has sex with men." The scimitar's scintillating tip traced an eccentric oval in the air as SB's poker face cracked into perplexity. "I mean," Yves added, pointing, "look at that thing. It's got to be over a foot wide, and, what, four feet long? Something from a video game." He shook his head. "Not a real sword. What the Hell can you do with it? Run around screaming 'Hassan chop'?" SB glared in silent defiance, turned aside, and brought the sword down close, hugging the pommel between her breasts, like a toddler protecting her favored teddy bear from a bullying brother. "Fine," Yves shrugged, stepping back. "I'll show you." He held out his hand. "Give it here." SB stared down into Yves open palm. Dee stood up in the Jeep doorframe, leaning outward. "Uh, Yves?" Yves flicked a Stay-out-of-this frown in Dee's direction before waggling the fingers of his outstretched hand at SB. "Well?" Scowling in uncertainty and moving with exaggerated care, SB offered the haft of the scimitar to Yves. Yves wrapped a hand around the roseate bulge of the pommel. SB stared at Yves' tan hand for a while before Yves said, "You've got to let go eventually, you know." SB relaxed her fingers and the full weight of the blade transferred to Yves. "See?" Yves grunted, quickly grabbing the scimitar with both hands. "It's got to weigh over ten pounds. There's no way you can...Huh." He choked up on the grip and took another pace backward. "It's got good balance, I'll give you that." SB pursed her lips, a sarcastic smirk beginning to blossom on her face—the scimitar swooshed once, twice, three times around Yves' shoulders as he whipped it about with the expertise of a champion baton twirler—and SB gasped and gawped instead, hands clenched over her heart. Dee hopped onto the pavement. "Hey, Yves?" Yves ignored him and set the scimitar spinning on its pommel in the flat of one hand. SB broke out into a sweat, her hands dropping to trace little, twitching circles over her washboard abs and chiseled obliques. "Alright," Yves confessed, tossing the sword end-over-end and high into the air, "it's got freakin' amazing balance." The sword purred—whum-whummm—slicing the sky before Yves snatched it and began an effortless twirl again. "But let's see what it can really do." SB's eyes flashed with panic. "Wait..." Yves executed a simple, modified kata form-exercise: knelt on one knee then barked wordlessly, striking out horizontal with the blade before rising for a wicked quick, overhead cut in the empty air. SB moaned and plopped down hard onto her ass. Yves performed a series of fluid slashes, cuts, and thrusts of a kata for practicing fending off three attackers at once. SB, her eyes glazed and jaw hanging, watched him shuffle, swing, and shout as he completed one maneuver after another, describing a circle around her. "Please," she begged, clawing at the pavement. "Nn, God, please...I, I can't..." The hollering bell grew loud again. "Hey, blondie." A young woman with raven hair glowered from the storefront doorway. Yves stopped in mid-mock decapitation to turn and look. Below the quivering blade, SB's eyes rolled back into her head and she toppled over insensate. "Give Strawberry her banana back," Tomoe said. Yves snapped out of his combat-trance. "Sorry. I'm really comfortable working up a sweat with this thing for some reason. I guess I got carried away. And I stand corrected about what I said before: this is a real sword." He knelt, holding the scimitar out to SB. "Here you go. Hey, you okay?" It's Always Time Act 04 Ch. 03 SB fumbled her way upright. She plucked the proffered sword from Yves' hand, grimaced, and gingerly cradled the blade against her shoulder. Hunching over, she scuttled away. Tomoe followed SB with her eyes, inscrutable smile dawning, as the rose girl crossed in front of her and raced around a whitewashed corner of the store. * * * * SB careened into a green metal dumpster standing flush against the building's western wall. Damn thing was always on the rear dock with the recycle bins. What the fuck was it doing here? Oh, that's right, Tomoe had made SB empty and haul the dumpster around the side last night for some unfathomable, Tomoe-ish reason. Unfathomable last night, SB corrected herself, but obvious now. This was just one of the prices SB paid for falling in love with a woman who could see the future unrolling before her like a movie in 4-D. Of course, Tomoe wanted that future to be a porn movie full of as many scenes of SB cumming as hard, as much, and as many times as possible. Over their three thousand year affair (not counting the relative-eternity time-loops Tomoe enjoyed watching the best), Tomoe took precautions and performed Rube Goldberg level machinations to ensure SB's life was filled with mind-numbing money-shot after mind-blowing money-shot after soul-shattering money-shot. Everyone wondered what Tomoe was always smiling about, but only SB knew for sure—or rather, would surely find out for sure in a few hours. Last night, she should have known better than to wonder why she was moving the stupid dumpster. She should have remembered moving the dumpster, period. "Hose down the inside," Tomoe had demanded. "With the real hose, I mean." She had smiled inscrutably as SB fumed. "At least at first. Oh, and leave the top open, so it can dry. What, can't a woman want a clean dumpster every once in a while?" SB had forgotten all about it, had forgotten about nearly everything once that beautiful boy started working her scimitar like it was a tantric sex toy. All these thoughts flickered through SB's powerful mind-web in the split second it took for her to smack into the rounded lip of the dumpster, lose her balance, and be carried by her momentum up and over and into the mouth of the fucking thing. SB twisted at just the right moment and landed, blessedly, on her back on the floor of the dumpster. The scimitar lay heavy between her breasts. The monomolecular smart-edge of the blade knew the quantum signature of her flesh and would not cut, so instead it just thrummed there, sandwiched between her tits like a four and a half foot long, fourteen inch wide, thirteen pound dick. Which was exactly what it was. For the first time in many years, SB was scared to reattach her penis. On countless occasions, she had woken up in the morning to find that her penis was missing again. That usually meant Tomoe had gotten carried away watching her private SB cosmic spacetime bukkake filmography, and had made off with SB's dick for some "us time." SB would just sigh and smile, knowing Tomoe would soon slink back so SB could rejoin with her dick and experience all the fun the two of them had just had. There had been a few scares before, like the occasion Czarina Catherine hired Mata Hari to fuck SB's penis off and smuggle it into the Winter Palace. ("Why did you give Mata a time machine?" SB had asked one cold October morning in Paris. "She paid five gulden!" was Tomoe's excuse.) It took SB and Tomoe thirty years to get the dick back, although Tomoe spent most of that time laughing her ass off. Catherine had used it monstrously, convincing SB she would never get it back until the Czarina died—which she did, stroking out in the bathtub while stroking off SB's penis for Catherine's twelve thousandth male orgasm-by-magical-proxy. When SB finally reattached her cock, the resultant money-shot lasted about eighteen months. Tomoe had spent most of that time laughing her ass off, too, come to think of it. But this was the first time someone else had ever used her dick, detached, right in front of her. If SB had not locked it into its sword-form before handing it over, the boy would have been drenched in jism, she was sure of it. As a sword, SB's dick responded to swordplay as a cock responds to foreplay, and this boy was an apparent master of both. But locked into its sword-form, her cock could not cum. On the numerous battlefields upon which she and Tomoe had fought—Atlantis' she-demon engulfment being the absolute worst—SB would cleave her way through a dozen or so opponents before sneaking behind a convenient balustrade, unlocking her dick and watching it erupt, only do go through all those orgasms all over again when the battle was won and her dick was between her legs again. This was the first time someone other herself had wielded her weapon as a weapon with an apparent expertise rivaling her own, so her scimitar had reached orgasm-point in a matter of moments, but, locked in form and in someone else's hands, could not achieve release. SB had not known she could experience a self-perpetuating feedback-loop of orgasm denial. The needed components for creating such a harrowing phenomenon were rare enough to not present themselves throughout her long life until now. As the beautiful boy manhandled her, the cresting pressure and sizzling sting of the moment of ejaculation had bloomed in her belly; bloomed but then did not ebb; did not ebb but then increased; did not only increase but also increase exponentially as the sensation of continual imminent release itself fed the strength of the impending orgasm that never came but just built and built and built. SB hefted the pink scimitar with the care of a demolitions expert probing an unexploded bomb. Her mind-web spent a few precious microseconds—the orgasmic feedback-loop still building (and building and building) deep within her—analyzing all the possible ways her predicament could play itself out. There was only one conclusion: Tomoe had labored to engineer this moment, to take advantage of the variables of the universe—or, perhaps, to arrange those universal variables in the first place—to maneuver SB into this situation, this crowning masterpiece of pleasure-torment, and Tomoe's grand vision would not be denied. SB propped her neck and shoulders on the wall of the dumpster, knees bent. She brought the pommel of the scimitar, a round, fat, polished ruby, down to her crotch and spread her legs. The feminine slit waiting there was pouting, wet, and ready. More than ready, since her feminine side experienced the feedback loop as a clitoral orgasm that never truly came but only coiled in the anticipatory tension of her muscular core. She leaned forward, grabbing the scimitar's grip with both hands, and hefted it into the air to inspect the pommel gemstone, red as blood and as plump as a plum. How could she experience a clitoral orgasm, she thought, when her clitoris counterweighted twelve pounds of lethal, metaphorical manhood? "T, my lovey, my creator, my cheeseburger," she muttered as she brought the pommel back down to nudge against the folds of her female sex. "You are into some seriously different shit." She pressed down on the pommel. SB's rugged flesh did not give like other goo-girls'. She felt a spark of pain as her pussy stretched to accommodate the intrusion. It was soon replaced by a flood of pleasure from being so full as the pommel pushed inward, followed by the first inch of the grip, then the second and third. The flood of pleasure became a searing tower of need as the pommel melted and merged with her innermost nectar. Her sword transmogrified from an intruder invading her sex from without, into an extrusion of her sex, thrusting out from within. The blade softened, thickening in width but shrinking in length until it returned to the three-foot, dick-girl erection curving up from between her thighs that had started it all. SB remembered how she had surprised and frightened her creator in the eon past, when SB first emerged from the icy, luciform waters of the nymphaeum grotto in the navel of the world. SB remembered how she had changed Tomoe's mind. She remembered how Tomoe had promised to make amends for that initial rejection, and how SB had, all those years ago, failed to notice that when Tomoe swore "I will never look away from your dick again," and SB had replied, "In fear. Never look away in fear, you mean, right? Right. I accept your oath," Tomoe did not say yes or no. She had only smiled. "Mm-Gawd-yes!" Meliae jism, gouts and gouts of cloying, sweet seminal fluid, surged from her core and rocketed out of her dick. Cum plastered the wall of the dumpster behind her head and spattered onto her face. Only a fraction of the orgasm feed-back loop had unwound, so the nanomek in SB's core went into overdrive, rush-producing and then pneumatically launching another gallon, then two, then ten, of melia cum. Twenty seconds and a quarter billion nanogasms later, the dumpster resembled the strawberry preserve cooling vat in a jelly factory. SB sprawled at the bottom, completely submerged, awash in both body and mind in an ocean of release. Consciousness returned and SB slithered up from the depths of jam, her dick detumescing. She burned a few thousand nanomek cleaning herself up as much as she could, and a thousand more manufacturing another copper-colored one piece dress. It felt cool and soothing against her still-weeping manhood. She hopped out of the dumpster, knees trembling until her nanomek rebuilt the carbon-crystal muscles in her legs. She marched toward the front of the store. "T," she panted. "Devil-bitch. Gotta get even. Got to get more nanomek. Got to go club—I got it!" She hunched her shoulders, mussed her hair, disassembled and melted a little musculature until she looked as worn-out and wobbly on the outside as she felt on the inside, and hobbled around the corner to the front of the store. "Here comes your darling cheeseburger." * * * * The rose girl zipped around the corner. Dee heard a hollow, metallic bang. Yves and Tomoe sized each other up. Tomoe sighed and shrugged one shoulder, then stood on her tiptoes to regard Dee. "Oh, hey," she called, "Dee! Who's your bish—" "Mm-Gawd-yes!" SB's exultation echoed around the parking lot, followed by a confusing series of pitters and patters and heavy, resounding splats. Tomoe checked her wristwatch as the sounds grew faint and threw a hand in the air. "Pfft, typical. Anyway, Dee, who's your bishonen buddy?" The Jeep creaked behind him as the four—Five, Dee reminded himself, Ursula doesn't really treat Nyx like an article of clothing and neither should you—as the five women skipped, oozed, or, in Raspberry's case, disengaged from the vehicle. Yves gave Dee a familiar arch look meaning Yves wanted him to take the lead. Dee shook his head, pointing a finger to his mouth, miming silent speech. "Don't worry about it," Tomoe said, flipping back her dark hair and tapping the sunflower yellow lump stuck in her ear. "Aegean beeswax." Dee scratched his head, then shrugged. "How did you know I was coming?" "I have my ways." She glared up at the incessant doorbell. "Loud, annoying ways." Ursula and the three meliae crowded behind Dee and Tomoe added, "That's some posse you got there." "Thanks," said a denuded Raspberry. "It's a snapper." Dee decided it was time for introductions. "That's Raz; just ignore her. The bishi is Yves." "Ah, so I see." She nodded as if that explained everything. "But why did he coldcock my girlfriend?" Dee did his best to mirror Tomoe's ineffable air of happy-go-lucky devilry. "She was waving her big thing around like she owned the place." The rose girl toddled back into view sans sword but sporting an oblong bulge disrupting the simple symmetry of her dress. The lump under the fiery one-piece diminished, leaving a trailing stain from SB's belly button to her crotch as she shambled to the storefront door. Her cornrows frizzed in cottony tufts. Tomoe took one look at SB's angry red flush and her inscrutable smile upended into a peevish frown. "Some cheeseburger you are." Tomoe spoke in a crass imitation of SB's contralto. "'Better stay back, lovey. I'll handle this.'" SB stumped in silence up the handicap access ramp next to the door, wracked with yawns. "Was that the sort of manhandling you had in mind? You got owned, SB." SB reached the threshold of the storefront and paused at Tomoe's side, the bell yammering above them. Without meeting Tomoe's withering glare, SB panted, "Invite...him...clubbing." She disappeared into the store. Tomoe balled her fists. "Masaka!" She stormed in after SB. The jarring bell and closing door muffled a string of crabby outbursts in rapid-fire Japanese. Yves listened for a moment, his face blank, then shrugged and moved for the door. Dee pulled him aside. Dee hissed, "Do you have any idea what you just..." Then he thought about it. "Wait. Of course you do." "Damn right," Yves said as Ursula strut past. Yves smiled, still tense and exhausted, but Dee thought the pressure building inside his friend no longer approached critical mass. "I know a cock when I grab one." Ursula pushed open the storefront door and stood at the threshold of SRU. A hush fell over the lot. The absence of noise raised Dee's hackles but it took a moment for Dee to realize why: the awful doorbell hung silent and still above Ursula's head. Tomoe's merry welcome rang out instead. "Oh, hey! Little sisters. Come on in." Ursula crossed the threshold and the bell started up its obnoxious clattering again as the door closed behind her. Eurydice slunk over to Dee, nesting in the crook of his arm. "Is it safe in there?" She eyed the windows piled high with display boxes of diagnostic gadgets, mobility scooter gear, and absorbency pads for every eventuality. "Each time I've gone in there," Dee admitted, "I've come out a different man, one way or another." Eurydice shivered and Dee planted a hard, lingering kiss over her eager mouth until his lips stung with citric acid. "But I'll never look back." She sighed and melted a little, suffusing his arm in gentle warmth. Dee's throat closed and his vision blurred. "C'mon." Eurydice tugged him toward the storefront. "We'll go in together this time." She insinuated herself under his arm as they walked. "Mm. Dee blanket." She wriggled her fingers behind his back and under the cinched waist of his sweatpants. "Heh." She flinched when Dee opened the door and the bell's clarion call was worse than ever. "Jesus, what the fuck?" SB sat on the glass countertop, hands clapped over her ears. Tomoe jumped off her stool behind the counter's cash register and waved them in. "Just move away from it!" Dee and Eurydice jogged past a couple of aisles. The bell dampened its enthusiasm but still clamored for attention. SB refused to move her hands away from the sides of her head. "Some things should stay at the bottom of the ocean." Tomoe poked SB on the shoulder. "You were the one who did not go down on the Titanic." "Only because the bed in our cabin was too narrow," SB protested. Through the rose girl's translucent crystalline flesh, Dee caught a glimpse of Ursula bustling around in the supply closet behind the counter. "Ursula. For God's sake, be careful." Tomoe looked petulant and was about to protest but Ursula answered, "Don't worry, I'm not going to buy anything. I'm just looking." "Doesn't matter," Dee said, ignoring Tomoe's frantic waving. "Just going in there makes you—" "Wait!" Tomoe cried, waving hard enough to flag down a semi-trailer truck. "Hey..." Dee started, but trailed off when he noticed Tomoe was looking behind him, not at him. He turned to see Yves outside the front door, about to push his way in. He registered Tomoe's ducking behind the counter in the corner of his eye, but before he could react— CLANG —the bell's copper clapper thundered louder than a foundry hammer and a palpable wall of noise knocked the wind out him. Eurydice keeled over, viridian droplets scattering in buckshot burst patterns around her. The glass of the countertop, still veined with cracks from Dee's last visit, shattered and SB jackknifed down into the counter. A support strut in the supply closet gave way and a shelf dropped diagonal, its contents shifting sideways before pelting to the floor. Yves danced in a stinging shower of copper shrapnel. Ursula leaped out of the closet. "Holy shit, everyone okay?" "No," said Yves, plucking a metal sliver from the pad of his thumb. "I need a tetanus shot." Tomoe peeped around the cash register, her face scrunched up. "Itai...itai..." SB's feet dangled above her head. "I've got a sphygmomanometer up my ass." Something made a fluffing thump and she lisped, "Anth my dich in my mouf." Dee bent over Eurydice lying prone on the floor and haloed in olive mist. "Honey?" After a terrifying silence, Eurydice said, "I've been subwoofered." A galaxy of green dewdrops zipped around the linoleum floor like beads of mercury rolling over felt cloth, smashing together into spinning gyres one instant only to burst apart into smaller and smaller clusters the next. Dee knelt and stroked her cheek. Yves selected a small First Aid kit from a window display and carried it to the intact half of the counter. He popped the kit open and fished out a bottle of antiseptic. A single spot of blood stood out against the kit's white plastic lid. "Mind if I take some freebies?" He dabbed an antiseptic-saturated pad of gauze on his palm. Tomoe, still half-crouched behind the cash register, looked up at him and sighed, "Shikata ga nai." "Oh, come off it," Yves said. "You're not Japanese." Further down the counter, SB spread her legs to get a good look at him, her mouth stuffed with the plump head of her own cock. He contemplated the spectacle in silence, then turned to Dee, and spoke to him in a slow, even deadpan. "I hate you. I hate you so very, very much." "It's not my fault." Dee grasped at a green spheroid whizzing by but it squirted through his fingers, reformed, and rolled away. "I was perfectly happy being alone and miserable back at the bar. You were the one who decided to drop by and try and cheer me up, if you care to recall. Anyway, how do you know she's not Japanese?" "Her accent, for one thing. It's completely muddled." Yves said. Tomoe rose up behind the cash register, her face a mask of indignation. "Her grammar, for another. No one says 'desu' so damn much. Not in real life, anyway." Tomoe waggled a dismissive hand at him. "You're the wannabe poser, here, not me, blondie. You want to know what it's like to be Japanese?" She crooked her thumb at the supply closet behind her "I've some pickled ginseng that will knock your socks off in there." She glanced down at the clutter spilt around Ursula's feet at the mouth of the closet. "Down there, I guess. Hey, little sisters, watch what you step on. You break it, you pay five dollar, you got that?" "'Kay." Ursula pussyfooted in Nyx's go-go boots over the pile. "We'll be careful." She froze, frowning down at the floor. "Hm?" "I'll pass on the ginseng, thanks," Yves told Tomoe as Ursula bent down to push aside a few boxes of SRU-label anti-aging cosmetics. Tomoe treated him to a trademark one-shoulder shrug. "What do you want then?" Dee thought the cock-blocked SB was watching Yves and Tomoe's interplay with a curious care. "You've got the look of a guy who hasn't been well-laid in a long time." Tomoe maneuvered around Ursula and pulled a SRU-labeled atomizer from the muddle on the floor. "How about some unisex body spray. Want some? For you? Five d—" Yves raised an open palm. "I'm perfectly happy with who I am, thanks." Tomoe rocked back on her heels, swooning as if Yves had slapped her across her face. SB's cheeks bulged with air and her cock bobbled free. "See?" she said as her massive member bowed backward. "I told you, he..." Her erectile gel-tissue bent back as far as it would go before popping right back into her mouth. "A wittle help here, pweath, thumb-buddy." It's Always Time Act 04 Ch. 03 Tomoe searched Yves face. "You are." Her voice fell to a whisper. "You really, really are." Yves imitated Tomoe's one-shouldered shrug. Tomoe stared up at him a moment longer, then bit down on the curving, maroon-painted nail of her left index finger and gushed, "So do you wan' go clubbing?" She blushed and toyed with the hem of her white blouse. Ursula tucked something bulky under her left arm and moved to help SB. She hesitated in reaching for SB's dick. Her hands, coated in glossy black, formal-wear gloves that stretched past her elbow to disappear beneath her poncho, paused and twitched around SB's mouthful of masculinity, as if testing various possibilities. "Um, not quite sure what to do here, exactly." Dee felt the pit of his stomach drop and his ire rise. He started to mouth off but swallowed instead. "I can't believe this." Yves, Ursula, Tomoe, and SB turned to look at him. Still lying on the floor and surrounded by wayward gobbets of gel, Eurydice pulled off her sunglasses and gazed upward. "For the first time in almost a week," Dee said, face burning, "I'm not the center of attention. And what do I do? I get angry. What the heck is wrong with me?" Eurydice nabbed a squirming green sphere and slapped it into her mouth. "Admitting you have a problem is the first step to solving the problem," she said, chewing. "Except," Yves added, "you just made yourself the center of attention again by doing so." Ursula, with her head turned and grip unsteady, eased SB's dick out into the air. "Nnf, thanks." SB smiled. "Dee's still a work in progress. Wait, um, Ursula? I've also got this sphygmoma—" Ursula skipped backward into the closet, the bulky found object still lodged in under her arm. "Nuh-uh." Tomoe sidled in front of her, eyes shining. She coughed, rolled up one sleeve, stepped up behind a now panic-stricken SB, and poked her tongue out of the corner of her mouth. The front door heaved open and Raspberry peered inside. "Have you guys stopped blowing things up? Is it safe to come in yet?" The ruined remains of the doorbell fell off its hook, pierced Raspberry's surface tension and lodged itself in her translucent, empty brainpan. "Ouch-fuck!" Eurydice swallowed her mouthful as CeeCee pushed a smarting Raspberry into the store. Eurydice hummed in thought, waiting. She gasped and grabbed at Dee's muscle shirt. "Dee!" She arched and fell back, her drab hoodie melting to reveal trembling gem fire flesh. "Oh, God, Dee...I re-remember. You squeezed me, all of me, in your fist, until I came apart into itty bitty pieces." "Holy cow, Galatea," Tomoe said after getting her first good look at the green girl's face and slender shoulders. "You look barely legal. Apart from the knockers." A glistening bulb of a blood pressure cuff dangled from Tomoe's sleeve-rolled arm. SB, woozy and cross-eyed, toppled free of the counter only to fall backward behind it. "Call me Eurydice." A green globule trundled by her head and Eurydice was captivated. Her emerald irises sharpened into diamond wedges as she watched the globule's erratic movements with a silent, feline intensity. Dee smirked and cornered the blobby escapee with his arms. He smooshed it against his palms and rolled it between his fingers before releasing it on the floor, where it reformed and wobbled away. Eurydice pounced on the dizzy blob. "C'mere you little goober." She gobbled it whole and sat like a cat, bare breasts squashed between her down-thrust arms. The re-remembrance struck her. She whimpered and wept as she came, fat drops of nectarous perspiration running between her tits and clenched thighs. She recovered and leered heavy-lidded at Dee. "Again." Tomoe shook her head. "Incredible." Raspberry teetered around the store's first aisle, the copper clapper lodged behind her eyes. She started chanting in rhyme. "They are neither man nor woman, they are neither brute nor human..." CeeCee, expression inquisitive, moseyed after her and Raspberry lurched at her, shaking CeeCee into froth by the shoulders. "To the groaning of the bells, to the moaning of the bells, to the—get this fucker out of my head right fucking now—bells bells bells bells bells bells BELLS!" Dee squeezed another green sphere into spiraling ribbons before letting it reform. Eurydice purred and lunged but Dee swiped it away and popped it in his mouth. Eurydice pouted and whined as Dee rolled the tart treat around on his tongue and worried it with his teeth. Her protestations soon died in her throat as Dee worked and worked but did not swallow. Dee sat back. "Kith me," he lisped, his mouth full of memories. Eurydice sprang into his lap. She cupped his jaw with both of her hands and French-kissed him so hard he felt it in his toes. She broke the searing kiss and had just enough time to lick Dee's lips clean before the re-remembrance hit. Eurydice collapsed against him, burying her head in the hollow beneath Dee's neck and pawing at his back. "I love you," she wept as each spasm of orgasm wracked through her. "I love you. I love you!" Yves leaned conspiratorially close to Tomoe. "I think she loves him." * * * * CeeCee espied Dee and Eurydice's blistering lip-lock while Raspberry accelerated her fevered, rhyming assault, a rapper demented by mescaline. "How it swells! How it dwells! On the future how it tells of the rapture that impels to the swinging to the ringing of the bells, bells, bells—help!" CeeCee slammed her mouth over Raspberry's. Raspberry froze rigid as a mellow yellow tongue lolled between her trembling lips. "Mmf? Mmm..." The tongue filled the cavity of Raspberry's mouth like a blooming sunflower. Raspberry's surface tension melted and slicked. "Hm? Nn!" The molten cream poured down her throat, a sluggish, internal waterfall visible but hazy in Raspberry's translucent neck and chest. CeeCee reached through the orchid petals shrouding Raspberry's pubic mound, matted with damp. Raspberry's perplexed cries dissolved into eager pleas. Raspberry raptured. Sugar-sherbet-satin imbrued her pussy and boiled inward. Buttercream tendrils questing down from her throat collided with the lemon-yellow upsurge from her sex. CeeCee kissed harder and mushier, muffling Raspberry's screaming orgasm. The lavender girl's core achieved critical meltdown as she came. She lost all cohesion, liquefying in moments, her face mask of bliss before CeeCee's ravening mouth inhaled Raspberry's one hundred and twenty gelatinous pounds as easy as a party girl slurping down a single Jell-O shot. "I told you we go together well," CeeCee said, smoothing out the gentle swelling of her belly, now tinged in soft oranges, reds, and golds, a tummy full of sunsets. She pressed a chubby thumb and forefinger between her peach-stained lips and drew out the destructed bell's old copper clapper. She flourished the clapper at the crowd gathered by the counter. "Now that's what I call a real show-stopper." But Eurydice sobbed her tenth "I love you" with no end in sight and still held the room in thrall. CeeCee folder her arms under the jutting prow of her matronly bosom. "How do you like that. Upstaged by a freshly squeezed fruit. Bet that bint's a cam-whore." CeeCee startled. "Raz, you stupid shitlick, get your dumb-ass thoughts out of my fucking head." * * * * Dee held Eurydice tight against him until there were no more I-love-yous. He could feel the pulsation of the green girl's lightning-strike climaxes as bursts of penetrating heat radiating from deep with her. She clutched and bucked with each pulse, her gel-flesh squashing against him in smooching waves. The onslaught of re-remembered sensations finally relented, and after one last, juddering, "I love, I love you, Dee," she released his neck and curled into a fetal hug in his lap, weeping openly. "Don't leave me. Don't let me leave. Don't look back." Dee raised his head. Ursula and Yves, his wry smile long gone, looked paler than ghosts. SB pressed a fist hard against her mouth with her other hand. Only Tomoe, tears tracing the line of a cheekbone, dared to look him in the eye. "Help us," Dee told her. "I'm sorry." Tomoe dried her cheek with the palm of her hand. "I can't." Dee blinked. "Um. Please?" Standing close to Tomoe, Yves added, "We haven't told you what's been happening yet." Tomoe gave Ursula the once-over, taking in the lustrous rubber collar with matching onyx gloves and hip-hugging go-go boots. Ursula blushed and busied herself with straightening out the closet. Tomoe nodded at CeeCee waddling into the maternity aisle, her surface whorled with hues of amber, amaretto, and port wine. "Considering how crowded it is in here, I'd say that the thickener's fallen into the wrong hands, as the cliché goes." Eurydice sniffled and twisted in Dee's lap, settling with her back nestled into his chest, the tips of her spiky hair winding around his chin. "The worst possible hands." SB limped out from behind the counter. "You know there's nothing T can do about that. She told Dee that whatever happened to the nanomek was on his head, his karma, remember?" "No, I don't remember." Eurydice reached up behind her, massaging Dee's neck. "But I do know you," she told SB. "I know you of old. How?" "That was a long ago." SB shrugged. "Different time, different country...different flavors. Things echo." "And she calls me cryptic." Tomoe muttered to Yves. "I guess she learned from the best," Yves answered. Tomoe swatted his shoulder. "Don't flirt with me unless you want to get into my pants." Yves glanced down. "What's your size?" "Oh, hardy-har-fucking har-har." She sounded as sardonic as ever but she wilted under Yves' icy regard, twiddling her thumbs and toying with her hair. "Listen, Dee knows the deal." She noticed SB staring daggers at her and stage whispered, "What?" Dee nodded. "I'm responsible for all of this. I done fucked up, I know it, and I plan to fix it. That's not what we're here for." "Okay," Tomoe said. "I'm listening." "Alright." Dee drew a ragged breath. "You probably know all this anyway but here goes. You told me that by buying the thickener I started a story that had one of two endings: the Disney happy ending and the Grimm cautionary one. Well, Galatea tried to give me—to get us—the Disney ending. I told her I trusted her, so she believed me and put me along the path. Turns out I didn't really trust after all." Dee squeezed Eurydice and kissed the top of her head. "If I did, I wouldn't have freaked out when I realized I'd eaten raw nanomek." SB backpedaled away from Dee until she banged her butt against the counter. "Whoa. You what?" Dee turned Eurydice around in his lap. "Eurydice, I know you don't remember, and I know you don't want to remember, but we spent two whole days together that I don't remember, so hear me out." Eurydice shivered but said nothing. "When we had our fight, I accused you of force-feeding me the thickener. I accused you but I never let you answer." Dee held her hand in his. Eurydice stared down at it. "That's not what really happened, was it?" After a long pause, Eurydice shook her head. "I ate the nanomek myself, didn't I? It was my idea all along, wasn't it?" The silence stretched. Eurydice crinkled her forehead in confusion, querying her memory-web for re-remembrances that were not entirely her own. * * * * "...Fuck all you want," the green girl had said, "I'll make more." Dee sprawled unconscious on the floor of the apartment kitchenette, his face, chest, and crotch slavered in lime gelatin. The hollow green girl stood astraddle his prostrate form. The early morning sunlight streaming in from the kitchenette bay window gave the green girl her first good look at the full package known as "Deiter Detwiler." Tall and skinny but more sinewy than lanky. A cute, boyish face under a nest of chestnut brown curls that could be considered handsome if he would stop making goofy expressions. The one he was wearing now, for instance, with his mouth slack and eyes rolled back, gave her giggles. His cum, on the other hand, was no laughing matter. It spread over the inner surface of her elastic, glass-bottle green shell, working into every nook and cranny. "Whatever your name is," the green girl told the comatose Dee, "I gotta tell you: your cum tastes fan-fucking-tastic." An electric tingle shot through her thin, air-inflated substance. "Wait, what's going on?" The green girl experienced her first nanogasm. "Woo! That was fun. Oh, it's happening again. And, uh, again?" Her hands fluttered about her throat as the little sparks of pleasure grew in strength and frequency, building into a cascade. "H-hey, bright boy?" She gently nudged Dee's ribs with a fuck-me-pump covered foot. He murmured and turned his head, eyes unopened. "What's happening? Why's it feel so—ah—so damn good?" The cascade crested and crashed. "Oh my God!" She pulled her hands away from her neck. Her arms, mobile sculptures of hollow, hand-blown glass, began to fill with gel. The green girl felt the inner growth as a delicious, empowering pressure, as strong as a bear hug and as penetrative as the deepest French kiss, starting with the tips of fingers and thumbs and pushing down through her palms, into her wrists, and past her elbows. It stopped short of her shoulders. "Oh my God." She fell to her knees beside Dee, still whimpering to the Heavens, or maybe to him, she was not sure. "Oh my God, oh my God. Oh, we've got to do that again." She crawled over to his crotch. Relishing the newfound strength of her jelled arms, she unzipped Dee's fly and yanked his pants down around his thighs. "I can't wait to feel that in my tits." Dee's erection bobbed free of his underwear. "Wow, you're hard again. Hey, bright boy, you awake?" Dee lolled his head, eyes still closed, and spoke in a dreamy, distant voice. "If I'm not awake then this is the best wet dream I've ever had and I don't want to wake up." "Good enough for me." She scuttled between Dee's spread-eagled legs, rolling up mock sleeves into rings around her upper arms. "Let's see what these babies can do." She held out one palm, now filled with gelatin the color of toothpaste gel, and brushed it against the very tip of Dee's cock, taking careful measure like an expert golfer needing to make birdie on the 18th hole. She reared her hand back, palm flat. "Ready for more Fleshlight Technique?" "No," Dee whispered, and the green girl deflated, brow crinkled in confusion until he said, "but that's the best part." The green girl grinned, shark-toothed, and drove her hand down onto his dick. The surface tension of her palm gave inward. Hard, it's so damn hard. The thought—It's so hard—bounced around her memory web. From an inner recess of her mind, an echo replied distorted: Not hard enough. She felt the surface of her palm stretch to swaddle the head of Dee's cock in cool, smooching gel. Not enough—Maybe never enough. I want him inside me—All of him inside me. She pushed her hand down his shaft until her fingers squelched into his scruffy pubic hair. The green girl let her palm's surface split. Dee's dick eased into her inner gel. There was no pain, no sense of invasion or breaking of limits. The green girl felt only more of that delicious pressure as the displacement, solidity, and warmth of the cock throbbing within her hand (and then wrist, and then forearm), whipped her inner gel into a piping hot frenzy. She pumped her arm up and down. Dee's dick scratched and soothed a burning itch somewhere deep inside her, an itch she had not known existed until it was gone. I want him inside me but this will do for now, oh yes it will oh it's so fucking solid! Ooh, what's this ooh precum yes ooh nanogasm yes ooh he's cumming! "Yes!" "Yes!" Dee echoed and thrashed as he came, arms sweeping across the floor. The green girl's inner gel worked to milk, massage, and spread Dee's spunk throughout her jellied mass. Not as much as last time, she thought, and the distorted echo answered, Not enough not ever enough. I guess I'll have to take it slow—Have to slowly take it all. She felt him soften and she pulled her arm off his shaft. The seam of the breach in her palm plumped into smacking lips. "Hot damn," her hand said. "Why are we stopping?" Dee drew his arms to his heaving chest, the tin of SRU thickening agent cradled in one hand. Nanogasms cascaded through the green girl's gel flesh. She felt as if a giant tongue were French kissing its way down her throat via the top of her head. The empty tubes of her hair, stubby petal-tentacles of a mutant sea anemone, filled into jellied dreadlocks. Cross-eyed, she flopped down onto Dee's stomach. The green girl, her head filling with gel the way rising dough fills a cake pan, found their worldless chorus—Oof!—inexplicably hilarious. Three glutinous giggles escaped her lips: "Ah-hah, ah-hum, hm-mm." The geek and the green girl panted in a huddle on the floor. The green girl sat up in a huff, tucking her skirt under her knees. Dee propped himself up by the elbows, head wobbling. "Whuzzit?" The green girl clutched her swollen tits and squeezed. They squeaked exactly like toy balloons. "My boobs are still empty. Aw, dammit." She squirmed, rolling her rubbery breast flesh between her fingers and bouncing up and down on her butt like an impatient kindergartner during naptime. "I wanna make 'em bigger." Dee fell back onto the floor. "Lord all-mighty," he sighed, draping the hand holding the tin of thickening agent over his eyes. "I think I'm in love." The green girl gaped. Her mouth worked in silence. The shock at the concept of love gave way to the curious and new sensation of lush lips scraping over semi-solid teeth and a weighty tongue filling her mouth. Filling her mouth, what a splendid idea. She scooted back down toward Dee's beslimed crotch. "Now that I've got a head," she said, bending close enough to buffet Dee's deflated dick with her sultry breath, "maybe it's time for me to give a little." Dee pulled the tin off his face, protesting. "W-wait a minute..." The green girl ignored his words and mashed her face over his cock. She tasted her own nectar, caked and cooling like batter on his shaft, but she spun her tongue three hundred and sixty degrees around his softened manhood a few times and hoovered it clean. Dee's distinct flavor permeated her, a cornucopia of earthy musk, cum, sweat, salt, and soap. Good, so good, he tastes so good—More, much more, taste him more. She squished her head over his crotch and her molten mouth engulfed his root, balls, and all. The stretchy, thick locks of her hair lashed around his thighs and ass. Say, she thought, he's got a cute butt, and the little echo replied, Shut up and eat it. Dee kicked and scuffed the floor. "Stop it. Ah, Jesus. Stop!" The green girl decoupled from his cock. The seal between her lips and his flesh burst with the smacking pop and slush of an uncorked bottle of shaken Champaign. "Wha'fuck?" Her vortex throat foamed and gurgled as she slurred, "You were just starting to get hard." Dee whistled through gritted teeth. "Afterglow. I tried...I mean, I want...but I can't, I can't." "Hey," the green girl cooed, mushing her hand around his cock in slow, sloppy circles, noting his legs and stomach spasm on each upstroke, "It's okay. It happens to everybody, right? We'll take it slow. After all, the Demonic Fifteen Point Fleshlight Palm Technique lasts forty-eight..." "No." Dee's free hand snapped around her wrist. "I want more, now. Don't you?" The little echo in the back of the green girl's mind took the initiative: Ooh, I like the way he thinks. She stole a sly glance at her cleavage, hunching her shoulders until her breasts squeaked. More, now! "Sure, but how? I mean, your mouth says 'Yes' but..." She squelched her fingers over his balls. "Your body says 'No no no please God no.' I mean, I feel your nuts trying to crawl back up into your pelvis." It's Always Time Act 04 Ch. 03 Dee held the thickener aloft. "What about this?" Uh oh. The green girl shrugged. "What about it?" "It made you, didn't it?" He made you. You made you. "I guess so." Dee turned the tin, inspecting it from every angle. "What does it do?" Anything you want, nothing you wish. She twirled a finger through his slick pubic hair. "Dunno." "But it made your Jell-O thick, right?" The powder inside the tin skittered and scratched. "So maybe it will make my, um, you know..." "Your dick hard?" the green girl finished, grinning. "Where'd you get an idea like that?" Dee glared up at her, askance. "I write Internet porn." He said it as if it explained everything. "Well?" He let go of her hand and pried the tin's lid loose with his fingernails. "You're serious?" Many have tried. "I...I think it might be dangerous or something." "I've seen this movie," Dee said. The lid clattered on the floor. "So let me skip to the end: 'Many have tried.' 'Tried and failed?' 'Tried and died.' Right?" Many have tried and wished they'd died. "Kinda sorta almost." Dee struggled to sit up and keep the tin level. She let go of him and edged back. "You're really serious?" Maybe he can do it. Maybe he can beat it. Maybe he's the one. "I mean, are you sure?" She could not hide her rising excitement. The skirt cinched around her waist softened and ran like treacle. The kitchen swam with the aroma of citrus and sex. "You...you've got to be sure." "For this?" He clicked the tin on the linoleum floor to stroke her cheek. "For you?" His hand came away sparkling with dots and spots of emerald. "I'm as sure as Hell. Hell, yes. Fuck, yes. For you, anything, always." Dee seized the small tin. Please let him do it. He rubbed a pinch of the nanomek between his fingers. Please let him be the one. Dee licked his dusty thumb, smacked his lips in thought, and smiled. I really, really like this one and I've waited so long... "You taste much better," he said, and tipped the tin into his mouth. The green girl cascaded into nanogasm, hot gel rushing and gushing and breaking the mould. * * * * Dee sat on SRU's checker-tiled floor, waiting for Eurydice's answer. She took his hand in both of hers and curled herself around it, snuggling to his lap. She rubbed his wrist with her thumbs and would not look up at the crowd staring at her. Dee asked her again, "It was my idea to eat the nanomek all along, wasn't it?" Eurydice shifted in his lap. She spoke in the tones of a toddler. "Yeah." Tomoe slumped against the cash register, making it ping and ring up a NO SALE. "Why. Why? Didn't you see how much kuzbu he had already?" "Yeah," Eurydice repeated in that same aw-shucks kiddy voice. "Kudzu? What?" Dee said. "Kuzzz...buuu." Tomoe over-enunciated, as if confident slow and careful speech would activate her universal translator. Ursula poked her head out of the closet. "Oh, so that's what it is. Good to know." SB shook her head. "His yang was so out of whack and you just go ahead and give him more?" "Wait, his yang was whacked? That makes no sense," Ursula said. "Did she say 'yang' or 'wang'?" Dee asked Eurydice. Eurydice giggled and nested further into his lap. "I love you." Yves stormed into the middle of the mob. "Would everyone just...shut the fuck up for one second and let me think?" "Woo!" A slippery slick Raspberry glissaded out of the maternity aisle, zooming across the tiled floor. "Gangway!" She zipped by on her back faster than an Olympic luge, smashed into a display stack of athletic equipment and vanished in an avalanche of boxes. "Fuck." Yves waited for the last box to tumble to a standstill before continuing. "Okay, let me get this straight: Dee ate the nanomek of his own free will, but apparently can't remember doing it or anything else during those two days. Right?" He turned to Eurydice, who nodded. "Dee had lots of, uh, 'kuzbu,' which—no, wait, let me guess—is probably some old word meaning destiny, or the Force, or maybe just Really Great Ass, right?" He turned to Ursula. "Right. Actually," Ursula admitted, "that's a good translation. It kind of means all three." She disappeared back into the supply closet. Yves leveled a finger at SB. "And that all somehow relates to the yin and yang of ancient Chinese philosophy and medicine, meaning the I-Ching is really about sex with goo girls." SB shrugged. "Isn't everything?" "So that's why women can't keep their hands off me?" Dee asked, blush rising as he realized how stupid that sounded even to his own ears. "No." Tomoe shoved the cash register's till closed. "That's your own damn fault." "Look!" Raspberry stumbled out of the pile of equipment, adjusting a swatch of fabric over her left eye. "I'm a pirate." CeeCee strolled out of the maternity aisle. "That's a jockstrap." Raspberry advanced on CeeCee, brandishing athletic supporters in both hands. "Get aboard you fat buccaneer." CeeCee retreated into the maternity aisle but Raspberry followed. "You are a pirate," she promised. Dee brushed a green dreadlock away from his ear. It darted under his chin to tickle the other one. "My fault? How do I stop it?" "Do you want to stop it," SB asked, tapping a finger against her lips. "Or do you want to control it?" Tomoe narrowed her eyes at SB. That was a clue, Dee realized as SB shrugged again. SB just gave me a clue. What did she mean? Isn't stopping it the same thing as controlling it? Only if I want to be able to turn it back on once I turn it off...Do I? "Oh my God, I do," Dee said aloud. "I do want to control it. Eurydice." He pulled away from her to look her in the eye. "Eurydice, I like it. I like my kudzu. Is that okay?" Eurydice goggled at him before dissolving into giggles, a host of dreadlocks swarming in to tickle his ears. "Kudzu, kudzu, kudzu," she teased, her sap green hair crawling everywhere like vines. "Huh," Tomoe said as Dee toppled backward onto the floor and Eurydice skooched up to sit on his chest and continue her tickle attack with hair and hands. "How about that. Kawaii lime. Now there's a flavor I never thought of." Ursula strut out of the closet. "I can't believe that's our Dee. I mean, he made his girlfriend multi-orgasmic in public. What's happening to him?" "He's getting tickled to death by creeper vines," Yves said. The blades of Eurydice's hair stretched longer and longer, hunting out ticklish spots, until some discovered the waist of his pants and dove beneath. "Make that molested by creeper vines," Yves added. Eurydice leaned to breathe in Dee's ear even as her hair pulled, massaged, and pumped in his crotch behind her. "Kudzu, kudzu, kudzu." Tomoe plucked at the buttons of her blouse then quickly turned away. "I got to stop watching before I develop a new fetish. Hey, wait a minute." She pointed to the bulge under Ursula's poncho. "What's that?" "This? Oh, we found it on the floor." Ursula went fishing under her poncho and pulled out the fat Sudoku puzzle book. She held the ungainly thing in two jet-black, gloved hands. "We weren't going to steal it, or anything. It just looked interesting." "Pfft, that old thing?" Tomoe waved her dismissal. "They used to make them much harder in the old days. The last magic squares were so easy I didn't even bother. I should just throw it out, but SB paid like twenty dollar for it on Amazon." SB was engrossed in watching Dee's sweatpants stretch and twist as more dreadlocks found their way between his legs. "Meh." She glanced down. "Ooh, dang, anyone got a tarp or something?" Ursula plunked the thick book down next to the cash register. "I have a twenty in my pocket—oh." Her glove rippled and a twenty dollar bill unfurled in the palm of her hand. "I mean, I've got a twenty right here." "It's used." Tomoe protested. "It's only got one section left. It's stupid." She sighed, her inscrutable smile indistinguishable from a frown. "But you want it? For you? Five dollar." "Kudzu," cooed Eurydice as Dee's legs began to tremble. "Kudzu, kudzu, kud...zu." Dee gulped and groaned. Eurydice's caresses slowed but Dee still spasmed on each luxurious upstroke of the nest of living dreadlocks pumping at his crotch. "Yes, Dee, it's okay to like your kudzu. But this..." She tugged her head. Her tentacled hair took up slack. Dee yawped and laughed and arched his pelvis high. "This is Mine." Dee leered. "Always." Ursula upended her palm and the twenty dollar bill flittered down. Tomoe snagged it out of the air and rang up SALE on the cash register in a single swoop. "Done!" Dee's smile twisted into a wince. "Oh shit." Jelly tentacles unwound all around him but Eurydice still perched on his chest. "Who bought something?" "Relax," Tomoe said. "It's just a dumb magic square book." She counted out Ursula's change. "One five dollar, two five dollar, three five dollar. Here you go. You want a bag?" "No thanks." Ursula tucked the puzzle book under her poncho. She pulled her hands free but the square bulge under the cashmere coverall slid across her belly and settled near the curve of her hip. "We're set." Eurydice bounced a bit on Dee's chest, tugging on the collar of his shirt. "Kudzu?" Dee goosed her thigh. "Just a one more question, honey." Eurydice pouted and stood up, morphing her glimmering flesh back into the drab olive Unabomber guise but leaving Dee's muscle shirt tie-dyed green and reeking of citrus-and-sex. Tomoe pried a lump of beeswax from her ear. "Better ask quick before she sits on your face to shut you up." She sighed. "That's what I'd do." She watched SB mutter and tug at the hem of her one-piece, stretching it tight over her tented prick. "I'd sit on something, anyway." Dee sat up as Tomoe cleaned beeswax from her other ear. "Wait. I don't know how to control it yet." "Sure you do," SB said, drawing the dress snug around her balls. "I do?" "You know you want it, right?" The copper-colored material popped up to let the base of her shaft peep out as soon as SB let go. "Dang it." "Yes. I want to keep my kuzbu." Eurydice gasped and narrowed her eyes. Dee winked at her. "I'm a kudzu kind of guy." "That's all there is to it," SB said. Yves nodded. "Like ki. Once you find it, it's yours to control. It will come when you call." Somewhere among the aisles, Raspberry barked out a single, raspy, "Ha!" "Hey," Tomoe said to SB, "remember all that 'can't interfere' stuff I keep talking about?" SB pursed her lips as if she knew what was coming. "Yeah." "Well, you're doing it wrong." "Why?" Dee rose. "Why can't you help?" Tomoe shrugged and opened her mouth but this time Dee knew exactly what was coming and cut her off. "And don't just say 'rules,' or 'I lost the manual,' or some other bullshit. Galatea tried to get us the Disney lovey-dovey ending and I fucked it up. I gave away the nanomek. Now there's this three hundred pound, chocolate cherry psycho-bitch running around, kidnapping my girlfriend, mindfucking skank-bots and killing and eating people in some elaborate scheme to take over the world just because she thinks I don't pay enough attention to her." Eurydice reached for him, silent and starry eyed. Dee moved close and Eurydice gathered him into her arms, rubbing her cheek against his back. "Tomoe," Dee said, "you told me the point of the Disney ending was for the lonely guy to learn the true meaning of love. Well, unless the true meaning of love is either 'chicks dig confidence' or 'Fatal Attraction is real,' I don't feel like I've learned a damn thing." He spun in Eurydice's arms and kissed her soft and sweet. "I love Galatea and I love Eurydice. They are the same and they are different in a way I don't understand. But it doesn't matter if I'll never understand, because the one thing I do know is much more important: right now, neither of them are happy. I made them happy, once, before I ruined everything. I want them to be happy again. So I've just got one question." Dee steeled himself, gave Eurydice a final squeeze, and bellied up to the counter to look Tomoe square in the eye. "What the Hell is going on?" he said. Tomoe bumped the cash register till closed. It pinged. "There are some thing's even I don't know, Deiter." Yves rapped a knuckle hard on the countertop, a move Dee had seen before whenever Yves wanted everyone at work to know he was pissed off. "A true but useless statement. Dee's right, you don't lie. But you don't answer anyone's questions in the way they expect, either. Well, too bad. I know about the third ending already." Relief washed over Dee. "You've figured it out," he said. "Took you long enough." "Just the basics." Blood blotted the cotton gauze bandage on Yves' palm. He rummaged through the first aid kit and began to redress the wound. "And I figured it out a few hours ago, actually, when you were quickening Eurydice." He dropped the used gauze into the wax paper disposal bag that came folded inside the first aid kit. "Well, Tomoe?" Tomoe gave him a curt nod. "What does 'sublime' mean, Dee?" Dee did not hesitate. "Vaporize." "Vaporize, right," Yves said, binding his palm with a fresh bandage. "That's what I first thought of, too." He smiled. "I guess we both took English for Engineers in college. But that isn't the only meaning. Eurydice told me that most guys who made lime meliae sublime that way, though, right?" Eurydice nodded. "But every once in a while, someone sublimes the other way." Ursula darkened the storage closet door. "In alchemy, 'to sublime' means 'to ennoble' or purify." "Tomoe, you called nanomek 'techno-alchemical,'" Dee remembered. "So which 'sublime' did you mean?" "Both." She shrugged, one shouldered. "How could I say for sure? No one's ever gone lime first time before. Even the most brazen had to work their way up from honey or vanilla—or chocolatl if you were an Aztec." "That was all before artificial flavor packets and high fructose corn syrup," SB admitted, smiling. "There could be more lime guys out there now than you or I ever imagined, T." "I don't get it," Dee said. "What is there to purify? I'm a computer geek. I write porn. I've got almost every fetish there is to get on the Internet. I'm a pervert. I'm just..." Dee spread his arms. "...I'm just me." Eurydice arched a brow. "And Mine." "Very funny." Dee frowned. There was something Galatea had said, when he stormed out on her. What was it?      ["...you aren't changing..."] "Look at that," Tomoe said, "you can almost see him thinking."      ["...What kind of name is Deiter Detwiler..."] "Still waters run deep," Ursula declared.      ["...Maybe you just didn't know who you really were before now..."] "I've always hated that expression," Yves said.      ["...Don't tell me. You never know when a secret identity might come in handy..."] "Yeah, me too," SB agreed. "Still waters don't run deep. Still waters don't run."      ["...Fire can't burn me, iron can't break me..."] Yves and SB grinned like idiots at each other and chorused, "Or else they wouldn't be still."      ["...Yves, you're a kung fu badass..."] "It's just an aphorism," Ursula murmured, soothing the thick rubber collar around her neck.      ["...I'm a ''pharmaceutria''. A sorceress. I'm a witch..."] "I can't see shit!" Raz bumbled out of an aisle, two jockstraps tied over her eyes.      ["...Shut up and let Sherlock do his thing..."] "We're not perverts," Dee said under his breath, looking at all his friends in turn.      ["...We didn't expect a... band, or league, or whatever it is you've put together..."] Eurydice crept up and took his hand. "What did you say?"      ["...you aren't changing..."] "We're not perverts," Dee told her, kissed her, and told everyone. "We're superheroes."      ["...you're just becoming more you..."] Eurydice asked, "There's a difference?" * * * * So I'm gonna get to know these little demons, So I can know where they end and I begin. I'm gonna peel back that fine line, That divides me from my mind, If there's a way out of my skin. —Gloria Deluxe, Outrun Your Demons * * * * Interlude: I Told You From the Start SB waved one last time and let the storefront door fall shut in front of her. The silent swish reminded her of the loss of the doorbell. "We'll need another cloister bell." Tomoe plucked shards of glass from the broken counter and collected them in a dustpan. "It was hard enough finding that one. Who the Hell throws gifts of pure kindness from their true love into the sea anymore?" She shoveled the glass into a plastic dustbin and started filling the pan again. "Nobody, that's who. Goodbye courtly love, hello Courtney Love. We'll do without." Out in the parking lot, a modest sized mob—Dee, Nyx upon Ursula, CeeCee, Eurydice, Raspberry, and Yves—descended upon a two-door, silver Jeep. The scene reminded SB of the old circus clown car gag, except... "Dee was here just last night," she pondered aloud, "a man alone apart from his stalkers. And what does he bring with him the very next morning, like minutes after we open for business?" "A knight and a witch," Tomoe shrugged. "Who are just as panty-soaking fucking fine as he is, don't forget. I can't decide whose ass to watch, Dee's or Ursula's. Or Eurydice's...no, wait, she has Ursula's ass too. That'd be kind of cute if I didn't want to line all three of 'em up and shag 'em senseless." "You don't wear panties. You mess the floor, you mop." "A knight and a witch." SB watched CeeCee siphon into the too-small trunk of the Jeep, distending the canvas roof and filling the plastic rear window with roiling, golden glop. "And familiars. How did he gather them so soon? How did he know?" "Everyone needs a hobby." The mid-morning sun danced across broken glass as Tomoe poured the pan out into the bin. "Dee doesn't look like the 'knowing' type. Dee's a doer." Ursula and Eurydice bounded into the back of the Jeep. SB frowned over her shoulder at Tomoe. "You're not watching. Me or them. Not even a peek." Her heart hardened, voice flattened. "They are going to die, aren't they? Today." "Why don't you help me clean up, hey?" Tomoe dropped the pan into its bin and scraped her palms together. "Answer me, lovey." "Don't do this." SB only stared so Tomoe sighed, "Alright, SB. Somebody has to die today. At least one, probably more. You know how this goes." Tomoe squeezed the first aid kit shut, a big red button of blood square in the middle of its white plastic lid. Dee hopped into the Jeep's front passenger seat, rocking the vehicle on its shocks. "Who has to die?" Tomoe flicked her thumb over her tongue and swept the bloodstain on the plastic lid, smearing it into a comet-tailed comma. "Who do you think?" she asked, kissing the blood off the pad of her thumb. The surface tension of her neck prickled and SB faced front. Yves stood by an open car door. His cool gaze met hers for a frozen moment before he climbed up into the driver's seat. Raspberry stuck her tongue out at Yves, gave SB the finger, and jetted up onto the roof in a spray of violet. SB felt a knot grow in her throat. "And we're just going to sit here and mind your shitty store?" SB heard the rustle of Tomoe's dress as she padded up behind her. "There's nothing I can do that won't make things worse." It's Always Time Act 04 Ch. 03 "Fuck you, T." SB balled her fists. "Fuck you and your fucking rules. How can you just..." Tomoe's iron grip clamped down on SB's shoulder and spun the rose girl about. There was no trace of Tomoe's casual mischief in her eyes. "SB, darling, please. Listen to what I am saying." She held the first aid kit in her free hand. "There's nothing I can do." * * * * Yves drove his overcrowded Jeep down the forlorn road. The surrounding fallow fields of wild grass blurred in undulating waves on either side. He eased back in the seat, trying to avoid tunnel vision and to keep his mental focus set to "Wide Lens." A harsh rapping on his window jolted him and the Jeep fishtailed a few degrees. "Open up!" Raspberry's upside-down head bobbed outside the window. The wind tossed the petals of her hair into the beautiful chaos of blossoms falling in late Spring. She drubbed her knuckles against the glass again. "Open up, asshole!" Dee stared, unseeing, out his own window. "We're superheroes." "Dee, you've said that already." Eurydice grinned in the rearview mirror. "At least a dozen times now." "You two are the superheroes," Yves said, cranking down the window. "I'm just the guy driving the car." Orchid petals tickled his cheeks and the tang of raspberry perfume overwhelmed all other scents. "What is it, Raz." "Drive faster, damn it," Raspberry demanded. "I can't cum unless you drive at least sixty. And if you can get this baby up to eighty-eight miles per hour," she winked, "you're gunna see some serious shit." Yves forced himself not to smile. He enjoyed Raspberry's company so much it pissed him off and he would rather die than let it show. "I'm not going to risk our lives just so you can get off." Raspberry grumbled, "Ass wipe." Her head swung up out of sight. For the first time since they drove away from the SRU parking lot, Ursula pulled her nose out of the Sudoku book. "Risk our lives? What's wrong, Yves?" Yves scrunched his fingers on the steering wheel. "Something just doesn't feel right. Maybe I'm just too wired, gone too long with too little sleep but...something's up." He studied Ursula in the rearview mirror. "I wish you'd keep an eye out. Dee's useless when he's achieving kensho." Ursula flipped to a page in the back of her book. "Ah ha, here's one she only finished halfway. Alright, Yves, just pass me a pen please." She cocked her head, eyes distant. "You sure? It won't cost you too much? Okay." Yves started to speak but Ursula raised one glossy gloved finger. The fingertip thickened liquidly before stretching up and tapering into a sharp, hooked claw, wet with onyx ink. She brought the claw down over the open book. It made the scritter and scritch noises of a fountain pen. "Did you just...talk...with Nyx?" Yves asked. "Hm? Oh! Duh, yeah." Ursula did not look up from her writing. "She hasn't mindfucked you or anything has she?" "Duh, no." Ursula tilted her head left and right, pointing with her claw at her ears. Little neat obsidian spheres were tucked into each ear. Capillaries of black ink ran down her neck and coupled the ear buds to the thick rubber collar. "Better than an iPod." She returned to her writing, lips working. Crammed into the trunk behind Ursula, CeeCee said, "They've been whispering to each other nonstop." "Subvocalizing," Eurydice agreed. "All the time." She pantomimed a conversation with her hands, her voice tinny and warbling as if she were speaking into a tin can. "Yap - yap - giggle - yap - yap - ooh - m'wah - m'wah ." She mashed her puppeting hands together and made obscene smooching noises. "It's like preteen puppy love but with latex queens." CeeCee nodded before hulloing to the front of the car. "I call shotgun for the next ride, honey, you hear?" Yves, his curiosity getting the better of him, kept one eye on the road and the other on the rearview mirror. "Unless you developed a Sudoku fetish, I take it there's more to that book than just magic square puzzles." "Nope." Ursula flipped to a page in the middle of the book and held it up for Yves to see. "Just magic squares." Yves could only look at page for a few seconds, at the impossible looping scrawl of words and numbers and symbols in dozens of languages and ciphers and geometries that burst organically from the confines of simple square Sudoku grids to infect the empty spaces in between with illusory dimensions. It filled him with a lurching vertigo and he slapped the rearview mirror vertical. "Sweet Jesus. What was that?" "Just magic square puzzle answers." The skittering noises of Ursula's fountain pen/claw started up again. She affected Tomoe's mixed-up Asiatic accent and added, "The way they used to answer them. In the old days. The very, very old days." The scratching reached a crescendo and Ursula finished her work with a final chop and flourish. When she spoke again, her voice was edged, echoing and strange. "Oh, God—the stars." With the driver's side window open and the passenger side door laying in the grass on the side of the road somewhere, the wind whistled through the Jeep's cabin unhindered, whipping up receipts, leaves, and the aromas of lime and caramelizing sugar. Yves drove passed a sign for the highway onramp. "We're superheroes," Dee said. Yves pulled the Jeep through a tight curve in the road and the onramp appeared beside the overpass before them. Without knowing why, Yves found his center and entered the detached middle-distance of the martial trance. The next few seconds unspooled before Yves' senses in an orderly, slow-motion succession of events. Yves consciously registered the bumper and hood of a yellow SUV hidden in the recess beneath the overpass. Yves lifted his foot off the accelerator pedal. Ursula called out in that same strange voice, "She's here." The Jeep reached the mouth of the overpass. Yves swung his leg over brake pedal and willed every ounce of his weight into his foot as he began to bring it down. He realized he would not be in time. Black Cherry, blood-and-shadow batwings spread thrice as wide as she stood tall, leaped from the top of the overpass into the air above the Jeep. She plummeted with the lethal aerodynamic grace of a guided missile, arms thrust ahead of her. Her fists punched through the silver hood of the Jeep, snapped the vehicle's frame and cracked the engine block. Yves' foot felt no resistance when the brake pedal connected with the floor. The brakes failed and all four wheels lost contact with the road. Black Cherry's feral scream reached Yves' ears. "Master!" * * * * I told you from the start Just how this would end: When I take what I want, I never want it again. —Hole, Violet * * * * It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 01 Act Five: Just Desserts Chapter One: The World Will Never See Centered and combat-ready, Yves had observed Black Cherry's descent with a calm, analytical appreciation for fine form. Black Cherry executed her leap with cliff-diver perfection. Wings fanned out, sailing into the air. Her body curled downward the moment her jump achieved apex. Fists thrust forward. Wings snapped inward, slapping together at supersonic speed. Black Cherry rode the thunderclap down. She hammered into the hood, a pile-driving pillar, a fallen angel sculpted from red clay and blackest basalt. The hood and engine block crumpled. The Jeep rebounded into the air, pivoting on the immobile fulcrum Black Cherry had become. Yves saw her sneer, her pageboy hair cut flying wild, her abyssal gaze locked on Dee's face. Her voice was triumphant, primal. Demoniac. "Master!" Dee turned away from her, his expression stony and stolid even as the Jeep's rear wheels rose higher than the front. He reached behind and above his head, bracing himself against the Jeep's roll-bar. The trunk of the Jeep soared higher. Black Cherry's impact stapled the hood to the road. Dee kicked his left foot into the driver's side foot well. The vehicle's chassis squealed as it fought against the opposing forces trying to tear it in half. Yves struggled for focus amidst madness. Dee's not bracing his body against the Jeep's roll-cage. Yves' seat belt bit into his tender shoulder. Dee's trying to brace the roll-cage against his body. Yves closed his eyes. The passenger compartment buckled but resisted caving inward and crushing Yves to death. Yves turned to stare at his friend. Holy shit. The cords in Dee's neck flexed. His arms strained as he battled torque, stress, and metal fatigue. It's really true. Yves found himself very surprised to be alive. Dee's a fucking superhero. Black Cherry was forced backward as the Jeep hurtled upright. The vehicle's shadow overtook her. Her triumphal sneer faltered. Two tons of American truck know-how bore down upon her. Yves heard Raspberry's battle cry over the ruckus of tortured metal, plastic, and glass. "Say 'Splat,' bitch!" Black Cherry set her jaw and swung her legs down, puncturing the pavement with her Mary Jane clogs. Her wings shot forward, around, and then behind the Jeep. Crimson claws pierced the undercarriage. Yves heard Ursula yelp and stamp. Black Cherry's sneer returned with a lazy roll of her head. Tension gathered within her gel. Dee spoke. His voice bypassed Yves' ears still half-stoppered with beeswax. His words came from outside time and transcended other sound, as if the world paused, eager to listen. They resounded through bone, sang in the blood, rang clear as a tower bell in the brain. "Raz, to Yves. Now." Two lavender arms shot in through the open driver's window in uncoiling springs. Cool fingers entwined behind Yves' neck. The bendy-straw arms cinched up slack and Raspberry's angelic face zoomed into view until her button nose dimpled his cheek. Her eyes searched his as she muttered a lightning quick, "Awfuckit," and kissed him hard and square on the lips. His mouth filled with the flavors of summer as more and more of Raspberry's jellied substance poured through the window and pressed its supple weight against him. Yves had never been kissed in bullet time before. His heightened awareness let the kiss linger even though it lasted no more than a second or two. He could not fully process the experience, as his inner ear reported he was now suspended upside down. The Jeep slung high over Black Cherry's head. Her arms and wings took on the full weight of the Jeep and all its occupants. She crowed in triumph. I'll have to try this again, Yves vowed to himself as Raspberry broke the awkward kiss. If only the person kissing me back had a dick, I'm sure I could get it right. Outside, Black Cherry followed through, accelerating her pitch. If only I could survive the next few sec— * * * Black Cherry hurled the Jeep with all her strength. The vehicle flipped end-over-end once, then twice, before colliding with a ferroconcrete pylon. The blacktop below fissured. Cement chips and dust showered from the highway above. The Jeep folded up, chevron-shaped, and tumbled to the ground. "Splat," said she. The Jeep hit the pavement passenger-side down. The safety glass windshield fractured milky-white on impact. Cracks and torn seams in the canvas top bubbled and wept golden champagne froth. The carriage bled oil, radiator and hydraulic fluid. Dust settled in the quiet. The driver's side door bulged outward then burst away in lavender geyser. The crest of the eruption resolved into the upper body of Raspberry herself, a bust carved from the richest amethyst. More gel peeled away to reveal Yves, slack, motionless, and cradled in Raspberry's willowy embrace. Yves groaned. Raspberry startled at the sound. Yves rolled his head and winced. Raspberry's shoulders sagged and she hugged Yves close. "Shh. I gotcha, babe." Her limpid gaze fell upon Black Cherry. Raspberry purpled with rage. She hissed through gritted teeth. "I am gunna rip off your head and shit down your neck you jam-ragged, clit-clot cunt." The dainty batwings poking out from behind Black Cherry's ears flared. "I'll kill you where you stand." The scarlet girl froze in mid-snarl, blinking her confusion. "As soon as I figure out what you just said." The Jeep's windshield exploded. Nuggets of safety glass flew like birdshot, ricocheted off Black Cherry's creamy red, rubbery hide, and clattered against the yellow SUV in the shadows behind her. Dee withdrew his fists. "Raz," he said, "enough banter. Get Yves out of here." Raspberry's bare hips and legs coalesced and she pivoted to jump from the Jeep. Black Cherry sidled and stretched a wing wide to block her path. "That's my playmate," she said, jerking a wing claw at Yves. "Master gave him to me and I only got to play with him once." Dee elbowed out of the Jeep and rose to his feet, uncut and unbruised. "Let her go, Cherry." Black Cherry golf-clapped her hands. "Oh, Master: name me." She giggled and grabbed her knees. "Name me like you named your stupid green whore. Name me and I will become she who eats worlds for you." Something heavy clonked and settled inside the Jeep. Black Cherry craned her neck to see but Dee hustled in between, his back to the vehicle. "Let them all go, Cherry, and I will stay." He swung one arm behind his back, hand opening and closing in a pantomime yap yap yap. Black Cherry clucked and dismissed the notion with a pshaw flick of the wrist. "You don't mean that, Master. You're going to stay anyway. Besides, I don't think Raspberry wants to leave. I had her made for you, you know." Dee pointed to the left with the hand hidden behind his back. "Why haven't you fucked her yet? I would smell her on you if you had. She wants you to fuck her, Master." She tipped her head, leading with her nose, breathing deep and nibbling her bottom lip. "She wants you so badly I can taste it from here." Dee pointed left again, looped his index finger around to the right before bringing his hand down flat. "But she can't handle it like I can, Master. She's so horny she can't understand you want her to feint to the left so you can flank me on the right while I'm monologing." "Oh," drawled Raspberry behind him. "Now I get it." * * * Dee heard a fizzy susurrus. Sunny slush frothed down the Jeep's sideways roof and heaped onto the pavement. Raspberry's speedy recovery matched her quick temper, but Dee knew CeeCee and Eurydice needed much more time to sort themselves out after such a rough jolt. He opted to stall, hoping to Hell that Ursula and Nyx were unhurt. "X-ray vision?" Head-wings rolled into cute megaphones around Black Cherry's ears. "Sonar." She winked. "Echolocation off the metal behind you, of course, because you're so impenetrable, Master." Her head-wings unfurled only a fraction before Dee spoke in his newfound voice. "Let them go, Cherry." Black Cherry gaped. Head-wings twitched and wilted with melt. Sanguinary brandy brimmed her lips and slicked her sex as the pylons supporting the overhead arch of the highway amplified and took up her name. Cherry—Cherry—Cherry. She rocked with each echo, dropping to one knee, then the other, and then to all fours. The echoes played out a long, low, bubbling roar, leonine and almost subsonic: Cherrrry. Black Cherry keened in reply, arms trembling, wings pearling with fat drops of ruby nectar. "Yes, Master, yes. Go." The underpass still purred with the final vestiges of Dee's echoed voice—rrr…rrry—and Black Cherry fell back on her haunches. Head bowed, she waved Raspberry away. "Go. Go!" Raspberry dismounted from the Jeep, her elastic legs protracting down onto the road before returning to their usual sumptuous, classical perfection. Yves, face pinched in pain, rode the gentle descent in her arms. Raspberry eased by Black Cherry, twittering and pawing at the ground. "Go, go," the scarlet girl whimpered. Dee's echo died. Black Cherry's hands curled into fists. "No." Dee charged, seized a bleeding wing. He planted his feet and started a vicious twist. Black Cherry reared back and tore the captured wing off her shoulder with her own hands. The wing dissolved in a russet flood. The momentum of his planned attack knocked Dee off his feet. "Run, Raz!" Black Cherry howled, "I told you I could handle it, Master!" She bitch-slapped the fleeing Raspberry across the back with the flat of her remaining wing. Raspberry exploded into purple haze. Yves sailed, ragged-doll limbed, through the air. The sound was consonant with the recording of smashing glass played backward and too fast and a thousand harp strings rubbed with steel nails. Raspberry snapped into solidity parallel and inches below Yves. She threw her arms and legs around him an instant before they both hit the pavement. Dee kipped up but Black Cherry clipped him on the chin with an uppercut on her backswing and knocked him flat on his back. "I should have known my minions would never be enough for you. Not like I am." Behind her, Raspberry and Yves streaked over the blacktop, trailing a greased, lavender wake. "I'm glad I stopped with the latex gimp. Where is she, anyway? Hiding isn't her style at all. Ah, well, she'll show up just in the nick of time, I suppose." Dee sat up, rattling his head, his jaw pins-and-needles numb. Black Cherry sighed. "Where was I? Oh, monologing, yes." She splayed her hands, crimson fluid rushing up her legs and humping her back with a burgeoning wing. Her once-nectarous surface smoothed into a polished rind of creamy carmine. "So there I was, with boxes and boxes of Jell-O gelatin, just oodles of raw collagen powder." Dee staggered to his feet. "I had to do something with it, but I'm not really the baking type." Dee charged, arms out, palms flat. He struck her in the abdomen, arms working in a peculiar rhythm. Nothing happened. Black Cherry cleared her throat. Dee stared down at his hands, one on her tummy, the other sandwiched between her breasts. The geek and the scarlet girl looked each other in the eye. "So I ate it all," Black Cherry smirked, and punched Dee in the gut with the force of a wrecking ball. The asphalt dimpled into two shallow potholes beneath Black Cherry's feet when her underhand swing caught Dee's stomach right below the ribs. The pin-and-needles sensation erupted across his body, over his skin and through meat and fiber. A seismograph slung down from his butt would have recorded a 6.7 Richter scale Dee-quake with its epicenter beneath the intruding crimson fist. Dee stood motionless, eyes watering, for a long and breathless moment. The laws of physics caught up with his nanomek-enhanced physique and launched Dee into the air, doubled over, a superman in sweatpants flying in reverse. His trajectory described a grand ellipse until he crashed, still ass-backwards, into a high corner where a recessed pylon met the overhead highway above the yellow SUV. The entire structure shivered, cement blocks scraping together, louder than firecrackers. The steel rebar enforcing the integrity of the overpass fatigued but held. Dee fell. He belly-flopped onto the roof of the yellow SUV. The vehicle's rear and side windows blew out as the impact bent the roof at jaunty angle. Three figures, already crouched and hidden between the SUV and the pylon, dropped to their knees and escaped the spray of glass. Numbness blossomed into dull headache and honest-to-goodness, throbbing pain. He rolled his head to the side. The three figures stood swaddled in shadow. Heads and arms hung low, faces covered in bedraggled, damp and filthy hair, reminding Dee of undead wet girls from Japanese horror movies. Dee thought he heard a muffled buzzing noise. He managed to mumble, "Ow, quit it," before all the lights went out. * * * Raspberry and Yves slid to a slippery halt. Raspberry rolled over and laid Yves out on his back. She fought off weakness, tried to be tender. Raspberry, pale and wan, knelt over Yves' inert body. The long trail of purple jelly collected into oozy polliwogs and wiggled upstream toward her. She bent close to Yves and nestled her head against his chest, eyes squeezed shut in hope. She felt a strong heartbeat, a shuddery breath. Relief flooded through her and the polliwogs raced to feed her growing, rising, darkening, furious form. Black Cherry contemplated her fist, mashed flatter than a ball of clay thrown against a brick wall, less than a dozen feet away from where Raspberry, radiant with rage, made her stand. The intense silence made the scarlet girl turn and look on with mild interest. Raspberry said, "Burn." She spat acid. A sizzling jet of molten violet struck Black Cherry in the face. The scarlet girl screeched and reeled, clawing at her face with her good hand. Raspberry spat again but overshot as Black Cherry fell kicking to the ground. The ejecta struck a concrete pylon. "Raz," Yves called to her over the Black Cherry's now burbling screams. "Raz." Raspberry sat on her knees next to him, took his hand in hers. "Yeah?" Yves watched the purple sputum eat a pizza-sized hole in the pylon's concrete, revealing ribs of blackened steel rebar. "What was that?" His voice was very faint. "My acid tongue. CeeCee calls me a real spitfire. I think it's one of her stupid double tundra thingies." She glanced up. A wide shape, a massive curvy mound of peach-orange ice cream, drew itself together by the overturned Jeep. Raspberry smiled. "You can ask the fat ass yourself in a minute." Yves shut his eyes. "I didn't know you could do that." "There's a lot you don't know about me." She felt so tired. Yves reopened his eyes and Raspberry did her best to smile again. "You wouldn't happen to be a goo guy in drag, would you?" Yves asked. The burbling screams tapered off into wet hissing. Raspberry shrugged. "Nah." Yves sighed, "Ah, well." He paused. Raspberry guessed he was waiting for a comeback. She did not feel like giving one. Yves frowned. "What's wrong?" "Nothing." Raspberry stood, mimed dusting off her knees. "Hawking a loogie takes a shitload of nanomek, that's all." She thrust her hands on her hips. "And I've already spent a couple o' fuckloads saving your pansy ass. Twice. I…" She blinked, gazing off into the middle-distance. "I…" She looked down. Twelve inches of curved, crimson wing-claw protruded from between her breasts. The claw curled lazily downward, dripping purple ichor, its needle-sharp tip pricking her tummy, poised to rip. "Oh," Raspberry said. * * * Dee drifted in squishy darkness. Wait a minute, he thought, I'm not unconscious. His head bopped to a jerking rhythm. Someone's sitting on my face. * * * Exhaustion, fear, and horror all demanded Yves cringe, look away, succumb to shock. He refused. "Raz." He would not abandon Raspberry. "Raz, look at me." She met his gaze. "Breathe. Don't look away. Eight forces sustain creation," he told her, calm and sure, as the red claw tore through her. "Breathe." Purple nectar spurted and stung his face and neck but Yves held Raspberry captive with his unblinking, sky-blue scrutiny. "Movement and stillness. Breathe." Yves sat up as Raspberry slumped toward him. He bobbed his head birdlike to keep their eyes locked. "Extension and contraction." Yves doffed his overshirt. Raspberry sank to her knees. "Breathe. Unification and division." Raspberry swooned, surface tension failing. Her features ran as slowly melting wax. Yves swooped his overshirt about her, gathered her into his lap, securing the shirt with a quick knot of the sleeves. Tie-dye splotches bloomed over the white shirt but Raspberry held together. "Solidity and fluidity," Yves smiled down at her. Raspberry pressed a cooling, gluey palm against his cheek. Her leer was a vague sickle-shape in her syrupy face. "You are shit fucking hot. We're so lucky Dee chose you." Yves wanted to ask the obvious question but saved it for later. Black Cherry loomed, wings held close, claws clicking above her head. Curlicues of crimson vapor wafted from her mouth and brow. "Let her go," she protested in the tones of a peeved toddler. "You're mine. She doesn't get to play with you unless I say so. She hurt me and I am going to kill her. You're my playmate." "Is he now?" CeeCee's golden bulk boiled up behind Black Cherry. "Well, Raz is mine, and I say you need to take a few Midol and mellow out." Black Cherry spun, wings whickering. CeeCee stood her ground. Crimson wing claws stabbed deep into the moiling gel-flesh below her breasts. Buttery pudding suppurated around the sunken claws, bleeding in little rills that scrawled over the veins in Black Cherry's webbed wings. Black Cherry smirked, hooked her wing claws deep within CeeCee's core, and tugged to rend the amber woman in two. CeeCee neither split nor budged. Black Cherry's Mary Janes scuffed over the pavement as the tugging motion of her wings dragged her a few feet closer to the amber woman's viscid, endlessly flowing curves. The little rills of cheesecake pudding rolling over her red wings surged into rivulets. Black Cherry frowned, jerked one shoulder backward—and tripped a step forward. The golden rivulets wove themselves into a thickening net across Black Cherry's wings. Tendrils crept across her back. The scarlet girl growled, gnashed her teeth, hauled with her other shoulder, and lurched sideways into CeeCee's abounding flesh. Soft, amber cleavage swallowed Black Cherry's neck. CeeCee chuckled, a rich, glutinous sound. She wrapped her arms around the bewildered scarlet girl, kneaded Black Cherry's devil-red little rump and mushed their mons together. Black Cherry whimpered and surrendered to the urge to grind. Her wings, torso, and legs were quickly coated in yellow cake batter. "Honey," CeeCee clucked. Black Cherry's trembling chin vanished in the cloying avalanche of golden gel-flesh. "I knew you were cumming." CeeCee's maw yawned wide. "So I baked you a cake," she finished, and started devouring Black Cherry in earnest. Raspberry, bug-eyed and enraptured by the sloppy spectacle, squirmed in Yves' lap. "Jesus fuck. Look-it. Look-it! Would ya look-it?" Yves shook his head, eye shut tight. "I ain't look-it-ting." * * * Addled and clobbered, Dee spent a few beats refocusing his senses. He had not plunged into comatose darkness. Some girl wearing skintight black jeans had scrabbled onto the bent roof of the yellow SUV, leapt froglike astraddle his face, and sat on his forehead, knees squeezed against his ribs. She rode the bridge of his nose like a berserk bicyclist slogging out the last few miles of Le Tour de France. Her denim seat sopped and reeked of sweat and sex and a hint of oven-fresh chocolate chip cookies. After all he had been through, Dee decided, he would never again enjoy a single innocent thought or taste of dessert. Maybe I'll be able to eat a brussel sprout without thinking of wild, raunchy sex, but that's about it. It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 01 The mystery girl sitting on his head buried her face in his crotch and mouthed his cock through his sweatpants and underwear. Her breath basted the cotton-nylon blends cupping his shaft and balls in sweltering warmth. His dick stiffened in reflex and the mystery girl assaulted him with a fully clothed fellatio-cunnilingus combo attack. Another day, Dee thought, grabbing handfuls of the ass bouncing against his forehead, another ambush sixty-nine session. He pried her ass away from his face. The jeans were so tight her cheeks felt rock solid. Sunlight spilled across the sodden camel-toe trying to stomp his nose flat. I bet this never happens to Batman. A fountain of flaxen hair blotted out the sun. A second girl—Dee recognized her, the blonde E-Z sorority sister who hit on him last night and then joined this morning's creepy carwash—her eyes blank of all expression except hunger, forced the mystery girl's ass high and rammed her tongue down Dee's throat. Dee craned his neck and took stock of his situation. The blonde tickled his tonsils like an alien facehugger. She stood on the hood of the SUV. Her white tee-shirt gaped open to reveal the top swells of big, wobbling breasts. Her wide, wine-dark areola and fat nipples still stuck to the translucent, wet material of her tee. Wow, Ursula was right on about those. "Honey," Dee heard CeeCee say, her voice deep and oddly amplified, "I knew you were cumming so I baked you a cake." He tipped his head. CeeCee had enveloped Black Cherry almost head-to-toe and was suckling on the scarlet girl as she would slurp down a thick chocolate cherry milkshake. My God. Red wings dissolved and siphoned off in swirls into CeeCee's gullet. I should have known.       ["…What can I say, honey, we go together well…"] Great spirals of black and crimson burst from Black Cherry's slowly deliquescing body and funneled into CeeCee, her gel-flesh banded and stormy with a riot of color. Chocolate and cherries go great with cheesecake. CeeCee is going to kick Black Cherry's ass. The mystery girl whined and strained against the blonde's arms, trying to smack her ass back down atop Dee's face. Dee propped his head up, the blonde still slopping her lips over his. His crotch had sprouted a bobbing carrot-top; the mystery girl turned out to be the redhead E-Z from earlier. Her fingers fumbled over Dee's sweats. She yanked the elastic waist but, like proverbial monkey with his clenched fist stuck in the cookie jar, she would not stop munching on Dee's cock through his clothes and stalemated herself. A brunette, the third E-Z from last night, hopped and kicked her way up the hatchback, clawing onto the roof. It's about to get pretty crowded up here. He twisted side to side. We're a good eight feet off the ground, glass everywhere, nowhere to maneuver. CeeCee's bought me some time. How do I get them off me without hurting them? The blonde sucked his face with bottomless abandon. He tried his newfound voice anyway: "Ge' mmf." A collective shudder passed through the two girls ravaging him. Their ardor and enthusiasm doubled. The left-out brunette wailed and bounded up between his legs. Dee's dispassion toward their efforts became difficult to maintain and his dick fully engorged. Yeah, that worked well. What to do? I can't hurt them, even by accident. They're innocent.       ["…innocent of this matter, I mean…"] The brunette pushed the redhead away. The redhead's mouth popped off Dee's cock with an angry huff. Her hands, as if driven by some other willpower, still tugged mechanically on his pants, and she finally managed to bare his manhood. The redhead wolfed down the head of Dee's dick, angled her neck, dove for a deep throat—and thwacked her forehead against the brunette, who was already slurping up his shaft and pawing at his balls. Just great. It grew difficult to distract himself from the all the tongues and teeth, the flashes of flesh, the funk of savaged sex, and especially the two pairs of lips and four hands mindlessly muscling for rank and territory on his package. Zombie cockfight. * * * Yves risked a peek over Raspberry's head. CeeCee dined, poised and regal, on Black Cherry's dwindling gel. Black Cherry swooned but could not escape the amber woman's engulfing embrace. CeeCee pressed forward, swelling as she drew in more and more crimson gel-flesh, a plus-sized vampire gowned in a muumuu of many colors. Black Cherry evanesced in spewing plumes, shuddering orgiastic with every rupture from her core. CeeCee's gourmandizing. His gorge rose at the thought.       ["…my compliments to the chef, Yves. That was choice…"] He turned aside. His silver Jeep squatted sideways a few yards away. The little truck looked like someone pulled a Thelma-and-Louise and drove it off a cliff. Yves squinted. Abstract green shapes, indistinct emerald cones and jade crescents, tumbled and bumped against the plastic rear window. He saw no sign of Nyx or Ursula. "Hey, Dee," he called, twisting. Raspberry settled in his lap. "Listen, Dee, Eurydice is having trouble putting herself back to…whatthefuck?" The yellow SUV sat in shadow under the overpass. Dee sprawled on its skewed roof, buried under three mindfucked co-eds. A redhead tried to sixty-nine him to death. She was thwarted by a busty blonde, standing on the SUV's hood and pushing the redhead's ass up with both hands while giving Dee a suffocating tongue-bath. A brunette curled around Dee's legs and battled the redhead over who could gobble Dee's cock the deepest and longest before coming up for air. So that's public fuckability, Yves thought. "Dee, what the fuck do you think you're doing?" The world can't really work this way, can it? Dee edged an arm out from under the redhead's thighs. He nudged the blonde's chin away from his face, uprooting her from his mouth. The blonde slavered, puckering like a fish out of water. Dee spread his fingers to hold her at bay and she nursed wetly on his thumb. "Trying not to ejaculate. Failing. Got any ideas?" "Stop fucking and start fighting. Knock their heads together or something." Yves said. Dee's expression curdled. "What? Why not? Oh, Christ, is this some 'great power, great responsibility,' comic book morality crap? Or just Dark Age chauvinism?" "It's Silver Age." The chill in Dee's voice dropped below freezing. "Got any other ideas?" Yves thought for a second, then turned to the goo girl warming his lap. "Raz, you said something before. About Nyx saving us from being buried in zombie pussy, remember?" Raspberry nodded, eyes glued on CeeCee. "What happens to one of Black Cherry's skank-bots when she's distracted?" "Automatic pilot," Raspberry answered, sounding robotic herself. "Dee," Yves said. "They're on automatic pilot, whatever that means. Can you use that?" The two girls feasting on Dee's dick settled into a relentless, counterpoint rhythm. The brunette humped his leg. The redhead strained to smother Dee with her ass again, but the blonde's grip on the redhead's ass held and kept it aloft. The blonde crooned and deep throated Dee's thumb. Dee twitched, sweating. "Got…one…chance." He raised his free arm. "You're loving this," Yves chided. Dee wrapped his free hand around one of the blonde's wrists and slid it toward the center of the redhead's ass. The blonde did not protest or stop slobbering on Dee's other thumb. Her fingers slid into the redhead's ass-crack. Dee let go. The blonde stared blankly down at him but her fingers fondled the redhead's ass. Dee muttered, "Bingo," and moved the blonde's other hand over the camel toe formed by the redhead's tight jeans' seam pressing into her vulva. The blonde absent-mindedly pressed two slender fingers against the seam, tracing little circles. The redhead stopped straining and started bucking her hips from side to side. She groaned, mouth full of cock. "You've got to be kidding me," Yves said, watching Dee unbuckle the redhead's belt. "This is your plan?" Dee pulled down on the redhead's zipper. "I said they were on automatic pilot, not bi-curious." Dee unzipped the redhead's fly not halfway before the blonde grabbed the belt and hauled the redhead's pants down. "Whoa," Yves said. The redhead wore no panties. Her bare ass bobbled free, shiny and wet with sweat and sex. "Wow, um…" The blonde squirmed her thumb over the clitoral hood hidden in a trimmed tuft of fiery red hair and sank two fingers third-knuckle deep between swollen labia. "That's, uh…" Dee hoisted his suckled thumb upward. The blonde followed, keeping her mouth locked around his flesh, until the top of her head bumped against the redhead's butt. She spat out Dee's thumb like it were old gum, clawed the redhead's thighs and latched her lips on the redhead's pussy. Yves gave up. Maybe the world doesn’t work this way for everybody, but it sure as shit does for Dee. "Good plan, Dee." The blonde went tongue-spelunking. The redhead pulled herself off his cock to howl her pleasure. Dee propped himself up, lightning fast. He plucked the brunette's face away from his balls and very gently pressed her forehead against the redhead's. The two girls gazed deep into each other's eyes for a moment, then soul-kissed with a manic ferocity, arms entwining in a desperate clinch. "And that…" Dee said, shaking his leg out from under the brunette. She took the opportunity to scoot close to the redhead and peel off her tee-shirt. Dee slipped off the roof feet-first, doing up his pants in the process. "…is how Deiter fucking Detwiler knocks heads," he finished as he touched down on the pavement, adjusting the crotch of his sweatpants in a meager attempt at modesty. The blonde scrambled onto the roof of the yellow SUV, shucking her shirt. Discarded skank-wear pattered down around the vehicle. Dee jogged over to CeeCee. The amber woman swallowed down the last of Black Cherry, noshing on a literal piece of ass like slice of watermelon. "CeeCee," Dee said, beaming, "you're amazing. How long can…" His face fell. "CeeCee?" CeeCee swayed. Her gel-flesh churned with licks of red and black brume. "Not long, honey," she said. She glanced up, not at Dee, but at Raspberry, and added, "Master." Raspberry spoke, "Back in the kitchen, you said you would never eat Black Cherry, only me." Her face was a child's and Yves thought she might cry. "Why not?" She sounded so plaintive Yves could not resist hugging her to him. "Why now?" CeeCee's weary smile was stained the color of blood oranges and cinnamon. "Because it costs too much nanomek," she answered. Her canary-yellow eyes misted over. "And I knew I'd have to do it to save your fool life someday." Her eyes dimmed into a dull, abyssal black. When she spoke again, her voice as not entirely her own. "And I think I can only do it once." "Hold out as long as you can, CeeCee" Dee said, "and we'll stick to the original plan." CeeCee bobbed her head and Dee turned. "Yves. You mobile?" Yves nodded, making the world spin. He fought to stay upright and nodded until the vertigo went away. "Alright," Dee said, "you get Raz and your own ass the Hell out of here." He turned to CeeCee. The amber woman's face scrunched and fists trembled. Her gel-flesh reddened. "I'll take care of the rest," he added. "Fuck you," Raspberry spat, "I am not leaving CeeCee." Her brow furrowed. "What original plan?" Yves consoled her as Dee hustled over to the Jeep. "We're just going a little bit back down the road where we came, that's all. Can you walk?" Dee stuck his head in the Jeep's skyward-pointing, driver-side window. Yves heard several muffled voices in a murmur of quick conversation. "Raz," Yves said, giving her the gentlest of shakes, "can you walk?" She pulled her shoulders out of his arms. "How the fuck should I know, motherfucker? I've never been this motherfucking low on fucking nanomek before. Besides, if I walk..." Her anger dissolved into tears. "If I walk away from CeeCee right now, like this, I'd die, I'd just die. Yves, what are we going to do?" "Stick to the original plan," Yves told her before calling out to Dee, "We good?" Dee pulled his head out of the Jeep's window. Lime green frosting ringed his mouth. A black lip-print of a chaste kiss adorned his forehead like some ceremonial third eye. "We're good." He shuffled to the rear of the Jeep, testing handholds. Raspberry sniffled. "What original plan?" Dee found a handhold and pushed. The Jeep scrapped forward. Dee blinked and started, an expression Yves readily identified as Dee's Holy-shit-that-was-easy face. Yves glanced at CeeCee. Two big, ludicrous lumps of amber gelatin gathered on her, like sideways Bactrian camel humps. Her eyes were jammed shut, but he knew that a meliae's senses did not always correspond to anatomy. He decided to risk it. Yves pointed left, then circled his finger around to the right, and brought his palm down flat. "I thought I screwed that up," Raspberry said. The Jeep inched nearer to the mouth of the overpass, trailing flecks of metal, glass, and silver paint. "Black Cherry doesn't know Dee like I do, no matter what the psycho-bitch thinks," Yves told her. "Watch." Yves pointed left. Raspberry followed his finger, saw the little copse of trees felled by the preternatural vigor of Dee and Eurydice's doggy-styling less than two hours earlier. Yves circled his finger around to the right. Raspberry followed it, as if hypnotized. Yves ended up pointing at the concrete pylon with the lavender-stained pizza-sized hole eaten into its face. Yves brought his hand down flat. Raspberry thought for a moment, her face blank. She paled to periwinkle and tilted her head up to gawk at the highway above them. "Oh, fuck me." "Hopefully, it won't come to that," Yves said. He tried to stand with the lavender girl in his arms but his legs kept folding up under him, or the road kept slipping around beneath his feet. He could not tell which. Raspberry managed a small laugh—"Ha"—but her eyes were wild and worried. Dee shoved the Jeep out from under the overpass' shadow. "Yves. Get up," Raspberry said. The humps on CeeCee's back thinned and stretched, first into discs, then webbed wings. "Get up, Yves." Dee pushed until the Jeep listed against far side of the on-ramp, well clear of the overpass. "Get up, babe," Raspberry pled, her arms trapped inside the overshirt tourniquet holding her together. "We gotta go." Yves hung his head. "I'm so tired, Raz. There are things you don't know about me, either." CeeCee's eyelids flittered up. The polished coal buttons of her eyes were too small for her round, wide face, fixing her visage in a silent but perpetual scream. "Dee," she said, arms searching blind. "Master. I. Black Cherry." She fought to hiss out each word. "I'm lying. She's lying. Black Cherry. About Galatea." Yves sat up fast. Raspberry sloshed against his lap. Dee whirled around. Come on, Dee, Yves thought. Keep it together, don't fuck this up. He watched Dee watch CeeCee struggle for control of her own mouth. If there was ever a time for one of your hallmark flashes of intuition, it's now. Yves realized he was holding his breath. CeeCee spluttered and coughed out words. "I didn't…she…" Dee's open palm shot up. "That's enough, CeeCee. You're running out of nanomek and I need you to do something else." "But she never—" Dee's new voice crackled in the air. "Enough!" The yellow SUV's car alarm blared, hazard lights flashing before the alarm wound down. The three sorority sisters, a half-naked pile of tangled limbs and lips, cried out in lusty chorus. CeeCee quailed and fell silent. Yves exhaled, slumping. Raspberry, bound by Yves' overshirt, flopped over to peer up at him. Yves shook his head. Dee can't know Black Cherry's secrets until she's ready to tell him, he thought, but only whispered, "Later." If she decides CeeCee's spoiled her fun, it's all over. She'll stop playing the supervillain game and any advantage we have will be lost. "After I get you out of here." "CeeCee," Dee said, pointing to the moist three-way on the SUV's roof, "Can you control them? Through Black Cherry? You've got to get them out of here." Nascent claws, little red nubs, hooked out from the raw scarlet wings stretching from CeeCee's back. The wings battered the air, powerful but uncoordinated, each attempting flight independent of the other. CeeCee lurched, arms raised. The three coeds floundered their slippy way down to the ground. Only the brunette had retained her panties. The greasy silk underwear looked like she had worn it for weeks on end. The three sorority sisters collected their clothes in silence and shambled down the road, extras from a Romero movie. The embryonic wing-claws grew long and sharp. One wing stabbed down, its claw piercing the pavement. The whorls of crimson and black sucked inward, gradually draining from CeeCee's turbulent surface, leaving behind a sallow yellow. Dee paced around her, keeping out of striking distance of the free wing, walking in a careful semi-circle until he stood with the purple-stained pylon directly behind him. "Aw, shit," Raspberry quavered as Dee backed up a step, then two. "We've gotta go right fucking now." Yves hoisted the lavender girl in his arms and rose to one knee. His vision danced with silvered sparks of snow and fire. Oh God, he thought, sagging his weight against his leg, not an aura. Not now. He blinked but the colorless pyrotechnics persisted. At least that explains the way I've been feeling; I'm not cracking up. The world filled with silent video static. I'm pre-migraine. The lavender girl stretched to plant a soothing kiss on his neck. "What are the eight forces that sustain creation, Yves? I forgot." Yves set his jaw. "Movement," he said, and stood straight. "And stillness," Raspberry said, nestled against his chest. CeeCee's free wing flopped in a wide circle before slamming into the pavement. Licks of red and black whipped around the amber woman's surface and vanished inward. Dee took another step backward. "Extension," Yves called, striding forward. "And contraction," Raspberry answered, hugging herself tight until she fit perfectly in his arms. The red wings clawed at the pavement. CeeCee rocked forward to stay on her feet. Her black button eyes sunk into her head before she squeezed them shut. A red bolus rose up on her back between her wings. Dee stepped backward again. The pavement beneath his feet inclined to join the pylon behind him. "Unification," Yves said, and broke into a run. "And division," Raspberry whispered, gazing over his shoulder as the distance between them and the amber woman grew. "I love you, CeeCee. Run. Run." CeeCee burst like a water balloon. Black Cherry fell away, fully formed and furious, sweating blood-nectar from every pore. CeeCee's shapeless remnants slithered over the pavement in honeyed waves. Black Cherry sprang to her feet, howling in rage, wings swooping in for the kill. "Cherry," Dee's voice reverberated and the scarlet girl staggered. Yves cleared the mouth of the overpass. The mid-morning sun overwhelmed the fading aural sparks. "Solidity," he said, and turned about. Dee stood with his back to the tall, ferroconcrete pylon. Black Cherry swiveled to face him. Sanguine honey dripped from her quivering wing claws, her arms, her pouting mouth and flush sex. "Master." Dee raised his arms high, left hand curled around his right fist. He poured every ounce of his strength into a backswing. His fist smashed into the pylon, blasting off chunks of cement spiked with shorn rebar. Yves ears rang in the roar. There was an instant of quiet. It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 01 "And fluidity," Raspberry said. CeeCee flowed away from the overpass in a creamy gush. A jagged crack raced up the side of the pylon with a ripple of sharp noise, overlapping pistol shots. The pylon split along its length. A half-column of concrete ripped free of rebar and thumped down onto the road hard enough to bounce Yves off the ground and knock the silver Jeep an inch forward. The bridging highway above rocked on its foundations. Black Cherry gazed upward, worry melting into wonder and delight, as the pylon began its slow topple toward her. Her lips curled in a lazy smile, heavy lidded eyes sliding shut. "Oh, Master." "Splat," Dee said, and several hundred tons of concrete pylon crashed down upon them both. * * * Superman never made any money For saving the world from Solomon Grundy, And sometimes I despair The world will never see Another man…like him. —Crash Test Dummies, Superman's Song * * * It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 02 Act Five: Just Desserts Chapter Two: Whatever May Come Concrete fractured into ragged slabs as it fell and struck the ground. Dee and Black Cherry disappeared in an acrid storm of grit and pulverized rock. The noise was deafening, a rolling thunderclap. Ears ringing, Yves huddled on the pavement drawing himself around Raspberry as best he could. Raspberry soliloquized at him, tone harsh but smile warm: "I'm made out of Jell-O, dumb-fuck. A little jiggle like this can't hurt me. Good thing I'm too scared to cum, though. All this hugging and sappy bullshit's got my cooze so creamy I’d frig away my last nanomek if I could." She looked away, sighing. "Black Cherry's right. I wanna stuff Dee's cock up my cunt so bad I get cross-eyed just thinking about it, but to tell you the truth, babe." The lavender girl shook her head. Concrete fines and dust nucleated in her hair, turning orchid petals into gray sandpaper. "You've made me a fag-hag. If you're looking for a beard, I'm your bitch. We could get a little apartment, you could do all your fudge-packing at home, and I'd felch all the jizz I'd ever need out of your ass." "Alright, alright," Yves said, loosening his hold on the leering goo girl. "I can hear again. Now would you please shut your filthy fucking mouth. Where's CeeCee?" Raspberry nodded to the left. CeeCee hulloed, "Over here, honey." CeeCee sprawled on the asphalt a few paces down the road, a heap of yellow, cream domes, as if someone had carved a reclining Buddha out of the world's biggest butter pat and left it melting on the pavement. "I'm just going to lie here awhile, if you don't mind." Yves asked her, "Are you okay?" "No." "Are you going to be okay?" "I'm not sure. I've never had so little nanomek to keep me going before. Honey, what happened? What on Earth was Dee thinking?" Yves surveyed the wreckage. He saw no sign of Dee. A crimson puddle spread out from under the rubble, too thick and too fast to be Dee's blood unless nanomek had changed Dee in ways Yves did not want to think about. "Same as you," Yves told CeeCee, "to buy time. Time for Eurydice to put herself back together." He turned to the Jeep tucked beside the onramp. "Time for Nyx and Ursula to…" He squinted but could glean no clues from the sideways vehicle. "…to do whatever the Hell it is they've been doing in there. Time for us to retreat." One of the largest broken slabs of concrete thumped and shivered, raising a cloud of fines. Yves added, "Time for Dee to go mano y psicópata with Cherry." Raspberry still dangled in Yves' arms. "But you're not going anywhere, are you?" Yves clucked his tongue, watching the puddle ripple and wax into a pool, incarnadine and shadow entwined. "Nope." She turned and glared at the growing pool, her eyes hard as true amethyst. "Then neither am I." "You couldn't drag me away with wild horses," CeeCee said, staring up at the sky before admitting, "You'd need a bucket." The thumping stopped. The slab grated over the pavement, a stone sarcophagus groaning open. Pale fingers reached up from beneath, found purchase, tensed, and pushed. The slab progressed another few inches. The bottom of the slab abraded into gravel. Fingers splayed and scrabbled but disappeared downward. Dee's muted swearing floated up. "Fucking physics!" "Dee," Yves called out, amazed, relieved, but somehow, utterly unsurprised. "We're okay." "Yves?" Dee's fingers reappeared from beneath the slab, their hunt for a handhold growing frantic. "Christ, Yves. How many times do I have to say, 'Get out of here' today before you actually get the Hell out of here?" The ruby pool drew in on itself, doming in the middle. "I've got a few minutes," Yves lied. Dee's fingers danced around the perimeter of the slab where the crumbing concrete met the pavement. "Listen; are you squashed flat under there or something?" "No, dammit, I'm harder than ferroconcrete, but ferro-fucking-concrete is harder than asphalt." "You didn't lie down?" Yves asked. "No, I didn't think of it. In comic books you don't have to worry about this kind of shit!" "What the fuck are you two dickweeds talking about?" Raspberry demanded. Yves stood up. "Our man of steel's been driven into the ground like a steel railroad spike." His elbows and shoulders burned from carrying Raspberry. "He's buried alive in the hardpan." The ruby dome rose into a ball. We may have to run after all. "Bedrock," Dee corrected, annoyed, from a Dee-sized hole in the road. "Granite, I think." "Who gives a shit?" Raspberry bounced in impatience. "Just punch your way out and kick psycho-twat's ass summore." "I'm working on it," Dee said. Yves heard the crump of crumbling rock. "This isn't easy. I'm no Uma Thurman. How much time have I got left, Yves?" "Master." Black Cherry unfurled, a rose blooming wet with morning dew. Her wings drooped, glistening and unformed. Her movements were twitchy and insectile. "You hurt me, Master." She paced in a little circle then folded up over a broken slab. "You hurt me so much." She rolled onto her back, luxuriating in a post-coital daze. "So much." Dee was silent for a moment. "Thanks a bunch, Yves." The sounds of an avalanche in miniature spilled out from the hole. Black Cherry glanced around. Her coy smile upended into a confused frown. "Master? Where are you?" Her head wings pulsed, glued to her pageboy haircut. She lazed onto her tummy and scooched to the end of the slab, streaking the concrete in a florid swath of fluid. She peeped over the edge. "Master?" She giggled down. "Oh, there you are. My noviluninium is waning, Master. Are you ready for me now? Or do you want me to play with Yves again? It's your choice, Master. Just as before." Her sly gaze flicked over Yves before she spoke to the hole in the pavement. "Is it time?" Raspberry snorted, a guttural ch-hock! noise bubbling in her throat. She stuck her violet tongue out from between her lips, aiming carefully. The purple stains on the overshirt wrapped around her welled and spread. Raspberry grew cold in Yves' arms. Yves pinched her as hard as he could on the neck. She coughed and swallowed. Yves felt the soft, radiant warmth rekindle in her core and he relaxed his grip on her neck. Something clanked inside the silver Jeep. Black Cherry pivoted on her ripe bottom, scissor-kicking to sit up, legs folding. She prized her diminutive wings away from her hair, angling them at the Jeep. Strings and filaments of gel drifted, lighter than air, in a hazy halo around her head. "What did you do that for?" Raspberry wheezed at Yves. "Don't you dare die for me or Dee," he told her. A slim, lustrous black arm sprouted skyward from the driver's side window of the sideways vehicle. Its smooth, conical fingers and thumb fluxed into raptorial claws before hooking down into the canvas top. "Ah," Black Cherry sighed, "of course. Just in the nick of time, too, imagine that." A second arm followed the first, fist clutching a torn book page and raising it high. "Our little heroine." Black Cherry peered at the nonsensical, spiraling scrawls of arcane formulae scribbled in black fountain pen ink across the crinkled paper. She shrugged. "She's the one I came for, Master. She helped you get away. She needs to die for that." The clawed hand flexed as the newcomer hauled herself into view. "She needs to die today…Wait." Black Cherry bounded to her feet, her head wings pricked up like the ears of a startled cat. "Who the fuck are you?" Wide, red, oval-rimmed glasses, lenses chipped into splinters and flakes, sat askew on the newcomer's pert little nose. Long, plaited pigtails framed a porcelain white, china doll face and arced down into the Jeep in ropey licorice braids. Ebony glossed her liquid lips. A burnished onyx choker ringed her ivory neck above a cashmere poncho. A narrow but deep laceration slashed across a high, angular cheekbone. A single bead of jet black blood rolled down a cheek as pale as milk. The obsidian goth stared down in silence. Wings of webby ink unfolded in sharp planes and geodesic formations from her back, holding her in place. She razored the poncho apart with a single slash of her clawed fingers. Strips of soft cloth fell away to reveal an iridescent, second skin, a living glaze of black volcanic glass, accentuating every curve of bone and swell of flesh,. Black Cherry was the first to blink and step back. "What are you?" The obsidian goth whipped off her useless glasses. She closed her eyes, daubed two gloved fingers against them. A perfect mask of black mascara coated her eyelids. Her eyes flicked open, their whites filling with starless night. "We - are - U - Nyx," she breathed, and took flight. "Oh, come on," Yves said. Unyx sailed high into the air on billowing, membranous wings. "Everyone's a superhero but me." Black Cherry hunched, hands curled into fists, glaring up at Unyx through her eyelashes. Unyx dipped and dove, kite-tail braids whipping high and back. Red wing claws snapped up, aiming for the tender flesh below Unyx's ribs. Crimson struck lacquered black. Yves flinched in the agonized noise, worse than fingernails across a blackboard. Needle-sharp claw-tips skittered over the Unyx's second skin. Black Cherry shrieked, threw her wings wide. Unyx bore down unhindered, her black talons ripping a gash between scarlet breasts. Black Cherry's single shriek stretched long without a stop for breath. Unyx's thick-soled go-go boots smacked into the pavement. She wrenched one arm back, drawing out an arc of sanguine gel. She punched out with the other hand and thwacked the torn page over Black Cherry's jagged wound. The scribbled equations and gridline charts were lost as red nectar seeped into the cheap paper. Black Cherry's inner gel, swirling red-and-black, sucked the page inward. Unyx rocked her hips. She sprung high and away, wings whomp-whomp-whomping and thrashing the air. Her braids flew before her face as she soared backward. Black Cherry lashed out with both hands, seized the ends of Unyx's trailing braids and hauled. Unyx's neck jerked down as her braids drew taut. The snarling scarlet girl smashed her fists into the pavement and Unyx slammed into the ground headfirst. Unyx's thick choker collar nictitated into a shell over her face an instant before colliding with the ground. Unyx twitched. Her wings settled to the ground in drifts of black silk. Black Cherry stepped astride Unyx's form. She wound the obsidian goth's braids around both her fists. The slash in Black Cherry's chest zippered shut and her snarl melted into a befuddled frown. Goosebumps dimpled her scarlet gel-flesh, making her shiver. "What's going on?" The filigree of shadow, the dark skeins and spirals permeating Black Cherry's red gel, trembled and whirled just below her skin. Beneath the fading scar between her breasts, the threading veins bent and twisted into angular shapes and mad loops before snapping into focus as numbers and symbols in a dozen languages, modern and ancient. Gibberish equations invaded her gel-flesh like a mathematical virus. Tunneling worms of code crept up the curves of her breasts, encircled her dark nipples in even darker lines of sums and symbols before swarming outward. In moments her stomach and neck swam with a motile tattoo inked by a demented algebra student. "What did you do to me?" Unyx pawed the road but said nothing. Equations scrolled up Black Cherry's arms and legs. The scarlet girl yanked on Unyx's braids, swung her up and over and back down hard, spraying chunks of asphalt into the air. Black wings wilted and collapsed into lumps. Black Cherry hoisted Unyx up by the hair and screeched in her face. "I said what did you do to me?" The black candy shell protecting Unyx's head peeled away to reveal Ursula, pale and unconscious. The wings on Unyx's shoulders melted and molded into a second pair of reedy arms, spindle neck and blank, egg-shaped head. Nyx emerged to confront her creator. She wrapped her arms around Ursula's neck in a fierce, desperate hug, conveying more affection, anger, and defiance in that single gesture than anyone could speak in a thousand words. "Fine," Black Cherry sighed. She unreeled Urusla's braids until the goth girl dangled to the ground. The growing math-tattoo breached the scarlet surface of Black Cherry's wings. Tension gathered in her gel as she prepared a final swing. "Then die." "Do it," Ursula mumbled, eyelids fluttering, eyes rolled back. Nyx craned her neck. One gaunt arm raised, too thin to support a hand. The tapered tip curved into a hook, its inward edged polished sharp. "If you say so," Black Cherry shrugged, the living tattoo encroaching the very tips of her wings. She rocked her arms back, dragging Ursula along the pavement. Nyx's hooked arm whistled down. She hesitated at the last instant, hook trembling above Ursula's creamy throat. Her skin grayed to a matte black. Ursula grimaced. "Do it!" Black Cherry poured power into her throw. Nyx turned her head, and, shuddering, slashed sideways. Black Cherry toppled backward. Ursula and Nyx skidded across the pavement. Yves found his voice. "Oh, God, no." "Did it work?" asked Dee from his hole in the pavement. "Did what work?" Raspberry cried. "Ursula's dead!" "Look-it," Yves whispered. "You fucking asshole." Raspberry's tears burned little holes in Yves shirt. "You should have let me nuke the cunt. I don't care if…" "For once in your fucking life would you just shut your mouth and look-it?" Yves hissed. Raspberry purpled, then turned and lookited. Black Cherry sat up, perplexed. Numbers and symbols spun beneath the surface of her skin. She held two long, black braids, one in each hand. They danced in the air, totaling six feet of plaited pigtails, their ends shorn shear. The living tattoo completed a full circuit, and the scarlet girl was covered head to toe in a madman's idea of math homework. Ursula propped herself up, blinking sleepily. The remains of her pigtails stuck out straight from either side of her head for a good half foot before puffing out into black pompom tufts. "Well, shit," Raspberry grumped, "She's cuter than ever now." "Then Ursula's okay," Dee said. "Thank God. Nyx too?" A rampart of granite pebbles and chips encircled the hole in the pavement. "Did it work?" "I think Ursula's okay," Yves answered. The Goth girl plopped down onto the pavement, exhausted and huffing. "More weary than wounded. Nyx is looking pretty gray, though, like a wool sweater. And I have no idea if anything worked because you didn't clue me in on your plan this time." More pebbles appeared. "Speaking of which, what the Hell are you doing? Trying to dig upwards?" Dee's fingertips waggled above the ring of rock. "I've barely got one arm free down here and I'm trying to make some room. Superhuman strength is pretty useless when you're pinned in place by plate-freaking-tectonics." A finger stabbed out at an angle. "What's happening to Black Cherry?" "She's covered in that magic square number stuff," Yves said. "And she's just…sitting there." "Maybe it did work, then," Dee said. "Master?" Black Cherry dropped the severed braids and tried to stand. She stepped on one sagging wing and flumped back down on her ass. The wings on her head shriveled and paled. "Master?" Yves adjusted Raspberry's weight in his arms, taking the edge off the fire in his shoulders. "What were U and Nyx trying to do? Magic, right? Not number games. Real magic." The lines of cipher wrapped around Black Cherry's body looked less like crazed math and more like an elegant but incomprehensible foreign language. "But magic to do what?" A face hidden by a drab olive hoodie and green, wraparound Onasis sunglasses poked out of the driver's side window. "To take the Devil out of Black Cherry," Eurydice answered, pushing herself up by the palms and flipping down onto the pavement. Black Cherry wobbled to her feet, gawping at Eurydice. Her head wings furled inward and melted away. The wings on her back faded and shrank until they were little more than the toy devil-wings of a Halloween costume. The green girl turned to her. "Hello, baby sister," Eurydice said. Black Cherry twittered, pointing at Eurydice but peering over her shoulder. "You made another one, Master?" She shook her head. "See how replaceable she is. Not like me. There's nothing like me. I'm nothing." Her bravado failed. "I'm alone." She glanced about, desperate and lost. "Be with me." Her gaze fell on Eurydice, darted to Yves and Raspberry, to CeeCee, then Ursula and Nyx, before circling back to Eurydice. "Become me. Name me." Ursula rolled onto her side, reaching for the hem of Eurydice's fatigues. "Hurry. The binding won't last. She's strong." She smiled before slipping back into exhaustion. "Just like you." Eurydice nodded, pulling away the glasses and the hood. Jellied dreadlocks tumbled free. Black Cherry tried to sneer. "So young, he made you so young this time. Just like I remember you." Black Cherry pressed her palm over her mouth. "I remember you? I do." Her hand trembled as she pointed. "I know you…" "You know me of old," Eurydice finished for her. "Yes. Things echo. But echoes have never been enough. Not for you." Black Cherry backpedaled, almost tripping herself up on crumbling cement. "I don't understand." "Neither did I at first." Eurydice unzipped her hoodie, molding the pliant garment into a peculiar sash, leaving her left breast bare. "Now that I've seen you, though, everything's so clear. We've done this so many times, you and I." She stepped closer. "But things are different this time. Everything can be different, if you let it." Black Cherry stared wide-eyed and silent. Eurydice pressed forward. "You don't have to be alone. Be with frends, with us. Become yourself." She held out her hand. "Adrasteia." Black Cherry fumbled backward. "Ide," she gasped, and at first Yves thought she said, I Dee, or maybe Idly. She bumped into a fallen slab and sat down hard. "It is you, Ide.". Eurydice reached out to her, smiling. "Call me Eurydice." "What the fuck is this shit?" Raspberry called out. Eurydice turned and shushed her but Raspberry just stared. "Jesus fuck, check out those tits." Yves whispered, "Nursemaids." "What?" Raspberry asked. "They were sisters," Yves answered. "Nursemaids." Another piece clicked into place in the puzzle.      ["...That depends, is Cherry Cupcake Dee's psycho bitch ex-girlfriend from Hell..."] "Black Cherry's always been the eldest before," Yves explained. "But not this time. That's what's different."      ["...No one's ever gone lime first time before..."] Eurydice smiled, opened her hands to Black Cherry again.      ["...Hello, baby sister..."] "Dee made Galatea first," Yves said. "Wait. Nursemaids? Of what?" Raspberry narrowed her eyes at the ample curve of Eurydice's bare breast. "Buffalo?" "Gods." "Names," Black Cherry said. "Why do you have so many names?" Eurydice's brow crinkled in confusion. "What do you mean?" "Ide," Black Cherry said, and stood up. "Eurydice. Galatea." The little wings on her back flushed red. "Shamhat. Meliboea." Black Cherry advanced, her sneer returning. Eurydice dropped back. "Brunhild. Marya." Two curved horns budded from the top of the scarlet girl's head, opening as embryonic wings. "I'm clueless," Raspberry hissed. From her muddle on the pavement, CeeCee said, "We know, honey. We know." Eurydice zippered her hoodie. "Adrasteia, please. I used up so much nanomek to put myself back together after the crash, just to talk to you. Listen to me, please." It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 02 Black Cherry tipped her head, listening to some distant voice. The wings on her back grew, gorged on blood red gel. "Zeus loved you best." Eurydice shook her head. "You don't understand, Adrasteia." "That's not my name," Black Cherry muttered. The symbols tattooed on her skin writhed and danced. "Zeus loved you best. Heracles loved you best. Sigurd loved you best." The little wings on her head spread atremble. "Dee loves…They all loved you best!" "No." Eurydice fell back against the Jeep. "You can't love what you don't trust. And, in the end, none of them trusted us. Ever. Because of you," Eurydice added, eyes brimming with tears and defiance, "Adrasteia." "That's not my name!" The mathematical formulae binding Black Cherry's flesh distorted, wavered, and finally faded into black veins marbling crimson gel, devoid of pattern or meaning. Her great wings opened, spanned the road, and a scarlet curtain of crushed velvet dropped between Yves and Eurydice. A battle cry built in Yves' throat. "Hey, fruitcake!" Yves clapped his mouth shut and spun about. Tomoe strolled up the double yellow line in the center of the access road, white blouse ruffling in the sudden wind, little black miniskirt hugging above her knees, snake-skin purse slung over one shoulder. She dismissed Yves with a wave, dark eyes shining. "Pfft, not you." She pointed. "That fruitcake. The crazy lady with wings." Black Cherry slumped. "This nick-of-time thing really gets tedious. Who ever heard of a team that doesn't team up? Ah, well, who is it now. Another shocker reveal?" She turned. The curtain rose on Eurydice, squashed against the silver Jeep, trying to peek around Black Cherry's head-wings. Black Cherry stood dumbstruck before stuttering, "Tiamat?" "Say, there's an old nickname." Tomoe folded her arms. "Who's been giving the crazy lady flashbacks?" Eurydice poked up a hand. "That'd be me. Sorry." From his hole, Dee asked, "Are you okay, Eurydice?" "Yeah. Plan B didn't work, though, so get your ass outta there." "Working on it." Chunks of granite flew up. "Just a minute longer." Black Cherry shrugged with arms and all four wings. "Tiamat," she whispered, pacing this way and that in the middle of the road, eyeing Tomoe from every angle. "You can't be here." "No rule against it," Tomoe said, one black pump tapping on the pavement. "What the fuck are you doing here?" Raspberry asked. "Me?" She met Yves gaze, matched his poker face. "Nothing." Yves smirked, "Ah." He went down on one knee and lay Raspberry down onto the pavement. "That, that's right," Black Cherry said, confidence returning. "You can't interfere." "Yep. I can't interfere. Now there's a rule I never break." "What're you doing?" Raspberry whispered to Yves. "Don't worry," he whispered back. "You'll be fine. Besides, my arms have gone numb and I think I'm slipping a disk." Wing claws clicked together over Black Cherry's head. "You can't interfere. So what are you going to do?" She edged closer to Tomoe. "Stand there and watch?" "Pretty much," Tomoe answered, "Yeah." She adjusted the strap of her purse, looking bored. Yves could not take any more. "You're asking the wrong questions." He shook his head, wore an idiot grin. "You stupid psycho-bitch." Black Cherry shot him a worried glance. In the distance, an engine revved up. "The question is," Yves said as the engine grew louder, "how did she get here so fast?" "Oh." Tomoe brightened. She stepped to the side, inspecting a finger nail. "I drove." A rose Mini Cooper raced around the bend in the access road. It bounced up a jagged slab of fallen concrete, soared through the air, and bore down upon Black Cherry, car horn meep-meeping. The car's grimacing oval grill rippled, split, and thrust out a single, diamond-tipped, ramrod spike. Black Cherry reared back, eyes bugging. "Oh, shi—" The scarlet girl flew backward, impaled. She threw her wings around the little car, claws raking the sides and scourging the rear bumper. Eurydice swore—"Whoa-shit!"—and dove away as the charging Mini Cooper clashed Black Cherry against the silver Jeep. The sideways truck folded up like a cardboard box. The little rose car disappeared in the vortex of crushing wings. Black Cherry's face contorted in some intense, silent emotion that Yves could not distinguish between exultation or exquisite pain. Scarlet wings ruptured, falling away in splattering petals. SB ascended in the rain of crimson honey, muscles bunching beneath her tight dress, monstrous pink scimitar twirling a glorious arc in her arms. The hooked tip of the blade sped downward, shearing through the carriage of the Jeep. SB yanked back on her swing as the scimitar's curved edge cleaved into Black Cherry's hair. Black Cherry twittered nonsense words, shut her eyes and chewed on her fingers. SB's rosy skin and coppery dress were plastered with cherry nectar. Black Cherry pushed her twitching fingers between the folds of her sex before mashing them back into her mouth. SB glowered, muttering, "Worse than Atlantis." She hefted the scimitar out of Black Cherry's hair and the scarlet girl fell into a post-coital fit, head rocking and feet drubbing the pavement. Her pageboy bob now bore a perfect, midline part. SB lanced the scimitar down into the asphalt, crossed her arms and propped herself against the sword's hilt. "Well, cousin," SB sighed, "I hate family dramas so I'm going to cut this short." She exchanged a quick glance with Eurydice, who nodded. "Your sister, for some reason, wants to present you with a choice. Do you think you could, just this once, get over yourself, move on, and maybe—Oh, I dunno—try for happiness instead of the usual boiling bunny bullshit?" Severed wings wriggled past her, as flat and wide as Persian carpets, crawling up to bind with Black Cherry's back. "Aw, eeew. So much worse than Atlantis. Anyway, you can either cheer up, emo kid, or you and I can keep doing what we're doing now and you can cum yourself to death. Your choice." Black Cherry gulped, "Who were you?" "Oh, you know, you and your sister filled them with honey." She plucked her scimitar out of the ground and slung it over her shoulders. "I brought the milk. I offered them my horn." Her diamond-white eyes flashed at Yves. He felt a guilty flutter in his stomach and heat in his face. "They gifted it back," she finished and leveled the scimitar at Black Cherry's crotch. The scarlet girl crossed and uncrossed her legs beneath it. "So what's it going to be?" SB asked. "Tiamat," Black Cherry spluttered. "Tiamat?" SB shrugged, moved aside, but kept her scimitar in striking range of Black Cherry's belly and sex. "Are you going to let her do this?" "Sorry." Tomoe worried an unruly cuticle with her teeth. "There's nothing I can do. Can't interfere, remember? And call me Tomoe, or 'T' at least. Can't use the old nickname any more thanks to Gary fucking Gygax." "I'm running low on nanomek and patience, little cousin." SB etched little circles around Black Cherry's belly button with the keen tip of her blade, making the scarlet girl shiver and pant, her cream-candy skin prickled with brandied dewdrops. "And frankly I'm inclined to keep cutting and cutting. But that's my dick talking and it's not my decision to make. What say you: sister, or sword?" Black Cherry's lips curled up into that lazy, coquettish smile that Yves had grown to loathe. "I'll take the third option," she said, and rolled her eyes upward. Yves, SB, and Raspberry followed her gaze, and swore in a ragged chorus. "Oh, shit." Three half-naked coeds—the blonde, brunette, and redhead E-Z sorority sisters—their nests of bedraggled hair twisting serpentine in the wind, perched on the corrugated steel barrier running along the lip of the overpass, almost two stories above the litter of ripped asphalt and craggy hunks of ferroconcrete spiked with barbs of distressed rebar. Their arms shot out straight into the air, releasing their clutches of clothes. Yves thought of Hollywood Frankenstein monsters, or swimmers positioning themselves to dive off a high board. His blush faded and the butterflies in his stomach grew icicles. "What the—Oh, yuck," Dee groused from his hole as the last of the coeds' skank-wear pelted down onto the road. "Why is it raining soiled panties?" "Shut up, Dee." Yves limped to the center of the road, never taking his eyes of the girls above. "Black Cherry's got the skank-bots back and she's going to kill them." Yves heard a growl and hiss from the hole in the road, sounding more locomotive than human. Yves spoke as fast as he could. "Dee no-it's-too-late any move and they're dead." Tomoe paled. "I'm so sorry. I can't interfere, I really can't." She stared at her hands. "If I do, it just gets worse, so much worse. So I can't. I can't." "I know," Dee said. Tomoe looked up at the three girls. She balled her fists. "I can't!" Yves felt the breeze blow stronger and the ambient temperature drop. Dee spoke in his new voice—"No more, Tomoe,"—and Tomoe gasped in relief, letting her arms fall, her purse slip from her shoulders. The electric tension in the air evaporated. She wasn't apologizing for staying out of it, Yves realized, She was begging someone to stop her from getting into it. Yves turned to SB. The rose girl stepped back, choking up on the scimitar's grip. The first pinpricks of migraine pain skewered behind Yves' eyes. "I need a minute," he said. "You won't get it," Black Cherry grinned, sitting up. I need to think this through. Yves held up an open palm. "You kill them, SB kills you, and you know it." How is this supposed to end? Just like I said this morning: 'Galatea divided, brothers and friends dead.' How do I stop it from happening all over again if Cherry Cupcake's too much of a psycho-bitch to let it go? The pinpricks grew into stiletto points and Yves had to bow his head. Black Cherry. Party tonight. Skank-bot army. Dee sublimed. Eurydice fragmenting. Galatea divided.      ["… She's lying. Black Cherry. About Galatea…"] "Oh." Yves stood straight. "Duh." From the hole in the road, Dee said, "Yves?" "Let her go," Yves answered. "You already know what you have to do." "SB," Dee ordered without any hesitation, "let her go." SB shouldered her scimitar, fuming. Black Cherry sat up and brushed herself off. "Well, this was fun." "Cherry," Dee said, "set the girls free, safely, or I let SB finish if she wants." The huge scimitar thrummed in SB's hands as she rolled her shoulders. "SB wants," the rose girl purred. Eurydice came up behind her and gave SB a fierce hug. "Of course," Black Cherry said, swaggering into the road and hopping onto a fallen concrete slab. "As soon as I'm clear. I'm sorry we were interrupted, Master. I could stay and play," she said, eying Yves, "but there's a choice you have to make. I told you I had work to do, remember?" She scampered over the rubble, crossing the road to the broken pylon. "Well, I did it, and it's perfect, just like I said. We'll be perfect, you and I, tonight." She stopped to peer down into the hole in the road. "Won't we, Master?" "Go," Dee said. Black Cherry sniffed and pouted. "You're not scared at all. Why not, Master? You were so scared last time. Why…" "Go, Cherry." "You're ready, aren’t you?" Black Cherry's laughter sparkled. "You're ready for me, finally. You're ready!" "Go, Cherry." Black Cherry, giggling and giddy, leapt onto the broken pylon. Claws and fingers punched their own handholds in the concrete. She loped up, her wings working as a third pair of limbs. She back-flipped up and around the lip of the overpass, onto the highway, and out of sight. Raspberry fought against the straightjacket of Yves' overshirt tourniquet. "I can't be the only person who didn't understand a single damn thing that just fucking happened, can I?" Yves shushed her, watching the three coeds balanced on the barrier railing. They rocked with a sudden tremor. The blonde and redhead's glassy, blank expressions came alive with alertness and confusion. The brunette only stood and swayed in her underwear. The blonde and redhead yipped in surprise when they noticed their surroundings and hopped back from the ledge, but wailed and fled down the highway in a hobbled, crouching run when they noticed their nudity. The brunette rolled her head and trembled again. "Come on," Yves whispered. The brunette danced about on the railing, lifting one leg and then the other, pulling off her panties. "Oh, shit." Yves cast about. "Can anyone do the bed trick?" Eurydice, SB, CeeCee, and Tomoe all raised their hands. Raspberry raised a delicate foot. The brunette's underwear dropped into the hole in the pavement. It was wet enough to splat. "Aw, man," Dee said. "The one fetish I don't have and I'm buried in it." The brunette dove her fingers into her sex and drew out a blue-chrome, oval vibrator. She gave it a twist and shut it off. She raised it slowly to her face. She stared, aghast and unbelieving. Yves squinted. "What the Hell?" "Oh thank God," the brunette gurgled, toppled behind the railing, and sprawled onto the embankment in a blissful coma. * * * * The word is about, there's something evolving, Whatever may come, the world keeps revolving. They say the next big thing is here, That the revolution's near, But to me it seems quite clear: It's all just a little bit of history repeating. —Propellerheads (feat. Miss Shirley Bassey), History Repeating * * * * It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 03 It's Always Time, Act Five: Just Desserts Chapter Three: Too Little Too Late * * * * "STUDY the myths and legends of cultures across the world, and many uncanny similarities soon appear: great floods, winged dragons, serpentine women, cannibal kings, cunning imps, and mad oracles are just a few of the common mythological motifs. Look closer still and the stories of myth, the sequence of events tying these mythic motifs together, take on a familiar rhythm: a hero must journey into the underworlds of Hell to recover what was lost; a heroine must endure trials of pain and disgrace to free her beloved from enchantment; hubris is punished, courtesy rewarded; a prophecy of doom is only fulfilled when someone tries to prevent it from happening in the first place. "Many of these coincidences can be explained by the myth-makers' proximity in time and geography. Roman myths mirror earlier Greek myths because the Romans adopted the legends and religions of the peoples they conquered. But the continual repetition of themes, symbols, and events have lead some scholars to hypothesize the existence of a monomyth, a central story ingrained so deep in social fabric and psyche of the human condition that it is the seed for all others. Attempts to distill the monomyth from the corpus of world legend have met with only modest success. The failure to find the monomyth is not one of method, but of point of view, and the monomyth will remain hidden until the mythographer considers the possibility that the monomyth is not an archetype of the mind, but an artifact of history. Instead of the same story being retold over and over in slight variation, the same situation, the same sequences of events, had actually recurred, playing out again and again, throughout history and across the world, by the same players under different names and, most importantly, different ingredients. "Until now." -From the introduction to Deiter Detwiler: The Hero with a Thousand Flavors, by Ursula Frost, 2nd Printing 2010 * * * * Freeing his elbows did the trick. Dee pried his chest and legs from the crushing strata of granite beneath the pavement, dug through rubble, and hauled ass onto the asphalt. Grit got everywhere and itched like crazy. "Some superman," Raspberry said as Dee emerged, one hand shoved into the seat of his pants, "scratching his ass to get glad." She wiggled in her impromptu straightjacket by Brooks Brothers. "He took his damn sweet time, too." Eurydice knelt behind Raspberry and encouraged the lavender girl to recline into her green gel-flesh. Raspberry lay back with little grace. Eurydice reached around in silence, plucking at the knotted sleeves below Raspberry's breasts. Raspberry snickered at the green girl, "I was about to suggest you frig a few gallons of cum down that hole and grease him out." Eurydice perked up. "Hey, really? That’s exactly what I was gunna do! Ellagic and citric minds must think alike." She tugged the cuff out of the knot. "But I'm too low on nanomek." Raspberry flushed violet. "I was joking. You, uh, can really cum that much?" "Oh, sure. Just for starters." Eurydice paused to watch Dee fuss with his cindery underwear. "That man really gets my motor running. Oh, Raz, don't cry. What's wrong?" Amethyst tears dashed down, eating little pits into the blacktop. "I wanna get laid!" Eurydice clucked. "That dick is Mine, girl." The knot came undone at last. "But maybe we can work something out." She peeled Yves' shirt away from Raspberry's chest. Raspberry pulled away fast. "No, don't." "You've got enough nanomek to hold yourself together, don't you?" Raspberry shrugged. The overshirt yawned. Her nipples stiffened and caught the material, the midline of her breasts and midriff peeping out. "Yeah, but that's not it." She settled back into Eurydice's lap, gazing across the road. Yves was helping Ursula pick through the concrete debris beneath the overpass. They moved from slab to slab, Ursula clinging to Yves waist, Yves supporting her by the shoulders. Raspberry undulated, a single wave rippling out from her core. The shirt-sleeves bulged, filling with lavender gel until her fingers wriggled out from the cuffs. Eyes locked on the bishi and goth girl across the street, Raspberry raised a forearm and scraped her lips over the sturdy cotton, breathing deep and shuddery. "This tastes sooo much fuckin' better than the mixing bowl." * * * * Ursula cast about. "They've got to be somewhere." "Your glasses?" Yves asked. Ursula turned in his arms. "Does it look like we need glasses?" Yves still startled each time she—Not "she," "they"—moved against him. Earlier that morning, standing together before Bee's apartment, he and Ursula had held hands. The hallway became a sauna and Ursula's hand had felt as warm, clammy, and shaky as his. But that was all before Ursula met Nyx. When he had clambered over the broken concrete beneath the overpass and reached down to help her up—"Them," damn it, help "them" up—it was the first time he had touched Unyx. Unyx's hand had felt cool and dry, fluid but not liquid, and utterly frictionless. He had shook hands with a ghost. He had looked down at her face and saw his own image double reflected in eyes of polished obsidian. No irises, no whites, not even eyebrows, just shining black orbs in a shadow eye-mask in the shape of infinity. One loop of the eye-mask had arched up her milk-white forehead (oO), Unyx's version of cocking her eyebrow. And then Yves had blurted, "Ben Franklin!" Now Yves looked into Unyx's black-on-black eyes again. "No, you don't," he said. "Those glasses did look good on you, though. On Ursula." Unyx softened and smiled. "Yeah, they did. We'll have to fix them, maybe take out the lenses, and put in flat glass." "So Ursula doesn't need them anymore?" Yves decided to come clean with his fear. "Ursula's still in there, right?" "Of course I am." The eye-mask dwindled and drained away, revealing Ursula's eyes, the irises neither hazel nor emerald but shining ebony. "I have nanomek contacts now," Ursula said. "I can see gravity. We, Nyx and I, are Unyx when we both want to be." She shrugged. "We just want to be Unyx a whole lot, maybe even all the time from now on. I'm sorry, Yves, I know this must be freaking you out." She giggled and imitated his voice, "'Ben Franklin!' You still haven't explained that." "Tell me what we're looking for, first," Yves said. "My hair." Ursula touched a pom-pom tufted end of one of her shorn, horizontal pigtails. "My braids. I can't find them anywhere. Not here, not now…" She stared of into the middle distance somewhere past Yves' left ear. "Not ten minutes into the past or future." She ghost-squeezed his shoulder. "We need to find my hair, Yves, or we're all royally fucked. Nyx cut as subtly as she could, but even meliae can’t cut sharp enough to sever such a strong sympathetic connection." "Ten minutes where? Sharp enough to what? Wait, your hair?" "No fair." She shook her head, whacking Yves with a pigtail. "Oops, sorry. I want my answer: Why 'Ben Franklin'?" "Caloric theory," Yves said. Ursula looked blank. "Look, I may have taken English for Engineers in college, but I know my history of science. Ben Franklin thought that electricity was a fluid. Before modern atomic theory, all sorts of stuff was considered fluid: electricity, light, heat and cold, were all supposed to be a kind of dry goop. I touched your hand, touched Nyx, and the first thing I thought of was Ben fucking Franklin and his fucking electric-heat goo." Something clicked in his head and his migraine returned with a vengeance. "Oh, no, not Benjamin Franklin. Do not tell me Nyx boned Franklin in a past life or something. I can't take any more of that kind of crap." Ursula laughed hard enough to make her stumble. She cinched her arms tighter about Yves waist and he gave her shoulders a supporting hug. He had to hook his arm in her armpit or risk slipping off her near-frictionless, second skin. Ursula puffed, pressing her cheek to Yves' ribs. "Oof, so little nanomek left, I need to be careful." "I saw that," Raspberry cried out from across the street. "Oldest trick in the book, baby-butch bitch!" But Eurydice waggled her and CeeCee, still lying supine on the side of the road, gave Ursula a thumbs-up. Ursula stuck her tongue out at all three of them; to Yves relief, it was as pink as ever, not black. "Anyway," she said, "Nyx doesn't remember fucking any Founding Fathers. She's different from the others. Not a meliae, really; something else." "What the heck is she made of, anyway?" Yves asked. "Just what you said: electric-heat goo. Sort of. Black Cherry mixed her from Devil's Food pudding and about a pint of latex paint." Yves massaged his forehead, knowing it would do little for his migraine. "But those two things don’t mix. At all." "No, they don't," Ursula agreed, "but they gave the nanomek a framework to work its magic, to mix her essence, not just her physical substance." She pulled away, testing her own balance. "You know your history of science, I know my alchemy. Nyx is phlogiston, the terra pinguis et fluida: the black blood of the Earth." "You mean oil." "She means Black Blood of the Earth," Tomoe cackled, hopping from one slab to the other, snake-skin purse swinging on its strap. "That reminds me: I wonder what Egg Shen is up to? Took him clubbing about two centuries ago and he never called back, the bastard." She reached an adjacent slab. "Hey, little sisters. Is your last name Exposition, by any chance? You're better at it than me." "It's Frost." Ursula looked Tomoe up and down. "'Tiamat,' huh?" She smirked. "How many hit dice you got?" Tomoe harrumphed, then leaned close and took up one horizontal pigtail in each hand. "Handlebars," she drawled, giving Ursula's hair a gentle-back-and-forth tug. She stood straight, hands on hips, and surveyed the whole Ursula/Nyx package. "I'd ride that like a bicycle." "Oh, ha ha…Oh. Oh, shit. Yves." Ursula turned, eyes glittering in alarm. "Black Cherry. Black Cherry must have my hair." "Uh, I've got be honest." Yves shrugged. "So what? She's got Galatea, she's planning to mass rape-murder about fifty college guys, and then ending the world. I think we need to prioritize a bit here. What am I missing?" An engine revved somewhere above them. "I haven't had a haircut since I was twelve." It was Yves' turn to look blank, so Ursula continued, "Remember all that sympathetic magic stuff I talked about? How my soap established a connection between me and Galatea, so I could find her? Well, a decade worth of my hair, all cut off at once, is the strongest sympathetic connection to me anyone could possibly have, other than some fresh blood. It's better than any voodoo doll; it's a perfect stand-in for me, for my body." The humming motor drew near. "If Black Cherry knows anything about magic, she can turn me—and Nyx—into her skank-bots with it, and then use us to control anyone we have a sympathetic connection with." "Your homemade soap," Yves said in dawning dread. "Galatea used it. Dee too." "And the girl at Starbucks," Ursula said. Yves thought about it. "You mean the one with the great—" "Yeah," Ursula butted in, blushing silver as a rose Mini Cooper sped down the highway off ramp toward them. "Black magic is just like VD," Tomoe said, nodding. The Mini Cooper zipped past, horn meep-meeping a friendly greeting. "But you don't even get to cum first." * * * * Dee contemplated his navel, plumbing for pebbles. The rose Cooper pulled up beside him, idling. The passenger door popped open, the front seat pushed up to the glove compartment. Four gallons of bottled water sloshed in the rear foot well. The brunette EZ coed lay unconscious on the narrow back bench. "She's wearing your dress," Dee said. The little car's AM radio crackled to life. "You want her naked?" "No," Dee said, straightening his muscle shirt and bending in, "but I didn't think someone else could wear it. You can divide?" He moved the four bottles onto the road. "Not exactly," came SB's voice from the radio. "Only one part of me can really come off. I can make all sorts of things, though." Dee pinched the coppery fabric between his thumb and forefinger. "It feels…real. Not rubbery or kinky at all." "You sound disappointed. I locked it. It's real, and hers to keep. Look, could you take her out, please? I don't wanna change back with her still inside me—don't know her near well enough—and I feel really stupid talking through the radio." Dee eased his arms around the brunette and lifted her out. "You didn't find the others?" The car's engine cut off. The chassis glinted liquidly, collapsed like an accordion before spindling into SB with a familiar metallic sigh. "I did, but a state trooper picked them up first." She read Dee's panicked expression and added, "Don't worry. Most people don't come this way unless they're drawn in somehow. And besides, the local patrollers are used to some seriously weird shit." The brunette in Dee's arms yawned, eyes blinking. She tipped her head. SB stood two feet away, rose-red and buck-naked, candy floss cornrows drifting in the gentle breeze, flaccid cock dangling to her knees. She flashed her diamond grin. "Why hullo there." The brunette squeaked, latching herself around Dee's chest. Confusion clouded her brow. Her fingers tickled over his back, feeling yielding skin covering marble-hard muscle. She tilted her head up with exaggerated care. "Please don't faint," Dee said, trying for his most disarming smile. She fainted. "Fuck." * * * * SB lugged the water jugs over to the far side of the street, proffered two to Eurydice and Raspberry. The green and lavender girls tore open the bottle's plastic tops and guzzled. SB called across the road. "Hey, Unyx!" Beneath the overpass, Ursula turned, black eye-mask flowing into place over her eyes. "Yeah?" "C'mon over." "'Kay." SB unscrewed the top of the third bottle and knelt beside CeeCee. The amber woman lay on the pavement, slowly liquefying. "Are you going to be okay?" SB asked her. "Not without a lot of nanomek—and I mean a lot—very soon." She reached up. "But some water will see me through for a little while. Thanks, honey." She filled out as she drank, her half-melted curves coalescing until she looked less like a runny butter sculpture and more like a record-breaking slice of creamy cheesecake molded into a big titty momma of rock and roll. Unyx wobbled over, her candy coating of glossy black swirled with matte gray. "'Zup?" SB passed her the last bottle. A few feet away, Raspberry and Eurydice chugged down the last of their water. They tossed the imploded plastic bottles over their shoulders into the fallow field behind them. They belched in near unison and dissolved into giggles. Unyx took a few sips and handed it back. "Wait," said Raspberry, the water spreading through her gel restoring her to a healthy jiggle. "That's all you need? After all that badass kung fu magic shit?" Unyx arched her eye-mask. "Nyx gets the water she needs from Ursula." Eurydice wrinkled her nose. "Oh, ew." Raspberry's amethyst eyes sparkled. "Wicked!" "Huddle up, girls," said SB, "We gotta talk." Unyx hunkered down and CeeCee scooted close. "Listen," SB said, voice low, "I'm running low on nanomek, enough to make me nervous." She hooked a thumb. "CeeCee's got one butt-cheek in the big freezer in the sky." "Now that's just silly," CeeCee said. "It's true, but silly." "Anybody else?" SB asked. "I fragment awful fast," Eurydice replied, "I burn nanomek to stay coherent. And after that crash? I'm damn low." "We're going gray," Unyx said, "that can't be good." Raspberry sniffed the tails of her shirt. "I've never needed a hot beef injection more in my life." "You're less than a day old," CeeCee insisted, "and you've been saying that every fifteen minutes since you were born. So what are we going to do?" Raspberry blushed purple and looked across the street. Tomoe and Yves traded withering witticisms. Eurydice shook her head. "We can't ask him. You don't know what he's been through." "What if he…" Raspberry made a hollow fist and pumped up and down above her crotch. "Where's the fun in that?" CeeCee protested. Raspberry's blush deepened into a raging indigo. "I—we—that is…You know. Watch." "Oh, honey." CeeCee patted the lavender girl on her mane of orchid petals. "That man's turned you into a blushing violet." "Yves is out for the count," Unyx said. "He's been up over thirty-six hours, he's had the shit kicked out of him two, three times now, and he's running on empty calories, caffeine and adrenaline. He's amazing, but he's only human." SB pursed her lips, nodding. She stood up, scraping her hands together, a coppery one-piece dress settling over her firm lines and gentle curves. "Let me see what I can do about that." "Besides," Eurydice said, watching SB swagger over to Yves and Tomoe, "we're going to need a lot. Like, a whole lot. I'm talking pints." Unyx, CeeCee, Raspberry, and Eurydice all craned their necks, smooth and slow. Dee stood under the overpass across from Yves, a brunette coed in his arms, chestnut hair falling in ringlets into his face. He returned their burning gazes, oblivious. "What?" he said. * * * * Yves' migraine fissured his thinking. "I'm sorry, Tomoe. What did you say?" Tomoe held out the two pills again. "Little. Yellow. Different. Come on, it's a perfect straight line." "Tomoe, look." Yves felt the mad desire to drill a hole in his skull; anything to relieve the pressure-pain. He forgot what he was going to say. SB sauntered up, her usually tight one-piece dress flowing loose past her knees. "Hey, T, Yves. Wow, Yves, you look like shit." Yves tried to smile, grateful for the rescue, but only affected a grimace. "Well, I feel like shit." He managed to put two thoughts together. "So at least there's symmetry." His knees began to buckle. SB steadied him, her grip strong and cool on Yves' bare forearm. "Yves, you've got to take a break. You're dead on your feet." He lost what she said next to the miasma of migraine. SB's thumb slipped under the strap of his tan, sleeveless tee shirt, massaged a pressure point in the hollow of his collar bone. The pain and fatigue faded enough for him to focus. "Ride me, Yves." He found his balance. "What?" "Welcome back," SB smirked. Her grip slid down his arm and she placed her hand in his, careful to avoid the gauze bandage on the pad of his thumb. "I said, 'Take a ride with me, Yves.' Back to SRU. There's something there that I want to give you." Tomoe coughed. SB glared. "What now?" Tomoe unsnapped the top of her purse and pulled out a plain, glass mason jar filled with strawberry-red jam. SB's expression softened. "You knew? Of course you knew. And you're okay with it?" Tomoe held out the jar. "Are you kidding? I've been watching this bit for weeks." SB took the jar with her free hand and Tomoe added, "Give the knight his sword. After all, you haven't had this good a candidate in forever, seems like." SB took a step back and tugged on Yves arm. "C'mon, Yves. Eurydice and her pals are running on empty and looking at Dee like he was the Exxon Valdese. You don't want to be here for what's about to happen next." Yves shook his head. "Nothing Dee does surprises me any more, not after the skank-bot gangbang. The world works different for him, that's all. I just need to figure out the rules." SB smiled and tugged again, and this time Yves followed her. "But I can always work out the rules later. Or from a minimum safe distance." It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 03 SB blew a kiss over Yves' shoulder. "See ya 'round, T." "I thought she said she, uh, wanted to watch?" Yves asked, wondering, What the Hell have I gotten myself into? At least I can't blame Dee this time.      ["…we're so lucky Dee chose you…"] Or can't I? "She's watching," SB assured him, leading him around the slabs of concrete. "She was watching, she always will be watching. She's T, and I'm her cheeseburger." "I'm just going to pretend I understood that," said Yves, "and not say anything." "Good plan." * * * * Eurydice waved Dee over. She burned a few nanomek muttering in ultrasound, too fast and high pitched for Dee to hear. "He's faking it, you know. His obliviousness, I mean. He always knows exactly what I want, even before I want it, and he teases and teases until I can't take any more." Dee ambled forward, his expression puzzled. "Get ready for the hardest foreplay of your lives, girls," Eurydice added. CeeCee snorted back a laugh, then answered Eurydice by broadcasting on the same wavelength. "If it's an act, he deserves an Oscar. I know he's the love of your life, Eurydice, but when it comes to women Dee doesn't have the sense God gave a lemon." The brunette rocked in Dee's arms, a muzzy smile stealing over her face as her body settled against his. "Look, the Easy girl is wide awake and having a ball with your boyfriend and he hasn't even noticed." "Sure he has. You don't know him like I do," Eurydice broadcast before calling out in an audible frequency. "Dee, put the Easy down, please." Dee ground to a halt halfway across the road, seemed to notice the damsel draped over him for the first time. He looked about, shrugged and turned back, loping across the street in his signature jaguar strut. "And now he's making me watch him walk," Eurydice broadcast an ultrasonic sing-song. "Why 'make'," Unyx wondered aloud. "Why would he even want to make you…Oh." CeeCee, Eurydice, and Raspberry, their surface tension spotting with liquid goose bumps, ogled Dee's backside as he closed in on a low, even concrete slab. "Why is everyone so obsessed with ass? First Nyx with Ursula's ass, now you all with Dee's ass. Although I admit that girl in Starbucks with the great…Whoa." Dee bent over the slab. Unyx's eye-mask widened as her voice grew choppy and small. "okay - impressive." Dee stretched to lay the brunette out on the slab. "most - impressive." She shook her head, eye-mask receding. "How does he show off like that, just walking around?" Dee nudged the brunette into a comfortable position, unheeding how she trembled and squirmed under his touch. Eurydice narrowed her eyes. "Now he's showing me his kudzu in action, trying to make me jealous." Her core achieved a steady simmer. Raspberry edged away from the radiant green girl. "Good thing it's not working, huh?" "I still don't buy it," CeeCee insisted, but Eurydice could hear the amber woman panting. "He can't be doing it on purpose. He just can't." Dee steamrolled toward them. "No one's that…devious." Dee flipped the hair away from his eyes, scratching behind his ear. "What's going on, guys? CeeCee?" He cocked his head to one side "You okay?" CeeCee only nodded. Dee tapped a toe on the remaining bottle. Water spilt over the black lip print on the bottle's mouth. "Hey, is anyone going to drink that?" Eurydice mopped her forehead. "I—I don't think so. Why?" Dee reached for the bottle but Raspberry snatched it up and slugged some down in the blink of an eye. "Sorry," she gasped, wiping her lip with the back of her hand. "Needed one last sip. Here ya go, stud muffin. Thirsty?" "No problem." Dee took the bottle from her. "Thanks. I'm not thirsty, just itchy. Like beach sand in the crack of your ass, but a hundred times worse." "Dee, listen." Eurydice rose up to her knees, fidgeting. "Just a second, honey," Dee said, and upended the bottle over his forehead. He let water pour out in three long, lazy glug noises before righting the bottle. The clear liquid ran through his hair and down his face. The neck of his white muscle shirt soaked through. Eurydice stared as the tee shirt material stuck translucent to the toned contours of Dee's pectorals and his small chocolate brown nipples. Eurydice's legs softened and merged into a single, curvy wedge. Water droplets falling from Dee's hair dribbled onto her face. "Uh, D—Dee?" "Oh, shit, sorry." Dee took a step back, rivulets encircling his head like a melting crown. He peeled off his shirt with his free hand, and deadpanned, "Didn't mean to get you wet." Dee turned and stalked away, pouring water down his back till it glistened. CeeCee drew herself up, swearing, "That son of a b—" but Dee bent over to pull off his sweat pants and her lips glued themselves together. She broadcast in a burbling, babbling ultrasound: "He is. He really, really is. Please, Eurydice, let me fuck the inscrutability off that man's face. Please." Dee stood across the road, poured more water into his hair. "That should be me," Eurydice sighed. Water ran over Dee's arms. Eurydice caressed her throat, touched the upper swell of her breast. "That should be me." Dee emptied the bottle on his legs and rubbed himself down, his muscular back flexing with each twist and stroke. "That really should be me," Eurydice groaned, her shaky hands liquefied into nectarous waves coursing down her tummy and into her sopping sex. Raspberry coughed. "Well, tough shit, Sherlock." She slapped her hand onto the pavement. The water pooling at Dee's feet rippled. It zigzagged across the road in an army of clear pollywogs. "That was me." "that - last - drink - you - spat - nanomek?" Unyx accused. "Spit? Me? Never." The last of the pollywogs wiggled into her jellied fingers. "But I couldn't help a little backwash, now, could I…I…" The re-remembrances hit her and she toppled backward. "Oh fuck, he's everywhere and so solid and strong and, oh, shit, I'm cumming, I'm cumming!" She writhed in a violet puddle on the road, the fabric of Yves' shirt the only thing holding her together. "I could die, I could die now and it'd feel so good I wouldn't fucking care, I could die…" "Good." Eurydice crept toward Raspberry on all fours, green with envy, lust, and gallons of melting gelatin. "Because I am gunna kill you." * * * * Tomoe watched SB drag a bemused Yves down the road. Tomoe had foreseen this moment a few dozen times already, had relived this moment a few million times if she included the future. These next few days were among her very favorites, after all, and she experienced them as often as she could. "Well," she said, snapping her purse shut, "what now?" The brunette stirred on the level concrete slab, a copper-and-silk clad offering on an altar to some Pulp Fiction carnal god. "Oh, right." Tomoe traipsed through the minefield of broken masonry, wary of losing a shoe heel. She brushed off the top of the slab and sat by the brunette's head. "Oh, hey!" Tomoe said, making the brunette wince and blink. "Jo Echo, right?" "How did…Do I know you?" The brunette sounded hoarse and parched. "Nah." Tomoe shrugged one shoulder. "I've watched you before." The brunette, Jo, furrowed her brow. Tomoe thought fast. "Seen you play volleyball, I mean. You've got a great, uh, serve?" Jo closed her eyes, groaning, "Whatever." "What do you remember? How are you feeling?" "Little," Jo said, shading her eyes. "Terrible. I keep trying to sleep, but my heart is pounding, my head is pounding, but worst of all my…" She blushed, mumbling, "Sore. Really sore. What did I do last night? Who did I do?" Her blush burned fire-engine red. "And why do I want to do it all over again? Christ, why am I telling this to you? Listen, lady, you got any aspirin?" Tomoe shook her head. "No aspirin, sorry. Sleepy?" Jo gave Tomoe a curt nod, grating her head on the concrete. Tomoe popped open her purse and presented Jo with a SRU-labeled, trial-size pill bottle. "I've got some Endymizine, though. Just one pill and you sleep so good you never want to wake up." She shook the bottle, making it rattle. "Two pills and…Oh, you want some? For you? Five dollar." Tomoe's dark eyes glittered above an unreadable smile. "Um." Jo patted down her coppery one-piece dress. "This thing doesn't have any pockets. I don't have any money." Tomoe stared. She dropped the SRU bottle back into her purse. A blue and white plastic bottle clicked onto the concrete beside Jo's ear. "Here. Have some ibuprofen." She stiffened. "Free of charge." Jo propped herself up. "But…" "Forget it!" Tomoe threw her hands in the air as she marched away, not looking back. "You ruined it." * * * * The ivy-choked kitchen window of the Epsilon Zeta sorority house slivered the early afternoon sun. Lancets of light tracked over the checker-tiled floor. Shimmering ovals glanced off the brushed aluminum of the industrial-sized refrigerator. A sickle-smile spotlight warmed the residue of cheesecake pudding and raspberry gelatin caked on the cock of the husky stock boy hogtied to the marble-topped kitchen cart. He shuffled his legs but his skewed smock got in the way, the underwear and workpants bunched around his knees restricted movement. The sugary gunk soaked into his pubic hair, trickled down his balls and greased his taint. He had never felt more befouled in his life. So why the Hell was his dick pointing straight at the ceiling? The swinging kitchen door bumped open. A cute girl in a tight, white spandex tee-shirt and pink hot pants stood in the frame. "Relax," she said, "she's not back yet. Something's happened to her." None of the Easies had talked to him before except to relay messages. Messages from her. "What do you mean?" The cute girl scuttled over. The stock boy cringed but she only stepped behind him, wrestling with the twine binding his hands to the kitchen cart. She smelled like a gym locker. "What's your name, kid?" None of the Easies had acted this alert before, either. A little hope bubbled up. "Eddie. What's going on?" "We don't know," the Easy girl said, tried to unknot the twine without cutting into his wrists. "But she's real low on nova-whatsis. Whatever it is she uses to control us. Do you know what that is, Eddie?" His eyes flicked to the closed tin of SRU thickener, half-hidden on the kitchen counter in a cluster of torn Jell-O boxes. "Not exactly. So, are you guys okay? Free, whatever?" "Not exactly," she echoed. "I still can't leave the house. I don't think any of us can. It feels like my feet get glued to the floor. And I can still hear her, sort of, like really loud music but from next door, you know? It's been like this for a while now." "Really? Why hasn't anyone come in here, then? It's been hours. Aren't you guys hungry?" The cute girl paused. "Starved." She went back to work, pulling one knot lose. "Listen, I'm real sorry no one's come to get you yet." She grinned. "But we've got you now, Eddie." Eddie felt a little chill. "I heard the doorbell ring. Around 10:30? Were you free then? What was that about?" The door bumped open again and another Easy marched in, licking her fingers. This one wore red leather pants and a black, tasseled jacket. Her thick mane of strawberry-blonde curls exploded out of a FedEx cap perched atop her head. "Dunno," said the girl in the pink hot pants. A second knot came undone. "Must've been a wrong number." She stretched to stage whisper at the other girl, the front of her tee shirt bussing the top of Eddie's head. "This is Eddie." "O-kay," Eddie drawled. Something was up. Other than his dick. Oh, Jesus, his dick. "Um, would you mind pulling up my pants?" He blushed. "Or just moving the smock? Something?" The girl in the FedEx hat popped a finger out of her mouth. "Now, why would we want to do that?" She sashayed over and sat on Eddie's knees. He could hear the scrunch of her leather pants. She wore no shirt under the jacket, just a racy, red, lacy bra. Tips of black felt gloves poked out from a jacket pocket. "What'cha got there, Eddie?" She twirled her slick finger around his pubic hair and slid a dollop of runny glop between her lips. "Well, phooey. Nothing but goo girl cum. We've eaten plenty of that. We're looking for something else." Eddie tried to shy away, but with Hot Pants pushing her tits on his head and FedEx squeezing his legs between her leather-wrapped thighs, there was nowhere to go. There's a certain freedom, Eddie decided, in being totally screwed. "I thought you said she didn't control you any more." Hot Pants sat behind him and untied the rest of the twine. "She doesn't." His hands fell to the floor, painfully numb. Her hands crept underneath his leaden arms. "She can't tell us what to do, not exactly, until she gets more nova-whatsis. So we've been talking. All of us. And as far as we know, there's just one source." Her fingers wrapped around his honey-basted cock and her lips pressed to his ear. "And that's you, Eddie." FedEx settled her butt onto his knees, reached into her jacket, and pulled one red bra strap down her shoulder. "We like being free, Eddie." She grabbed one of his hands and brought it to her breast, encouraging his fingers to paw beneath the loose lingerie. Her flesh felt warm and silken. Eddie had not felt a girl up since high school. How could he resist? "Mm, although I don't think we're really free. We still share her instincts, impulses." She cupped his chin. "Appetites." Hot Pants' hands around his goo-girl lubricated dick began to pump, slow and lazy. Eddie felt the delicious sting of precum. "Well, whatever we are, we really…" Pump-up-and-squeeze "Really…" Pump-down-and-swirl "Like it." Eddie came in spurts, not even fully erect. The precum sting just got sweeter and sweeter until his cock wept globs of cum. Hot Pants held his dick, squeezing and kneading. FedEx sat on his knees, leering like the Chesire Cat, watching his cum ooze onto the other girl's knuckles. She reached into her jacket pocket and snuck out the gloves. They slid onto her hands with a silky sigh. His dick softened a bit. Hot Pants stroked up and squeezed, making his whole body twitch. FedEx reached down, and now there were four hands, two bare, two wrapped in cool black felt, kneading his cock into tingling over-stimulation. The gloved fingers were super-smooth when they glided down, became bristles against his cock when they wiggled up. The bare fingers were hot and slippy. In the shock of afterglow, his dick hardened like ironwood. "Wa—wait." The two girls glanced at each other over Eddie's head. "Nah," they chorused, and returned to pumping. Eddie's jism and the glistening goo girl cum were worked into froth by the action of the fabric and fingers against his skin. Eddie arched his back and kicked but the combined weight of the two girls was just too much after being bound and bent over for hours. "Wait!" Each squeeze and curl of their fingers made him jolt and judder. "We're tired of waiting, Eddie," FedEx whined, sliming his dick with his own cum. "We want to be free. We need to be free. So we're gunna drain you bone dry and make sure you stay that way." "Besides," Hot Pants whispered into his ear. Their pumping grew fervid and quick. The froth worked itself into the fabric of the gloves. The two girls fisted him, harder and faster. "Want to know what her last command was before she let us go?" Eddie could only whimper, awful afterglow orgasm building. The kitchen door flung open. A wild-eyed, half naked man wearing nothing but a ragged, FedEx uniform shirt fell into the room. Many slender hands shot out of the doorway behind him, grabbing up his bare ankles, calves, thighs and ass. His eyes met Eddie's. He gurgled, "Run," before he was hauled back through the door and out of sight. The girl wearing the FedEx hat giggled, scooted down and bent close, watching captivated as she and Hot Pants beat Eddie off to a searing, second orgasm. Little pearls of cum splattered her chin. They kept working him over until his cum ran clear and thin as water before they let go. The coil burning in Eddie's balls and abdomen unwound at last. Then FedEx ran froth-matted, gloved fingers over her lips, cooed, "Frenzy," and deep-throated him. * * * * Eurydice loomed over the convulsing Raspberry. Green honey drizzled down Eurydice's chin onto the lavender girl's tummy. Raspberry's bellybutton ranneth over and a steaming emerald flood washed down the delta of her sex. Raspberry squealed, toes wriggling. She held up a trembling hand. "Wait, wait. Eurydice, wait!" Eurydice frowned down. "What?" Raspberry's eyes rolled back. A few wayward pollywogs found her, swam into her, fed her their memories. Raspberry's hand dropped down to her labia, sleek with green and purple nectar. "I finally got Dee by the balls." She gulped. "Holy shit, they're ginormous and so full. Jeebus, there's no way you could ever fuck all this cum out of him yourself, Eurydice. Share the wealth, ya greedy twat." Eurydice boggled, unbelieving, before grinning a mouthful of knives. She swung about, locked her legs over Raspberry's head. "Oh, I'll show you a greedy twat alright." Eurydice's face hovered over Raspbery's cleft. Her breath melted the jellied orchid petals covering the lavender girl's mons into a slurry of raspberry wine. Eurydice's dreadlocks wound tight around Raspberry's thighs. "But first I feel like making some soup." She mashed her face and sex down. Green and purple slithered together in a pneumatic 69. "Well, that's one way to make a raspberry lime rickey," CeeCee said. "So, Eurydice." Dee trotted over, skin glistening wet. "What did you wa–ha–huh?" Raspberry wrapped her arms around Eurydice's waist, tongue stabbing deep. "Uh, guys? Hey, guys?" Eurydice threw her head back, gasping. Her teeth flashed with pomegranate nectar. "You made her cum first, bright boy. So fair's fair. And when I'm through with her." Eurydice spread Raspberry's sex between two fingers and kissed the lavender, clitoral hood into her mouth. "You're next." "CeeCee," Dee said, stepping over to the kneeling amber woman so that his bare crotch was level with her face, his dick slowly engorging, making her cockeyed. "What's up?" CeeCee's lips squirmed, her jaw trembled. She shook her head, hissing, "You God damned, teasing motherfu—" She cut herself short, held up both hands. The air wooshed out of her. She took a cleansing breath, then looked up at Dee, canary diamond eyes cool and sparkling. "Face it, honey. You've been upstaged. Topping those two tarts is going to take some teamwork. And nanomek." "Dee." Unyx paced. "no - games - need - nanomek - you're - friends. " She wrung her hands. "you - Ursula - good - friends - much - trust - but - can't - we - can't." Her eye-mask dwindled until only black contacts remained. "Dee," Unyx mumbled, "what are we going to do?" Dee brushed a tear away from Unyx's cheek, staining his thumb with black ink. "I'll do what I have to do." He looked down at his hands, then his crotch, and shrugged. "Got a bucket?" CeeCee and Eurydice both cried, "What?" while Raspberry, smothered in limeade pussy, only managed a "Wff?" Eurydice sat up. "Oh, no." Her juicy green ass pivoted over Raspberry's face, slicker than a quart of astroglide. Raspberry groaned in depraved delight, her arms falling limp as she just lay there, wallowing in the face-fucking. "No, way." Eurydice's gel-flesh tits and tummy separated from Raspberry's surface in a syrupy, slurping wave. She wore a thick, vertical candy stripe of berry-red frosting from her chin to her belly. "If you think we're going to just sit here," Eurydice muttered, rocking, "and watch you play with that glorious cock of Mine while you fill a fucking, mm, b–bucket, with all that, oh, God, all that c–cum…" It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 03 CeeCee's poker face broke into desperation. She rolled up onto her feet, a fountain of creamy yellow sherbet. "You could really fill a bucket?" Raspberry squeezed her head out from between the green girl's ass-cheeks. She wore an avocado facial mask of lime goo girl cum. "Shit on a stick, CeeCee," Raspberry burbled. "Wait till ya feel what that man's got to offer, we're gunna need a fucking bucket brigade." "Shut up, you two," Eurydice demanded, rising, her eyes glowing, her head so wreathed in vapor she seemed aflame in jade. "Dee, if you think you can tease us like that." She advanced on Dee, fuming. "In fact, if you keep teasing us just one more second, you've got another thing cumming." The sheaves of her quivering hair tickled his chin. "Got that?" The sultry vapor enveloped him, its citrus-and-sex aroma stronger than he ever remembered. "Um." Dee grew hard in seconds. "Uh-oh." Eurydice bent her head, eyes rolling down. "Alright. That's it." She stepped aside. "Girls, it's time." Dee backpedaled, arms raised. "But…" Raspberry rocketed upright, her borrowed overshirt saturated with psychedelic purple and green hues. "Sweeeet." She swaggered over and grabbed Dee's left elbow. Dee protested, "I didn't…" "I'll try anything once," CeeCee said, surging forward and grabbing Dee's right wrist. "Twice if I like it." She glanced down at his thick prick. "Three times to make sure." "But it wasn't on purpose," Dee insisted. "It wasn't my fault." "No," Eurydice said, stepping behind him, planting her hands on his back. "It was Mine. Now march. God, Dee, even your back is rock hard. This is gunna be the best fuck you've ever had." The three girls pushed and pulled him forward. Ursula dropped back, inky contacts spilling out into the whites of her eyes, then spreading over her face in a raccoon's mask. "guys - wait - Dee - looks - scared." Eurydice relented, grinning in reverie. "It's bestest when he looks scared." The three meliae lead him off road. "And he's loving it. C'mon, Unyx. You don't want to miss this." Unyx pussyfooted after them. "Eurydice - nanomek - need - so - much - but - how - um - what - are - you - doing?" "What I do best," Eurydice said, pushing Dee past the copse of fallen trees and into the fallow field of wild grass beyond. "I'm going to fuck Dee." She stood on tiptoe to leer over Dee's shoulder at CeeCee and Raspberry. "We're going to fuck Dee." She glanced back, purring, "and then we're going to fuck the ever living shit out of you." * * * * SB led Yves round the bend. The road turned treacherous under Yves' unsure feet. "Easy," SB said, turning about to steady him, her hand finding its way behind his neck. "What's your last name, Yves?" Her tone was calm and casual. Her fingers soothed the aching tendons in his nape. "Valiancourt." Yves found his balance. SB kept rubbing. "Quebecois?" "My father, yes." Yves' eyelids fluttered. "Mom's Minnesotan." "Swedish." SB's other hand joined the first, thumbs massaging beneath Yves' ears. "Götalander." "Yeah. That was my grandmother's name: Göta." Yves peeked. "How did you know?" "Dunno." SB's eyes roved over Yves' spiky blond hair, ice-blue eyes, and tall, whipcord frame. "Lucky guess." The pressure-point massage felt almost too delicious. He mumbled, "Strong." SB rubbed Yves' neck for a while before asking, in the same conversational tone as her other questions, "Have you ever hit on Dee?" "Yeah," Yves chuckled, eyes closed. "Once. He didn't notice." He snapped awake. "Oh-shit." SB draped her arms down onto Yves' shoulders, lips pursed. "Was that supposed to be secret?" "Not exactly. I mean, I even told Dee later." He glowered. "Just don't tell Ursula. Unyx. Whoever she is, I'd never hear the end of it." "So you're attracted to him?" "No. Well, then, yes, obviously. But that was when he first moved in and no one could figure him out." Yves shrugged. "After I knew he was straight, I wasn't interested. If it's not going to happen, it's not going to happen." "Just like that, huh?" SB toyed with the tag on Yves' tee shirt. "You intellectualize that much?" "It's not like that. I'm an existential monogamist." SB cocked her head. "What the heck does that mean?" Yves sighed, gearing up for a lecture. "Sex is just something that happens between two people." SB looked at him, puzzled. He opened his mouth to explain. She kissed him. Her kiss was soft, lips plush but only slightly parted. The darting tip of her tongue touched his, salty sweet and tart, a sumptuous slice of strawberry gently placed in his mouth. She stepped back, hands on hips. "Well. Did something happen?" Yves rolled the lingering mix of flavors around in his mouth with his tongue. "You mean you couldn't tell?" He glanced down, watching SB's dress inch up. "The hem of your dress gives you away. Nice knees." SB smirked and held up the mason jar. "What is that stuff, anyway?" Yves asked. "And please don't tell me where you were keeping it." "It's for you." The jelly sloshed in the jar. "I don't need to change, and I don't have five dollars." "True, true. But this won't change you one bit. And anyway, it's not for sale. It's mine to give. And I give it to you." She stood there, tapping the jar against her chin. "All right, then." Magical thinking, Yves reminded himself. Fairy tale logic. "I trust you and accept your gift." SB only tapped the jar. Yves asked, "So what do we do now?" "We get the fuck out of here." SB's smile broadened. "Can you drive stick?" "Cute." "Cute, huh?" SB squat on her haunches, palms flat against the road, and arched a brow at him. "Vroom, vroom." She slid her legs out and back. Her gel-flesh moiled, shone, and reshaped. Yves stared. "That's, uh…" SB's engine growled to life. Yves felt road rumble through the rubber soles of his sneakers. "That's, uh, definitely not a Mini Cooper." The rose red racer was low-slung and all hood, its bulging, round headlights and outthrust grill unmistakable. "The Coop's Tomoe's car," said the roofless Aston Martin supercar, its voice drifting up from the gearbox. "This is mine." Yves circled the speedster, running his hand over the swells above the rear tires, expecting the give of camouflaged gel-flesh, but finding cold, polished, hard alloy. The engine noise dropped to a purr. "Late Fifties?" Yves guessed. "Mark III?" "Please." The SB-gearbox voice managed to sound sardonic. "Mark III's are for James Bond wannabe pussies. I'm a D-B-fucking-3. Placed at les 24 Heures du Mans, thank you very fuckin' much." Yves completed his second circuit around the car, and the gearbox added, "So are you going to get in and drive me or am I going to have to start making Hasselhoff jokes?" Yves slid into the driver's seat, not bothering to open the door of the roofless speedster. Everything inside the cabin was tinted in countless shades of red or diamond white. The gearbox's stick ended in a thick, red-leather bulb. "Jesus." Yves checked she was in neutral and revved the engine. "J-e-e-z-u-s-s-s," he stuttered as the cabin throbbed with power. The leather seat was as soft as sin and the vibrations from the engine relaxed his muscles to puddles. He could not decide whether he had hopped onto a rocket or crawled into a womb. SB's voice reverberated all around him. "No need to be gentle, boy." Yves slammed his hand around the stick. The engine let loose a throaty groan. He threw her into first gear. They screamed down the road. "Jesus!" * * * * Look. I understand too little too late. I realize there are things you say and do, You can never take back. But what would you be if you didn't even try. You have to try. So after a lot of thought, I'd like to reconsider. Please… If it's not too late, Make it a…cheeseburger —Lyle Lovett, Here I Am * * * * It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 04 It's Always Time, Act 5: Just Desserts Chapter 4: Through the Skin to the Core Unyx stumbled, caught herself on one of the upright trees. "wait – what?" Eurydice turned. "You need what Dee's got inside him, right? We all do." Raspberry and CeeCee marched backward into the field, each leading Dee by the hand. The bristled tops of wild grass tickled and stuck against Eurydice's glazed, green knees. "Well, the only way to get it is to fuck it outta him and into you. Not really your thing, so you just relax." Raspberry yelped and stopped short, bumping up against Dee's right side. "I think a pussywillow just went up my butt." She leered up at Dee. "Care to lend a hand?" She slid his hand into the crack of her ass. She gazed down, whistling. "A couple good hard reams from that dick and the pussywillow'll pop out my fucking nose." Eurydice sighed, rolled up an imaginary sleeve. Her arm lengthened and angled into a blunt, agate scythe. "Step back, girls." She swung her arm out and down, threshing a swath of grass in a single stroke. "Watch where you swing that thing," Raspberry said, her free hand stealing down toward Dee's crotch. "You'll poke your eye out." "You talking to Dee," Eurydice said, scything, "or me? Dibs on that dick, by the way. It's Mine, so I get the first shot. Or two, or twenty-two. Got that?" Dee smiled and shook his head. CeeCee oozed close to Dee's left side, sizing him up, a sex-starved milf overeager to tip the paperboy. Her wide mouth and satin-soft lips trembled inches away from his neck. "You keep me waiting that long and I'll just eat the two of you." Unyx pressed her back against the tree but found little shelter. Her eye-mask shrank into black contacts. "Are you really planning what I think you're planning?" Eurydice tamped down the unruly sward. "Me, Raz, and CeeCee are gunna—oof—find out just how much cum Dee's really got in him. Something tells me we're going to need it all to face down my baby sister." She worked around in a wide circle. "And then we're going to fuck his cum into you, one nanogasm at a time, no matter how much of Nyx we gotta stuff up our snatches or how much Ursula-pussy we gotta eat. It's the only logical solution." She stood up and shrugged. "Don't you think?" Unyx's eye-mask gushed over her face. "yes – yes – yes!" She waved her fists high in the air. CeeCee hummed in thought. "You know, if I did eat you and Dee, we could both have him, right there and then, inside and out. What do you say, Dee? Dee, what's with that look?" Dee scowled and smoldered, sandwiched between CeeCee's luscious cream and curves on one side and Raspberry's stunning, shameless beauty on the other. "Why have you gone so quiet, honey?" CeeCee stepped back. "Why are you laughing, Eurydice?" Eurydice made one last, long swipe with her scythe. "Cuz you gunna get reaped." Her scything-arm straightened, shortened, and split into five finger-long razors. She grumbled, shaking out her arm until her hand reformed. "There." She inspected her handiwork, a cropped circle of compressed and interwoven grass and brush, spanning several yards. "Perfect. The Green Man himself wouldn't wish for a finer bed." She stepped into the center of the clearing, and extended her hand. "Would you, Dee?" Raspberry gasped, paled, and pulled away. "Lookit him." A sudden hush fell over the field. "What's happening?" Dee stepped into the circular clearing. The living bed of wild greenery rustled softly under his feet. Every noise sounded quiet and close. "You've never seen Dee get really turned on before," Eurydice said, "that's all." She reached for his hand but Dee slid his fingers up and clasped her forearm, making her shiver. CeeCee stood in the tall grass at the threshold of the green bed. "Dee's really turned on?" Eurydice peered into Dee's eyes. "A little bit, yeah." Together, they knelt onto the green. Raspberry quivered at CeeCee's side. "Lookit. It's like, it's like..." Eurydice breathed, "The wrath of a god," and moved close and kissed him. Dee cradled her face in his hands, bowed her backward with the ferocity of his need. He broke the kiss and Eurydice cried out in wordless, mindless delight. "It's time," he said. * * * * Dee ran his fingers over the heart-shaped contours of Eurydice's face and into her hair. She felt electric, not hot, under his hands, although he could see her heat churn the air. Her surface tension was plastic but alive. She laughed in helpless pleasure, eyes half-crossed and half-closed, butterfly kissing his wrist and arm between the giggles: "Ah-hah, ah-hum, hm-mm." "So alive," Dee whispered. He leaned forward, one hand supporting her neck, the other sliding down her sleek, bare back. A spray of wildflower buds spotted the grass around them. "I live," Eurydice said, lying back onto the green bed until Dee loomed over her, "for you." "All this build-up," Raspberry bitched, standing at the edge of the bed, eyes bugging, "just for some missionary?" Dee caressed Eurydice's neck, squeezed the cello curve above her hip. She sighed, "Your hands feel so big." She luxuriated on the mat of grass, arms crooked above her head. Wildflower blossoms opened on the living bed, haloing her head in a quiet riot of pastel colors. "You make me feel so, so safe, Dee." Dee circled a thumb over a wine-dark nipple. It hardened like glass, making her gasp and arch. "And so fucking hot." Dee slid his hand down her tummy and slipped a finger into her molten sex. Eurydice whimpered. "No more. No more teasing." He lay down over her in a slow, full-body clinch, his dick pressed against her inner thigh. She chewed her lip. "Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me." Raspberry gurgled, "H-holy shit." Raspberry fell to her knees, head bent, hair falling about her face in long, drippy chains of orchid petals, overshirt flapping open to reveal lavender gel-flesh slick with perspiration. She pawed her pussy, a tangy bouquet of berry-and-sex complimenting Eurydice's heady citric perfume. "Fuck her. Fuck her before I fucking explode." Dee shifted, balancing his weight on his left hand pressed into the matt of grass above beside Eurydice's neck. Green shoots sprung up between his fingers, burst into flowering Baby's Breath. The frantic growth raced over the grass until the two lovers were ringed in yellow Anemone, vibrant Holyhock, and trembling rosid flowers of every color in nature's paint box. Dee gazed deep into eyes of green gem-fire, the head of his cock nudging against Eurydice's outer labia. "What's my name?" he asked her. She smiled. She sighed, "Green Man," and he entered into her. She was satin and lightning around him, fluid but so strong, stronger than anything he had felt since they had left SRU together, since he—What had Yves called it?—achieved kensho. Everything had become soft and impermanent clay, but by touching Eurydice, penetrating her, he knew a flux so powerful, thick and fast it felt eternal. Dee felt like he could fuck her forever. "I love you," he said, moving against her, and then with her as she picked up his rhythm, "forever." She wondered up at him, emerald eyes wide as saucers, her mouth open in a silent, exultant O. "I'll fuck you," he said, his tempo growing longer, deeper, "forever." She wrapped one hand, and then another, around his neck, and her whole body began to move under him, rocking in time with each thrust. "What's my name?" "Green Man," she said, eyes locked on his. The ring of flowers around them expanded in spiraling arms. "Cum in me," Eurydice begged. Dee felt the fingers on his neck melt and merge, saw her soften in a slow dissolve. "Cum in me now. It's so good." Her legs, sex and belly began to yield, runny and slick. "You make me feel so good that I'll..." She gasped and gulped. "I'll burn up." Dee hooked one arm under her leg, his hand spread across the hollow of her knee. "No." He pressed his fingers into her supple flesh. "You won't." Eurydice shuddered. "Oh God. Ah fuck." Her arms fell. "Oh, wow." She clawed the green bed, tore great clumps of flowers from the ground, uprooting whole plants in strong, perfectly formed hands. "Nanomek," she mumbled on the verge of incoherence. "Nanogasm. So many, so much, so fucking good." Her leg grew taut in his hand. "What's, what's happening?" Dee smiled, remembering. "Nanomek density." He rocked onto his knees. He hauled up Eurydice's leg, now firm and fleshy as any showgirl's, until her shin bounced against his shoulder. "I'll fuck you, forever," he said, and dove deep. "I'll fill you, forever." Eurydice cried out. Her head whipped back and forth, arms outspread, fingers digging into the green bed, anchoring herself in place. "Flying," she breathed, barely a whisper, "flying. Cumming. Flying." Her toes got gluey and stuck together. Dee caressed and kissed them, tasted a tingling tangy honey, his rhythm into her unrelenting. Her toes reformed, their surface tension snapping back, and they curled in the spasm of orgasm. "You break me down," she babbled. "You build me up. You burn me up you bring me back. Over and over and all over and always and—and..." Dee plucked up her other leg. He tipped her hips, hugged her knees to his chest, and drove deeper. She groaned, low and half-mad. "And you still. Haven't. Cum." * * * * Raspberry fell onto her back in the tall grass, knees bent, pelvis pumping, hand twitching against her gushy sex. She spoke through gritted teeth. "Weren't we s'posed to be fucking his brains out right now? All I wanna do, all I can think about is Dee on top of me." Her index finger fluttered atop her clitoral hood. "Dee inside me. Dee cumming in me. It's like I'm tuned into channel Dee-eee..." Her last word stretched into a whine. She clutched at her breast, teasing a nipple erect. "'Eezus Christ! I don't have enough nanomek left to get off anymore!" She frigged herself sloppy. "It just itches itches itches and I can't cum—just one more orgasm and I'll come apart I know I will, I—Ah fuck I'm goin' bugfuck!" CeeCee quivered at the green bed's threshold. The chaotic carpet of flowers zipped around the bed's periphery, inches from feet the color of fading cornsilk. She held up her hand, and after a moment's hesitation, eased it forward, wincing as she passed the boundary of the bed where the grass had been laid flat. A flush rushed down her fingertips, sallow yellow revitalizing into sunny lemon. "Raz. Oh, Raz, feel it." Her arm surged forward, filling up with churning, vivid cream. "It's blood music." Raspberry could only grunt. "Nanomek? Spooge-free nanogasm? Bull-fucking-shit." She squirmed a dainty foot onto the green bed, pinky toe brushing the lips of a blue tulip. Her jellified leg flashed an opaque violet. Raspberry squealed in surprise, yanked her leg back. The dark purple stole up her leg in an undercurrent of swirling inner gel. "Yes! Fuck yes! I'm finally gunna get laid. But first..." She sat up, tongue caught between her teeth, finger fucking herself something furious. "I'm gettin' off." * * * * Unyx braced herself against the tree, her eye-mask narrowing into a horizontal slit. "something - wrong." "Oh, hey!" Tomoe's voice almost made Unyx jump out of her skins. "There you are, little sisters. I thought I...um." Tomoe stepped up beside her. "That's...um." Tomoe's eyes followed Eurydice's feet as they traced little helpless circles above Dee's head in the center of the green bed. Dee hugged her legs higher, dragging the green girl's hips into the air. "That's a lot of..." Eurydice's ass bounced against Dee's haunches in wet, meaty slaps. Eurydice could only babble nonsense words and rip flowers out of the ground, roots growing and wriggling about her hands before she let them fall. Tomoe gulped, hands toying with the neck of her blouse. "Kuzbu. Yeah. Lots." Unyx thought it through. "kuzbu - kudzu - Green Man?" She shook her head. "missing - some - connection - what?" "You can't see it?" Tomoe popped open the top button of her white blouse, watching the green bed grow into a sea of petals, a flowerbed. Unyx's eye mask shrank into contact lenses as she squinted. "We think we see something but we keep getting distracted by the...you know." She blushed, silver on milk-white cheeks. "The Easy girl we're going to start fucking in a few minutes. This space-time/second sight stuff is new to both of us. The whole 'knowing the future but still living in the moment' thing? It's kinda like getting stoned, but nothing's funny and there's no munchies." Her blush darkened into grey. "Not the food kind, anyway." Tomoe rubbed the flat plane of her chest above her breasts, forcing her blouse to fall open in a slanted V. "You're thinking fourth-dimensionally. Go up one more." Unyx set her jaw, head bobbing and weaving as if trying to peer through a crowd. Then her jaw dropped and she wobbled on her feet, grabbing the tree to keep her balance as her gaze swept skyward. "There you go," Tomoe drawled. "Kuzbu, kudzu, Green Man," Unyx pondered. "SB said Dee got more yang when he ate nanomek, when his energies, his yin and yang, were already unbalanced." She shook her head. "This isn't about sperm at all, is it?" Tomoe gave her a one-shouldered shrug. "It's about life energy, yin and yang, right? Meliae don't need sperm, they need yang to balance all their extra yin." "Don't we all," Tomoe sighed, taking a step toward the flowerbed. "But don't get all new-agey on me with that 'balanced life energy' bullshit. Sometimes, a girl just needs a good, hard screw." Dee hooked his thumbs under Eurydice's knees, squeezed her thighs, and bore down into her. Her legs crooked back far enough for her tits to rebound off her knees as the shadow of his thick cock disappeared further into her translucent core than ever before. "What's my name?" Tomoe took another step forward, unbuttoned the second button of her blouse, murmuring, "Green Man," an instant before Eurydice screamed the same reply at the sky. Tomoe hung her purse on a nearby branch. "It's been a long, long time. Since forever." Unyx realized Tomoe was talking to herself. "I'm sure SB wouldn't mind if I...maybe just a little..." Tomoe drew near the edge of the flowerbed, working on the last buttons of her blouse. A third voice, softer and less sure than Tomoe's, spoke up behind Unyx, but this time she was not surprised in the least. "Uh, hi? Little girl? You wouldn't happen to have five dollars on you, would you?" Unyx turned about-face and got her first good, real-time look at Jo Echo. The tall, toned, brunette beauty looked beat-up, bruised, bedraggled, and downright filthy. In stark contrast, her coppery one-piece dress was pressed, pristine and ready-to-wear for a night on the town. Unyx let her eye-mask leak over her face. She folded her arms across her perky breasts, rocked her violin-curvy hips and tapped a high heeled boot. "little - girl?" "Sorry." Jo fidgeted, downcast, stealing sideways glimpses at the obsidian Goth girl. The angular, porcelain-white face with raccoon eye-mask. The thick, licorice pigtails. The Go-Go boots that stretched up into a gleaming, black bodystocking so tight she looked more naked than naked. Even the little rounded mound of her pubis was described in shine and shadow. Jo stared at Unyx's candy-coated camel toe. Unyx cleared her throat. Jo started, squeezed her eyes shut. "Sorry! Sorry." Unyx held out an empty, gloved hand. Jo peeped at it, blinking in surprise as a few dollar bills unfurled out of the polished-black palm. "fifteen - dollar - gift - no - strings - 'kay?" Jo stuttered, "Okay," and delicately plucked up the bills. The tip of her index finger brushed against the vitreous, frictionless surface of Unyx's palm. Jo's skin seized up in goose bumps. "Wow." She snapped out of her Unyx-ogling trance, seemed to notice her surroundings for the first time. "What's going on, anyway? Holy shit." Jo pointed to the flowerbed. Tomoe slowly slipped her blouse off her shoulders, revealing the rosy Wonderbra underneath. Beyond her, at the heart of the flowerbed, Dee and Eurydice rutted without any apparent modesty or fatigability. "I wasn't dreaming it," Jo said, "It's really him. The 'What?' guy. The Master." She frowned down at a pair of unblinking eyes like twin ebony reflecting pools. "Why are you looking at me like that?" "Cherry - nanomek." "Nano-what?" Jo asked "You mean the nova-whatsis?" "novilunium - nanomek - yes." Unyx tapped her chin with the tip of a claw. "little - left - very - little - but - some." "Is that, um, bad?" Jo's fistful of dollars rustled as she started to tremble. "And since when did you have, uh, claws?" "not - sure - but..." Unyx's eye-mask siphoned away until only her irises shone as starless night. "Best to play it safe. Can't really risk it, so..." She stepped close. Eurydice's orgasmic wailing orgasm echoed around them as Unyx smirked, claws flexing, shoulders rolling. "Looks like we've got to go in and get it out." Jo skittered back. "What do you mean?" Unyx scraped a thumb and forefinger down either side of her neck. Ursula felt Nyx's talons, gentle and frictionless, caress and tickle her neck. Nyx felt Ursula's pale flesh tremble beneath her fingertips, soft and solid and sweet. Together as Unyx, both girls relished the touch of her lover's flesh and her own flesh as experienced by her lover's touch. The double sensation was as confusing as it was wonderful, as maddening as it was intimate. It took all of Unyx's willpower to focus on the pretty brunette standing next to her. Pretty grotty is more like it, added Ursula's inner Martha Stewart as Unyx eyed the grime and sweat drying on Jo's arms and legs. We are Unyx, but we are not touching that until it's had a bath. "How do you feel?" Unyx asked. "Hammered, hung over," Jo answered. She touched her hair and flinched. "Gross. And kind of disconnected." She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "It's hard to describe, it's like, uh..." "Like you're running on automatic pilot?" Unyx suggested, tipping her head. "I was going to say like being gorked on nasal decongestant, but, yeah, 'automatic pilot' is better. So what are you saying?" "Black Cherry's still in your noggin." Unyx hooked a thumb in Dee's direction. Dee was French kissing Eurydice, holding her knees up almost to her elbows. "That guy's name's Dee, by the way. You just called him 'Master'." The green girl made, muffled, manic mm-mm-mm! noises with his every thrust. "Although I think I'm starting to empathize." Jo grimaced. "I did?" She clutched her head. "Oh, fuck, you're right, I did. I can still hear that cherry chocolate nutjob inside my head. I can't stand it." Her eyes widened, imploring. "Can you really get her out? Please? I'll do anything." Unyx nodded. "We can, but you'll have to trust us. Once we begin, it'll be dangerous to stop—she might be able to take hold of you again completely if we do—and things'll get even weirder before they start getting better. Something tells me you're going to like it, though." "Whatever, just...wait." Jo pointed. "What's she doing? What's going on?" Tomoe had stepped into the flowerbed, arms open and hugging the air, giggling like a schoolgirl. Her raven hair billowed about her bare, petite shoulders and slender back, although no breeze blew. Her creamy-olive skin darkened into a golden bronze, the kind of flawless tan only seen in fashion magazines. She kicked off her high heels, laughter sparkling, skin glowing in health. Unyx noticed no change in Tomoe's height when her tall heels came off. Tomoe's flying hair tickled her bra strap. Unyx was certain it was shoulder length just a few minutes ago. It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 04 "Dee's putting out," Unyx said, watching Tomoe twirl, the honey-brown cleavage created by her Wonderbra spilling over the brassiere's push-up wire, bending it out of shape. "Tomoe's taking a yang bath." Unyx turned a sly eye to the skuzzy brunette. "Hm." Tomoe's blissful smile twisted. "Ow!" She hunched over, hopping on one leg, hair falling in thick, lustrous locks down to her knees. Her black miniskirt split down the seams, revealing rosy silk panties. "Damn it, damn it, I can't believe I forgot." She reached behind her back, wrestling with the hook of her bra. Her panties sunk between the swollen globes of her ass, looking more like a thong than a pair of bloomers. The bra's straps bit into her shoulders, and no amount of plucking would unhook them. "Ooh, dammit. Oh, I know!" Tomoe swung upright to a height of nearly six feet, hair fanning in crescent waves. She squared her shoulders and punched her elbows out. "Pow!" The metal hooks of the bra ripped out of elastic straps and the lingerie flew off her chest. Tomoe toppled, long legs kicking, her paroxysm of laughter making her breasts wobble. "Jesus," Jo gawked. "She's Wonder Woman." "Aren't we all." Unyx took Jo by the hand, felt the brunette thrill at her touch. "C'mon, let's get started." She urged Jo toward the flowerbed. She almost asked, What's your name, Jo?, but caught her self just in time. "What's your name?" "Jo." The brunette wavered on her feet. "What're you going to do?" Unyx sighed. The sounds of the fallow field played around them: Tomoe's throaty laughter, Raspberry's shuddery growls, CeeCee's susurrations of regenerating gel-flesh, Dee's fucking Eurydice insensate. "You said you heard Black Cherry in your head," Unyx told Jo. "What did it sound like? A walkie-talkie?" "No." Jo thought. "It was like singing. Music. Not beautiful, but irresistible. I was dancing, all the time, no matter what I was actually doing. It felt like a mad dance." "Blood music," Unyx agreed. On the flowerbed, Tomoe grabbed her breasts, kneading and tweaking her chocolate-dark nipples between her long fingers. She inhaled, deep from the diaphragm. Her nipples climbed erect, thick as thumbs. The flesh beneath her hands swelled, forcing her fingers apart. She collapsed into laughter again, her tits weighty enough now to slam together, which just made her laugh harder. Unyx gulped. "Uh, what were we talkin' 'bout?" Jo, mesmerized by Tomoe's mammary extravaganza, managed, "Music. I think." Tomoe rolled onto her tummy, presenting Unyx and Jo with her pert ass, and squashed dozens of flowers beneath her breasts. Her laughter slowed but her breath quickened as she dragged her new flesh through the sea of soft petals beneath her. She reached between her legs, pressed the smooth heads of tulips and poppies against her inner thighs. She swallowed the last of her giggles, pulled down her panties, and pushed the silken but firm flowers into her vulva. She rocked on her knees, gasping and shuddery, grinding against flowers and fingers, giving Unyx and Jo front-row seats. Unyx swam lightheaded, her sex aflutter and aflood, her nanomek heating up with prickly need. Her Ursula half had never felt a nanomek powered sex drive before—little burning wires by the thousands—and her Nyx half had never felt an estrogen powered sex drive before, that swollen, spreading need. Got to simmer down before we just leap in and bury our heads in that succulent ass and glorious pussy oh God we can smell it from here. Unyx burned some of her last remaining nanomek to increase her olfactory input and wallow in the smell of flowers and sex but the brunette's funk hit her inner Martha Stewart like a combo brick wall/cold shower. "So," Unyx said, wrinkling her button nose, "blood music. That's Black Cherry's nanomek—you called it 'nova-whatsis'—working inside you. There's just enough for you to hear, but it's not loud enough to pinpoint the source. We gotta turn up the volume inside you a little bit, but not too much. Then we can go in, find it, and turn it off. Understand?" Tomoe propelled herself to a silent orgasm before them, brawny legs rigid, muscles shivering. "Understand, Jo?" "Uh. Huh?" Tomoe slumped into the blossoms and Jo came out from under her spell. "Oh. Yeah. Turn off the music. Sure." Jo turned. "What the Hell is that?" Unyx held up a page torn out from the Sudoku book, covered in cryptic scrawl. "It's a binding." She grinned. "We've got a few tucked away in case of emergencies." "Binding? Binding what?" "We are going to bind ourselves to ourselves." "Us?" "No. Us. M-me. Unyx." The obsidian Goth girl touched a thin, long scar on her cheek. "Ursula and Nyx were in a car accident. They were close—Ursula inside Nyx, Nyx inside Ursula—but not close enough. To survive the crash, they sang the blood music together. And now, we are Unyx. But if we are going to stop Black Cherry's music in you..." Unyx's contacts of living ink spread into a full eye-mask. "you - must - sing - blood - music - with - us." "Whoa, now." Jo hopped away. "You're cute and sexy and all, but I've had enough nova-whatsis music. I don't want to be a slave to the rhythm anymore. There's got to be another way." Unyx nodded, ripping the page in two. "yes - separate - bind - Nyx - Ursula - keep - Unyx - Jo - separate." Unyx tore the page into fourths, made a square paper sandwich, and popped it into her mouth. Jo scratched her head. "What you do that for? How does this binding thing work anyway? I sound like an idiot asking all these questions, don't I?" She gingerly inspected the foul bird's nest her hair had become. "I must look like one, at least." "hardly." Unyx chewed, eye-mask dwindling. "Your friends ran away screaming. You stayed, asked questions." Worry flashed across Jo's face and Unyx added, "They're all right. Cops picked them up, I'm told. 'Kay?" Jo nodded. Unyx swallowed, continuing. "Okay. A binding is, well, kinda complicated. Hm. Oh! Think of it as sheet music for nanomek, the nova-whatsis that plays the blood music. You ever see one of those old player pianos, with the rolls of paper? It's like that. We, Nyx and Ursula, both had to consume the binding, or it wouldn't work." Tomoe groaned, still lying flat but clapping her hands over her ears. "Yap, yap, yap. What a turn-off." She rolled over and sat up. Tresses of hair fell about her like a cloak of shadow, darker than Nyx herself. Unyx was struck by Tomoe's exotic beauty, her oval face, almond eyes, and honey-olive skin. Was she Indian? Japanese? Maori, maybe? Unyx could not tell. "You done?" Tomoe asked. "Good. You really need to work on your air of mystery, little sisters. You explain too much. Next time, just make up something like, oh, 'bio-Gematria,' and tell her to look it up on the Internet later. Hey, look at this." Explosive new growth pushed aside the blossoms flattened by Tomoe's earlier passion, blooming faster, thicker, more eager. Tomoe brushed her arms through the flowerbed, purring in pleasure. "You know, any man that can make me feel this good..." She fell to all fours, turned about, and padded off through the flowers. "Deserves a reward." "We're running out of time, then," Unyx said, unable to keep her eyes off Tomoe's swaying hips as she crawled in a beeline to the center, where Dee still plowed Eurydice into orgasmic oblivion. The binding sat in Unyx's stomach, an inert lump, a too-big bite of spaghetti. "We need more nanomek to get the player piano paper rolling." She took Jo's hand in hers again, leading her back to the flowerbed. "And you could use a yang bath." Tomoe called over her shoulder, "That's better, but—mmf!" A cluster of sunflowers burst up beneath her, tickling her bare flesh, fluffing against her face. Her eyes crossed and she slid prone, cooing and cackling, clutching sunflowers to her chest. "Oh, yeah." Unyx reached the periphery of the green bed. "Listen, Jo: Dee's focused his kuzbu, but when we step into the crop circle, you'll feel it full-bore. It's going to be a bit...intense." Tomoe's voice drifted over the sunflowers. "Just quit yappin' and let it happen." Her head peeped up, dark eyes burning with mischief. "Or do I have to sit on your face to shut you up?" Unyx paused at the verge of the flowerbed. Jo looked down at her. "Well?" "We're thinking, we're thinking," Unyx said. "Pfft." Tomoe broke through the wall of tall heliotropes, eating out an overripe sunflower head. Her eyes fell on Dee's heaving, sweat-oiled back, and the flower head slipped through her fingers. "I've got a bigger fish to fry." "Now or never," Unyx said, giving Jo's hand a quick squeeze. Jo's hand froze. "Sorry." She squeezed back. "You just feel so, I dunno..." Unyx wiggled her fingers between Jo's. "Slinky?" Jo bit her lip, nodded violently, eyes shut tight. Unyx's liquid black eye-mask unrolled across her skin, coating her face from eyebrow to sharp cheekbone. "just – let – it – happen." Jo nodded slower, bent down to tuck her fistful of dollars under a fallen branch. She straightened, smoothed out her dress, and gave Ursula a thumbs-up, her smile anxious. Hand in hand, Jo and Unyx crossed the border of tall grass onto the flowering bed. Both girls startled stiff, then relaxed into little giggles. Unyx knew the sensation exactly. When Ursula was ten years old, her parents had thrown her a surprise birthday party. They had executed it flawlessly, with a feint party, a little weekend soiree with a few friends and modest presents, the sort of party Ursula always had. On her actual birthday, they took her to the community center for weekly violin practice, and instead there was candy and friends and candy and cake and candy and presents and a magician and candy and a belly-dancer and candy. It was simple, pure delight. Ursula had never felt that way again, had forgotten what uncomplicated pleasure—cake and friends and dancing and candy, candy, candy—could feel like. Unyx felt it now. She cast any thought of nostalgia aside, let go of Jo, and embraced the air. "candy – candy – candy." "Cumming," Jo groaned, knees buckling, dropping into a crouch among dozens of apple-blossomed amaryllis, their wide, white petals tinged pink, their fragrance head-spinning sweet. "Cumming, cumming, cumming." Her hair softened, thickened, its knots untangling. Licks of hair the color of antique brass fell into her face and onto her shoulders in luscious waves. "This is a yang bath?" The bruises on her arms and legs disappeared. She gasped, lolling through the flowers. "Oh, God, I feel so good." Her coppery dress cinched up, revealing a downy bush of golden curls and nether lips pouting and dewed, perfumed with floral fragrance and Jo's own earthy essence. "But it's so...so goofy." She giggled again, pushing blushing flowers into her face. "Calgon's taken me away and plans to fuck me senseless." "this - yang - special." Unyx's blood rushed as Champagne. The scar on her cheek faded into nothing. The gray cobwebbing her second skin vanished into varnished lacquer-black. "good – goofy – sexy – senseless – guiltless." The blood music of nanogasm coruscated as nanomek replicated by the hundreds in her heart, then by the thousands throughout her chest, and tens of thousands across her limbs. A hundred thousand nanogasms sparkled inside her, each one producing its own tiny burning wire of coiled, pre-orgasmic tension. Unyx had never felt this horny before in either of her lives. Unyx purred and crossed her arms over her glossy black belly in a happy, randy self-hug. Ursula and Nyx intertwined, blood music opening their minds and motions to each other. The ghost-touch of four arms snaked around Unyx's doubly sensitive tummy. Ursula's tender flesh and solid bone, Nyx's flux and power, partook in one another, their thoughts and feelings emergent within Unyx. Unyx hugged herself tighter, hugged her two other selves tighter together, and now they were three. Ursula, Nyx, and Unyx, each cherished the ghost-touch of three pairs of arms, three fierce hugs, and three reciprocated loves of three very horny girls. "this – yang – is – dee." Jo hummed drunkenly into a bouquet of crocus flowers, then pushed herself up by the elbows, her eyes wide. She reminded Unyx of a befuddled kitten, ears pricked in curiosity. Jo glanced down at her chest, teased open the neck of her dress with a finger, and peeked inside. "I think I'm...I feel like I'm...growing?" Unyx's laugh was rich. "definitely – dee." The mention of Dee's name gave Unyx a wicked little thought. She held up a hand, turning it this way and that, scrutinizing it from every angle. She saw only one hand, but felt the ghost of three. She wiggled her fingers, saw only five, but whimpered as her hand was wreathed in over a dozen phantom digits. "got – to – try." Trembling, she brought her hand down. "got – to – know." After a final hesitation, Unyx cupped her breasts. "oh – wow." Her second skin thinned to just a few molecules wide. All her nipples crinkled up. All? How many of me are there? "ah – god." She gently pinched them, her thumbs rolling over them in lazy circles. "god – oh – god." She lost herself in the influx of sensation. So many hands, so many fingers, so many burning wires of too, too sensitive flesh. "ohmygod!" She came in one hard quicksilver throb of her pussy, an Ursula breast-orgasm. She whipped her head back and flopped onto her ass, flattening a petunia bush. The nanomek singing inside her went berserk, found her stomach, read the binding she had swallowed a few minutes before, and cranked Unyx's blood music volume up to Eleven. "uh – oh." * * * * Dee broke his endless kiss, his mouth wet with tart honey, lips numb with the tang of lime. His senses swam in citrus-and-sex. His knees settled further into the mattress of flowers and woven wild growth. He gripped Eurydice's ankles, held them aloft. Eurydice, flat on her back, pushed on the flowerbed with her hands. Her pelvis rocked forward and rolled up Dee's thighs, welcoming the new angle his cock explored inside her. Her pussy was molten but her surface tension stayed firm, cooled with honeyed perspiration. Dee ran a hand up a leg as firm and clear as green glass. He mouthed the sole of her foot, drinking drops of nectar. Dee arced his other hand beneath her, cupping and caressing. Her ass felt like globes of pliant glass dripping with velvet sweat. Eurydice mewled—Nn! Nn!—punctuating each quiet cry with a punch of a fist against the bed. "Too good. Nn! Too much." She yanked on her hair. "Mad, I'm going mad!" Dee tipped her chin up. Silvery motes of light scintillated her deep, darkling emerald eyes. "I love you, Eurydice," he told her, his rhythm into her slow but as strong as ever. "You know the safeword." The words came easy to him. "You can do anything you want. I'll do anything you want." His prick felt primed with precum, with the I-can-do-this-all-night sensation that usually only lasted a few minutes but now truly felt it would last forever. "Anything you want. For as long as you want." Eurydice whickered in orgasm. "All ways! Always." A shadow fell over her. Behind Dee, Tomoe whispered, "Oh, hey." Dee felt long fingers dance over his back, urgent and eager. "Green Man." Dee sat back, pulling Eurydice along. He stayed locked inside her, a hook perfectly fit into an eye. Tomoe knelt behind him. She towered a good head above him, the tips of her raven hair tickling his ass, her mocha-colored nipples level with the nape of his neck. She chewed her plush bottom lip. "Please, I just..." Her hands pressed flat but timorous against his back. "I want to hold you. To feel it for myself, just this one time." She tilted to look down at Eurydice, and implored. "Please." Dee turned to Eurydice. "Anything you want," he told the breathless green girl. "I'll do anything you want because I am so going to fuck your fucking brains out." He gathered Eurydice in his arms, propping her up into a sitting position on his lap. He dropped one hand to the flowerbed for support and slung the other across the small of her back. He pushed up with his haunches and his cock rammed straight upward into the very heart of her. "Now: What. Is. My. Fucking. Name!" Tomoe fell against his back. Eurydice, cumming and yowling, collapsed on top of him. Tomoe and Eurydice shrieked together, "Green Man!" * * * * Jo rolled onto her back, panting. High in a cloudless sky, the early-afternoon sun reflected off the flowers and Jo's borrowed coppery dress, casting everything in the light of an overexposed film. The breezy air above the flowerbed was sultry and so laden with floral perfume Jo felt awash in the breath of Mother Nature herself. If Mother Nature was horn-dogging, that is. The sumptuous warmth stewed the air and lapped at her skin like some huge, feather-light tongue. It felt her up and ate her out.      ["...Listen, Jo: Dee's focused his kuzbu..."] A bass voice thundered—"What. Is. My. Fucking. Name!"—followed by twin cries—"Green Man!"—and Jo suddenly knew that the invisible, energetic presence urging her toward another orgasm was, somehow, male. Not Mother Nature, she thought, her eyes sliding shut, her lips parting, drinking in air like hot mulled wine. The Green Man. She hitched her dress up above her hips, spread her legs, and opened herself to the Sun.      ["...but when we step into the crop circle, you'll feel it full-bore..."] Jo saturated. She lost herself in the Sun's dazzling white-blue light, the overpowering aroma of blooming growth, and the firm pressure of satin petals on every side and inch of her skin. Flowers pressed whispery soft into her ears, stroked her hair, nestled in the hollow of her neck, buoyed up her arms, nudged her back and ribs. Her parted legs were swallowed up in thousands of delicate, cool petals. How are they all moving toward me, into me? Her eyes flickered open as the revelation struck her. The flowers aren't moving against my skin. My skin is moving against the flowers. I really am growing!      ["... It's going to be a bit..."] The dizzy torridity of the air pervaded her pussy, and Jo's last semi-coherent thought before the strongest orgasm of her life lashed through her was, Oh shit oh fuck oh God I was right Calgon's taken me away and is fucking me sensele—      ["...intense..."] Her orgasm plateau'd and overflowed her pulsing sex, wracking her body in spasms of release and relief. Jo no longer thought, only felt. No longer observed, only experienced. Flower stems piled up between her fingers as her arms grew, pulped under her feet as her legs lengthened, her heels furrowing little troughs in the matted grass below. As her orgasm rushed-and-gushed, her muscles burned-and-rebuilt, over and over, as if a few years of volleyball workouts flew by in a few seconds. As Jo came down from the timeless cumming, a terrible tenderness built up in her breasts. The coppery dress that felt so flowing and silky moments before had become confining and as scratchy as the shaggiest, wool knit sweater. Jo shot her hands under her dress, shielding her raw nipples against the ragged material with her palms. Skin met skin. The cooling sweat in her palms soothed her smarting flesh even as it spread beneath her fingers, pushing against her hand in a bizarre, reverse game of cop-a-feel. My tits are trying to get to second base with my hands. The very idea filled her with giggles, but they died in her throat as the gradual pressure against her hands went on and on for a long, worrying while before subsiding. It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 04 She snuck a peek at her new peaks. She looked like someone had shoved two metal mixing bowls under her dress. The coppery material strained but managed to cover her new assets. The tension in the material only served to make her look bustier. Only served...wait a minute. "Oh, no!" She thrust her arms skyward, ignoring the new power and sinew rippling beneath her skin, watching only how her breasts bulged around her arms. "No, no, no!" She straightened her arms until they were perpendicular with her supine body, wincing as her tits squashed up her forearms. An undulating shadow fell over Jo. "what?" Jo squinted up at Unyx. The obsidian Goth girl stood in the sun, her outline obscured by the harsh light. "My serve," Jo told her. Unyx dipped her head to the left, bowed her body to the right in a single, serpentine movement. With the sun in her eyes, Jo could not make out details, but she saw something loop and swing behind Unyx. "your – what?" "My volleyball serve," Jo whined. She pumped her right arm back and forth, making her right breast smack into the left. "I had the best underhand serve in the state. Now I've got...tits." Unyx slithered closer and out of the sun. Her eye-mask shrank into black contacts. The tip of her tail oscillated high behind her head, a hypnotic metronome. "At least you've got...legs." * * * * Dee rocked up onto his knees, scooping Eurydice in his arms, molding her body against his. Her surface tension was cool, her breath hot and citrus-sweet. "I love you," she said, sitting in his lap and riding him, "I love you. Cum in me now." She feasted on his neck. Tomoe knelt behind Dee and embraced him. Her sturdy arms stretched across his, followed their path up Eurydice's back. Tomoe's fingers splayed over Dee's hands, their tips pressed into Eurydice's glistening gel-flesh. Tomoe moved closer still. Her thighs packed against his butt, her navel nuzzled the small of his back. Her ripe breasts mashed into his shoulders, swaddling his neck, even nudged Eurydice where she gnawed on Dee's collar bone. Green, jellied dreadlocks sprawled across Tomoe's chest. Dee was caught in a middle of a three-way clinch. "Cum in her, Green Man," Tomoe said, matching his momentum, twinning his rhythm into Eurydice. "I want to feel it." Eurydice pulled away to look Dee in the eye. "Stand up." Dee stood, arms slung under Eurydice's ass. She hooked her legs around his waist, gripped his neck tight. They rose together. Tomoe followed, crushing herself against Dee's back. "Now don't move," Eurydice whispered, "and let me fuck you." She unhooked her legs. Tomoe pressed her cleft against Dee's ass. Eurydice locked her ankles around Tomoe's back. The green girl tensed and juddered upward, dragging her steaming sex up his shaft until the tip of his cock threatened to pop free. She pressed her forehead against Dee's, chewed her lip, whispering, "Let me fuck you." She squirmed back down, impaling herself with his dick. She gaped, gasping in little high pitched hiccups, grinding her clit against the root of his shaft before tensing, glissading back up. "Let me fuck you, let me make you cum." Dee groaned, but Eurydice covered his mouth in quick little kisses. "Shh." She kissed him. "Shh." She kissed him. "Cum in me now." Tomoe reached down, cupped Eurydice's ass cheek in one hand, pawed at Dee's dick with the other. Eurydice slithered back down Dee's shaft. Tomoe explored the gooey margin of Dee and Eurydice's merging. "I feel it," Tomoe said, fingers squishing. "So strong, both of you." Eurydice shuddered back up him, coaxing a building, agony-sweet flow of precum from Dee's cock. Her lips scraped past his ear and kissed Tomoe's nipple into her mouth. Tomoe leaned over Dee's shoulders, her purring a deep rumble in her throat. Her hand swirled around Dee's nectar-coated shaft, her grip firm and sure, in counterpoint to Eurydice's slow, shivery humping. The head of Dee's cock smarted with rising pressure. He faltered, bucking, but Tomoe pressed even closer behind him and kept his cock buried deep inside Eurydice. The green girl pulled free of Tomoe's breast. She grazed her lips in circles over Dee's mouth. "Let it happen," she begged, panting and fevered and still humping, humping, humping. "Cum in me. Fill me. Green Man, Dee...You've made me..." Dee twitched, pressure searing inside him. "You made me so..." Dee went rigid. Eurydice sobbed, "Happy." She slammed her mouth over his and he came. * * * * The sensuous, drenching essence above the flowerbed ebbed, evaporating into ordinary air. "Aw," said Jo, pouting and petulant, lounging among the flowers. Then she got a good look at Unyx. "Ack!" The obsidian Goth girl hovered high above the flowers. Her pale, angular face, liquid-black eyes and silver-touched cheeks reminded Jo of a porcelain Harlequin doll. The choker collar glowed like a hoop of polished, precious stone. The bodysuit flowed down from the choker over Unyx's budding breasts, up her arms, and across her trim stomach. Its glimmering surface egged Jo to ogle and her eyes roved downward. She found herself staring at Unyx's camel toe once again. Just below that plump cleft, the black second skin swathing Unyx's legs molded and merged into a single, sinuous trunk, winding over the flowerbed behind her, corkscrewing through the air and spindling to a kinked point. Unyx's opal carapace burnished in the Sun, iridescent with oil-slick rainbows. Her tail bobbed up, as proud as a tomcat's. Jo propped herself up by the elbows, unexpectedly high above the flowers. "What the Hell happened to you?" "I am myself at last," Unyx answered, beaming. "Say what?" Unyx wove up and up on her thick ophidian trunk. She rose six, then eight, maybe even ten feet into the air, arms crossed above her head, midriff swaying to some deep, inner beat. She spoke in dreamy recitation:      I am myself at last; now I achieve      My very self, I, with the wonder mellow,      Full of fine warmth, I issue forth in clear      And single me, perfected from my fellow. Jo boggled up at her. "Holy shit." "Hello, Jo," Unyx winked. "What do you know?" She extended her tail, tip crooked and aimed at Jo. "We are Unyx." Jo crossed her eyes watching the tail bobble close. "This is you?" "Don't really know till you put 'r there," Unyx said. Her tail mimed a slow, up-and-down handshake. Jo shifted her weight, her inner ear confused by her new center of gravity for a moment before compensating. She reached out and wrapped her fingers around the proffered tail. Once, in elementary school, she had been the only kid in her class brave enough to touch the python during a field trip to a petting zoo. Feeling the python's sleek strength beneath her palm had made eleven-year-old Jo's knees wobble and her tummy feel funny. Compared to Unyx, touching the python had been as exciting as holding an old garden hose. Twenty-one-year-old Jo knew the right body part to place the funny feeling in now. "Mm," Unyx purred, her hands running down her thighs. "Good grip. You've done that before." Jo marveled at the frictionless, pulsing power between her fingers. Her eyes followed the yards of looping tail and trunk to Unyx's sly smile in the middle of the air. "You can feel this from all the way up there?" "Of course, silly. What did you think the binding was for?" Unyx withdrew her tail. Its tapered tip grew soft and liquid, the opalescent coating peeling back. A petite, milky-white foot wriggled its cutesy toes against Jo's nose. "Now we are Unyx." Unyx descended, swaying in that same spellbinding, languid, tempo. "Well, now you know who we are." The black velvet flowed over her foot, zippered into a tail again, and rustled into the flowers. It threaded through the stalks, winding in a great circle about Jo's supine form. "But the important question is..." Unyx arched her serpent's trunk, skimming a few feet above the flowerbed, until she drew parallel to Jo. Her eyes were filled with ink and starred with mischief. Her predatory smile, full lips parted and glossed black, floated inches above Jo's mouth. "Who do you think you are, Jo?" Her breath carried the scent of bittersweet cordial. Jo tried to shrink down into the flowers. "What—Mm." Unyx kissed her with lips softer than any eiderdown, the fluttery touch of her tongue electric. The metallic sheen of Jo's rumpled dress reflected in gold fractals across Unyx's second skin. Unyx broke the kiss and drifted up, still within kissing distance. Jo whispered, "You taste like licorice." Unyx nodded. Her tail completed a circuit around Jo, its tip lay like a lion by Jo's feet. "And you taste like a cupcake." Unyx crooked her head to one side. "Can you hear?" Jo tried to focus on the syrupy commotion on the other side of the flowerbed. "I hear that Master guy, Dee. Sounds like he's in trouble." "Not over there," Unyx dismissed, tapping Jo's forehead with a gloved fingertip. "In here. Can you hear her?" Jo concentrated. At first, she could only make out the beat of her own heart. But there it was. Blood music, the bass thunder and thud of a rave in a club across the street, but inside her head. Jo nodded. Unyx's tail stirred, crept closer to Jo's foot. "What is she singing?" Jo shook her head. "I don't think she is, or maybe I just can't make it out." Unyx's willowy torso tilted back until she seemed to stand upright in the air, supported by a strong arc of her serpentine trunk. If Jo pumped her hips up, she would mash her naked mons against Unyx's. She imagined grinding away at the triangular cleft of Unyx's sex, exposed just above the point where her legs merged into a single pillar of living onyx. Jo felt her thighs tremble, realized how much she yearned to feel Unyx's frictionless pussy sliding over her own. And if her lips tasted so good and so soft, what would her—What's happening to me? "She's singing to me," Jo said, shivering. "Singing soft, so it sounds just like my own thoughts. But she's singing inside me." Jo scissored her legs, blushed so hot she thought she might faint. "Oh, God, I want you inside me." "What is she singing?" Unyx demanded. "We need to know. She's planning something terrible and we need to know what it is." She softened. Her tail caressed Jo's ankle. The power in that one touch made Jo whimper, her sex throb. "Once we know, we'll go anywhere you want." "I don't know. It's not loud enough." Jo felt teary-eyed from the effort of straining for an inner voice that lingered beyond true perception. "I don't know." "Well, then," Unyx said, her fingers flexing, extending into claws, "maybe she needs something to sing about. How's 'bout a little Keats?" Unyx's tail lashed around Jo's ankle. "Let the mad poets say whatever they please," Unyx said, her tail creeping up Jo's shin. "Of the sweets of Fairies, Peris, Goddesses." The coiling tail trapped Jo's calf in a silken, thrumming vice. Jo quaked with need. "There is not such a treat among them all..." Unyx raised a thumb-claw to her own neck, just below her collar. "Haunters of cavern, lake, and waterfall..." The claw dipped into Unyx's smooth throat. The tail looped snug above Jo's knee. "As a real woman," Unyx said, and drew her thumb-claw down between her breasts and over her stomach.Her ebony second skin split, revealing a long stripe of creamy white. Unyx's tail encircled Jo's thigh, forcing the tingling tension in Jo's sex to ratchet sky-high. "Lineal indeed..." Unyx aired her pale bellybutton. "From Pyrrha's pebbles." The rent in her second skin yawned, revealing the inner rise of ivory breasts and the curves of a flawless, porcelain tummy. The strip-tease stopped a hairsbreadth before exposing her nipples or outer labia, her second skin refusing to part farther, as if too selfish to share. "Or old Adam's seed," Unyx finished, pressing the tip of her tail against Jo's inner thigh. "Oh, fuck," Jo cried, thumping her head against the flowerbed, pulling her hair, "Tiamat's right. Shut your fucking mouth and fuck me already!" "Adrasteia!" Unyx zoomed close until she and Jo were nose to nose. "We bound you once, bound you while you still held this girl in thrall. Tell us of what you sing." Jo's vision swam red. Her blood sang in her ears. Her mouth filled with the flavors of baking cookies and hot, melting chocolate. She fell into the dance. "Frenzy." Jo lurched up to suckle on Unyx's neck. "Frenzy." She wallowed wetly between Unyx's breasts. She heard Unyx's heartbeat race, felt the silken, python-grip on her leg loosen. Jo kissed and nibbled her way down Unyx's marble tummy. "Frenzy," she hissed, and buried her head between Unyx's thighs. "oh." Unyx's eye-mask unfolded wide over her brow. "oh – that..." Jo's hand reached for Unyx's breasts while her tongue wriggled deep into her sex. "that's – a – ah – good – mm – song." * * * * Eurydice broke her slamming kiss, crooning in pleasure, relief, and a hint of triumph. She searched Dee's face as he spurted into her, his body seizing once, twice, thrice. He fell back, knocked off his feet. Tomoe had to hold him up, arms hooked under his shoulders, her grin canary-eating. Dee's cum spiraled and suffused Eurydice's core. Her eyes glazed, lips upended in a hazy smile. She slid off Dee's dwindling member—the movement made him shudder, his reaction triggering a gush of joy and nanogasm within her—and slipped down into a crouch, hugging his knees. Three helpless, drunken giggles escaped her: "Ah-hah, ah-hum, hm-mm." "Wow," Dee gulped, breathless. "What happened?" Eurydice could only hug and hum. Tomoe spoke up behind him. "You came, Dee. Ever done that before?" Dee turned his head, blinked up at Tomoe from between her honey-gold breasts. "No? Well, when a man and woman love each other very much..." Eurydice burst into a fizzy giggle fit at her words, falling onto her butt and drubbing the flowerbed with her feet. "Very funny," Dee smiled as Tomoe lowered him to the ground. "I mean, I felt it would last forever." When he touched down onto the bed, he added, "What's with all the flowers?" "Dee," Eurydice wheezed, "what were you trying to do?" Dee's voice floated up from a spray of mimosa. "To make you feel as good and as happy as you make me feel." Eurydice clucked and cooed and reached out for him, a particular part of him. Dee shied. "Careful, careful. Afterglow. Ah, anyway, I know you've always wanted to fuck me in public, and there we were, so I wanted to give you a damn good public fucking, I guess." He sounded very self-conscious and muttered, "Public fuckability." Tomoe stood over the mimosa. "You went demiurgic." The mimosas stirred as Dee glanced up and then further up, "And you went She-Hulk. Wait, 'demiurgic'? Is that supposed to mean something to me?" "Not really. Look it up later on the Internet if you want. Let's just say you got lost in the moment there for a while, Dee. Put out some serious yang." Tomoe shrugged one muscular shoulder. "Not that any of us minded. But even you can't keep that kinda thing up forever, if you know what I mean." "I feel like I've been hit by a truck," Dee admitted. The spice flowers rustled. "Man, this is comfortable. I think I'm falling asleep. I haven't slept in days, you know." Eurydice sat up, scooted over, and looked down. Dee sprawled over the flowerbed, chest heaving and slick with sweat, face beet red, his flagging dick slick with her honey and the dregs of his orgasm. She leered. "What are you looking at?" Dee asked her, sounding muzzy but suspicious. "You," she said. "It's been a lifetime since I've wiped you out like this." Her eyes roved. She scooched closer still. "I love it, it's so adorable." She dropped a firm hand on his thigh. "I wanna do it again." "M'sleepy," Dee mumbled. "Nuh-uh." Eurydice scooched close enough to press her thigh against his. "You put out, Dee. You totally blew my mind." Her sensitive gel picked up the little temblors in his overworked muscles. It felt deliciously sexy. "I've got more nanomek in me than I can ever remember. But that only makes me want even more." She wanted to lie atop him, feel his body tremble beneath her, inside her. "So now we're gunna go all the way." "'All the way'?" CeeCee swaggered up, her rich flesh sinfully plump and lush, smelling of caramelized sugar and overindulgence. Her eyes scintillated with yellow sparks. "This is going to take extra innings." "Yeah," said Raspberry, stepping out from behind her. Her lavender gel had darkened into a deep, imperial purple, the hue of raspberry wine. "Thanks for the quick pick-me-up, stud muffin, but it just made my cunt itch for the real deal." She loomed over Dee's prostrate form, reeking of boozy, raunchy sex. She drank in his nudity, his sleepy vulnerability. She gritted her teeth and growled, "I am gunna make you cum harder than you've ever felt in your life." Dee snapped awake. "Um. What?" "Uh-huh, sure." Eurydice flashed a mouthful of daggers at Raspberry. "Take your best shot, you little linzer torte. I'll top it. Winner eats out the loser." "You're on, bitch," Raspberry hissed. "Step aside." "Whoa, whoa!" Dee waggled his hands. "There's no way I can..." Tomoe made a psst noise. "What?" Tomoe pointed. Dee looked down. His dick crept slowly skyward. "Whoa." "That's Mine." Eurydice straddled Dee's legs. "Nope." Raspberry sat Dee's chest. Her ass nudged his chin. Her pussy drooled searing nectar down his sternum. "That's Ours." "That's just typical," CeeCee said, glancing around. "What do I get to do?" Raspberry and Eurydice, not looking up from Dee's lengthening prick, chorused, "Bed trick." "That's my cue," Tomoe said, sitting in the lotus position, resting Dee's head in her lap. "That'll work." CeeCee mimed cracking her knuckles. "Hang on, honey. It may not be bumpy, but you're in for one Hell of a ride. If you can take it." "Well, Dee?" Eurydice wriggled her butt down his thighs and onto his knees, bent forward until her lips skated over the tip of his dick when she spoke, making him twitch and twist with every word. "Is...it...time?" * * * * Please to bend down for the one called the Green Man He wants to make you his bride Please to bend down for the one called the Green Man Forever to him you're tied. And you know for a million years he has been your lover He'll be a million more And you know for a million years he has been your lover Down through the skin to the core. —XTC, Greenman * * * * Act Five Interlude: Pitiful Me Eddie shouldered the bedroom door shut. The patter of countless bare, petite, rampaging feet drew near in the hallway beyond. Eddie's shaky, slippery fingers fumbled with the doorknob lock. The catch clicked into place an instant before something heavy whacked into the door's hallway side. The door jam creaked but held. Eddie heard a muffled, "Oof!" followed by a petulant drawl. "Aw, Eddie. Come out and play." Someone scored long fingernails—painted cherry red, Eddie wagered, how they all loved cherry red—over the outside of the door. "We've heard so much about you." Many more hands joined the first. "And sisters share." Eddie threw his naked back against the door. "Whose idea was it to come upstairs?" The cable guy cranked open the bedroom window on the opposite wall. "It was a good plan, dammit! There's enough ivy on the walls to climb down easy." He had lost his work shirt during a harrowing moment on the stairwell. His chest and shoulders festooned with fresh hickies, smudged lipstick prints, love bites, and fingernail scratches. He reached through the window and rattled rusty steel. "I didn't know they barred the windows." He gave the bars one last shake before throwing his hands in the air. "Must be an old panty-raid thing. Sorry, guys. I fucked up." It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 04 The pizza delivery guy flopped onto one of the two frilly twin beds. "We're trapped!" He lay naked and greasy from the waist down, wearing only a marinara-stained shirt with an iron-on patch advertising Napoli's Pizza! All Day Delivery! "Trapped in here with those...things!" The cable guy squinted. "That FedEx truck's still outside. Where's the driver?" "There's nothing we can do for him," Eddie sighed. The pizza guy bolted upright. "They killed him?" "No. Well, not yet." The clawing on the door grew more desperate and Eddie covered his ears, hollering. "He's handcuffed to the sofa in the Sitting Room. They're calling it the Face Sitting Room now, and it's standing room only in there." Fists started to pound. Behind Eddie, the kid carrying a satchel of newspapers ran up and shouted. "You can keep your two damn dollars!" The noise level plummeted. "Hey, kid," a low female voice asked. "You're over eighteen, right?" Eddie, the cable guy, and the pizza guy turned to stare. The paperboy adjusted the strap of his satchel. "Uh, yeah, sure. I'm, uh..." He shrugged. "Helping my kid brother do his route this week?" Overlapping giggles rippled down the hallway outside. "Good enough for us. Now let us in, kid." The pummeling resumed. "You've got a few dozen asses to tap." The paperboy paled, fell back, rearranged his shorts. "What are those things?" "Mental cases," the cable guy hazarded, searching through the drawers of a vanity table. "Maybe Mad Cow Disease?" "Don't be stupid." The pizza boy covered his lap with a store-bought throw pillow. A cheery Disney heroine gazed up at him from his crotch. "They're a biker gang strung out on some bad Meth. Or escaped convicts?" Eddie shook his head. "No. Worse." The assault on the door slackened, half-hearted. "They're sorority girls." He pressed his ear on the door for a second. "And they're up to something." He nodded at the cable guy. "Found anything useful?" "I wish." He piled his discoveries on the vanity's tabletop. "Box of hair combs, a crimping iron, and...hello." Something U-shaped clunked onto the table. "A double-headed dildo. At least that's something." "Great." The pizza guy bounced down onto the bed. "Just great. That takes care of two. There's hundreds out there!" "Don't exaggerate," Eddie said. "There's ninety, maybe little over a hundred, tops." "But they're superfreaks," the pizza guy insisted, wild eyed. "All they want, all they ever think about is sex, sex, sex. I told one I had a headache. She just laughed!" He cackled. "She just laughed and shoved her tongue up my ass!" "Get a grip, son!" The cable guy waved the long plastic schlong in the air. "They've gotten to all of us." He pointed the dildo at the paperboy, who winced. "Except him. I grabbed him when they were inviting him in." "Yeah," the paperboy grumped, "thanks." "You should be thankful." He leveled the dildo at the pizza guy. "Tell him your story." "Only if you put that fucking thing down." The dildo thunked onto the vanity and the pizza guy sat back up. "Okay, kid, listen up. We get this call for five large pizzas, extra sauce, extra cheese. We just started this 'All Day Delivery' deal, but one look at the address—the frickin' Easy Sorority House, man, poontang heaven—and I pull rank and take the order. I just want to get a good, long look, that's all. But the door's answered by three stacked girls in tees and panties and they ask me to come in while they get my tip." He ran a hand through his slick hair. "Just like a porn movie, you know? "Anyway, these three girls lead me down to the dining hall, and there's even more girls in there, grinning at me. One of 'em grabs the pizza and lines the boxes up on the table, one after another, see? Then she pops the tops open, one at a time. She's got this cute little frown on her face, and she says, 'We ordered Meat Lover's pizzas.'" Eddie cupped his hand around his ear, listening at the door. "I think some of them are leaving. There's lots of whispering, too." He turned. "I've got a real bad feeling about this, guys. Guys?" The pizza guy continued, "Anyway, she says they ordered the Meat Lover's. A couple other girls corner me against the table. At this point I'm pretty sure this is a joke, some initiation prank: flash your tits at the dorky pizza guy, that kind of thing. But there's something in the way they grin at me. So I pull out the receipt stub, confirm the order, but I say something goofy about how the customer's always right, offer them coupons. And then...and then they're all closin' in on me, and they've all got that 'we're gunna eat-you-up' grin. And I'm standing there with a bunch of buy-2-get-1-free coupons in my hand and a boner in my pants." He fidgeted with the illustrated throw pillow. The paperboy's eyes bugged out of his head. "And?" The pizza guy grimaced. "And then one says, 'Sorry, no substitutions,' and they drag me down, splat, right on the pizza." He ran his hand through his greasy hair again, this time plucking out a chunk of stewed tomato. "Once it cools down, pizza grease makes one Hell of a lube." His eyes misted. "The first fifteen minutes were the greatest moments of my entire life. But then...it didn't stop. They didn't stop. And after they'd eaten all the dough and cheese and licked off all the sauce, they still wouldn't stop, no matter what I said or did." He hung his head. "And when I couldn't get it up again, I swear, they were getting ready to eat me." He glanced up. "That's when Eddie here busted out of the kitchen and saved my ass." Eddie could not meet his eyes. Something about standing in a room full of half-naked men, and one paperboy, he supposed. "Dumb luck on my part. They got me naked and let their guard down. Thought I wouldn't do a runner with my dick hanging out." He laughed, leaning against the door. "I'm a streaker, not a hero—Oh, shit!" The butt of a metal fire extinguisher, as heavy as a SWAT police battering ram, punched through the door on the second swing, leaving a ragged round hole. The girl with strawberry blonde curls thrust her head through the hole, her grin menacing and maniacal. "Heeeere's pussy!" The four guys fell into a huddle in the middle of the bedroom. Suddenly, the personal space issues of their nudity did not seem so important. The pizza guy gurgled, "What the fuck do we do? How the fuck do we get out of here?" The curly blonde wriggled her hand through the hole, scrabbling for the doorknob, pointy pink tongue peeking out between her teeth. The unreality of their situation sunk in. "That's exactly what we do," Eddie said. He felt calm and sure. He looked at his three companions in turn. "We're going to fuck our way out of here." The pizza guy cringed. "This is madness!" The curly blonde's hand stumbled on the doorknob. "Ah, ha!" She fiddled with the lock. "Madness?" The cable guy squared his shoulders, jutted his jaw. "This is poontang." He stood erect, in more ways than one. "Let's do this." The lock came undone. The curly blonde's howl of triumph was picked up, echoed and amplified into a lusty battle cry by dozens of throats. Eddie turned to the pizza guy. The pizza guy swallowed, nodded, hardened. Eddie barked an order: "Virgin in the middle!" The paperboy jumped into the center of the huddle. The pizza and cable guys took up his flank. Eddie took the vanguard. "Here they come." The bedroom door flew open. The first wave of frenzied coeds poured into the room. The paperboy dropped his satchel to the floor. "This is so..." He gulped, searching for the perfect word. The host of Easy pussy fell upon them. He found it. "Awesome." * * * * Poor, poor pitiful me, Poor poor pitiful me. These young girls won't let me be, Lord have mercy on me, Woe is me! —Waren Zevon, Poor Poor Pitiful Me * * * * It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 01 Act Six: Second Helpings * * * * Intermezzi Tomoe Exposition walks into the sterile white plane. The click-clacking of her heels echoes. Soon she finds a worn, maroon leather recliner chair next to a counterfeit Tiffany floor lamp. "Wow. A Matrix reference. Why am I not surprised." She sits in the lounger, taking care to cross her legs and smooth her black miniskirt. The chair faces the frame. She looks out at you, her dark eyes merry, her smile inscrutable. "Oh, hey! Long time no see." She scoots back into the chair, the leather scrunching. "Sorry for this hokey Fourth Wall routine, but Oblimo asked me to say a few words. Me, I don't think they need to be said." She folds her arms across her blouse. "He's a bit of a wuss when it comes to new things. Besides, if you've read this far, you probably know what's coming. Oblimo lets me read the roughs, so I definitely know what's coming, at least as much as he does, which—granted—isn't always that much. Sometimes, the inspiration fairy takes its time when taking a dump." Tomoe plops her hands onto the armrests, and sighs. "Okay. Here's the deal: Yves' getting some in this chapter. More than some. If you ask me, it's about damn time. Yaoi is my second favorite thing to watch while I whack off, next to futa of course. That's 'homoerotica' and 'dickgirl' porn, respectively, in case there are any noobs out there." She reaches her right hand down and pulls a wooden handle. The back of the chair reclines and the footrest pops up. She props herself up on her elbows to look out at you again. "This chapter features a ton of hardcore yaoi-futa fucking. Me, I'm in hog heaven. For some reason, Oblimo wanted you to know ahead of time. I'm sure there's more he wanted me to say." Tomoe bends forward and wrestles with the zipper on the back of her miniskirt for a while. "But I don't give a damn. If watching SB and Yves doesn't turn you on, that's your business." She wriggles her lithe, olive-skinned legs and kicks off the skirt. It drops to the nominal floor. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gunna get down to business." The frantic fingers of her right hand squirm into the crotch of her rosy silk panties just as her left hand reaches up and switches off the lamp. "Get writing, big guy." * * * * Chapter One: Come Easy Yellow and black warning stripes marked a hairpin left turn few hundred yards up the road. Yves downshifted. The Aston Martin decelerated to a more comfortable speed, the speedometer dipping below the 100 MPH mark. The engine's revving modulated into a throaty feminine voice, "Trust the tranny, Yves." "Just testing the clutch," Yves said, applying enough gas to keep the car humming at eighty miles per hour. He eyeballed the upcoming left-hand turn. The thick backwoods tree line afforded little room for error. About one hundred sixty degrees at the steepest, he judged. "You're tail happy, SB." The muffler snorted. "You accusing me of skirt-chasing, or oversteer? I deny neither." The turn hurtled closer. "You want me to handle this one, yaoi-boy? Remember what happened last time." "Nah." Yves kicked the clutch, spinning the steering wheel hand-over-hand to the right, shocking the powertrain. The Aston Martin lost its balance, rear wheels slipping wide, threatening to fishtail. Yves pumped the clutch pedal, teasing the flywheel, his foot angled to punch the gas and brake. The rose supercar's spin-out became a tight, controlled drift. Yves floated through the hairpin, accelerating out of the turn in a smooth upshift and an earsplitting squeal of rubber burning against asphalt. "I've got it." The Aston Martin zoomed up the straightway, engine purring but nonverbal. Yves waggled the gearbox stick. "I thought you had a dry clutch, SB." He arched a brow. "Now it feels all wet." "Wuh," the engine gulped. "Wow. So, uh, does this make us even? You know, for last time?" "You mean when you reprofiled your camshaft without telling me?" "Not my fault. You, ah, really know your way around a stick." SB's embarrassed mumbling barely rose above random engine noise. "So the VTEC just kicked in, yo." Yves glimpsed a gray shimmer dancing behind the dense line of evergreens. "Looks like we found the reservoir." "Oh. Cool. Um. Hey, Yves?" The stick shift shivered under Yves' fingers. "Can we take that turn again?" * * * * Unyx's sex was candied gossamer against Jo's tongue. The onyx glossing Unyx's cleft thinned and nestled until her labia flowered black and her clitoral hood gleamed as a black pearl. Unyx tasted of sex and licorice with an undercurrent of sweet liquor so potent it cut through the red rhythm fogging Jo's mind. Jo pulled away from her feast. "Ouzo?" "of – course – what – else? but – please." Unyx's tail, still entwined about Jo's leg, tugged, gentle but insistent. Her gloved hands urged Jo back down. "please – finish." Jo flittered her tongue over Unyx's clit, a bud of black silk. "god – three – Ursula – Nyx – me – we – all – feel..." Unyx thrashed and pushed Jo prone onto the green bed, bundling Jo head-to-toe under her serpentine trunk. Jo reveled. Muscular, python power surrounded her, quivering against her legs, her arms, her everywhere. The taste of ouzo and sex flooded her mouth. The random spasms soon settled into a slow, steady pulsation, beginning with Unyx pressing her pussy into Jo's mouth. The pressure traveled down Jo's neck, over her breasts, tummy, thighs—pausing to prolong the tender squeeze over Jo's sex—and legs in undulating waves. Jo felt as if she would melt. Then the tip of Unyx's tail glided between Jo's labia majora, moving to the same pulsing beat, and Jo felt as if she would fly. Jo stretched up, hugging as hard as she could. Her arms barely reached halfway around the sleek snake swaddling her. The thick tail-tip nudged and nuzzled but would not penetrate. A greedy, empty need yawned between her legs. Jo arched her neck, the back of her head crushing into the flowerbed, her chin burrowing into Unyx's sex. She screamed. She begged, "Fuck me. Oh, God, fuck m—" The tail-tip slid into her, in perfect time with the beat. "My-fucking-God!" The beat pulsed within her, without her, around her. Unyx's tail-tip filled Jo up, so thick it throbbed against her clit, only to withdraw again. Jo ran mad. "Stop teasing and fuck me—Jesus oh God so deep. More, dammit, more." Then, unthinking: "Cum. Cum in me." Unyx's punishing rhythm began to falter, her steady rocking started to seize. Jo felt a giddy rush of triumph. "Yes, yes, cum in me!" Jo heard Unyx's wordless, helpless yelp. A single spasm shot through the bulk above her. The tail-tip thrummed once, twice. A sizzling, fluid warmth gushed inside her. Jo climaxed, laughing in lazy delirium. The tail-tip shuddered and withdrew, leaving Jo's womb awash. Jo came down far enough to think about it. "Wait. What the fuck just happened?" Unyx flopped down beside her on the flowerbed hard enough for Jo to feel the shockwave. "So," Unyx gulped, her milk-white skin slick with sweat, her eye-mask retreating into contact lenses. "So that's what it feels like." Jo felt positively oozy. "That's what what feels like?" "I think..." Unyx mopped her brow. "I think I finally reached the end of Galatea's lesson number five." Unyx's tail twitched in the jasmine flowers between Jo's knees, shiny-slick, almost greased. Jo daubed her hand over her sex, more curious than trepid. Her fingers shone with her own wetness—she'd been in near constant meltdown for ages now, or so it seemed—but little else. Her sinuses twinged. "Ow." She rubbed her nose, smearing her nostrils with her own musk. "Ew. Stupid, stupid." The pinching twinge spread out in a spiky ring around her head. "Christ, what's happening now?" Unyx held up her hands, her right with every finger outspread, her left gesturing thumb's up. "Lesson number six." "Say what?" "I'm closing ion channels." Jo's headache faded, leaving nonplus in its wake. "What?" "Un-mindfucking you." Jo growled and squeezed her knees together, squashing jasmine and Unyx-tail between them. The obsidian, ophidian goth girl yipped like a puppy, her tail recoiling. "Gah, careful! It's really, really sensitive." Unyx giggled. "We're Unyx. We've got afterglow." She closed her eyes and settled into the flowerbed. "We've gotta take a nap." "I liked you better when you over-explained everything." Jo sat up and grabbed for Unyx's tail. She overshot, amazed at her newly-grown reach and frustrated with how much her newly-huge-and-bouncy boobs still managed to get in the way. Jasmine petals flew as Jo and Unyx played a giggly game of keep-away with the tip of her tail. "Start expounding or Mr. Happy gets it." "All right," Unyx laughed, squirming. "All right! But, listen: do you hear her? Do you hear Black Cherry's blood music any more?" Jo froze. "No." It was true; the party-next-door-but-between-the-ears sensation that had plagued her for hours had fallen silent. "Wow, no! Did you do that? Oh, thank you! But how?" Unyx shrugged, eyes closing again. "How did Black Cherry mindfuck you in the first place? Get the blood music inside you, we mean." "I'd crawled into bed." Jo blushed. "With my jelly-egg vibrator. I was friggin my way past Pluto when that cherry-chocolate tramp strutted into my room like she owned the place and sat on my face." Jo relaxed and lay back. "I was too far gone, and she tasted too good, and the whole thing was too damn kinky...so I ate her out. She came like crazy and the music started up." "Black Cherry's cum was full of nanomek—what she calls 'novilunium'," Unyx explained, and then she blushed, silvery blood flushing milk-white skin. "So was ours. The binding we ate was very strong, you see, so we couldn't give you any nanomek until we got really excited. Stopping a mindfuck costs more nanomek than starting one up, so we had to get really, really excited." She grinned, shook her head. "And the spooge shall set you free." Jo lay awhile in thought. She felt sated and stuffed enough to ignore the gurgling, orgiastic noises from across the flowerbed, at least for the moment. "So you cured me of blood music." Unyx bobbed her head. "Yep." "By fucking my brains out until you came like a sperm whale." Another head-bob. "Yep. Had to burn all the nanomek in our cum to do it, too. So you're truly free from all headfuckery now." "I wasn't even thinking about that," Jo said. "When Black Cherry did it—did me—it felt like she was being selfish, taking something from me. But you," she laughed through her blush, "you gave and gave until I almost blacked out." Unyx, her eyes still closed, waved a silent Aw, shucks, at Jo. "So what were you thinking about, then?" Jo rolled onto her side. "I was thinking about my sorority sisters." "What about them?" "Can you cure them, too?" Jo asked. Head-bob. "Yep." "The same way?" Head-bob. "Yep." Unyx sighed, resigned. "In fact, it's the only way." "Um." Jo paused. "I'm not sure how to tell you this. There's lots of girls in the Ep-Zed House this weekend—we're throwing a big party tonight—and I think Black Cherry got to them all. I mean lots of girls. Like, over a hundred." Unyx rolled over and leered. Her eyes sparkled like black ore, her tail toying with the petals of countless flowers. She bobbed her head. "Yep." * * * * The rose-colored Aston Martin supercar growled down an abandoned road, little more than a narrow strip of potholed hardpan dusted with gravel. The engine groused at being kept in such a low gear. Yves shot a sour look into the rearview mirror and the engine's grumbling grew self-conscious. "I want to go fast," the engine said. "Can't help it. Not when you're behind my wheel, driving me like that." Yves maneuvered the supercar through a rusted-open chain-link fence. "Like what?" "Like 'wow'," the engine chuckled, a strange bubbling sound. "Like I want to scream, 'Floor it! Floor it!'" Yves shook his head, bemused. "You are every red-blooded American male's wet dream, SB." The engine mumbled, "I seriously doubt every." They drove down the old gravel road in silence and second gear before the engine affected an overblown fake orgasm. "Ooh! Ah! Floor it! Floor it!" Yves laughed hard enough to bring his headache pounding back to life. "I can't. If I did, we'd drive right into the reservoir." The road curled into a dead end behind a wide grassy bank. A fallen, weatherworn sign insisted upon no fishing without a county permit. "We're here. And you still haven't told me why you wanted to come in the first place." "You need to relax." The supercar's engine noise dropped into a subsonic purr. The driver's seat thrummed against Yves' neck and the small of his back. Yves yawned, headache gone. "This place is pretty relaxing, isn't it?" the engine asked. A thick wall of pine trees circled the bank. The reservoir stretched out ahead of them in a great, flat bowl. The early-afternoon sun reflected off the dark water in flashing triangles. The grass grew wild and tall, cutting off sight of the road, completing the illusion. "It's amazing," Yves confessed. "A mountain loch in the middle of Middle America." "Reminds me of a bend in the Durance River," the engine whispered, "a long time ago." Yves left the stick in neutral and engaged the emergency brake. "So what do we do now?" The engine cut out and the driver's side door clicked open on its own accord. "We get the fuck out." Yves hopped out and ambled down the sloping bank. He heard a metallic sigh behind him. He bent at the water's edge, hunting without success for a good skipping stone, hearing SB's swaggering walk rustle the grass behind him. When he stood up, a strong hand slipped around his shoulder, fingers firm and cool. A breeze carried the scent of wild strawberries and cotton candy. "How do you feel, Yves?" Yves stretched. "Deliciously sleepy." Those slim fingers patted him on the back. "C'mere, Yves." SB wore her signature one-piece dress, sunlight painting her in fiery shades of red and gold. She knelt onto a wide tartan picnic blanket, patted the spot in front of her. "Come on down." Yves tapped the blanket with a sneaker. "Is this you?" He hoped he sounded more curious than nervous. "It's of me," SB explained, "but it's not me. I've locked it, it's just a thing." She smoothed out the blanket. "Well?" Yves sat cross-legged before her, inspecting the tartan textile. "Soft. Feels familiar, somehow." "You'd be surprised, the kinds of things you can spin from sugary carbohydrates. If you're working on the sub-molecular level, that is." SB read Yves' expression and added, "Okay, maybe you in particular wouldn't be surprised." She shifted, her cheeks darkening to a true crimson. "What're you looking at?" "Your eyes," Yves answered. "It was recently pointed out to me that I do not pay close attention to a woman's eyes." "Dude." SB gestured at her lap, where her manhood folded between her knees like a bendy third leg. "Do I look like a woman?" "Do appearances matter?" Yves asked in return, still scrutinizing SB's face. "I thought they were rock candy or some other sugar crystal. Your eyes, I mean. But they're not, are they? They're real diamond." "So?" Yves nodded. "'So,' indeed. Diamond's just carbon, after all, less complicated than sugar in some ways." SB's wry smile set her eyes twinkling. Yves nodded again, downcast. "Yeah, I'm stalling. I don't even know what's going to happen, and I'm stalling. Wow, listen to me..." SB tipped her head. "Yves?" "...I'm talking as much as Ursula..." SB coughed politely. "Hey, Yves?" "...No worse: Dee." SB plucked Yves' head up by the chin. "Yves. You really, really need to unwind." She held up the mason jar of strawberry colored jam in her other hand. "How's 'bout a rub down?" Every bit of Yves ached, from his brain to his balls down through the soles of his feet. He wondered if any part of him, body or spirit, had escaped torture in the past twelve hours. He doubted it. "My arms are a little sore, yeah." SB rolled her eyes, goosed Yves' cheek, and popped the jar open before setting it beside them on the picnic blanket. "Hold out your arm, then," she said. Yves offered up his arm. SB gently rotated Yves' hand palm-upward. The improvised bandage on the pad of his thumb had frayed and curled up around the edges. SB picked off the tape and unwound the blood-spotted gauze, revealing a small but deep crescent-shaped puncture in Yves' flesh. "The cloister bell," SB murmured. "Hm? Oh," Yves nodded, "the exploding doorbell, yeah. That sucker really took a bite out of me." SB gingerly inspected the wound. The sudden flare of pain took Yves' breath away. "Still stings a bit." SB scooped a small dollop of jam onto one finger. "This will help." The jam's vibrant red contrasted the soft rose hues of her translucent flesh. "But you'll always bear the mark." Yves wanted to ask her what she was talking about but she smeared the stuff across the pad of his thumb without another word. He readied himself for another sharp stab of pain. It only tingled instead. A droplet of strawberry red nectar streaked down into the cup of his palm. Yves frowned. "Your skin is warm enough to cook it into oil," SB said as more tingling syrup pooled in his hand. She held him by the wrist, and rubbed her thumb over the strawberry smear on his hand, tracing the flexor tendon anchoring his thumb and working the red salve into his skin. The puncture wound itched, felt tender when the skin around it flexed, but the pain had fled. Her gaze fixed on his hand, SB added, "You okay?" Yves was not sure how to answer. I'm amazed. I'm relieved. I'm a little scared. "What do you mean?" "The color." She gathered Yves' hand to her chest, soothing the stuff over his palm, then sliding her thumbs around and between his fingers. "Before it cooks into oil, it kinda looks like blood." "You mean, do you remind me of Black Cherry?" SB looked up from her ministrations, squeezing each of Yves' fingers in turn. "Well?" "You're nothing like Black Cherry," Yves insisted. SB pressed the flat of his oiled hand against her cheek. Yves smiled, "You want details?" SB dipped a finger into the jar and massaged more jam into Yves' wrist. "Just a couple." "You'll have to give me a minute." "Why?" SB slid her fingers up his forearm. Yves sighed, eyes closed. "I just want to...feel this, for a while." The tingle stretched from Yves' fingertips down to his elbow. The muscles of his hand and forearm were as butter, all tension gone. SB found a potent pressure-point and a clarifying calm stole over Yves. "Black Cherry's dark currents give her that horrible, arterial red look," Yves heard himself say. "Yours is the red of rosé wine. Black Cherry felt like clay, wet cement, really. Raz and Eurydice felt like living, standing waves. You feel, well, real." He opened his eyes. SB paused, her hands encircling his upper arm. "With my eyes closed," Yves explained, "I can't tell that you're meliae. Just someone who wears a summery cologne. Uh, I mean perfume." SB stroked the length of Yves' oiled arm. Yves resisted the urge to purr. "I'm not built like other goo girls," SB said. "I'm organized." Yves eyed the crowded crotch of her dress. "That's apparent." A breeze blew across the grass and rippled SB's dress, defining the angles of her lap. Good God, Yves thought, how big can that thing really get? "Stop," SB breathed. She gave him a playful push, planting a strawberry-red stain over Yves' undershirt. "Or you really will start sounding like Dee. Anyway, that's not my only organ. I've got internal structures. Check this out." SB flexed her right arm. Her toned, oval muscles bulged. "This bicep ain't just for show. Striated pectin. Go on, check it out." It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 01 Yves reached out, prodding cautiously at first, but growing bold when his fingers only dimpled SB's upper arm. "Wow. Do you work out?" Oh, Jesus. Yves winced. What am I, twelve? What's gotten into me? "My nanomek do it for me." SB rolled her shoulders and inhaled. Her round breasts jutted against her fiery dress, nipples erect and obvious and inches away from Yves' fondling fingers. "Wanna feel my pecs?" I haven't been this close to second base with a girl since high school. Yves flustered and flushed. SB studied his face, winked, nabbed his other arm, and slathered it with a healthy gob of tingly jam. The delectable massage drove away memories of youthful, fruitless denial. "You're sure generous with that stuff," Yves said, sighing. "Thank you, thank you." SB laughed. "I've come into possession of a dumpster full of it." She swallowed a bark of laughter and oiled Yves' arm. The creaking of pine branches and the gentle lapping of lake water against the bank filled the bashful silence until SB added, "Thanks to you." Pain and stress vanished under SB's touch. Yves allowed himself to purr. "Mrr. Just what is it, anyway?" "Have you ever heard of woad, Yves?" SB asked, swirling her thumbs around his elbow. "Only as the past tense of the Keanu Reeves verb, 'to whoa'." SB smirked but said nothing. "It's a dye, blue, or something, right?" "Or something, yeah," SB said. She leaned close to massage his upper arm. Her breath tickled Yves' his neck. "Anyway," SB began, "the ancient Britons painted themselves before every battle. They needed no other armor." A memory of kilts and blue paint clicked into place. "Like Braveheart," Yves said. SB froze, then snorted, "Nothing like Braveheart." She went to work on his shoulder. "I'm talking aboriginal Albion, Yves. And it wasn't blue, either. Julius Caesar called it vitrum." She shook her head in reverie. "Julius. Now there's a guy who knew how to spend five denarii." "Vitrum," Yves repeated. He knew his Latin roots from years of applied science. "Glass." He raised his free arm. The glaze of massage oil blazed in the sun. "Vitreous armor." His skin glittered as the oil dried, mellowing into a healthy glow. He twisted his arm one way and the other. Sunlight played over whipcord muscle, his wrist, his palm. Yves stared. The puncture wound on his hand had healed. "Glass armor." Only a faded, comma-shaped scar remained, as if Yves had born it for years. From birth, Yves realized, like I've born it since birth. It's a mark, not a scar. That's what SB said. But now what? SB's eyes danced, her voice edgy with urgency. "Take off your shirt, Yves." Yves tugged his undershirt up over his head, his arms smooth and sure but his back panged hotly, forcing him into a hunch. SB had a big, three-finger scoop of jam ready and aimed for his chest. She hesitated, watching his spiky blonde hair droop over his eyes as his undershirt fell away. She flashed a crooked smile, brushed his hair back with her free hand, and splattered the scoop of goop atop Yves' head. "Hey," Yves startled, laughing, but SB ignored him and combed the stuff through his hair with her fingers. "The soldiers of Sparta and Macedon," SB said, knee-walking behind Yves' back, "would groom one another with it, with the vitrum." Yves felt SB's knee nudge up against his butt. He suspected it was her knee, at least. "I thought that was just olive oil." "No." SB's aquiline chin pressed into the hollow of Yves shoulder. The slinky material of her dress whisked against his back. Her lips scraped against his ear as she spoke, "They used olive oil to fuck." Yves swam in the scent of her summer cologne. SB reached up and scrubbed the jam into his scalp without mercy until Yves protested that his brain was marinating in strawberry marmalade. "Better marinade than migraine," SB said, oiling Yves neck and knuckling the ridges of his shoulder blades. "Wouldn't you say?" "Just keep doing what you're doing," Yves said. The twanging pain in his back evaporated under SB's care. "And I'd say any little thing you asked me to." Rose crystal arms snaked around Yves' chest and slapped a big blob of jam onto his stomach. "Do you know what's going on, Yves?" The arms slithered up his chest, spreading the melting jam in two tingling swaths of oil from his abs to his pecs. Her firm breasts squashed against his back. "You're," Yves shivered as SB's fingertip skated across his nipple, "you're seducing me." "Mm," SB agreed, squeezing oil into Yves' ribs, "but do I have to?" "No," Yves said, realizing it himself for the first time. He turned to smirk at her. Shining blonde blades of hair bowed to occlude his eyes. "You had me at, 'Ride me, Yves.'" SB scooted around to Yves's side and kissed him. This time, Yves returned the kiss and took her in his arms. The giving flesh of her lips and toned expanse of her back felt as firm as any man or woman's, but her silken touch, her summery smell, her salty-sweet taste were beyond exotic, almost unearthly. SB broke their kiss and Yves, breathless, rested his forehead against hers. "I think I understand Dee a bit better now," he said. "So," SB said, sitting up and daubing strawberry balm on the tip of Yves' nose. "If I'm not seducing you..." The balm melted into oil and she spread it across the bridge of his nose and around the orbits of his eyes. "Then what am I doing?" She swabbed his temples and forehead and Yves breathed easy; he had never felt more clear-headed in his life. Yves thought about it as SB rouged his cheeks. "You're anointing me." SB grinned and glanced aside, as if remembering some private joke. "I'm a-knighting you." "I thought you knighted someone with a sword." SB's introspective grin turned downright wicked. "That comes later." She finished her handiwork on his face and sat back to admire it. The balm tingled as it dried. "Glass armor," Yves remembered. "You're armoring me. Outfitting me? No." He found the right word and it both thrilled and chilled him. "You're girding me." SB leaped close, her third kiss hungrier than the last two combined. "Lie down, Yves," she said, voice low. "Lose the pants." Yves settled into the picnic blanket, scrunching the wild grass beneath. His hair fanned over his face, shading his eyes from the cloudless sky and the sun high above the pines. He twirled a finger through a sheaf of his suddenly salon-perfect coiffure. "I've never been vain about my hair." He bunched his legs up. His knees still creaked and his thighs cramped but he ignored the pain as best he could and shucked off his slacks. The cuffs caught on his sneakers. SB's arch smile hovered into view. "Silk boxers?" "I'm vain about other things," Yves readily confessed. SB padded down to his feet, giving Yves a slow-pan eyeful of her copper-clad, powerhouse ass. "Uh." SB's rear swayed from the heavy counterweight tucked between her legs and hidden by her flowing dress. "Oh, boy," Yves swallowed. "Anyways, I always just let my hair do whatever it wanted." Yves propped himself up to watch SB undo his laces and a blonde tussock fell neatly across half of his face with an almost audible foop! noise. "I never expected a hairdo would take me literally." Sneakers and socks sailed into the surrounding grass. SB administered the strawberry balm to Yves' feet. Yves yelped when she kneaded between his toes. "Quit squirming," SB said, smothering his heels and ankles in extra helpings of the stuff. "Achilles was ticklish, too, so I missed a spot and I bet you know the rest." "Oh, ha, ha," Yves said. SB glanced up, her expression blank, and Yves added, "Um. Ha?" SB held his worried stare a moment longer, then thrust her tongue out between her teeth, dug her fingers into his calves and tickled him until Yves' howling laughter echoed across the placid reservoir. When Yves caught his breath, SB was smoothing salve over his knee. His lower legs wore greaves of glassy grease. "Okay, so you're girding me in vitrum—Ah!" A pressure point in Yves' knee popped and relief flooded through his leg. "God, that feels fucking fantastic. A minute ago I was nearly crippled. Now I want to run a marathon." SB moved on to Yves' other knee but her eyes were fixed on the crotch of Yves' boxers. "Save your strength." Yves heard the meaning behind the innuendo. "So vitrum is not going to make me strong like Dee." "Nope," SB said. She popped another pressure point. Her hand crept up Yves' thigh. "Good," Yves sighed, closing his eyes, letting the last of his pain and weariness wash away. "I'd be worse off with it. If I were suddenly Superman, I'd have to unlearn years of fighting with limited resources." SB oiled Yves' inner thighs, hands squeezing in a lazy rhythm. Blood rushed into Yves' face and his crotch. His slowly engorging dick slid against the silk of his boxers. "I guess virtum doesn't make me bullet-proof, either?" "No," SB said, her oiled fingers working under the left leg of his boxers. "You'll never be bullet-proof, but fight well and you won't have to be." Her fingertips brushed against his pubic hair and she turned her attention to his other leg. One of Dee's interminable comic book lectures rose unbidden in Yves mind. "Superman versus Batman," Yves heard himself say. SB's sensual fingers froze. "Say what?" "Superman's power comes from who he is. Batman's power comes from what he does." Yves had heard this bit from Dee so many times he could not help but plunge ahead. "Superman stands his ground and bullets bounce right off him. He doesn't even have to think about it. Batman can dodge bullets because he's careful and brave, clever and quick." Yves sat bolt upright. "Plot armor. That's what Dee calls it. That's what vitrum is." Yves rubbed his stomach. The oil had soaked into his skin, but he could still feel the energizing tingle. "You're covering me in plot armor." SB had not moved since Yves started blabbing. "Are you trying to turn me off?" "Hey, now. You, Tomoe, Nyx and Galatea are the gals running around empowering nerds." Yves lay back, hands behind his head. "What did you four expect?" SB blinked at him, then whipped off his boxers. She dug deep with both hands into the mason jar, leaving nothing but dregs of jam at the bottom of the glass. "Really hot and freaky sex sprinkled with the occasional Monty Python reference," she said, fingers dripping. "It's a fair cop," Yves admitted. "Quiet, you," SB said, and brought her hands down. Her left hand traced circles about his balls while her right slid straight down his scrotum. The jam melted immediately into oil. SB did not lose a single drop to the blanket beneath. She massaged rolls of oil into Yves' sensitive skin, running his taint between her ring and middle fingers. SB's expert hands and the tingling oil electrified Yves and his pelvis pivoted up to meet them. SB wasted no time and dove her fingers into the crack of his ass. She teased the rim of his anus and he barked in surprised pleasure, bent his knees and pushed his butt off the blanket. "Perfect," she said, grabbing a cheek, "stay just like that." She cooed as she oiled him up, one hand squeezing his ass, the other curling around his balls and teasing the root of his cock. "Ooh, is this fun." Yves erection surged, the glistening red head of his dick peeking out from his foreskin. "Gotta get me some of that," SB said, bringing her right hand up and spiraling down his shaft, peeling his foreskin back with each pump, determined to paint every ridge and wrinkle of him in oil. Yves groaned and collapsed onto the blanket, his twitching dick pointing skyward. SB's eyes unfocused, her lips puckered into a hazy smile. She coddled Yves' balls in her left hand, milked his cock in her right. "C'mon," she hummed. "Come on." Tension gathered in Yves' crotch and released in a full-body twitch, again and again. SB burst, "Oh! God," and "Oh! Yeah," with each shudder Yves gave her. She rocked up high on her knees and her own hardening prick flopped onto the blanket between Yves legs and pressed up against his inner thigh. Yves felt some switch thrown deep within him and the maddening tension became a tide of building pressure. He moaned and muttered, inarticulate with encroaching orgasm. SB bent forward. "God." Her lips hovered inches from the head of Yves cock. "Oh, God." She wrapped both hands around Yves' throbbing shaft, pushed its head between her lips. Yves whimpered and seized. SB sobbed—"Oh, God,"—around the head of his cock. He came. And SB wept and nursed on his cum as if their lives depended on it. "Holy shit," said Yves when SB finally rocked backward. "The only other time I've cum that fast and hard before, I was alone. And seventeen." SB tried to laugh but only gasped for air. Yves asked, "Nanogasms?" SB nodded, eyes crossed, and Yves added, "You just gave me a massive macrogasm, SB. You deserve more than a little blood music." Yves sat up, bare chest filmed in sweat, and eyed the mammoth bulge in SB's dress. "Why aren't you naked?" He reached out, one hand following the distending curve of SB's dress. SB's hard-on grew and throbbed, as wide as Yves' hand, beneath his touch. I only caught a glimpse of her at the store, he thought, taking the hem of SB's dress in both hands. SB bit her lip as Yves sat close, drawing her dress upward. I know she's big, Dee said she was humungous, but how big could she possibly—"Ow," Yves said, as the head of SB's dick bopped him on the nose. Yves gawked at a candy-red, fist-sized cock-head, polished in maraschino-cherry pre-cum and crowning about three feet of rose-red shaft. The whole package looked crystalline and fleshy at the same time. Veins like chiseled rose quartz somehow pulsed with life. SB worried her lip and searched his face with anxious eyes. Her childlike pout put Yves over the edge, and he laughed so hard he had to hold on to the sides of his head. "No one," SB muttered, then shifted and raised her voice over Yves' delighted cackling. "No one has ever laughed at my dick before. Ever." "Why not?" Yves wiped tears from his eyes. "It's amazing. You're amazing, SB. I mean, look at you. You've got the biggest penis on the planet and you're still insecure. If a three foot cock can't make a dickgirl confident, mortal men are doomed." SB threw her head back and cracked up, her dress cinched around her belly. Her glans bobbed and weaved as she shook with laughter. Yves tracked the red cock-head's perambulations with his eyes, more amused and amazed than mesmerized. "You've got to tell me, how on Earth do you and Tomoe...relate?" "She's lost a little weight since we first met," SB snickered. Yves knew he would not get any better answer than that, and his mind was elsewhere anyway. "Well." He cracked his knuckles. "In for a penny..." He reached out again, with both hands this time. SB shied to the side. "Wait." Yves' fingertips hovered, poised to grasp. "Why?" His eyebrows waggled. "I'm really good at this bit." "I know. Wow, do I know." She sighed. "That's the point. But cumming costs me nanomek, and, Yves, you turn me into a walking fire hose." Dropping a gentle hand to SB's knee, Yves said, "I feel wonderful, SB. Better than I've felt in years. Awake, alive." He gave SB's knee an eager squeeze. "Horny. Hell, you probably saved my life. I want to share, SB. I need to." His hand inched up SB's thigh. "Sex is something that happens between two people, SB, and I want it to happen to you so good you'll see stars. Why are you so nervous?" "Not nervous." SB leaned in for a sweet kiss but pushed Yves' hand away. "I'm not done sharing with you yet, that's all." Or you're still too nervous to let me take the lead. "Very well." Yves swooned onto the blanket, the back of his hand pressed against his forehead. "Have your way with me, you cad." SB goosed Yves on the big toe, stood up, and walked straight past him. Her shadow fell across his face, soon followed by her dress. "Hey." He rolled over and looked up, the fiery dress dangling from his hair like a unwound turban. SB stood naked at the water's edge. Her broad, sinewy back tapered down to a trim waist and a thick, traffic-stopping ass. Yves asked, "Are we skinny dipping?" SB turned and presented Yves with her profile, adding the high curves of her bust and impossible scimitar of her cock to the mix. Her substance possessed a milky translucence and the sun lit her up. She glowed from within, radiating a buttery aura, and Yves could only breathe, "My God." "Actually, you need to stay onshore." SB stepped into the reservoir. Waves lapped at her ankles. "No matter what happens, no matter what you see, you can't touch the water. Understand?" Some small part of Yves wanted to quip at the corny, fairytale instruction, but it was overruled by his awe of her beauty and the certainty in her voice. He nodded. "Good." She strode deeper, proud and confident, until the she dipped low enough to dunk her balls in the water. She jumped back with a high pitched, piping squeak. "Eee! Cold!" Yves bit down hard on his bottom lip to keep from laughing as he watched SB shiver and crouch. "Well," SB said, "I'll fix that soon enough." She gave Yves one last, admonishing look. "I'm not Tomoe; I mean exactly what I say." "And I'm not Dee," Yves said. "I don't touch my plate just because the waiter warns me that it's hot." SB dazzled Yves with her smile, then gazed out over the dark water. "I haven't done this in a long, long time," she said, waded in deeper, and vanished below the surface. Yves sat up, crossed his legs, draped SB's dress across his lap, and waited for something to happen. He watched the clear sky, half-expecting dramatic, stormy clouds to scud in over the horizon. None came. The sun climbed closer to the zenith of noon, warming the still air. "Is this when I say 'It's quiet, too quiet'?" Yves shaded his eyes, scanned the tree line, then peered over the reservoir. "Hello? Ah, well. Thinking cap time, I guess." Okay, there's no denying that I'm caught up in Dee's story, or whatever fairytale he started when he bought his nanomek, then derailed by making Galatea first. "Is that all this is? Just part of Dee's story? SB?" After all, I didn't buy anything from SRU. I didn't start anything. Did I?      ["...It's not my fault. I was perfectly happy being alone and miserable back at the bar. You were the one who decided to drop by and try and cheer me up, if you care to recall..."] Yves stood up. The dress fell. He cupped his mouth and hallooed over the reservoir, ire rising with every word. "So all this happened because I chose to cheer a friend up? That's all it takes get stuck in my own fairytale? And why the fuck did it have to start with some psycho-bitch fucking me in the ass?" A wave of sultry heat rolled over the shore. The whispery woodland sounds died. Whitecap waves chopped up in the heart of the reservoir many yards away. Yves folded his arms. "That's more like it." The heat grew oppressive. The whitecaps churned into a growing circle of froth. "Wait a minute." The fizzing whitewater expanded, raced closer. The air turned savanna-hot. "Uh, SB?" At the water's edge, steam rose and wildgrass wilted. "The, uh, lake's starting to boil." Columns of steam wafted skyward and the roiling waters boiled like a sign of the Apocalypse. Yves backpedaled away from the shoreline as the ambient temperature rose from sizzling savanna to roasting sauna, hot enough to scald his throat or even burn his lungs if he risked breathing in through his mouth. Yves' hair frizzed out and fountained around his head in a cross between a bowl cut and an overgrown spider plant. His voice cracked and croaked. It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 01 "Is it too late to say, 'Pygmalion'?" The columns of steam condensed into billowing walls of mist, carried to the lakeshore by waves of heat. Yves' thumb prickled. Water, he thought, as the thick trails of mist moved in. She didn't say 'Don't go in the lake.' She said, 'Don't touch the water.' The temperature continued to climb and Yves felt faint. The water's coming to me but I doubt that makes any difference. What do I do? Do I run? He cast about, made his decision—No—and dove for the picnic blanket, throwing it over himself just as the first tendrils of mist coiled onto the shore. Yves lay in darkness and cool grass. No wonder this fabric felt familiar. The terrible heat buffeted the blanket above him. It's spun lace insulant, just like Ursula's high-tech potholders. The hissing from the lake stopped. Yves counted slowly to two hundred before testing the air: sultry as a New Orleans summer, but safe. He crawled out from under the blanket, the shore soupy and slippery beneath his hands and knees. The wild grass now resembled boiled cabbage, browned and overcooked. The reservoir was becalmed. Mist licked across the smoothed water. The hush heightened Yves' awareness of his own nudity and exposure. He adopted a ready stance. A silvered blade rose from the reservoir, piercing the surface without a ripple. SB soon followed, striving in a weary swagger toward the shore, holding a sword aloft above her head. Dark water swirled around her bare legs, her flaccid but still massive dick slapping against her inner thighs. Her eyes were dim and unfocused, her frown severe. Her muscles trembled, as did her voice. "Yves Valiancourt!" "I am here," Yves said, surprised at his own formality. An exhausted smile lit up SB's face. She stepped onto the shore, seemed to see Yves clearly. "Yves Valiancourt." "I am he." His heart in his throat, his blood signing, he added in whisper, "'SB' doesn't really stand for 'Strawberry Banana,' does it?" SB at last lowered her arm, resting the flat of the blade across both her palms. "No," she whispered back. "It does not." She fell to one knee before Yves, head bowed. She sighed, raising her arms to present Yves with a long, curved blade the color of frozen moonlight. "I have borne you a sword, Yves Valiancourt." Yves hefted the sword. The grip, wrapped in a braided weave of rose silk cord, could accommodate two hands but felt equally comfortable in one. The round guard had been forged from a midnight purple alloy Yves could not identify. The sharpened, single edge ran along the outside of the blade, longer and more curved than the samurai swords seen in the movies. It took a moment for Yves to find his voice. "How did you know?" SB glanced up, grinning. "The tanto you have in your shirt—neat trick, by the way, can't believe I didn't notice it until I was feeling you up. You've got the tanto slung the wrong way 'round for typical katana work. And you weren't exactly subtle back in the SRU parking lot." Kalidescope eyes sparkled. "I could tell you were a tachi man." Yves smoothed his thumb over the flat of the pearlescent blade; slick but not sticky. "What is it?" He held it up. It refused to reflect the sunlight. This is what's left when you take away the metal but leave the edge, the lethality, behind, Yves thought. This is the ghost of a sword. "SB, what did you do?" SB stood. "I told you you'd be surprised," she said, chest heaving as she caught her breath. "The things you can spin from carbohydrates and the trace elements found in freshwater. But the process gives off so much waste heat I have to jump in a lake or spontaneously combust. Anyway, it's a metallofullerene core edged in aggregated nanorods folded into a fractal lattice serration...What's with that face? Constipated?" "This is my 'processing technobabble face'," Yves said, stepping back, testing the feel of the deadly thing. "Metallofullerene core: more ductile than steel." SB nodded, so Yves struggled on with his translation. "Aggregated nanorods: harder than diamond." SB nodded again, her grin growing wide. "Fractal lattice..." He squinted at the edge. It remained out-of-focus. "What's its effective cutting surface?" he asked. SB scratched her head. "If you straightened out all those microscopic serrations but kept the same surface area," Yves continued, "how long would the blade be?" "Ten," SB shrugged. "Maybe up to eleven." Her grin returned, positively shit-eating, and she added, "Kilometers." "So," Yves said, trying a two hand grip. "Fractal lattice serration: sharp enough to cut through, what, solid rock?" "Honey," SB sighed, "you could cut a diamond Sherman tank in half with that thing. And diamond is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, metals known to man." Yves just stood there, brow furrowed, so SB grumped, "Dee would've laughed that joke." "That's my point," Yves said, turning away from SB to gaze over the tree line. "I mean, shouldn't Dee be here, not me? Doesn't Arthur get Excalibur?" "Aw, don't be an idiot." SB gave Yves a dismissive but playful shove on the back. "Arthur's just a myth. Never existed." "Oh, ha, ha." "I'm serious. Arthur and Lancelot: both total bullshit." "But, still," Yves muttered, "shouldn't Dee...?" "Not everything's about Dee," SB insisted behind him. "Besides, Gawain got the green girdle. Yvain got the sword." Yves would only stare down at the ghosted blade. "I don't know who those two guys were." Except one killed the other, according to Eurydice. "Unyx would know. She's a superhero. Like Dee. Like the rest of them." Yves' thumb prickled. SB clucked deep in her throat. "Fine." Yves whirled around, arms whipping up. Pale sword met pink scimitar a few inches away from his face. The two blades rang together in a crystalline tone as pure as two matched tuning forks. Yves boggled at the anger simmering in SB's eyes. "What did I..." "Have it your way, then," SB growled and kicked Yves' left knee out from under him. Yves toppled backward. SB brought her blade whistling down at Yves' exposed neck. Yves rode his collapse into a controlled tumble. SB's pink scimitar sank into the sodden earth. "You're quick," SB said, wresting the scimitar from the ground, whisking it high and behind her head. "Damn quick for someone who says he's not a superhero." Yves sprang to his feet, pale sword ready in a two-handed grip. "Victory is not getting cut." He found his center and sought a Kamae, a kendo fencing ready stance. "That's not superheroic," he said, thinking, This is no kendo match and she isn't holding a practice staff. "That's just smart." He tipped his blade up, and entered a textbook perfect Water Kamae, reciting, "If you've thought of cutting, it's too late to cut." Her grip is tight. She's not ready. Don't move until you see it. "You must have already cut when you think of cutting." SB's fingers relaxed. The scimitar's haft slipped a hairsbreadth downward. There. Yves angled his blade a few degrees, its tip pointed at SB's eyes. Now. SB swung her scimitar down in a blurred arc. Yves was already moving, closing the distance to level the advantage of an overhead strike. The scimitar accelerated downward. He rotated his own sword. The scimitar rebounded and SB dropped back. Sport-drink red sweat beaded her bare breasts. Yves rotated back to his Water stance and waited. "Your banter is pretty pithy," SB snarled, this time bringing her blade low and back, "for someone who says he's not a superhero." Yeah, why the Hell am I bantering? "That's just my inner Dee talking," Yves said, and, feeling as uncertain as he sounded, he shifted his stance and lost his center. "I know you're a superhero, Yves, and I know that you know." The pink scimitar swept up and out. Anticipating a feint designed to push him further off-center, Yves risked a sidestep—but SB swiveled her hips and double-feinted, her huge blade whirring faster than Yves thought possible. He walked right into an upswing about to crack open his chest like a book. His thumb prickled. There was a screech of glass grinding against glass. Without thinking, Yves had leaned into the fatal swing. The scimitar grated over the flat of his blade until the guards of both swords clicked together. Yves and SB stood nose-to-nose, their swords locked together between them. "I know you're a superhero, Yves," SB said, straining to break the lock and earn the riposte, "because despite all your training, all that muscle memory telling you to strike after each defense, you haven't even tried to cut me yet." SB narrowed her eyes, her face slick with sport-drink sweat. "Only the good guys are dumb enough to do that." Yves hissed, every ounce of his strength channeled into his effort to hold the lock. "That's not it." SB arched a brow and Yves conceded, "Alright, that's not just it." The swords squealed in protest as their wielders forced them a fraction of an inch one way and then the other. SB gritted her teeth. "What else, then?" Yves began, "This is..." SB yanked the scimitar's guard away and Yves dredged up reserves of stamina he did not know he had to clamp the pale sword's guard down hard, locking the blades again. "This is so fucking hot," he gushed. SB gasped and relaxed her grapple. "Oh, Jesus, Yves, you should see." She pressed her leg into his groin; his growing erection crawled up her thigh, became spotted with sport-drink sweat. "You should see how fucking amazing you look." She let her sword fall to her side, one hand squeezing its ruby pommel, the other winding around Yves' neck to pull him into a summer-sweet lip-lock. "Ride me, Yves," she said, and kissed him again. "Fuck me." And again. "Fuck me, now." Yves dropped his sword. It sunk into the ground up to the hilt. He squeezed the rose-colored thigh rubbing against him, relishing the feel of SB's lithe but steely frame. He urgently reached for SB's groin, yearning to squeeze something else—and poked SB in the pussy. The bishi and the dickgirl yelped in shock and surprise, and glared at each other before spluttering embarrassed giggles and snickers. "Sorry, I'm so sorry." Yves blushed beet red. "Totally forgot." SB waggled the pommel of her sword. "It's over here, Sherlock." She plucked it up, and proffered the pink scimitar to Yves. She pouted and rocked her hips. The longing look she gave him could have raised the dead. "Would you make a man out of me?" Yves took up the oversized scimitar, heard SB's gasp as he gripped the polished quartz handle. He marveled at the sense of power in potentia it possessed, remembering the feeling from when he had held it before, back in the SRU parking lot: an almost drunken empowerment. "How do I?" SB whimpered her need and drove two shaky fingers into her sex, her burning eyes never leaving his. Yves was awestruck. Mother of God. "Lie down, sword bearer." SB stumbled and sprawled supine onto the picnic blanket. Yves fell to his knees beside her, clutching her sword. He goggled at the plum-sized ruby in the pommel, glanced down at SB's cleft. No way. No way can this thing fit. Head lolling, SB spread her legs and parted her flush labia with trembling hands. "Please," she said, unabashed. I can't believe this. Yves' head swam. I can't believe this is happening, that I'm doing this. He brought the sword-pommel close to SB's cleft. I can't believe this is making me so God-damned, mother-fucking horny. "Tomoe," Yves said, his breath haggard. "Tomoe made you like this?" SB bit her lip and nodded. "She taught me. She taught me how to take it off. Now, please, put it back on." The pommel nudged against SB's mons. She thrashed and sobbed. "Oh, God, put it back in." Sweat stung Yves' eyes. "Tomoe's okay with this?" Yves swabbed the sweat with his forearm. "With us?" SB's laughter was faint and dazed. "I hope not. I hope she's jealous as Hell, of you as much as she is me." Her fingers fell away from her sex. "She's watching us, you know. Right now. A hundred years ago. A thousand years from now. So she'd better be jealous." She brushed a golden lock of Yves' hair behind his ear, then tipped her head back and shouted at the sky loud enough to make Yves flinch and pull the sword back. "You hear me, out there? You see me, Tomoe?" Her cry was triumphant, not angry. "It's me. I'm the one! Not Ursula, not Galatea, not Raspberry, and it sure as shit ain't gunna be you! I'm the one," she said again, her tone softening. She pressed a palm against Yves' cheek, her smile as rapt as it was wicked. "I'm the one who gets to fuck Yves." Her fingers dropped away from his face and wrapped around Yves' hand. She guided him down until the scimitar's bulging pommel nestled into her sex. "Do it, Yves." She luxuriated beneath him, hips pumping as her nether lips flowered to accommodate the pommel-stone. "It's time. "It's finally our time." Yves applied pressure to the pommel, felt the resistance of SB's most tender flesh. SB's fingers trembled over his. She spread the petals of her sex with her other hand. "Yves," she breathed, and opened herself to him. His heart slamming in his chest, Yves pushed down on the rubicund pommel. SB clawed his chest, kicked against the blanket. "Yves!" Her labia enfolded the pommel. Pungent nectar drizzled around the hilt, the blade towering above the both of them. She led him to angle the scimitar down. "Deeper, Yves." Balancing the weight of the scimitar delicately in his hands, he eased the hilt in. Yves realized he wasn't breathing. SB screamed his name and threw her arms around his neck. She curled and huddled beneath his chin. The sword slipped further into SB's core and Yves felt a subtle shift in the contours of the rose girl's body. She felt more sleek, angular, and hard against him. Between his fingers, the scimitar began to burn. Even though Yves hovered only inches away, even though Yves watched agog as it happened, even though Yves' hands were wrapped around the scimitar as it coarsened and thickened, the exact moment of transition—the moment where Yves could say, before it was her sword, and now it was her cock—escaped him, or maybe never truly occurred. One minute Yves was fucking an Amazon with the hilt of her own sword, the next he was jacking off a dickgirl with the biggest prick on the planet. The potential power locked in SB's scimitar was a flickering candle compared to the flamethrower of her cock. Yves adapted to her size quickly, using the hollows of his palms more than his fingers to tease and squeeze her shaft. SB convulsed and groaned with each stroke. "Yes. God. Yes. God! Ye—No. Wait. Wait!" Yves threw his hands in the air, dragging one last shuddery cry from SB. "Jesus Christ," Yves growled, standing with fists clenched. "I want to make you cum." He bared his teeth in a mirthless, horny leer. "Is that so much to ask?" "I need you," SB said in an alto voice so deep it bordered on baritone. She rolled over onto her stomach, the pillar of her erection forcing her up on all fours. "I need you inside me." She scooted backward, pressed her ass against his groin until their balls touched. "And you know what they say, Yves." She threw him a shameless smile over her shoulder. "Ladies first." Yves squat down behind her, his knees locked tight about SB's thighs. He loomed over her, bending down to kiss the sweet-and-salty, sports-drink sweat droplets off her brawny back, making her shiver. "What about lube?" he asked between kisses. SB arched her back and rocked her hips in silent response. Her skin was satin against his chest, giving him another serious case of gooseflesh. His dick slid across the crack of her ass. Her cheeks were solid muscle but his shaft glided between them. Yves moaned and pressed his face into the sheaves of cotton-candy dreadlocks trailing the nape of her neck. "No need," SB said, grinding her ass over his groin and her back across Yves' chest. She felt pillowed in luscious oil. "Not with the vitrum. Not with a goo girl, or even a goo dickgirl. Now fuck me." She bent up and back at an inhuman angle to plant an open-mouthed kiss on Yves' forehead. "Fuck me." After almost three hours of non-stop flirting and foreplay, banter and battle, Yves needed no such encouragement. He was already reaching back, aiming the head of his cock at the bud of SB's anus. "Yes," SB whispered, relaxing. She reclined her head on her folded arms, her ass bobbing between Yves' thighs. "Yes." "Yes," Yves hissed, and penetrated. SB's passage was tight but supple, forcing Yves' foreskin back but accepting the sensitive, exposed head of his prick, bathing it in a snug, delicious heat. "My God," Yves said, pressing his chin into her shoulder, feeling her whole body quake beneath him. "You're incredible." Yves slithered into her. A single, hiccupping sob burst from SB's lips before she bit down on her fist. Yves started a slow rhythm, pumping the first few inches of his cock in and out of her in time with the low waves lapping the nearby shore. SB moaned after each stroke. "Mm. Mm. Mm—more!" Her fist popped out of her mouth. "More, dammit!" She rocked back on her elbows and knees in time with Yves' next forward thrust. Yves' dick sank into her ass until her balls slapped against his. "Whoa-fuck," Yves said. SB's innermost nectar clutched his shaft. He withdrew, then drove forward. "Oh, wow." He built up a strong, lunging rhythm. "Oh, hot damn." "Oh, thank fucking God," SB said, an obscene smile blooming across her face as she readied herself for some serious reaming. Yves hugged himself tight to SB's back, stretching his neck to mutter in her ear, "Nuh uh. No rest for you." The sensuous, torrid friction of her core around his cock threatened to drive him mad. He bucked and reamed and bit her shoulder. SB slammed her fist between her teeth in and screamed. The juice of wild strawberries, so tart it was almost bitter, trickled around Yves tongue. He pulled away long enough to growl at SB, his teeth stained maraschino-red. "You are gunna cum so fucking hard." SB craned her neck—"Wha'?"—but Yves' pounded into her as strong and steady as the crashing surf and she flopped onto the picnic blanket, cross-eyed and keening. Her helpless pleas of pleasure triggered a rising pressure within Yves' groin. The urge to pump his pelvis became an imperative. Yves bit down again, wrapped his arms around SB, and hauled the two of them up together onto their haunches with his next thrust, his deepest yet. SB threw her arms wide. "OhmyfuckingGod—Yves!" Yves' slipped his arms down and around SB's waist and pinioned her prick. "So hard," he promised her, his dick buried in her ass, his hands stroking the length of SB's massive member. "So fucking hard." SB tried to protest, "B-but..." Yves stroked down on her cock while plunging into her ass and she could only wail his name, again and again. "I know," Yves soothed, but would not relent. "Nanomek, I know. But don't worry." He stroked and plunged. "You feel so good, SB, I can't hold back." The pressure and tension focusing in Yves' groin began to crest. "And if I am going to cum..." He swirled one hand around the base of her shaft while pushing two fingertips into the wide slit atop the head of SB's dick. "Then so are you." They came together in a torrent of release. Yves lurched and spurted deep within SB. The rose dickgirl sobbed and spewed a geyser of seminal fluid high over their heads. She fell backward against him, he collapsed into her. They kissed and panted and held each other close. The intimate and glorious afterglow lasted about ten seconds before they were both spattered head-to-toe in a downpour of piping hot strawberry jam as SB's meliae jism fell to Earth. It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 01 * * * * The paperboy pelted down the narrow steps to the Epsilon Sorority House basement, satchel of soggy newspapers bouncing off his flat, newsprint-smudged ass. The pizza guy and Eddie followed close behind on the single-file stairway. The cable guy, his work-clothes little more than strips of cloth stuck to his sticky skin, hesitated at the top of the stair, set his jaw, turned and stood his ground. Eddie poked his head back up the wood-paneled stairway, his face a blotchy patchwork of lipstick, bites, bruises, and vaginal juices. "C'mon, man! We don't have time." "You guys go on," the cable guy said, his voice flat. The hordes of horny E-Z sorority sisters searching for them in other parts of the house sounded muffled but were getting closer. "It's too late for me." He adjusted himself. "And I can buy you a couple of minutes." Eddie squinted up. The cable guy stood rigid, but Eddie could not read his body-language on his butt. "What the Hell, man?" "I have erectile dysfunction," the cable guy answered in that same flat tone. The pizza guy and the paperboy crowded Eddie at the stairwell's bottom. "Could've fooled me," the pizza guy said as the paperboy looked up, puzzled. The cable guy sagged. "No, it's true. It's just not something I talk about. Even got a prescription for it. Never thought I'd need it, but I put one in my wallet, just in case." The rampaging Easies were close enough to pick out individual voices. The cable guy called over the rising noise, "Remember when I fell back on stairs, when we were headed for the second floor?" "Oh my God," Eddie whispered. The paperboy shrugged. "What?" "I took it," called the cable guy. He adjusted himself again and stepped into the upper hall. "So get going." The paperboy shouted from the bottom of the stairwell. "Took one what?" "Viagra," Eddie said, his face ashen. "He took a Viagra pill. His hard-on'll last another three hours, or until his heart stops, whichever comes—uh, happens—first." The pizza guy blinked back tears. "I'll never forget you, man." The paperboy choked back rage. "You selfish bastard." Eddie ran back up the stairs, grabbed the stairwell door. The cable guy took a few more steps into the hallway. Somewhere down the upper hall, a girl cried, "There he is!" Eddie and the cable guy exchanged a knowing glance. "Look at that, he's still hard," gloated another girl, "and just standing there." The cable guy nodded. Eddie slammed the door to the stairwell shut, trapping the cable guy in the upper hall. He battered the doorknob until it he heard the mechanism inside crack. He hobbled back down the stairway, cradling his throbbing fist, where the pizza guy and delivery boy looked on in horror under a single, bare light-bulb. "Keep moving," Eddie ordered. "What are we looking for?" the paperboy asked, casting about. An unfinished cement corridor and assorted basement clutter stretched in either direction. "Storm cellar door," Eddie answered. "A huge-ass building like this has got to have a storm shelter. Right?" The pizza guy nodded his agreement, then glanced up. Something thumped against the door at the top of the stair. "Did they get the extinguisher again?" The thump developed a steady rhythm and the pizza guy paled. "Oh, shit. That's his ass. C'mon kid." He clapped the paperboy on the shoulder. "Let's not waste the time he bought us." He led the paperboy down the left-hand side. Eddie picked his way over steamer trunks and boxes of bric-a-brac to the nearest doorway: laundry room. Frilly under-things hung everywhere, a panty-raid mother load. Eddie shuddered and moved on, the hallway growing darker as he moved away from the stairwell. "You guys find anything?" "Storage closet," called the paperboy. "World's largest collection of old Cosmo mags," said the pizza guy. Eddie found the next door. He rattled the rusty knob. "Please, God," he muttered, testing the door with his shoulder, "don't tell me we got all this way and the storm cellar's locked." The paperboy's voice drifted down the corridor. "What the fuck is that?" Eddie spun. The paperboy and the pizza guy stood at an open door at the far end of the corridor. They were bathed in a pale green light. "What's going on?" Eddie asked, hustling over as fast as he could. "Is it," the pizza guy wondered, staring into the doorway. "Is it even real?" Oh, no, Eddie thought. He heard the flickering buzz of florescent lighting as he approached. Light shone from the doorway ahead, casting scintillating motes of lime-colored light over every surface in the hallway. Please, no. He reached his two companions as the paperboy took his first step into the room. Eddie peeked around him. One look was all he needed. The paperboy started, "Maybe it's just a sta—" but Eddie yanked him back. "It's not," Eddie hissed. "Don't touch it. Don't go near it. And whatever you do, don't point your dick at it." "All right, all right." The paperboy massaged his shoulder, then narrowed his eyes at Eddie. "But you know something. Something you're not telling us." Eddie blocked the doorway and the contents of the room beyond. "It doesn't matter. Either way, we've got to get out of here, right?" The pizza guy moved to the paperboy's side. "You've been here the longest, and I just realized you never told us how you got here." He folded his arms, making them dance with flecks of green light. "So what's your story, Eddie?" "I don't have a story," Eddie insisted. His eyes grew accustomed to the eldritch illumination. "I'm just Eddie. And trust me, I have no fucking idea what's—the storm door." The pizza guy blinked. "Say what?" "Behind you," Eddie said, pointing. Now that his vision had adjusted, he could see the short stairway leading to a canted metal door. "It's right there. Guys, we're getting out of here." The pizza guy turned. "Holy shit. You're right. We made it!" He marched up the stairs. "I'm still a virgin," the paperboy insisted. Eddie rolled his eyes. "Only in the strictest sense." "Yeah," the pizza guy said, pushing on the door, "you've done things today that'd make Bill Clinton blush. Or give you a medal." The door creaked and moaned as metal strained against cement. "Eddie, give me a hand with this." Eddie hopped up the stairs. The pizza guy shoved one side of the storm door. A sliver of light zigzagged down the stairs as the heavy metal door shifted half an inch before falling back. "It was just held by a sliding bolt," the pizza guy laughed, "but it's heavy as Hell." Eddie shouldered up against the other side of the door. He turned to the pizza guy. "On the count of three?" "Sure," the pizza guy answered, "but we're, you know, buck naked." "So?" said Eddie. He gave the pizza guy a celebratory punch on the shoulder. "We're outta here!" The paperboy mounted the foot of the stair. "Hurry up, guys, that thing in there's giving me the creeps and, well, a boner." "One," Eddie said, shifting his weight. He grinned like an idiot. "Two." The pizza guy tested his handhold on the door. Eddie breathed deep. "Three!" He pushed. Both sides of the door flew open, hinges squealing and sparks flying. Eddie and the pizza guy belly-flopped onto the grass. Eddie squinted in the sudden flare of sunlight until a long shadow fell over him, coasting wide to cover a huge swath of the lawn, as if cast by an encroaching alien starship. "Oh, hello, Eddie. You've made a friend, I see. That's good." Eddie punched the ground. "No, no, no." He turned his head. "I was so close." Red Mary Jane jelly clogs skipped through the grass, stopping inches away from his eyes. "Aw, I'm sorry, Eddie. Was your friend close, too?" Eddie looked up at a pair of legs the color of a cherry creamsicle. "Don't you two worry. I'll help you finish." Black Cherry swooped in. Eddie's stomach dropped. She flipped him over onto his back with one wing claw, pinned the pizza guy's arms to the ground with the other. The pizza guy glared, murder in his eyes. "What did you do, Eddie?" Black Cherry clucked, poking and prodding the pizza guy as if inspecting ripening fruit. A pair of long, black, braided hair extensions dangled from one of her hands. The pizza guy hissed, "What. Did. You. Do?" "Nothing." Eddie choked back tears. "I did nothing. I...I showed up for work." "And I'm so glad you did, Eddie," Black Cherry said. She stood up, hands on hips, chest outthrust. "Because I'm starved." "What the Hell's goin' on?" The paperboy tromped up the storm cellar stairs and into the sun before his eyes nearly popped out of his head. "Oh, fuck me." Black Cherry tipped her head, the miniature pair of wings above her ears pricking up. "Okay!" * * * * "So," SB said, wringing the last of the strawberry spooge from her hair, "all that high-minded talk about 'existential monogamy' is really just a rationalization of your fetish for—" "For mutual, simultaneous orgasm," Yves said, nodding, "yes." He shimmied the picnic blanket over his butt, hoping it would serve as an impromptu towel. Instead, Yves got the strangest impression that he was polishing his own ass with a chamois. "Although I prefer to think that my fetish partakes in my philosophy, rather than one being the reason for the other. I don't buy into the idea of the whole..." He made chopping motions with his hand. "Separating the mind from the body thing. Is that bad?" "I can think of more selfish fetishes than wanting to cum together," SB leered, ogling Yves' derriere. Yves returned a smirk. "Unless you can shrink that thing between your legs down a few—dozen—notches, you ain't getting any of this." He dropped the blanket and slapped his ass. "But it's sooo shiny!" "The palm sisters and their ten lovely assistants are itching for another go," Yves said, gesturing lewdly with both hands. SB pouted, "Today's been a parade of ass, each juicier than the last, and it's all hands-off." "I never said anything about hands off," Yves laughed. SB hummed thoughtfully, furled the fingers of her right hand, and a knurled, pink dildo sprouted to fill them. Yves' cock twitched. "Can you feel with that thing?" "If I leave it unlocked," SB answered, "yeah." She sighed and the dildo zipped out of existence. "But it isn't the same." Yves bent over to retrieve his sword, taking care not to flaunt his rear end in SB's face. The pale sword had struck a flat rock where he had dropped it, slicing through the stone and into the earth beneath. Yves pulled the sword from the ground and the stone crumbled to powder. He inspected the bare blade. "How do I clean this thing?" "Liminal zero friction coefficient," was all SB said. "I don't clean this thing," Yves translated. "Would you make me a scabbard?" He turned to her. "Do you have enough nanomek?" "Normally, no," SB said, and pressed her palms together in a dreamy-genie gesture. "With most guys, the nanomek-sperm exchange rate is strictly two-for-one. But with guys like you and Dee?" Her hands parted. A curving, coral-colored scabbard grew in the space between them. She tossed Yves the scabbard. He caught it and sheathed the pale sword in a single, lightning-quick motion. SB gaped at him like a crushing schoolboy, then licked her tongue across her teeth. "Mm. For men like you and Dee, meliae offer ten-for-one sales." SB bent to retrieve her dress, making sure Yves got an eyeful of strawberry-banana flavored ass. "Need anything else?" She feigned fumbling with the dress, her rump wobbling in the air. "A new car." SB pushed her cock to one side so she could gaze up at him upside-down through her legs. "Do you have any idea," she said slowly, "how many more times you'd have to cum inside me to create enough nanomek to make a car? Especially considering your cum-together fetish?" "My weekends are free for the next few months," Yves confessed. "If I can save the world from Cherry Cupcake, that is. Tomoe would have to stick to her voyeurism, though." SB's upside-down smile upturned into a frown. "Yves, there's something we need to talk about." "Yeah, I figured." He took up the picnic blanket. "It's not even wet. SB, can you reshape something after you've made it?" "Sure. But, Yves..." "Too bad it's plaid." "Color's not a problem." SB moved close and took his hand. "Quit stalling. How much do you know already?"      ["...Gawain killed Yvain, and Dee will kill you..."] "I know the punch line." Yves bundled the sword and scabbard in the blanket, did not like the way it looked, and started unwrapping it. "But I also know that Dee changed the joke. Cherry's supposed to be the spurned, older woman, like a fairytale witch-queen or something." Yves tried wrapping the sword again but gave up halfway. "Hell, Cherry wants to be the spurned, older woman, but she can't do that, not without a time machine." He blinked in alarm. "I don't have to worry about time travel, do I?" "Not unless Mata Hari shows up," SB glowered. Yves heard the edge in SB's voice and dropped the subject. "Cherry wants to be something she's not, and it's driven her batshit insane. Out of her gourd." Where had he heard that before? He shook off the reverie. "She wasn't her master's first," he continued. "She..." The blanket unraveled. The pale sword and coral scabbard clattered to the ground. "No." SB moved closer, embracing him, trapping his arms. "I think you've got the full picture now."      ["...No wonder that Black Cherry twat is out of her gourd..."] "No." His mouth soured with the taste of copper. He tried to pull away but SB held him fast. "Let go." "This is one time you need to separate your mind from your body, Yves," she said, refusing to budge. "You have to think it and remember it, without reliving or becoming it."      ["...'Master' is gay..."] Yves lost all control. He flailed and howled, kicked and swore. SB took all the abuse and would not let go. "What are you feeling, Yves?" she demanded, "What are you feeling right now?" The word welled up and he spat it out. "Rage." Once named, it did not feel as deadly and wrong. "This is rage." "'Rage,'" SB whispered, dropping back. "'Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles'." Yves rediscovered his center. He slung his sword over one shoulder, the spun-lace insulate blanket over the other. "What would you have me do?" Relief washed over SB's face. "Someone needs to die today, Yves." * * * * I don't ask for much, I only want your trust, And you know it don't come easy. —Ringo Starr (with George Harrison), It Don't Come Easy * * * * It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 02 Act Six: Second Helpings Chapter Two: Every Piece of Me "…Well, Dee?" Eurydice was asking, punctuating each word with a surreptitious, molten kiss on the tip of his dick, sparking jolts of afterglow. His hips twitched, trying to turn aside out of instinct, but Eurydice clamped her thighs around his knees and held fast. "Is it time?" Raspberry slathered Dee's chest with sex. Her ass slid over his nipples as she craned her neck to leer at him, her elfin ears wiggling in an expression both girlish and incredibly lewd. He could see Eurydice through Raspberry's lavender, translucent tummy. The green girl was gazing cross-eyed at his cock, coaxing his erection skyward with little kisses and burning exhalations. He glanced up, his head pivoting in Tomoe's lap. Her face, framed in a mane of raven hair long enough to tickle Dee's nose, loomed high above honey-brown breasts. She winked, gave his neck a little squeeze with her legs, and his head was trapped in a tree-trunk vise. CeeCee stood beside her, contemplating a plucked sunflower, its saucer-sized head filled with thousands of sticky seeds. Her mouth yawned and she popped the entire flower in her mouth, seeds, petals, three-foot stalk and all. She munched, looked about as if searching for something else to eat until her eyes fell on Dee's crotch, and she mimed an expression of dawning discovery. Eurydice gave a polite cough. "I said, 'Is it time?'" Tomoe, CeeCee, and Raspberry stared at Dee. A gentle breeze stirred the flowerbed. Dee gulped, "Um. Maybe?" Dee felt Eurydice stiffen, then relax. "Raz," she commanded, "shut that man up," and sword-swallowed his cock. "Yes, ma'am!" Raspberry saluted and slipped her slick ass up Dee's neck, over his chin, and onto his face. Raspberry's orchid-petal pussy touched Dee's lips and he saw stars. The honey of Raspberry's sex was tarter and sweeter than the finest rhubarb pie. He was helpless not to eat. Raspberry shifted her plastic-perfect ass against Dee's face until she rode him cheek-to-cheek. "So that's what a solid tongue feels like," she said. "Not bad, but CeeCee is bet…Oh." Dee found her clitoris "Oh, h-holy shit." She gaped down at Dee through her own gelled flesh. "Oh, where the fuck have you been all my life you fucking bastard!" She ground down, swearing a blue streak while her pussy painted a purple swath across Dee's chin. "I ain't never," she panted, "ever standing up again, swear to fucking God." She threw her head back, studding Tomoe's chest with amethysts. "Nng—fuck—cumming—again." She kicked and gnashed her teeth, falling backward between Tomoe's breasts. "Bastard. Motherfucker. More." Eurydice's throat pulsed and thrummed around his cock—always swallowing, swallowing, swallowing—while Raspberry's succulent nectar and acid tongue rained down upon him. Eurydice raked her fingers over Dee's ribs, squashed her breasts around his thighs. The barrage of sex sent Dee over the edge and into a screaming orgasm. Dee's cries bubbled through her inner gel and Raspberry bolted upright. "Whoa!" She eyed Eurydice. "Hey, did you just make him cum?" Eurydice only grinned and giggled around Dee's shaft as she suckled the dregs of his climax down. "That's two for you. In a row. And nuffin' for me." "I'm the one just standing here," CeeCee said. Tomoe cleared her throat. "I've got jelly all over my boobs. Hell of a show, though, girl. Damn." "I'm not done yet," Raspberry pouted, rocking slowly. She folded her arms. "And the lime's bogarting all the baby-gravy." The seal imprisoning Dee's dick in Eurydice's throat gurgled and she pulled her mouth free, tonguing the tip of his cock, catching the last gob of cum as his glans escaped her lips. Dee shocked and shuddered. "Pfft," Eurydice dismissed, "he's got plenty. Don't you, baby?" Dee, his face still buried in raspberry heaven, tried to protest but only managed, "Bff." "'Course ya do. Besides…" Eurydice shrugged, her syrupy lips descending toward Dee's captive prick, her gaze rolling up to stay locked with Raspberry's. "I'm better at this than you are." Raspberry froze, then purpled. She rocked forward, peeling away from Dee's jam-plastered face, until she and the green girl were nose to nose. "What did you just say?" Dee said, "Oh, shit." "You heard me," Eurydice purred before treating herself to a mouthful of half-hard cock. "'Oo canth handle the dich. Wah'ch dis…" She deep-throated Dee with a greedy hum. Raspberry wrenched Dee's dick from Eurydice's mouth. "Dee," she said as Dee writhed and gasped. "Have you ever noticed Miss Cum-Chugger here has only one blowjob Technique?" Her lavender fingers wormed around his lime-lubed root. "There's more than one?" Dee panted, dick responding to Raspberry's ministrations. Two fingers, he thought, she's just using two fingers. Raspberry pushed and pinched. Exhausted, still in afterglow, Dee found himself growing hard. I think I'm in trouble. "Thousands," Raspberry hissed, wrapping her hand around his reborn erection. She went cockeyed as her lids slid shut. "Jesus fuck that's solid." Her thumb stroked his shaft, never touching the crown of his glans. "This is no dick, this is an honest-to-shit, solid fucking rock." "Nothing tops the Bowling Ball Through Eight Feet of Garden Hose Technique," muttered Eurydice. Dee thought he heard an undercurrent of triumph in her petulance and knew he was in trouble. Raspberry sighed, chewed her lip, and rolled her palm over the head of Dee's dick like she were polishing a doorknob. "I know limes've got the greatest cunts, but nobody, nowhere has a mouth like mine." Deep trouble. Eurydice tipped her head, meeting Dee's anxious gaze. He had never seen a more wicked smile in his life. "Go through them all, Raz," she said, "I'm sure Dee'll tell us whose Technique is best." Deep, deeeep trouble. "She's kidding, Raz," Dee said. Eurydice cocked her brow and angled Dee's dick up toward Raspberry's mouth with a fingertip. "Eurydice, please" he said, "tell Raz that you're kid—" The lavender girl eased her ass back and Dee was smothered in steamy, creamy raspberry pie. "Dnf." "Quiet, kid," Raspberry growled at him, "I'm getting ready for work." Her hand slipped down his shaft, her thumb shivering across the very tip of his dick, toying with the extremely sensitive slit. "Gotta prime the pump with some yummy nummy pre-cummy, then I'm gunna milk Mine like we're goin' down to cow town." Dee jerked under Raspberry's electric touch. Tomoe squeezed her legs and reached down to massage Dee's shoulders, a tenderness reinforced by an iron grip. In his weakened state, her touch proved immobilizing. "Aw, poor baby," Tomoe said. "So tense. Your life sure must suck." "Actually," Eurydice said, fist against her cheek, watching enrapt. Raspberry flexed her jaw and brought her mouth down around her thumb, scraping her teeth across the ridge of Dee's glans and slurping up the strings of sticky pre-ejaculate she teased from his cock with her fingers. "I think it's about to blow." A fluttering tongue replaced Raspberry's teasing thumb as she screwed her mouth onto Dee's knob, her hand swiveling around his shaft. Her jaw was muscular, her teeth sharp. Dee felt the sweet sting of flowing precum grow stronger. Raspberry groaned in depraved delight. She pressed her ass atop the bridge of his nose and humped his chin, coating his face and neck with runnels of purple honey. She slobbered up his cock in earnest, her hand slick around its root. Dee lanced his tongue into her sex. A muffled, guttural chuckle rose in her lavender throat. She gyrated in furious little circles, grinding her clit against his chin. Her lips latched around Dee's glands, her fist blurred around his shaft, pumping faster and sucking harder until Dee's orgasm crested and crashed through him. Raspberry cackled as Dee came, her face split into a jack-o'-lantern grin. She aimed his prick at her gaping mouth and painted her tongue and lips with spurts of silver. Her thighs clenched and relaxed around his head, aftershocks of her own orgasm. She smeared his spunk around her lips with her fingers, ran her tongue over her teeth, and laughed with a mouth full of cum. "Ha! Now I can get started." Dee's unbelieving outcry—"Wff?"—was swallowed by her pussy and his deflating dick vanished down her throat. A few years ago, one of Dee's ex-girlfriends got curious about something she had read on the Internet and chewed on a couple of curiously strong breath-mints before giving him a blowjob. After a surprisingly pleasant first thirty seconds or so, Dee spent the next fifteen minutes hopping around her apartment with a wet washcloth in his crotch. Galatea's seltzer-blowjob had been as intense but ticklish and sparkling. None of it had prepared him for the full onslaught of a Raspberry deep-throating. Dee's dick could not have felt more stimulated if Raspberry had chewed an entire tin of breath-mints, chased them down with a few pouches of Pop Rocks and a liter of cola, and then hooked herself up to a car battery for good measure. Dee lurched, breaking free of Tomoe's leggy headlock, arms windmilling, his erection resurging just as fast. Raspberry whooped like a cowgirl and rode him like a mechanical bull, legs wrapped around Dee's head, hands clinched around the base of his cock. Dee sat upright, Raspberry dangling from his neck, the world's most fuckable albatross. Her tits squashed against his abdomen and her face dug into his crotch. She released his dick from her throat and crowed, "Yippie-kay-yay! How'd you like that, motherfucker?" "Wow." Dee teetered, thunderstruck, between shock and awe. "Wuh…Wow." "What the Hell did you do to him?" Eurydice demanded, still glued to Dee's legs but quivering, her gel-flesh rocked by Dee's twitches and kicks. Raspberry shuddered. "My mouth ain't even halfway done nanogasming, thanks to Dee's super-spooge." She pushed up with her hands and cinched her legs tight around Dee's head, ramming her streaming sex back into his mouth, and prostrating him back onto the ground and into Tomoe's lap. "That was just a few thousand nanogasms," she said, massaging Dee's hard dick with both hands. "Let's see what Mine thinks of a million of 'em." Her lips curled into a salacious snarl. Raspberry scarfed up Dee's entire cock, drenching it in a tempest of nanogasmic gel. She encircled his root with her fingers. She disgorged slowly, pumping down with her hands while pulling up with her mouth, lips and tongue lazing over every inch of his dick as she withdrew. She sucked on the head, a demented Lolita with a well-loved lollipop, before gobbling his cock down for another slow pump-and-pull. "Holy shit," Tomoe said as Raspberry's pump-and-pulls grew faster and sloppier, "I ought to be taking notes." "Jesus wept," Eurydice said, head bobbing as she followed the action like a spectator at a professional ping pong ball championship. "Raz, you'd stop if Dee said the safeword, right?" Raspberry's slavering filled the field with syrupy slurch noises. "Right?" Dee gurgled, lost in the sensorial storm of Raspberry's cosmic sixty-nine. He wrapped his arms around the lavender ass astride his face, kissed her clitoris into his mouth, and clung for dear life. Raspberry's eyes rolled back into her head. She went berserk, pump-and-pulling in double time, then treble. Dee's onrushing orgasm nearly smashed his brain to bits. He arced in a grand mal seizure ellipse and he came, hard and wild, hips bucking. Raspberry neither slowed nor skipped a beat. She pump-and-pulled, milking Dee through spurt after uncontrollable spurt. "And that," Raspberry gasped when she finally allowed Dee's dick to flop free of her throat, "is the 'Sucking the Chrome off a Caddy' Technique." She wiped her oozy mouth with the back of her hand, trembling and giddy with nanogasm. "Well, that's one down." "That counts as two," Eurydice scolded, "and that makes us even. So it's time for Dee to fess up." She peered around Raspberry's tummy. Raspberry threw Dee a harrowing glance over her shoulder and bore her full weight onto his face. "Dee," Eurydice said, ignoring the squishy sounds rising up from Raspberry's crotch as she rode him. "What kind of man are you, Chrome or Bowling Ball?" Dee slowly raised one hand, fingers splayed. "Ffth." Raspberry frowned. "Wuzzat mean?" she asked. Dee's arm drooped down into a nearby flower patch. "Dee pled the Fifth Amendment," Eurydice sighed, shaking her head. "He's not going to tell us." Raspberry threw her hands in the air. "Hasn't he seen any porn before?" "Yeah," Eurydice said, propping herself up by the elbows. "Sure. Lots." "Oh." Raspberry perked up, bouncing atop Dee's forehead. "So he knows what happens when the guy says he can't decide." Emerald eyes met amethyst. "Tag team," the green and lavender girls sang. "Come on down, Raz," Eurydice said, sitting up on her knees, straddling Dee's thighs. "Dee's gunna want to see this." "Okay." Raspberry scooted around and knelt by Dee's side, then glanced at the surrounding girls. "But no one better call dibs on his face. I've got squatter's rights." Dee blinked, eyelashes sticky with essence of raspberry. "Guys, wait." Eurydice and Raspberry shared shy smiles, bent toward one another. "I wasn't really thinking…" The two girls kissed, a tentative brushing of parted lips. "That is, I didn't really mean…" Eurydice pulled away, eyes heavy lidded and downcast, but her smile was sly and her mouth met Raspberry's again. Green fingers wound through orchid hair. "Um, at least, I don't think I really meant…" "Dude," said Tomoe, staring, as Raspberry and Eurydice's delicate kisses lingered and emboldened. "Shut up." Dee swallowed. "I'm trying." The green and lavender girls sighed and cooed and kissed open-mouthed. "But it's like I don't know how." Purple and jade tongues danced. The translucency of their gelled cheeks heightened Dee's impression of bearing witness to something remarkably tender and intimate. His manhood rose to the occasion. "Wow," Dee said. Raspberry slid her arms around Eurydice's shoulders. Their deep soul kiss stretched longer and longer without pause for breath. "Oh, wow." Together, kiss unbroken, the green and lavender girls slowly bowed their heads down toward Dee's rising dick. "Uh. Wait." They nuzzled Dee's glans between their chins, their mouths working against each other in languorous, drawn-out smooches, chewing on each other's tongues. "Wait a minute." The stealthy caresses of their necks against Dee's cock set his pulse pounding. Their elastic gel-flesh gave against his dick. His glans slid upward and was trapped between their lower jaws, a tight but oh-so-soft fit. Dee fell dead quiet. Eurydice shivered and moaned in the sudden silence. Raspberry squirmed, as if infected by the thrill in Eurydice's flesh. Without unlocking their lips, they inched downward, and Dee's dick was in their kiss. At first, the opposing suction of Eurydice and Raspberry's lips and the liquid lashing of their tongues was so gentle and luscious it drove Dee mad. He trembled with the impulse to feel more but was too overcome by the sensation to move. The green and lavender girl's eyes flew open at Dee's first spasm within their mouths, but their startled gazes soon dimmed, eyes hazing over. They mashed their mouths together, kissing harder. Dee groaned and tipped his hips up, desperate for the double-suckle. Eurydice keened, her jellied dreadlocks flowed down her back like green icing from a cake left out in the rain. Beaded sweat, sparkling like precious amethyst, streaked Raspberry's flesh. The two girls' suckling became ravenous and their faces lost focus. The tension of yet another approaching orgasm welled up within him. The pressure building in his abdomen and groin was so strong, the sensations surrounding his dick so strange, it made Dee dizzy, his thoughts swimmy and unsure. Raspberry and Eurydice devoured one another in the ferocity of their kiss. As if in a dream, Dee felt their mouths melt and merge into a vortex of need and greed and velvet and lightning and—cumming, cumming, cumming—He gushed in a shattering climax, his body jolting as he came, over and over and out of control. The green and lavender girls slithered apart, tongues and mouths ungluing, their runny-honey faces trailing sticky tendrils. They splat down on either side of him, gulping and crooning as they reformed. "We," Raspberry wheezed, "we just—woo—we just invented a new Technique." A cascade of nanogasm transported her into giggling, helpless pleasure. " Chrome—ha—Chrome Bowling—Ha!—Chrome Bowling Ball—hahaha..." "So much," Eurydice murmured, planting kisses on Dee's ribs and bellybutton. "You came so fucking much." A shadow fell over the three of them. They glanced up. CeeCee's eyes were nothing like the Sun. "And there'd better be plenty left." Dee draped the crook of his arm over his eyes but did not bother hiding his smile. "Lord all-mighty." "Yeah," Raspberry said, pulling herself together, arms high and chest outthrust in a glorious, rise-and-shine stretch. "I've got more nanomek in me than ever." She relaxed, one hand falling close to Dee's groin. "But I'm still a virgin." "Oh, come on," Dee protested. "I'm serious!" Raspberry cupped his balls. "I need good, hard cherry popping. Real bad." Her fingers stole up his shaft, working their revitalizing magic. "Real soon." Eurydice sat up and swatted Raspberry's hand away. "Nuh-uh. That's Mine." Her nose twitched. "There's only so much I'm willing to share." She leered up at CeeCee. "Unless you've got a better idea." Raspberry turned to Dee, her mouth puckered into childlike moue and her eyes wide and innocent. "There's a party in my cunt," she baby-talked, "and everyone's invited." CeeCee swaggered over behind Eurydice. She placed two big, buttery yellow hands on Eurydice's shoulders of polished jade. Dee was amazed how petite Eurydice appeared beside CeeCee's towering, brick house figure. Combined with the hungry, mischievous glint in the amber woman's eyes, CeeCee reminded Dee more of Galatea at that moment than Eurydice did herself. Seeing the two of them together aroused but disquieted him in a way he could not put his finger on. Raspberry had taken advantage of Eurydice's distraction and snuck her fingers around Dee's prick again. She sniggered, ears waggling, when she found him halfway hard already. "Attaboy. Just make sure you don't blow your wad over what's about to happen next." Eurydice reached up and caressed CeeCee's cheek. CeeCee turned her head and kissed the green girl's palm. "What's going to happen next?" Dee asked. CeeCee's wet kiss broadened and Eurydice's hand vanished into her mouth. Raspberry's forefinger and thumb clapped around the root of Dee's dick like a cockring. "Don't you dare cum," Raspberry hissed into his ear as Eurydice stretched her other arm up to CeeCee's face. "We want you good to the last drop. And after this, you are not going to want to piss us off." CeeCee's mouth yawned and Eurydice slid her other hand into it. CeeCee quivered and bent forward, her hands creeping down from Eurydice's shoulders to cosset her breasts. Purls of champagne cream traced over Eurydice's chest and arms. The two meliae presented a phantasmagoric tableau—CeeCee, her head bowed, standing behind Eurydice, sitting with both arms rising straight above her head until they disappeared into CeeCee's mouth—some carnal grotesquery of Hieronymus Bosch or sensual vision of William Blake. Dee felt no fear, only an anxious wonder that, over the past week, he had learned to love. And lust for, Dee admitted to himself as blood rushed into his face and groin. Damn me if Raspberry isn't right. The weirder things get, the hornier I get. What if this is as weird as it gets? It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 02 "After what?" Dee asked Raspberry, although he suspected he knew. As weird as it gets? Hardly. Eurydice's arms became sleeved in gold gossamer, her chest wreathed in spirals of Indian yellow gel. I've only just skimmed the surface of the weird. I'm not ready to dive deep, but that's exactly why I want to do it. "It's time," Eurydice said, standing up into CeeCee's waiting maw, "for you to get a huge helping of Key Lime pie." Jade arms, inlaid with gold, proceeded down CeeCee's throat as Eurydice rose to her feet. CeeCee's wide neck bulged only a bit. The amber woman rumbled her pleasure. A pale mint green flush bloomed in her chest. "How does it feel?" Dee asked when Eurydice's elbows melted into CeeCee's mouth. Eurydice swayed, her eyes dreamy. "Wow." She stood with knees bent and ass pushing against CeeCee's crotch, grinding to some slow inner beat. "So gentle." Gold filigree twisted about her thighs. "Oh, Dee, it's like the slowest, softest orgasm you could ever imagine." CeeCee loomed over Eurydice and the green girl's upper arms dissolved between CeeCee's jaws. "Is this how you felt?" CeeCee wolfed down Eurydice's hair one blade at a time, and Eurydice had to fight giggling and gasping with each chomp. "When I ate you…Ah! I mean, tried to eat you?" Raspberry's cock-ringing fingers started an idle stroking. "Can't help it," she muttered. "Jeebus, I love this dick." Dee's heart hammered. "N-no," he answered Eurydice, "not like that." "Like this?" Raspberry smirked, and enfolded Dee's dick with both hands. Dee juddered as she jacked him. "Yeah-it-was-a-lot-more-like-that." Eurydice started to admonish her: "Raz, be goo—Ooh, God." But CeeCee latched onto her head. Eurydice spun around, squashed her curves against CeeCee's marshmallowy substance, her face upturned for a fierce, moaning kiss. Dee heard Eurydice's muffled squeals of delight as she scissor-kicked off the ground, launching the last of herself into CeeCee's absorbing flesh. CeeCee staggered backward, stunned by a meal so eager to be eaten. Her belly bloated. The mint flush plumed her breasts and neck. Raspberry wrenched her hands away an instant before Dee reached the point of no return. "Nah," she said, cracking her knuckles in pantomime. Dee twinged with denied release. "From now on, you're cumming in our cunts or not at all, got it?" "You know," Tomoe sighed, relaxing her legs around Dee's head. "I'm starting to feel fifth wheelie." Something snaked through a clump of salmon chrysanthemum to her left. "Hm?" A pointed, opalescent tendril bumped against her knee. "Oh. Hey." Dee propped himself up, fascinated by the spectacle before him. The mint tint spread across CeeCee's body, transmogrifying all that it touched. Her spongy, cream-flesh jellified, developing a shimmering surface tension of milky green gel. Her belly flattened as internal fluxions redistributed the mass of her meal. Her waist tapered and legs lengthened. Her chest swelled, breasts riding higher and firmer as her shoulders climbed higher. She's ripening, Dee decided, as her hourglass figure ballooned up and out, growing ever taller and more pronounced. The two curviest girls on the planet decided that they weren't curvy enough. Her neck smoothed into an elegant pillar, her regal visage dimpled into a heart-shaped face with a cherubic leer. Loose curls of tea-green hair tumbled down her back. Her canary yellow gemstone eyes darkled into heliodor, the rarest green and golden beryl. Dee gaped, "Holy shit." The mint girl's smile smoldered. She sauntered up and stood astraddle his hips. Dee bolted, sitting upright. His chin bumped against her knee. "Holy shit." She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and blotted out the Sun. Dee goggled upward from the darkness of a total mammary eclipse. "Hole. Lee. Shit." "Why, hi," drawled Key Lime Pie. She knelt over him, sandwiching his legs between her thighs. She bent forward, lips parted, and practically bowled him over with her tits. "Whoops. Glad we're outside." She edged back, caressing the rise of her left breast. Ripples raced ahead of her fingertips. "I'm not exactly door friendly at the moment." Dee sat up again, squeezed her knee and found his voice. "I want to taste that kiss." Key Lime clucked and blushed the color of a Granny Smith apple. She bowed her head, leaning in. Dee pressed himself into her flesh—cool, firm, scrumptious—and met her lips with his, as gently as he could. It was the most exquisitely sweet kiss of his life. Key Lime's apple blush flashed down her throat. She whimpered into his mouth, then scrabbled backward. "I came." Her thighs slicked down Dee's legs with nectarous sweat. "I came. Just one kiss and I came." Dee smiled despite his escalating passion. "Welcome to Eurydice's world, CeeCee." "She loves you, Dee," Key Lime said. She reached out, hand shaking, and brushed a few ringlets of hair off his forehead. "So much." Her fingers traced the line of his jaw, his neck. "Too much." She pawed at his chest, eyes roving. "I'm frightened." Raspberry shoved her face between them. "If you hurt CeeCee, Dee, I'll kill you." She did a double take at his rampant erection. "Um. Eventually." Tomoe twined the black tendril through her fingers. "Hey, Raz." The other end of the tendril trailed off through the flowerbed. "Look-it." Raspberry's frown flip-flopped before she disappeared behind Dee. "Ooh. Whuzzat?" Kneeling around his legs, Key Lime glanced down at Dee's dick. "That's…Mine?" Dee nodded, "It's yours." She skated up to sit on his thighs, planted her palm over his heart. "Mine." Dee thought he still heard a slight hesitancy in her voice. He knew how to fix that. "Always," he said. Key Lime's gel-flesh flushed iridescent hues of green and gold. She rocked forward on her knees, pushed him supine onto the soft green bed. She towered above him, one hand flat against his chest, the other aiming Dee's dick at her dewed sex. "This is Mine," she said, dropped down, and thrust him into her. Dee arched, every instinct urging him to reciprocate the rhythm of the girl riding him. Key Lime dipped forward, spread her hand over his chest—the span of her fingers as wide as his ribcage—and held him flat. She mewled, gyring in wide circles above him. "Mine, mine, mine." She hunkered downward and enveloped his mouth with a kiss, her breasts overflowing his shoulders, trapping him up to his elbows in plush flesh, and rode faster. Dee drowned in sex, a full-body fuck. Key Lime scraped her lips over his ear. "Cum," she said, "cum quickly." She sprawled like a leopard above him and he was smothered from his neck to his ankles. "Cum quickly so I can make you cum again." Dee was wreathed with her perfumed breath and intoxicated by her words. "And again." She cradled his head in the hollow of her neck as he trembled and seized. "And again." His climax was so savage, Dee sobbed with each searing release. Key Lime exulted. "So much! Oh, Dee, you give us so much." She rolled upward to look him in the eye. "You gave Galatea love, you gave Eurydice life, you…" She blinked. "You're still hard." Dee nodded, chest heaving. "I ask a lot in return." Green-and-gold gem fire winkled in her eyes. "You're gunna get it." She looked past him. "Raz, come here." "Mm?" Raspberry popped the black tendril out of her mouth. It shuddered and swooned in her grip. Key Lime waved one hand in little circles. "Share Dee with me." Raspberry tossed the tip of the tendril way. Tomoe giggled and sprung after it. "You mean," Raspberry marveled, "I'm finally gettin' laid?" Dee smiled but Key Lime canted her hips, making him groan. "Uh-huh," Key Lime said, arms outstretched. "About fuckin' time," Raspberry snarled, leapfrogging over Dee's face and squatting on his chest. "Yves says we're living in an X-rated fairy tale, but I've shoved my cooze at every cock I've come across and didn't get dick." She craned her neck to glare at Key Lime. "If this is porn, it sucks." "Turn around," said Key Lime, her finger revolving in a little circle. Raspberry shrugged and hopped about-face, winking at Dee. "Hiya, stud-muffin." The nectar of her sex burned his bellybutton. "Have we fucked you senseless yet?" "Yes," Dee confessed, "Yes. God, yes." What had Tomoe said? "Going 'demiurgic' totally wiped me out." Raspberry nodded, frowning in mock sympathy, fingertips kissing across his sternum and nipples. His head spun. "But..." Key Lime bucked against him once, swaddled his cock in the silk furnace of her pussy and bundled his legs in her heavy but giving thighs. "But your nanomek," she said, bucking again. Blood sang in Dee's ears and his erection rose anew. "Won't let you stop cumming. We've got you for as long as we want." Key Lime wrapped an arm around Raspberry and squished the lavender girl against her tall tummy. "Too bad the world's ending tonight," Key Lime purred, "or we'd make you cum for weeks." Key Lime rocked her body behind Raspberry's. "Instead," Key Lime sighed, "we gotta pump it out." Raspberry swayed in time. "All of it out." The two girls lap-danced above Dee's cock, teasing it to bursting. "All of your cum out in one. Big. Blow." Note to self. Some corner of Dee's mind was still capable of rational thought. Don't let CeeCee eat Eurydice again. Raspberry wriggled her shoulders. Key Lime nestled her closer. "Someone's gotta move so I can get laid," Raspberry said, "and no eating or merging or any of that crap. I want," she declared, pointing at Dee's face, "that man's dick." She pointed to her pubis. "In this here cunt, right now, or someone's gunna pay." Key Lime reached down, wrapped one hand around each of Raspberry's thighs. "I have an idea," she said. She began to ride Dee again, slow and rolling. "Well, CeeCee had the idea first." Raspberry tipped her head back to look up at the mint goddess. "Whut?" "It will be just like the Chrome Bowling Ball kiss," Key Lime promised, drawing Raspberry back until the lavender girl's ass slid over Dee's groin and pressed against the delta of Key Lime's crotch. "But with a different pair of lips." Raspberry's mouth puckered into a haunting smile. "That is so wicked." She wiggled her butt backward. Key Lime's gel-flesh dimpled deeper and deeper around the lavender girl until she seemed to sink sideways. "CeeCee, you've got to eat Lime more often." Key Lime's surface tension crested and broke around Raspberry in a gentle wave. From her thighs to her midriff, Raspberry slipped behind a curtain of green and gold. Key Lime never stopped her tidal ride but Dee felt a delicious change in pressure around his shaft. Raspberry startled. "Whoa, is that his dick?" Key Lime sighed, "Mm-hm." Raspberry's mouth worked in silence while something rounded and firm bumped and rubbed against Dee's dick. Her ass. Her ass inside Key Lime. "It's so hard," Raspberry whimpered. "So fucking hard." She clawed his ribs, dry humping him between the globes of her butt even as Key Lime fucked him. It felt too strange, too much, too good for him to process and he came in a torrent all over Raspberry's ass and into Key Lime's pussy. Raspberry screeched, "No!" She tore at her hair, head whipping. "In me! He has to cum in me." She thrust herself backward as Dee came. The rushing, gushing around his dick soared. Dee was still in mid-spasm when Raspberry impaled her pussy upon him. "Again," Raspberry sobbed, and she and Key Lime moved in tandem. "Again-again-again-again." Dee's dick hardened almost at once. His heart raced, his breath and body burned. Every muscle quaked and although each orgasm felt like his very last, felt like a final, delectable release of the last dregs of his vitality, he knew Key Lime was right; he could do this for weeks, wanted to do this forever. Some athletes lived for the Runner's High. Dee thought he had discovered the Cummer's. Another orgasm sizzled through him and Raspberry howled, gnashed her teeth and raked his belly. Her rhythm jerked and slowed while Key Lime continued her gentle, endless undulation, a perpetual-motion fucking. Raspberry crashed backward against Key Lime and her body disappeared into the mint wall of gel-flesh with nary a ripple. Key Lime whickered, orgiastic, and two lavender arms shot out from above her hips. Their grip was iron, their strength irresistible. They hauled Dee up to a sitting position, gathered him into a clinch, and pulled him in. He knew he was safe. He closed his eyes and let it happen. The mint gel-flesh pressed around him in a familiar, traveling smooch that spread from his belly up his chest and neck, then over his face and shoulders and around his ribs—but this time it did not end. The body-kiss went on and on, covering every part of him, even behind his ears and up the crack of his butt. When he was immersed in Key Lime's voluptuousness, when the traveling smooch had no place else to go, it just kept kissing and kissing. Not just hungry, but happy. Equal parts love and greed, content and need. A true soul kiss. Amidst the creamy maelstrom came Raspberry's hot and lithe form. Her chest welded against his, her legs locked behind his back. They were both awash in the deluge of Key Lime's eternal kiss. Her lips met his, her tart tongue darting, and he heard her. I said I was going to make you cum harder than you ever felt in your life, and I meant it. You ready, solid boy? Dee nodded, and whispered into her mouth, "Always." Raspberry took up an opposing beat, moving in counterpoint to the current of Key Lime's kiss and to the rhythm of her sex around him. When Key Lime pumped down on Dee's dick, Raspberry ambled up. When Key Lime rocked up, Raspberry dragged herself down and drove his cock deep into her. Dee thought he would last forever, but the truth was, in the face of a simultaneous, three-meliae, full-body fuck, he lasted about thirty seconds. Just like a man, all three meliae chorused as Dee came and came until he toppled backward and into the cool air and bright sunlight, insensate. * * * * "Lookin' good, Jo." Jo Echo woke from her doze in the flowerbed. "Tomoe, right? Unyx said to call you Tomoe." Tomoe smiled down at her, nodding. Rivers of black hair flowed over her shoulders, spilling down and piling atop Jo's chest. The exotic fabric of Jo's coppery dress, stretched to its limits over what Jo resignedly considered her "newly huge boobs," conducted the tactile sensation of Tomoe's hair kissing across its surface, perhaps even amplified it. The newly huge boobs' newly monstrous nipples stiffened, tenting the material of the dress in a way Jo would find uproarious if she were watching it in a porn flick instead of experiencing it on her own chest. The fiery tingle made her feel powerful yet haywire. Jo still moped. "I'll never play volleyball again." Unyx snoozed beside her, her ebony serpentine trunk trailing away through the flowers. She treated Jo to a radiant, close-eyed, sleepy smile. "Mm, look in a mirror before you quit the team for good, 'kay?" Jo moved to brush Tomoe's hair away but found herself stroking it instead. Totally haywire. So why don't I hear any blood music? Jo murmured, "Where'd you come from?" Christ, did I just say a pick-up line? "Here and there." Tomoe shrugged one shoulder. "But just now?" She raised one hand. Unyx's tail-tip was woven between her fingers and wagging like a puppy's. "I believe I was invited." Unyx stretched, her mouth forming a little O in a yawn so adorable it made Jo’s mouth water. She smacked her lips and sat up, arms lazing over her ophidian thighs. “Hello, Tomoe. What are you grinning at?” “Your face. I know that face.” Unyx arched a brow and her liquid black latex raccoon mask flowed out to fill it. "That’s a meliae-jism O-face." Tomoe’s teeth flashed. "SB gets it all the time." She turned back to Jo. "So I guess those are for me," she said, gazing down at Jo’s nipples pointing up at her face. "But from you, not Black Cherry." She leaned down until her lips were inches away from Jo’s own. "How do you like them apples? Or should I say cantaloupes?" Oh, God, maybe she’s right. I’m so confused. What do I do, what do I? Jo blurted, “I have fifteen dollars.” I solicit her like a hooker? Where the fuck did that come from? Tomoe sat back, her smile unreadable. "Really?" Jo blushed and stammered so it was Unyx who nodded and said, "Three five dollar, even." "Well, now," Tomoe said, and glanced over to the tree where her purse still hung, "I just so happen to have a few things you might be interested—" "Unyx," Raspberry interrupted, swaggering across the bed toward them, her face plastered with the smile of someone serenely satiated. "I think the phrase is: 'It's time.'" "Dammit," Tomoe huffed. "What does a girl have to do to earn five dollar around here?" Jo had not seen Raspberry up close before and was mesmerized by her beauty: skin of amethyst, lavender hair in gentle curls like thousands of orchid petals, a face of classic perfection. "Well, fuck," said the mouth in that face, glaring down at Jo and Tomoe, "did the Titty Fairy hand out extra cup sizes when I wasn't looking?" Tomoe sat up and stuck out her chest. "Yep." Her boobs bobbled. "Jealous?" "Nah." Raspberry knelt by Jo's side, opposite Unyx. "I love the feel of being held in one hand." Jo felt very crowded and her blush deepened. Without ceremony, Raspberry reached down, plucked up Jo's hand and plopped it atop one ample, amethyst breast. "What do you think, solid girl?" "I…I…" Jo fumbled but Raspberry encouraged her to squeeze, pressing her hand over Jo's. Gel-flesh dimpled and flowed, surface firm but substance softer than any living thing Jo had ever felt. "Wow." "Ha!" Raspberry let her hand fall. Jo lingered, fingers questing, until Raspberry's nipple hardened into a glassy pebble, snapping Jo out of her fascination and back into embarrassment. "Eurydice's gunna like you," Raspberry said, and Jo could not tell if her tone was threatening or promising. "A lot." "Where is the Titty Fairy anyway?" Unyx asked, twisting on her trunk. "The yang-bath's long gone." "You mean Eurydice?" Raspberry asked. "No. Dee." Unyx's raccoon mask flowed wide and she laughed in a fast, breathy voice. "Dee – the – Titty – Fairy – hee!" Raspberry hooked her thumb behind her. "Green Man's taking a little nap. Well deserved, for once. The man said he'd spew a bucket of spunk, and, by God, he delivered." Jo felt a little flurry of panic when she followed Raspberry's pointing thumb to the other side of the flowerbed and glimpsed a strapping, Junoesque woman the color of mint cream swaying toward them. "I mean," Raspberry continued as the mint woman came near, "he totally crashed his yoghurt truck. I am absolutely stuffed." As an Epsilon Zeta sorority sister, Jo had lived in a house crammed with gaggles of girls for three years now, but even when she was a freshman and they slept two-to-a-bed, it had been routine. There had never been any real tension, no moments worthy of writing up in a letter to Penthouse Forum. Surrounded on all sides by women possessed of a confidence and sexuality so intense it was almost comical, Jo felt ready to write a Forum special exposé. Jell-O girls, snake-women, and amazons. It should be downright laughable…but not when it's happening to me. Unyx peered up, way up, at the newcomer. "CeeCee?" "And Eurydice," said the mint woman. "We're 'Key Lime' for the moment. With CeeCee's help, Eurydice can stay glued together for what's coming next." "What's next?" Jo asked, butterflies boiling in her stomach. It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 02 Raccoon mask vanishing, Unyx unfurled in another scrumptious yawn, rising into the air on her gleaming, ophidian trunk until she drew eye-to-eye with Key Lime. "Fucking my brains out," Unyx smirked. Jo could not decide if she were relieved or disappointed to find herself outside the center of attention. "More fucking?" she asked. "For God's sake, why?" "We—Unyx—are going to need a lot more nanomek," Unyx answered, "if we're going to cure the Easies and stop the Frenzy." Raspberry, who had been contemplating the rise and fall of Jo's newly huge boobs as she breathed, glanced up. "Cure the who and stop the what?" "We've got to save the world, remember?" Key Lime reminded her. Eyes the color of golden delicious apples never left Unyx's. "Oh, right," Raspberry said, "that." She gave Jo a wink and went back to ogling. "I've been kinda distracted lately. Jeez, solid girl, you've got legs all the way up to your head." "Don't worry," Unyx said, "We've got a plan. Kinda complicated, though." "But there's fucking," Raspberry insisted. Key Lime and Unyx smoldered at one another. "Oh, yeah," said Unyx. Raspberry shrugged, "Then don’t bother me with details. Just aim me at a cock or a twat and say 'Fire'." "Bad choice of words," Unyx sighed. Key Lime brought her lips close. Unyx hesitated a microsecond away from a green-gold kiss. "You're not going to snowball us, right?" "Ooh, wicked," said Raspberry. She set her jaw and her throat flushed the creamy color of a raspberry Italian soda. "I would," she added, her mouth sounding suspiciously full. "You wan' shome? Tashte's great. Dee'sh filling. Ha!" "Not that way, honey." Key Lime bussed her lips against Unyx's left cheek and the obsidian Goth shivered her shoulders. "Ursula and Nyx are refined girls." Key Lime tipped her head and blew sweetly citrus perfumed air over Unyx's neck. The shiver shot down from her shoulders and through her tail, the tip curling into a trembling ball in the palm of Tomoe's hand. Unyx whimpered. "What. What was that?" "Refined Vitamin Dee," Key Lime breathed, "pure yang, courtesy of Dee and me." And she kissed Unyx full on the lips. * * * * Unyx lost herself in Key Lime's kiss and the flood of nanogasm that followed. Key Lime nudged Unyx's lips apart with her tongue and breathed new life into her mouth. Unyx pressed close until their noses nuzzled. The air passing between them was sultry and pregnant with energy. Unyx inspired. A rarified fluid, lighter and smoother than smoke, ghosted down Unyx's throat. The part of her that was Nyx recognized the substance viscerally, knew it by its taste—this was nourishment and power of a dizzying potency—and craved to feed. The part of her that was Ursula identified it intellectually—this was quintessence, what the alchemists of the West called the fifth element and the doctors of the East called yang—and became fascinated. Together, Unyx named it in the language of poetry—this was firmament, the material of Heaven, this was love—and grew as horny as Hell. She kissed Key Lime back, open mouthed and greedy, onyx fingers gooshing in Key Lime's spongy mane as she inhaled more and more. Nanogasm rioted as nanomek replicated in exponentially bigger bursts. Blood music screamed as the novilunium waxed. A billion wires burned within her, superstrings of sexual tension, signaling the imminence of the hardest, most amazing orgasm of her life. Then Key Lime broke the kiss and pushed her back by the shoulders. "Don't cum," she said. Unyx swayed on her serpentine trunk as her nanogasm-mad mind tried to process these two words. All those shining wires, more and more and burning brighter with each passing moment, made orgasm an imperative. Unyx started to speak, "Wha—?" but Key Lime kissed her again and Unyx could only croon. "Nn. Mm!" A single pre-orgasmic tremor, a bodyquake, shattered across both her human and gelled flesh. Then another. Key Lime pushed her away again. "Don't cum. You mustn't." "She shan't, she shan't," Raspberry crowed in a nasal, affected sing-song. She searched for understanding in Unyx's crossing eyes but found none. "She's gunna shit bricks when she figures it out." At last, the concept registered. "What?" Tomoe whistled through her teeth and returned Unyx's tail-tip to the flowerbed. "C'mon, Jo." Tomoe stood, flipped her hair out of her face. "We gotta go." She blinked and added, "Me oh my oh." Unyx yanked hard on her own braids. "What do you mean we can't cum? We're so horny we'd have a screaming orgasm if that girl in Starbucks just looked at us funny." "Get used to it," Raspberry smirked. "Orgasm burns nanomek," Key Lime said as if that explained everything. "Big fucking deal," Unyx hissed, scraping her bottom lip with her teeth. "We've got plenty." She had never felt so ripe with novilunium. Raspberry cackled and fell to her knees beside Unyx. "You ain't got squat." She wormed her way between Unyx and Key Lime, aiming for the cleft where Unyx's thighs melded into a single ophidian trunk. "Yet." She kissed Unyx's glistening, ebony labia into her mouth, and exhaled with exquisite tenderness. Jo reached for Tomoe's proffered hand. A few feet away, Unyx gasped and rolled her eyes over white. Jo asked, "What's going on?" Then she stood for the first time since she had entered the flowerbed. The hem of the coppery dress, which had first hung loose around her ankles, now draped just below her knees. She teetered on her newly statuesque legs. "Whoa." "'Whoa' later," Tomoe insisted, taking Jo by the arm. "We need to reach minimum safe distance. Like, right now." She paused. "But don't forget your fifteen dollar, okay?" "Nyx is used to running on empty," Key Lime said as Raspberry's nether kiss lingered and Unyx whined and babbled. "You have only begun…" Key Lime said, stepping over Raspberry to bump noses with Unyx again. "…to feel half of the way we feel." She palmed Unyx's alabaster cheeks. "All the time." "Please," Unyx said. Raspberry's nether kiss went on and on, suffusing Unyx with that same quintessential-but-chained power, and those billion shining wires coiled into springs of sexual tension bordering on agony. "Please." "Don't cum," whispered Key Lime, and filled Unyx's mouth with her breathy kiss. Unyx reeled and rode an inner, rising wave. Within their shared body-mind, Ursula fought the urge to ride the ecstasy into an astral trance. Then Raspberry trapped the bud of Unyx's clitoris beneath a rolling tongue, and Unyx was beside herself with pleasure. That's not fair, Ursula wailed. The purple tart is cheating! Nyx was smug as a bug snug in a rug. you - wore - me - for - hours. Nyx's inner voice held none of the panic of Ursula's. fucked - me - for - hours. All the anxiety over threatened boundaries seemed to stem from the Ursula side of Unyx. you - wore - me - out - over - and - over - hours - hours - hours! Key Lime cupped Unyx's breast, now dappled with inky sweat, and Ursula was sure she would break apart. Nyx, she marveled, I really made you feel this good, this bad? The thrill of panic gave way to the thrill of power. yes. Unyx's tail lashed. She tried to anchor herself to a rosebush but the spasms from pent-up orgasm ripped it out of the flowerbed, roots and all. Did, Ursula asked as clumps of Earth sprayed down, Did you like it? yes - yes - Hell - yes. The thrill of power was pittance compared to the soaring happiness Ursula felt with these words. you - wanted - lifetime - nonstop - sex? you - got - it - little - sister - you - are - all - mine. Ursula rejoiced, I am yours! Key Lime and Raspberry kissed and kissed and Unyx kissed back. Past and future melted into an eternal now. Every iota of Unyx itched for release. I'm freakier than Dee, aren't I? Ursula said at last. The frustration had plateaued into a cosmic high better than any bong hit. I must be. I'm loving this. ha - ha - yes - my - love - yes. Unyx stilled. Oh, God, Nyx, I love you. Her arms and trunk went slack. I love you. Raspberry paused in her merry munching and glanced up, her chin streaked in swirling ink, tribal-tattoo style. "Hm?" Unyx calmly stopped Key Lime's kiss with a wet pop. "And you," she said aloud, "you're a bigger nympho than Galatea or any of them, aren't you? You just never had the strength before." Key Lime frowned. "Say what now?" ha - ha - ha! yes! yes - I - am. Nyx's little voice rang with mischief, wisdom and a confidence Ursula had never heard before. and - Ursula - all - my - love - all - my - life - all - that - I - am - is - all - yours. Raspberry scooted back on her butt until she bumped into Key Lime's legs. "Why's she smiling like that?" "She's one of us now," Key Lime said. "Right?" "Kinda sorta almost." Unyx rolled her shoulders. A second pair of arms, sleek and slick and blacker than sin, slipped out from under her first, swimming through the air like water snakes slithering through a swamp. Unyx purred as her new-made limbs grew thick and strong with new gel, muscle and bone. "So this is what a hard-on must feel like." Across the flowerbed, Tomoe spun about the instant Unyx mentioned a hard-on—"Oh shit oh shit oh shit."—and elbowed Jo in the ribs. "Back, back, get back. Get the fuck back." ha - ha - yes - erection - in - stereo - but - why - stop - at - two? "Don't you worry," said Unyx. Her tail slunk behind Raspberry and Key Lime. "I won't." Key Lime smiled and pressed close again. "Ursula?" Unyx heard hopeful edge in Key Lime's voice. good - she's - guessed - what's - cumming - Raz - hasn't - but - always - ready - anyhow… The tip of her tail tapped Raspberry between her purple shoulder blades. "Whut?" When the lavender girl turned around, the onyx tail darted right into her crotch. "Whoop! Get it out, get it ou…Ooh, God." Raspberry burbled and fell prone with a pungent splat between her thighs and a widening, blissful grin between her ears. "Leave it in." so - give - it - to - them - till - they - melt. "We are Unyx," Unyx said. Two obsidian arms slid around to clinch Key Lime's neck. Two more locked behind the small of her back. Unyx bent Key Lime backward, and French-kissed the canary-eating-grin off her minty face. "And you are fucked." * * * * Chop me into pieces, If it pleases, If it pleases… And when the chopping is through, Every piece will say, "I love you." Every piece of me will say, "I love you, you, you." —They Might Be Giants, Museum of Idiots * * * * It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 03 Act Six: Second Helpings Chapter Three: The End * * * * "The Earth, itself untouched by hardship and virgin of the plough, offered up its ripe bounty unprovoked. And Men, contented with food created without toil, gathered the strawberries of the mountains, and currants, and blackberries sticking to their bramble-bushes, and acorns which had fallen from the wide-spreading tree of Jove. It was an eternal spring: the rivers flowed with milk and nectar, and honey—meli—sweated from every tree." —Ovid (circa 8 AD), The Metamorphoses, Fable III: The Golden Age * * * * "Master." Black Cherry writhes on the linoleum bathroom floor. "I'm in you now." She swallows food coloring and stains herself green, absorbs her wings to provide her slender body some heft, but she has no real talent for mimicry. She resembles a garish and gloppy copy of Galatea. She rises, sighing, "I'm in you." The coloring fades and the va-va-voom curves dwindle as rubied wings sprout from her back. "I've been in you for hours, now, remember?" She shuts her eyes and pops open her mouth, tipping forward. "You took my tongue, so that I might speak inside you." Her mouth lies hollow and empty. "You drank of my breast, so that I might touch your soul." She cups her coquette's breast, watching the last of the green tint fade from her flesh. She stands with the wings of a bat and a cardinal's colors. She winks an abyssal eye. "Not very romantic, but the magic was there, wouldn't you say?" She taps a fingertip against her lip. "You're dreaming, Master." She spreads her wings and pirouettes on the toe of her candy-apple red Mary Jane clog. "Finally!" Her wings ignore the dimensions of the crowded bathroom, as things often do in dreams, and fly wide. "I thought your green whore would never let you sleep." The buffeting air is redolent with sex, and the unmistakable scent of baking cookies. "I thought she knew better." She winks, shrugs, "Her loss," and wing claws longer than daggers and sharper than any swords slice through the air. Dee feels no pain, only a gentle chill, as the claws pierce his skull and meet with a click somewhere behind his eyes. Black Cherry frowns in a moue. "Well, that didn't work." She pivots her chin, inspecting with her light-swallowing eyes. "Something's keeping me out. Is it you?" She smiles, a proud pet-owner. "Are you really that strong, to keep me out, even now, when I'm so close?" She holds up a length of black braided rope, tied up in white ribbon. "Even when I have this?" The knowledge comes to Dee now fully-formed, as if he always knew, a part of the dream's back-drop slotted into place. The rope is Ursula's hair. Over ten years worth of growth. Ten years worth of work: an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening with…          [gates] …combs of horn and ivory, every day, sitting at her…          [altar] …vanity, gazing into her own eyes reflected back out at her from a century-old…           [scrying] …looking glass. She performed this…           [ritual] …compulsive routine, twice a day, every day, for ten years. The subtlest knife could not cut the bond tying Ursula to her…          [talismanic] …trademark braids, any more than losing a limb makes someone less of a person. Black Cherry holds Ursula's life and power in her hand. "Caught up?" Black Cherry asks. "Good. Whatever the reason, I can't get into your inner mind. I'm stuck here, in your imagination." She takes in her surroundings with a knowing smirk, and, as the bathroom vanishes around Dee, she muses, "What an odd place." Linoleum bathroom tiles and specks of caulking tumble upward in zero g. Fixtures and walls melt into wisps of menthol. Black Cherry brushes the drifting detritus away with a flick of a wing. "There are two gates of Sleep," she recites, skimming a finger across the page of a fusty tome that plops out of thin air and into her hands, "one said to be of horn, through which true shades gain gentle passage." She licks the pad of her thumb and flips the page. Dee knows she reads from the Aeneid, although he cannot fathom how he knows. Black Cherry grins at his confusion and holds the book out to him. Pages have been cut away to make room for a faded, four color comic book. "Classics Illustrated," she winks. "Is this how you BS'd your way through college?" She returns to reading, "The other gleams with the whiteness of polished ivory." She pauses, raises a brow and harrumphs. "But through it the gods of the dead send false dreams to the world above." The book snaps shut. "Bingo." Dee and the scarlet girl stand on a rain-slick city street before a door cornered off by red velvet rope. A sign above the door proclaims Lux in pale neon. Black Cherry flits over the rope and cracks open the door. Piano music spills out into the night. She whirls about and sings, her face a mask of sly delight, her soprano sparking and pitch-perfect:          I've just read of Cleopatra          The glamorous empire shatt'rer,          Who to Caesar lost her heart as well as her head,          But that stingy old Rotarian          Gave her nothing but one Caesarian,          So she fell in love with Marc Antony instead.          To worship two men in turn may be sublime,          But, oh, it's Hell when you care for both at the same time. She twitters and dips her head through the door, one leg raised behind her butt. "Not the sort of ivory I was expecting. Where do you get this stuff?" She peeks back at Dee. Dee's speech slurs, his mouth feeling full of peanut butter. "Innernet. Comic booksh." "Never heard of it," Black Cherry mutters, then sighs. "Can't get through your Gate of Horn. Tried that already." One wing claw dimples the side of her skull before leaning through the piano bar's front door again. "Ivory will have to do." She squares her shoulders, unruffles her wings, and scampers inside. "Welcome to your nightmare, Master." The wake of her wings drags Dee across the velvet-rope boundary and into the piano club. Upon stumbling through the front door, Dee finds himself in a tiny kitchen, a cluttered twin of the kitchenette of Dee's own apartment. A tall steel mixing bowl keeps the refrigerator's door wedged open and its compressor running nonstop. A few dozen empty boxes of cherry Jell-O are piled atop the kitchen table. Black Cherry perches on the kitchen counter, feasting on the last scraps of Bernie's—Bee's—flesh she is willing to eat. Pheromones of fear befoul the meat. Cannibalizing Bee for his collagen was no picnic. "But I did it, Master," she says, slurping down wobbly bits of gristle. Dee's revulsion overcomes the sleep paralysis swaddling him like wet cotton. "Why, Cherry? Damn it, why?" "To be strong for you. Strong enough to fuck you. To beat you." She sucks the dregs of marrow from a cracked femur. "To please my Master whether he likes it or not." After a few final, lingering licks, she bites the thigh bone in two, chokes down one half, and drops the other into the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink. She flips a wall switch and the disposal coughs to life. The femur dances and descends into the disposal as hidden, dull blades whack it into splinters. "I ate all that I could use," she shouts over the racket. She glances aside. "Well, almost all." She holds up a mason jar with the remains of Bee's manhood. Dee struggles to reach out and throttle Black Cherry's throat, but his arms plough through air thicker than treacle, and the scarlet girl rebuffs them with an impatient wing. He can still speak, and opts to scream for a long while before words come out. "Why show me this?" "No choice." Black Cherry shuts off the disposal. "Through the Gate of Ivory, I can't make any true visions or new memories. I have to work within what's inside you already—my memories from before you consumed my novilunium. Plus, it's fun!" She gazes up at him through her eyelashes. "You should see how adorably angry you look." She hops off the counter, mason jar in hand. "Now then, where is…Ah." She plucks up the tin of nanomek in the other hand. "Hm." She contemplates the two containers. "I wonder if the old trick still works." She plunks the mason jar back onto the counter. The two gobbets of raveled flesh inside the jar roll and rebound off the sides of the glass. "I just need a little bit of offal." She fishes inside the mouth of the garbage disposal and comes away with a finger-scoopful of muck. She flicks a dollop of the stuff into the mason jar. She pops the top off the tin and dread blankets Dee. "My God, Cherry. Don't…" She shushes him and gives the tin a short shake. "No talking during my flashbacks." A slight shower of soft powder wafts down into the jar. "You didn't really do that," Dee says, aghast. "This is a nightmare, a false dream. You're…you're making this up." "Could be," she twitters, locking the top of the mason jar in place. "I think I'll leave this little guy for you, a guardian at the threshold of the underworld. I bet you'll completely forget about it until it's too late, just like in all the stories." Dee presses his fists against his forehead. "Remember, remember. This is important. Forget everything else about this fucking nightmare but remember this." Black Cherry laughs like she will fall apart. "I love loose ends, don't you?" Dee lunges for her but he still moves in slow motion. Black Cherry laughs again and skips from the kitchenette into the living room. She skids to a halt. "That smell. I didn't notice it in the kitchen—Bee's fear was too thick—but now…" She turns back to Dee, eyes wide. "I know that smell, Master." She giggles. "It's another me, isn't it?" A frown clouds her face. She swallows her laughter. "No, wait." She tips her head toward the ceiling. "It's her." Dee staggers after her. Black Cherry groans. Wing claws scourge her back, her chest, raising crisscrossed, weeping welts. "There are gaps in my mind, Master." Beads of brandy bleed down her legs. "Glittering caverns filled with only the shadow of memory. I am newborn but there are echoes of something older, far older." She hangs her head. Her bangs fall over her eyes and she sobs, "I'm so confused. I'm so alone." Dee reaches for her shoulder. "Cherry." Black Cherry glares up at the lime-stained ceiling, defiance shining through sanguine tears. "I should be alone." A wing claw stabs upward. "She should not be here. It's all wrong." She sniffles, hiccupping giggles. "You made a mess of things this time, Master. But I will fix them for us." She strides to the living room window, wrenches it open, and scuttles out. Wing claws punch through aluminum siding for purchase. "Come along, Master. I mean for you to see this through." The dream-world shifts around Dee. He drifts three stories up in the middle of the night air. Black Cherry suspends herself upside-down above an apartment window. She peeps through, her face illuminated by a jittering electric glow. Dee's heart is in his throat. "Galatea?" Black Cherry grips the windowsill with her hands, and pries the window open with one long claw. Inside, the sliding lock rips free of the window frame and clatters to the floor. "If all your neighbors are this cute, Master," she remarks, "I won't have to eat many more of them." She swings to the side to let him see. The living room behind the glass is not his own, but he recognizes its occupant readily enough. Dee breathes, "Oh, no…Viggo." Viggo Palm sits in a cushy lounge chair a few feet away from a wafer-thin television so high fidelity it needs to be calibrated against the magnetic disturbances in the Earth's crust. The only source of light in the room, the television's ambient glow casts Viggo's fine black hair in electric blue. His ears are swallowed up by boxy headphones. He is absorbed in his work, which, at the moment Black Cherry glides through the living room window, consists of killing zombies. Dee finds himself beside Black Cherry, standing amidst stacks of video game and DVD boxes in low-slung wire racks. Black Cherry nibbles her lip, eyes roving over Viggo's own low-slung, wiry frame. Viggo sits oblivious to everything but the virtual tide of the hungry dead rising in HDTV on the screen. His fingers blur over a wireless video game controller with so many knobs and buttons it looks like a gleaming scarab beetle. The room is silent save for the clacking controller and the muffled death-rattles of the living dead reverberating from his headphones. Black Cherry fixates on Viggo's nimble fingers. "He knows the Flying Octopus, Hooded Pearl Technique," she marvels. "Cherry," Dee says, "don't do this." "Don't do what?" she titters, trying to imitate the butterfly movement of Viggo's hands. "This has all happened already. Maybe you just don't want to see?" She perfects the finger motion, then lowers her arm and plays out the same pattern across her mons. She squeaks and jumps, the miniature wings above her ears frazzling. "Oh, my!" Her brows knit. "Cherry," Dee says, "wait." But she is already stomping across the room in her jelly clogs. Black Cherry opens her wings, curtaining the television set, and folds her arms below her bare breasts. The plasma screen's lumina ignite her curves with an eerie nimbus. "What's wrong with you?" she asks, head-wings fanned, mouth filled with crimson foxfire. "Spending the night alone when you have hands like that?" Viggo blinks up at her. The controller falls in his lap. He toggles the volume control on his headphones. Black Cherry tips her head and taps her foot. "Well?" The demoness and dweeb stare in silence. Then, in hushed tones, Viggo wonders: "Morrigan?" Black Cherry purses her lips. Her left wing fleets forward, claw hooked down. Dee shouts Viggo's name but the sleep paralysis returns, cramming Dee in invisible gauze. Dazed and unflinching, Viggo watches the wing sail toward him. He taps the PAUSE button on the game controller between his knees. The claw flies past his ear and flips the lounge chair backward. The chair's upturned footrest points Viggo's feet at the ceiling. The scarlet girl, more shadow than substance in the televised witch-light, sashays forward. She sighs, "Read a book sometime, alright?" and straddles Viggo's lap. The lounge chair creaks once, then wobbles as Viggo nods his fierce, wide-eyed agreement. Black Cherry tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, bends down, and enshrouds his mouth with hers. Viggo reaches down and tosses the game controller onto the carpet. Black Cherry molds her body over his, snickers, "Good boy," into his mouth, and guides his hands up from between his knees to her naked sex. "Find my pearl." Viggo moves beneath her and she trembles, still kissing, kissing. The miniature wings above her head furl into pointed cones, becoming perky cat ears. Dee knows he watches a cat at play with her prey and an enervating sense of dread and guilt—I mistrusted Galatea; I gave away the nanomek; I am the cause of all of this—roots him to the spot as an impotent spectator. Black Cherry breaks the kiss. Her throaty chuckle fills the silence, her wings outspread wall to wall. Her lips shine in the half-light, serous and wet. Viggo swallows, his mouth glossed with brandy. He worships the vision above him before whispering, "I'm Badjao." Black Cherry scrunches her hips around Viggo's hand. "Hm?" "My granddad: Badjao," Viggo says, his smile hazy, his voice slurry. "Pearl diving is in my blood." Dee manages to spit a few words. "You're. Mindfucking. Him." "Oh, yes," Black Cherry replies. She descends onto Viggo again. At first Dee thinks their kiss has become soulful and full of tongue. Then a trickle of cordial escapes Black Cherry's lips, drizzles down Viggo's cheekbone and over an ear. This is no French kiss, Dee realizes, watching Black Cherry gush and Viggo guzzle. This is a grotesque communion. "You won't…eat him?" Black Cherry rocks up. "Oh, no." She snaps the buttons off Viggo's shirt, one by one, and shrugs. "Well, yes. But not now. Why?" She turns to Dee. "Do you want me to eat him, Master?" Dee plods forward a single step. "Damn you." Words flow a little easier now. "Stop this. Leave him. Alone." "You and I should be alone, Master," Black Cherry insists. "But for that to happen…" She pauses and glares at the television—No, through the television, through the wall beyond, into my apartment, to Galatea—"There's someone I need to deal with first." She turns back to Viggo. "So, Badjao." "Viggo," says Viggo. "Whatever. Can you hear it now?" Black Cherry raps a knuckle on his forehead. "Blood music?" Viggo's face blossoms with silent revelation, a broad Oh, so that's what that is expression. "Blood music," Viggo echoes, glad to give the strange sensation a name. "For the next few hours, that's all I want you to hear. And this." She slips two fingers into her sex then smears them across his mouth and under his nose. "Is all I want you to think about." Viggo groans, "I already am." He reaches for her but she pushes his hands back. "Don't you want to fuck?" Black Cherry finishes undoing his shirt and plants her palm over his left breast. "Of course. But later. Master must be my first, and you're not him. You're for the Frenzy." Dee startles. It's like falling off a cliff. For an instant, he seizes upon the truth. He sees. He sees everything that's happened, everything that she's said.           ["…It should be you…My master should be my first…It should have been you, but I have no time…"] The whole puzzle clicks together in his head, Black Cherry's whole, crazy, pointless, stupid game. The knowledge is ephemeral. Dee can already sense it slipping through his grasp, through the gate of ivory, the font of false dreams. "Dream logic," Yves called it. It rarely makes sense after you wake up. Yet the bitterness and bile welling up in his breast feel strong enough to last forever. He knows what he has to do. "Enough, Cherry." Black Cherry ignores him. "Are there any guardsmen?" she asks Viggo. Viggo frowns. Droplets of Cherry's cordial spill down his chin. "I saw a guardhouse outside," Black Cherry continues, "but it was empty." Dee advances on the overturned lounge chair. "I mean it. It's over." "Central office," Viggo says. His fingers strive for Black Cherry's cleft but she pins him down and shies away. "Near the front gate." "I'm ending this." Dee stands before overturned chair. For the first time, Viggo registers Dee's presence. "Dee?" Dee looks down and speaks with his newfound voice: "Frog blast the vent core." Black Cherry's incredulous laughter dies in her throat as Viggo flays and swears beneath her. The scarlet girl stumbles off the chair. "What? What?" Viggo rolls onto the floor and springs up, wild eyed. Dee chases him out the front door of the apartment with two well-timed cries of "I'm out of ammo!" and "Shoot me!" "That." Black Cherry shakes her head. "That never happened. Whatever the Hell that was." She levels an accusing finger at Dee. "You cheated!" "No," Dee shuts the front door, bolts it shut. "I out-geeked you. V's a diehard gamer, and some instincts go deeper than sex. Besides, my head…" The apartment evaporates into diffuse light. "My rules. Get moving." It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 03 Black Cherry twitters and casts about for a reference point in the white, sterile plane. She finds a worn, maroon leather recliner chair next to a counterfeit Tiffany floor lamp. "What is this?" "A Matrix reference." Dee smirks as he circles around to the front of the recliner. "You'll never understand me, or—" He freezes. "Tomoe." Tomoe goggles up at him from the recliner, a toddler caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Her hair is plastered with sweat against her cheeks. Her skirt is on the nominal white floor. Her fingers are jammed into her rose underwear. "Oh, hey, Dee." Dee spreads his hands, lost. "What the fuck, Tomoe?" "I," Tomoe starts. "I was…" She looks down at her crotch. The panty is soaked through. "I was just…" Her fingers withdraw with a lewd shlick noise, and she blushes strawberry red. "I was just leaving," she squeaks, hops out of the chair, wraps her skirt sideways around her waist, and crab-walks away. "You're right," Black Cherry says, watching Tomoe vanish from view. "I don't understand you. Yet. But we'll have all the time in the world soon enough." "That's what I want to talk to you about," Dee says. Black Cherry cocks an eyebrow at him and he gestures at the recliner. "Sit." Black Cherry alights upon the recliner and crosses her legs. "Still warm. Well?" Dee stares off after Tomoe for a moment, then shakes his head clear. "You want your master," he says, "all to yourself. I want all the mindfucking and Frenzying and—God, damn you, Cherry—the killing to stop. No more." Black Cherry narrows her eyes. "So?" "So," Dee says, and leans up against the recliner's armrest. "I think we can work something out." * * * * Dee woke to debauchery. Tomoe stood in stunned silence on the sideline. He had dreamt of her as he first met her: a short slip of a girl with dark, merry eyes. Now those same eyes sparkled from a face almost level with his above a body from a boyhood wet dream, an airbrushed pin-up girl with skin tanned to chocolate perfection, eye-popping curves, and waves of raven hair flowing down to her ass. Dee ambled up, still groggy from sleep, trying to make sense of the spectacle Tomoe was watching. "What'd I miss?" Tomoe opened her mouth, but just shook her head, spread her hands, and shut it again. Long shadows moved behind Dee. He turned around and bumped his chin atop a bust crammed so close into a coppery one-piece dress he could hear the fabric squeal under the stress. "There was a little purple one," came the voice from above the boobs, "and a big, minty one." Dee stepped back to better look the newcomer in the eyes, but old habits died hard and he found himself drawn to the sunlight reflecting off the skintight material hugging the huge globes right in front of him. The girl swung her arm out to point. Dee stared at the muscle gliding under her creamy skin instead. "Then Unyx fucked the minty one so hard she came apart," the girl gabbled. "So now there's a yellow one—right there, see?" She pointed to CeeCee, lying flat on her back in a little pool of melted creamsicle, her face stamped into a blissed-out smile. "And a green one." Here the girl paused, licked her lips, and bent down to whisper to Dee, in hushed, almost reverent tones. Flower perfumed, honey-brown hair tickled his nose. "And the green one? She just keeps going, and going, and going…" Dee swallowed. "Where's Raz? The purple one?" Tomoe found her voice. "Up in the tree." "I've been fucked by a train!" Raspberry hollered back, slung over a high branch in the one tree remaining upright. She pumped her fists. "Woo!" "Hi, Dee," Eurydice sang down from the heart of a glistening black nest, a writhing web of clutching arms and questing snakes. "Unyx, put me down, Dee's awake…Wait." Eurydice twisted until she hung suspended by her ankles and wrists bound in ebony ropes. "Hey, Dee," Eurydice called. She bit her lip in concentration. A pleated, myrtle miniskirt unrolled over her thighs and a prim, tea green schoolgirl blouse skated up over her chest. "Wanna watch?" Ursula, wearing a glossy raccoon eye-mask and nothing else, rose out of the obsidian mass, a porcelain pale mermaid bobbing up from an inky sea. Her lips were liquid black. Her high cheekbones, bare breasts and flat abdomen ghosted with silver as if the night had become her life's blood. Ursula's mask—Dee corrected himself: Unyx's mask—crooked up in arch inquisition. Dee contemplated Unyx's outie navel and Eurydice's cheeky, jade grin before turning back to Tomoe. "You were right," he deadpanned. "My life does suck." The tall girl eyed Dee up and down. "Wow." Her gaze locked in the "down" position. "You are very naked right now." "That's Mine, Jo," Eurydice declared. The black cabling binding her unraveled and Eurydice drifted down to the ground. "Why hullo there, Mine," Jo breathed. "I've heard some very good things about you." The name and face of the tall girl clicked. "Jo?" Dee squinted. "Jo Echo, the volleyball captain?" Eurydice bounced over. "You're a girl's volleyball fan?" Dee and Tomoe chorused, "Yes." Unyx nodded. "oh - yeah." The tesseract of Unyx's gel-flesh folded into itself before flowing up and around her ivory curves, collapsing into an onyx bodysuit, thigh-high go-go boots, and thick choker collar. "Zup, Dee?" "What happened to you?" Dee glanced around. "To all of you." Jo shrugged and Dee froze, watching the cords of Jo's neck grow taut and her breasts battle with her dress. "Especially you," he told her. Raspberry spread her legs to peer upside-down at Dee from her perch in the tree. "I got fu—" "Not you," Dee dismissed, and waved off her two-fisted, one-fingered salute. A distant motor purred. Tomoe turned toward the sound, her smile wide and sensuous. Eurydice stepped up to fill the silence. "You happened, Dee. When you fucked me." She blushed wine-dark, quivery with memory. "Oh, God, when you took me, you went all out. You didn't just fuck me." She gestured at the chaos of wildflowers around them. "You screwed the brains out of every female thing within seven yards." She patted him on the cheek. "No wonder you passed out." Dee took her hand. "I slept." Her brow knit. "Did you…" "A little," Dee said and kissed her palm. "Went hypnagogic." Eurydice cradled herself against his chest. "It's okay." "'Hypnagogic'?" asked a doubtful Unyx. The motoring noise drew louder, closer. "Where'd that come from?" "Alan Moore," Dee said. Unyx looked blank and he added, "Really tall. Huge, crazy-ass beard. Writes comic books. Shacks up with his wife and her bi girlfriends. Talks to snakes." "Owes me five dollar," Tomoe muttered as the roaring engine dropped to a low rumble. The sound tickled Dee's memory. "Just what happened to Yves, anyway?" "Hey, guys." Dee, Eurydice, Tomoe, Unyx, and Jo turned. "Ooh," said Jo. "Gay," Tomoe whispered. "Aw," said Jo. A tall figure slouched in the heart of the copse of fallen trees, blades of blond hair falling over his face, a portrait of effortless elegance. A brilliant white shirt, loose and open over his tan undershirt, caught the sun's rays one shining thread at a time. His hands dangled over a long curved sword in a coral sheath, slung across his back like a yoke. Behind him, a rose colored roadster idled, crouching in the wild grass, a predatory monster of polished metal and glass. "We’re superheroes," Yves said. Wood rustled and snapped overhead. Yves sighed, let the sword slip from his fingers, and closed his eyes. "Yves!" Raspberry hurtled down, an amethyst lightning bolt, bowling Yves over in a blur of violet limbs and orchid hair moving too fast for Dee to see. Yves ended up flat on his back. Raspberry's naked body sprawled against him, her arms locked around his neck, her face buried in the hollow of his shoulder. She sobbed his name once, twice, then sat bolt upright. "You smell just-been-fucked," she said askance. Behind them, the roadster's engine revved. "Can't I get laid every once in a while?" Yves asked. "Sure," Raspberry shrugged as the engine's revving became a syrupy burble. "But only if I get to watch." SB strode passed them, coppery one-piece dress adhering to her curves and bulges. "Took me hours to get that man's dick in my ass." Raspberry dug her knees into Yves ribs and crossed her arms. "What's she got that I don't? Or can't strap on?" SB's stride broke when she crossed the threshold of the flowerbed. "Whoa." Her dress snagged on a rosebush. "Dee, do you have any idea what you did." Her words died in her throat when Tomoe stepped forward. "Oh." SB's fingers flew over her mouth. Her diamond eyes sparkled wet as Tomoe towered closer, her hair swinging in counterpoint behind her back. "Oh my God, T." "Well met," said Tomoe, her voice melodic and strange. "We are well met in the navel of the world." "So long." SB reached up to trace Tomoe's cheek. "It's been so long." Tomoe glanced down. "It's getting even longer." SB swallowed a teary chuckle. Tomoe pressed their foreheads together. "I'll never look away again," she whispered. "Never. I swore, remember?" She stepped back to take SB by the hand. "Dee," Tomoe called, "we gotta go. You got things covered?" Dee slipped his arm around Eurydice's waist. She nodded at him. "I think so." "Gotcha." She led SB away. "Try to avoid the demiurgic stuff, okay? World navels can attract all kinds of attention. Know what I mean?" "Not a clue," Dee replied, shaking his head. Unyx laughed. "Good." Tomoe and SB stepped out of the flowerbed. Without looking back, Tomoe said, "You coming, Jo?" Jo glanced up from her study of Dee's package and Eurydice's chest. "Who, me?" "No, the seven foot tall muscle girl with huge tits behind you. Yes, you. And bring your three five dollar." Jo dashed and bent over to grab her wad of bills, and it was Dee and Eurydice's turn to stare. "I've got fifteen dollars," Jo said, standing up. Dee and Eurydice glanced away. "That's what I said," Tomoe said as she and SB entered the copse of fallen trees. "Later, Yves." Beneath Raspberry, Yves gave her a sarcastic salute. "It's been surreal." "It's just getting started," SB said. "See you around, Sir Valiancourt. Remember your choice." Jo bounded after Tomoe and SB. "What are we doing? Where're we going?" "Clubbing," Tomoe answered. "And a little shopping." "But first," SB said, taking stock of Jo's dress and the assets within, "one of us has got to lose her skirt." * * * * "What choice?" Raspberry glowered down at Yves. "And what was that about bellybuttons?" She toyed with the fabric of his sleeve. "And gimme your shirt. I sorta burned out the other one." Dee picked his way into the copse of trees. "Let him up, Raz. It's time for Yves to stand." Yves turned his head. "I don't like the way you said that, Dee." His ear pressed to the leaf mold, Yves could feel little ground temblors, vibrations on the cusp of hearing. Dee thudded toward him. "Jesus." Raspberry curled a lock of Yves' hair around her finger. "I'll release him for a kiss." She blushed violet. "Please?" Yves propped himself up on his elbows. Raspberry scooted back until she sat in his lap. Yves sat up straight, took the now trembling lavender girl by her shoulders, and planted a warm kiss on her forehead. She bowed her head, wreathed Yves in orchids and the smells of early summer. "I would have been there for you," she whispered, "even if Dee had never bound me." "I don't understand," Yves said, feeling awkward under her regard. "In the Jeep," Raspberry explained, "right before the crash." She cleared her throat and spoke in a tinny imitation of Dee's voice. "'Raz, to Yves. Now.'" She ducked and kissed him back, soft but chaste, on the mouth. "Now and always." Yves stammered at her, but she winked, swatted him, and hopped to her feet. "Don't gimme none of your faggotry." She angled her thumb at Dee waiting a few feet away. Dee was inspecting the sword, careful not to draw it much more than an inch from its sheath, whistling and wowing. "King schlong demands an audience." Dee handed him the sword after Yves dusted himself off. "This sword doesn't make you a superhero, Yves. Don't get me wrong, it's freakin' awesome, but it won't make you a Batman." Yves shrugged. "Figured as much." He hooked the sword into the silk sash tied around his waist. It rested against his leg, blade curving down. "I don't feel any different, and when SB made me this outfit, she didn't bother with a utility belt." Dee shook his head. "SB didn't make you a superhero, Yves, because you've already been one for years." They stood in silence until Yves asked, "Are we supposed to kiss now or something?" "If you two start making out in front of me," Raspberry breathed, "I'll finger-bang myself until my twat falls out, swear to God." Dee thought it over. "I think the homoeroticism of our friendship is supposed to be latent." "Latent?" Yves leered. "You're buck fucking naked and I'm wearing a long, pink scabbard. That's blatant, not latent." Dee's face remained thoughtful but blank. Yves' smile fell. "Yeah, I'm stalling." "Back on the road," Dee said, "you told me I already knew what to do. Well, I think someone has to die today, Yves." Dee clasped Yves by the forearm. "And I won't let it be you." Yves closed in. He felt the heat of Dee's breath and bare skin. "Dammit, Dee." His free hand seized the pommel of his sword, ready to draw. "It's not your decision to make." Dee maintained his stolid expression. "What is it?" Certainty chilled Yves to the core but he asked anyway. "My God, Dee, what have you done?" Dee turned. Raspberry shivered and shrank back. "Raz, leave us for a minute." The lavender girl protested but Dee spoke unmoved. "Yves is safe from me." Raspberry purpled. Dee sighed, "Go, Raz," and the lavender girl fled. Dee released his hold on Yves' arm. "The decision has already been made, hasn't it, Yves?" * * * * Dee crossed the curving perimeter of the flowerbed. Goosebumps danced across his skin. Walking beside him, chin pressed to his chest, Yves shivered and shot him an inquisitive glance. "Tomoe said something about 'world navels'," Dee said. "I haven't a damn clue what she meant. Sounds like a drink." Raspberry, Unyx, and Eurydice loitered in a circle around the snoozing CeeCee. Eurydice smoothed her skirts. "Hey, Dee." Dee thought her smile looked plastic. "Sounded like you two were having a Hell of an argument. What's up?" "Macho bullshit," Yves spat. Eurydice's brow crinkled in confusion. Raspberry slunk behind her and would not look Dee in the eye. Dee shook his head and turned to Unyx. "Yves says you can see the future. How does that work?" "You explain it better than we do," Unyx answered. "I did?" Dee scratched his head, parsing her reply. "I mean, I do? When?" Unyx reached for Yves. "When Yves tells us Black Cherry raped him." Behind Eurydice, Raspberry drew in a sharp breath. Yves pulled away. "I never told you she raped me. How the fuck did you know?" Unyx blanched, her raccoon mask fading into her skin. "Oh God." She gaped. "Black Cherry raped you?" Yves spluttered and swore. Everyone started talking at once, but Dee's calm voice cut through the babbling. "Unyx perceives fourth dimensional space-time from a fifth dimensional perspective. She saw that, in the future, Yves would tell her about Cherry. But Yves still had to tell her, otherwise she wouldn’t have seen it in the first place, and create a paradox. So Unyx can know something before it happens, as long as it still happens to her for the first time at some point in the future. She still has to be surprised to prevent paradox, so she winds up living a kind of backwards time universe." Dee perked up. "Just like Doctor Manhattan." He noticed everyone had fallen quiet sometime during his little speech and was staring at him. "What?" "That's exactly right," Unyx marveled. "Except we're limited to about ten minutes for some reason. But who's Doctor Manhattan?" "Oh," Dee shrugged, "he's a comic book character. Alan Moore again." Eurydice and Yves exchanged a look. "Dee," Eurydice said with exaggerated care, "how did you come up with the name Galatea?" "That's what they call Power Girl in the cartoon," he said. "Seriously: What?" "What about 'Pygmalion'?" Yves asked, both curious and cautious. "I got his name off the Internet." Dee faltered. "Googling, uh, for Power Girl porn." "And 'Eurydice'?" asked Eurydice. "Ah!" Dee waggled a finger. "I know all about Eurydice and Orpheus. There was a Jim Henson special about them. Orpheus sings her out of a tree. The tree opens up, it's all sticky inside, and, uh, and." Dee mumbled something. "It got you hard," Eurydice giggled and Dee nodded. "Are you telling me," Yves demanded, "that you've had all your insights and leaps of intuition these past few days because you love comic books, cartoons, and porn?" "And muppets," Unyx chimed in. "Hey, Ursula whacked off to softcore vampire sex." She stroked Dee's sagging shoulder. "We are Unyx; we sympathize." "That's nice." Raspberry's voice was little more than an acid hiss. She moved out from behind Eurydice, her hair whirling in an unfelt breeze, her body haloed in radiant reds and violets. "Now excuse me, I've got a psycho-twat to kill." Dee sighed, "No, Raz." "Shove it, brick-dick." Raspberry marched for the road. "I am going to burn new holes in the bitch just to shit in." She spat at the upright tree as she steamed passed. It toppled, vanishing into purple vapor before it hit the ground. "And then I'll get nasty." "You will not hurt her, Raz." Raspberry stumbled as if tripped, then spun around to face Dee. Her gemmed eyes burned black and ultraviolet. She snorted and made a guttural ch-hock! noise deep in her throat. CeeCee bolted upright but it was Yves who ran between Raspberry and Dee. "Raz, don't," he said. "It's too late." Eurydice cried out, ran to Dee, and clutched at him. "No. Not now. Too soon." "It's time," Dee whispered to her. "It's already been decided." "Dee's giving himself up," Yves said. "No." Eurydice burrowed against Dee's chest. Her tears left trails of liquid emerald down his bare skin. "I've known you less than a week. As Eurydice, not even a day." She turned her cheek against his chest and listened to his heart. "I want years and years. I can't lose you now. I, I won't survive." "You will." Dee held her tight. "You're strong, Eurydice." His hug slackened. "But I have to go to your sister now." Raspberry clenched her fists and kicked a stone into high flight. "Why, for fuck's sake?" "Black Cherry's holding too many cards," Dee said. "She doesn't just have Galatea." He nodded to Unyx. "She has Ursula's hair." Eurydice groaned and hid her face. CeeCee frowned up at the two of them. "A wig doesn't make much of a poker hand. What am I missing?" Unyx opened her mouth to speak. Dee interrupted, "Cherry can mindfuck Unyx any time she wants, can see through her eyes and hear through her ears," He looked to Unyx for confirmation. She nodded. "Basically? Yeah," Unyx said. "Technically? Very no. But we don't have time to lecture." She pouted. "Bummer." "Cherry knows," Dee said. "She knows Unyx is the only one who can really stop her." He glanced at Yves. "Stop the Frenzy, that is. She's ready to kill Unyx. I won't let that happen. And I can't let the Frenzy happen." Raspberry took a few baby steps toward Yves. Yves held an arm out and Raspberry nestled under it in the blink of an eye. "I don't get it," she said. "She's already got the Easies. Isn't that the Frenzy?" Dee shook his head. "That's just the beginning. Cherry's gone total psycho-supervillain." He eased away from Eurydice. "You were wrong, CeeCee, about the party. Cherry doesn't plan on killing or eating any of the guys showing up tonight. It's bigger than that." Eurydice crept back into his arms. "She needs them for nanomek—lots of it. She's going to weaponize the Frenzy. Load the Easies up with nanomek until they're contagious all by themselves, by fluid-borne infection. And then, she'll loose them." It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 03 "It'll be just like all those zombie movies," Yves explained while Raspberry breathed in the fragrance of his shirt. "Except there'll be a hundred Patient Zeroes. And they'll be horny, not hungry. And, uh, hot bisexual coed skank-bots, not corpses." He scratched his chin. "So it won't be anything like a zombie movie. It'll be much worse." CeeCee mused, "A hundred maenads?" She drooped back onto the flowerbed. "Well, send one home." She closed her eyes. "I'm tired." "There will be millions of them soon if I don't go to Cherry now," Dee said, squinting at the mid afternoon sun. "I have to get there before the party starts, and that's just a few hours away." He peeled away from Eurydice again. "So I'm going. Now." Dee looked Eurydice in the eye one last time. "I love you." "Fuck you," Eurydice said, jaw set firm even as she wept. "If you're going to go, then go." Her finger stabbed forward. "But don't you dare look back." Dee turned away from her. He shuffled out of the flowerbed, absent his usual, steamrolling strut. He passed Raspberry and Yves without a word. He thought he heard a gentle susurrus of gel-flesh behind him. Was Eurydice following? His ears strained for any sound, but he heard only his own breathing and the undercurrents of outdoor noise. He crossed the fallow field, hearing nothing. He tripped up onto the road, hearing only the sound of his bare feet slapping against the pavement. He bent down to scoop up his clothes. He heard nothing behind him, felt nothing but empty air. He shook out his pants and muscle shirt as best he could and dressed as he walked toward the yellow SUV hidden beneath the overpass. The remaining grime from his premature burial gritted against his skin. And still he heard nothing, nothing, nothing. Then: "You're supposed to be the one." Eurydice sounded quiet and alone and right behind him. Dee straightened at once. He tipped his chin toward his shoulder. He listened to her silence, then bowed his head, grabbed hold of the SUV's front bumper with both hands, and tugged sideways. The vehicle pivoted on its rear wheels, crunching asphalt as Dee swung it around, always keeping his eye on the road ahead. The driver's side door was wedged shut into the its bent frame where Dee had dropped onto the SUV's roof a few hours before. He punched out the window then tore the door in half. Dee clambered inside, forcing the canted roof to pop upward with the flat of his hand. Metal squealed and glass shattered and sprayed down in nuggets. His wrist flared with pain, a brief, phantom sprain. He ignored it. The keys were still in the ignition. It took three twists for the engine to turn over. "Just like in the movies," Dee muttered. He shut his eyes, drew a ragged breath, then finessed the SUV into gear. * * * * Eurydice watched the SUV pull away, drive under the overpass, up the onramp on the far side, and accelerate down the highway and out of sight. The engine's protests faded as the distance between her and Dee grew. Someone padded across the road behind her, quiet as a ghost. Eurydice spent a few thousand nanomek—she had so much now it frightened her, and she took every excuse to burn some—and heightened her hearing. She recognized the approaching heartbeat immediately. "Eurydice?" Yves asked. She turned to him, starry-eyed from weeping, her lips trembling. "He didn't look back," she said. * * * * It's time We saw a miracle. It's time For something Biblical. To pull us through And pull us through And this is the end Oh, this is the end Of the world. —Muse, Apocalypse Please * * * * [AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's Always Time will conclude in Act 6, Chapter 4: "Take From Me"] It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 04 Act Six: Second Helpings Chapter Four: Take From Me The drive to the Epsilon Zeta Sorority chapter house proved dull and anticlimactic. The steering wheel jerked and the yellow SUV juddered if Dee pushed it over fifty miles per hour. He considered abandoning the beaten automobile and running barefoot all the way to fraternity row. It shocked him to realize he had been barefoot since "quickening Eurydice," as Yves called it, back in Bee's apartment. He wiggled his toes on the gas pedal. The thought of putting something on his feet was unnerving, exposing. "I'd feel naked," he told his reflection in the rearview mirror. ""Just wearing socks would make me feel naked." He downshifted into third gear and the SUV stopped trembling. He filed the barefoot question in his mental Things to Figure Out Later folder. Damn, that folder's getting pretty big. With the automatic gearshift stuck in third, it would take him over an hour to drive to Epsilon Zeta. Pulling over and running began to appeal. His nanomek had remade him inside out, after all. Surely indefatigability during marathon sex translated into running a real marathon. And what about super-speed? Did he have any? Red and blue flashed in the rearview mirror. Dee ignored the strobe lights for the moment, pondering super-speed. "Dumb name," he said. "'Celerity'. That's better." A siren squawked once. Dee sighed and pulled over, a police car riding his tail. What about celerity? he wondered. Do I have any? He put the SUV in park and kept his hands at ten and two o'clock on the steering wheel, waiting for the state trooper to run the SUV's tags, call in the stop, and mosey over. Even if I have celerity, what would happen if I used it? Dee had to experiment and learn the limits of his powers eventually, he decided, but now was not the time. If Yves were here, he'd say, "Go with what you know." There was too much at stake for experimentation now. The state trooper moseyed up to the busted driver's side window, drawling smoother than John Wayne. "What happened to your car, son?" He held a pad of ticket forms in one hand. "Driver's license and registration, please." "You don't need to see my identification." "I don't, huh? Now why is that, son?" "I can go about my business." The state trooper tore off the top form and crumpled it before retreating, his gait still set to Mosey as if nothing unusual had happened. "Move along." Dee confessed to his reflection, "All right, maybe a little experimentation," and spent the rest of his trip quantifying his abilities in Star Wars terms. By the time the SUV rattled down fraternity row, Dee had given up on any aspirations to Jedi knighthood. Tomoe's "kuzbu" aligns more with the other guys. "That's okay," he said aloud, turning onto Campion Street, "the Dark Side has cooler lightsabers anyway." The SUV rounded a bend, Epsilon Zeta Sorority House came into view, and reality became stranger than fiction. Dee took his foot off the accelerator and coasted into the cul de sac, not sure of what he was seeing. Porn movie clichés raced through his mind and the gaggle of vehicles parked in front of the house’s made sense in a funny, but not humorous, way. "All that’s missing is a plumber’s van," Dee mused. He parked the SUV against the curb along side the FedEx truck, the russet Dodge Shadow capped by a triangular Napoli’s Pizza marquee, and an electrician’s van from a cable television company with a very ironic name, considering the circumstances. A ten-speed bicycle leaned against the steps leading to the house’s columned front porch. The bike was rigged with canvas saddle bags brimming with newspapers. "Christ, I hope that paperboy’s over eighteen." Dee had not expected Cherry to start collecting guys—and "collecting" was the precise word for what Cherry did with men, Dee decided—until the party tonight. Did it change anything? They’re just more cards for her to hold. She already has the upper hand; it’s even "upper" than I had thought, that’s all. Dee surveyed the other buildings in the cul de sac, all unaffiliated student housing, and all dead quiet. It’s Friday afternoon, so where is everybody? He glanced at the dashboard clock: 4:20 PM. "Oh. Duh." The lace-curtained windows in the sorority house’s three stories belied no movement. "Well, I’ve been talking to myself for a couple minutes now." The house’s front door remained closed. "And no skank-bot, wet tee-shirt, carwash zombie horde…uh, thing…this time. So I guess my public fuckability’s under control. Right?" Or Cherry’s found a better game to play. He listened to the SUV’s engine clank as it cooled. "Right. Here we go." Dee swung open the car door, connected his bare feet to the ground, and felt his mind clarify, as if he had squeezed contact lenses, not into his eyes, but inside his head. He became aware of background details, the contours of ivy leaves and the granules of mortar on the sorority house’s brick edifice, without feeling overwhelmed or distracted. "Weird. Like Ritalin." Dee mounted the stairs and crossed the whitewashed porch to the front door. The door stood ajar a fraction of an inch, just enough to prevent the latch from catching. Loneliness and longing welled up within him. He wanted one of his friends to say, "It's a trap!" or "I have a bad feeling about this." It was the perfect occasion, almost obligatory, and the stretching silence compounded Dee's sense of loss and doubt. "God," Dee beseeched, "don't let me do anything stupid." He brushed open the door and edged inside. Epsilon Zeta's foyer stank like a frat house. An Easy girl lazed against the wall, her back to the door. Strawberry blonde curls stuck out beneath her FedEx cap. She wore a tasseled leather jacket but no pants, only a pair of thong underwear skewed off the crack of her juicy ass. Her head cocked, trapping an old-fashioned phone handset between her cheek and shoulder, she twirled the cord around her fingers as she spoke. "Uh huh. And three spicy tuna rolls. Yeah. Around five o'clock's fine. Can I request deliverers? Is Shota working tonight?" She turned to face forward, lacy black bra peeking out behind her jacket. Her voice trailed off as she stared at Dee. "Uh," she mumbled into the phone, "never mind." She squared her shoulders and the phone thunked to the floor. "Dinner's here." Dee raised both hands, palms out. "I don't want to hurt anybody." The Easy's hazy gaze zeroed in on Dee's crotch. She pouted, "Not even a little?" She bit her lip and took a step toward him. "Get back." The girl slumped, her mouth working against the wall. A single gasp escaped her throat. The soft, wet noise seemed to echo through the house. Dee heard pattering movement in the rooms above him, in the main hall before him, in the corridor beside him. The strawberry blonde rocked back onto her feet, her face and neck flush. Her fingernails scoured the wall's wood paneling as she took another step toward Dee, chest heaving. Her breath smelled like a bakery. "Do that again." Dee tried to ease his sinking stomach, looking for that center Yves always lectured about. Out in the house's main hall, a steady stream of coeds slunk down the stairs, a half-naked chorus line pussyfooting in time to an unheard beat. Dee found no center, only memories of Raspberry.      ["…When Black Cherry concentrates on the Easies, she can make them do pretty much anything…"] A vanguard curl from the strawberry blonde's mane tickled Dee's chin. She wet her lips and stood on tiptoe, questing for a kiss. How did he let her get so close? Here goes nothing. He pressed his index finger to her lips and said, "Black Cherry should be my first." The blonde swayed in a faint, seizing his wrist. Dee's unmoving arm was sturdy as a wrought iron lamppost. Her hands slid down to his elbow and she dangled there, hissing air inward through clenched teeth. "Yes, Master. Yes." Dee hoisted her chin with his other hand. Her pupils were dilated. Her pulse pounded in her throat like a drum. "Galatea, Cherry," Dee told the mind behind the frenzied eyes. "Show me Galatea's safe, then we seal the deal." The girl groaned, blonde curls flaying as she shook her head. "You won't win until she loses." "Basement." The blonde loosed her grip on Dee's elbow and flopped ass-first onto the floor. "Down the hall, down the stairs." She pulled the thong until it tore, fingers shivering against her clitoral hood. "You're r-ready, Master. You're ready f-for me." The narrow hallway was filled with girls. They squeezed against the wall, pawing at Dee's chest as he walked passed, before sinking into masturbatory oblivion. An empty doorframe, the door itself missing except for the hinges, revealed a flight of steps downward. A girl in a white spandex tee-shirt and pink hot-pants, reeking of fever and sex, stood rigid and staring in front of a swing-hinged door at the very end of the hall. She chewed her lip until it bled. There is no center here, Dee decided, and descended into darkness. Eggshell shards of glass crunched under Dee's feet on the last few steps. The jagged stub of a light bulb hung from the ceiling of the basement hallway. Coeds crowded the top of the stairs. Gloom thickened. To his right, Dee saw the outlines of two doors. Beyond them, two great crescent shapes were obscured in deepest shadow. They made Dee feel watched, and he looked away, grown accustomed to the dark. A pale shaft of green light cut across the hallway floor to his left. He stepped into it. The light spilled out from under a closed door. Heart hammering, Dee turned the doorknob. The mechanism grated beneath his fingers. He eased the door open. Brilliance dazzled him, caught his breath, and drew him into the room. The room was small and spare. Slivers of green light danced on the whitewashed, cinderblock walls. An extension cord led from the one wall socket to the center of the room where three lamps were arrayed on the floor. Their upturned halogen faces triangulated on the room's sole occupant. She reflected and refracted their life-giving light like an emerald prism. "Galatea," Dee said, reaching for her. "Galatea, I'm sorry." She did not move. "Galatea, this is all my fault." She did not move. "I'm so sorry," Dee whispered, and pressed his hand against her hip. She was cold as glass, immobile as marble, and as dead as stone. "What did she do to you, Galatea?" Dee asked, looking up into her eyes. They sparkled, but not with mischief or any sign of life, only with the mindless glimmer of gemstone. Dee glanced down at her bare feet. "At least she did not put you on a pedestal," he said, and stepped back. The statue of Galatea looked exactly as he remembered last seeing her: a figure as tall as it was curvaceous; a swooping X carved atop her left breast, angled and resembling a dancer in mid-leap; spikes of hair framing a mature face of aching beauty; that beautiful face downcast in quiet disappointment. "I didn’t trust you," he told the statue, "I blamed you rather than face the truth. I understand now." He stepped into the radius of light and took the statue by its unmoving shoulders. "I know what I am. And I love you, Galatea." He bent his head up. "It's time," he said, and kissed her on the lips. Nothing happened. Her lips were cool and hard. Dee clicked his teeth against them, waiting for something, some sign of life. Tears ran down her cheek. He broke the one-sided kiss. "Galatea, thank…Oh." The tears staining her cheek had no telltale trail of moisture from her eyes. "Those are mine." He dried his tears off Galatea's crystal-carven face with his thumb. In a sudden inspiration, he gently streaked the statue's lips with his damp thumb, and kissed the salt into her mouth. Nothing happened. The door creaked behind him. Dee swallowed against the lump in his throat. "What do you need?" he asked, tracing the inner edge of the X with his index finger. It stung. A breathy voice twittered behind him, "More than words and tears." Strong, warm palms pushed against the small of his back, slid up around his ribs and pressed against his chest. A dainty chin pressed into the hollow of his shoulder. Sultry-sweet breath tickled his ear. Dee glanced down. A bead of blood seeped up from the scalpel-perfect cut in his fingertip. "Oh." "Time to seal the deal," whispered Black Cherry, wing claws flexing high above him. Dee started to turn but scarlet arms gripped tight. "No," Black Cherry said, "keep looking at her, not me. I want her to know she's lost." "She can see?" Dee asked. He heard nothing from Black Cherry, sensed no stirring within the Galatea statue. The electric whine of the sunlamps filled the silence. "Anyway," he added, "we need to rework the terms." "Oh?" Black Cherry giggled. She sandwiched herself against him. Her breasts squashed into his back and her groin grinded on his ass. "And what makes you think you're in any position to negotiate?" Her rising wings cast two crescent shadows on the far wall. "Because I won't say it otherwise," Dee said, "and she won't truly lose unless I do." The winged shadows froze. "You think you know me inside and out. You don't." The shadows shrank as her wings settled against her shoulders. "But you'll know what it's like inside me soon enough." Dee stayed stolid. Black Cherry sighed. "Very well, Master. You may restate your terms." "Those other guys," Dee said. "I didn't know about them. I don't want them hurt; let them go." "Who?" Dee pictured the vehicles in front of the sorority house. "The cable guy, the FedEx guy, and two delivery boys. Pizza and paper, I think." "Oh, them." Wings rustled. "They weren't my idea in the first place, although they came in handy. What else?" Dee closed his eyes. "Galatea. I don't really think this counts as 'safe'. Release her." Ten pinpricks of pain bloomed on his chest. Black Cherry's fingernails thickened into polished black talons. She sighed, drawing her arms downward. "You go too far, Master," she said over the sounds of ripping cloth. This is it. Don't fuck up. "Nevertheless," Dee said, feeling the scrape of all ten talons. "Set her free. Let her go. No strings." Black Cherry clucked and ticked, slicing shreds of Dee's tee-shirt onto the floor. "Oh, all right. I'll release her from all that binds her here. Satisfied? No? Ooh, you are impossible!" Her soft lips closed around his earlobe. "I love it. Fine, she'll be free to leave, unfettered and unharmed. Better? Then nod your head. Good boy. Honestly, it's like dealing with the Devil." She feasted on his neck, reduced his shirt to tatters with her talons. She perked up, mouth parting from his flesh with a wet pop. "But I'll need something extra in exchange." One final swipe of a talon over his collar and the jigsaw remains of his shirt fell to the floor. "I need a name, Master." Her talons drifted toward his waist. "And I need pants," Dee insisted, "These are my very last pair." Talons plucked out an impatient beat on Dee's bare stomach. "Okay. Your master will name you. Now cancel the party and end the Frenzy." She pushed herself away. "Are you serious? Think of it: a planet of women calling you Master, just like I do." He felt her shrug, the shadow of her wings waxing and waning on the walls. "Consider it a preemptive strike. Thanks to that stunt you pulled, every witch less than six dimensions away is already after your ass." "What?" "The omphalos mundi," Black Cherry said. Dee shook his head and she added, "The world navel you made? You weren’t subtle; don't think you can be, with something that big." She giggled at the memory. "I was fucking this paperboy in the backyard for the fourth or fifth time in a row. Those eighteen-year-old delivery boys have got a lot of spunk in them, in more ways than one; he didn't beg for his life until at least his third orgasm. So there I was, getting his barely-legal rocks off, when—Wham! A new omphalos mundi, bigger than life, and topped by an axis mundi shot up into the sky." She pinched him under the armpit. "That must have really drained you, Master. No wonder you slept." She pinched harder and Dee flinched. "Still drained, I see." Despite the desperate circumstances, Dee felt bashful. "You saw that all the way from here?" Black Cherry's laughter twinkled. "Master, they saw that from the Moon." "Who's on the Moon?" Dee felt another shrug, "The Amazons," Black Cherry answered. "Duh." "You're not crazy for me, Cherry," Dee said, remembering Yves' earlier words, "You're indiscriminately crazy. There are over six billion people in the world nowadays, you can't just…Wait, Amazon women on the Moon?" Black Cherry twittered, "Six billion? Really?" She hugged his back again. "I'll have even more time with you until the Frenzy runs its course and the female half of the world fucks the male half to death. Then I'll share you, or not, as I see fit, with any witches and Moon maidens and maenads and whoever else's left." "No party, no Frenzy, no world fem-domination, and don't hurt anybody I've left out. Promise me that, and your Master will name you," Dee offered. "Maybe," Black Cherry cooed, planting little kisses on his back. "I promise to think about it. Depends on how good a Master you are." "I can live with that. But Unyx's hair: you've got to burn it." Black Cherry gasped in mock shock and swatted Dee on the rump. "Nuh-uh. I'm keeping her hair as an assurance. Besides, you have nothing left to bargain with." She reached around to clutch his chest, the talon of her index finger pricking the rib below his left breast. "Do we have a deal?" Dee gazed up at Galatea. She did not look back. "Yes." A shiver of excitement shocked through the scarlet girl's body. She squeezed against him tighter than ever. "Cross your heart?" she asked, sunk her talon into his flesh, and dragged her hand up and across. Pain exploded in his chest. Dee's knees buckled but Black Cherry held him up. His vision wavered. Blood spotted the floor. She withdrew her talon, but a heartbeat later another sank into the skin above his left breast and just below the shoulder. She held him in silence and exquisite agony, the talon burrowed deep but unmoving. "Say it," Dee told her, his jaw clenched against the pain. She shivered around him. Her sex felt hot and slick against his thigh. Black Cherry tittered, "You first." "Yes," Dee nodded, "cross my heart—" "And hope to die?" The words gushed out of her mouth as her talon sliced downward. He was ready for more pain this time but it still took his breath away. He remembered his favorite line from Yves' centering lectures.      ["…Victory is not getting cut…"] He glanced down at the raw X incised above his heart, the blood streaming down to his belly. The center is here. He bowed his head. "Hope…Hope to die," he said. "Then tell her," Black Cherry growled, grabbing a handful of Dee's hair and pointing his face up at the green statue's. "Tell her. She has to know." Dee swallowed. "Galatea," he told the statue, "I'm ready." Black Cherry mewled. Her talons vanished back into her fingertips. Her wings spread wide, encircling Dee in swirls of soot and licks of flame. Fingers thrust under the waist of his pants. Black Cherry wrapped her hands around Dee's cock. She babbled nonsense words, a woman possessed. "I'm ready for your sister," Dee said. "Fuck me, Master." Black Cherry released Dee long enough to wrench him around. Her eyes were nothing like Unyx's, Dee realized, which shone like a starry, cloudless night. Black Cherry's eyes were an unreflective black. Abysses that swallowed light and gave nothing back. Even as she sobbed, overcome—although Dee could not tell whether with lust, triumph, joy, madness, or something more dark and alien—her insectile eyes gave up no tears. She huddled herself against him, smearing her cheek on his blood-stained abdomen, one hand mauling his dick to life. "Fuck me." It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 04 The pain from his wounds had become a dull, pervasive ache. "Not in front of your sister," Dee said. She gaped up at him, her cherry-creamsicle colored cheek rouged arterial red with his blood. I've got to get this just right. "You wanted her to know," Dee explained, "but you want to share with her? In any way?" Black Cherry glanced from Dee to the statue behind him and back again. Burning brandy drizzled her inner thighs. Her hand slipped out of his pants and onto his wrist. "Come with me, Master." Dee followed her for a few paces but stopped short of the door. She tugged once. He shifted his weight and resisted her pull for a heartbeat before he tripped forward another pace. "The deal, Cherry," Dee reminded, bumping against her wing. "Release Galatea." "Oh, right," she said, her customary, coy smirk returning. Her wings flourished in the air. "Galatea! I hereby release you from any and all binds, geasan, blood music, um, disharmonies, and, uh, etcetera etcetera." Her wings sagged and she gave Dee a helpless shrug. "Sorry. Look, Galatea, you're free to leave. I won't hold you here, or try to stop you. Any power I had over you is gone." She and Dee turned back to the statue, waiting. Nothing happened. "Well," chirped Black Cherry, scraping her palms together, "that was exciting. Worth the wait. Shall we go, now, Master?" Dee frowned. "Release her, Cherry." A wing waved at the door. "The door's open, Galatea. There's a storm door leading right outside. Don't let it hit you on the way out." Nothing happened. Dee's hands curled into fists. "Release Galatea, Cherry." "You want me to drag her back to your apartment like this?" Black Cherry folded her arms. "That's how I brought her here." "What?" Black Cherry rolled her eyes. "I found her this way, Master. I came in through your bedroom window, and there she was, frozen, just like that." A wing claw gestured. "Like she'd French-kissed Medusa." She arched a brow. "Oh, I tried to smash her to bits, believe me. Even dropped her out the window. Nothing worked. Ooh, I was so angry, Master." A chill ran up his spine. "But the bedroom. All that red and green…" "Oh, that," Black Cherry dismissed, waving a hand. "I was angry, Master. So you had to be angry, too." She twirled, wings drawn in tight. "Did you really think I used the whole bottle of green food coloring on me? I just needed a few drops. I used the rest on the walls, along with half the red bottle." She made wide swipes with her arms and wings, miming an artist splattering paint across a huge canvas. "When you, Yves, and I were in your apartment, Galatea was stuck headfirst in a Rhododendron bush outside your bedroom window." She waggled a foot at him, pumping her heel against her jelly clog. "With her feet in the air. The whole time." Black Cherry sidled toward Dee. "So you see, Master, I have released her. I'm not the one keeping her like this. I never was. She could have gone to you any time she wanted." A wing claw caressed Dee's cheek. "But she doesn't want you like I do, Master. Well, she is free." Black Cherry kissed the center of his wound, painting her lips with blood. "The deal is sealed." She threw herself at Dee, wings crushing over his back, and kissed him hard on the mouth, thrusting her tongue between his lips. He tasted his own blood. "And you are mine." She took him by the hand. "Just like you wanted, Master. Now, come." Dee felt hollow and numb. He followed her out the door, unresisting. "It's time, Master." She shut the door behind them, her glistening grin vanishing as the light fled. "It's my time." Black Cherry led Dee into darkness. He reached for his chest. The sudden pain from contact made him wince, but the constant ache had become a distant throb, and no fresh blood flowed around his fingers. "How did you cut me, Cherry?" "That raspberry-flavored floozy told me to 'eat shit and die,' I believe her phrase was," Black Cherry said, pulling Dee along. "But all I ever wanted her to do was fuck you, drain you dry enough to let me in." She stopped and pushed open a door. Pale light revealed her coquettish grin. "Now it's my turn to drain you, over and over." A wing claw skittered down his bare side, scratching and probing, but without piercing. "We will fuck and cut and fuck and cut, all day, every day, forever." Dee could not decide what was more nauseating, her madness or his dick growing hard at her words. "Jesus." "Never met him." A playful shove sent Dee stumbling through the door. "In you go, Master." Grey light filtered through grimy slivers of glass set high in the wall above a row of boxy washing machines. The air was thick with lint and the sickly sweet scent of fabric softener. Baskets of half-folded laundry piled high in the corners while dozens of pairs of pantyhose and delicate exotica hung from dry-racks and clothes lines strung throughout the room. Shadows flicked across the basement windows. It's time. Dee found his balance. It's time to stand, but I have so little strength back. How?      ["…It will come when you call…"] He spun about, skidding on the cement floor. "I'm ready for you, Cherry." A dangling silk strap snagged his hair and a brassiere fell on his head. "Ah, shit." "You make an adorable demigod, Master." Dee heard an edge in her laugh. Black Cherry glanced behind her. "You glitter not of gemstone," Dee said, uprooting the bra from his hair, "but of broken glass." "Nice recovery," Black Cherry murmured, squinting at him. "Master?" Dee loomed forward. "You dapple." His shoulder did not hurt at all. "You brittle." Black Cherry dropped back toward the door, her wings trailing cobwebs of lingerie. "You sound strange, Master." A door banged open somewhere upstairs. She gazed up at the ceiling, frowning. "Something's wrong. What's happening?" She glanced down at the bulge in Dee's pants and squeaked, "Wait." Dee took a slow, single step. "This…" His bare sole connected with the floor. "Is what you wanted." The washing machines lurched forward in the aftershock. Black Cherry whirled, wing claws slicing through clothesline. "Wait!" Dee caught a wing claw by the tip. "No." He hauled on the claw and twisted Black Cherry into his embrace. "I'm ready for you, Cherry," he said, and kissed her hard enough to shred her lips with his teeth. Black Cherry yanked her head back. She stammered, "I don't—mmf." Dee crushed her to him, his mouth covering hers. Her cherry-chocolate, cordial-candy taste cloyed his tongue. She pushed against shoulders as unyielding as granite slabs. "Mmm!" Dee reached under her ass and slung one of her legs over his hip, mashing her mons against the crotch of his pants. "Mmm…" His sweatpants slipped down around his thighs and the head of his prick slid up to her bellybutton. Black Cherry's body reacted at once. Her gel-flesh stuck to his skin. Her wings perspired fat droplets of sanguine nectar. Her protestations dissolved into a fervid keening. Dee hooked his other hand under her ass and hoisted Black Cherry off her feet. She locked both legs around Dee's hips and wrapped her arms about his neck. Dee steamrolled toward the row of washing machines, his passenger clinging and crying. Dee tossed Black Cherry down onto a washing machine. Its lid dented around her derriere. She clung to his neck, kissing and sobbing. Dee took her by the shoulders and slammed her back against the wall, fracturing the cinderblock. "What's happening?" Black Cherry wailed. "What's happening?" "I'm fucking you, Cherry," Dee said, kicking off one leg of his sweatpants. "Is that so hard to comprehend?" "Yes. No. I…" She shook her head, the miniature wings above her ears whipping through the air. "Why are you, I mean, why am I—" Dee cut her off, snarling, "Scared? Don’t you get it yet?" Dee pulled his sweatpants off his other leg. "You have to fuck me to hurt me." He raised his balled first. Black Cherry quailed. A wing whickered inward, not to strike, but to shield her as she shrank away. Dee followed through with his swing, tossing his sweatpants across the room. "So I have to hurt you to fuck you." Dee's voice dripped with scorn. "Remember, back at the apartment? Out on the highway? You only got wet…" He twisted her sheltering wing. "…after I kicked your ass." Black Cherry barked a single yelp of fear and pain and let the wing fall. "This is what you want," Dee said. He hiked one of Black Cherry's legs up high, her jelly clog shoe melting into a shapeless wedge, and held it tight to his shoulder. "This is what you want from me." Dee angled his erection at her pussy, ignoring her soprano screams. "This is what you think a 'master' is supposed to do. You sick, stupid bitch," Dee hissed, and invaded her. Her arms and wings flung wide, Black Cherry shrieked, "Master!" Dee smothered her mouth with his hand. "Shut up," he said, thrusting, "I'm not your master." He heard chaotic drumming across the ceiling; movement in the story above them. He hitched his knee atop the washing machine and drove deeper into her searing sex. "This isn't what a master is." Black Cherry's head lolled, scarlet honey pouring off her wings in lazy waves. "This isn't what a master does." She screamed into his palm with each lunge. "Not your real master, Cherry." More shadows danced in the windows. "But you don’t want the real thing, Cherry." Dee shoved her, rolled her onto her shoulder, and fucked her sideways. She batted her fists at the washing machine next to her, her gel-flesh splattering, raising red welts over the machine's metal casing. "Because you aren't the real thing. Even as a statue, Galatea's more real than you." The drumming above them grew louder, more directed. Dee rammed into Black Cherry and bent over, one hand firmly clapped over her mouth, the other sinking into the wet mess that was once her hair. "Do you know how I can tell Galatea's real? That she's not some stupid princess trapped in a story?" Something pounded down the stairs in the hallway beyond. Dee raised his voice. "Waiting for a master? A hero? A rescuer?" Eurydice burst through the door and into the laundry room, knees bent, hands splayed and ready. "Where?" Dee looked back at her. "Down the hall. Last door on the left." Eurydice turned about and fled without another word. Black Cherry's scream was so loud, vibrating through Dee's hand, it rattled the windows and washing machine lids in their frames. Black Cherry reared up. "Oh no, you don't," Dee muttered. He whirled his arms across her fluid flesh, starting a standing wave that ended with her flipped over flat onto her stomach. He hopped off the washing machine, tugging Black Cherry's hips down. Her ass was a pert as ever. Dee pressed the head of his cock against the bud of her anus. Black Cherry shuddered and fell quiet. Her silence was electric. Dee lifted his hand away from her mouth. "So," he said, "do you want to stop Galatea from rescuing herself, or do you want me to fuck you in the ass? This is probably your one and only chance, on both counts." She whimpered for a while before Dee realized the soft sounds she made were words. "Fuck me, Master. Fuck me." Dee seized Black Cherry by the neck. "Fuck me." "That's how I know," he said, and did. * * * * Eurydice stormed down the darkened hall, struggling with each step. Nanomek swirled inside her, a maelstrom in microcosm. The air upstairs, overripe with sex and the pheromones of fear, had stirred them up. Here in the sorority basement buried halfway into the earth, she feared they would blow her apart. Scent traces of Dee's blood and Black Cherry's desire—She's cumming so much, she cuts him and Dee makes the bitch cum so much—churned in a molecular soup around her. She wanted to turn back, to go back to him, to forget Black Cherry and Galatea and just be with him. To be Eurydice and Dee, forever and always. But not as much, she realized, her eyes fixed on the last door on the left, not as much as I want to do this. White light flooded behind her, lit her up neon green. "Now what?" The strawberry blonde spilled down the stairs, naked save for her FedEx cap and a slick of sweat. She trembled, hands on her knees, panting and grimacing like a marathon runner. Her hair lay matted and limp over her face and neck. She wheezed, "Stop." Eurydice narrowed her eyes. "You don't know when to quit, do you?" The strawberry blonde shook her head, swallowing, finding her voice. "Nuh. Ugh. I…" Shadows flickered at the top of the stairwell and the strawberry blonde froze. "Oh boy." Tendrils of living ink zigzagged down the stairs, swimming through the air like a coordinated school of fish with endless, liquid tails. The strawberry blonde crooned, eyes sliding shut as the first whorls of gleaming black crept across her hips. More and more of the substance slithered over her skin, tongues of obsidian spiraling down her legs, coursing up her back and between her breasts. The black ribbons pulsed and the strawberry blonde's feet started kissing the ground. "Never mind," she sighed, suspended in mid-air, before the black ribbons reeled her in, floating her weightlessly up the stairs. A bemused voice drifted down. "you? but—we—cured—you—already." Eurydice heard the strawberry blonde reply, "I know. But, but, would you, um, do it, y'know, again?" "hmm." "Please?" "'kay." "Woo!" Eurydice rolled her eyes, turning to her destination. My final destination. The last door on the left stood closed, lime-colored light trickling around its frame. The hallway echoed with Black Cherry's feral squeals. My destiny. The green girl pushed open the last door on the left, and crossed the threshold into radiance. I love you, Dee. She never looked back. * * * * A Sister of the Frenzy blundered about the sorority house kitchen. When the blood music sang this loud behind her eyes, she forgot everything, including her name, living only for the irresistible song inside her head. There were always lyrics behind the blood music, the dulcet voice of Black Cherry, carrying subliminal suggestions, infectious moods, and the occasional direct command. In the early hours of the morning, the blood music had coaxed the Sister into a pair of pink hot pants, a white spandex shirt, and the insatiable need to fuck every last ounce of sperm out of some guy with the unlikely name of Deiter Detwiler. Now, almost twelve hours later, the pants' tight crotch had rubbed her sex raw, and the sweaty spandex was sandpaper against her nipples. But the blood music was worse. She toppled against the kitchen counter. Empty Jell-O boxes, mixing bowls, aluminum utensils and tins tumbled into the sink and a scattered across the floor. The Frenzy Sister moaned, head bowed, riding a wave of panicky excitement that was not her own. The blood music soared, full of dissonant cords, random rhythms, and lousy lyrics. Black Cherry sang of being tricked, of a surprise attack, of enemies at the gate, and of Master's cock fucking her in the ass, as ironic as rain on her wedding day, which was to say, not ironic at all. Filled with this nonsense, the Frenzy Sister went on automatic pilot. Black Cherry's song faded into background noise, like a loud party at a neighbor's house, but still informed the Sister's own ideas and desires. Her ass fell against the pantry door, one pink-clad cheek toggling the lock on the knob. The doorknob nudged between her cheeks, and the Sister decided she really needed some serious butt-fucking herself. She remembered the cable guy, catatonic but erect as a schoolboy on a vibrating bus seat. She tottered toward the swing-hinged door. It opened inward before she reached it. A confusion of black coils billowed into the kitchen. Thick tentacles, their tips conical and smooth, flowed across the floor in the fluid, sideways wave-motion of an octopus unfurling across the ocean bottom. Danger, Black Cherry sang through the music in the Frenzy Sister's mind. That's Unyx! Don't let her near your Sisters. And stop Eurydice! Come down to the base—ooh, damn, fuck my ass! Fuck it! More! The Frenzy Sister clutched her head. "I don't understand." Unyx glided into the room. Her glossy black lips parted in a languorous smile, her neck and chest flushed silvery white. An obsidian corset hugged the ribs below her breasts then stretched down into a gleaming bodysuit. The suit shone like latex, clung like velvet, and flowed like oil. Below the delta of Unyx's sex, the bodysuit bound her legs together into a seamless trunk, only to split again into dozens of snaking limbs, as if she had grown roots instead of knees. One of those roots found the Frenzy Sister's ankle. The tentacle's touch was smooth and sleek. Dozens more lazed on the floor and crowded the air around the Sister, swaying inches away but not making contact. The Sister could only quiver, gazing mute into Unyx's eye-mask. The delicate tip of a black tentacle traced the Frenzy Sister's jaw, ran down the line of her neck behind her ear. The physical strength behind the soft touch was immense. The strongest force she had ever experienced was giving her the most intimate and tender caress she had ever known. The Sister's sex, despite hours of non-stop stimulation, felt cavernous with need. "let—us—in," Unyx said, her tentacle curling up the sister's neck and stroking her cheek, "and—the—music—will—stop." The Frenzy Sister nabbed the tentacle with both hands and shoved it in her mouth. It tasted of licorice and power—a savage, unstoppable power touching her, filling her, yet treating her oh-so-gently. It made her feel delicate, precious, prized, and hornier than she had ever been in her entire life. "whoa," Unyx said as the Sister deep-throated the tentacle with abandon. "you—ah!—you—like—that?" The Sister chuckled and slurped hard. The tentacle in her mouth pulsed once. She froze, then pulled the sleek limb out of her mouth long enough to gasp, "Are you kidding?" She ripped open her hot pants, yanked them down around her knees. She begged, "Oh, God, fuck me," before inhaling the tentacle back into her mouth. Unyx gulped, little jet beads of sweat pricking her forehead, as the Frenzy Sister pumped the tentacle in and out her mouth. A second tentacle brushed against the Sister's outer labia, and pulsed slowly inward. The Frenzy Sister screamed around the throbbing member in her mouth. An orgasm struck her like lightning, she felt so deliciously full, and all she could think was more, more, more. She reached for a third tentacle and rammed it up between the globes of her ass. "wait—what?" Unyx licked her lips. "seriously?" The Frenzy Sister, refusing to part from the tentacle pulsing down her throat, nodded vigorously enough to give herself whiplash. The tentacle tantalizing her pussy started to withdraw. The Frenzy Sister screeched in frustration, reached down, and clawed both tentacles inward. Unyx's black raccoon mask drained away from her face. "I think," Ursula's voice trailed off. The Frenzy Sister sunk to her knees and elbows on the floor, eyes rolled over white, lost in an endless tide of power, pleasure, and triple penetration. "I think I get hentai now," Ursula gasped. * * * * "Um," Eurydice said. "Hi." She raised her palm in a little wave. Galatea said nothing, showed no signs of life. Eurydice contemplated her other self. The statue stood much taller than her, its bearing more fierce and proud, even with the sad, lost look on its face. A face so different from Eurydice's own. Not too much older: five years, ten years at the very most. And only in appearance, Eurydice had to remind herself. Galatea was merely six nights old, after all, and she did not share Eurydice's memories of the meliae that came before them, as confused and cloudy as they were. But the maturity of Galatea's visage, a true, elegant confidence that could never be confused with haughtiness, seemed deeper than appearance. Galatea wore no mask of womanhood. She was a woman down to the core. Eurydice felt mawkish and girlish—felt all sorts of negative words ending in –ish, in fact— in Galatea's presence. It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 04 Was Galatea present? Eurydice burned nanomek to examine the statue in minutiae. It was solid emerald, crystals of beryllium aluminum silicate arranged in an orderly, hexagonal molecular lattice, tinted green by trace elements of chromium. Aligned along the lattice were trillions of dormant nanomek. When a photon of light bumped into an iota of nanomek, the nanomek would absorb it, but that was an autonomous reaction. No information moved along the webs of mind and memory inside. At least, none that Eurydice could see without actually going inside the statue herself. So Galatea was present, but asleep. More than asleep. Comatose? Dispirited? Somehow expired? Eurydice would only find out if she merged with the statue. But if Galatea's mind and memory web were truly expired… Eurydice shut down that train of thought and returned to the visible light spectrum. "At least my boobs are as big as yours." She tried to smirk, glancing at Galatea's bare chest. "Maybe bigger, I…Oh." She saw the swooping X carved in Galatea's left breast. She glanced down at herself, realized she still wore the Dee-pleasing schoolgirl uniform. It melted away in the blink of an eye. "I never thought about it," Eurydice said, her voice a watery whisper. Tears pattered down over her unmarked breasts, puddled in her cleavage. "Dee never mentioned it. Why didn't he ask about it, dammit? Why?" She glared at the statue. Although its expression had not changed, Eurydice felt as if its disappointment was focused on her. "Don't look at me like that. Look!" She pointed at the spattered floor. "Dee bled right in front of you." A red smudge dried on one of the statue's toes. "Dee bled on you! And you did nothing!" She balled her fists, gel-flesh fingers and thumbs melding into spheres atop her wrists. "It's so hard for me to just stand here. She cut him! She hurt him!" Sharp jagged knives flicked out of her fists, more thorns than fingers. "I want to kill the little red bitch!" Eurydice raged in silence for a moment before the knives slid inward and her hands reopened with a metallic sigh. "But this is what I need to do. This is where Dee wants me to be." She glowered at Galatea. "This is where I want to be, damn you." She wiped her eyes. "Okay. Got that outta the way. I feel a little better." She sighed, closed the door behind her. "Let me start again. Okay?" She combed out her hair, jellied dreadlocks settling around her shoulders. "Okay. Hi." She repeated her little wave. The Galatea statue remained motionless, recasting lamplight from a sunshine white to a crystalline green. Eurydice twirled a dreadlock in her fingers. "I don't know if Dee or Black Cherry told you about me. Well, I bet Black Cherry did, and I can imagine what she said." She stepped forward, eyes on her fidgeting digits. "Anyway, I'm Eurydice. Dee wants me to talk to you, to try to convince you to come back to him. To us." She looked up. Galatea did not move. Eurydice's eyes fell. "For a long time, I thought that's why he made me. I thought he made me, just to bring you back. But that's not true." She stepped forward. "He loves me. That means he loves you, too. "Dee doesn't really understand the whole nanomek-individuation thing." She gave the statue a crooked grin. "He's not the brightest guy in the Universe, you know that, and maybe he learned everything he knows from comics and cartoons and Internet porn and stuff—but, oh, he's clever, and he cares, and he understands us." She gestured back and forth "You. Me." She shrugged. "You know: art. Women." Eurydice stepped into the field of light defined by the three sunlamps. The room fell into a green gloaming. Doubled shadows, shades of green and gray, played over every surface, transforming the spare basement room into a seashore grotto. "There are things you don't know, Galatea. There are things I don't know—like whatever made you decide to do this." She reached up to touch Galatea's cheek, hesitating at the last instant. "This thing to yourself, whatever it is. I want to find out." Her arm dropped to her side. "But I'm not going to force you to share with me. It can't work that way. But there's something you've got to know. I bet you know already." Eurydice peered deep into the statue's lifeless gaze. "He's the one, Galatea." Galatea's eyes flicked their focus onto Eurydice. Her face leapt into life, millions of nanomek burning to rearrange the emerald construct, one molecule at a time, in a flurry of speed, control, and power Eurydice could scarcely comprehend. "He was the one," Galatea said. Eurydice startled backward, knocking over the lamp behind her. Shadow and light swirled and spun. "He is the one." Galatea towered over Eurydice, her face grimacing in contempt. "How would you know?" This is it, Eurydice realized. Final choice. She thought of Dee, what it would mean to spend the rest of their lives together, what it would be like to never see him again. Galatea said, "Well?" Eurydice made her stand. "Let me show you," she said, and offered her hand. Galatea's brow crinkled. "I should be able to share memories just by touch," she murmured, and Eurydice knew she had said it before, "but I haven't figured out how to do it yet." "That's 'cause you have no limits, no boundaries," Eurydice said. "I do." She waggled her fingers. "Take my hand." Galatea stretched toward her. Their fingertips brushed. Motes of silver and green light scintillated within, growing brighter and brighter as their hands entwined. Eurydice stood on tiptoe. Their linked hands outshone the sunlamps in an expanding flare of light. The two green girls' lips met and they outshone the Sun. * * * * Eurydice watched the SUV pull away, drive under the overpass, up the onramp on the far side, and accelerate down the highway and out of sight. The engine's protests faded as the distance between her and Dee grew. Someone padded across the road behind her, quiet as a ghost. Eurydice spent a few thousand nanomek—she had so much now it frightened her, and she took every excuse to burn some—and heightened her hearing. She recognized the approaching heartbeat immediately. "Eurydice?" Yves asked. She turned to him, starry-eyed from weeping, her lips trembling. "He didn't look back," she said. Yves nodded, looking grim, until Eurydice bowled into him, laughing, "He didn't look back!" She grabbed Yves by the collar and tugged him into a friendly kiss and ferocious hug. She beamed, so happy she thought she might crack open. "Oh, Yves, he didn't look back." She blinked away tears. "He loves me." Yves scowled, and in a patient, little voice he said, "Of course he does," and Eurydice laughed so hard she started crying again. "You were eavesdropping, then, I take it?" "Huh?" Yves made quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "Sounded like you two were having a Hell of an argument," he said in a passable imitation of Eurydice's voice. "Heard every word, didn't you?" Eurydice hiccupped and sniffled, "Oh, yeah. 'Course I did." And that set off more laughter and waterworks. Unyx sped toward them, running out of the field and across the road, boots whacking against pavement. A pair of wings unfolded from her back. The wings spread wide as they took shape, black feathers iridescent in indigo and midnight blue. Raspberry raced behind her. "What the fuck is going on?" Yves reached into his pants' pocket and drew out a set of stubby keys. He tossed them high. Unyx kicked off, great wings beating the air, snatching the keys before soaring up and banking above the overpass. "Wow," Eurydice breathed. Raspberry skidded to a halt. "You guys. Seriously: what-the-fuckage." She glared upward. "We're just standing there and suddenly Unyx gets this 'I-left-the-porn-in-the-DVD-player' look on her face, does a runner." Unyx circled higher until she appeared no bigger than a crow. "Next thing I know," Raspberry said, watching Unyx wheel away, "I'm in an Evanescence music video." "Unyx's gone to get Dee's car," Yves said, watching the sky. "How do you know that?" Raspberry asked. "Those were Dee's car keys," Yves answered. Eurydice daubed her eyes. "When'd you get those, anyway?" "I picked Dee up at a gay bar yesterday," Yves shrugged. Eurydice boggled at him, watched him fight to keep the smile off his face, ready to punch him in the nose if he failed. "Okay," Raspberry drawled, brows raised. "But how does Unyx know that? When did you tell her?" "About ten minutes from now," Yves said. The purple and green girls stared at him. CeeCee sauntered up, slow and steady but with the energy of an avalanche. "Is it time to save the world yet?" * * * * Galatea broke the kiss, her face flushed with snowflake-fire. "I don't understand." The sights and sounds of the underpass faded around them, dreamlike afterimages melting into soft white light. Eurydice inched her free arm up around Galatea's neck. "I think you do." She tugged. Galatea did not resist. "But there's more." Gel-flesh met gemstone. * * * * Ursula's head peeped over the trembling curves of Galatea's calves. She wore a mustache and goatee of glimmering green nectar, grinning like her own evil twin from an alternative universe. "It's called the Venus Butterfly." "A Technique?" Galatea demanded, dumbfounded. "You are using a Technique on me?" "Half of one." Ursula rocked forward onto her elbows, her rump bobbing high in the air and her milk-white, elfin face descending below the verdant swell of Galatea's cleft. "For a proper Venus Buttery, my thumb would go up in here—" "Ah." "—my middle and ring fingers would go down in there—" "Yah!" "—and my tongue, well my tongue would go—hmmph, hm-mm, mm." "Ooh, fuck!" Galatea chewed on a fist to muffle a scream and then begged, "Enough. Enough!" * * * * "Wait. Hey." Galatea frowned down as the walls of Ursula's bedroom resolved into the cinderblock of the sorority house basement. "That was my memory." Eurydice hummed, eyes sliding shut. "So you did fuck the loli-goth." She giggles, eyes still closed. "I had to feel that for myself." Galatea ran a hand over Eurydice's thigh. "You really are me, aren’t you?" "Mostly." Galatea's hand traced up Eurydice's back, making the shorter green girl shimmy. "Mm. Solid." "Then you need to know this," Galatea said, palming the back of Eurydice's neck before kissing her hard and open-mouthed. * * * * "Aren’t you even going to listen to what I have to say?" Galatea asked, frustration and ire rising. "Yes," Dee said, "but when I get back." Galatea felt a gush of relief. "You mean," she said, "you mean you aren't leaving me?" "No," Dee said, "maybe. I don't know. You've done something to me. You're doing something to me. I guess I'm a control freak, because I'm really freaking out right now." "Dee, I haven't done anything—" "You're changing me, Galatea." Dee marched to the front door. "But it would be stupid to make any decisions about us right now. I've got to go out. Alone. I've got to get away, by myself, to be myself, for a while. I'll be back. If I can still move. If I'm still alive." "But Dee," Galatea wailed, hating herself for sounding so desperate, "I'm not changing you. I can't tell you now…there's so much I still don't understand…but you aren't changing." Dee slammed the front door behind him, cracking the frame and ruining the lock. "You're just becoming more you," Galatea whispered. * * * * Eurydice tore free of Galatea's embrace. The eidolon of memory and light winked out. Eurydice quaked, disheveled dreadlocks falling everywhere, fists squeezed against her sides. "I'm sorry." Galatea's smile was kind but sad. "But you had to know. He's not the one." Eurydice said nothing. "Another will come." Galatea's smile turned wry. "They always do." "You're wrong," Eurydice said. "What?" "You were wrong." Eurydice flipped her hair back, a gesture both childish and defiantly strong. "Dee was changing." She stepped forward. Silver foxfire bloomed below her skin. "Dee has changed. Wait. You weren't wrong." Her eyes narrowed. "You're lying." Galatea fell back between the two upright sunlamps. "No, I'm not." "Of course you are. You lie all the time. You're lying right now." Eurydice's laughter rang like fey bells. "To me!" "Dee can't change," Galatea insisted, but her eyes pled otherwise. "I know something you don't know," Eurydice sang, glowing. She opened her arms wide. "C'mere, you big dummy." Galatea rushed into her embrace and the world went white. * * * * Yves and Dee were arguing in the copse of ruined trees at the edge of the wide flowerbed. Eurydice followed the fleeing Raspberry with her eyes, burned nanomek to smooth her ears into perfect parabolas, and homed onto Dee's dark vibrato. "The decision has already been made, hasn’t it, Yves?" he said. Yves' grin was mirthless. "I know that tone, Dee. You're starting a rehearsed hissy fit." Dee tried to protest but Yves cut him off. "'Bitch-bitch-bitch, walk out the door.' That means you're leaving." Icy panic seized Eurydice. She shut down, terrified to move, ready to shatter. A warm hand enfolded her shoulder, soft and soothing, creamy satin. "Keep listening, honey," CeeCee urged. "If they wanted to be out of earshot, they would have driven two counties away." Eurydice drew a ragged breath, nodded, and swiveled her ears like a cat. "…So it has to be me," Yves was saying. "Agreed," Dee said, nodding gravely. "Black Cherry wants to live in a story? Fine. We're going to give her one." Yves rubbed his chin. "What do you mean?" "Black Cherry's holding all the cards," Dee said, "but she's not playing with a full deck." "A little less hissy fit, a lot more exposition, please," Yves insisted, "time's a wasting." "All right," Dee smirked, then ticked off each point with his fingers. "I head off, alone, to Easy House. I distract Cherry, make sure she can't use Unyx's hair. You guys catch up—still have my keys? Good. So I distract Cherry. The Easies go on automatic pilot." He dropped his hand. "Out of fingers. Anyway, Easies go on automatic pilot, Unyx cures the Frenzy." "How?" Yves' cheek twitched. "This is another answer I don't want to know, isn't it?" "Yes," Dee replied, "it really is. So Unyx cures the Frenzy. Raspberry finds Unyx's hair and the nanomek. CeeCee eats anybody trying to get away. You do…what you've got to do." "And you rescue Galatea," Yves said, brow furrowed. "No," Dee said, "that's Eurydice's job." He turned to the flowerbed. Eurydice contemplated her feet. "If she wants it. Eurydice deserves the chance to make up her own mind about Galatea," Dee finished. He turned away and Eurydice popped her head up, eyes wide. "Two problems with that plan," Yves countered. "One, Eurydice doesn't know if she wants Galatea back." "And two," Dee sighed, "Galatea probably doesn't want to come back. CeeCee said Cherry was lying about her. Cherry's setting me up with some sort of cruel irony gag. What else could it be? She thinks she's the villain in a fairy tale or vaudeville routine." Dee shrugged. "But the Frenzy has got to be stopped, and Black Cherry will go berserk as soon as Unyx shows up. So I've got to keep Black Cherry busy, no matter what it takes. Oh." Dee raised his voice. "And I don't know how Unyx's precognition really works, but Cherry can hear through Unyx's ears, so I sure hope she hasn't been listening to any of this." Eurydice, almost frozen with anticipation, managed, "Unyx, don't start listening five minutes ago." "'Kay," said Unyx, Raspberry's head resting on her shoulder. "No games, Dee," Yves dismissed. "Do you want Galatea back?" "I want her to be happy," Dee said, "I want Eurydice to be happy." Dee relented. "Yes. God, Yves, I want them both to be happy." His Adam's Apple bobbing, he whispered, "I want them to be happy with me." Dee stood in teary silence. Yves softened. "Dee?" Every iota of nanomek in Eurydice's body latched onto her sensory web. Billions of green girls listened to Dee's breathing deepen and slow. Dee nodded, then spoke with such sudden conviction Eurydice nearly cried out. "This is how it has to happen. I won't second guess her or Galatea anymore. Whatever Eurydice and Galatea choose will be the right thing." Dee dried his face with his palm. "No looking back." "You sure?" Yves asked, but he was already adjusting his scabbard, tightening the knot in his belt. "Yes," Dee answered, and as if it were the easiest thing in the world, he added, "I trust her both." * * * * The washing machine tore off its wall hookup. Water squirted up the basement wall. Black Cherry hissed and drank. Her gel-flesh seethed around Dee's cock. Candy-red froth poured off her back and flailing wings, sluicing over Dee's belly and thighs. "Had enough?" Dee growled, brutalizing her ass from behind. "You…sick…fucking…bitch?" "Never!" Black Cherry smashed her ass against Dee's crotch, jabbing his cock into her very core. She howled in orgasm or agony or both. "Master! Cum in me now. Name me now." Her insane enthusiasm was infectious, the constant surf of her flesh impossible to deny, and Dee felt pressure rise within him. "Become me," Black Cherry moaned. "Now!" "Dee?" Dee whipped around. His dick gashed Black Cherry wide open. She twittered and gabbled, cumming so hard her wings fountained off. A green face peeked at him from around the washroom door. Thin dreadlocks cascaded about the face in sheaves, hiding everything but a sensuous smirk. "This is what happens," the green girl said, tipping her head, revealing a sparkling emerald eye, "when you leave the house." Dee's heart raced. "Eurydice?" "Yes," said the green girl, and filled the doorway. She flipped her hair back, ducking to avoid the top of the doorframe. Time stood still. "Galatea." "Yes," said the green girl. "I am Eurydice." She swayed into the room. Dee was staggered by the grace and sumptuous promise in that single step. "I am Galatea. I am Venus." Her gel-flesh flowed, her curves tapered into a classical figure with hair falling down to her knees. "I am Lilith." The beauty grew fangs, her form fiendish and fleshy. She stepped closer, body diminishing as dragonfly wings sprouted. "I am Fée. I am all of them and more. But more than anything…" She moved close enough for Dee to hear the metallic sigh as she morphed into the ravishing beauty that had greeted him at the washroom door, in the flowerbed by the overpass, in Bee's bathtub, and in Dee's apartment, rising up from the kitchen table, mischief and fantasy made flesh. Well, no, not exactly flesh. The green girl's fingers crossed her left breast, cleaving an angled X, its curved lines suggesting a dancer in mid-leap. "I am yours, Deiter Detwiler," she said, and kissed him. "Always." Black Cherry backslid off the washing machine, splashed down into a ruddy lake. Her hips pumped in reflexive jerks on the floor. Little waves rippled through the soupy mess. "Master, master, master." "You know," the green girl said, glancing sidelong at Dee's crotch. He was ramrod stiff and slicked with cherry syrup and sugary foam from his bellybutton to his knees. "This'd be so much more romantic if you hadn't just butt-fucked my sister." Dee felt drunk with delight. "Or if you'd stop screwing every woman I introduce you to," he countered, grinning like an idiot. "What's going to happen when I take you to meet my mom?" She poked him in the chest. "You're the one who slept with Yves!" "No, I didn't." "Yeah," the green girl pouted. "Still, I can dream, can't I?" She reached for a torn clothes line and mopped the gunk off Dee's gut with a silk camisole. Black Cherry flopped onto her back, gulping like a suffocating fish. The green girl swirled the camisole around Dee's balls, stepping close. "So." Her breasts pushed against his neck as she leaned into him, slowly stroking the silk material over his prick. Dee swam in a perfume of citrus-and-sex. She whispered into his ear, "Tell me: your mother." She pulled back. "She hot?" It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 04 Dee kissed the wicked grin off the green girl's face. * * * * Yves sat in the idling Volkswagen, fingering the scabbard. Yves remembered mocking Dee when he had refused to hurt the mindfucked Easies under the highway overpass. He could sympathize now. "C'mon," a coed whined. "Lemme in." She bounced on the balls of her feet, rattling the driver's side door handle, breasts spilling out from under her tank top and smearing the window with sweat. "I'll suck your dick." He looked up into her rabid eyes. "Sorry," he said, turning away, "I just can't hit that." The front door of the sorority house banged open. Raspberry jigged in the threshold. "Woo! I rock!" She brandished two long, braided ropes of black hair. "I got 'em!" Yves swore. Nothing to do but to do it, he thought, and popped open the car's electric door lock. The coed bent down, fumbled the car door open. Yves swung the door out hard, wincing as the coed whacked her head against the window. He stepped onto the pavement, grabbed the reeling girl in a fireman's carry, and dragged her up the porch steps and into the sorority. The foyer was crowded with idle coeds. Some looked miserable, others abashed, but all where exhausted and lost. "Need some help here," he said, hefting the girl to her feet. A girl with a FedEx cap rammed down over unruly strawberry blond curls trotted up. "She okay?" "She's still frenzied," Yves said. "Where's Unyx?" "Upstairs," the strawberry blonde said, "there're still six or so sisters unaccounted for." She took the woozy coed from him. "This…oof…makes it five. I'll take her upstairs." She blushed. "I'm so sorry for all this." "Where is she?" Yves felt hollowed out, coreless. "Where is Cherry?" "Last I heard from her," the strawberry blonde answered, "She was in the basement, down that hallway. First door to your left." She wobbled but made her way toward the stairwell in the center hall. Her blush deepened. "Thank you, Mr. Valiancourt." At the sound of his name, all the girls turned to him. No one told them my name. They just know, from Cherry. The Frenzy is gone but the cherry lives on. Yves swept from the foyer and down the hallway. * * * * "Rage," SB had whispered to him on the boiled shore of the reservoir. "Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles." "What would you have me do?" Yves had asked. "Someone needs to die today, Yves." "It's me," Yves had said. He had not intend it to be a question. SB had said, "Yes, Yves. It's supposed to be you." * * * * The door at the end of the hall led to a large kitchen. A clutch of coeds tended to a naked boy in his late teens sitting on the marble top of a utility cart. Yves watched a girl in torn pink hot pants hand him a satchel. "Here's your newspapers. What's left of them, anyway. And, uh, your two dollars." She dropped a fifty dollar bill into the satchel. "Keep the change." "Thanks," the paperboy muttered, plopping the satchel in his lap. "We're so, so sorry," said one of the other girls. The paperboy shrugged. "S'okay." "We mean it," the girl in the pink hot pants cupped his shoulder, then withdrew her hand. "Look, uh, I know this doesn't make any difference, but you were pretty good." The paperboy laughed dryly. "Seriously," another girl insisted. "All those other guys are out cold. And Eddie ran away, I bet. You're the last man standing. I think that cable guy's going to need an ambulance." She blanched. "We're really sorry." The paperboy sat up straight, laughing. "You know what I'm sorry about? I was a virgin. Hell, the only date I've ever had was to the prom. And we only necked. And this…" He waved his hand around at the surrounding gang of half-naked college girls, "This is what happens my first time. You won't believe it, I can't believe it, but do you want to know what I'm thinking? It's all downhill from here. What I'm sorry about? Nothing like this will ever happen again." The girls glanced at each other. "Yeah," the paperboy mumbled, "pretty stupid, I know. Thanks for listening to me, though." The girl in the pink hot pants coughed politely. The paperboy looked up at her. "What's your phone number?" she asked. Yves shook his head and trudged down the basement steps. * * * * "Supposed to be," Yves had repeated to SB. "That's not the same thing as 'has to be,' is it?" "No," SB had said, "it isn't. Dee's a rule breaker. His story is off course. You don't have to play by the rules, either. You can choose who dies this time around, Yves. It doesn't have to be you. But you have to pick." She had walked back to the water's edge. "So who's it going to be? You? Dee?" She had turned to face him. "Me?" * * * * "Wait," Black Cherry burbled. She sat up but her momentum and the weight of her formless wings drove her back down again. "Wait." Dee broke his kiss. The green girl giggled and hummed, eyes closed. "If you're going to meet my mother," he said to her, "I'll need to know your name." "Mm, a third name. That's your job." The green girl beeped him on the nose. "But don't name me here. It makes me orgasm so hard and I want some real romance for once." "Shouldn't you name yourself?" The green girl gazed at him. Behind them, Black Cherry thrashed, the crimson lake shrinking into a puddle as her wings took shape. "No, Master." "That's so cornball," the green girl snickered, "I love it." She kissed him, slurring into his mouth, "But I cum rilly, rilly hard when you do it. You're the one." "No." Black Cherry swayed on all fours, head bowed, the wings above her ears little more than red, wet noodles. "Master, no." "You said that before," Dee told the green girl. "Back at the highway, you said, 'You're supposed to be the one.' But what does that mean? There some prophecy I don’t know about or something?" The green girl laughed, "No, silly. It just means you're the one." She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him so hard his toes curled. Black Cherry sat up on her haunches and shrieked like a wounded animal. "No!" "The one for me," the green girl told Dee, and kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him. * * * * "Cut the crap," Yves had told SB. "I don't believe in fate or destiny, and especially not some bullshit story." "Black Cherry believes," SB had said. "Exactly!" Yves had paced, hands balling into fists. "Fate didn't rape me. Black Cherry did. Fate isn't going to kill anybody. Black Cherry will." He had jabbed his finger at SB. "You're not talking about fate, you're talking about Black Cherry. Her actions, her choices. She's not going to stop until somebody dies. Because that's what she wants." SB had reached for him but he had pulled away. "What do you want, Yves?" * * * * "Stop ignoring me!" Black Cherry's voice was shrill enough to break glass. "Stop it. I'll kill you all!" "Let's get out of here," Dee told the green girl, hooking an arm over her shoulder. "Your baby sister's being a real brat." Dee and the green girl turned their backs on Black Cherry and made for the door. The scarlet girl flew at them, all her strength and fury funneling into her wing claws as she hurtled forward. Yves stalked through the door, drawing his sword. He stepped around his friends and raised his blade. Its ghostly edge sliced through Black Cherry's wings like a razor through water. "Victory is not being cut," he said, angling his blade as Black Cherry stumbled into it. He cut Black Cherry in half. "You lost." Her belly unzipped. Yves' cut was clean and Black Cherry cracked open, torso canting backward like the lid of a cigarette lighter. Her face contorted. Her jet-engine scream switched off into total silence. Yves was convinced he had been struck deaf. Black Cherry's torso bent almost parallel to the ceiling and her entire body dissolved into a downpour. Sound returned to the world as the deliquesced scarlet girl sloshed onto the floor like an upturned barrel of claret wine. "Yves," Dee called from the door. Yves nodded but did not look back. The rollicking red waves described a perfect circle on the floor before him. He took the time to find his center and relax into the Water Kamae ready stance. "She needs a name, Yves," Dee said. Yves nodded again and heard the door shut behind him. Black Cherry spindled up out of the waves, body hardening within a creamy red shell, beautiful and terrible. "Playmate's come to play." Her lips parted as she gave Yves's pale sword a sultry look. "Where did you get such a wonderful toy?" "Your banter's lousy," Yves replied. "Derivative, too." He angled the tip of his sword to point at the bridge of Black Cherry's nose. "This is the endgame, Cherry. Bad time to get sloppy." Black Cherry feinted with a right hook. Yves sidestepped, leaving his chest exposed. Black Cherry swung a roundhouse punch at Yves' breast powerful enough to pulverize his heart. His thumb prickled and Yves spun about, sword rising high. The scarlet girl's punch flew wild as Yves severed her right wing at the shoulder, then flicked his blade through her neck on the downswing. "Stupid girl," Yves said over the deluge as Black Cherry rained down all around him. "I told you I never make the same mistake twice. I know you have claws." Black Cherry scrabbled over the floor like a half-drowned swimmer dragging herself from the ocean. "How…H—how…" "Nice triple-feint, though," Yves said. "Too bad you can't divide like your sister, or I'd really be in trouble." Black Cherry pushed herself up. She was nothing more than a head and torso above a choppy puddle of crimson melt. Yves brought his sword down. The sword point bobbled close. Black Cherry stared cross-eyed and gasping. "What…" Yves slashed. "Wait…" Yves slashed. "Why?" she sobbed, and the sword finally fell still at Yves' side. Black Cherry crawled away from him, her wings lifeless and trailing rills of blood red gel. "Why are you doing this?" "A few hours ago," Yves told her, his voice flat, "you were given a choice: sister or sword." He drew the pale sword up to the Water Kamae ready position. "There was no third option." "You?" Black Cherry rolled onto her back, chest heaving. "It's going to be you?" * * * * "What do you want, Yves?" SB had asked him. His rage had boiled over, and he had thrown the sword into the woods. "I don't want to be a killer!" * * * * "It was always me," Yves said. Hollow. I need to stay hollow. He glanced down and saw her exposed labia, engorged and overflowing with nectar. But I hate this, I hate this. "So little nanomek left," Black Cherry gulped, fingers creeping cross her thigh. "Dee made me cum—you made me cum—so much. Just a little more and…" Her fingers shivered over her mons. "No, I can't." She jerked her hand away. "Not without Master." Yves lowered his sword, training it on her belly. I hate this. * * * * SB had said, "But you're so good at it, Yves." And Yves had cried, and SB had run to him. * * * * "My master should have been my first," Black Cherry pled. "My master should be my last." "I was." Yves moved to Black Cherry's side. After a moment's hesitation, he sheathed his sword. It slid into its scabbard with a silken sigh and click. "I will be." Black Cherry frowned up at him, blinking. Her eyes grew wide. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she called to him, "Master?" * * * * "I tried to give her a choice. Eurydice tried, too," SB had said, hugging Yves tight. "Eurydice risked her life to save her sister. But Cherry didn't want it. It's not Dee who won't change, it's Cherry. She wants to kill her master, or her master to kill her." She had gripped him by the shoulders. "And that's you, Yves. Isn't it?" * * * * "Yes," Yves said to Black Cherry. He pulled the scabbard from his belt and tossed it aside. "It's me." "Oh, Master." Black Cherry wondered up at Yves. "Master, I'm sorry. I should have known. You were always ready for me. Ready from the very start. Even though you hated it." Her fingers scuttled into her sex again. "And you do hate it, don't you, Master?" "Yes," Yves said. He reached into his sparkling white over-shirt, and drew out a stout, gray blade. "Your tanto," Black Cherry sighed, one hand plunging into her sex, the other tracing little circles between her breasts. Yves straddled Black Cherry's stomach, pinning her arms in place with his knees. "It's time." "You hate me," Black Cherry purred. Yves could feel her arms move frantically beneath him. "You hate me enough to kill me." "I hate you," Yves said, palming the tanto in both hands, trying to think of the words that would drive Black Cherry over the edge, trying to stay hollow. "Because I have to kill you. Not for what you did to me before, but what I'm doing now." He raised the short blade above his head, "I hate you more than anything in the world." She shook beneath him, legs kicking, wings trembling. Nectar leaked everywhere from her. "Hate me, Master! Name me! Become me, Master!" Yves thrust the tanto downward with all his strength, burying the blade between her breasts. "Die for me, Nemesis," he told her. Nemesis cried out his name and died. * * * * And I won't take from you What you can't take from me. —XTC, We're All Light * * * * Epilogue: The Moral of This Motherfucker Dee and the green girl were sitting together on the basement stairs when Yves emerged. "It's over," he said, tucking the pale sword and scabbard into his belt. "Nothing left but Jell-O, and that's getting washed into a sump pump by a leaky washing machine. Still," he added to the green girl, "do you mind double checking? I don’t have super-senses." The green girl rose. Yves marveled at her beauty, then startled at her height and megaton bombshell figure. "We think you're super, Yves," she said, patting him on the chest and kissing his cheek. "Thank you." She swayed into the washroom. "That's Galatea?" Yves asked Dee. "Kinda sorta almost," Dee smiled. "She's Eurydice and Galatea. She—well, we, I guess, she still wants me to officially do it—we haven’t decided on a new name yet." "Eurydice was worried if they could re-assimilate, or what would happen if they did," Yves said. "Eurydice's still there," Dee said, "more than ever. But so's Galatea." His brow furrowed in thought. "She says it's different than anything that's happened before. Their nanomek didn't just sum together, it multiplied. She's not Galatea plus Eurydice, she's Galatea times Eurydice. That's what she said, anyway." "What the heck does that mean?" Yves asked. "It means I'm fucked." Dee grinned, eyebrows arching. "And this weekend's going to be God-damned amazing." Yves gave Dee a wan smile, then sat beside him. "You're naked again," Yves said. "I'm used to it," Dee said. "Here're the pants I borrowed." Dee handed Yves a dripping, red and gray mass. "Sorry." Yves pushed him off. "Keep them. My treat for helping me save the world." Dee sat with the sloppy sweats in his lap, saying nothing. Yves sighed. "Thanks for not asking if I was okay, Dee." Dee nodded. "I know you're not okay, Yves. But I think you will be." "Me too," Yves said. They sat together a while. "Galatea, Eurydice, and Raspberry all fantasize about you and me fucking," Dee said out of nowhere. Yves thought about this. "Who's on top?" Before Dee could answer, the green girl, her face stricken, emerged from the washroom. "She's gone," she said. Dee moved to embrace her. "She's really gone." "You tried everything," Yves told her. "So did you," she said. "You know I don't blame you for anything, right?" Yves nodded and the green girl relaxed. "These are for you," she told Dee, handing over a clean tee shirt and pair of blue stretch pants. "These are like three sizes too small," Dee protested. "I know." The green girl's eyes glittered with gem-fire. "Put 'em on." CeeCee's voice drifted down from the first floor. "Did anyone lose a guy who tastes like pizza?" "I do not like the way she said that," Dee said, glancing up the stairs. "You were the one who said she should eat anyone trying to escape," Yves said. He stood up, mimed dusting off his knees. "Come on, Green Girl, Nude Man." "First thing we do when we get home," Dee grumbled, following Yves up the stairs, "is come up with some good superhero names." "Second thing," the green girl said from behind Dee, leering at his ass as it bounced up the stairs. "Maybe third, or three hundredth." * * * * A taxicab ambled down Campion Street. A green Volkswagen darted down the opposite lane, its windows burnished by the sunset. The cab's passenger, a redheaded coed, squinted from the glare. She sat in borrowed clothes rustled up from her stay at the state police station. The baggy sweatshirt and jeans reeked of cigarettes. At least she had underwear on again, even if they were voluminous granny-panties. The cab rounded the bend of the cul de sac. "Hey," the redhead said, "that's my car! Aw, man, what happened to it?" The yellow SUV, windows smashed, roof rumpled, sat in front of the sorority house. She glanced around. Other than the SUV, the cul de sac looked abandoned. "Huh. No FedEx truck. Good sign." "You talk to yourself a lot," the cabbie observed. "What they pick you up for? PI?" "PN," she said, "public nudity." She tossed him a twenty and hopped out before the cabbie could comment further. Dozens of Friday newspapers piled around the porch steps. "Weird." The redhead unlocked the front door, poked her head into the dark foyer and halloed. "Is it safe? I heard the message on my cell." She stepped inside, hunting for the hall light switch. She looked down. "Oh, hello. Who're you?" "Ursula's a good name," said a girl with a massive pair of pigtails, thick handlebars tufted with big black pompoms. She looked barely old enough to drive, tarted up in white cake makeup and black lip and eyeliner. "Art, or theater major?" the redhead asked, squinting at Ursula's outfit of black patent leather club gear. "Post-grad," grinned Ursula, turning. "Women's Studies. C'mon!" She skipped out into the main hall. Don't look at her ass. The redhead followed, frowning. "We're we going?" Don't look at her ass. Ursula flounced up the main stairwell. Oh my God, just look at that ass. And what did she do, paint those pants on? "Um, little girl?" Ursula froze. Her outfit seemed to ripple in the shadowy half-light. "Yeah?" "What happened?" Ursula shrugged, an uncanny, almost liquid rise and fall of her shoulders; another trick of the light, perhaps. "Good guys won," she said, and started back up the stairs. "Duh. Don't they always?" The redhead ascended after her. "So where is everyone?" "Done a bunk. Bugged out. Vamoosed." Ursula whistled through her teeth and zipped her hand through the air. "Why?" Ursula reached the top of the stair and spun about, lips pursed. "Because I asked them to." The redhead's stomach flip-flopped. Ursula shook her head, raised a finger as pale as her face. "Ah, ah! Asked them to. 'Asked.' Not sang." She strutted down the hallway, boots clicking on the hardwood. "How?" The redhead swallowed, then hurried to catch up. "How did you know about that?" "We know all sorts of stuff," Ursula said, stopping at a closed door. "And here we are." "But this is my bedroom," the redhead said. "Really?" Ursula tipped her head. "Gosh." The door opened by itself. "After you, Madam Secretary." A strawberry blonde squatted on the vanity bench, FedEx cap twirled backward on her head, like a relief pitcher waiting in a dugout. "Hi!" Relieved to see a familiar face, the redhead rushed into the room. "What're you doing here?" It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 04 "I can't get enough of it," the strawberry blonde answered, plopping her chin into her palm, "but you're the last one, and that makes me sad. But Unyx said she was going to make it really special." She perked up, reaching to the vanity and clicking off the table lamp. The room gloomed. "And that makes me happy." "Who?" "Unyx." The strawberry blonde pointed to Ursula, who had slipped into the room as soon as the light when off, closing the door behind her. "You, know: snippy-snippy." Unyx burst into giggles. "Not eunuchs. Unyx. U and Nyx." Finally, something she understood. "Like the computer operating system thing," said the redhead. Unyx gulped down a giggle. "The what?" "UNIX, right?" Unyx stared in the dark, then shook her fists around her head. "Ooh, dammit. They never told us! No wonder Yves and Dee kept smirking whenever we said it!" "I'm lost again," the redhead groaned, flumping onto her bed. "Nope." The strawberry blonde whipped off her cap and ruffled her hair. "You landed on target." Unyx glided into the room. "We want to talk to you about Chapter Regulation 700: Citizenship, Morality, and Values." Does she have rollerskates in those boots or something? "That's Reg 600." The strawberry blonde shook her head. "She knows about the real one." "Regulation 700," Unyx said, coming to a stop at the foot of the bed. "No licky-licky." "So that's what this is all about?" The redhead clucked and lay back with her hands behind her head. Another dyke bitchfest. "That, and stopping the blood music," Unyx said, folding her arms. Twice. The redhead sat up. "Holy shit, you can do that?" Unyx nodded. "Oh, thank God. It's been so strange lately. I feel so, I dunno, disconnected, like I'm…" "On automatic pilot," Unyx suggested. "Yeah! Please, make it go away? I'll do any—Oh." A chill stole over her. "No. No fucking way." The strawberry blonde sighed, standing up. "Well, here's the thing. While you were gone, the rest of us took a vote. And it was unanimous." She crossed the room to stand beside Unyx, putting her left arm around her. "No more Reg 700." Unyx put her right arm around the strawberry blonde. Twice. "No more code red hazing. Girls can ask and tell as much as they want, with no consequences." "Doesn't matter," the redhead smirked. "You couldn't have had a unanimous vote. I know two sisters who'd never—" "Jo Echo says you eat pussy like a pro," Unyx interrupted, eyebrow arched. "And she really knows her stuff. As for your cute blonde friend? Well, she and her amazing tits got here an hour ago. I didn't even have to ask. So it's unanimous, except for you, Madam Secretary." The strawberry blonde peeled out of her top. "But, you know, Unyx, the Chapter Secretary has to approve or veto every vote." "That's right," the redhead said, huddling at the head of the bed. "And I'll never change my mind. Never." "Oh, I don't know." Unyx raised an arm and reached out. It reached and reached, stretching nine, ten feet to the wall switch. "Something tells me that it's time," Unyx said. and light flooded the room. At first, the redhead wanted to scream. And then, she didn't. And a few minutes later, she was screaming her silly head off. * * * * "I feel like I'm forgetting something," Dee said. He waggled the Volkswagen's steering wheel, felt it tug to the left as the car picked up speed. "Why is the alignment shot?" "Unyx had to drive like a bat out of Hell to make it back in time for me to tell her to go get the car in the first place," Yves explained from the front passenger seat. "Compared to a time paradox annihilating our existence, I'd say wheel alignment was worth the price." "Glad I won't see the future," Raspberry said from behind them, "I didn't understand any of that shit." Dee frowned at her reflection in the rearview mirror. "Did you say 'won't'? But doesn't that mean…" "It's a Raspberry thing, honey," said CeeCee from the opposite side of the backseat. She twirled her index finger about her ear and winked. "You wouldn't understand." "Eat me, fatso," Raspberry said. "I would, honey, I would." CeeCee glanced up at the face of the green girl sitting between them "If tall, green, and horny weren't in the way. Look." She placed a buttery yellow hand on the green girl's shoulder and slid right off. "I don't know what you've got going on over up in that lovely head of yours, Ms. Eurydice-that-was, but you've got more nanomek inside you than the rest of us combined. A lot more." "And she's just sittin' here staring at the back of Dee's neck," Raspberry added. "There's only one thing I want inside me," the green girl said in a voice so sultry it could melt lead. They drove in anxious silence for a while. "So," Yves squeaked, coughed, and started again. "So, you feel like we've forgotten something." "Yeah." Dee turned off Campion Street and onto the main throughway. "Something back at the apartment, maybe?" Yves pointed at a black shape circling high in the twilight sky above them. "Unyx has already checked it out. All clear, no cops, no nothing. Nemesis didn't hurt anyone else. Just pulled a mild Jedi mindfuck on the guards, although we don't know how long it'll last." "What about Viggo?" Dee asked. "Cherry Nemesis…" "Just Nemesis," Yves interrupted. "Nemesis really put the whammy on him," Dee said. "He probably has some nanomek left in him. And I wouldn't ask Unyx to go all hentai on a guy." CeeCee peered around the green girl. "Sounds like you and I have an action item, Raz honey," she said. "Sweeeet," Raspberry drawled. "Hentai!" Dee thumped the steering wheel. "That's it!" "What?" Yves sat bolt upright. "What?" "My story," Dee said, "I was supposed to upload a goo girl story to the 'Net, and I'm almost a week late. Man, those guys are going to kill me." Yves glared at him. "What? Oh, come on," Dee mugged, "that was funny. I did forget all about that, though. So, I'm thinking: what else have we missed?" "You were supposed to learn the true meaning of love," Yves said, folding his arms. "Oh, that," Dee waved, driving onto the highway onramp. "I figured that out awhile ago, back at SRU." "Is it something really trite," Yves hazarded, "like trust?" "Friction?" suggested CeeCee. "A butt that won't quit," insisted Raspberry. The green girl just smiled. Dee met her eyes in the review mirror and said, "Teaming up to fight crime." The green girl glanced away, heavy-lidded. "Um, wow. Okay. Then that covers everything. Listen," Yves said, emphasizing each point by rapping a knuckle against the dashboard. "I killed Nemesis. Unyx saved the world. You got the girl. Raspberry got the hair and the nanomek, and that's that." Dee nodded, smiling. Raspberry said, "Wait. What?" "Unyx's braids and the tin of nanomek from SRU," Yves said. "Oh," said Raspberry, plucking at her shoulder. CeeCee, the green girl, Dee, and Yves turned to stare at her. "I got the braids," Raspberry said. * * * * Dusk fell over the ivy-choked window of the Epsilon Sorority House kitchen. Shadows dappled the cluttered countertops, the empty boxes of Jell-O strewn across the floor, and the horizontal slats of the locked pantry door. The door jumped on its hinges. "Hello?" Eddie's voice was muffled through the slats. "Is it over? There's a can of soup cutting the circulation off to my ass. Anybody? Dammit." A pair of slats trembled. "Ow, ow. Fuck." A finger wormed its way between them. "C'mon. Yes!" A slat splintered then fell backward into the pantry, opening a narrow, lengthwise gap in the door. Two more slats soon clattered away. A hand fumbled out from the widened gap and wrestled with the knob. There was a click and the pantry door burst open. Eddie staggered out of the pantry in a hail of canned vegetables and dry goods, kicking boxes and tins across the floor. "Thank God," he groaned, rubbing his naked rear end. "My butt is numb." He bent to massage the life back into his legs, then dipped his head to stare at the marble-top kitchen cart where he had been hogtied earlier that morning, although to Eddie it felt like a lifetime. "What's that?" He hobbled over to the cart, rolled it aside, and stared in silence. He bent down, pushed away a tin of tuna, and picked something up. He shook it. It rattled, perhaps half-full of sand. He leaned over to the wall, flipped the light switch, turned the tin over in his hand, and read the yellowing label. SRU THICKENING AGENT "Oh, shit." * * * * And the moral of this motherfucker is, Ladies, make 'em act like they know: You are, was, and always will be Pussy control. —Prince, Pussy Control * * * * It's Always Time A Ribald Farce in Six Lewd Acts Coda: Nothing Like Us He remembered a kiss, the taste of cupcakes, a brief but blinding pain, and then a sensation peculiar in its familiarity but terrific in its intensity—the floaty-feely side effect from taking a strong decongestant. "Medicine head," the commercials called it. He remembered seeing himself from above, seeing himself fall to the floor. For a moment he had wondered if he were already dead, if this were the out-of-body experience before the tunnel of light, but no light had come. As the world narrowed and his mind dimmed, it occurred to him that the wet, rag-mop mess atop his body's shoulders was missing something. This was no spiritual, out-of-body head-trip. This was the real thing. This was not the sort of disembodiment you came back from and then talked about on cheesy cable television exposés at one o'clock in the morning. This was not life after death. This was dying from having your head torn off. But as his awareness of the world, of himself, and of the difference between the two fragmented and fell away, one thought remained. One white-hot ember of memory and emotion raged and burned until there was nothing else left: "And his name is Dee," she had said, and that was the last sound he would ever hear. "…His name is Dee," she had said, and those were the last words ever spoken to him. "…Dee," she had said, and it would be the last thought he would ever have. Dee. * * * * And then he sat up and screamed, "Dee!" Echoes died around him. Bee's hands flew to his ears. His fingers scrambled of his receding ginger hair, his cheeks and neck, squeezing and pinching. They were all there and in their proper place. His fingertip touched his teeth, and Bee realized he was grinning huge enough to hurt. "I'm alive." He leapt up, bare feet slipping once on the cold, clean floor. "I'm alive." He tried to make sense of the tall, twisty shapes all around him but an unconscious, protean fear gripped him with one overriding priority. He trust a hand between his bare legs and almost wept the relief to feel his manhood intact, balls and all. "I'm alive!" he cried, and ran headlong into a hard plane of thick glass, stumped backward and flopped onto his ass. "Wait," someone said. The voice was muffled and musical but also amplified and strange, as if some girl were talking through a loudspeaker outside his bedroom window. "What was that?" The floor trembled a little whenever she spoke. "I thought I heard something." Bee splayed his legs. The floor was convex, gently bulging upward, the apex beneath his butt. He glanced up and snapped his legs shut. "Take your time," said another voice. "Looking is free. You break it, you buy it." A metal disc capped the space Bee occupied some ten feet into the air, but the distorted shapes around him rose higher still. "Oh, no," Bee said, "Oh, no fucking way." He bent down and knocked on the floor. It clinked like glass. "I knew I heard something," said the first voice. Shadow and light cut wide swaths around him as something enormous moved in the distance. Bee stood. "No way is this happening." He reached out, tapped the glass in front of him, and traced the clear wall as it curved inward until he came full circle to where he began, and stared up through the glass and into a sensuous mouth as big as a queen-sized bed. "Oh my God," the mouth exclaimed, and Bee's world vibrated. "It's a little man in a jar!" "Hm? Oh, him," said the other voice and Bee looked up into a pair of dark, merry eyes the size of dinner platters and framed and enough lush, raven hair to fill a football stadium. "That's a homunculus. Very rare these days. Hardly anyone has what it takes to make one, and Catherine the Great's been rounding them up." Bee suspended all disbelief and rethought his surroundings. Everything he had seen made perfect sense if he were stuck in a tall mason jar on a crowded shelf of a supply closet, being scrutinized by two towering femme fatales straight out of a Russ Meyer movie. He glanced down into two seas of cleavage, one the color of cream, the other coffee. But with bigger tits, he decided. The first girl reached for his jar but stopped when he shrank back. Bigger tits plus the muscles of pro bobybuilders, Bee added, watching the girl's pectorals bunch and swell beneath her breasts. "Tomoe," said the first girl, pointing. "You'd better punch some air-holes in that lid." She pouted. "Poor li'l guy." "He doesn't need 'em, Jo," Tomoe explained, "homunculi are immortal, if you feed them right." "Immortal?" Jo said, eyebrows rising. "What do you feed them?" Tomoe smiled at Bee with infuriating inscrutability, then tipped her head up and cupped a hand to whisper in Jo's ear. Jo gaped, "What?" Her cheeks flushed red as Tomoe continued to whisper. "I, I don’t believe it. You're kidding." Tomoe stepped back and shook her head. Jo bit her bottom lip and smiled, "Really?" Tomoe nodded. Jo glanced at Bee, her fingers tracing the overstressed bust-line of her coppery one-piece dress. "Well, he is six inches tall." "Seven and a half." Tomoe's eyes danced with knowing mischief. "And he doesn't need to breathe, remember?" "Wow," Jo sighed, and reached for Bee's jar with both hands. Bee braced himself against the curve of the jar and he soared through the air in a great glass elevator. "Wow," Jo said again, gazing at him. "Hi there, little guy." This is impossible, Bee thought, the pit of his stomach filling with ice. This is insane. "You want him?" Tomoe asked. Jo nodded, hair flying, hugging the jar tight to her chest. Bee was embosomed in warmth and darkness. This is absurd. He thought he heard the glass creak. His legs wobbled like water. This is obscene. "For you?" Tomoe asked. "No," Jo insisted, her muffled voice more bass and louder than ever. "For us. All of us. For Epsilon Zeta. For all of my sisters now, and those yet to come. Forever." Jo's heart hammered all around the jar. This is… Bee could not bring himself to complete the thought. This is… "For y'all? Five dollar," Tomoe offered. "This is Dee," Bee said. Jo slapped a five dollar bill into Tomoe's hand. "Done!" Tomoe declared, then fanned her hand. "Ow, ow, ow. Good thing he's unbreakable." Jo wrenched off the top of the jar so fast it made Bee's ears pop. Eager fingers closed around him. "Welcome home, little guy." Bee closed his eyes. "Oh, shit." * * * * Church of women is made out of milk Which their love churns to butter. Church of women will have you give praise With a laugh, bark and stutter. Like us men, like us men, they are nothing like us men Men have gargoyles ’round their hearts. Want to worship at the church of women Breathe ’em in until my head goes spinning around Want to worship at the church… Let me worship at the church of women! —XTC, Church of Women * * * *