It's Always Time - Chapter Seven: We End as We Began
A classic tale of boy loses goo
Chapter Six: We End as We Began
Black Cherry pelted down the little hall. Her wings, cramped in the narrow corridor, trailed straight behind her, the train of a jilted bride fleeing her red wedding. Wing claws carved channels into the plaster walls as she ran. Wasting novilunium, she thought, losing control, losing cohesion. Minutes left, maybe less. She burst from mouth of the hall and into the living room. The couch sat unoccupied. Where is the plaything Master gave me?
"'Mugger Fleeing the Scene,'" Yves muttered, moving in from his ambush point against the wall behind her to execute the maneuver.
In the bathroom, Dee attempted to stand but the resistance from the ragged clothing around his knees took him by surprise and he collapsed, his chin dinging the linoleum floor. Fire can't burn me, iron can't break me, but get me drunk and tie my shoelaces together and I'm fucked. He rolled over and sat up, every movement uncertain. No, I got myself drunk. I gave Bee the nanomek. I left Galatea alone. He started clawing himself free of the khaki material one strip at a time. I ripped yet another pair of fucking pants.
Yves flanked Black Cherry on the left. So, Black Cherry thought as Yves closed the distance between them, plaything wants to play.
Yves clamped his right hand down around her left wrist. His right foot slid out in front of Black Cherry's left leg as Yves gave her wrist a sharp twist. Was that supposed to hurt? Best act like it, Black Cherry decided, hunching over. Anticipating resistance of her bodyweight, Yves shifted his balance and poured energy into an inward turn, bringing her arm forward and around, trying to use her own momentum to throw her to the floor.
My turn, plaything. Black Cherry let her arm stretch and Yves' expertly planned wrist-throw became a clumsy taffy-pull. Yves stiffened in surprise, spinning in an unbalanced arc to face the wall. Relishing the feel of Yves' hand locking rigid around her wrist, Black Cherry followed through, her arm snaking out until her palm pushed against the wall. "I'll play with you," she said aloud, her fingers curling backward and down to grip the hand stuck to her wrist, "but by my rules." Her hand pinwheeled around his and she reversed their roles just as quickly, pinning Yves' wrist against the wall and moving close behind him.
She let go just to see what he would do. His right arm twitched but did not budge from where she had pinned it. His left arm curled against his chest beneath his unbuttoned button-down. He's scared, she realized, watching Yves' fingernails scrape against plaster. Just like Bee. Just like Galatea and all the others. All except Master. She pressed her slinky, naked frame against Yves' frozen form. Even on tiptoe she could not reach his neck, so she nestled her cheek in the small of his back, breathing deep. Plaything's fear smells sweet and precious, like a rare prize. Imagine how divine Master's fear must be. Imagine!
"You do not scare easily." Black Cherry snuggled in. "I can tell. I like that. Not like Bee. His fear was sour. Killing him just made it worse, and after eating him the aftertaste lasted hours. Blech," she spat, shuddering at the memory.
Dee heard something shatter and scatter in the living room, a jarring tuneful sound like the breaking of a pottery jug or a china plate. Sober up and think straight, damn it. He shook his head until the room stopped spinning. Your friends are in trouble. He rose and made for the door. A muddy, ruddy light gave Dee the strange, sickening impression that the short hallway was swollen and bloodshot. He steadied himself by grabbing the doorknob. He started to shout, "Yves-!" but was fuddled by sudden movement of something scarlet and leathery racing down the hallway. A red claw bit into the pressboard wood of the bathroom door and wrenched it shut. Dee jerked at the door, trying to keep it open, but pulled the doorknob and shaft out instead.
Yves pushed back, trying to spin around. He recovers quickly, Black Cherry thought. She clipped his right hand to the wall with a wing claw, knocking a Deep Space Nine commemorative plate off its hanger. It fragmented when it hit the floor. She craned her neck to peer down the hallway to the bathroom. As quick as Master.
"Yves-!"
Black Cherry sighed, sent her other wing hurtling down the hallway to drag the bathroom door shut as it sprang back. She turned to Yves and startled to see he held a short, wicked-edged knife in his left hand. Maybe quicker than Master. Black Cherry wrestled Yves' left arm into a painful pin behind his back. "Now where on Earth did this come from?" she asked, the claw from her returning wing plucking the knife away. She leaned hard against him to maintain the pin and slipped one hand between the wall and his chest. She found a nylon scabbard sewed below the left armpit of the tee shirt beneath his overshirt. "You must have been fishing for your little knife-"
"Tanto."
"-this whole time. Readying a strike, even through all that fear. Your little knife-your tanto-would be buried between my breasts now, wouldn't it?" She caressed a wing claw over Yves' cheek. "But you didn't know this little girl had claws."
A few drops of blood ran down Yves' cheek and beaded in the dimple of his chin. "I do now. I don't make the same mistake twice. Ever."
"Master didn't bring me a plaything." Black Cherry reached up Yves' tee shirt and strummed her fingers across his washboard abdomen, purring. "He's given me a play_mate_. We'll have hours and hours of fun, you and I, but there's something I need first. I tried to get it from Master, but he's not ready for me. He will be, soon, but not yet, and I'm out of time. So, darling Yves," she said, undoing his belt and unzipping his fly, "it looks like you're on the menu after all. On the taster menu, at least."
Dee dropped the knob, hooked two fingers into the dark, round hole left in the door, and gave a tentative tug. The door stuck fast. Dee sighed. Two swings of his fist brought the door down in splinters and he stepped sideways into hall. A glob of red goop stained the ceiling lamp, casting everything in an unsettling florid light. A chest-high gouge in the plaster of both walls ran the length of the hallway. Whatever had cut them grooved the wood of his bedroom door and left it swinging loose on its hinges. He shuffled by, gave his bedroom a passing glance, and stopped dead. Blinking, he nudged the bedroom door open with outspread fingers.
When he last saw the room, it resembled a war zone, but now walking into his bedroom was like sticking his head inside a Jackson Pollock painting. Every surface was spattered with chaotic sprays and splashes of black ink and all imaginable shades of red. They fought here, Galatea and the scarlet girl. Dee lurched, taking it all in. The third color dominating the frenzied mess was green. And Galatea lost and the scarlet girl wiped the walls with her. Dee pivoted on his heels, his balance perfect, and stalked out, his fluid gate as steady and sure as a panther closing in on a kill.
And I'm going to murder the bitch.
Dee found the scarlet girl standing close to the wall. Her head lolled backward, eyes shut and lips parted in a whimper of relief. Her wide batwings were drawn tight around her petite form in a parody of a cardinal's crimson cloak, locked in place by wing claws stabbing deep into the gelled flesh of her shoulders. "Much better," she sighed, eyes still closed. Her claws withdrew, burgundy nectar weeping from the ragged wounds they left behind. "I can feel the novilunium. I can feel its music, its blood music." Her wings relaxed and unwound, slowly exposing a second figure squeezed so tight and close to the scarlet girl Dee had not noticed it before. "My compliments to the chef, Yves." The scarlet girl released her captive. "That was choice."
Yves staggered back from her, clothes haggard and wine-stained, his eyes incandescent with rage. "Fuck you," he replied, and punched her in the throat.
Her neck distended with the force of Yves' blow but her head remained perched above her shoulders. Her eyes opened, her wings swooped back in but hesitated, their long, needle sharp claws quivering inches from Yves' face. She met his unflinching glare for a second more before swiveling her gaze to Dee. "Master?" the scarlet girl said, her smile coy but sly. "I have time now."
"Dee?" Yves said, his eyes never leaving the two raptorial claws hovering close to his temples.
"Yes, Yves?"
Red nectar dripped down onto Yves face. "You're still standing?"
"Yes, Yves."
The scarlet girl chuckled, turning her head as each man spoke, like a spectator watching a tennis match.
"Well, then," Yves said, "Remember what I said about your stupid straight-guy hero routine?"
"Yes, Yves."
"I was an idiot." Yves fell back. The scarlet girl's claws clacked together in empty air as Yves flipped down and away in textbook, backward break-fall. "Kill the bitch," he panted, crawled a few feet closer to the front door before he collapsed, every muscle trembling and oiled in sweat.
"Way ahead of you, Yves," Dee muttered, moving between Yves and the scarlet girl.
The scarlet girl marveled at him, perfect breasts heaving. "You smell wonderful, Master; so angry." Batwings the color of blood and smoke luxuriated in the air of the living room. "I love it." Narrow rivulets of red nectar trickled from her sex to run down her inner thighs. "You won't regret coming back to me. I'm so much stronger for you now." She reached out to him, fingers flexing. "I'm ready."
["...I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready..."]
Dee advanced into the radius of her wingspan. "You're finished."
"Oh, Master," she gasped, agape with delight, before her eyes narrowed and her lips twisted into a thin, crooked grin. Her batwings snapped ready, their tiny twins above her ears fanning up and back until she looked like a helmeted Valkyrie who had fell to Hell. "Bring it."
Dee rushed her. The scarlet girl's wingtips meshed and merged behind him. Streams of gel pulsed out from her core to course through the membranes of her wings, ringing Dee in thick walls seeping with sanguine syrup, their bakery-oven smell overpowering. Dee crossed his forearms in front of his chest and hooked his fingers outward. The scarlet girl's crooked grin crept higher as Dee stormed closer and the gel walls surrounding them contracted inward like an iris. The drizzle of inner nectar dripping from her pussy surged, her legs lost in the torrent fueling the flood bearing down upon Dee. His hands stabbed into her dissolving shoulders just as the collapsing gel crashed down on all sides, a torrid kiss over every inch of his skin and a siphon over his cock, its smothering pressure building without plateau or any hint it would ever stop. Dee spun his fingers deep into her flesh and uncrossed his arms, drawing them downward and out behind him.
Dee tore the scarlet girl apart, opening a v-necked gully in the crushing red sea, and bulldozed through. He emerged clean as a whistle, not a single drop of cherry jam sticking to him. He skidded to a halt before bonking against the living room window and twirled about-face.
The scarlet girl funneled to the floor in a confusion of tangled limbs and funhouse-mirror distorted shapes. "Master," she sobbed when the two halves of her face zippered together the right way around, "it hurts. You hurt me." She curled into a fetal ball, wracked with spasm. "You hurt me so much."
Dee charged. The scarlet girl rolled onto her knees. Her wings plunged forward, their claws digging into Dee's underarms and hoisting him into the air. She leapt to her feet, her wings accelerating until Dee's back smashed into the ceiling. "Do it again!" she crowed through the rain of plaster, honey bleeding from both pairs of lips.
The scarlet girl twittered and flexed her claws, testing their grip, digging into Dee's armpits. Dee bared his teeth in a gritty, mirthless leer, wrapping his arms in the rubbery folds of her wings. Her murmurs melted into a lush, eager purr as she pulled her wings taut, stretching Dee's arms out wide until she had him crucified on the ceiling. "I want to do every sick, perverted, and twisted thing with my master."
Dee shrugged hard, his left shoulder rolling forward. A clockwise curlicue corkscrewed down the scarlet girl's right wing. A heartbeat later Dee shrugged again, rolling his right shoulder backward. A counterclockwise torque galloped down the left wing. The scarlet girl's cry of shock caught in her throat when the two opposing torsions met in her core and blew her to bits. She burst with a hollow, plosive pooch! noise, pelting Dee with stinging spray of black-and-crimson gunk as he plummeted to the floor like an Acme anvil. He tucked his legs in at the last second and punched feet-first through the coffee table. The table caved in, its faux mahogany pressboard top fractured and folded up at crazy angles. Dee stood in the wreckage, knees bent and arms akimbo, an earthbound Peter Pan.
Yves flopped onto his back. "Who won?" he asked, swabbing glop of his face with his stained outer shirt. "If this red stuff is your innards, Dee, I'll probably puke."
Grainy gobs rained down off the ceiling, slid down the walls, and dripped off the furniture. "It's hers," Dee said.
Yves wretched. "Then I'm certain to puke." He peeled off the sloppy shirt and shoved it aside, sitting up. "Who was that bitch? Why did she smell like, like Betty God-damned Crocker? I used to love the smell of cake batter, you know." His strength gave out and he plopped back down, groaning but sparing no energy for dignity. "Now I'm going to have nightmares about it."
The gobs settled in larger lumps on the floor. "Are you all right?" Dee said. "Did she really do what I think..."
"Don't believe what they say on the Internet," Yves interrupted, his voice flat. "Getting your prostate milked sucks."
"But she raped-"
"Enough, Dee. I know what happened, thank you very much." He tried to zipper his fly but the slider got caught on the first few bottom teeth. "That wasn't Galatea, I presume, but something that our boy Bee made. She told me she killed him because she didn't like the way he smelled, by the way."
"But if she is Bee's honey nymph," Dee said, "that doesn't make any sense." A beat later, he added, "Actually, it makes perfect sense."
Yves's glance was alarmed. "You keep referring to her in the present tense. It's not over?"
"Not if she can still move," Dee said. The slush-covered overshirt started to inch forward. "She's heard everything we've said. Yves, get the fuck out of here."
Yves watched his shirt wriggle past him. "She's not interested in me now that she's got you to play with."
"We're not playing."
"Then what-"
"Quiet," Dee snapped. A cherry chocolate mound gathered at his feet.
"Yes, Ooze-Sensei," Yves whispered.
Fed by dribbles and spurts of red and black goo, the mound ripened into a bloated beach ball. "Well?" Dee said, shifting his weight, "had enough?"
The scarlet girl's wings whipped back and she rocketed forward, snagging Dee by the throat with one hand as she ran past him in an almost casual gesture. His feet dangled a few inches off the floor for a moment of hurtling, horizontal flight before she rammed him into the far wall. Struts buckled and plaster powdered behind him, but the load-bearing structure of the apartment building's outer wall absorbed most of the blow. "I want," the scarlet girl panted, "to do every...sick, perverted, and...twisted thing with my master! And that," she wailed, "that was just one!"
Dee kicked out, his foot kinked at a curious angle, his movements slow but strong. The kick connected with gel flesh and amputated the scarlet girl's right leg at the thigh. Her wings smacked down onto the floor behind her, keeping her upright as she reeled. She recovered quickly, gobs of severed leg still pattering around the room as the grip around Dee's neck cinched shut and she threw a left hook at his jaw. Dee let his knees buckle and the scarlet girl punched a fist-size hole in the wall an inch above his head. He barreled forward, shoulder slamming into the scarlet girl's midriff, his hands pushing a strange pattern through her jellied substance. The force of the blow threw her backward in a disintegrating arc through the air until she fell among the ruins of the coffee table.
Her hand held fast to his neck, her arm stretching noodle thin until it snapped. The hand dissolved, its warm sanguine fluid running down Dee's chest. Lost cohesion when it separated from the whole, Dee decided. She can't divide like Galatea could, or maybe just not as well.
The melted gel rolled away in glistening beads of blood. The scarlet girl flailed in a mad tantrum, screeching, "You pushed me away! Never push me away!"
"Always," Dee said in a dead monotone and marched forward. "And you'll never get to have me."
The scarlet girl flew at him, a banshee blur of wings, claws, and rings of teeth. Dee cried out in wordless pain in the center of a red cyclone that tore away every last shred of his clothing. The scarlet girl coalesced and clung to him, wings wrapped around his ass and between his legs, fingers raking over his back. "I have a master," she hissed, hips humping furiously against his dick. "I'll always have a master."
Dee bobbed and weaved, broke free, and threw her melting form to the floor. "You have nothing," he spat, stumbling through trails of black and burgundy slime.
"I'm nothing," she whispered, a shaky wing claw reaching down to shiver against her clitoris. "I'm nothing." Her other wing claw dove into her sex.
"Jesus," Dee said. He stumped over to Yves. "Let's get you out of here, Yves."
Yves lay still on the floor, his neck crooked up and glassy eyes narrowed. "I've never seen anyone move like that."
Dee grimaced at the scarlet girl writhing in the living room. "That's because she's made of Jell-"
"Not her," Yves said, "you. And just what the Hell are you doing?"
"What you told me to do," Dee said. "I'm killing the bitch."
Yves craned his neck higher. The scarlet girl's face had grown gooey, her features unfocused and dripping with dew. Red rills coursed between her breasts before her hands, fingers fused into flippers, scooped and smeared the runoff across every softening curve. One wing pulsed deep in her pussy. She arched up, sheets of candy-apple red icing flowing down her back in a rippling mane, and the other wing curled under her rump and penetrated her from behind. All the while she twittered and muttered, "I'm nothing, I'm nothing, I'm nothing."
Yves head bumped down hard against the floor. "Sure doesn't look like it."
"Every move costs nanomek," Dee said. "Every reassembly burns even more."
The apartment filled with slurping, syrupy sounds as the scarlet girl drove herself to messy orgasm. "Nothing! Master! Nothing! Always! Master!"
"And that costs her the most," Dee added wretchedly.
"Christ, Dee, why?"
"Don't you get it? I'm going to burn all her nanomek away." Dee helped Yves to his feet. "Or die trying. Probably both. That's why I have to get you out of here, Yves. She can't have another source of sperm. I've got to burn all the bitch's nanomek away. Every last one. That's the only way to truly kill a meliae."
"Yes!" the scarlet girl burbled. "Kill me, master! Hate me enough to kill me!"
Dee fixed her with an empty stare, and in that terrible, lifeless monotone, he said, "That's how she killed Galatea."
The scarlet girl's slow dissolve froze. "That sentimental green simpleton?" Her features hardened along with her voice. "If my master doesn't choose me over her, I may kill her after all."
Dee blanched. "Galatea's alive?"
"Fear," the scarlet girl gulped. "I can smell it from here."
Dee advanced, face bleached and eyes blank. Yves blundered about but managed to sag against the apartment's front door. The scarlet girl bolted upright, fists squeezed against her checks. "Oh, Master," she babbled, "your fear. It's more incredible than I ever imagined..." Her squeal ascended into a piercing scream as Dee reached out and tore off both her wings at the shoulder.
Her wings liquefied, thundering to the floor in a crimson downpour. Dee stepped close to the scarlet girl shrieking in the middle of the red tide. "Tell me where she is," he said.
"You're so scared!" rejoiced the scarlet girl.
Dee ripped the little wings out of her head. "Tell me where she is."
The scarlet girl's trembling limbs locked rigid. "You'll never push me away again!"
Dee cradled her face in his hands. "Tell me where she is or die."
The scarlet girl twittered and drooped in a post-coital haze. "No," she said, abyssal eyes glowing.
Dee's arms twitched, and in that split second of indecision the scarlet girl slipped from his grip and laid Dee out flat with a lightning-quick uppercut. The red fluid on the floor roiled around and rushed up her back. New pairs of wings unfurled. "No," she yawned, "I don't think so. I was ready to die for you, Master, but now I think I've found a better way to ensure you'll never push me away again."
She swayed over him. "You pushed her away, remember? And she let you go. That's why she gave up and let me take her so easily. She knew you pushed her away to make room for me. I'll be better than she ever was, Master, because I never give up. And I never let go. And you're crying, Master."
"I'm sorry, Galatea," Dee whispered.
The scarlet girl shook her head. "You still don't understand. But you will." She sauntered over to the living room window and broke the pane with an effortless flip of a wing. "I've got to go now, Master."
"No, tell me-"
"See? You've accepted it a little already." The scarlet girl hopped onto the windowsill. "You can't push me away. But there's so much work to be done, now that I know what you need me to do. I'm going to make everything perfect for us, Master. Everything."
"No."
Red wings extended into the pre-dawn damp. "I live to serve and please my master," the scarlet girl said, "whether my master likes it or not."
"No!"
The scarlet girl's wing claws bit into the wall high above her and she clambered out of sight.
"Dee," said Yves, testing his balance, "get up."
Dee sprawled on the floor, head in his hands. "Galatea, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"Snap out of it and get up," Yves insisted, taking a few uncertain steps forward.
"But she's right. It's all my fault."
"No, she's not." Yves leaned against the archway to the kitchenette. "You're coming down off a serious adrenaline rush and she took advantage of it to fuck with your head and escape. It's a dirty trick that I've used myself a few times."
"That explains the headache," Dee groaned.
"No, that's probably the bourbon. If I can stand, so can you. Now get your ass up!"
Dee stood, flinching at the pain pounding in his temples.
"Jesus, Dee," Yves said. "Have you been working out or something?"
"'Four day fuck-a-thon,' remember?" Dee shrugged in an outspread gesture that took in the entire room. "What the fuck do I do now, Yves?"
"We find some clothes-Oh, grow up," Yves sighed as Dee cupped his hands over his crotch and blushed. "Anyway, we find some clothes and some coffee, and then we find Galatea and burn that devil cookie freak."
"'We?'"
Yves hobbled into the kitchenette. "If you don't want to help me, I guess I'll understand."
Dee's smile was grim. "Of course I'll help, Y-Sensei." He listened to Yves fumble with the electric coffee maker but knew better than to interfere. "Coffee's in the cabinet above the microwave."
"Thanks," Yves said, his movements growing confident. "Have you really gone five days without sleep?"
"Only if being comatose doesn't count."
Steam percolated in the coffee maker. "I doubt it does," said Yves, rinsing out a couple of corporate-logo coffee mugs. "But I haven't pulled a real all-nighter since college, so these are both for me. In about ten hours I'm going to be hit with a massive migraine and become utterly useless, so after we get our shit together we're going to have to move fast."
Coffee started sizzling into the pot. "Move where?" Dee asked. "Miss Devil Cookie could be anywhere. Where do we start?"
Yves watched the level of coffee in the pot rise. "If you told me everything before, then we've only got two places to go."
Dee thought about it for a moment. "You're right. Let's start close to home. Listen," Dee added. "I think I've run out of clothes."
"Clean clothes?"
"Yeah." Dee shifted uncomfortably. "But I think I'm completely out of pants."
"Ten years," grumbled Yves, pounding down the cement stairs.
"What?" Dee asked from a few steps in front of him.
"Ninety minute workouts, at least once a day, for ten years," Yves said, glaring at Dee's chiseled shoulders. "That's how long it took me to look good in these clothes."
"Really?" Dee reached the door to the first floor. "I thought you were born bishi."
"And you fill out a muscle shirt in four damned days."
"Feeling petty, Yves?" Dee turned the door handle. "Is that why you gave me these stupid M.C. Hammer pants?" He pulled at the elastic of a pair of sweats resembling gun-metal gray pantaloons.
"No, I'm feeling practical. You've been ruining an average of 2 and a half articles of clothing an hour in the past few days, and I need to cleanse the Nineties from my wardrobe. Besides, you need a lot of room for Goojitsu."
Dee held the door ajar. "What?"
Yves shrugged, then winced and rubbed his shoulders. "Would you prefer 'goo fu?'"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Your martial art," Yves said.
The door fell closed. "I repeat: what the fuck?"
"Come off it, Dee. When I said I'd never seen anyone move like you did, I meant it. And what you did to that cherry cupcake psycho..." Yves shuddered. "She may have felt like Jell-O to you, but to this mere mortal she was about three hundred pounds of wet cement."
"Yves, honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing or what's happening to me. You've always been good at this sort of thing; I've seen you guess the endings of movies like The Sixth Sense, Momento, and Seven from just watching the opening credits. Do you know what's going on?"
"Not yet," Yves said, joining Dee in the entryway to the first floor and pulling open the door. "But I'm working on it."
Dee peered down the empty hallway. "What can you tell me, then?"
"Well," Yves sighed, closing the door. "You've invented the world's first martial art designed not just for unarmed combat, but also for fighting when totally nude, with an entire school devoted to defense against rheodynamic attacks. The cherry cupcake girl is insane, but she has standards and lines she is unwilling to cross. She makes contingency plans, however, and is prepared to compromise when desperate. And Bee's really dead."
Dee goggled. "How do you know all that?"
"His testicles are in a jar outside his apartment's front door."
Dee cracked the door open. "Good eye," he said, squinting. "I thought those were marbles."
"Have some respect for the dead, Dee. That's the part of himself Bee probably wanted to stick in her mouth more than any other and it wound up being the only part of him that didn't end up in there. I guess nanomek really is programmed for irony."
"What are Bee's balls doing in the hallway?" Dee said.
"It's a message from that cherry devil cookie bitch-look, we need to come up with a good nickname for her," Yves said. "I don't like saying 'bitch' all the time, no matter how appropriate."
"Cherry Cupcake?" Dee suggested.
"Only if I get to call you 'Ellie Dee'."
Dee blinked. "Even I don't get that reference. But, whatever. Um, Betty Crocker?"
"Lawsuit waiting to happen," Yves said.
"Darth Cherry?"
"Please."
"Well," Dee said, "Devil Cookie has a familiar ring...Wait a minute. You're trying to distract me from something."
"It's working."
"Just tell me what message Bee's balls in a glass jar could possibly convey."
"I have no idea," Yves said. "Cherry Cupcake's crazy."
"'Crazy for me,'" Dee muttered in reverie.
"What? No, she's indiscriminately crazy. But the message, whatever it was, was meant for you."
"So?" Dee said, ire rising.
"So I don't think Cherry Cupcake's there, but I also don't think you're going to like what's waiting for us in there, either,"
Dee startled and threw open the door. "You think Galatea's-"
"I don't know, Dee." Yves blocked the doorway. "But I need you to not think about Galatea for the moment. I don't want to belittle your feelings and I appreciate the gravity of your situation..."
"I know," Dee said.
"But we need to think big-picture right now, and that means the most important question is..."
"I know."
"Where the Hell is the rest of the nanomek?" Yves finished, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"I don't know," Dee said. "But I can guess."
The tin of SRU Thickener bounced around the metal mesh child seat of the shopping cart gamboling down the Baking Needs aisle. The burning red sunrise threw crazy shadows ahead of it. "Where's all the cherry Jell-O?" the pusher of the cart called out.
A sleepy reply came from a few aisles away. "Ma'am? We don't open until six o'clock, ma'am. The front door should have been locked."
"It was," said the customer, bobbing her head to peek into various rows of instant desserts and pie fillings. "I just slipped in." She adopted a breathy, pouting tone. "I hope you don't mind. It's only a few minutes before six. Could you help me with the cherry Jell-O? Please?"
"I'm sorry," said the sleepy voice, the squeak of sneakered feet approaching the Baking Needs aisle. "Some sicko came in last night and bought it all for who-knows-what."
"Oh, really?" the early customer drawled owlishly.
"Yah, really," the husky stock boy insisted, round the bend of the aisle. "We're all sold ow-wow-huh-how." He skidded to a halt, gawking.
Black Cherry's batwings stretched high and triangular like lateen sails, crimson blazing and black veins glistening as they drank in the dawn. Her fingers riffled through the uneven rows of gelatin boxes. "'Peach'," she read, picking up one box. "Maybe. If I had some schnapps." She put the box back on the shelf. "Hm. 'Grape'? Probably a boozehound. 'Mixed Fruit'? What the heck is that? Oh, who am I kidding?" A wing flicked down and scooped every last box into the shopping basket.
"I'll make as many as it takes for Master," she said, plucking out the boxes of lime Jell-O from the pile in her basket and pitching them into the next row, "give him more, and more, and more until he finally realizes I'm the only one perfect for him. Or they drain him dry, I suppose, and then I'll just claim what's mine. After all," she told the stock boy, "a girl needs her minions."
"Uh. Huh?"
"Ah," Black Cherry said, ignoring him, and pulled a handful of devil's food instant pudding boxes from the shopping cart. "Not cherry, but these will do for a start. Too unoriginal, though. She'll need something more. Time to think outside the box." She watched inky black swirls spiral across her wings. "Of course," she murmured. "She'll be perfect. Well, almost perfect."
Black Cherry fixed the stock boy with her bottomless stare. "What's your name?"
"Uh. Eddie."
"Do you sell paint, Eddie?"
"Aisle three," Eddie the stock boy said, unblinking.
She took a step closer. "Do you sell black paint?"
"Aisle three, freezer-side left," Eddie gulped, gooseflesh prickling his arms and neck.
She stepped closer still, her wings buffeting his hair. "Do you sell black latex paint?"
"Aisle three," Eddie croaked, "freezer-side left, center shelf. Just a pint or two, though."
"More than I need, thank you. Say, Eddie..." Black Cherry gave Eddie's cheek a friendly tweak, raising a bruise. "Has anyone ever told you that you look good enough to eat?"
"Do you really think meliae can make more meliae?" Yves wondered. "We're dealing with magic and dream-logic, here. There could be a rule against it."
"There's also a rule that nanomek never does what you expect," Dee said. "It's the most important rule, apparently, so maybe it applies to meliae too."
"I don't know what's worse," Yves said, scrutinizing the hallway again, "Cherry Cupcake planning to make more meliae or Cherry Cupcake making more meliae that don't turn out as planned."
"Jesus, I hadn't thought of that."
"I've run out of ideas, myself," Yves said. "We have to check out Bee's place eventually, anyway." He stepped through the doorway. "Let's get it over with."
They sidled down the hallway. "Who else lives down here?" Yves asked.
"Esteban. You know," Dee said into Yves blank stare, "good looking guy, always acts like he just broke up with his girlfriend, goes home with a new girl every other night? Not your scene, I guess. I doubt he's home."
"Is he Bee's next door neighbor?"
"No," Dee said. "That's Kay."
"Kay's back from Iraq?"
"Don't know, but don't worry," Dee whispered, "Kay sleeps like the dead, no amount of noise can wake him up-unless you're trying to be quiet or sneaking around, that is."
"Like we are now?"
"Shit," Dee said a normal volume. "Good point. Sorry."
Yves marched to the door with the jar sitting in front of it like something left out for the milkman. He nudged the jar aside with his foot, his eyes focused on the glass peephole directly in front of him. He rattled the knob. "Locked. Do your thing, Dee," he said, moving back, "and don't be sneaky."
Dee kicked out. The metal door refused to bend and Dee's right foot punched through it like an awl through leather until his leg pushed knee-deep. "Cheap door," Dee said, hopping on his left leg to keep his balance.
"That's what it's supposed to do, I think," Yves said, backing even further away. "Although I doubt the designers ever took into account someone strong enough to actually puncture the damn door."
"Okay, then," Dee grumbled. He reared up, shifting his full weight onto his trapped leg and butting the door with his head. The hinges groaned, the door caved in, and Dee toppled into the apartment.
"That would have woken the dead," Yves said after a long pause. "I don't think Kay's home."
"There're Styrofoam peanuts all over the place in here," Dee remarked.
"How does it smell?" asked Yves.
"The peanuts?" said Dee, lying atop the pierced metal door and crammed into the apartment's tiny foyer. Paint scraped off the walls whenever he tried to move. "Yves, I need a little help here. I think I'm stuck."
Out in the hallway, Yves fell into a ready stance. "Try thinking for a second, Dee, and tell me if you smell anything."
"It is a little ripe in here, now that you mention it. Sickly sweet, like-Oh, shit." Dee bucked, bending the door at a ninety-degree angle, only trapping his right leg tighter. "You don't think Bee made two of them, do you?"
"Sickly sweet like what?"
Dee shuffled, making no progress. "Not like cookies, thank God. Garbage and air freshener. No, not air freshener...Galatea."
The door shred like tissue paper under his hands and Dee stumbled into the apartment's living room. A moment later Yves followed, picking his way through the sharp strips of shorn sheet metal. "This place is directly below yours, Dee," he said, "so that makes sense. Check out the ceiling. It's tie-dyed mint green."
Dee relaxed enough to take in his surroundings. "The fridge's wide open but the light's out and I don't hear the compressor running. I guess that's where the smell's coming from. No sewage-meliae to worry about, thank God."
"I was thinking more along the lines of other bits and pieces of Bee," Yves said, rummaging through the clutter of old mail on Bee's coffee table.
"Ew. Thanks, I'll keep that in mind." Dee rifled through the cushions of Bee's black leather couch. "We're looking for the nanomek, I take it?"
"Yeah, on the odd chance we've lucked out and Cherry Cupcake doesn't have it, we've got to find it and put it somewhere safe. Man, look at all these mail-order catalogues. Did Bee collect anime action figures or something?"
"Trust me; you don't want to know," Dee said, "I'll check out the kitchen."
Yves contemplated the ceiling. "It's not seeping down," he pondered aloud. "It's spreading across."
"What?" Dee said from the kitchenette.
"I'll be in the bedroom," said Yves.
The refrigerator door was propped open by a massive, metal mixing bowl. Dee rolled it aside and shut the door, ignoring wilting vegetables spotted with mold and a burst, soupy package of ground beef. He hefted the bowl off the floor, testing its weight. Dee sniffed a hint of chocolate cherry cordial candy. "Speaking of magic and dream-logic," Dee called out, "you should see the bowl Bee made Cherry Cupcake in. It's a god-damned cauldron."
Dee caught a glimpse of the kitchen table and whistled. "Holy crap." The mixing bowl thudded onto the stove. "That's a lot of Jell-O. Yves! There must be two dozen empty boxes of cherry Jell-O in here. All that collagen; no wonder she was so strong...Wait a minute."
Dee bent down and picked a lone, empty box of Devil's Food instant pudding from the floor. Its cardboard was crusted with a dull russet stain. Dee wished it were ketchup, beet juice, or even Cherry Cupcake cum, but he knew better. "Devil's food." He turned to the mixing bowl. "Witch's cauldron." There was more russet on its rim. "I bet he bled a little into the mix, too." He glanced out the bay window into the golden dawn. "All on a night of the New Moon. Bee, you idiot."
"Dee," came Yves' shaky voice from the bedroom. "You'd better get in here."
Dee crossed the living room and trod down the little hallway to the bedroom. Galatea's scent mixed with the earthy must of mildewed plaster. Yves stood in the bedroom doorway. "Don't freak out," he said, moving back. "Just look and tell me if you think there's anything we can do."
The bedroom ceiling was pitted with lime-stained fissures and craters. Strips of greenish drywall formed stalactites around a broken plywood support beam breaching the spongy stucco and blemished the walls. The catastrophic water damage barely registered. Dee's attention was transfixed by dozens of containers. Salad and soup bowls, aluminum pots and steel pans, glass beer mugs and countless plastic cups littered every flat surface in the room. "He was collecting her," Dee whispered. The Devil's Food box tumbled to the floor. "Her, uh, runoff."
"I know." Yves picked up a nearby Pyrex measuring cup and handed it over. A rind of pale green powder coated the mouth and walls of the glass and a thick, florescent green sludge glazed the bottom. "They're all pretty much like this, mostly evaporated. Do you think there's anything we can do? If Cherry Cupcake knew about this, she wouldn't have left anything here if she thought we could."
"Maybe she didn't know everything," Dee said. He pressed a finger into the measuring cup. The sludge felt cold and lifeless, the fingerprint he left in it as unchanging as an astronaut's footprint on the Moon. "Maybe she didn't know what she never experienced."
"What are you thinking, Dee?" Yves asked.
["...nanomek always holds a little energy and some of your cum-maybe a milliliter or two-in reserve, out of instinct or something like that..."]
"You're so quiet I can't tell if you're freaking out or not," Yves added.
"I can't afford to freak out," Dee said, "now that I can bring Galatea back."
"How?"
"Three Ds."
"What?"
"The three Ds," Dee repeated, searching out glasses and clear plastic cups. "Remember? She said that's all she'd ever need."
Yves thought for a moment, then twitched with sudden recognition. "I can help you with the first two," he offered.
"I don't think we'll need more of the third."
Yves was collecting plastic cups near the bedroom window when he said, "What the Hell is this?"
Dee glanced up from his growing stack of glasses. "It's a webcam on top of a broom handle." He pointed at camera's winking LED light. "It's on."
Yves followed the camera's cabling to Bee's worktable. He fished a receipt out of a plastic bag crumpled by the keyboard. "Bee bought a three hundred gigabyte external hard drive a few days ago." He sat in Bee's mesh desk chair and brought his computer out of hibernation. "It's full." He hunched over Bee's computer monitor and called up an image viewer. "Oh my God," he said, mouse clicking furiously.
"What?"
"Well, Dee," Yves sighed as the monitor flickered. "I've always wondered, and now I know, thanks to you, Galatea, and a little help from Bee."
"Know what?"
Yves punched a key and a high resolution video filled the screen. "I am completely, one hundred percent, absolutely gay. This stuff isn't turning me on at all."
Dee came up behind him. "That's a prototype of her bed trick, I think. Too bad we never got to try the final version."
Yves pressed his palms against his cheeks, aghast. "I'm not turned on but I can't look away. How are you breathing between those?" He advanced the video a few minutes. "Or under there?" He advanced it again. "Or in that?"
"That's when I learned how to hold my breath for half an hour," Dee said, blushing. "At least. Never found out how long I could go. I, uh, kind of take over in a little while. That's part of the game...Yeah, there I go. Huh. Wow."
"'Wow?'" Yves laughed, hitting the fast forward button. "I see how you learned Goojitsu." He turned to face Dee. "Why aren't you angry? The Dee I know would be punching holes in walls and threatening to kill Bee."
"He's already dead," Dee said. He waved an arm over all the containers on the floor. "Besides, if this works, he's given Galatea back to me. I let all this happen-I gave him the nanomek and then I pushed Galatea away. And now thanks to Bee I have a chance to put things right."
"Except Bee will still be dead," Yves pointed out.
Dee shrugged. "I don't have a problem with that, to be honest."
Few minutes later they had almost a dozen cups and glasses filled with water catching the sunlight from the sill of kitchenette's bay window. In the cloudless dawn, the water looked polluted with algae and silt. "Maybe we should stir it? I mean her?" Yves suggested after staring for a long while. Silent minutes crawled passed and he added, "Uh, maybe I should lie down for a while and you could work on the third D. I'm beat. Literally."
Dee took up two cups, careful not to spill a drop. "The bathtub." He made his slow way to the bathroom. Dee placed the two cups gently on the bathroom's linoleum floor. He hunted down Bee's drain stopper and made sure the seal was air tight before he poured the cups' contents into the tub and started the tap running warm. Yves came in with two more glasses and Dee said, "You rest a while and I'll fill the tub. Maybe if I can collect enough together..."
In about an hour the tub was half full with warm limeade. "I'm going to have to call in sick soon," Yves called from the couch.
"Maybe you should go," Dee said, watching the random ripples of the green bathwater, hoping to see any kind of pattern. "It looks like she's going to need the final D after all-or maybe this just isn't working and I need to find where Cherry Cupcake's taken the rest of her. I still have to do that, no matter what happens. There's no way I'm going to let Cherry Cupcake hurt her-any of her-anymore. But I don't want her to hurt you again, either."
Yves shuffled in and put a kind hand on Dee's shoulder. "Forget that, I'm sticking with you." He took his hand away. "Although I will duck out for this last bit."
"Of course," Dee said, his smile wan.
"Maybe there's something I can do in the meantime," Yves suggested. "There's no window in here. What if I borrowed some grow lights?"
"Some what?"
"A natural light lamp," Yves explained. "You know, for tropical fish? Or indoor gardening? Or..."
"There's only one person I know who, uh, 'gardens' in a closet," Dee said.
"There's only one person I know who'd be crazy enough to believe us."
They locked eyes and chorused, "Ursula."
"I'll go talk to her," Yves said. "You should stay here in case Ursula is affected by your public fuckability."
"We definitely need a better nickname for that, too," Dee said. "Do you really think Ursula would be affected? I mean, she's gayer than you."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You came out of the closet five, six years ago, right? Ursula took a cheerleader to her junior prom."
Yves waved his dismissal. "Okay, okay. The truth? I hope not but I don't want to find out. Do you think your friendship with her would survive something like that? Plus, you've got things to do."
"Good points all," Dee said, sitting on the toilet. "Get going, and close the door behind you."
"You can keep those pants when you're done. Jesus, Dee," Yves said, "for a guy who's about to win back his true love, you look miserable."
Dee sat lost in thought. ["...When I fully split into separate, um, Galateas, I start acquiring separate memories..."] "When Galatea divides," Dee explained aloud, "her memories and experiences get split up, too." He turned toward the tub. "Even if I can bring her back, I can't know how much she'll remember." He pointed at the green, oily water. "It all depends on what memories are mixed up in there, how old all that stuff is."
Yves smirked. "Maybe you'll luck out and she won't remember your hissy fit." His smile faded fast. "Wait, even if you can bring her back? What are you not telling me?"
["...Let's see if little Miss Venus had anything worth remembering. And then it'll be your turn, Dee..."]
Dee did not look up. "The taste of tears."
Yves hesitated. "Dee?"
After a while, Dee whispered, "Just go."
Yves left without another word, closing the bathroom door behind him. Dee waited to hear the front door of the apartment to open and shut, but after a quizzical, silent minute he remembered the front door was now scraps of metal scattered in the foyer. He leaned forward, clicked the door lock, and dropped down to kneel at the foot of the tub. "Okay."
After a final moment of hesitation, he dropped a hand down into the tub. It made a loud slap when his hand hit the mixture and he jerked back, mournful. The liquid felt warm and tacky. His hand came away filmed with fluid.
Damn. That felt awful.
Resting his head against the cool ceramic lip of the tub, Dee said, "I can't do this."
Yves trudged up the cement stairs to the second floor. Pain flared from his waist with each step. He felt like someone had kicked him in the groin, but he had felt that way for over an hour now and was growing accustomed. You don't get good at Aikido, he thought, without spending many years being bad at Aikido first. I've been hurt before.
A stitch in the ribs took his breath away when he opened the door to the hallway. I've lost fights before.
He moved down the citrus-perfumed hallway, resisting the urge to limp and favor his left leg. I've been robbed of my dignity before. I've even been-His right leg folded up under him so he sat there in the middle of the hallway, searching for balance. Breathe. Victory is not getting cut. Breathe. Eight forces sustain creation: Movement and stillness. Breathe. Extension and contraction. Breathe. Unification and division. Breathe. Solidity and fluidity..."Oh, for Heaven's sake," he said with sudden realization. "If Aikido has anything to do with goo girls and solid boys I'm going to take up ballet instead."
Yves stood with composure and crossed the hallway to knock on Ursula's door.
"Just a minute," came Ursula's dreamy alto voice. "Who is it?"
"Yves Valiancourt."
"Yves?" Ursula asked. The door opened. The funk of patchouli unrolled in the air.
No one was there until Yves remembered to look down. Ursula slipped on her oversized, oval eyeglasses with wide, red, plastic frames and peered sleepily up at him, her angular face as pale as milk. Yves could see the mousy brown of the roots of her hair, dyed a lustrous black with some homemade henna concoction and pulled into two thick, braided pigtails curled over her shoulders and dangling down to her hips. She wore a tight set of boy's black sweats, a cat burglar's outfit ruined by an overstuffed pair of baby blue bunny slippers with long fuzzy pink ears. "Earth to Yves."
"Sorry," Yves said. "I've never seen you...well, anyone...dressed like that. Ever."
"I'm sleeping in today," she said as if that explained everything. "You look like Hell, Yves. Are you okay? What's going on?"
Yves glanced down the corridor. I should have come up with something to say before knocking. Oh, well, bean spillage time. "Actually, Dee sent me because-"
"Galatea's in trouble," Ursula said, not missing a beat.
"God damn, woman," Yves cried out, "how do you always do that?"
"Galatea," Dee said to the tub of sugary green soup. "I don't know if you can hear me. I don't know if you have any nanomek left in there. But I've realized something. I've realized why I couldn't do it that first time. It's the same reason why I can't do it now. And I want to explain."
He turned and sat with his back against the tub. "I love you and I know you love me, and I've got this thing for you too, just like you have for me. But I don't have a thing for Jell-O, or goo, or maybe even goo girls. I don't have a thing for things." He laughed. "I know this is sounding like one of my rehearsed hissy fits, but it's not. Please hear me out, if you're in there.
"In fantasy, and on the Internet-it is a blast, Galatea, just like you said-I can get turned on by almost anything. That's what fantasy is for. That's what the Internet is for. It's harmless, guiltless pleasure. But actually sticking my dick into a bowl of Jell-O that I didn't know was you, that I thought was just Jell-O? That isn't harmless, at least not to me, although I'm sure it is for some, and certainly doesn't harm the Jell-O. But masturbating over what is probably the corpse of the woman I love more than anything else in the world? That isn't just harmful for me. It's unimaginable."
"So, I can't do that." Dee stood up. "More than that, I won't do that." He pulled off Yves' muscle shirt and hopped out of the Hammer-pants and underwear. "But I will do this," he said, and slid naked into the tub.
The liquid sloshed over him, a warm green film sliming his hair, gumming up his nose, greasing his stomach, trailing over his legs and puddling in his crotch. Every inch of his skin felt pasty. Soon the rippling from his descent petered out. Other than the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, nothing moved in the tub. "I love you, Galatea," Dee said, his voice distant and muffled to his plugged-up ears. "I said it unthinkingly before, but I mean it now more than ever: you are a part of me."
On the inner curve of his left thigh, Dee felt a single, solitary nanogasm.
| In the Blood of Eden, We've done everything we can. In the Blood of Eden, So we end as we began: With the man in the woman, And the woman in the man.
-Peter Gabriel, Blood of Eden |