Poor Man's Bones
#2 of The Electric Giant
Author's Note: The saga continues, etc. etc. Enjoy!
The Electric Giant Chapter 2: Poor Man's Bones
Wort was having a bad day.
He had had a bad life, as a matter of fact, but he was used to it.
This particular day was so bad because of two things. First off, he was out of a job - which incidentally meant he'd probably soon be out of a place to live as well, when the time to pay the rent he wouldn't be able to afford rolled around. Second, he was being offered a new job. It was, in fact, an offer he couldn't refuse.
His day had been pure routine to begin with. He'd woken up at noon after eight hours of sleep. He'd gone out for breakfast, a luxury he could afford as long as the breakfasts in question were anything but luxurious. He'd passed the day reading and listening to the voices of people passing by his window.
When the sun began to go down he'd left his small but tidy apartment and made his way to the small and quite dirty club where he made a modest living playing the clavipipe while the girls entertained the audience.
On the door to the Clawroot Club was a sign, with hand-lettered, slightly off-kilter text.
WE ARE CLOSED
FOR BUSINESS
FOREVER
He stood for a moment and stared, realizing hopelessly that this was too typical to be anything but true and pondering the implications. Then, coming around again, he'd tried the door. It'd been open.
He'd found Miss Tawney - the old spinster owner of the Clawroot - in there. Not strange, considering that the floor above the club was her apartment. He'd asked her if this was a joke, knowing that if it was it was a very strange joke, and at Miss Tawney's own expense. He'd asked why, and what he was supposed to do now.
Miss Tawney had responded calmly enough, with a slightly disassociated, disillusioned look about her that Wort could understand: maybe the Clawroot had never been her pride and joy - it seemed to Wort that people of his and Miss Tawney's station were not allowed joy, and if they had pride it was a very workman type of pride, pride of what you did and never what you were - but she'd owned and run it for who knew how many years now and that sort of long-term relationship must leave an impression.
It was not a joke. There had been debts, too many debts and too little patronage. It had been long in coming now, she said. And as for him... he'd have to find another job.
He was being offered another job, and he didn't like it.
"It's a situation where everyone wins," said the cat. He was thin and grey, and the way he pronounced "situation" made Wort's skin crawl. "You're in need of employment, and we need somebody to play the poor man's bones."
"I play the clavipipe," said Wort quietly.
The cat made a noise and waved his hand dismissingly. "It's the same instrument, basically!" he said in the confident tones of those who have no idea what they're talking about. "Lot of keys, the only difference is the sound."
It was completely wrong, of course. In a clavipipe, a bellows blew air through pipes of varying pitch, which were opened with the keys. On the other hand, on the poor man's bones - so called because the story went that the first had been built by some crazy old king who'd made the keys out of a pauper's skeleton, and more properly called the percussophone - pressing a key caused a hammer to strike a bar of metal which resonated to create the desired note. The mechanics of pressing the keys were the same, true, but the percussophone had an added dimension of dynamics that was not present in the clavipipe and which Wort was afraid that he'd very soon have to master, very fast.
He said nothing, because he was terrified.
The cat hadn't introduced himself any further than explaining that he worked for Mister Ion. It wasn't necessary. That was the important part - the cat's name and identity were just details. The job he was offering Wort was percussophonist at the Gemstone Club, where Mister Ion spent his days surrounded by an entourage that more than resembled a royal court.
Wort didn't want this job.
Say what you will about his life, but staying alive sat well with Wort.
This was the problem: Mister Ion had people working under him who got things done. Clerks, treasurers, merchants, and further down, people of a more physical persuasion. And Mister Ion understood that experience was an important part of doing your job, so it took more than just any minor mishap to be removed from your position in the Ion hierarchy.
Unless you were an entertainer.
The people working under Mister Ion were more or less safe. But there were people working around him, too - the people at the Gemstone Club, the comedians, showgirls and, of course, musicians. Mister Ion's royal court. And these people were expendable. Nothing would slow down if any of these people disappeared. There wouldn't even be a hiccup in the machinery.
And Mister Ion didn't care for entertainers who couldn't do their job right.
The road from Targa to Port Whorl took a few days on horseback. By foot it was bound to take longer. Still, it was summer and the weather was warm, and Joy figured that she and Tully didn't have much to complain about as they wandered along the Huddling Road.
Deep underground, like a bass vibration unheard and unfelt, something stirred in its sleep.
Only a few days after Joy's and Tully's departure from Targa, a carriage with heavy curtains in all its windows rolled into the city through the northern gate. It was pulled by two horses, jet-black and well-bred, with well-combed manes. The carriage made people turn their heads to look as it went past, and when its only passenger stepped out and down onto the street, she made people keep looking.
Her dress was not ornate. It had no frills or lace, it simply tastefully accentuated her impressive figure. It was a vestal white, but the woman wearing it looked all but vestal. She made the people who saw her momentarily forget their prejudice against reptiles.
The anonymous coachman snapped the reins and the carriage rolled away as the lady in the white dress set own down the street with a purposeful stride. Sometimes she would stop at a street corner, look around for a minute, and set off again. Everywhere she would make heads turn. After a while she came to an inn, almost identical to five or ten others that she'd passed by without so much as a second glance. She went in.
Thea was alone in the inn, standing at the bar and wiping a beer mug with a rag, when the lady came in. Thea saw the woman and that was the word that popped up in her head: lady. Nothing in the way she was dressed suggested this. There was just something about the way she carried herself. Regally. A lady if Thea ever saw one.
The lady strode up to the counter, glancing at the locale. "I need a room," she said and looked at Thea with the most hypnotic eyes the young cat girl had ever seen.
"I--" Thea faltered. She couldn't look away from those eyes. She cleared her throat. "We have an empty room. Up the stairs and to the left, if you need to leave... your..." But the lady didn't seem to have any luggage. Thea felt a fool.
There was a pause when none of them said anything, and then a soft "mmm" from the lady. In a gentle voice, she said: "Will you come up to the room with me?"
Thea stared. She'd lived in the city all her life, but she wasn't a mean girl. Whenever she saw reptiles, dirty and gibbering in the streets, she just felt sorry from them. However, sleeping with one of them... even one as unusual and entrancing as this one... she just couldn't--
She went up the stairs after the lady.
The strange lady wasted no time. As soon as Thea had shut the door behind her she slipped out of her simple white dress, and that was the right word because it really seemed to just slip off her like water off an oiled slicker.
She was beautiful. Strangely, terrifyingly beautiful - maybe the biggest woman of any race that Thea had ever seen, with amazing curves. Huge wide hips, big firm tits, made all the more eye-catching by the lady's regal manner. And it was beauty of an exotic sort, too, a forbidden sort, because she was covered in scales...
Thea had a boyfriend, his name was Tor, and she'd always considered herself to be straight, if she'd thought about it at all. The slopes and valleys of the lady's body suggested it was time to reconsider.
She threw herself onto the lizard lady with animal lust, and the lady caught her, their lips meeting in a ferocious kiss. She moaned into it as the lady's hands undid her apron and efficiently removed her clothing. Within seconds she stood buck naked, her small chest heaving, feeling a bit thin and flat compared to her would-be lover - she was a typical cat, slender and agile.
Wordlessly, she was pressed down onto her knees. Gently but firmly, the lady forced Thea's muzzle between her legs. Thea groaned and smelled the lady's pussy. It was already wet and ready, it seemed from the smell.
"Lick me, girl," the lady said.
Thea's rough tongue darted out, hesitantly at first but with greater and greater confidence, exploring every inch of the wonderful creature that had only minutes earlier stepped into her father's inn. Her hands felt greedily along the lizard's thighs and went to squeeze her big ass.
Distantly, Thea thought that she should be manning the bar. She didn't care.
The lady was squeezing and playing with her own breasts, hissing gently with the cat girl's treatment. She moaned quietly as the girl hit a sensitive spot... and then moved on. She was no experienced pussy licker, this one, that was for sure. But that wasn't important. What was important to the lizard lady that had just come to Targa, was submission.
After a while, she stepped back and pulled the cat girl up to her feet, her eyes feasting on the girl's slender, virginal beauty. She liked virgins. They really gave it their all. Hand in hand, she led them both, cat and lizard, to the bed. The linens were coarse, but that didn't matter.
The cat girl was dripping wet when the lady stuck her fingers inside her. She was responsive to her every touch. "Oh, ooh!!" she moaned, her mind ablaze; she'd never felt this way before.
"What's your name, girl?" came the lady's voice, all imperious. Her fingers worked with furious expertise inside Thea and the girl's hips bucked as she tried to articulate her name.
"Th... TheaaAAH!" was the best she could manage.
"Thea? Listen to me, Thea." Still the same imperious tone. "You must tell me when you are about to come. Do you understand?"
Come? What was she talking about? Thea was not an experienced girl. "N--naaww!"
"When you feel as if you're going to explode. You have to tell me, alright?" Still the fingers were working away inside the cat girl, hitting places she hadn't even previously known existed, making her mind flash and burn with pleasure. "Say, 'I'm going to come!'"
Thea moaned loudly as she felt the lady's mouth on one of her nipples, a long, reptilian tongue playing with the hard little nub. She looked at the impressive figure lying next to her, all curves, and her hand shot out, jerkily, of its own volition, brushing one of the lady's huge tits.
She didn't fully understand what the lizard lady had meant by feeling as if she'd explode. With the fingers moving tirelessly inside of her, she felt as if she was exploding constantly, bursting with pleasure that she'd never imagined. Yet, somehow, it was all building up to a peak, a peak higher than any mountain that really existed, a peak so high it was in space.
She moaned again, not knowing what she was saying. "Ooh, uhhh, oh! Yesss, yes, yesss!"
Again, the sharp tone: "Are you going to come, Thea?"
She sounded like a schoolteacher, thought Thea in a detached way, an inconsequential little thought lost in a roiling sea of pleasure. She was going to come, but she didn't know it. She didn't say: "I'm going to come!" What she said was: "NnnaaAH! Ah, ah, AH!"
She felt on the threshold of some magical gate, looking out over a landscape of crazily flying colors. All it would take was another second of the lady's fingers inside of her, touching her most secret places, to make her cross that threshold and who knew what waited then, but Thea was sure it would blow her mind.
She felt, in fact, as if she was going to explode.
That's when the lady stopped.
For a second, Thea was completely quiet, completely tense. Something had gone wrong, something was missing, but she was not conscious enough to understand what yet. But then it hit home and she exhaled loudly, and the exhalation turned into a frustrated groan. She could hardly articulate what she was trying to say at first. "Why did you stop?" she asked, sulkily, like a little girl.
The lady's eyes were hard. "Why didn't you tell me you were about to come? You were a very bad girl, Thea."
Thea was taken aback by that. "But I didn't-- I..." She didn't know what to say. She didn't know what the lady even meant! How could she explain that? The lady acted like she ought to know, as if she'd let her down by not knowing, and ... because of those strangely hypnotic eyes ... that was how Thea felt.
And she remembered the feeling of standing at that magical threshold... and not being allowed to pass through. It was frustrating; it left her feeling empty to her very core. She needed to come.
"Go." The one word was hard-edged and sharp. "I'll have no truck with bad girls."
Thea gathered up her clothes, feeling exactly as if she'd disappointed a teacher that was like a mother to her. Hot tears stung in her eyes. "And close the door when you leave," the lady's deep alto voice commanded, so she did. She didn't even realize that she was naked until she stood in the hallway.
Inside the room, the lizard lady chuckled quietly and began stroking herself to a much-needed climax.
Joy was in a daze. She could feel the pleasure building up again, rapidly, to another peak, and she wasn't sure that she could take it, but she knew she would try. Her tongue was hanging out of her mouth, her big, hard cock was bobbing with every one of Tully's thrusts. Her breath came in shallow gasps and then she came again, letting out a tortured, ecstatic whine. A string of cum shot out of her dick and landed on her shoulder and on the ground underneath her.
Now she couldn't take it anymore. But she couldn't say a word, she was no longer in control of herself, she didn't have the strength.
All that escaped her was a tiny little moan and she looked up and Tully and met his gaze and knew that he knew exactly what was going on inside her. You bastard, she thought, stop it, you bastard, I can't take it anymore, I'm going to cum again!
And that's when the smug-faced bastard actually took her cock in his hand and began to wank it, hard. She didn't know what to do with herself. She thought she might die of pleasure, that her brain might overload and just... shut down. There was nothing she could do about it. She came again, painting her face with her own cum.
When that orgasm subsided, the words finally came. "AaaAAH, stooop!! I can't ta-ah-aaaAKE it anymoooOOH--"
Tully seemed to have been waiting for this, and he hilted himself inside her and came. Afterwards, Joy lay on the ground, waiting for her strength to return. Playing with the cum in her fur, she said to the sky, "I think you like to see me suffer."
Tully, who was washing himself off in a spring where they'd set up camp for the night, replied with a smile in his voice. "That's because you suffer so beautifully."
They were well on their way to Port Whorl now. In a day or two, depending on the pace they made, they'd be there. Joy sat up, brushing a few strands of her hair out of her face, and turned around to look at the sinewy figure of Tully, standing hip-deep in water. She crawled over to the little pond and got in, and grabbed the lizard's cock.
Tully laughed. "Don't you ever get enough?"
"No," said Joy, truthfully.
All told, the way south could've gone much worse, Joy reflected. They had seen no trace of the rumored bandits, for one thing. It was two days later, not long after they'd eaten breakfast and set off, and they were coming over the top of a hill and looking down over Port Whorl.
They view was breathtaking - on the other side of the hill, the final stretch of the Huddling Road ran steeply downwards, carving a path through the young grass, into the trade capital of Thauvia, all red and green tile roofs in a crazy jumble. And beyond the city was Whorl Bay, glittering and heliographing wildly in the summer sun. Joy gasped and laughed at the beauty, a childlike sound, and looked over at Tully.
He was wearing his hood, despite the warm weather, and a grim expression on his face. "Port Whorl," he said in a portentous voice. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."
"I love it!" shouted Joy, starting down the hill.
"Wait!" Tully yelled after her, trying to catch up. "We must be ca--oh, brother..."
There was nothing to it. Wort had no choice, so that very night he played the poor man's bones for Mister Ion for the first time while the girls danced. That was a small blessing, he decided, for his part - he reckoned most of everyone's attention was on the girls. He'd probably have concentrated on them, too, if his mind hadn't been sharpened to a point by the terror.
He wore his finest suit, which wasn't very fine.
He couldn't read sheet music. He didn't know if he'd ever known a song - he just improvised. Once or twice at the Clawroot Club, pretty often now that he thought about it, a drunken patron would come up to him and ask him to play a certain song. He would smile and go on improvising, and the patrons would be as happy as clams.
He didn't think Mister Ion knew much about music. If he did, he wouldn't have hired a clavipipist to play the percussophone. It was like asking a hatter to mend your shoes.
He didn't get killed the first day. That night, he went home to his small apartment and slept, deeply and dreamlessly. The next day, he went to the Gemstone Club again to entertain. That's when he saw the vixen.
She was beautiful, of course. All of Mister Ion's showgirls were beautiful. It wasn't her slim, well-formed figure that caught his eyes, or her skimpy clothing. To tell the truth, Wort didn't know what it was. All he knew was that when the vixen stepped out onto stage, for the first time, his fright-sharp mind wandered. He stared at her for an eternity - maybe ten seconds, all told - before he realized that he had no idea how he'd played during those seconds.
But no heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and he made it back to his apartment again.
He had a dream about the vixen. They were in a small room - almost claustrophobic, and littered with stuff that was dream-vague, but which got in the way of their sex. They were standing, because there was hardly any room to even sit here, her back against the wall and her claws digging into his back.
His dick was painfully hard and throbbing, and it would still be that way when he woke up from the dream, and he pounded away with reckless abandon. His head was bent and he was kissing and licking the vixen's neck.
He was sure there was more to the dream, but it was disjointed and... well, dreamlike, and it faded quickly into nothing when he awoke, save for that one vivid image. He still pictured the scene when he pawed himself off in his bed.
I don't even know her name, he thought idly as he got up.
Before departing from Targa, Tully had met with a man who'd sold him the key to a run-down shanty building in Port Whorl for an outrageous price. All the lizard would tell Joy was that they needed to wait before moving on to the next step of his plan.
Mister Ion had people everywhere, which was hyperbole except for Port Whorl. In Port Whorl, he really had people everywhere. They had been seen, arriving to town. Most likely they had been seen going to the shanty house, too. Patience and care were of the essence.
Tully spent his time in the house. Joy wanted to see the town, however, and Tully, perhaps persuaded by her pretty eyes and her lips wrapped around his dick, had allowed this, on the condition that she didn't stand out too much, and that she return to the house only when dark had fallen.
Joy wondered about that. She didn't know how not to stand out.
It was during one of his short breaks that Wort the dog was approached by the vixen. He'd worked at Mister Ion's court for exactly two weeks now; he'd gotten quite good at faking on the bones, he reckoned. The fox girl didn't work every night, but when she did, he stared. He didn't zone out quite as badly as he'd done the first time, luckily, but she was still the only thing that made his concentration waver.
She came up to him and leaned on the percussophone, still wearing her performing outfit. "Hi," she said in a seductive voice.
His first reaction was fear. He hadn't talked to any of the other showgirls. Was this allowed? Were they watched? Was he going to get in trouble for this?
But the vixen, at close quarters, still had the same mystical power over him. And, after all, he had been afraid for too long. He wanted to be happy. So he followed her as she led him to a small broom closet he hadn't noticed before.
In his fog of lust, he didn't remember the dream. He didn't even stop to consider when the rational, sane part of his mind screamed at him that he was being stupid and that he was going to get killed.
She pulled his pants down and he was already hard. He undressed her, even though there wasn't much dress to begin with. She grabbed his dick almost gently and he kissed her. She said her name was Lavender. The stuff in the closet got in the way aggravatingly. They were standing, because there was hardly any room to even sit there, her back against the wall and her claws digging into his back. He entered her with a grunt and she gasped and pressed herself against him.
Two things happened then.
First, the door opened, and the slim grey cat aide who had hired Wort two weeks ago looked at them impassively. There was no surprise in his face - they hadn't been very discreet in coming here, had they? Wort felt his guts drop with dull terror.
And then, all hell broke loose.
Author's Note: I'll apologize now so I don't have to do it later - it'll probably be a while before the next chapter comes. Sorry about that, but I'm going to have other commitments in my life for a while. But stay tuned, I guess!