Spirit of \'67
#1 of The world of the Spirit of '67
Some notes from the author:
Oh man. Yeah. I think my word-processor chewed this alive, but I may have wrestled it back under control. Anyway!
I hope you enjoy this little piece of 'art', as our protagonist would call it. Any (respectful) Feedback or messages you may have are entirely welcome and encouraged.
With a little luck, our performer may well make a return. We shall see.
//: 2105, City of San Iadras, Spirit of '67 adult club/theatre.
The outside doors on the main room of the club and theatre began to shut, admitting the last few straggling patrons within. When there was a show on at the Spirit of '67, no disturbances were tolerated. A few quiet minutes passed in which the seated patrons at their tables (most human, some not) passed their time by looking over the slightly back lit sculptures, bringing nude silhouettes into harsh contrast in the dimly lit club room. Perhaps they might look over the posters, proclaiming erotic entertainment with a particularly exotic twist to it. The lights focused in on the club's main stage, then dimmed down. Amongst the club's tables, swathed in dim light, conversations began to die down. The waitresses, wearing a variety of skimpy outfits, many with false ears or tails to make the human girls seem a little more in theme with the club atmosphere, hurried to finish the last minute drink orders. There was a sense of anticipation. Against the background of dying conversation and the occasional chime of drinks glasses an announcer spoke. "Gentlemen, and those ladies who are joining us this evening, the Spirit of '67 is very pleased to welcome a very special live act. The performer has requested silence throughout her time on stage. Any tips or gifts you may have for the performer may be sent via club waitresses after the performance." The club lighting faded to black entirely for a few moments, and there was the sound of rustling fabric from the stage. "I guess you might call this a bit of a self biography, or maybe a lecture. Maybe a little social commentary or maybe a striptease," said a female voice from the darkness. "I like to think of it as art..." The lights on stage smoothly rose to a slightly dim glow, back lighting the performer on stage in the manner of the club sculptures, showing just her silhouette. Clearly female, somewhat human. The set of the shoulders wasn't quite right, nor the shape of the head, broken up by two pointed ears. "Art brought us all a lot of things. Literature, mythology, images of things a little too fantastic to imagine," she continued, turning her head, showing a decidedly inhuman profile - a long muzzle, graceful lines of neck and smooth hair. "About eighty years ago we got good enough that our art could make anything we wanted to seem real. Each and every little fantasy we wanted was ours." The lights rose a little more, though remained soft and a little dim, now revealing the femme standing on stage. Tall and thin, she held up a slim microphone pen to her lips. Covered in short, dense and soft yellow-brown fur, she was now even more clearly not human. Her proportions were not quite right, her bare legs a little longer than they might be. She wore a short green skirt and a neat dark green business jacket over her pale blue button-down blouse. "Then almost forty years ago, well, we got good enough to not just make our fantasies seem real, but actually make them real," she continued, reaching up with one furry hand, blackish claws cut short, to brush at her long red hair. "That was twenty-sixty-seven. So they built up their fantasy gene by gene, made it more human chemically and neurologically." She tapped her foot thoughtfully, glancing down demurely, shifting the pen mic from hand to hand. She seemed to be scrutinising the black leather stiletto heels she wore, the pale blue stockings that rode her legs up beneath her dress. "So it was an exciting time, very exciting indeed when they revealed their little darling test subject, Marika Estian, who was tended to by a crack team of vetinarians. Genes altered and rebuilt as much as the vets could get away with, made her as human as possible for research it was illegal to use people for." The performer slowly turned, revealing from the folds of her skirt a tail, short and stiff, wide where it disappeared through her clothing, tapering down to a blunt point a little behind her knees, covered in little tiger stripes. She set her tail asway as she began to pace the stage. "So I guess we all remember little Marika, eight years old, looking a little like some poor puppy carved up and sewn back together by Doctor Moreau into a fragile little thing, walking stooped on misshapen legs, slurring around the surgery that made her hands and feet and mouth." The performer turned her own gaze on the audience, a deep green stare from eyes that seemed human, held emotion, but the pupils glimmered a faint green with reflected light in the dim. She licked her lips, long, careful swipes with the tip of the tongue, running along each side of the muzzle, showing perfectly white teeth. "That's where we all think we know the story of the new 'race', the furries, made to get by draconian research laws built up by the Tri-Corp special interest group. And we've seen the results, cybernetics, new gene therapies, a little more of humanity playing at god. "But the thing is... it is that nobody really knows what it's like to be one of us, except for us." The performer turned back to the audience, bowing her head slightly, lifting one not-quite human hand, the fur rustling, to reach inside her business jacket, finally drawing out a pair of rectangular thin-framed spectacles. "There are things we all take fore granted," she said, pulling out a thin data screen from another pocket, turning the pen mic over briefly, she jabbed it at the screen like a stylus, powering it on. Returning the thin mic to her mouth, she read from the screen "Freedom. The basic right of everything, right? Up until fifteen years ago, the freedom to make our own choices, or even find our more about ourselves, was barred. As Marika said when she was revealed to the world back in sixty-seven, 'I don't know what I am, but I'd like a chance to find out.' "Marika Estian never really got that chance, really, but she was kept alive, and it was her sad image that convinced men to keep playing god, make more of us for whatever purposes they wanted." She walked around on stage, lifting the datascreen and displaying it to the audience, scrolling screens of text. "Here in the old media archives, they painted all of us with one brush. New creatures, docile, harmless, a cookie-cutter people no one should worry or care about, born without sin and without suffering." She shut down the data screen then, tucking it back into a jacket pocket, and moved to sit down on the edge of the stage, crossing her legs, her short skirt revealing a flash of garter straps holding up those silk stockings of hers. She paused to run a hand back through her flat red hair. "Just to remind you, I'm real. I am entirely real," she explained, slapping the stage beside her, eliciting a loud thud, "not a hologram. Not a perfect fantasy made visible, to be seen by all. Not someone with all the cosmetic grafts to look like this, although that should be obvious to you by now." "I am one out of sixteen thousand of the 'fourth' generation furs. I got born in a bottle, was decanted twenty two years ago nearly complete, but had to endure all the surgery to make me into... well, me," she said, peeling off that business jacket of hers, discarding it to one side of the stage. She held out one arm, turned it this way and that, fabric taughtening at the point of her elbow as she did. "You might take it fore granted. An elbow. A simple joint. I'm proud of mine. I endured cartilage grafts and bone re-shaping to have my joints. You can imagine how painful that was." She stood then, solemnly removing her glasses, shaking out her red hair, walking back to the center stage, pausing only briefly to kick the jacket over the edge of the stage. She lifted her head as she turned, rubbed her throat gracefully with fingertips. "My voice? Six hour session in the surgeon's chair with tiny robots in my mouth and throat, rebuilding everything to let me speak. I am real, oh yes I am, but I am also art. The art of the genetic engineer, the surgeon, and the art I practised to make me who I am. And let me tell you, I have suffered for my art." "My name, or at least the one I'm telling you, is Elle Dante... just a stage name, I assure you. A polite little fiction," she said with a smirk. "You may have seen me in the 'furry' district of San Iadras, or walking back and forth to where I work... but maybe that wasn't me, just one of my one hundred and sixty-eight genetically identical 'sisters', the survivors out of a batch of five hundred and twelve, some never fertililzed properly, some never formed heads or arms, some never survived the surgery, but we were all made on one factory line. So if you do see 'me' again, please don't wave, or say hello, or stare, or smile, because that's just one of my people, another cookie-cutter perfect furry girl just like Elle." She hooked her glasses into the collar of her blouse, dragging it down till the first button-clasp broke open, collar trailing open. "But me, I'm a little different to the rest of my, shall we say, brood, my generation... I'm an individual. Just like everybody else. We've all got the same eyes, same ears, same flesh, but not quite the same heart." "You might not be able to guess my genotype right off. Some kind of wolf, some kind of dog maybe?" she asked, turning side to side, displaying her short tail, showing her muzzled face. "The answer's a little difficult because the base code used to cook up what I and my generation are was derived out of a rare little critter that hasn't been seen for a hundred and fifty years or so in Australia. I had to look it up as a child, after I'd been released from the corporate dormitories, for the first time encouraged to work out what I was. Because I was a little too bashful to ask my doctors or foster-parents what I was, it took me awhile, but I worked it out eventually... I am, a thylacine. An old little predator, with great big--" she yawned theatrically, throwing her jaws wide, wider than one would have thought possible, "--jaws. Also known as the Marsupial wolf, though I like to think I'm not that big, bad, nor given to huff and puff and maybe blow down the houses of the three little kangaroos." She smiled then, an odd thing, but recognisable even on her somewhat animalistic face. "So you might be wondering... does this girl have a pouch? I mean, marsupials... that's only logical, right?" she asked, running her free hand slowly down the front of her body, dragging over her blouse, until she began slowly tugging the blouse up, revealing inch by inch a stomach furred with tawny white, with a perfect navel, though it was likely only cosmetic surgery. Elle looked down at her stomach, holding the folds of her blouse up high, though not so high one might see her bra. "Guess not," she concluded. "I didn't get a choice in the matter, there, since the doctors and surgeons thought it might be prone to infection due to a faulty run in the genes. Though I guess you'll all be finding out about whether or not the rest of me's perfectly formed and still there..." She paused, and began to unbutton her blouse from bottom to top, pen mic held awkwardly as she worked the button-clasps. It sent the rustle of fabric through the speakers, though continued to pick up her voice easily. "Anyway. So I was a little curious about myself. Wanted to know what I was... there wasn't anybody who could help me, y'know? Not too many furs had reached adulthood yet, and I was sent to live with a foster family, without any of my genetic sisters..." "Oh, by the way," Elle paused, turning around again, lifting the back of her blouse with one hand. "Thylacines were also called the Marsupial... tiger." She revealed her back and the tiger-stripes running down it, starting just below the strap of her bra. She briefly fondled the clasp, as though debating opening it, but she finally dropped the shirt back down. "Anyway... It was new to all of us, this thing called freedom and life." "I grew up in a foster home with four other furs, a couple of boys, a couple of girls, and a kindly old childless couple who'd taken on the epic task of raising us." She turned again, keeping the folds of her blouse closed just enough to display her cleavage and the center of her bra. After a moment, as though on the spur of the moment, she knotted the blouse shut, tightly, showing the curve of her breasts through the fabric. "It was more like being students in a dormitory together, but we called ourselves a family anyway. I was youngest... Anyway. We were all free to explore what we liked and didn't like, who we were." "I was the inhibited one. Very quiet, withdrawn... not the kind of girl you'd find, oh, up on this stage." She smiled again, at this little joke of fate. "That I found out relatively quickly. Give me a nice little shadow to lay down in, out of sight, and that's where I'd be. Those genes, those funny things, asserting themselves I guess." "My two 'brothers', two very handsome furs from one gene-group, a couple of big, tall and strong felines, maybe gray tabbies or similar, were almost indistinguishable from each other, so I'll name 'em Rod and Tod. One of my sisters was a similar feline, some other kind of house-cat, and I'll call her Tami. The other sister involved in this... foursome was a petite little bunny-girl, who I'll call Pam. "Mmm... I've given everyone nice, short, porn-star names, haven't I?" She grinned, displaying her pearly white teeth, all relatively sharp. "Oh well. Ignore that for the moment. Pam... Pam was the odd one out, prey genotype in a houseful of predator genotypes. That manifested with the rest of us teasing her about her ears, long as they were," Elle said, lifting the pen mic to her mouth again. "That's the kind of thing you do in any family though, I guess. Sibling rivalry. Though, as I said, we were hardly siblings. Tami... now she had designs on Rod and Tod, ever since she tricked the boys into playing tea-parties with her. I guess it's true about twins, because those boys were practically identical at the start. We grew up pretty fast, though. We weren't kids forever..." she trailed off, toying with the knot in her blouse, "... but we tried to pretend it, for the sake of our foster-parents." "It was all polite, careful, not to show anything in front of the adults... but me and my little tendency for hiding, well. Growing up, teenagers are teenagers, we're all hormonal at about the same age thanks to our similarity to human beings. So as we grew up, there were a few... embarrassing moments, you might say. Lemme relate one." "Rod and Tod, well, they'd started to become a little different. They'd been encouraged to try out different musical instruments to differentiate from each other. First they both picked guitars, but after a time they chose again, and this time Tod picked the cello, and Rod the violin." Elle paused, began to pace again running her free hand over her bare stomach. "Magic hands those boys had, gentle and graceful..." she said huskily. "I'll explain that later, though. Tod... well couldn't carry around that big old cello of his as easily as Rod and his violin, so Tod gave it up. And that really marked the first difference in them." "They both liked music, and that's when Tami got her claws in Tod for real, by learning how to sing. Eventually those two made... beautiful music together," Elle ran her free hand down the side of her thigh, dragging it back again over the silk stockings. In doing so she lifted the side of her skirt up high enough to show the garter straps holding up the stockings, pressed a few fingers underneath the stocking band. "But, that's another story. I'm happy for them, I really am, because love's a little difficult to find in this world for us, when we don't know who or what we are, when sexual attraction is more than a little confused..." "The house where we lived, well, there was a relatively secluded indoor pool. I'd gotten the little idea it was mine, back during the winter, when I was around sixteen, the others in the house seventeen or so. Anyway. I made a habit sneaking into the little maintenance closet with my comic disks, or my homework, or my diary. I see well enough in the dark... Thylacines were nocturnal, you see. Then summer rolled around. You wouldn't think a cat and a bunny'd have much use for a pool..." Elle shrugged her shoulders, dragging down the folds of her blouse to reveal one shoulder, then the other. "I didn't like it when people knew I was sneaking around, so when Rod and Pam, cat and bunny, strolled right on in, well. I didn't move from my spot, just waited for them to go away. I'm patient like that, maybe a little naive. Pam just had on her bikini," Elle explained, pulling the knot out of her blouse, slipping it off her body to clearly reveal the way her stomach and chest were covered in lighter fur than the rest of her. She shifted the pen mic from hand to hand as she removed the blouse, dropped it smoothly to the floor, revealing her bra, simple and white. "And Rod just a pair of shorts... Now I knew for a fact Rod wasn't a big fan of water. Said it messed up his fur. So I was naturally suspicious of this pair, though I knew Pam took a dip now and then to cool off in the heat." "So the indoor pool was predictably empty, or so it looked to Rod and Pam.They looked around briefly, but not into my little closet, with the spare pool cleaner and all that. I just peeked out, through a tiny little grille." Elle shuffled the blouse over the stage floor with one foot, head bowed as she stared at it girlishly. "Now I wasn't naive exactly. Human culture has a bit of a fascination with sex, and there was talk at school... Besides. With Tod's infatuation with Tami, Rod had been getting a little lonely. Pam filled up that gap nicely." "Rod was satisfied quickly enough that the place was empty. Pam wasn't so sure... but I don't think she cared. They pulled together, kissed," Elle smoothly sank to the floor, kneeling, then laying down on the stage's edge. "... sank to the floor together. I don't know if I should've been watching, hiding there where I was. Sometimes I think maybe I should've let them know I was there, left..." Elle sighed, slipped her free hand under the cup of her bra. "But it was a perfect moment... theirs, shared by me, maybe unintentionally, but I'm thankful. Like I said, Rod and his 'brother' had wonderful hands. Rod's were on Pam's body, those long ears we used to tease her about quivering as he massaged her breasts." Elle lifted the cup of her bra, letting the curve of her breasts be seen, fingers covering the nipple, rubbing back and forth. She seemed content to lay there a moment, before sitting up, moving her hand with the pen-mic to cover her bare breast, the other trailing down to the folds of her skirt. She rubbed the fabric down, pressing her hand against her crotch for a moment. "I didn't see it all, of course, but oh... did Pammie squeal..." Elle groaned lustily, eyes shut, before running that free hand from her crotch, down her leg, over her thigh, back and forth for a moment. "I knew I didn't want to be the one there, under Rod's caress... but I also found out something I liked. I liked watching." She stood slowly, letting her breast be seen, soft, almost downy fur covering it, the area around the nipple cut short to display the tan flesh. "That wasn't my first little education, my first little bit of accidental voyeurism that grew a little with time... But I didn't hide, didn't sneak around like an intentional," she dragged down the other cup of her bra, displaying her other breast, arching her back in display, "peeping," she reached behind her back, undid the clasp, and smoothly dragged the bra down her arms, holding it out like a pair of cuffs, "tom." "Wouldn't you know it, but the boys.... they liked being watched. Territorial instincts, let everybody know the girls they'd claimed. And under Rod and Tod's delicate touch," Elle said, dropping the bra and briefly caressing a nipple with her free hand, stiff tail quivering, "Pam and Tami decided being watched wasn't such a bad thing for the pleasure it derived." "But then they demanded a little trade, and I got my start," Elle continued, turning her back on the audience, swaying her hips side to side, "in another fine art." She began to rub her hand over her hip, where she reached for a hidden zipper in the skirt, and dragged it down halfway to loosen it. She lifted her hands over her head, letting the swaying of her hips cause the skirt to ride down off her hips and over her legs, pausing only to bring the pen mic to her lips again. "They said to me... they said, Elle... if you like watching... watching with that hot little body of yours... why not try being watched?" Shaking the dress free of her body, her pert behind now on display, the laced garter belt around her waist. She shook her butt at the crowd, her tail swinging side to side, revealing in tight swipes the silky blue fabric of her panties. "So what we did, about a year later, what we did was we put me on Rod and Tod's bed, turned off most of the lights, and I danced for the four of them," she whispered huskily into the pen-mic, stepping out of her skirt, turning to face the audience, clutching a breast. She glanced down off the side of the stage, and covered her breasts with her arms as though in shock at what she'd seen. She smiled at the audience then, continuing normally. "And then the moment was lost. Fantasy over, because they were all sitting there, where I could see them... and that just wasn't any fun. It removed the fantasy of the thing, the things I could think in my mind, the things I could imagine my little audience doing, feeling, thinking... the same way I could imagine how it must have felt under Rod's hands, the same way, I eventually found out, it was less fun to be under those hands than to watch them work." She dropped her arm, displaying herself again, strutting around the stage. "It's a funny little kink, but it's mine. We tried again, though. I liked my body. It's mine, I exercise, I eat right... Showing it off wouldn't be so bad, would it? I thought not. Little while later, well, I tried again, just me in the pool room closet," she said, the lights suddenly snapping off, and returning a heartbeat later in wide slits, as though Elle was being illuminated through a grille. "The others, I knew they were outside," she continued, her dancing motions only part-way revealed by the slats of light, her free hand travelling up and down her body. "Peeking in through my closet door grille, the tables were turned. I closed my eyes, and tried to imagine what they'd be doing out there..." Her hand slipped beneath the fabric of the panties, cupping her crotch. "Maybe Rod would be doing Pam, or maybe Tami would be sucking off Tod, or maybe they'd be standing there, hot and horny as hell." Elle's hand began to grind, the cloth of her panties rising back and forth rhythmically as she began to masturbate herself, halfway hidden in the slats of light and dark, her breathing heavy. "And that," she groaned, "really turned me on..." She stood there a moment more, before kneeling with her legs spread, crotch thrust out at the audience, working herself energetically beneath the half-light half-dark, now and then a few curls of her pubic hair visible, deep red, t he same shade as her hair. She kneeled there, pleasuring herself for several moments, moaning and groaning, her voice not quite human, not quite animal, somewhere in between and masked with pleasure. "It was better," she gasped, "better than... than Rod's hands, or Tod's hands, or Pam's tongue..." She paused then, giving one quiet groan of pleasure, her rhythm and breathing slowing. She took deep breaths, then withdrew her hand from herself, holding it up in one beam of light, pressing her fingers together briefly, then spreading them, threading out her juices between her fingers like a gossamer web in the light. "I... I like to think of it as art," Elle panted, "My little explanation, my gift from me to you. What is life like as a furry. It's... it's pretty normal, despite getting stared at," she continued, as the lights returned to the level they'd been at before, the silk of her panties now clearly drenched, a faint shine on her inner thighs. She ground her fingers into her discarded skirt, cleaning them off. "Despite our sordid origins, under the knives of surgeons, we all just want the usual things, like pleasure." She slowly stood once more, swaying a little as she did, " Me? I'm kinky. Just a little. This is my personal thrill. This is how I get off... maybe how you get off too, there in the dark club... I don't mind, so long as you let me picture you in my head, in my own way, drooling for my body." She paused, turning to walk back to the stage curtain, slow, careful steps. "I like my body too, to be honest..." She disappeared behind the curtain, leaving behind her the discarded clothes from her act, speaking huskily through the pen mic as she went, "It's been fun everybody. I'll be, hah, seeing you next time..." The lights blanked out briefly, then rose to their pre-performance dimness. The announcer's voice returned, speaking whilst a couple of waitresses gathered up Elle's discarded clothing, and the club doors were opened again. "Thank you gentlemen, and those ladies who have joined us this evening. On behalf of the patrons and staff of the Spirit of '67, we would like to thank miss Dante for her performance, and hope she will return to us in the future. Any gifts or tips for miss Dante may be forwarded to her through our club waitresses. For the next half hour, up until our next performance, some light jazz..."