Act Six: Second Helpings
Chapter Four: Take From Me

The drive to the Epsilon Zeta Sorority chapter house proved dull and anticlimactic. The steering wheel jerked and the yellow SUV juddered if Dee pushed it over fifty miles per hour. He considered abandoning the beaten automobile and running barefoot all the way to fraternity row. It shocked him to realize he had been barefoot since "quickening Eurydice," as Yves called it, back in Bee's apartment. He wiggled his toes on the gas pedal. The thought of putting something on his feet was unnerving, exposing.

"I'd feel naked," he told his reflection in the rearview mirror. ""Just wearing socks would make me feel naked." He downshifted into third gear and the SUV stopped trembling. He filed the barefoot question in his mental Things to Figure Out Later folder. Damn, that folder's getting pretty big.

With the automatic gearshift stuck in third, it would take him over an hour to drive to Epsilon Zeta. Pulling over and running began to appeal. His nanomek had remade him inside out, after all. Surely indefatigability during marathon sex translated into running a real marathon. And what about super-speed? Did he have any?

Red and blue flashed in the rearview mirror. Dee ignored the strobe lights for the moment, pondering super-speed. "Dumb name," he said. "'Celerity'. That's better."

A siren squawked once. Dee sighed and pulled over, a police car riding his tail. What about celerity? he wondered. Do I have any? He put the SUV in park and kept his hands at ten and two o'clock on the steering wheel, waiting for the state trooper to run the SUV's tags, call in the stop, and mosey over. Even if I have celerity, what would happen if I used it? Dee had to experiment and learn the limits of his powers eventually, he decided, but now was not the time. If Yves were here, he'd say, "Go with what you know." There was too much at stake for experimentation now.

The state trooper moseyed up to the busted driver's side window, drawling smoother than John Wayne. "What happened to your car, son?" He held a pad of ticket forms in one hand. "Driver's license and registration, please."

"You don't need to see my identification."

"I don't, huh? Now why is that, son?"

"I can go about my business."

The state trooper tore off the top form and crumpled it before retreating, his gait still set to Mosey as if nothing unusual had happened. "Move along."

Dee confessed to his reflection, "All right, maybe a little experimentation," and spent the rest of his trip quantifying his abilities in Star Wars terms. By the time the SUV rattled down fraternity row, Dee had given up on any aspirations to Jedi knighthood. Tomoe's "kuzbu" aligns more with the other guys. "That's okay," he said aloud, turning onto Campion Street, "the Dark Side has cooler lightsabers anyway."

The SUV rounded a bend, Epsilon Zeta Sorority House came into view, and reality became stranger than fiction. Dee took his foot off the accelerator and coasted into the cul de sac, not sure of what he was seeing. Porn movie clichés raced through his mind and the gaggle of vehicles parked in front of the house’s made sense in a funny, but not humorous, way.

"All that’s missing is a plumber’s van," Dee mused. He parked the SUV against the curb along side the FedEx truck, the russet Dodge Shadow capped by a triangular Napoli’s Pizza marquee, and an electrician’s van from a cable television company with a very ironic name, considering the circumstances. A ten-speed bicycle leaned against the steps leading to the house’s columned front porch. The bike was rigged with canvas saddle bags brimming with newspapers. "Christ, I hope that paperboy’s over eighteen."

Dee had not expected Cherry to start collecting guys—and "collecting" was the precise word for what Cherry did with men, Dee decided—until the party tonight. Did it change anything? They’re just more cards for her to hold. She already has the upper hand; it’s even "upper" than I had thought, that’s all. Dee surveyed the other buildings in the cul de sac, all unaffiliated student housing, and all dead quiet. It’s Friday afternoon, so where is everybody? He glanced at the dashboard clock: 4:20 PM.

"Oh. Duh." The lace-curtained windows in the sorority house’s three stories belied no movement. "Well, I’ve been talking to myself for a couple minutes now." The house’s front door remained closed. "And no skank-bot, wet tee-shirt, carwash zombie horde…uh, thing…this time. So I guess my public fuckability’s under control. Right?" Or Cherry’s found a better game to play. He listened to the SUV’s engine clank as it cooled. "Right. Here we go."

Dee swung open the car door, connected his bare feet to the ground, and felt his mind clarify, as if he had squeezed contact lenses, not into his eyes, but inside his head. He became aware of background details, the contours of ivy leaves and the granules of mortar on the sorority house’s brick edifice, without feeling overwhelmed or distracted. "Weird. Like Ritalin."

Dee mounted the stairs and crossed the whitewashed porch to the front door. The door stood ajar a fraction of an inch, just enough to prevent the latch from catching. Loneliness and longing welled up within him. He wanted one of his friends to say, "It's a trap!" or "I have a bad feeling about this." It was the perfect occasion, almost obligatory, and the stretching silence compounded Dee's sense of loss and doubt.

"God," Dee beseeched, "don't let me do anything stupid." He brushed open the door and edged inside.

Epsilon Zeta's foyer stank like a frat house. An Easy girl lazed against the wall, her back to the door. Strawberry blonde curls stuck out beneath her FedEx cap. She wore a tasseled leather jacket but no pants, only a pair of thong underwear skewed off the crack of her juicy ass. Her head cocked, trapping an old-fashioned phone handset between her cheek and shoulder, she twirled the cord around her fingers as she spoke.

"Uh huh. And three spicy tuna rolls. Yeah. Around five o'clock's fine. Can I request deliverers? Is Shota working tonight?" She turned to face forward, lacy black bra peeking out behind her jacket. Her voice trailed off as she stared at Dee. "Uh," she mumbled into the phone, "never mind." She squared her shoulders and the phone thunked to the floor. "Dinner's here."

Dee raised both hands, palms out. "I don't want to hurt anybody."

The Easy's hazy gaze zeroed in on Dee's crotch. She pouted, "Not even a little?" She bit her lip and took a step toward him.

"Get back."

The girl slumped, her mouth working against the wall. A single gasp escaped her throat. The soft, wet noise seemed to echo through the house. Dee heard pattering movement in the rooms above him, in the main hall before him, in the corridor beside him.

The strawberry blonde rocked back onto her feet, her face and neck flush. Her fingernails scoured the wall's wood paneling as she took another step toward Dee, chest heaving. Her breath smelled like a bakery. "Do that again."

Dee tried to ease his sinking stomach, looking for that center Yves always lectured about. Out in the house's main hall, a steady stream of coeds slunk down the stairs, a half-naked chorus line pussyfooting in time to an unheard beat. Dee found no center, only memories of Raspberry.

     ["…When Black Cherry concentrates on the Easies, she can make them do pretty much anything…"]

A vanguard curl from the strawberry blonde's mane tickled Dee's chin. She wet her lips and stood on tiptoe, questing for a kiss. How did he let her get so close? Here goes nothing. He pressed his index finger to her lips and said, "Black Cherry should be my first."

The blonde swayed in a faint, seizing his wrist. Dee's unmoving arm was sturdy as a wrought iron lamppost. Her hands slid down to his elbow and she dangled there, hissing air inward through clenched teeth. "Yes, Master. Yes."

Dee hoisted her chin with his other hand. Her pupils were dilated. Her pulse pounded in her throat like a drum. "Galatea, Cherry," Dee told the mind behind the frenzied eyes. "Show me Galatea's safe, then we seal the deal." The girl groaned, blonde curls flaying as she shook her head. "You won't win until she loses."

"Basement." The blonde loosed her grip on Dee's elbow and flopped ass-first onto the floor. "Down the hall, down the stairs." She pulled the thong until it tore, fingers shivering against her clitoral hood. "You're r-ready, Master. You're ready f-for me."

The narrow hallway was filled with girls. They squeezed against the wall, pawing at Dee's chest as he walked passed, before sinking into masturbatory oblivion. An empty doorframe, the door itself missing except for the hinges, revealed a flight of steps downward. A girl in a white spandex tee-shirt and pink hot-pants, reeking of fever and sex, stood rigid and staring in front of a swing-hinged door at the very end of the hall. She chewed her lip until it bled.

There is no center here, Dee decided, and descended into darkness.

Eggshell shards of glass crunched under Dee's feet on the last few steps. The jagged stub of a light bulb hung from the ceiling of the basement hallway. Coeds crowded the top of the stairs. Gloom thickened.

To his right, Dee saw the outlines of two doors. Beyond them, two great crescent shapes were obscured in deepest shadow. They made Dee feel watched, and he looked away, grown accustomed to the dark. A pale shaft of green light cut across the hallway floor to his left. He stepped into it.

The light spilled out from under a closed door. Heart hammering, Dee turned the doorknob. The mechanism grated beneath his fingers. He eased the door open. Brilliance dazzled him, caught his breath, and drew him into the room.

The room was small and spare. Slivers of green light danced on the whitewashed, cinderblock walls. An extension cord led from the one wall socket to the center of the room where three lamps were arrayed on the floor. Their upturned halogen faces triangulated on the room's sole occupant. She reflected and refracted their life-giving light like an emerald prism.

"Galatea," Dee said, reaching for her. "Galatea, I'm sorry." She did not move. "Galatea, this is all my fault." She did not move. "I'm so sorry," Dee whispered, and pressed his hand against her hip.

She was cold as glass, immobile as marble, and as dead as stone. "What did she do to you, Galatea?" Dee asked, looking up into her eyes. They sparkled, but not with mischief or any sign of life, only with the mindless glimmer of gemstone. Dee glanced down at her bare feet. "At least she did not put you on a pedestal," he said, and stepped back.

The statue of Galatea looked exactly as he remembered last seeing her: a figure as tall as it was curvaceous; a swooping X carved atop her left breast, angled and resembling a dancer in mid-leap; spikes of hair framing a mature face of aching beauty; that beautiful face downcast in quiet disappointment. "I didn’t trust you," he told the statue, "I blamed you rather than face the truth. I understand now." He stepped into the radius of light and took the statue by its unmoving shoulders. "I know what I am. And I love you, Galatea." He bent his head up. "It's time," he said, and kissed her on the lips.

Nothing happened. Her lips were cool and hard. Dee clicked his teeth against them, waiting for something, some sign of life. Tears ran down her cheek. He broke the one-sided kiss. "Galatea, thank…Oh." The tears staining her cheek had no telltale trail of moisture from her eyes. "Those are mine." He dried his tears off Galatea's crystal-carven face with his thumb. In a sudden inspiration, he gently streaked the statue's lips with his damp thumb, and kissed the salt into her mouth.

Nothing happened. The door creaked behind him. Dee swallowed against the lump in his throat. "What do you need?" he asked, tracing the inner edge of the X with his index finger. It stung.

A breathy voice twittered behind him, "More than words and tears."

Strong, warm palms pushed against the small of his back, slid up around his ribs and pressed against his chest. A dainty chin pressed into the hollow of his shoulder. Sultry-sweet breath tickled his ear.

Dee glanced down. A bead of blood seeped up from the scalpel-perfect cut in his fingertip. "Oh."

"Time to seal the deal," whispered Black Cherry, wing claws flexing high above him.

Dee started to turn but scarlet arms gripped tight. "No," Black Cherry said, "keep looking at her, not me. I want her to know she's lost."

"She can see?" Dee asked. He heard nothing from Black Cherry, sensed no stirring within the Galatea statue. The electric whine of the sunlamps filled the silence. "Anyway," he added, "we need to rework the terms."

"Oh?" Black Cherry giggled. She sandwiched herself against him. Her breasts squashed into his back and her groin grinded on his ass. "And what makes you think you're in any position to negotiate?" Her rising wings cast two crescent shadows on the far wall.

"Because I won't say it otherwise," Dee said, "and she won't truly lose unless I do."

The winged shadows froze. "You think you know me inside and out. You don't." The shadows shrank as her wings settled against her shoulders. "But you'll know what it's like inside me soon enough." Dee stayed stolid. Black Cherry sighed. "Very well, Master. You may restate your terms."

"Those other guys," Dee said. "I didn't know about them. I don't want them hurt; let them go."

"Who?"

Dee pictured the vehicles in front of the sorority house. "The cable guy, the FedEx guy, and two delivery boys. Pizza and paper, I think."

"Oh, them." Wings rustled. "They weren't my idea in the first place, although they came in handy. What else?"

Dee closed his eyes. "Galatea. I don't really think this counts as 'safe'. Release her."

Ten pinpricks of pain bloomed on his chest. Black Cherry's fingernails thickened into polished black talons. She sighed, drawing her arms downward. "You go too far, Master," she said over the sounds of ripping cloth.

This is it. Don't fuck up. "Nevertheless," Dee said, feeling the scrape of all ten talons. "Set her free. Let her go. No strings."

Black Cherry clucked and ticked, slicing shreds of Dee's tee-shirt onto the floor. "Oh, all right. I'll release her from all that binds her here. Satisfied? No? Ooh, you are impossible!" Her soft lips closed around his earlobe. "I love it. Fine, she'll be free to leave, unfettered and unharmed. Better? Then nod your head. Good boy. Honestly, it's like dealing with the Devil." She feasted on his neck, reduced his shirt to tatters with her talons. She perked up, mouth parting from his flesh with a wet pop. "But I'll need something extra in exchange." One final swipe of a talon over his collar and the jigsaw remains of his shirt fell to the floor. "I need a name, Master."

Her talons drifted toward his waist. "And I need pants," Dee insisted, "These are my very last pair." Talons plucked out an impatient beat on Dee's bare stomach. "Okay. Your master will name you. Now cancel the party and end the Frenzy."

She pushed herself away. "Are you serious? Think of it: a planet of women calling you Master, just like I do." He felt her shrug, the shadow of her wings waxing and waning on the walls. "Consider it a preemptive strike. Thanks to that stunt you pulled, every witch less than six dimensions away is already after your ass."

"What?"

"The omphalos mundi," Black Cherry said. Dee shook his head and she added, "The world navel you made? You weren’t subtle; don't think you can be, with something that big." She giggled at the memory. "I was fucking this paperboy in the backyard for the fourth or fifth time in a row. Those eighteen-year-old delivery boys have got a lot of spunk in them, in more ways than one; he didn't beg for his life until at least his third orgasm. So there I was, getting his barely-legal rocks off, when—Wham! A new omphalos mundi, bigger than life, and topped by an axis mundi shot up into the sky." She pinched him under the armpit. "That must have really drained you, Master. No wonder you slept." She pinched harder and Dee flinched. "Still drained, I see."

Despite the desperate circumstances, Dee felt bashful. "You saw that all the way from here?"

Black Cherry's laughter twinkled. "Master, they saw that from the Moon."

"Who's on the Moon?"

Dee felt another shrug, "The Amazons," Black Cherry answered. "Duh."

"You're not crazy for me, Cherry," Dee said, remembering Yves' earlier words, "You're indiscriminately crazy. There are over six billion people in the world nowadays, you can't just…Wait, Amazon women on the Moon?"

Black Cherry twittered, "Six billion? Really?" She hugged his back again. "I'll have even more time with you until the Frenzy runs its course and the female half of the world fucks the male half to death. Then I'll share you, or not, as I see fit, with any witches and Moon maidens and maenads and whoever else's left."

"No party, no Frenzy, no world fem-domination, and don't hurt anybody I've left out. Promise me that, and your Master will name you," Dee offered.

"Maybe," Black Cherry cooed, planting little kisses on his back. "I promise to think about it. Depends on how good a Master you are."

"I can live with that. But Unyx's hair: you've got to burn it."

Black Cherry gasped in mock shock and swatted Dee on the rump. "Nuh-uh. I'm keeping her hair as an assurance. Besides, you have nothing left to bargain with." She reached around to clutch his chest, the talon of her index finger pricking the rib below his left breast. "Do we have a deal?"

Dee gazed up at Galatea. She did not look back. "Yes."

A shiver of excitement shocked through the scarlet girl's body. She squeezed against him tighter than ever. "Cross your heart?" she asked, sunk her talon into his flesh, and dragged her hand up and across.

Pain exploded in his chest. Dee's knees buckled but Black Cherry held him up. His vision wavered. Blood spotted the floor. She withdrew her talon, but a heartbeat later another sank into the skin above his left breast and just below the shoulder. She held him in silence and exquisite agony, the talon burrowed deep but unmoving.

"Say it," Dee told her, his jaw clenched against the pain.

She shivered around him. Her sex felt hot and slick against his thigh. Black Cherry tittered, "You first."

"Yes," Dee nodded, "cross my heart—"

"And hope to die?" The words gushed out of her mouth as her talon sliced downward.

He was ready for more pain this time but it still took his breath away. He remembered his favorite line from Yves' centering lectures.

     ["…Victory is not getting cut…"]

He glanced down at the raw X incised above his heart, the blood streaming down to his belly. The center is here. He bowed his head. "Hope…Hope to die," he said.

"Then tell her," Black Cherry growled, grabbing a handful of Dee's hair and pointing his face up at the green statue's. "Tell her. She has to know."

Dee swallowed. "Galatea," he told the statue, "I'm ready."

Black Cherry mewled. Her talons vanished back into her fingertips. Her wings spread wide, encircling Dee in swirls of soot and licks of flame. Fingers thrust under the waist of his pants. Black Cherry wrapped her hands around Dee's cock. She babbled nonsense words, a woman possessed.

"I'm ready for your sister," Dee said.

"Fuck me, Master." Black Cherry released Dee long enough to wrench him around. Her eyes were nothing like Unyx's, Dee realized, which shone like a starry, cloudless night. Black Cherry's eyes were an unreflective black. Abysses that swallowed light and gave nothing back. Even as she sobbed, overcome—although Dee could not tell whether with lust, triumph, joy, madness, or something more dark and alien—her insectile eyes gave up no tears. She huddled herself against him, smearing her cheek on his blood-stained abdomen, one hand mauling his dick to life. "Fuck me."
The pain from his wounds had become a dull, pervasive ache. "Not in front of your sister," Dee said. She gaped up at him, her cherry-creamsicle colored cheek rouged arterial red with his blood. I've got to get this just right. "You wanted her to know," Dee explained, "but you want to share with her? In any way?"

Black Cherry glanced from Dee to the statue behind him and back again. Burning brandy drizzled her inner thighs. Her hand slipped out of his pants and onto his wrist. "Come with me, Master."

Dee followed her for a few paces but stopped short of the door. She tugged once. He shifted his weight and resisted her pull for a heartbeat before he tripped forward another pace. "The deal, Cherry," Dee reminded, bumping against her wing. "Release Galatea."

"Oh, right," she said, her customary, coy smirk returning. Her wings flourished in the air. "Galatea! I hereby release you from any and all binds, geasan, blood music, um, disharmonies, and, uh, etcetera etcetera." Her wings sagged and she gave Dee a helpless shrug. "Sorry. Look, Galatea, you're free to leave. I won't hold you here, or try to stop you. Any power I had over you is gone." She and Dee turned back to the statue, waiting.

Nothing happened.

"Well," chirped Black Cherry, scraping her palms together, "that was exciting. Worth the wait. Shall we go, now, Master?"

Dee frowned. "Release her, Cherry."

A wing waved at the door. "The door's open, Galatea. There's a storm door leading right outside. Don't let it hit you on the way out."

Nothing happened. Dee's hands curled into fists. "Release Galatea, Cherry."

"You want me to drag her back to your apartment like this?" Black Cherry folded her arms. "That's how I brought her here."

"What?"

Black Cherry rolled her eyes. "I found her this way, Master. I came in through your bedroom window, and there she was, frozen, just like that." A wing claw gestured. "Like she'd French-kissed Medusa." She arched a brow. "Oh, I tried to smash her to bits, believe me. Even dropped her out the window. Nothing worked. Ooh, I was so angry, Master."

A chill ran up his spine. "But the bedroom. All that red and green…"

"Oh, that," Black Cherry dismissed, waving a hand. "I was angry, Master. So you had to be angry, too." She twirled, wings drawn in tight. "Did you really think I used the whole bottle of green food coloring on me? I just needed a few drops. I used the rest on the walls, along with half the red bottle." She made wide swipes with her arms and wings, miming an artist splattering paint across a huge canvas. "When you, Yves, and I were in your apartment, Galatea was stuck headfirst in a Rhododendron bush outside your bedroom window." She waggled a foot at him, pumping her heel against her jelly clog. "With her feet in the air. The whole time."

Black Cherry sidled toward Dee. "So you see, Master, I have released her. I'm not the one keeping her like this. I never was. She could have gone to you any time she wanted." A wing claw caressed Dee's cheek. "But she doesn't want you like I do, Master. Well, she is free." Black Cherry kissed the center of his wound, painting her lips with blood. "The deal is sealed." She threw herself at Dee, wings crushing over his back, and kissed him hard on the mouth, thrusting her tongue between his lips. He tasted his own blood. "And you are mine."

She took him by the hand. "Just like you wanted, Master. Now, come." Dee felt hollow and numb. He followed her out the door, unresisting. "It's time, Master." She shut the door behind them, her glistening grin vanishing as the light fled. "It's my time."
Black Cherry led Dee into darkness. He reached for his chest. The sudden pain from contact made him wince, but the constant ache had become a distant throb, and no fresh blood flowed around his fingers. "How did you cut me, Cherry?"

"That raspberry-flavored floozy told me to 'eat shit and die,' I believe her phrase was," Black Cherry said, pulling Dee along. "But all I ever wanted her to do was fuck you, drain you dry enough to let me in." She stopped and pushed open a door. Pale light revealed her coquettish grin. "Now it's my turn to drain you, over and over." A wing claw skittered down his bare side, scratching and probing, but without piercing. "We will fuck and cut and fuck and cut, all day, every day, forever."

Dee could not decide what was more nauseating, her madness or his dick growing hard at her words. "Jesus."

"Never met him." A playful shove sent Dee stumbling through the door. "In you go, Master."

Grey light filtered through grimy slivers of glass set high in the wall above a row of boxy washing machines. The air was thick with lint and the sickly sweet scent of fabric softener. Baskets of half-folded laundry piled high in the corners while dozens of pairs of pantyhose and delicate exotica hung from dry-racks and clothes lines strung throughout the room.

Shadows flicked across the basement windows. It's time. Dee found his balance. It's time to stand, but I have so little strength back. How?

     ["…It will come when you call…"]

He spun about, skidding on the cement floor. "I'm ready for you, Cherry." A dangling silk strap snagged his hair and a brassiere fell on his head. "Ah, shit."

"You make an adorable demigod, Master." Dee heard an edge in her laugh. Black Cherry glanced behind her.

"You glitter not of gemstone," Dee said, uprooting the bra from his hair, "but of broken glass."

"Nice recovery," Black Cherry murmured, squinting at him. "Master?"

Dee loomed forward. "You dapple." His shoulder did not hurt at all. "You brittle."

Black Cherry dropped back toward the door, her wings trailing cobwebs of lingerie. "You sound strange, Master." A door banged open somewhere upstairs. She gazed up at the ceiling, frowning. "Something's wrong. What's happening?" She glanced down at the bulge in Dee's pants and squeaked, "Wait."

Dee took a slow, single step. "This…" His bare sole connected with the floor. "Is what you wanted." The washing machines lurched forward in the aftershock.

Black Cherry whirled, wing claws slicing through clothesline. "Wait!"

Dee caught a wing claw by the tip. "No." He hauled on the claw and twisted Black Cherry into his embrace.

"I'm ready for you, Cherry," he said, and kissed her hard enough to shred her lips with his teeth.

Black Cherry yanked her head back. She stammered, "I don't—mmf." Dee crushed her to him, his mouth covering hers. Her cherry-chocolate, cordial-candy taste cloyed his tongue. She pushed against shoulders as unyielding as granite slabs. "Mmm!" Dee reached under her ass and slung one of her legs over his hip, mashing her mons against the crotch of his pants. "Mmm…" His sweatpants slipped down around his thighs and the head of his prick slid up to her bellybutton.

Black Cherry's body reacted at once. Her gel-flesh stuck to his skin. Her wings perspired fat droplets of sanguine nectar. Her protestations dissolved into a fervid keening. Dee hooked his other hand under her ass and hoisted Black Cherry off her feet. She locked both legs around Dee's hips and wrapped her arms about his neck. Dee steamrolled toward the row of washing machines, his passenger clinging and crying.

Dee tossed Black Cherry down onto a washing machine. Its lid dented around her derriere. She clung to his neck, kissing and sobbing. Dee took her by the shoulders and slammed her back against the wall, fracturing the cinderblock.

"What's happening?" Black Cherry wailed. "What's happening?"

"I'm fucking you, Cherry," Dee said, kicking off one leg of his sweatpants. "Is that so hard to comprehend?"

"Yes. No. I…" She shook her head, the miniature wings above her ears whipping through the air. "Why are you, I mean, why am I—"

Dee cut her off, snarling, "Scared? Don’t you get it yet?" Dee pulled his sweatpants off his other leg. "You have to fuck me to hurt me." He raised his balled first. Black Cherry quailed. A wing whickered inward, not to strike, but to shield her as she shrank away.

Dee followed through with his swing, tossing his sweatpants across the room. "So I have to hurt you to fuck you." Dee's voice dripped with scorn. "Remember, back at the apartment? Out on the highway? You only got wet…" He twisted her sheltering wing. "…after I kicked your ass." Black Cherry barked a single yelp of fear and pain and let the wing fall.

"This is what you want," Dee said. He hiked one of Black Cherry's legs up high, her jelly clog shoe melting into a shapeless wedge, and held it tight to his shoulder. "This is what you want from me." Dee angled his erection at her pussy, ignoring her soprano screams. "This is what you think a 'master' is supposed to do. You sick, stupid bitch," Dee hissed, and invaded her.

Her arms and wings flung wide, Black Cherry shrieked, "Master!"

Dee smothered her mouth with his hand. "Shut up," he said, thrusting, "I'm not your master." He heard chaotic drumming across the ceiling; movement in the story above them.

He hitched his knee atop the washing machine and drove deeper into her searing sex. "This isn't what a master is." Black Cherry's head lolled, scarlet honey pouring off her wings in lazy waves. "This isn't what a master does." She screamed into his palm with each lunge. "Not your real master, Cherry."

More shadows danced in the windows. "But you don’t want the real thing, Cherry." Dee shoved her, rolled her onto her shoulder, and fucked her sideways. She batted her fists at the washing machine next to her, her gel-flesh splattering, raising red welts over the machine's metal casing. "Because you aren't the real thing. Even as a statue, Galatea's more real than you." The drumming above them grew louder, more directed.

Dee rammed into Black Cherry and bent over, one hand firmly clapped over her mouth, the other sinking into the wet mess that was once her hair. "Do you know how I can tell Galatea's real? That she's not some stupid princess trapped in a story?" Something pounded down the stairs in the hallway beyond. Dee raised his voice. "Waiting for a master? A hero? A rescuer?"

Eurydice burst through the door and into the laundry room, knees bent, hands splayed and ready. "Where?"

Dee looked back at her. "Down the hall. Last door on the left."

Eurydice turned about and fled without another word. Black Cherry's scream was so loud, vibrating through Dee's hand, it rattled the windows and washing machine lids in their frames. Black Cherry reared up.

"Oh no, you don't," Dee muttered. He whirled his arms across her fluid flesh, starting a standing wave that ended with her flipped over flat onto her stomach. He hopped off the washing machine, tugging Black Cherry's hips down. Her ass was a pert as ever. Dee pressed the head of his cock against the bud of her anus.

Black Cherry shuddered and fell quiet. Her silence was electric. Dee lifted his hand away from her mouth. "So," he said, "do you want to stop Galatea from rescuing herself, or do you want me to fuck you in the ass? This is probably your one and only chance, on both counts."

She whimpered for a while before Dee realized the soft sounds she made were words. "Fuck me, Master. Fuck me." Dee seized Black Cherry by the neck. "Fuck me."

"That's how I know," he said, and did.

* * * *

Eurydice stormed down the darkened hall, struggling with each step. Nanomek swirled inside her, a maelstrom in microcosm. The air upstairs, overripe with sex and the pheromones of fear, had stirred them up. Here in the sorority basement buried halfway into the earth, she feared they would blow her apart. Scent traces of Dee's blood and Black Cherry's desire—She's cumming so much, she cuts him and Dee makes the bitch cum so much—churned in a molecular soup around her. She wanted to turn back, to go back to him, to forget Black Cherry and Galatea and just be with him. To be Eurydice and Dee, forever and always.

But not as much, she realized, her eyes fixed on the last door on the left, not as much as I want to do this. White light flooded behind her, lit her up neon green. "Now what?"

The strawberry blonde spilled down the stairs, naked save for her FedEx cap and a slick of sweat. She trembled, hands on her knees, panting and grimacing like a marathon runner. Her hair lay matted and limp over her face and neck. She wheezed, "Stop."

Eurydice narrowed her eyes. "You don't know when to quit, do you?"

The strawberry blonde shook her head, swallowing, finding her voice. "Nuh. Ugh. I…" Shadows flickered at the top of the stairwell and the strawberry blonde froze. "Oh boy."

Tendrils of living ink zigzagged down the stairs, swimming through the air like a coordinated school of fish with endless, liquid tails. The strawberry blonde crooned, eyes sliding shut as the first whorls of gleaming black crept across her hips. More and more of the substance slithered over her skin, tongues of obsidian spiraling down her legs, coursing up her back and between her breasts.

The black ribbons pulsed and the strawberry blonde's feet started kissing the ground. "Never mind," she sighed, suspended in mid-air, before the black ribbons reeled her in, floating her weightlessly up the stairs.

A bemused voice drifted down. "you? but—we—cured—you—already."

Eurydice heard the strawberry blonde reply, "I know. But, but, would you, um, do it, y'know, again?"

"hmm."

"Please?"

"'kay."

"Woo!"

Eurydice rolled her eyes, turning to her destination. My final destination. The last door on the left stood closed, lime-colored light trickling around its frame. The hallway echoed with Black Cherry's feral squeals. My destiny.

The green girl pushed open the last door on the left, and crossed the threshold into radiance. I love you, Dee.

She never looked back.

* * * *

A Sister of the Frenzy blundered about the sorority house kitchen. When the blood music sang this loud behind her eyes, she forgot everything, including her name, living only for the irresistible song inside her head. There were always lyrics behind the blood music, the dulcet voice of Black Cherry, carrying subliminal suggestions, infectious moods, and the occasional direct command. In the early hours of the morning, the blood music had coaxed the Sister into a pair of pink hot pants, a white spandex shirt, and the insatiable need to fuck every last ounce of sperm out of some guy with the unlikely name of Deiter Detwiler. Now, almost twelve hours later, the pants' tight crotch had rubbed her sex raw, and the sweaty spandex was sandpaper against her nipples. But the blood music was worse.

She toppled against the kitchen counter. Empty Jell-O boxes, mixing bowls, aluminum utensils and tins tumbled into the sink and a scattered across the floor. The Frenzy Sister moaned, head bowed, riding a wave of panicky excitement that was not her own. The blood music soared, full of dissonant cords, random rhythms, and lousy lyrics. Black Cherry sang of being tricked, of a surprise attack, of enemies at the gate, and of Master's cock fucking her in the ass, as ironic as rain on her wedding day, which was to say, not ironic at all.

Filled with this nonsense, the Frenzy Sister went on automatic pilot. Black Cherry's song faded into background noise, like a loud party at a neighbor's house, but still informed the Sister's own ideas and desires. Her ass fell against the pantry door, one pink-clad cheek toggling the lock on the knob. The doorknob nudged between her cheeks, and the Sister decided she really needed some serious butt-fucking herself. She remembered the cable guy, catatonic but erect as a schoolboy on a vibrating bus seat.

She tottered toward the swing-hinged door. It opened inward before she reached it. A confusion of black coils billowed into the kitchen. Thick tentacles, their tips conical and smooth, flowed across the floor in the fluid, sideways wave-motion of an octopus unfurling across the ocean bottom.

Danger, Black Cherry sang through the music in the Frenzy Sister's mind. That's Unyx! Don't let her near your Sisters. And stop Eurydice! Come down to the base—ooh, damn, fuck my ass! Fuck it! More!

The Frenzy Sister clutched her head. "I don't understand."

Unyx glided into the room. Her glossy black lips parted in a languorous smile, her neck and chest flushed silvery white. An obsidian corset hugged the ribs below her breasts then stretched down into a gleaming bodysuit. The suit shone like latex, clung like velvet, and flowed like oil. Below the delta of Unyx's sex, the bodysuit bound her legs together into a seamless trunk, only to split again into dozens of snaking limbs, as if she had grown roots instead of knees. One of those roots found the Frenzy Sister's ankle.

The tentacle's touch was smooth and sleek. Dozens more lazed on the floor and crowded the air around the Sister, swaying inches away but not making contact. The Sister could only quiver, gazing mute into Unyx's eye-mask.

The delicate tip of a black tentacle traced the Frenzy Sister's jaw, ran down the line of her neck behind her ear. The physical strength behind the soft touch was immense. The strongest force she had ever experienced was giving her the most intimate and tender caress she had ever known. The Sister's sex, despite hours of non-stop stimulation, felt cavernous with need.

"let—us—in," Unyx said, her tentacle curling up the sister's neck and stroking her cheek, "and—the—music—will—stop."

The Frenzy Sister nabbed the tentacle with both hands and shoved it in her mouth. It tasted of licorice and power—a savage, unstoppable power touching her, filling her, yet treating her oh-so-gently. It made her feel delicate, precious, prized, and hornier than she had ever been in her entire life.

"whoa," Unyx said as the Sister deep-throated the tentacle with abandon. "you—ah!—you—like—that?"

The Sister chuckled and slurped hard. The tentacle in her mouth pulsed once. She froze, then pulled the sleek limb out of her mouth long enough to gasp, "Are you kidding?" She ripped open her hot pants, yanked them down around her knees. She begged, "Oh, God, fuck me," before inhaling the tentacle back into her mouth.

Unyx gulped, little jet beads of sweat pricking her forehead, as the Frenzy Sister pumped the tentacle in and out her mouth. A second tentacle brushed against the Sister's outer labia, and pulsed slowly inward. The Frenzy Sister screamed around the throbbing member in her mouth. An orgasm struck her like lightning, she felt so deliciously full, and all she could think was more, more, more. She reached for a third tentacle and rammed it up between the globes of her ass.

"wait—what?" Unyx licked her lips. "seriously?"

The Frenzy Sister, refusing to part from the tentacle pulsing down her throat, nodded vigorously enough to give herself whiplash. The tentacle tantalizing her pussy started to withdraw. The Frenzy Sister screeched in frustration, reached down, and clawed both tentacles inward.

Unyx's black raccoon mask drained away from her face. "I think," Ursula's voice trailed off. The Frenzy Sister sunk to her knees and elbows on the floor, eyes rolled over white, lost in an endless tide of power, pleasure, and triple penetration.

"I think I get hentai now," Ursula gasped.

* * * *

"Um," Eurydice said. "Hi." She raised her palm in a little wave.

Galatea said nothing, showed no signs of life.

Eurydice contemplated her other self. The statue stood much taller than her, its bearing more fierce and proud, even with the sad, lost look on its face. A face so different from Eurydice's own. Not too much older: five years, ten years at the very most. And only in appearance, Eurydice had to remind herself. Galatea was merely six nights old, after all, and she did not share Eurydice's memories of the meliae that came before them, as confused and cloudy as they were. But the maturity of Galatea's visage, a true, elegant confidence that could never be confused with haughtiness, seemed deeper than appearance. Galatea wore no mask of womanhood. She was a woman down to the core. Eurydice felt mawkish and girlish—felt all sorts of negative words ending in –ish, in fact— in Galatea's presence.
Was Galatea present? Eurydice burned nanomek to examine the statue in minutiae. It was solid emerald, crystals of beryllium aluminum silicate arranged in an orderly, hexagonal molecular lattice, tinted green by trace elements of chromium. Aligned along the lattice were trillions of dormant nanomek. When a photon of light bumped into an iota of nanomek, the nanomek would absorb it, but that was an autonomous reaction. No information moved along the webs of mind and memory inside. At least, none that Eurydice could see without actually going inside the statue herself.

So Galatea was present, but asleep. More than asleep. Comatose? Dispirited? Somehow expired? Eurydice would only find out if she merged with the statue. But if Galatea's mind and memory web were truly expired…

Eurydice shut down that train of thought and returned to the visible light spectrum. "At least my boobs are as big as yours." She tried to smirk, glancing at Galatea's bare chest. "Maybe bigger, I…Oh." She saw the swooping X carved in Galatea's left breast. She glanced down at herself, realized she still wore the Dee-pleasing schoolgirl uniform. It melted away in the blink of an eye.

"I never thought about it," Eurydice said, her voice a watery whisper. Tears pattered down over her unmarked breasts, puddled in her cleavage. "Dee never mentioned it. Why didn't he ask about it, dammit? Why?" She glared at the statue. Although its expression had not changed, Eurydice felt as if its disappointment was focused on her. "Don't look at me like that. Look!" She pointed at the spattered floor. "Dee bled right in front of you." A red smudge dried on one of the statue's toes. "Dee bled on you! And you did nothing!" She balled her fists, gel-flesh fingers and thumbs melding into spheres atop her wrists. "It's so hard for me to just stand here. She cut him! She hurt him!" Sharp jagged knives flicked out of her fists, more thorns than fingers. "I want to kill the little red bitch!"

Eurydice raged in silence for a moment before the knives slid inward and her hands reopened with a metallic sigh. "But this is what I need to do. This is where Dee wants me to be." She glowered at Galatea. "This is where I want to be, damn you." She wiped her eyes. "Okay. Got that outta the way. I feel a little better." She sighed, closed the door behind her. "Let me start again. Okay?" She combed out her hair, jellied dreadlocks settling around her shoulders. "Okay. Hi." She repeated her little wave.

The Galatea statue remained motionless, recasting lamplight from a sunshine white to a crystalline green.

Eurydice twirled a dreadlock in her fingers. "I don't know if Dee or Black Cherry told you about me. Well, I bet Black Cherry did, and I can imagine what she said." She stepped forward, eyes on her fidgeting digits. "Anyway, I'm Eurydice. Dee wants me to talk to you, to try to convince you to come back to him. To us." She looked up.

Galatea did not move.

Eurydice's eyes fell. "For a long time, I thought that's why he made me. I thought he made me, just to bring you back. But that's not true." She stepped forward. "He loves me. That means he loves you, too.

"Dee doesn't really understand the whole nanomek-individuation thing." She gave the statue a crooked grin. "He's not the brightest guy in the Universe, you know that, and maybe he learned everything he knows from comics and cartoons and Internet porn and stuff—but, oh, he's clever, and he cares, and he understands us." She gestured back and forth "You. Me." She shrugged. "You know: art. Women."

Eurydice stepped into the field of light defined by the three sunlamps. The room fell into a green gloaming. Doubled shadows, shades of green and gray, played over every surface, transforming the spare basement room into a seashore grotto. "There are things you don't know, Galatea. There are things I don't know—like whatever made you decide to do this." She reached up to touch Galatea's cheek, hesitating at the last instant. "This thing to yourself, whatever it is. I want to find out." Her arm dropped to her side. "But I'm not going to force you to share with me. It can't work that way. But there's something you've got to know. I bet you know already." Eurydice peered deep into the statue's lifeless gaze. "He's the one, Galatea."

Galatea's eyes flicked their focus onto Eurydice. Her face leapt into life, millions of nanomek burning to rearrange the emerald construct, one molecule at a time, in a flurry of speed, control, and power Eurydice could scarcely comprehend. "He was the one," Galatea said.

Eurydice startled backward, knocking over the lamp behind her. Shadow and light swirled and spun. "He is the one."

Galatea towered over Eurydice, her face grimacing in contempt. "How would you know?"

This is it, Eurydice realized. Final choice. She thought of Dee, what it would mean to spend the rest of their lives together, what it would be like to never see him again.

Galatea said, "Well?"

Eurydice made her stand. "Let me show you," she said, and offered her hand.

Galatea's brow crinkled. "I should be able to share memories just by touch," she murmured, and Eurydice knew she had said it before, "but I haven't figured out how to do it yet."

"That's 'cause you have no limits, no boundaries," Eurydice said. "I do." She waggled her fingers. "Take my hand."

Galatea stretched toward her. Their fingertips brushed. Motes of silver and green light scintillated within, growing brighter and brighter as their hands entwined. Eurydice stood on tiptoe. Their linked hands outshone the sunlamps in an expanding flare of light. The two green girls' lips met and they outshone the Sun.

* * * *

Eurydice watched the SUV pull away, drive under the overpass, up the onramp on the far side, and accelerate down the highway and out of sight. The engine's protests faded as the distance between her and Dee grew. Someone padded across the road behind her, quiet as a ghost. Eurydice spent a few thousand nanomek—she had so much now it frightened her, and she took every excuse to burn some—and heightened her hearing. She recognized the approaching heartbeat immediately.

"Eurydice?" Yves asked.

She turned to him, starry-eyed from weeping, her lips trembling.

"He didn't look back," she said.

Yves nodded, looking grim, until Eurydice bowled into him, laughing, "He didn't look back!" She grabbed Yves by the collar and tugged him into a friendly kiss and ferocious hug. She beamed, so happy she thought she might crack open. "Oh, Yves, he didn't look back." She blinked away tears. "He loves me."

Yves scowled, and in a patient, little voice he said, "Of course he does," and Eurydice laughed so hard she started crying again. "You were eavesdropping, then, I take it?"

"Huh?"

Yves made quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "Sounded like you two were having a Hell of an argument," he said in a passable imitation of Eurydice's voice. "Heard every word, didn't you?"

Eurydice hiccupped and sniffled, "Oh, yeah. 'Course I did." And that set off more laughter and waterworks.

Unyx sped toward them, running out of the field and across the road, boots whacking against pavement. A pair of wings unfolded from her back. The wings spread wide as they took shape, black feathers iridescent in indigo and midnight blue.

Raspberry raced behind her. "What the fuck is going on?"

Yves reached into his pants' pocket and drew out a set of stubby keys. He tossed them high. Unyx kicked off, great wings beating the air, snatching the keys before soaring up and banking above the overpass.

"Wow," Eurydice breathed.

Raspberry skidded to a halt. "You guys. Seriously: what-the-fuckage." She glared upward. "We're just standing there and suddenly Unyx gets this 'I-left-the-porn-in-the-DVD-player' look on her face, does a runner." Unyx circled higher until she appeared no bigger than a crow. "Next thing I know," Raspberry said, watching Unyx wheel away, "I'm in an Evanescence music video."

"Unyx's gone to get Dee's car," Yves said, watching the sky.

"How do you know that?" Raspberry asked.

"Those were Dee's car keys," Yves answered.

Eurydice daubed her eyes. "When'd you get those, anyway?"

"I picked Dee up at a gay bar yesterday," Yves shrugged.

Eurydice boggled at him, watched him fight to keep the smile off his face, ready to punch him in the nose if he failed.

"Okay," Raspberry drawled, brows raised. "But how does Unyx know that? When did you tell her?"

"About ten minutes from now," Yves said. The purple and green girls stared at him.

CeeCee sauntered up, slow and steady but with the energy of an avalanche. "Is it time to save the world yet?"

* * * *

Galatea broke the kiss, her face flushed with snowflake-fire. "I don't understand." The sights and sounds of the underpass faded around them, dreamlike afterimages melting into soft white light.

Eurydice inched her free arm up around Galatea's neck. "I think you do." She tugged. Galatea did not resist. "But there's more." Gel-flesh met gemstone.

* * * *

Ursula's head peeped over the trembling curves of Galatea's calves. She wore a mustache and goatee of glimmering green nectar, grinning like her own evil twin from an alternative universe. "It's called the Venus Butterfly."

"A Technique?" Galatea demanded, dumbfounded. "You are using a Technique on me?"

"Half of one." Ursula rocked forward onto her elbows, her rump bobbing high in the air and her milk-white, elfin face descending below the verdant swell of Galatea's cleft. "For a proper Venus Buttery, my thumb would go up in here—"

"Ah."

"—my middle and ring fingers would go down in there—"

"Yah!"

"—and my tongue, well my tongue would go—hmmph, hm-mm, mm."

"Ooh, fuck!" Galatea chewed on a fist to muffle a scream and then begged, "Enough. Enough!"

* * * *

"Wait. Hey." Galatea frowned down as the walls of Ursula's bedroom resolved into the cinderblock of the sorority house basement. "That was my memory."

Eurydice hummed, eyes sliding shut. "So you did fuck the loli-goth." She giggles, eyes still closed. "I had to feel that for myself."

Galatea ran a hand over Eurydice's thigh. "You really are me, aren’t you?"

"Mostly." Galatea's hand traced up Eurydice's back, making the shorter green girl shimmy. "Mm. Solid."

"Then you need to know this," Galatea said, palming the back of Eurydice's neck before kissing her hard and open-mouthed.

* * * *

"Aren’t you even going to listen to what I have to say?" Galatea asked, frustration and ire rising.

"Yes," Dee said, "but when I get back."

Galatea felt a gush of relief. "You mean," she said, "you mean you aren't leaving me?"

"No," Dee said, "maybe. I don't know. You've done something to me. You're doing something to me. I guess I'm a control freak, because I'm really freaking out right now."

"Dee, I haven't done anything—"

"You're changing me, Galatea." Dee marched to the front door. "But it would be stupid to make any decisions about us right now. I've got to go out. Alone. I've got to get away, by myself, to be myself, for a while. I'll be back. If I can still move. If I'm still alive."

"But Dee," Galatea wailed, hating herself for sounding so desperate, "I'm not changing you. I can't tell you now…there's so much I still don't understand…but you aren't changing."

Dee slammed the front door behind him, cracking the frame and ruining the lock.

"You're just becoming more you," Galatea whispered.

* * * *

Eurydice tore free of Galatea's embrace. The eidolon of memory and light winked out. Eurydice quaked, disheveled dreadlocks falling everywhere, fists squeezed against her sides.

"I'm sorry." Galatea's smile was kind but sad. "But you had to know. He's not the one."

Eurydice said nothing.

"Another will come." Galatea's smile turned wry. "They always do."

"You're wrong," Eurydice said.

"What?"

"You were wrong." Eurydice flipped her hair back, a gesture both childish and defiantly strong. "Dee was changing." She stepped forward. Silver foxfire bloomed below her skin. "Dee has changed. Wait. You weren't wrong." Her eyes narrowed. "You're lying."

Galatea fell back between the two upright sunlamps. "No, I'm not."

"Of course you are. You lie all the time. You're lying right now." Eurydice's laughter rang like fey bells. "To me!"

"Dee can't change," Galatea insisted, but her eyes pled otherwise.

"I know something you don't know," Eurydice sang, glowing. She opened her arms wide. "C'mere, you big dummy."

Galatea rushed into her embrace and the world went white.

* * * *

Yves and Dee were arguing in the copse of ruined trees at the edge of the wide flowerbed. Eurydice followed the fleeing Raspberry with her eyes, burned nanomek to smooth her ears into perfect parabolas, and homed onto Dee's dark vibrato.

"The decision has already been made, hasn’t it, Yves?" he said.

Yves' grin was mirthless. "I know that tone, Dee. You're starting a rehearsed hissy fit." Dee tried to protest but Yves cut him off. "'Bitch-bitch-bitch, walk out the door.' That means you're leaving."

Icy panic seized Eurydice. She shut down, terrified to move, ready to shatter.

A warm hand enfolded her shoulder, soft and soothing, creamy satin. "Keep listening, honey," CeeCee urged. "If they wanted to be out of earshot, they would have driven two counties away."

Eurydice drew a ragged breath, nodded, and swiveled her ears like a cat.

"…So it has to be me," Yves was saying.

"Agreed," Dee said, nodding gravely. "Black Cherry wants to live in a story? Fine. We're going to give her one."

Yves rubbed his chin. "What do you mean?"

"Black Cherry's holding all the cards," Dee said, "but she's not playing with a full deck."

"A little less hissy fit, a lot more exposition, please," Yves insisted, "time's a wasting."

"All right," Dee smirked, then ticked off each point with his fingers. "I head off, alone, to Easy House. I distract Cherry, make sure she can't use Unyx's hair. You guys catch up—still have my keys? Good. So I distract Cherry. The Easies go on automatic pilot." He dropped his hand. "Out of fingers. Anyway, Easies go on automatic pilot, Unyx cures the Frenzy."

"How?" Yves' cheek twitched. "This is another answer I don't want to know, isn't it?"

"Yes," Dee replied, "it really is. So Unyx cures the Frenzy. Raspberry finds Unyx's hair and the nanomek. CeeCee eats anybody trying to get away. You do…what you've got to do."

"And you rescue Galatea," Yves said, brow furrowed.

"No," Dee said, "that's Eurydice's job." He turned to the flowerbed. Eurydice contemplated her feet. "If she wants it. Eurydice deserves the chance to make up her own mind about Galatea," Dee finished. He turned away and Eurydice popped her head up, eyes wide.

"Two problems with that plan," Yves countered. "One, Eurydice doesn't know if she wants Galatea back."

"And two," Dee sighed, "Galatea probably doesn't want to come back. CeeCee said Cherry was lying about her. Cherry's setting me up with some sort of cruel irony gag. What else could it be? She thinks she's the villain in a fairy tale or vaudeville routine."

Dee shrugged. "But the Frenzy has got to be stopped, and Black Cherry will go berserk as soon as Unyx shows up. So I've got to keep Black Cherry busy, no matter what it takes. Oh." Dee raised his voice. "And I don't know how Unyx's precognition really works, but Cherry can hear through Unyx's ears, so I sure hope she hasn't been listening to any of this."

Eurydice, almost frozen with anticipation, managed, "Unyx, don't start listening five minutes ago."

"'Kay," said Unyx, Raspberry's head resting on her shoulder.

"No games, Dee," Yves dismissed. "Do you want Galatea back?"

"I want her to be happy," Dee said, "I want Eurydice to be happy." Dee relented. "Yes. God, Yves, I want them both to be happy." His Adam's Apple bobbing, he whispered, "I want them to be happy with me." Dee stood in teary silence.

Yves softened. "Dee?"

Every iota of nanomek in Eurydice's body latched onto her sensory web. Billions of green girls listened to Dee's breathing deepen and slow. Dee nodded, then spoke with such sudden conviction Eurydice nearly cried out. "This is how it has to happen. I won't second guess her or Galatea anymore. Whatever Eurydice and Galatea choose will be the right thing." Dee dried his face with his palm. "No looking back."

"You sure?" Yves asked, but he was already adjusting his scabbard, tightening the knot in his belt.

"Yes," Dee answered, and as if it were the easiest thing in the world, he added, "I trust her both."

* * * *

The washing machine tore off its wall hookup. Water squirted up the basement wall. Black Cherry hissed and drank. Her gel-flesh seethed around Dee's cock. Candy-red froth poured off her back and flailing wings, sluicing over Dee's belly and thighs. "Had enough?" Dee growled, brutalizing her ass from behind. "You…sick…fucking…bitch?"

"Never!" Black Cherry smashed her ass against Dee's crotch, jabbing his cock into her very core. She howled in orgasm or agony or both. "Master! Cum in me now. Name me now." Her insane enthusiasm was infectious, the constant surf of her flesh impossible to deny, and Dee felt pressure rise within him. "Become me," Black Cherry moaned. "Now!"

"Dee?"

Dee whipped around. His dick gashed Black Cherry wide open. She twittered and gabbled, cumming so hard her wings fountained off.

A green face peeked at him from around the washroom door. Thin dreadlocks cascaded about the face in sheaves, hiding everything but a sensuous smirk. "This is what happens," the green girl said, tipping her head, revealing a sparkling emerald eye, "when you leave the house."

Dee's heart raced. "Eurydice?"

"Yes," said the green girl, and filled the doorway. She flipped her hair back, ducking to avoid the top of the doorframe.

Time stood still. "Galatea."

"Yes," said the green girl. "I am Eurydice." She swayed into the room. Dee was staggered by the grace and sumptuous promise in that single step. "I am Galatea. I am Venus." Her gel-flesh flowed, her curves tapered into a classical figure with hair falling down to her knees. "I am Lilith." The beauty grew fangs, her form fiendish and fleshy. She stepped closer, body diminishing as dragonfly wings sprouted. "I am Fée. I am all of them and more. But more than anything…"

She moved close enough for Dee to hear the metallic sigh as she morphed into the ravishing beauty that had greeted him at the washroom door, in the flowerbed by the overpass, in Bee's bathtub, and in Dee's apartment, rising up from the kitchen table, mischief and fantasy made flesh. Well, no, not exactly flesh.

The green girl's fingers crossed her left breast, cleaving an angled X, its curved lines suggesting a dancer in mid-leap.

"I am yours, Deiter Detwiler," she said, and kissed him. "Always."

Black Cherry backslid off the washing machine, splashed down into a ruddy lake. Her hips pumped in reflexive jerks on the floor. Little waves rippled through the soupy mess. "Master, master, master."

"You know," the green girl said, glancing sidelong at Dee's crotch. He was ramrod stiff and slicked with cherry syrup and sugary foam from his bellybutton to his knees. "This'd be so much more romantic if you hadn't just butt-fucked my sister."

Dee felt drunk with delight. "Or if you'd stop screwing every woman I introduce you to," he countered, grinning like an idiot. "What's going to happen when I take you to meet my mom?"

She poked him in the chest. "You're the one who slept with Yves!"

"No, I didn't."

"Yeah," the green girl pouted. "Still, I can dream, can't I?" She reached for a torn clothes line and mopped the gunk off Dee's gut with a silk camisole. Black Cherry flopped onto her back, gulping like a suffocating fish. The green girl swirled the camisole around Dee's balls, stepping close. "So." Her breasts pushed against his neck as she leaned into him, slowly stroking the silk material over his prick. Dee swam in a perfume of citrus-and-sex. She whispered into his ear, "Tell me: your mother." She pulled back. "She hot?"
Dee kissed the wicked grin off the green girl's face.

* * * *

Yves sat in the idling Volkswagen, fingering the scabbard. Yves remembered mocking Dee when he had refused to hurt the mindfucked Easies under the highway overpass. He could sympathize now.

"C'mon," a coed whined. "Lemme in." She bounced on the balls of her feet, rattling the driver's side door handle, breasts spilling out from under her tank top and smearing the window with sweat. "I'll suck your dick."

He looked up into her rabid eyes. "Sorry," he said, turning away, "I just can't hit that."

The front door of the sorority house banged open. Raspberry jigged in the threshold. "Woo! I rock!" She brandished two long, braided ropes of black hair. "I got 'em!"

Yves swore. Nothing to do but to do it, he thought, and popped open the car's electric door lock. The coed bent down, fumbled the car door open. Yves swung the door out hard, wincing as the coed whacked her head against the window. He stepped onto the pavement, grabbed the reeling girl in a fireman's carry, and dragged her up the porch steps and into the sorority.

The foyer was crowded with idle coeds. Some looked miserable, others abashed, but all where exhausted and lost. "Need some help here," he said, hefting the girl to her feet.

A girl with a FedEx cap rammed down over unruly strawberry blond curls trotted up. "She okay?"

"She's still frenzied," Yves said. "Where's Unyx?"

"Upstairs," the strawberry blonde said, "there're still six or so sisters unaccounted for." She took the woozy coed from him. "This…oof…makes it five. I'll take her upstairs." She blushed. "I'm so sorry for all this."

"Where is she?" Yves felt hollowed out, coreless. "Where is Cherry?"

"Last I heard from her," the strawberry blonde answered, "She was in the basement, down that hallway. First door to your left." She wobbled but made her way toward the stairwell in the center hall. Her blush deepened. "Thank you, Mr. Valiancourt."

At the sound of his name, all the girls turned to him. No one told them my name. They just know, from Cherry. The Frenzy is gone but the cherry lives on. Yves swept from the foyer and down the hallway.

* * * *

"Rage," SB had whispered to him on the boiled shore of the reservoir. "Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles."

"What would you have me do?" Yves had asked.

"Someone needs to die today, Yves."

"It's me," Yves had said. He had not intend it to be a question.

SB had said, "Yes, Yves. It's supposed to be you."

* * * *

The door at the end of the hall led to a large kitchen. A clutch of coeds tended to a naked boy in his late teens sitting on the marble top of a utility cart. Yves watched a girl in torn pink hot pants hand him a satchel. "Here's your newspapers. What's left of them, anyway. And, uh, your two dollars." She dropped a fifty dollar bill into the satchel. "Keep the change."

"Thanks," the paperboy muttered, plopping the satchel in his lap.

"We're so, so sorry," said one of the other girls.

The paperboy shrugged. "S'okay."

"We mean it," the girl in the pink hot pants cupped his shoulder, then withdrew her hand. "Look, uh, I know this doesn't make any difference, but you were pretty good." The paperboy laughed dryly.

"Seriously," another girl insisted. "All those other guys are out cold. And Eddie ran away, I bet. You're the last man standing. I think that cable guy's going to need an ambulance." She blanched. "We're really sorry."

The paperboy sat up straight, laughing. "You know what I'm sorry about? I was a virgin. Hell, the only date I've ever had was to the prom. And we only necked. And this…" He waved his hand around at the surrounding gang of half-naked college girls, "This is what happens my first time. You won't believe it, I can't believe it, but do you want to know what I'm thinking? It's all downhill from here. What I'm sorry about? Nothing like this will ever happen again."

The girls glanced at each other.

"Yeah," the paperboy mumbled, "pretty stupid, I know. Thanks for listening to me, though." The girl in the pink hot pants coughed politely. The paperboy looked up at her.

"What's your phone number?" she asked.

Yves shook his head and trudged down the basement steps.

* * * *

"Supposed to be," Yves had repeated to SB. "That's not the same thing as 'has to be,' is it?"

"No," SB had said, "it isn't. Dee's a rule breaker. His story is off course. You don't have to play by the rules, either. You can choose who dies this time around, Yves. It doesn't have to be you. But you have to pick." She had walked back to the water's edge. "So who's it going to be? You? Dee?"

She had turned to face him. "Me?"

* * * *

"Wait," Black Cherry burbled. She sat up but her momentum and the weight of her formless wings drove her back down again. "Wait."

Dee broke his kiss. The green girl giggled and hummed, eyes closed. "If you're going to meet my mother," he said to her, "I'll need to know your name."

"Mm, a third name. That's your job." The green girl beeped him on the nose. "But don't name me here. It makes me orgasm so hard and I want some real romance for once."

"Shouldn't you name yourself?"

The green girl gazed at him. Behind them, Black Cherry thrashed, the crimson lake shrinking into a puddle as her wings took shape. "No, Master."

"That's so cornball," the green girl snickered, "I love it." She kissed him, slurring into his mouth, "But I cum rilly, rilly hard when you do it. You're the one."

"No." Black Cherry swayed on all fours, head bowed, the wings above her ears little more than red, wet noodles. "Master, no."

"You said that before," Dee told the green girl. "Back at the highway, you said, 'You're supposed to be the one.' But what does that mean? There some prophecy I don’t know about or something?"

The green girl laughed, "No, silly. It just means you're the one." She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him so hard his toes curled.

Black Cherry sat up on her haunches and shrieked like a wounded animal. "No!"

"The one for me," the green girl told Dee, and kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him.

* * * *

"Cut the crap," Yves had told SB. "I don't believe in fate or destiny, and especially not some bullshit story."

"Black Cherry believes," SB had said.

"Exactly!" Yves had paced, hands balling into fists. "Fate didn't rape me. Black Cherry did. Fate isn't going to kill anybody. Black Cherry will." He had jabbed his finger at SB. "You're not talking about fate, you're talking about Black Cherry. Her actions, her choices. She's not going to stop until somebody dies. Because that's what she wants."

SB had reached for him but he had pulled away. "What do you want, Yves?"

* * * *

"Stop ignoring me!" Black Cherry's voice was shrill enough to break glass. "Stop it. I'll kill you all!"

"Let's get out of here," Dee told the green girl, hooking an arm over her shoulder. "Your baby sister's being a real brat."

Dee and the green girl turned their backs on Black Cherry and made for the door. The scarlet girl flew at them, all her strength and fury funneling into her wing claws as she hurtled forward.

Yves stalked through the door, drawing his sword. He stepped around his friends and raised his blade. Its ghostly edge sliced through Black Cherry's wings like a razor through water. "Victory is not being cut," he said, angling his blade as Black Cherry stumbled into it.

He cut Black Cherry in half. "You lost."

Her belly unzipped. Yves' cut was clean and Black Cherry cracked open, torso canting backward like the lid of a cigarette lighter. Her face contorted. Her jet-engine scream switched off into total silence. Yves was convinced he had been struck deaf. Black Cherry's torso bent almost parallel to the ceiling and her entire body dissolved into a downpour. Sound returned to the world as the deliquesced scarlet girl sloshed onto the floor like an upturned barrel of claret wine.

"Yves," Dee called from the door. Yves nodded but did not look back. The rollicking red waves described a perfect circle on the floor before him. He took the time to find his center and relax into the Water Kamae ready stance.

"She needs a name, Yves," Dee said. Yves nodded again and heard the door shut behind him.

Black Cherry spindled up out of the waves, body hardening within a creamy red shell, beautiful and terrible. "Playmate's come to play." Her lips parted as she gave Yves's pale sword a sultry look. "Where did you get such a wonderful toy?"

"Your banter's lousy," Yves replied. "Derivative, too." He angled the tip of his sword to point at the bridge of Black Cherry's nose. "This is the endgame, Cherry. Bad time to get sloppy."

Black Cherry feinted with a right hook. Yves sidestepped, leaving his chest exposed. Black Cherry swung a roundhouse punch at Yves' breast powerful enough to pulverize his heart. His thumb prickled and Yves spun about, sword rising high. The scarlet girl's punch flew wild as Yves severed her right wing at the shoulder, then flicked his blade through her neck on the downswing.

"Stupid girl," Yves said over the deluge as Black Cherry rained down all around him. "I told you I never make the same mistake twice. I know you have claws."

Black Cherry scrabbled over the floor like a half-drowned swimmer dragging herself from the ocean. "How…H—how…"

"Nice triple-feint, though," Yves said. "Too bad you can't divide like your sister, or I'd really be in trouble." Black Cherry pushed herself up. She was nothing more than a head and torso above a choppy puddle of crimson melt. Yves brought his sword down.

The sword point bobbled close. Black Cherry stared cross-eyed and gasping. "What…" Yves slashed. "Wait…" Yves slashed. "Why?" she sobbed, and the sword finally fell still at Yves' side. Black Cherry crawled away from him, her wings lifeless and trailing rills of blood red gel. "Why are you doing this?"

"A few hours ago," Yves told her, his voice flat, "you were given a choice: sister or sword." He drew the pale sword up to the Water Kamae ready position. "There was no third option."

"You?" Black Cherry rolled onto her back, chest heaving. "It's going to be you?"

* * * *

"What do you want, Yves?" SB had asked him.

His rage had boiled over, and he had thrown the sword into the woods. "I don't want to be a killer!"

* * * *

"It was always me," Yves said. Hollow. I need to stay hollow. He glanced down and saw her exposed labia, engorged and overflowing with nectar. But I hate this, I hate this.

"So little nanomek left," Black Cherry gulped, fingers creeping cross her thigh. "Dee made me cum—you made me cum—so much. Just a little more and…" Her fingers shivered over her mons. "No, I can't." She jerked her hand away. "Not without Master."

Yves lowered his sword, training it on her belly. I hate this.

* * * *

SB had said, "But you're so good at it, Yves." And Yves had cried, and SB had run to him.

* * * *

"My master should have been my first," Black Cherry pled. "My master should be my last."

"I was." Yves moved to Black Cherry's side. After a moment's hesitation, he sheathed his sword. It slid into its scabbard with a silken sigh and click. "I will be."

Black Cherry frowned up at him, blinking. Her eyes grew wide. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she called to him, "Master?"

* * * *

"I tried to give her a choice. Eurydice tried, too," SB had said, hugging Yves tight. "Eurydice risked her life to save her sister. But Cherry didn't want it. It's not Dee who won't change, it's Cherry. She wants to kill her master, or her master to kill her." She had gripped him by the shoulders.

"And that's you, Yves. Isn't it?"

* * * *

"Yes," Yves said to Black Cherry. He pulled the scabbard from his belt and tossed it aside. "It's me."

"Oh, Master." Black Cherry wondered up at Yves. "Master, I'm sorry. I should have known. You were always ready for me. Ready from the very start. Even though you hated it." Her fingers scuttled into her sex again. "And you do hate it, don't you, Master?"

"Yes," Yves said. He reached into his sparkling white over-shirt, and drew out a stout, gray blade.

"Your tanto," Black Cherry sighed, one hand plunging into her sex, the other tracing little circles between her breasts.

Yves straddled Black Cherry's stomach, pinning her arms in place with his knees. "It's time."

"You hate me," Black Cherry purred. Yves could feel her arms move frantically beneath him. "You hate me enough to kill me."

"I hate you," Yves said, palming the tanto in both hands, trying to think of the words that would drive Black Cherry over the edge, trying to stay hollow. "Because I have to kill you. Not for what you did to me before, but what I'm doing now." He raised the short blade above his head, "I hate you more than anything in the world."

She shook beneath him, legs kicking, wings trembling. Nectar leaked everywhere from her. "Hate me, Master! Name me! Become me, Master!"

Yves thrust the tanto downward with all his strength, burying the blade between her breasts. "Die for me, Nemesis," he told her.

Nemesis cried out his name and died.

* * * *
And I won't take from you
What you can't take from me.

—XTC, We're All Light
* * * *

Epilogue: The Moral of This Motherfucker

Dee and the green girl were sitting together on the basement stairs when Yves emerged. "It's over," he said, tucking the pale sword and scabbard into his belt. "Nothing left but Jell-O, and that's getting washed into a sump pump by a leaky washing machine. Still," he added to the green girl, "do you mind double checking? I don’t have super-senses."

The green girl rose. Yves marveled at her beauty, then startled at her height and megaton bombshell figure. "We think you're super, Yves," she said, patting him on the chest and kissing his cheek. "Thank you." She swayed into the washroom.

"That's Galatea?" Yves asked Dee.

"Kinda sorta almost," Dee smiled. "She's Eurydice and Galatea. She—well, we, I guess, she still wants me to officially do it—we haven’t decided on a new name yet."

"Eurydice was worried if they could re-assimilate, or what would happen if they did," Yves said.

"Eurydice's still there," Dee said, "more than ever. But so's Galatea." His brow furrowed in thought. "She says it's different than anything that's happened before. Their nanomek didn't just sum together, it multiplied. She's not Galatea plus Eurydice, she's Galatea times Eurydice. That's what she said, anyway."

"What the heck does that mean?" Yves asked.

"It means I'm fucked." Dee grinned, eyebrows arching. "And this weekend's going to be God-damned amazing."

Yves gave Dee a wan smile, then sat beside him. "You're naked again," Yves said.

"I'm used to it," Dee said. "Here're the pants I borrowed." Dee handed Yves a dripping, red and gray mass. "Sorry."

Yves pushed him off. "Keep them. My treat for helping me save the world." Dee sat with the sloppy sweats in his lap, saying nothing. Yves sighed. "Thanks for not asking if I was okay, Dee."

Dee nodded. "I know you're not okay, Yves. But I think you will be."

"Me too," Yves said. They sat together a while.

"Galatea, Eurydice, and Raspberry all fantasize about you and me fucking," Dee said out of nowhere.

Yves thought about this. "Who's on top?"

Before Dee could answer, the green girl, her face stricken, emerged from the washroom. "She's gone," she said. Dee moved to embrace her. "She's really gone."

"You tried everything," Yves told her.

"So did you," she said. "You know I don't blame you for anything, right?" Yves nodded and the green girl relaxed. "These are for you," she told Dee, handing over a clean tee shirt and pair of blue stretch pants.

"These are like three sizes too small," Dee protested.

"I know." The green girl's eyes glittered with gem-fire. "Put 'em on."

CeeCee's voice drifted down from the first floor. "Did anyone lose a guy who tastes like pizza?"

"I do not like the way she said that," Dee said, glancing up the stairs.

"You were the one who said she should eat anyone trying to escape," Yves said. He stood up, mimed dusting off his knees. "Come on, Green Girl, Nude Man."

"First thing we do when we get home," Dee grumbled, following Yves up the stairs, "is come up with some good superhero names."

"Second thing," the green girl said from behind Dee, leering at his ass as it bounced up the stairs. "Maybe third, or three hundredth."

* * * *

A taxicab ambled down Campion Street. A green Volkswagen darted down the opposite lane, its windows burnished by the sunset. The cab's passenger, a redheaded coed, squinted from the glare. She sat in borrowed clothes rustled up from her stay at the state police station. The baggy sweatshirt and jeans reeked of cigarettes. At least she had underwear on again, even if they were voluminous granny-panties.

The cab rounded the bend of the cul de sac. "Hey," the redhead said, "that's my car! Aw, man, what happened to it?" The yellow SUV, windows smashed, roof rumpled, sat in front of the sorority house. She glanced around. Other than the SUV, the cul de sac looked abandoned. "Huh. No FedEx truck. Good sign."

"You talk to yourself a lot," the cabbie observed. "What they pick you up for? PI?"

"PN," she said, "public nudity." She tossed him a twenty and hopped out before the cabbie could comment further.

Dozens of Friday newspapers piled around the porch steps. "Weird." The redhead unlocked the front door, poked her head into the dark foyer and halloed. "Is it safe? I heard the message on my cell." She stepped inside, hunting for the hall light switch. She looked down. "Oh, hello. Who're you?"

"Ursula's a good name," said a girl with a massive pair of pigtails, thick handlebars tufted with big black pompoms. She looked barely old enough to drive, tarted up in white cake makeup and black lip and eyeliner.

"Art, or theater major?" the redhead asked, squinting at Ursula's outfit of black patent leather club gear.

"Post-grad," grinned Ursula, turning. "Women's Studies. C'mon!" She skipped out into the main hall.

Don't look at her ass. The redhead followed, frowning. "We're we going?" Don't look at her ass. Ursula flounced up the main stairwell. Oh my God, just look at that ass. And what did she do, paint those pants on? "Um, little girl?"

Ursula froze. Her outfit seemed to ripple in the shadowy half-light. "Yeah?"

"What happened?"

Ursula shrugged, an uncanny, almost liquid rise and fall of her shoulders; another trick of the light, perhaps. "Good guys won," she said, and started back up the stairs. "Duh. Don't they always?"

The redhead ascended after her. "So where is everyone?"

"Done a bunk. Bugged out. Vamoosed." Ursula whistled through her teeth and zipped her hand through the air.

"Why?"

Ursula reached the top of the stair and spun about, lips pursed. "Because I asked them to." The redhead's stomach flip-flopped. Ursula shook her head, raised a finger as pale as her face. "Ah, ah! Asked them to. 'Asked.' Not sang." She strutted down the hallway, boots clicking on the hardwood.

"How?" The redhead swallowed, then hurried to catch up. "How did you know about that?"

"We know all sorts of stuff," Ursula said, stopping at a closed door. "And here we are."

"But this is my bedroom," the redhead said.

"Really?" Ursula tipped her head. "Gosh." The door opened by itself. "After you, Madam Secretary."

A strawberry blonde squatted on the vanity bench, FedEx cap twirled backward on her head, like a relief pitcher waiting in a dugout. "Hi!"

Relieved to see a familiar face, the redhead rushed into the room. "What're you doing here?"
"I can't get enough of it," the strawberry blonde answered, plopping her chin into her palm, "but you're the last one, and that makes me sad. But Unyx said she was going to make it really special." She perked up, reaching to the vanity and clicking off the table lamp. The room gloomed. "And that makes me happy."

"Who?"

"Unyx." The strawberry blonde pointed to Ursula, who had slipped into the room as soon as the light when off, closing the door behind her. "You, know: snippy-snippy."

Unyx burst into giggles. "Not eunuchs. Unyx. U and Nyx."

Finally, something she understood. "Like the computer operating system thing," said the redhead.

Unyx gulped down a giggle. "The what?"

"UNIX, right?"

Unyx stared in the dark, then shook her fists around her head. "Ooh, dammit. They never told us! No wonder Yves and Dee kept smirking whenever we said it!"

"I'm lost again," the redhead groaned, flumping onto her bed.

"Nope." The strawberry blonde whipped off her cap and ruffled her hair. "You landed on target."

Unyx glided into the room. "We want to talk to you about Chapter Regulation 700: Citizenship, Morality, and Values."

Does she have rollerskates in those boots or something? "That's Reg 600."

The strawberry blonde shook her head. "She knows about the real one."

"Regulation 700," Unyx said, coming to a stop at the foot of the bed. "No licky-licky."

"So that's what this is all about?" The redhead clucked and lay back with her hands behind her head. Another dyke bitchfest.

"That, and stopping the blood music," Unyx said, folding her arms. Twice.

The redhead sat up. "Holy shit, you can do that?" Unyx nodded. "Oh, thank God. It's been so strange lately. I feel so, I dunno, disconnected, like I'm…"

"On automatic pilot," Unyx suggested.

"Yeah! Please, make it go away? I'll do any—Oh." A chill stole over her. "No. No fucking way."

The strawberry blonde sighed, standing up. "Well, here's the thing. While you were gone, the rest of us took a vote. And it was unanimous." She crossed the room to stand beside Unyx, putting her left arm around her. "No more Reg 700." Unyx put her right arm around the strawberry blonde. Twice. "No more code red hazing. Girls can ask and tell as much as they want, with no consequences."

"Doesn't matter," the redhead smirked. "You couldn't have had a unanimous vote. I know two sisters who'd never—"

"Jo Echo says you eat pussy like a pro," Unyx interrupted, eyebrow arched. "And she really knows her stuff. As for your cute blonde friend? Well, she and her amazing tits got here an hour ago. I didn't even have to ask. So it's unanimous, except for you, Madam Secretary."

The strawberry blonde peeled out of her top. "But, you know, Unyx, the Chapter Secretary has to approve or veto every vote."

"That's right," the redhead said, huddling at the head of the bed. "And I'll never change my mind. Never."

"Oh, I don't know." Unyx raised an arm and reached out. It reached and reached, stretching nine, ten feet to the wall switch. "Something tells me that it's time," Unyx said. and light flooded the room.

At first, the redhead wanted to scream. And then, she didn't. And a few minutes later, she was screaming her silly head off.

* * * *

"I feel like I'm forgetting something," Dee said. He waggled the Volkswagen's steering wheel, felt it tug to the left as the car picked up speed. "Why is the alignment shot?"

"Unyx had to drive like a bat out of Hell to make it back in time for me to tell her to go get the car in the first place," Yves explained from the front passenger seat. "Compared to a time paradox annihilating our existence, I'd say wheel alignment was worth the price."

"Glad I won't see the future," Raspberry said from behind them, "I didn't understand any of that shit."

Dee frowned at her reflection in the rearview mirror. "Did you say 'won't'? But doesn't that mean…"

"It's a Raspberry thing, honey," said CeeCee from the opposite side of the backseat. She twirled her index finger about her ear and winked. "You wouldn't understand."

"Eat me, fatso," Raspberry said.

"I would, honey, I would." CeeCee glanced up at the face of the green girl sitting between them "If tall, green, and horny weren't in the way. Look." She placed a buttery yellow hand on the green girl's shoulder and slid right off. "I don't know what you've got going on over up in that lovely head of yours, Ms. Eurydice-that-was, but you've got more nanomek inside you than the rest of us combined. A lot more."

"And she's just sittin' here staring at the back of Dee's neck," Raspberry added.

"There's only one thing I want inside me," the green girl said in a voice so sultry it could melt lead.

They drove in anxious silence for a while. "So," Yves squeaked, coughed, and started again. "So, you feel like we've forgotten something."

"Yeah." Dee turned off Campion Street and onto the main throughway. "Something back at the apartment, maybe?"

Yves pointed at a black shape circling high in the twilight sky above them. "Unyx has already checked it out. All clear, no cops, no nothing. Nemesis didn't hurt anyone else. Just pulled a mild Jedi mindfuck on the guards, although we don't know how long it'll last."

"What about Viggo?" Dee asked. "Cherry Nemesis…"

"Just Nemesis," Yves interrupted.

"Nemesis really put the whammy on him," Dee said. "He probably has some nanomek left in him. And I wouldn't ask Unyx to go all hentai on a guy."

CeeCee peered around the green girl. "Sounds like you and I have an action item, Raz honey," she said.

"Sweeeet," Raspberry drawled.

"Hentai!" Dee thumped the steering wheel. "That's it!"

"What?" Yves sat bolt upright. "What?"

"My story," Dee said, "I was supposed to upload a goo girl story to the 'Net, and I'm almost a week late. Man, those guys are going to kill me." Yves glared at him. "What? Oh, come on," Dee mugged, "that was funny. I did forget all about that, though. So, I'm thinking: what else have we missed?"

"You were supposed to learn the true meaning of love," Yves said, folding his arms.

"Oh, that," Dee waved, driving onto the highway onramp. "I figured that out awhile ago, back at SRU."

"Is it something really trite," Yves hazarded, "like trust?"

"Friction?" suggested CeeCee.

"A butt that won't quit," insisted Raspberry.

The green girl just smiled. Dee met her eyes in the review mirror and said, "Teaming up to fight crime." The green girl glanced away, heavy-lidded.

"Um, wow. Okay. Then that covers everything. Listen," Yves said, emphasizing each point by rapping a knuckle against the dashboard. "I killed Nemesis. Unyx saved the world. You got the girl. Raspberry got the hair and the nanomek, and that's that." Dee nodded, smiling.

Raspberry said, "Wait. What?"

"Unyx's braids and the tin of nanomek from SRU," Yves said.

"Oh," said Raspberry, plucking at her shoulder.

CeeCee, the green girl, Dee, and Yves turned to stare at her.

"I got the braids," Raspberry said.

* * * *

Dusk fell over the ivy-choked window of the Epsilon Sorority House kitchen. Shadows dappled the cluttered countertops, the empty boxes of Jell-O strewn across the floor, and the horizontal slats of the locked pantry door. The door jumped on its hinges.

"Hello?" Eddie's voice was muffled through the slats. "Is it over? There's a can of soup cutting the circulation off to my ass. Anybody? Dammit." A pair of slats trembled. "Ow, ow. Fuck." A finger wormed its way between them. "C'mon. Yes!"

A slat splintered then fell backward into the pantry, opening a narrow, lengthwise gap in the door. Two more slats soon clattered away. A hand fumbled out from the widened gap and wrestled with the knob. There was a click and the pantry door burst open.

Eddie staggered out of the pantry in a hail of canned vegetables and dry goods, kicking boxes and tins across the floor. "Thank God," he groaned, rubbing his naked rear end. "My butt is numb." He bent to massage the life back into his legs, then dipped his head to stare at the marble-top kitchen cart where he had been hogtied earlier that morning, although to Eddie it felt like a lifetime. "What's that?"

He hobbled over to the cart, rolled it aside, and stared in silence. He bent down, pushed away a tin of tuna, and picked something up. He shook it. It rattled, perhaps half-full of sand. He leaned over to the wall, flipped the light switch, turned the tin over in his hand, and read the yellowing label.

SRU THICKENING AGENT

"Oh, shit."

* * * *
And the moral of this motherfucker is,
Ladies, make 'em act like they know:
You are, was, and always will be
Pussy control.

—Prince, Pussy Control
* * * *

It's Always Time
A Ribald Farce in Six Lewd Acts

Coda: Nothing Like Us

He remembered a kiss, the taste of cupcakes, a brief but blinding pain, and then a sensation peculiar in its familiarity but terrific in its intensity—the floaty-feely side effect from taking a strong decongestant. "Medicine head," the commercials called it.

He remembered seeing himself from above, seeing himself fall to the floor. For a moment he had wondered if he were already dead, if this were the out-of-body experience before the tunnel of light, but no light had come. As the world narrowed and his mind dimmed, it occurred to him that the wet, rag-mop mess atop his body's shoulders was missing something. This was no spiritual, out-of-body head-trip. This was the real thing. This was not the sort of disembodiment you came back from and then talked about on cheesy cable television exposés at one o'clock in the morning. This was not life after death. This was dying from having your head torn off.

But as his awareness of the world, of himself, and of the difference between the two fragmented and fell away, one thought remained. One white-hot ember of memory and emotion raged and burned until there was nothing else left:

"And his name is Dee," she had said, and that was the last sound he would ever hear.

"…His name is Dee," she had said, and those were the last words ever spoken to him.

"…Dee," she had said, and it would be the last thought he would ever have.

Dee.

* * * *

And then he sat up and screamed, "Dee!"

Echoes died around him. Bee's hands flew to his ears. His fingers scrambled of his receding ginger hair, his cheeks and neck, squeezing and pinching. They were all there and in their proper place. His fingertip touched his teeth, and Bee realized he was grinning huge enough to hurt. "I'm alive."

He leapt up, bare feet slipping once on the cold, clean floor. "I'm alive."

He tried to make sense of the tall, twisty shapes all around him but an unconscious, protean fear gripped him with one overriding priority. He trust a hand between his bare legs and almost wept the relief to feel his manhood intact, balls and all. "I'm alive!" he cried, and ran headlong into a hard plane of thick glass, stumped backward and flopped onto his ass.

"Wait," someone said. The voice was muffled and musical but also amplified and strange, as if some girl were talking through a loudspeaker outside his bedroom window. "What was that?" The floor trembled a little whenever she spoke. "I thought I heard something."

Bee splayed his legs. The floor was convex, gently bulging upward, the apex beneath his butt. He glanced up and snapped his legs shut.

"Take your time," said another voice. "Looking is free. You break it, you buy it."

A metal disc capped the space Bee occupied some ten feet into the air, but the distorted shapes around him rose higher still. "Oh, no," Bee said, "Oh, no fucking way." He bent down and knocked on the floor. It clinked like glass.

"I knew I heard something," said the first voice. Shadow and light cut wide swaths around him as something enormous moved in the distance.

Bee stood. "No way is this happening." He reached out, tapped the glass in front of him, and traced the clear wall as it curved inward until he came full circle to where he began, and stared up through the glass and into a sensuous mouth as big as a queen-sized bed.

"Oh my God," the mouth exclaimed, and Bee's world vibrated. "It's a little man in a jar!"

"Hm? Oh, him," said the other voice and Bee looked up into a pair of dark, merry eyes the size of dinner platters and framed and enough lush, raven hair to fill a football stadium. "That's a homunculus. Very rare these days. Hardly anyone has what it takes to make one, and Catherine the Great's been rounding them up."

Bee suspended all disbelief and rethought his surroundings. Everything he had seen made perfect sense if he were stuck in a tall mason jar on a crowded shelf of a supply closet, being scrutinized by two towering femme fatales straight out of a Russ Meyer movie. He glanced down into two seas of cleavage, one the color of cream, the other coffee. But with bigger tits, he decided.

The first girl reached for his jar but stopped when he shrank back. Bigger tits plus the muscles of pro bobybuilders, Bee added, watching the girl's pectorals bunch and swell beneath her breasts.

"Tomoe," said the first girl, pointing. "You'd better punch some air-holes in that lid." She pouted. "Poor li'l guy."

"He doesn't need 'em, Jo," Tomoe explained, "homunculi are immortal, if you feed them right."

"Immortal?" Jo said, eyebrows rising. "What do you feed them?"

Tomoe smiled at Bee with infuriating inscrutability, then tipped her head up and cupped a hand to whisper in Jo's ear. Jo gaped, "What?" Her cheeks flushed red as Tomoe continued to whisper. "I, I don’t believe it. You're kidding." Tomoe stepped back and shook her head.

Jo bit her bottom lip and smiled, "Really?" Tomoe nodded. Jo glanced at Bee, her fingers tracing the overstressed bust-line of her coppery one-piece dress. "Well, he is six inches tall."

"Seven and a half." Tomoe's eyes danced with knowing mischief. "And he doesn't need to breathe, remember?"

"Wow," Jo sighed, and reached for Bee's jar with both hands. Bee braced himself against the curve of the jar and he soared through the air in a great glass elevator. "Wow," Jo said again, gazing at him. "Hi there, little guy."

This is impossible, Bee thought, the pit of his stomach filling with ice. This is insane.

"You want him?" Tomoe asked.

Jo nodded, hair flying, hugging the jar tight to her chest. Bee was embosomed in warmth and darkness. This is absurd. He thought he heard the glass creak. His legs wobbled like water. This is obscene.

"For you?" Tomoe asked.

"No," Jo insisted, her muffled voice more bass and louder than ever. "For us. All of us. For Epsilon Zeta. For all of my sisters now, and those yet to come. Forever."

Jo's heart hammered all around the jar. This is… Bee could not bring himself to complete the thought. This is…

"For y'all? Five dollar," Tomoe offered.

"This is Dee," Bee said.

Jo slapped a five dollar bill into Tomoe's hand. "Done!" Tomoe declared, then fanned her hand. "Ow, ow, ow. Good thing he's unbreakable."

Jo wrenched off the top of the jar so fast it made Bee's ears pop. Eager fingers closed around him. "Welcome home, little guy."

Bee closed his eyes. "Oh, shit."

* * * *
Church of women is made out of milk
Which their love churns to butter.
Church of women will have you give praise
With a laugh, bark and stutter.
Like us men, like us men, they are nothing like us men
Men have gargoyles ’round their hearts.

Want to worship at the church of women
Breathe ’em in until my head goes spinning around
Want to worship at the church…
Let me worship at the church of women!

—XTC, Church of Women
* * * *