Misconstrued (Mistaken)

by Pixie Unger

  “She’s an adult. It doesn’t look like Lucky is going to hurt her—”

  “He named Lucky?” Mac asked in disbelief.

  It didn’t seem like a good idea to admit that I named him Lucky, so I just shrugged. But that reminded me of something. “Wanna go for a walk, Mac?”

  The pressure on the back of my shirt released. “You are going to leave her here?” Iago asked.

  That made me hesitate and I whirled to face him. “Is she unsafe?”

  There was a hurried chorus of no’s and much head shaking. Iago didn’t participate but merely tilted his head and said, “Yesterday you didn’t believe you were safe with me.”

  Yesterday you were sitting at a table covered in guns, dickwad, was what I didn’t say.

  “You told me otherwise,” I pointed out. “Was that a lie?”

  “No, it wasn’t a lie,” he said firmly.

  We stared at each other in a badly defined battle of wills. Time to try out the theory. “Erika doesn’t want to get pregnant. Will he stop when she tells him to?”

  Mostly they said yes, but Iago asked, “Did she tell him that?”

  I walked the step back to the door and knocked but didn’t open it. “Erika? You looking to get knocked up?”

  “Hell no!” she shouted back. “I can think of sixty-nine better things to do!”

  I nodded. “Mind if I step out for a moment?”

  “Have fun! You know I am!”

  I turned and walked out of the house. No one stopped me and when I glanced over my shoulder, Mac was following. I didn’t go back to the school, but walked up the street to one of the park benches at a former bus stop. I sat. Mac looked at me for a moment, then sat on the ground so that he wasn’t hovering over me.

  That was kind of nice.

  “Iago said that I was labelled defective, but you disagreed.”

  He sighed and pulled a clear hexagon out of his pocket. He poked at it for a while, then it said: “Allergies are acquired. Yours do not appear to be life-threatening under normal circumstances.”

  I nodded slowly. “I don’t want to be rude, but how would you know?”

  Now he looked worried. “I was medic before we came.”

  “Iago was in prison.”

  He nodded slowly. “Me too.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. I kept watching. He still didn’t answer.

  “That bad that you are afraid to tell me?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Stupid, not scary.”

  “What? Did you remove the wrong leg or something?”

  His eyes went wide and he shook his head. “Medic for enemy of my family. I saved him, but gave him—” he stopped and fingered his neck again. “His woman did not like.”

  I licked my lips. “Where exactly did you pierce him?”

  He gave me a sheepish grin, then ducked his head and pointed at his crotch.

  “Oh.” There didn’t seem to be much else to say about that one. “Iago asked if I liked the house. I said I didn’t have a choice. He insisted that I did. But he’s wrong.” I pointed at the school. “I am living in a cage. In prison. You took all my choices from me. I’m not free to choose until I am free to choose to leave.”

  He didn’t look at me but his eyes were twitching slightly as he considered that. “Erika choosed.”

  I shook my head. “Erika may be having fun, but she is also trying to buy her way out of prison. Out of the camp and sleeping on the ground and the crappy food line.”

  Mac tensed at that. “Not right,” he whispered.

  “No, that isn’t right. But it is where we are.”

  “Choose to leave, not safe.”

  I shrugged. “I lasted more than a year before you found me.”

  He sat, not looking at me, absentmindedly running his thumb up and down his neck piercings.

  I tried something else. “Iago said he would volunteer to be sterilized for me.”

  Mac raised his eyebrows for a moment, then nodded. “I too.”

  “Kind of extreme, isn’t it?”

  That made him blink. “No? Easy do, easy undo.”

  I shivered and rubbed my arms. I made up my mind on the spot and blurted out, “When Erika is done, I want to see you naked. Like we did for Lucky.” I said it before I could change my mind and hoped that I wouldn’t chicken out.

  ——

  “How was it?” I asked Erika, finding myself once again sitting between her and the medic in the medbay.

  She grinned. “I’ve got no complaints. I suspect he’s going to have a sore wrist later tonight, but that’s his issue, not mine.”

  The medic coughed. “Who do you want to see first?”

  I shrugged. They were all here, but I had firmly stated this was a one at a time thing. “Any volunteers?”

  Mac stepped forward and stripped. Erika and I both gasped. He had hundreds of bar piercings all down his body. They were next to each other like railway tracks, starting just below his jawline, traveling down his neck, and swirling around his arm before wrapping across his chest, down his hip, and down the length of his dick.

  “That’s something you don’t see every day,” Erika murmured.

  Mac smirked and flexed then turned around so we could check out his back muscles. He had a series of implant studs running down each side of his spine.

  “That can’t be comfortable to sleep on,” I mumbled. Mac tensed again, but this time without the smirk.

  Erika elbowed me. “You aren’t supposed to think about that. They look sexy. If you don’t want him, I wouldn’t complain.”

  I leaned forward to look harder and realized that Mac had a lot of scars. He looked like he had been stabbed quite a number of times and the scarring had been worked into the pattern of the body modification. “Huh.”

  “Can he get dressed now?” the medic asked.

  “Sure,” I mumbled.

  Romeo was next. Besides the shotgun-like pitting on one side of his face and shoulder, he had a scar across his chest where it looked like he had been slashed. It was neatly sewn up so that it was barely a pale line, but had to have been a massive slice when it happened. He just stood impassively before doing quarter turns like he was getting his mug shots done. He had a back tattoo that made no sense to me right between his shoulder blades. When he was facing me again, he made and held eye contact with me for a moment before getting dressed.

  Tybalt was comparatively unmarked. The subtle scar through his eyebrow was about as bad as it got for him. I wondered what he was in prison for. As he was getting dressed, the medic stood up and started to leave. I caught his sleeve.

  “One more,” I whispered.

  He shrugged. “You don’t want that one. Why waste our time?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m not sure I want any of them, but I do want to know what I’m dealing with.”

  Iago, who had been hesitating, gritted his teeth and stepped forward. He stripped almost angrily then glared at us when Erika gasped.

  “See?” the medic said, nodding over his shoulder. “You don’t want a mate with replacement parts.” He hadn’t even turned to look.

  I swallowed. Iago was missing a leg just below the knee. There was no wobble in his gate, and I would never have guessed.

  “What happened?” Erika asked.

  “I was caught poaching,” Iago said tersely.

  I decided to just ignore it. “Can I see your back, please?”

  He turned for me as Romeo had. His lower leg reminded me of the arm from the Terminator movie after the skin came off. It even had articulated toes the way the hand had articulated fingers in the movie.

  “Thank you,” I said as politely as I could.

  “Not prime candidates any of them. That was why no one cared if they took one who was dying anyway. No high-quality female is going to want any of them,” the medic explained.

  I was immediately offended by that, both by the suggestion that I wasn’t “high quality,” whatever that meant, and that the
y were somehow as defective as I was considered to be.

  ——

  The sheets were crisp and clean. Erika had stayed over again. We were staring at the ceiling when she asked, “What’s wrong with Tybalt, do you think?”

  “I don’t see that there is anything wrong with any of them,” I grumbled.

  “Oh, come on! You know what I mean! Three of them are disfigured and he’s the odd man out.”

  He didn’t want to share, I remembered. Maybe he had picked guys he didn’t see as competition. Maybe there was something else that I couldn’t see.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “You’ve had an up close and personal look at yours now. Did you see anything … different about him?”

  Erika took a breath and blew it out in a long stream. “Aside from the facial scarring you mean?”

  “Oh, right. It’s funny how you stop noticing that after a while.”

  “If I have a chance, I’m keeping him,” she admitted. “Even with his pants on, he made me cum ‘til my legs were shaking, and even threw in a full body massage afterwards.”

  I sucked on my lip for a moment. “Mac told me they have male birth control.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do I ask for my own room?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “But why stop at a room? Why not ask for the house next door?”

  “Wanna share a duplex?” she teased.

  I just laughed and shook my head. “Nah. I bet you’re a screamer.”

  “Oh you know it!”

  We laughed and when we stopped, I sighed. “There’s a big difference between you picking one and me being purchased by four, though.”

  “I guess,” she said hesitantly.

  “You guess?”

  She shrugged. “It’s not like you have to fuck all four. Or all four at once. You just be friends you want. Maybe with benefits.”

  I shuddered.

  “Oh come on! They seem nice enough. I would at least give them a chance.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I just want to get out of here. I want to go back to being a free person, not in a prison camp. Not in a house outside the fence. I want to—”

  “Go back to how it was before they got here?”

  “Yes!”

  “Hmm. You know the world can’t do that, right?”

  “It could!” I protested.

  “Maybe. There would be lots of infrastructure to rebuild. We would have to figure out how to grow food where we live until shipping could get set up again. I don’t know where you were, but this is better than starving.”

  I pushed myself up on my elbow to look at her. “Are you really okay sleeping with the enemy?”

  She wrinkled her nose at me. “It’s hard to think of him as the enemy when he’s being so polite. Honestly, Mina, most people are jerks.”

  I thought again of the fire in the orchard. I understood why it had happened, but it was still hard to accept.

  “Hey—” Erika said, making me look at her again. “You and I are amazing women. These boys are lucky to have us!”

  I giggled, “That’s what I call your orc, you know. Lucky. You just need to look at his face and you can see he’s lucky and he knows it.”

  ----

  Iago was more than happy to help get Lucky and Erika their own house next door. Afterall, it got more orcs out of the house. Lucky had picked two friends to go with him. They were both being very careful around Erika, and so far she didn’t mind.

  Now it was down to my four. In a three bedroom house, that meant that they were still doubling up. The morning after Erika moved all the way out, I got up to find breakfast waiting on the dining room table and no way to avoid talking to them.

  I hesitantly sat down. Tybalt just blurted out, “Are you going to keep us?”

  Iago looked like he wanted to punch the guy, Mac shook his head, and Romeo smiled and rolled his eyes.

  “I don’t understand how that works. You bought me.”

  “We are invested in you,” Iago countered. “It isn't the same thing.”

  I tried to focus on that. I spent the day thinking about it. Tybalt had been the first to feed me, so it would make sense if I spent extra time with him first. But he had also already confessed to a sort of possessiveness that made me worry. Iago had the best English and was the easiest to have a conversation with, even if I didn’t believe what he said most of the time. It also didn’t sit right that he was a killer.

  “How would this work in your culture?” I asked. “Because I can’t find a comparison I like in mine.”

  They suddenly all looked cagey and a little embarrassed. I wasn’t surprised when Iago was the one to field the question.

  “There aren’t as many female orcs as there are males,” he said slowly.

  “How does that work?” I snarked, thinking it was a joke. From the look on their faces it wasn’t. Suddenly, I remembered Iago specifying that female rapes were the equivalent of cannibalism.

  “Deeply ingrained gender roles,” Iago growled.

  I fought the urge to make a snide comment about him using the expensive words. I had allowed myself to be derailed like that before.

  He blew out a stream of air. “Remember when I said I poached for others?” I nodded. “Female orcs pick out the males they like; the biggest, the strongest, the smartest. They will have a whole harem fawning over them. Any orc here is part of the leftovers.”

  “Unwanted,” Tybalt agreed.

  I suddenly felt cold.

  “Good just living with you,” Mac added.

  “Males who can attract mates have status,” Iago translated.

  “What about the ones who buy mates?” I asked carefully.

  No one was willing to meet my eye to answer that. “If you find someone you like better,” Iago said quietly like he was hoping I wouldn’t hear him. “Your favourite can pay us back.”

  “Or you leave and we can't stop you,” Mac added.

  That gave me some pause. “Don’t lie to me. I can’t walk away from this camp to go be free.”

  They were all watching me then with varying looks of pity on their faces. It was Iago who finally asked, “Mina? Do you really think that living outside the camp where you aren’t safe or warm or well-fed would be better than having us watching over you?”

  I growled and scrubbed my face with both hands. “No.” It was really hard to admit. “What do you want from me? Because the inevitable conclusion that I come to isn’t anything I want.”

  It was Romeo who answered by pitching that deep rumbling voice as high as he could into a mere bass range instead of his usual infrasonic. “Hope.”

  “Hope?”

  “Hope we are wanted.”

  He started out in a range I could hear and slowly drifted almost too low by the end of that sentence. I got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about sex. I thought about the medic being so certain that I wouldn’t want Iago with his replacement parts.

  “This is so frustratingly stupid!” I blurted out. They all blinked at me. “I don’t understand you, and it isn’t just the language thing. I’m trying to understand the way you think, when I can’t understand what you are saying. In Romeo’s case, I can barely even hear him! I understand culture shock, but this is a lot when you’re just pushed into it.”

  No one said anything to that.

  “Ugh! I need some time to think. I’m going for a walk.” They all stood up and started to get ready to join me. I forced myself to calm down. It was annoying to have them trailing after me when I wasn’t leaving the neighbourhood. “You can’t have it both ways. Either orcs respect women and I am safe here. Or I’m not safe here and I would be better off on my own.”

  Iago very slowly sat down. The others were even more hesitant. I took a deep breath. “I really need to know which it is.”

  “You are safe,” Tybalt said firmly. “But—” he stopped abruptly. Then he shook his head and repeated, “You are safe.”

 
; I nodded slowly, then turned and left. I stomped angrily around for the compound for a while before I noticed the orcs were all staring at me.

  Eventually, one who looked younger than any of mine came over. “Looking for someone new?” he asked. There was no leer in his voice, just curiosity.

  I shook my head. “I’m just testing a theory.”

  He gave me a puzzled look.

  “I’m looking for Erika’s house.”

  He nodded and pointed back the way I had come. I turned and wandered off in that direction.

  She was happy to see me. There was still an orc hanging out, but it wasn’t Lucky.

  “Does your friend have a name?” I asked.

  She smirked. “Not yet. But he’s trying to earn one. I made things too easy on Lucky. I could have held out for a better offer.”

  The orc looked decidedly nervous at that.

  “Can we talk?” I asked. “Privately, I mean.”

  The unnamed orc stood up and left without being told.

  After the door closed, Erika asked, “What’s up, buttercup?”

  I shifted awkwardly. “Has Lucky actually gotten lucky yet?”

  “Not yet. Why?”

  “I’m trying to figure this out. I’m struggling to understand what they want from me,” I admitted. “They told me that they don’t own me and I can pick different orcs if I want, but they hope I won’t.”

  Erika was watching me carefully.

  “Did you know they were all in jail before they came here?”

  “I knew Lucky was. He was in a gang. They weren’t transported together.”

  “What about the other ones?”

  “I dunno. I haven’t asked. They seem like okay company, though. It’s still early days.” She stopped and looked at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I just have a combination of culture shock and testosterone poisoning. Too many men, not enough space,” I explained.

  She shrugged. “I wonder what they do around here for fun?”

  I snorted. “Besides trading blow jobs?”

  “What?” she gasped. Then she laughed.

  Erika was easy to be around.

  ----

  It was getting dark by the time Lucky turned up with dinner for her. He was shocked to see me.

  “I’m not staying,” I assured him.