It's Always Time

by Oblimo

  Dee parked one space away from rose-colored Mini Cooper out of some ancient herding instinct. He listened to the click and clack of the cooling engine, trying to screw up his courage. He might have to shout, he realized, or even threaten violence, to get what he wanted. But could he? He glared at the Mini Cooper. The owner had taped a "For Sale" sign in the passenger-side rear window. Instead of a price, someone had written, "What are YOU looking at?" in an elegant longhand calligraphy. Below that was a phone number: (555) GET-LOST. "I know the feeling," Dee said, but got out of his car and made a bee-line for the store anyway.

  A "Help Wanted – Inquire Within" sign hung amid the clutter of collapsible crutches, orthopedic pillows, home blood pressure kits, and posters for various medical manufacturers crowding the glass storefront. The antique bell hanging on the front door clattered even louder than Dee remembered. The elevated counter ran down along the wall to the left; the cash register perched on the countertop just a few feet away from the front door, providing the occupier of the stool behind it a clear view of the remaining three corners of the store. The stool's occupant, however, was currently frowning over a book of Sudoku puzzles as thick as a phone directory, rubbing down the open page with an eraser worn away to the nub. Dee stepped over to the counter directly in front of her, but she did not look up until the puzzle box on the open page was clean. When her eyes eventually met Dee's, however, she startled with a lightning-quick double-take, as if surprised at being surprised at who she saw, but her poker faced mask of happy inscrutability flicked back in an instant.

  "Oh, hey!" the young woman said, sounding delighted. "Thick Jell-O boy. How'd it go?" Her dark eyes twinkled. "Let me guess: chocolate, right?"

  "Who are you?" Dee asked.

  She brushed pink eraser shavings off her white blouse. "You can call me Tomoe Exposition."

  "What kind of name is 'Tomoe Exposition'? Other than the obviously fake kind, I mean," Dee said.

  Tomoe made her all-inclusive, one-shouldered shrug. "What's your name?"

  "Deiter Detwiler. Who are you, Tomoe, really?"

  "Oh, hey!" she said, exactly as before. "Deiter Detwiler. How'd it go? And what kind of name is 'Deiter Detwiler'?"

  Dee sighed. "Call me Dee. Who are—"

  "Oh hey!" she said, a pitch perfect repeat. "Dee. Now are you going to tell me how it went or am I going to have to call in the big guns?"

  Dee reached into a jacket pocket. The SRU Thickening Agent tin clicked onto the countertop. Anticipating a samurai staring contest, he did his best to match her inscrutable smile, trying to act cool but certain he looked like a terrified dweeb. "Call in whoever you want," he said, hoping it did not sound as stupid to her as it did to him, "I don't kiss and tell." They matched stares. Dee's stomach knotted as the moment stretched. "Do you?" he said, thinking: I'm not going to get anywhere with her. This is her Mysterious Foreign Shopkeeper schtick, she is a master at it, and she knows that I know and vice versa. I'm never going crack it, and I'm never going to hurt her, or even bluff about it, because I like her too much. How can I not like her? She set me up, all right, but she set me up with the best thing that's ever happened in my entire life…

  Tomoe blinked and swiveled her gaze down to the floor. "No, I don't."

  Dee, bewildered over winning the standoff, said, "Huh?"

  "I don't kiss and tell," Tomoe said, her grin wide and very real. "But for you…" She held out a small hand. Dee clasped it, expecting a handshake, but instead Tomoe used his arm as leverage to stand on the stool. Dee wondered at her strength and grace. "For you, Dee," Tomoe said, "I will show and tell."

  She pumped her fist three times at the window. "Wait a minute," Dee said as the Mini Cooper started forward. "What's going on?" he asked, as the little rose-colored car picked up speed. "Look out!" he shouted as the Mini Cooper showed no sign of slowing down, but Tomoe just stood there.

  Dee guessed the little car had accelerated to at least thirty miles per hour before hitting the curb of the sidewalk and his mind shut down while his hindbrain kicked in. He stepped up onto the countertop in a single, glass-crunching stride, Tomoe turning to face him just as the front tires cleared the curb.

  "What…" Tomoe began, but Dee plucked her up into the air by the armpits as the front tires bit down on the sidewalk. Tomoe tried again, "The…" but Dee spun about, carrying her in both arms as the car's rear tires cleared the curb. "Fuck…" Tomoe wheezed, but Dee held her close, leapt, and ran into one of the aisles across from the counter, laying her flat on the floor. "Do you think you're doing?" Tomoe finished in a shriek. Dee bent over her, shielding her body with his as the car careened into the front door.

  The battered doorbell clattered and for one vertiginous moment Dee thought that a strawberry jam factory must have exploded nearby. "What the Hell is going on?" he cried as great bows of rose colored jelly zipped and ricocheted throughout the store.

  Tomoe, still pinned beneath him, batted her fists against his shoulders as the springy bows of gel bounced one by one behind the counter. "I'm trying to introduce you to my girlfriend you idiot! But, uh…" Her battering slowed, her fists unclenched and Dee had the sneaking suspicion he was being felt up. "Thanks for trying to save my life, I guess. No, no, don't get up," she added, grabbing his collar. "You, ah, really knocked the wind out of me. You wouldn't mind picking me up…again…would you?"

  "Hey," someone said, voice soft but warm and sparkling, "you totally ruined my entrance."

  Dee glanced up and Tomoe's hands returned to their surreptitious roving. An aquiline, angelic face chiseled from the pure pink of flawless rose quartz watched them from behind the counter. "What are you two doing?"

  "Dee thought you were trying to run me over," Tomoe said. "Dee? Meet SB. SB, this is Dee."

  SB stood, shaking out a long, thick mane of narrow dreadlocks spun from cotton candy. Where Galatea had the overripe, fit-to-bursting figure of a Hollywood bombshell from the Fifties, SB took on the lithe power and athleticism of an Olympian. Her coppery spandex one-piece, however, made damn sure everyone knew she had all the curves and swells anyone could possibly want. Her eyes narrowed. "So this is the latest Jell-O aficionado, huh? How's about you standing up and getting the Hell off my merchandise?"

  Dee stood and helped Tomoe to her feet. SB did that same quick double-take Tomoe had given him earlier but resumed her what-are-you-looking-at glare just as fast. "You can turn into a car?" Dee asked, not even believing the words were coming out of his mouth.

  "It's a dick thing," SB said, but Dee did not understand what she meant until she stepped out from behind the counter and, suddenly, he did.

  "He's gone pretty pale, T," said SB.

  "Probably feeling a little inadequate, SB," Tomoe said.

  Dee had read too much hardcore manga not to know where this was headed. "It's not that," he said, but, looking down at the gargantuan bulge in the overstressed crotch of SB's one piece, confessed, "Well, I guess it kind of is. No, it just is. But that's not important."

  "That was refreshingly honest," said SB, binding up her dreadlocks into a thick ponytail. "If that's not the important part, though, what is? Go on. You can see you have my full attention."

  Dee took a step back. "Actually, I bet I don't. I suspect your attention can get a lot, er, fuller."

  "You'd win that bet," Tomoe said, her inscrutable smile back in place.

  Honesty seems to be working, Dee thought. It had better, or else I am truly fucked. "I jerk off to comics about dickgirls as much as the next man," Dee said. "But when I do, I don't fantasize about being with a dickgirl, you see, I fantasize about being the dickgirl. I hope you don't take offense."

  "Interesting," said SB, cupping her chin. "I think I'll let this one live, T."

  "You want to be a dickgirl, Dee?" said Tomoe. "Why didn't you say so before? I've got just what you need, SRU-label hormone supplements. Right in there." She pointed to the supply closet behind the counter. "You want some? For you? Five dollar."

  Dee op
ened his mouth, waiting for his conscience to voice an objection, but then he remembered he did not possess a conscience any more, at least when it came to sex, so he just turned to the supply closet with a thoughtful, "Hm."

  "Go on in and take a look around," Tomoe said. "Don't worry, nothing in there will bite you, at least not until you get it home."

  Dee wandered into the supply closet and SB pulled Tomoe aside behind the counter. "You said he was cute!" she whispered.

  "He was!" whispered Tomoe.

  "You didn't say he was so panty-soaking fucking fine!" SB hissed, teeth gritting.

  "He wasn't!"

  Dee clambered up the short ladder at the far end of the closet to get a better look at something and SB yanked at the collar of Tomoe's blouse. "Oh, lover-girl, would you look at that ass!"

  "I am! I am!"

  "I don't see any more thickener in here," Dee said.

  "You wouldn't," Tomoe called back, trying to keep the anxious quaver out of her voice, "not when you don't need it. One of the rules."

  "I see you have some SRU-label herbal-enzyme male enhancement supplements. I bet I know what those might do."

  "You want some?" asked Tomoe.

  SB chewed on a fist and whispered, "God, no, what if he took some right here in the store I don't think my mind could take it."

  Tomoe steamrolled ahead out of habit and arcane ritual. "For you? Five dollar." She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, "No, no, please say no."

  "No thanks," said Dee.

  The two girls relaxed.

  "Maybe later."

  The two girls clutched each other in fear.

  "We've got to get a grip!" SB said.

  That seemed to snap Tomoe out of her panic. "Like this?" She grabbed SB's dick. Her slight hand barely wrapped half-way around its girth but her grip was long-practiced and ironclad.

  "You guys okay?" said Dee, coming out of the closet. "I thought I heard someone shout. What's so funny?"

  "Nothing, nothing." SB coughed to smother her case of the giggles and walked away from the counter.

  Dee shrugged and turned to Tomoe. "'Rules,' you said? What 'rules'?"

  "I can tell you rule number one," Tomoe said. "We get to ask the first questions around here."

  "Very well."

  "So," said the well-endowed rose girl, "What flavor did you start with?" SB wriggled out of her one-piece, rolled it into a jelly donut, and ate it. She pirouetted, with the elegance and dignity of a Bolshoi ballerina apart from the monster cock flapping like a windsock glued on her groin. She rode the momentum of the revolution to spin and reweave her gelled body into the form of a slinky, doe-eyed bimbo lying supine on the store's checker-tiled floor. She bent her legs at the knees and spread them, obscenely wide, dick replaced with a pink and puffy pussy. She turned her head away bashfully and bit down hard on a curled knuckle. "Vanilla?" she asked through clenching teeth, her voice shuddery with anticipation.

  "Eh," said Tomoe, shrugging. "He doesn't look like the vanilla type."

  SB clucked impatiently and rolled onto her belly, facing Dee. The color of her crystal-polished skin cycled down to a rich, ruby red. She clasped her hands behind her back, wide leathery bands snaking around her arms to bind them tight together. She scooted up on her knees, rump rising in the air, two ruby pseudopodia morphing into bloated, knurled, thrumming dildos that stuffed themselves up her cunt and down her ass. "Ch-cherry?" she managed to sob before a ball gag popped itself into her mouth.

  Outside, something clattered like a garbage can overturning. Dee looked out in alarm but a purring croon from Tomoe drew back his attention. "Ooh," she said, eyes locked on SB's reddening, violated derriere. "I don't know about him, but I could go for the cherry-treatment right about now."

  SB swallowed the ball gag and blew Tomoe a petulant raspberry. Then she chuckled and leapt up, filling out into a toothsome Amazon, round ass pressed up against the glass counter, proud tits mashed together with her elbows. "Chocolate?" she asked in honeyed, fiery voice, drawing out the first syllable as she leaned in toward Dee, leering.

  From behind the counter, Tomoe looked down and wolf-whistled. "That's my bet," she said. "Bet you five dollar he's a chocolateer, SB. But don't answer yet, Dee!"

  SB bounced up to sit on the countertop and quivered back into her original, chisel-perfect form with one glaring exception. "Strawberry?" she asked in her own voice. "Or…" she said, and with a crick of her neck and a jut of her jaw, her dick billowed out, a tumescent fire hose. "Strawberry-Banana?"

  Dee sighed, took the crumpled, soggy, empty Jell-O box out of his jacket pocket, and placed it on the countertop next to the tin of SRU thickener.

  SB took one look and toppled over backward into a display of vitamin supplements, her massive manhood weighty and elastic enough to stick tight to the countertop as she fell. Tomoe backpedaled away from the box, swearing a blue streak in Japanese. The pull of the SB's fall eventually caught up with her enormous dick and sack and they squeaked over the countertop glass, flipping up and then slapping down behind the counter with a loud thwap! and a muffled oof! from SB. "Lime?" Tomoe cried, nearly twisting an ankle on a Vitamin C bottle SB had sent spinning her way. "Lime?! Doaho! What did I say? What. Did. I. Say!"

  SB peeped up from behind the counter. "You went lime?" she whispered, eyes wide in wonder. "You went lime…first time?"

  Dee flushed. "It was an accident."

  "No way, José," Tomoe said. She jerked a thumb back toward the SRU supply closet. "Once you take something from there, nothing is accidental. That's one of the rules."

  "So there are rules?" asked Dee.

  SB murmured, "Wow, a real lime-guy."

  "Hundreds and hundreds," Tomoe said, "and I hardly know half of them. Lost the franchise manual a day after I assumed the place, although I bet that was just a rule in action, too." She glared at the gaping SB and gave her an annoyed kick. "Pick your jaw up off the damn floor, SB."

  SB pouted but pulled herself together.

  "Anyway" said Tomoe, turning back to Dee, "I'm glad you got away. She'll lose cohesion quickly without that first infusion of sperm."

  Dee shuffled his feet.

  "What?" Tomoe said while SB breathed, "Uh-oh."

  "She got that four days ago," Dee answered.

  "Four days." Tomoe shook her head. "Four days? You've been with lime for four days?" She drew close to SB who gave her a loving, reassuring squeeze. "Never mind about me," Tomoe said, "Who the Hell are you?"

  "I'm not answering any more questions until you answer some of mine," said Dee. He tapped a finger on the top of the thickener tin. "What is nanomek? Is…SB…made out of it too? SB, if you're made out of Jell-O, how come you're so, well, cut? And how does it all work?"

  "You want the long answers or the short ones?" asked Tomoe.

  "Short will do."

  "Okay. Nanomek is a magical powder, some 'techno-alchemical' handwavium stuff or something. I don't really know, I'm not science fiction fan. It's a basic component of a lot of the SRU gimmicks and gimcracks. When used as a thickener for sweet liquid, it makes meliae." Seeing Dee's confused expression, Tomoe repeated, "Meliae. Honey nymphs. Goo girls. Just look it up on the Internet later, will you?"

  "Why goo girls?" Dee said.

  "Nanomek is entirely female," Tomoe answered. SB cleared her throat, and Tomoe looked up at her, smiling, "even if the meliae it makes aren't."

  "So that's why it needs sperm," said Dee. "That makes sense, I guess." Then, after a beat: "No, that actually doesn't make any sense at all."

  Tomoe continued, "As to your second question: yes, SB is a meliae. And as to why she's 'cut,' as you so delicately put it: I cut her collagen-based gelatin powder with the polysaccharide pectin when I made her." She nestled further into SB's protective embrace. "So that means she's my meliae, Deiter, and don't you damn-well forget it."

  "I'm a one-woman man-woman," SB told her, "you know that, lovey."

  Dee said, "So then how do you get…well,
you know…"

  "We used to steal from sperm banks," said SB. "But that was too complicated, random, and not a very nice thing to do in the first place."

  Tomoe smirked, running a finger up and down SB's breastbone. "So now, every once in a while, we go to a club and make some guy really, really, lucky."

  SB stepped back, rolled her trim, broad shoulders, and stood proud, fists pressed to outthrust hips. "And very, very surprised."

  The couple collapsed together in a fit of cackling laughter. Dee found himself grinning like an idiot.

  After a minute, SB brushed tears away from Tomoe's eyes with her thumbs. "You okay, lovey?"

  "I am now," Tomoe said, bussing SB's lips. "This just isn't the way it's supposed to work. When they go lime, they're not supposed to come back at all. Something is going on here."

  "He's a real lime guy," SB told her with a shrug. "We always suspected there had to be some out there, somewhere."

  Dee felt like he was intruding on something that should have been very private, but the questions were burning too brightly in him, and he had to interrupt. "I'm sorry," he said, giving them a moment to drift apart, "But what's the deal with lime?"

  "Let's start with how the nanomek works, how the meliae is born." Dee felt a flash of panic at hearing the word 'born,' although he did not know why, but Tomoe must have read something in his eyes and added, "I mean made, or summoned, if you prefer."

  "Sure," said Dee, relaxing.

  "The goo girl takes on characteristics associated with the flavor you make her with, often with unexpected results," Tomoe explained.

  "Huh?" said Dee.

  "The nanomek metamorph assembles by a process of allopoiesis informed by a collaborative-learning neural net filter trained in the recognition of poetic justice and irony," SB translated. The coppery one-piece fanned out from her shoulders to cover her Olympic diver's physique again.