by Oblimo
Yves flopped onto his back. "Who won?" he asked, swabbing glop of his face with his stained outer shirt. "If this red stuff is your innards, Dee, I'll probably puke."
Grainy gobs rained down off the ceiling, slid down the walls, and dripped off the furniture. "It's hers," Dee said.
Yves wretched. "Then I'm certain to puke." He peeled off the sloppy shirt and shoved it aside, sitting up. "Who was that bitch? Why did she smell like, like Betty God-damned Crocker? I used to love the smell of cake batter, you know." His strength gave out and he plopped back down, groaning but sparing no energy for dignity. "Now I'm going to have nightmares about it."
The gobs settled in larger lumps on the floor. "Are you all right?" Dee said. "Did she really do what I think…"
"Don't believe what they say on the Internet," Yves interrupted, his voice flat. "Getting your prostate milked sucks."
"But she raped—"
"Enough, Dee. I know what happened, thank you very much." He tried to zipper his fly but the slider got caught on the first few bottom teeth. "That wasn't Galatea, I presume, but something that our boy Bee made. She told me she killed him because she didn't like the way he smelled, by the way."
"But if she is Bee's honey nymph," Dee said, "that doesn't make any sense." A beat later, he added, "Actually, it makes perfect sense."
Yves's glance was alarmed. "You keep referring to her in the present tense. It's not over?"
"Not if she can still move," Dee said. The slush-covered overshirt started to inch forward. "She's heard everything we've said. Yves, get the fuck out of here."
Yves watched his shirt wriggle past him. "She's not interested in me now that she's got you to play with."
"We're not playing."
"Then what—"
"Quiet," Dee snapped. A cherry chocolate mound gathered at his feet.
"Yes, Ooze-Sensei," Yves whispered.
Fed by dribbles and spurts of red and black goo, the mound ripened into a bloated beach ball. "Well?" Dee said, shifting his weight, "had enough?"
The scarlet girl's wings whipped back and she rocketed forward, snagging Dee by the throat with one hand as she ran past him in an almost casual gesture. His feet dangled a few inches off the floor for a moment of hurtling, horizontal flight before she rammed him into the far wall. Struts buckled and plaster powdered behind him, but the load-bearing structure of the apartment building's outer wall absorbed most of the blow. "I want," the scarlet girl panted, "to do every…sick, perverted, and…twisted thing with my master! And that," she wailed, "that was just one!"
Dee kicked out, his foot kinked at a curious angle, his movements slow but strong. The kick connected with gel flesh and amputated the scarlet girl's right leg at the thigh. Her wings smacked down onto the floor behind her, keeping her upright as she reeled. She recovered quickly, gobs of severed leg still pattering around the room as the grip around Dee's neck cinched shut and she threw a left hook at his jaw. Dee let his knees buckle and the scarlet girl punched a fist-size hole in the wall an inch above his head. He barreled forward, shoulder slamming into the scarlet girl's midriff, his hands pushing a strange pattern through her jellied substance. The force of the blow threw her backward in a disintegrating arc through the air until she fell among the ruins of the coffee table.
Her hand held fast to his neck, her arm stretching noodle thin until it snapped. The hand dissolved, its warm sanguine fluid running down Dee's chest. Lost cohesion when it separated from the whole, Dee decided. She can't divide like Galatea could, or maybe just not as well.
The melted gel rolled away in glistening beads of blood. The scarlet girl flailed in a mad tantrum, screeching, "You pushed me away! Never push me away!"
"Always," Dee said in a dead monotone and marched forward. "And you'll never get to have me."
The scarlet girl flew at him, a banshee blur of wings, claws, and rings of teeth. Dee cried out in wordless pain in the center of a red cyclone that tore away every last shred of his clothing. The scarlet girl coalesced and clung to him, wings wrapped around his ass and between his legs, fingers raking over his back. "I have a master," she hissed, hips humping furiously against his dick. "I'll always have a master."
Dee bobbed and weaved, broke free, and threw her melting form to the floor. "You have nothing," he spat, stumbling through trails of black and burgundy slime.
"I'm nothing," she whispered, a shaky wing claw reaching down to shiver against her clitoris. "I'm nothing." Her other wing claw dove into her sex.
"Jesus," Dee said. He stumped over to Yves. "Let's get you out of here, Yves."
Yves lay still on the floor, his neck crooked up and glassy eyes narrowed. "I've never seen anyone move like that."
Dee grimaced at the scarlet girl writhing in the living room. "That's because she's made of Jell—"
"Not her," Yves said, "you. And just what the Hell are you doing?"
"What you told me to do," Dee said. "I'm killing the bitch."
Yves craned his neck higher. The scarlet girl's face had grown gooey, her features unfocused and dripping with dew. Red rills coursed between her breasts before her hands, fingers fused into flippers, scooped and smeared the runoff across every softening curve. One wing pulsed deep in her pussy. She arched up, sheets of candy-apple red icing flowing down her back in a rippling mane, and the other wing curled under her rump and penetrated her from behind. All the while she twittered and muttered, "I'm nothing, I'm nothing, I'm nothing."
Yves head bumped down hard against the floor. "Sure doesn't look like it."
"Every move costs nanomek," Dee said. "Every reassembly burns even more."
The apartment filled with slurping, syrupy sounds as the scarlet girl drove herself to messy orgasm. "Nothing! Master! Nothing! Always! Master!"
"And that costs her the most," Dee added wretchedly.
"Christ, Dee, why?"
"Don't you get it? I'm going to burn all her nanomek away." Dee helped Yves to his feet. "Or die trying. Probably both. That's why I have to get you out of here, Yves. She can't have another source of sperm. I've got to burn all the bitch's nanomek away. Every last one. That's the only way to truly kill a meliae."
"Yes!" the scarlet girl burbled. "Kill me, master! Hate me enough to kill me!"
Dee fixed her with an empty stare, and in that terrible, lifeless monotone, he said, "That's how she killed Galatea."
The scarlet girl's slow dissolve froze. "That sentimental green simpleton?" Her features hardened along with her voice. "If my master doesn't choose me over her, I may kill her after all."
Dee blanched. "Galatea's alive?"
"Fear," the scarlet girl gulped. "I can smell it from here."
Dee advanced, face bleached and eyes blank. Yves blundered about but managed to sag against the apartment's front door. The scarlet girl bolted upright, fists squeezed against her checks. "Oh, Master," she babbled, "your fear. It's more incredible than I ever imagined…" Her squeal ascended into a piercing scream as Dee reached out and tore off both her wings at the shoulder.
Her wings liquefied, thundering to the floor in a crimson downpour. Dee stepped close to the scarlet girl shrieking in the middle of the red tide. "Tell me where she is," he said.
"You're so scared!" rejoiced the scarlet girl.
Dee ripped the little wings out of her head. "Tell me where she is."
The scarlet girl's trembling limbs locked rigid. "You'll never push me away again!"
Dee cradled her face in his hands. "Tell me where she is or die."
The scarlet girl twittered and drooped in a post-coital haze. "No," she said, abyssal eyes glowing.
Dee's arms twitched, and in that split second of indecision the scarlet girl slipped from his grip and laid Dee out flat with a lightning-quick uppercut. The red fluid on the floor roiled around and rushed up her back. New pairs of wings unfurled. "No," she yawned, "I don't think so. I was ready to die for you, Master, but now I think I've found a better way to ensure you'll never push me away again."
She swayed over him. "You pushed her away, remember? And she let you go. That's why she gave up and let me take her so easily. She knew you pushed her away to make room for me. I'll be better than she ever was, Master, because I never give up. And I never let go. And you're crying, Master."
"I'm sorry, Galatea," Dee whispered.
The scarlet girl shook her head. "You still don't understand. But you will." She sauntered over to the living room window and broke the pane with an effortless flip of a wing. "I've got to go now, Master."
"No, tell me—"
"See? You've accepted it a little already." The scarlet girl hopped onto the windowsill. "You can't push me away. But there's so much work to be done, now that I know what you need me to do. I'm going to make everything perfect for us, Master. Everything."
"No."
Red wings extended into the pre-dawn damp. "I live to serve and please my master," the scarlet girl said, "whether my master likes it or not."
"No!"
The scarlet girl's wing claws bit into the wall high above her and she clambered out of sight.
"Dee," said Yves, testing his balance, "get up."
Dee sprawled on the floor, head in his hands. "Galatea, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"Snap out of it and get up," Yves insisted, taking a few uncertain steps forward.
"But she's right. It's all my fault."
"No, she's not." Yves leaned against the archway to the kitchenette. "You're coming down off a serious adrenaline rush and she took advantage of it to fuck with your head and escape. It's a dirty trick that I've used myself a few times."
"That explains the headache," Dee groaned.
"No, that's probably the bourbon. If I can stand, so can you. Now get your ass up!"
Dee stood, flinching at the pain pounding in his temples.
"Jesus, Dee," Yves said. "Have you been working out or something?"
"'Four day fuck-a-thon,' remember?" Dee shrugged in an outspread gesture that took in the entire room. "What the fuck do I do now, Yves?"
"We find some clothes—Oh, grow up," Yves sighed as Dee cupped his hands over his crotch and blushed. "Anyway, we find some clothes and some coffee, and then we find Galatea and burn that devil cookie freak."
"'We?'"
Yves hobbled into the kitchenette. "If you don't want to help me, I guess I'll understand."
Dee's smile was grim. "Of course I'll help, Y-Sensei." He listened to Yves fumble with the electric coffee maker but knew better than to interfere. "Coffee's in the cabinet above the microwave."
"Thanks," Yves said, his movements growing confident. "Have you really gone five days without sleep?"
"Only if being comatose doesn't count."
Steam percolated in the coffee maker. "I doubt it does," said Yves, rinsing out a couple of corporate-logo coffee mugs. "But I haven't pulled a real all-nighter since college, so these are both for me. In about ten hours I'm going to be hit with a massive migraine and become utterly useless, so after we get our shit together we're going to have to move fast."
Coffee started sizzling into the pot. "Move where?" Dee asked. "Miss Devil Cookie could be anywhere. Where do we start?"
Yves watched the level of coffee in the pot rise. "If you told me everything before, then we've only got two places to go."
Dee thought about it for a moment. "You're right. Let's start close to home. Listen," Dee added. "I think I've run out of clothes."
"Clean clothes?"
"Yeah." Dee shifted uncomfortably. "But I think I'm completely out of pants."
"Ten years," grumbled Yves, pounding down the cement stairs.
"What?" Dee asked from a few steps in front of him.
"Ninety minute workouts, at least once a day, for ten years," Yves said, glaring at Dee's chiseled shoulders. "That's how long it took me to look good in these clothes."
"Really?" Dee reached the door to the first floor. "I thought you were born bishi."
"And you fill out a muscle shirt in four damned days."
"Feeling petty, Yves?" Dee turned the door handle. "Is that why you gave me these stupid M.C. Hammer pants?" He pulled at the elastic of a pair of sweats resembling gun-metal gray pantaloons.
"No, I'm feeling practical. You've been ruining an average of 2 and a half articles of clothing an hour in the past few days, and I need to cleanse the Nineties from my wardrobe. Besides, you need a lot of room for Goojitsu."
Dee held the door ajar. "What?"
Yves shrugged, then winced and rubbed his shoulders. "Would you prefer 'goo fu?'"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Your martial art," Yves said.
The door fell closed. "I repeat: what the fuck?"
"Come off it, Dee. When I said I'd never seen anyone move like you did, I meant it. And what you did to that cherry cupcake psycho…" Yves shuddered. "She may have felt like Jell-O to you, but to this mere mortal she was about three hundred pounds of wet cement."
"Yves, honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing or what's happening to me. You've always been good at this sort of thing; I've seen you guess the endings of movies like The Sixth Sense, Momento, and Seven from just watching the opening credits. Do you know what's going on?"
"Not yet," Yves said, joining Dee in the entryway to the first floor and pulling open the door. "But I'm working on it."
Dee peered down the empty hallway. "What can you tell me, then?"
"Well," Yves sighed, closing the door. "You've invented the world's first martial art designed not just for unarmed combat, but also for fighting when totally nude, with an entire school devoted to defense against rheodynamic attacks. The cherry cupcake girl is insane, but she has standards and lines she is unwilling to cross. She makes contingency plans, however, and is prepared to compromise when desperate. And Bee's really dead."
Dee goggled. "How do you know all that?"
"His testicles are in a jar outside his apartment's front door."
Dee cracked the door open. "Good eye," he said, squinting. "I thought those were marbles."
"Have some respect for the dead, Dee. That's the part of himself Bee probably wanted to stick in her mouth more than any other and it wound up being the only part of him that didn't end up in there. I guess nanomek really is programmed for irony."
"What are Bee's balls doing in the hallway?" Dee said.
"It's a message from that cherry devil cookie bitch—look, we need to come up with a good nickname for her," Yves said. "I don't like saying 'bitch' all the time, no matter how appropriate."
"Cherry Cupcake?" Dee suggested.
"Only if I get to call you 'Ellie Dee'."
Dee blinked. "Even I don't get that reference. But, whatever. Um, Betty Crocker?"
"Lawsuit waiting to happen," Yves said.
"Darth Cherry?"
"Please."
"Well," Dee said, "Devil Cookie has a familiar ring…Wait a minute. You're trying to distract me from something."
"It's working."
"Just tell me what message Bee's balls in a glass jar could possibly convey."
"I have no idea," Yves said. "Cherry Cupcake's crazy."
"'Crazy for me,'" Dee muttered in reverie.
"What? No, she's indiscriminately crazy. But the message, whatever it was, was meant for you."
"So?" Dee said, ire rising.
"So I don’t think Cherry Cupcake's there, but I also don't think you're going to like what's waiting for us in there, either,"
Dee startled and threw open the door. "You think Galatea's—"
"I don't know, Dee." Yves blocked the doorway. "But I need you to not think about Galatea for the moment. I don't want to belittle your feelings and I appreciate the gravity of your situation…"
"I know," Dee said.
"But we need to think big-picture right now, and that means the most important question is…"
"I know."
"Where the Hell is the rest of the nanomek?" Yves finished, pinching the bridge of his
nose.
"I don't know," Dee said. "But I can guess."
The tin of SRU Thickener bounced around the metal mesh child seat of the shopping cart gamboling down the Baking Needs aisle. The burning red sunrise threw crazy shadows ahead of it. "Where's all the cherry Jell-O?" the pusher of the cart called out.
A sleepy reply came from a few aisles away. "Ma'am? We don't open until six o'clock, ma'am. The front door should have been locked."
"It was," said the customer, bobbing her head to peek into various rows of instant desserts and pie fillings. "I just slipped in." She adopted a breathy, pouting tone. "I hope you don't mind. It's only a few minutes before six. Could you help me with the cherry Jell-O? Please?"
"I'm sorry," said the sleepy voice, the squeak of sneakered feet approaching the Baking Needs aisle. "Some sicko came in last night and bought it all for who-knows-what."
"Oh, really?" the early customer drawled owlishly.
"Yah, really," the husky stock boy insisted, round the bend of the aisle. "We're all sold ow—wow-huh-how." He skidded to a halt, gawking.
Black Cherry's batwings stretched high and triangular like lateen sails, crimson blazing and black veins glistening as they drank in the dawn. Her fingers riffled through the uneven rows of gelatin boxes. "'Peach'," she read, picking up one box. "Maybe. If I had some schnapps." She put the box back on the shelf. "Hm. 'Grape'? Probably a boozehound. 'Mixed Fruit'? What the heck is that? Oh, who am I kidding?" A wing flicked down and scooped every last box into the shopping basket.
"I'll make as many as it takes for Master," she said, plucking out the boxes of lime Jell-O from the pile in her basket and pitching them into the next row, "give him more, and more, and more until he finally realizes I'm the only one perfect for him. Or they drain him dry, I suppose, and then I'll just claim what's mine. After all," she told the stock boy, "a girl needs her minions."
"Uh. Huh?"
"Ah," Black Cherry said, ignoring him, and pulled a handful of devil's food instant pudding boxes from the shopping cart. "Not cherry, but these will do for a start. Too unoriginal, though. She'll need something more. Time to think outside the box." She watched inky black swirls spiral across her wings. "Of course," she murmured. "She'll be perfect. Well, almost perfect."