by Oblimo
"Right. Actually," Ursula admitted, "that's a good translation. It kind of means all three." She disappeared back into the supply closet.
Yves leveled a finger at SB. "And that all somehow relates to the yin and yang of ancient Chinese philosophy and medicine, meaning the I-Ching is really about sex with goo girls."
SB shrugged. "Isn't everything?"
"So that's why women can't keep their hands off me?" Dee asked, blush rising as he realized how stupid that sounded even to his own ears.
"No." Tomoe shoved the cash register's till closed. "That's your own damn fault."
"Look!" Raspberry stumbled out of the pile of equipment, adjusting a swatch of fabric over her left eye. "I'm a pirate."
CeeCee strolled out of the maternity aisle. "That's a jockstrap."
Raspberry advanced on CeeCee, brandishing athletic supporters in both hands. "Get aboard you fat buccaneer." CeeCee retreated into the maternity aisle but Raspberry followed. "You are a pirate," she promised.
Dee brushed a green dreadlock away from his ear. It darted under his chin to tickle the other one. "My fault? How do I stop it?"
"Do you want to stop it," SB asked, tapping a finger against her lips. "Or do you want to control it?"
Tomoe narrowed her eyes at SB. That was a clue, Dee realized as SB shrugged again. SB just gave me a clue. What did she mean? Isn't stopping it the same thing as controlling it? Only if I want to be able to turn it back on once I turn it off…Do I? "Oh my God, I do," Dee said aloud. "I do want to control it. Eurydice." He pulled away from her to look her in the eye. "Eurydice, I like it. I like my kudzu. Is that okay?"
Eurydice goggled at him before dissolving into giggles, a host of dreadlocks swarming in to tickle his ears. "Kudzu, kudzu, kudzu," she teased, her sap green hair crawling everywhere like vines.
"Huh," Tomoe said as Dee toppled backward onto the floor and Eurydice skooched up to sit on his chest and continue her tickle attack with hair and hands. "How about that. Kawaii lime. Now there's a flavor I never thought of."
Ursula strut out of the closet. "I can't believe that's our Dee. I mean, he made his girlfriend multi-orgasmic in public. What's happening to him?"
"He's getting tickled to death by creeper vines," Yves said. The blades of Eurydice's hair stretched longer and longer, hunting out ticklish spots, until some discovered the waist of his pants and dove beneath. "Make that molested by creeper vines," Yves added.
Eurydice leaned to breathe in Dee's ear even as her hair pulled, massaged, and pumped in his crotch behind her. "Kudzu, kudzu, kudzu."
Tomoe plucked at the buttons of her blouse then quickly turned away. "I got to stop watching before I develop a new fetish. Hey, wait a minute." She pointed to the bulge under Ursula's poncho. "What's that?"
"This? Oh, we found it on the floor." Ursula went fishing under her poncho and pulled out the fat Sudoku puzzle book. She held the ungainly thing in two jet-black, gloved hands. "We weren't going to steal it, or anything. It just looked interesting."
"Pfft, that old thing?" Tomoe waved her dismissal. "They used to make them much harder in the old days. The last magic squares were so easy I didn't even bother. I should just throw it out, but SB paid like twenty dollar for it on Amazon."
SB was engrossed in watching Dee's sweatpants stretch and twist as more dreadlocks found their way between his legs. "Meh." She glanced down. "Ooh, dang, anyone got a tarp or something?"
Ursula plunked the thick book down next to the cash register. "I have a twenty in my pocket—oh." Her glove rippled and a twenty dollar bill unfurled in the palm of her hand. "I mean, I've got a twenty right here."
"It's used." Tomoe protested. "It's only got one section left. It's stupid." She sighed, her inscrutable smile indistinguishable from a frown. "But you want it? For you? Five dollar."
"Kudzu," cooed Eurydice as Dee's legs began to tremble. "Kudzu, kudzu, kud…zu." Dee gulped and groaned. Eurydice's caresses slowed but Dee still spasmed on each luxurious upstroke of the nest of living dreadlocks pumping at his crotch. "Yes, Dee, it's okay to like your kudzu. But this…" She tugged her head. Her tentacled hair took up slack. Dee yawped and laughed and arched his pelvis high. "This is Mine."
Dee leered. "Always."
Ursula upended her palm and the twenty dollar bill flittered down. Tomoe snagged it out of the air and rang up SALE on the cash register in a single swoop. "Done!"
Dee's smile twisted into a wince. "Oh shit." Jelly tentacles unwound all around him but Eurydice still perched on his chest. "Who bought something?"
"Relax," Tomoe said. "It's just a dumb magic square book." She counted out Ursula's change. "One five dollar, two five dollar, three five dollar. Here you go. You want a bag?"
"No thanks." Ursula tucked the puzzle book under her poncho. She pulled her hands free but the square bulge under the cashmere coverall slid across her belly and settled near the curve of her hip. "We're set."
Eurydice bounced a bit on Dee's chest, tugging on the collar of his shirt. "Kudzu?"
Dee goosed her thigh. "Just a one more question, honey." Eurydice pouted and stood up, morphing her glimmering flesh back into the drab olive Unabomber guise but leaving Dee's muscle shirt tie-dyed green and reeking of citrus-and-sex.
Tomoe pried a lump of beeswax from her ear. "Better ask quick before she sits on your face to shut you up." She sighed. "That's what I'd do." She watched SB mutter and tug at the hem of her one-piece, stretching it tight over her tented prick. "I'd sit on something, anyway."
Dee sat up as Tomoe cleaned beeswax from her other ear. "Wait. I don't know how to control it yet."
"Sure you do," SB said, drawing the dress snug around her balls.
"I do?"
"You know you want it, right?" The copper-colored material popped up to let the base of her shaft peep out as soon as SB let go. "Dang it."
"Yes. I want to keep my kuzbu." Eurydice gasped and narrowed her eyes. Dee winked at her. "I'm a kudzu kind of guy."
"That's all there is to it," SB said.
Yves nodded. "Like ki. Once you find it, it's yours to control. It will come when you call."
Somewhere among the aisles, Raspberry barked out a single, raspy, "Ha!"
"Hey," Tomoe said to SB, "remember all that 'can't interfere' stuff I keep talking about?"
SB pursed her lips as if she knew what was coming. "Yeah."
"Well, you're doing it wrong."
"Why?" Dee rose. "Why can't you help?" Tomoe shrugged and opened her mouth but this time Dee knew exactly what was coming and cut her off. "And don't just say 'rules,' or 'I lost the manual,' or some other bullshit. Galatea tried to get us the Disney lovey-dovey ending and I fucked it up. I gave away the nanomek. Now there's this three hundred pound, chocolate cherry psycho-bitch running around, kidnapping my girlfriend, mindfucking skank-bots and killing and eating people in some elaborate scheme to take over the world just because she thinks I don't pay enough attention to her."
Eurydice reached for him, silent and starry eyed. Dee moved close and Eurydice gathered him into her arms, rubbing her cheek against his back. "Tomoe," Dee said, "you told me the point of the Disney ending was for the lonely guy to learn the true meaning of love. Well, unless the true meaning of love is either 'chicks dig confidence' or 'Fatal Attraction is real,' I don't feel like I've learned a damn thing." He spun in Eurydice's arms and kissed her soft and sweet. "I love Galatea and I love Eurydice. They are the same and they are different in a way I don't understand. But it doesn’t matter if I'll never understand, because the one thing I do know is much more important: right now, neither of them are happy. I made them happy, once, before I ruined everything. I want them to be happy again. So I've just got one question." Dee steeled himself, gave Eurydice a final squeeze, and bellied up to the counter to look Tomoe square in the eye.
"What the Hell is going on?" he said.
Tomoe bumped the cash register till closed. It pinged. "There are some thing's even I don't know, Deiter."
Y
ves rapped a knuckle hard on the countertop, a move Dee had seen before whenever Yves wanted everyone at work to know he was pissed off. "A true but useless statement. Dee's right, you don't lie. But you don't answer anyone's questions in the way they expect, either. Well, too bad. I know about the third ending already."
Relief washed over Dee. "You've figured it out," he said. "Took you long enough."
"Just the basics." Blood blotted the cotton gauze bandage on Yves' palm. He rummaged through the first aid kit and began to redress the wound. "And I figured it out a few hours ago, actually, when you were quickening Eurydice." He dropped the used gauze into the wax paper disposal bag that came folded inside the first aid kit. "Well, Tomoe?"
Tomoe gave him a curt nod. "What does 'sublime' mean, Dee?"
Dee did not hesitate. "Vaporize."
"Vaporize, right," Yves said, binding his palm with a fresh bandage. "That's what I first thought of, too." He smiled. "I guess we both took English for Engineers in college. But that isn't the only meaning. Eurydice told me that most guys who made lime meliae sublime that way, though, right?" Eurydice nodded. "But every once in a while, someone sublimes the other way."
Ursula darkened the storage closet door. "In alchemy, 'to sublime' means 'to ennoble' or purify."
"Tomoe, you called nanomek 'techno-alchemical,'" Dee remembered. "So which 'sublime' did you mean?"
"Both." She shrugged, one shouldered. "How could I say for sure? No one's ever gone lime first time before. Even the most brazen had to work their way up from honey or vanilla—or chocolatl if you were an Aztec."
"That was all before artificial flavor packets and high fructose corn syrup," SB admitted, smiling. "There could be more lime guys out there now than you or I ever imagined, T."
"I don't get it," Dee said. "What is there to purify? I'm a computer geek. I write porn. I've got almost every fetish there is to get on the Internet. I'm a pervert. I'm just…" Dee spread his arms. "…I'm just me."
Eurydice arched a brow. "And Mine."
"Very funny." Dee frowned. There was something Galatea had said, when he stormed out on her. What was it?
["…you aren't changing…"]
"Look at that," Tomoe said, "you can almost see him thinking."
["…What kind of name is Deiter Detwiler…"]
"Still waters run deep," Ursula declared.
["…Maybe you just didn't know who you really were before now…"]
"I've always hated that expression," Yves said.
["…Don't tell me. You never know when a secret identity might come in handy…"]
"Yeah, me too," SB agreed. "Still waters don't run deep. Still waters don't run."
["…Fire can't burn me, iron can't break me…"]
Yves and SB grinned like idiots at each other and chorused, "Or else they wouldn't be still."
["…Yves, you're a kung fu badass…"]
"It's just an aphorism," Ursula murmured, soothing the thick rubber collar around her neck.
["…I'm a pharmaceutria. A sorceress. I'm a witch…"]
"I can't see shit!" Raz bumbled out of an aisle, two jockstraps tied over her eyes.
["…Shut up and let Sherlock do his thing…"]
"We're not perverts," Dee said under his breath, looking at all his friends in turn.
["…We didn't expect a...band, or league, or whatever it is you've put together…"]
Eurydice crept up and took his hand. "What did you say?"
["…you aren't changing…"]
"We're not perverts," Dee told her, kissed her, and told everyone. "We're superheroes."
["…you're just becoming more you…"]
Eurydice asked, "There's a difference?"
So I'm gonna get to know these little demons,
So I can know where they end and I begin.
I'm gonna peel back that fine line,
That divides me from my mind,
If there's a way out of my skin.
—Gloria Deluxe, Outrun Your Demons
Interlude: I Told You From the Start
SB waved one last time and let the storefront door fall shut in front of her. The silent swish reminded her of the loss of the doorbell. "We'll need another cloister bell."
Tomoe plucked shards of glass from the broken counter and collected them in a dustpan. "It was hard enough finding that one. Who the Hell throws gifts of pure kindness from their true love into the sea anymore?" She shoveled the glass into a plastic dustbin and started filling the pan again. "Nobody, that's who. Goodbye courtly love, hello Courtney Love. We'll do without."
Out in the parking lot, a modest sized mob—Dee, Nyx upon Ursula, CeeCee, Eurydice, Raspberry, and Yves—descended upon a two-door, silver Jeep. The scene reminded SB of the old circus clown car gag, except… "Dee was here just last night," she pondered aloud, "a man alone apart from his stalkers. And what does he bring with him the very next morning, like minutes after we open for business?"
"A knight and a witch," Tomoe shrugged.
"Who are just as panty-soaking fucking fine as he is, don't forget. I can't decide whose ass to watch, Dee's or Ursula's. Or Eurydice's…no, wait, she has Ursula's ass too. That'd be kind of cute if I didn't want to line all three of 'em up and shag 'em senseless."
"You don't wear panties. You mess the floor, you mop."
"A knight and a witch." SB watched CeeCee siphon into the too-small trunk of the Jeep, distending the canvas roof and filling the plastic rear window with roiling, golden glop. "And familiars. How did he gather them so soon? How did he know?"
"Everyone needs a hobby." The mid-morning sun danced across broken glass as Tomoe poured the pan out into the bin. "Dee doesn't look like the 'knowing' type. Dee's a doer."
Ursula and Eurydice bounded into the back of the Jeep. SB frowned over her shoulder at Tomoe. "You’re not watching. Me or them. Not even a peek." Her heart hardened, voice flattened. "They are going to die, aren’t they? Today."
"Why don’t you help me clean up, hey?" Tomoe dropped the pan into its bin and scraped her palms together.
"Answer me, lovey."
"Don't do this." SB only stared so Tomoe sighed, "Alright, SB. Somebody has to die today. At least one, probably more. You know how this goes." Tomoe squeezed the first aid kit shut, a big red button of blood square in the middle of its white plastic lid.
Dee hopped into the Jeep's front passenger seat, rocking the vehicle on its shocks. "Who has to die?"
Tomoe flicked her thumb over her tongue and swept the bloodstain on the plastic lid, smearing it into a comet-tailed comma. "Who do you think?" she asked, kissing the blood off the pad of her thumb.
The surface tension of her neck prickled and SB faced front. Yves stood by an open car door. His cool gaze met hers for a frozen moment before he climbed up into the driver's seat. Raspberry stuck her tongue out at Yves, gave SB the finger, and jetted up onto the roof in a spray of violet. SB felt a knot grow in her throat. "And we're just going to sit here and mind your shitty store?"
SB heard the rustle of Tomoe's dress as she padded up behind her. "There's nothing I can do that won't make things worse."
"Fuck you, T." SB balled her fists. "Fuck you and your fucking rules. How can you just..."
Tomoe's iron grip clamped down on SB's shoulder and spun the rose girl about. There was no trace of Tomoe's casual mischief in her eyes. "SB, darling, please. Listen to what I am saying." She held the first aid kit in her free hand. "There's nothing I can do."
Yves drove his overcrowded Jeep down the forlorn road. The surrounding fallow fields of wild grass blurred in undulating waves on either side. He eased back in the seat, trying to avoid tunnel vision and to keep his mental focus set to "Wide Lens." A harsh rapping on his window jolted him and the Jeep fishtailed a few degrees.
"Open up!" Raspberry's upside-down head bobbed outside the window. The wind tossed the petals of her hair into the beautiful chaos of blossoms falling in late Spring. She drubbed her knuckles against the glass again. "Open up
, asshole!"
Dee stared, unseeing, out his own window. "We're superheroes."
"Dee, you've said that already." Eurydice grinned in the rearview mirror. "At least a dozen times now."
"You two are the superheroes," Yves said, cranking down the window. "I'm just the guy driving the car." Orchid petals tickled his cheeks and the tang of raspberry perfume overwhelmed all other scents. "What is it, Raz."
"Drive faster, damn it," Raspberry demanded. "I can't cum unless you drive at least sixty. And if you can get this baby up to eighty-eight miles per hour," she winked, "you're gunna see some serious shit."
Yves forced himself not to smile. He enjoyed Raspberry's company so much it pissed him off and he would rather die than let it show. "I'm not going to risk our lives just so you can get off."
Raspberry grumbled, "Ass wipe." Her head swung up out of sight.
For the first time since they drove away from the SRU parking lot, Ursula pulled her nose out of the Sudoku book. "Risk our lives? What's wrong, Yves?"
Yves scrunched his fingers on the steering wheel. "Something just doesn't feel right. Maybe I'm just too wired, gone too long with too little sleep but…something's up." He studied Ursula in the rearview mirror. "I wish you'd keep an eye out. Dee's useless when he's achieving kensho."
Ursula flipped to a page in the back of her book. "Ah ha, here's one she only finished halfway. Alright, Yves, just pass me a pen please." She cocked her head, eyes distant. "You sure? It won't cost you too much? Okay." Yves started to speak but Ursula raised one glossy gloved finger. The fingertip thickened liquidly before stretching up and tapering into a sharp, hooked claw, wet with onyx ink. She brought the claw down over the open book. It made the scritter and scritch noises of a fountain pen.
"Did you just…talk…with Nyx?" Yves asked.
"Hm? Oh! Duh, yeah." Ursula did not look up from her writing.
"She hasn't mindfucked you or anything has she?"
"Duh, no." Ursula tilted her head left and right, pointing with her claw at her ears. Little neat obsidian spheres were tucked into each ear. Capillaries of black ink ran down her neck and coupled the ear buds to the thick rubber collar. "Better than an iPod." She returned to her writing, lips working.