It's Always Time

by Oblimo

  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, alon
g 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 a
gainst 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.