by Oblimo
The black ribbons pulsed and the strawberry blonde's feet started kissing the ground. "Never mind," she sighed, suspended in mid-air, before the black ribbons reeled her in, floating her weightlessly up the stairs.
A bemused voice drifted down. "you? but - we - cured - you - already."
Eurydice heard the strawberry blonde reply, "I know. But, but, would you, um, do it, y'know, again?"
"hmm."
"Please?"
"'kay."
"Woo!"
Eurydice rolled her eyes, turning to her destination. My final destination. The last door on the left stood closed, lime-colored light trickling around its frame. The hallway echoed with Black Cherry's feral squeals. My destiny.
The green girl pushed open the last door on the left, and crossed the threshold into radiance. I love you, Dee.
She never looked back.
A Sister of the Frenzy blundered about the sorority house kitchen. When the blood music sang this loud behind her eyes, she forgot everything, including her name, living only for the irresistible song inside her head. There were always lyrics behind the blood music, the dulcet voice of Black Cherry, carrying subliminal suggestions, infectious moods, and the occasional direct command. In the early hours of the morning, the blood music had coaxed the Sister into a pair of pink hot pants, a white spandex shirt, and the insatiable need to fuck every last ounce of sperm out of some guy with the unlikely name of Deiter Detwiler. Now, almost twelve hours later, the pants' tight crotch had rubbed her sex raw, and the sweaty spandex was sandpaper against her nipples. But the blood music was worse.
She toppled against the kitchen counter. Empty Jell-O boxes, mixing bowls, aluminum utensils and tins tumbled into the sink and a scattered across the floor. The Frenzy Sister moaned, head bowed, riding a wave of panicky excitement that was not her own. The blood music soared, full of dissonant cords, random rhythms, and lousy lyrics. Black Cherry sang of being tricked, of a surprise attack, of enemies at the gate, and of Master's cock fucking her in the ass, as ironic as rain on her wedding day, which was to say, not ironic at all.
Filled with this nonsense, the Frenzy Sister went on automatic pilot. Black Cherry's song faded into background noise, like a loud party at a neighbor's house, but still informed the Sister's own ideas and desires. Her ass fell against the pantry door, one pink-clad cheek toggling the lock on the knob. The doorknob nudged between her cheeks, and the Sister decided she really needed some serious butt-fucking herself. She remembered the cable guy, catatonic but erect as a schoolboy on a vibrating bus seat.
She tottered toward the swing-hinged door. It opened inward before she reached it. A confusion of black coils billowed into the kitchen. Thick tentacles, their tips conical and smooth, flowed across the floor in the fluid, sideways wave-motion of an octopus unfurling across the ocean bottom.
Danger, Black Cherry sang through the music in the Frenzy Sister's mind. That's Unyx! Don't let her near your Sisters. And stop Eurydice! Come down to the base—ooh, damn, fuck my ass! Fuck it! More!
The Frenzy Sister clutched her head. "I don't understand."
Unyx glided into the room. Her glossy black lips parted in a languorous smile, her neck and chest flushed silvery white. An obsidian corset hugged the ribs below her breasts then stretched down into a gleaming bodysuit. The suit shone like latex, clung like velvet, and flowed like oil. Below the delta of Unyx's sex, the bodysuit bound her legs together into a seamless trunk, only to split again into dozens of snaking limbs, as if she had grown roots instead of knees. One of those roots found the Frenzy Sister's ankle.
The tentacle's touch was smooth and sleek. Dozens more lazed on the floor and crowded the air around the Sister, swaying inches away but not making contact. The Sister could only quiver, gazing mute into Unyx's eye-mask.
The delicate tip of a black tentacle traced the Frenzy Sister's jaw, ran down the line of her neck behind her ear. The physical strength behind the soft touch was immense. The strongest force she had ever experienced was giving her the most intimate and tender caress she had ever known. The Sister's sex, despite hours of non-stop stimulation, felt cavernous with need.
"let - us - in," Unyx said, her tentacle curling up the sister's neck and stroking her cheek, "and - the - music - will - stop."
The Frenzy Sister nabbed the tentacle with both hands and shoved it in her mouth. It tasted of licorice and power—a savage, unstoppable power touching her, filling her, yet treating her oh-so-gently. It made her feel delicate, precious, prized, and hornier than she had ever been in her entire life.
"whoa," Unyx said as the Sister deep-throated the tentacle with abandon. "you - ah! - you - like - that?"
The Sister chuckled and slurped hard. The tentacle in her mouth pulsed once. She froze, then pulled the sleek limb out of her mouth long enough to gasp, "Are you kidding?" She ripped open her hot pants, yanked them down around her knees. She begged, "Oh, God, fuck me," before inhaling the tentacle back into her mouth.
Unyx gulped, little jet beads of sweat pricking her forehead, as the Frenzy Sister pumped the tentacle in and out her mouth. A second tentacle brushed against the Sister's outer labia, and pulsed slowly inward. The Frenzy Sister screamed around the throbbing member in her mouth. An orgasm struck her like lightning, she felt so deliciously full, and all she could think was more, more, more. She reached for a third tentacle and rammed it up between the globes of her ass.
"wait - what?" Unyx licked her lips. "seriously?"
The Frenzy Sister, refusing to part from the tentacle pulsing down her throat, nodded vigorously enough to give herself whiplash. The tentacle tantalizing her pussy started to withdraw. The Frenzy Sister screeched in frustration, reached down, and clawed both tentacles inward.
Unyx's black raccoon mask drained away from her face. "I think," Ursula's voice trailed off. The Frenzy Sister sunk to her knees and elbows on the floor, eyes rolled over white, lost in an endless tide of power, pleasure, and triple penetration.
"I think I get hentai now," Ursula gasped.
"Um," Eurydice said. "Hi." She raised her palm in a little wave.
Galatea said nothing, showed no signs of life.
Eurydice contemplated her other self. The statue stood much taller than her, its bearing more fierce and proud, even with the sad, lost look on its face. A face so different from Eurydice's own. Not too much older: five years, ten years at the very most. And only in appearance, Eurydice had to remind herself. Galatea was merely six nights old, after all, and she did not share Eurydice's memories of the meliae that came before them, as confused and cloudy as they were. But the maturity of Galatea's visage, a true, elegant confidence that could never be confused with haughtiness, seemed deeper than appearance. Galatea wore no mask of womanhood. She was a woman down to the core. Eurydice felt mawkish and girlish—felt all sorts of negative words ending in –ish, in fact— in Galatea's presence.
Was Galatea present? Eurydice burned nanomek to examine the statue in minutiae. It was solid emerald, crystals of beryllium aluminum silicate arranged in an orderly, hexagonal molecular lattice, tinted green by trace elements of chromium. Aligned along the lattice were trillions of dormant nanomek. When a photon of light bumped into an iota of nanomek, the nanomek would absorb it, but that was an autonomous reaction. No information moved along the webs of mind and memory inside. At least, none that Eurydice could see without actually going inside the statue herself.
So Galatea was present, but asleep. More than asleep. Comatose? Dispirited? Somehow expired? Eurydice would only find out if she merged with the statue. But if Galatea's mind and memory web were truly expired…
Eurydice shut down that train of thought and returned to the visible light spectrum. "At least my boobs are as big as yours." She tried to smirk, glancing at Galatea's bare chest. "Maybe bigger, I…Oh." She saw the swooping X carved in Galatea's left breast. She glanced down at herself, realized she still wore the Dee-pleasing schoolgirl uniform. It melted away in the blink of an eye.
"I never thought about it," Eurydice said, her voice a watery whisper. Tears pattered down over her unmarked breasts, puddled in her cleavage. "Dee never mentioned it. Why didn't he ask about it, dammit? Why?" She glared at the statue. Although its expression had not changed, Eurydice felt as if its disappointment was focused on her. "Don't look at me like that. Look!" She pointed at the spattered floor. "Dee bled right in front of you." A red smudge dried on one of the statue's toes. "Dee bled on you! And you did nothing!" She balled her fists, gel-flesh fingers and thumbs melding into spheres atop her wrists. "It's so hard for me to just stand here. She cut him! She hurt him!" Sharp jagged knives flicked out of her fists, more thorns than fingers. "I want to kill the little red bitch!"
Eurydice raged in silence for a moment before the knives slid inward and her hands reopened with a metallic sigh. "But this is what I need to do. This is where Dee wants me to be." She glowered at Galatea. "This is where I want to be, damn you." She wiped her eyes. "Okay. Got that outta the way. I feel a little better." She sighed, closed the door behind her. "Let me start again. Okay?" She combed out her hair, jellied dreadlocks settling around her shoulders. "Okay. Hi." She repeated her little wave.
The Galatea statue remained motionless, recasting lamplight from a sunshine white to a crystalline green.
Eurydice twirled a dreadlock in her fingers. "I don't know if Dee or Black Cherry told you about me. Well, I bet Black Cherry did, and I can imagine what she said." She stepped forward, eyes on her fidgeting digits. "Anyway, I'm Eurydice. Dee wants me to talk to you, to try to convince you to come back to him. To us." She looked up.
Galatea did not move.
Eurydice's eyes fell. "For a long time, I thought that's why he made me. I thought he made me, just to bring you back. But that's not true." She stepped forward. "He loves me. That means he loves you, too.
"Dee doesn't really understand the whole nanomek-individuation thing." She gave the statue a crooked grin. "He's not the brightest guy in the Universe, you know that, and maybe he learned everything he knows from comics and cartoons and Internet porn and stuff—but, oh, he's clever, and he cares, and he understands us." She gestured back and forth "You. Me." She shrugged. "You know: art. Women."
Eurydice stepped into the field of light defined by the three sunlamps. The room fell into a green gloaming. Doubled shadows, shades of green and gray, played over every surface, transforming the spare basement room into a seashore grotto. "There are things you don't know, Galatea. There are things I don't know—like whatever made you decide to do this." She reached up to touch Galatea's cheek, hesitating at the last instant. "This thing to yourself, whatever it is. I want to find out." Her arm dropped to her side. "But I'm not going to force you to share with me. It can't work that way. But there's something you've got to know. I bet you know already." Eurydice peered deep into the statue's lifeless gaze. "He's the one, Galatea."
Galatea's eyes flicked their focus onto Eurydice. Her face leapt into life, millions of nanomek burning to rearrange the emerald construct, one molecule at a time, in a flurry of speed, control, and power Eurydice could scarcely comprehend. "He was the one," Galatea said.
Eurydice startled backward, knocking over the lamp behind her. Shadow and light swirled and spun. "He is the one."
Galatea towered over Eurydice, her face grimacing in contempt. "How would you know?"
This is it, Eurydice realized. Final choice. She thought of Dee, what it would mean to spend the rest of their lives together, what it would be like to never see him again.
Galatea said, "Well?"
Eurydice made her stand. "Let me show you," she said, and offered her hand.
Galatea's brow crinkled. "I should be able to share memories just by touch," she murmured, and Eurydice knew she had said it before, "but I haven't figured out how to do it yet."
"That's 'cause you have no limits, no boundaries," Eurydice said. "I do." She waggled her fingers. "Take my hand."
Galatea stretched toward her. Their fingertips brushed. Motes of silver and green light scintillated within, growing brighter and brighter as their hands entwined. Eurydice stood on tiptoe. Their linked hands outshone the sunlamps in an expanding flare of light. The two green girls' lips met and they outshone the Sun.
Eurydice watched the SUV pull away, drive under the overpass, up the onramp on the far side, and accelerate down the highway and out of sight. The engine's protests faded as the distance between her and Dee grew. Someone padded across the road behind her, quiet as a ghost. Eurydice spent a few thousand nanomek—she had so much now it frightened her, and she took every excuse to burn some—and heightened her hearing. She recognized the approaching heartbeat immediately.
"Eurydice?" Yves asked.
She turned to him, starry-eyed from weeping, her lips trembling.
"He didn't look back," she said.
Yves nodded, looking grim, until Eurydice bowled into him, laughing, "He didn't look back!" She grabbed Yves by the collar and tugged him into a friendly kiss and ferocious hug. She beamed, so happy she thought she might crack open. "Oh, Yves, he didn't look back." She blinked away tears. "He loves me."
Yves scowled, and in a patient, little voice he said, "Of course he does," and Eurydice laughed so hard she started crying again. "You were eavesdropping, then, I take it?"
"Huh?"
Yves made quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "Sounded like you two were having a Hell of an argument," he said in a passable imitation of Eurydice's voice. "Heard every word, didn't you?"
Eurydice hiccupped and sniffled, "Oh, yeah. 'Course I did." And that set off more laughter and waterworks.
Unyx sped toward them, running out of the field and across the road, boots whacking against pavement. A pair of wings unfolded from her back. The wings spread wide as they took shape, black feathers iridescent in indigo and midnight blue.
Raspberry raced behind her. "What the fuck is going on?"
Yves reached into his pants' pocket and drew out a set of stubby keys. He tossed them high. Unyx kicked off, great wings beating the air, snatching the keys before soaring up and banking above the overpass.
"Wow," Eurydice breathed.
Raspberry skidded to a halt. "You guys. Seriously: what-the-fuckage." She glared upward. "We're just standing there and suddenly Unyx gets this 'I-left-the-porn-in-the-DVD-player' look on her face, does a runner." Unyx circled higher until she appeared no bigger than a crow. "Next thing I know," Raspberry said, watching Unyx wheel away, "I'm in an Evanescence music video."
"Unyx's gone to get Dee's car," Yves said, watching the sky.
"How do you know that?" Raspberry asked.
"Those were Dee's car keys," Yves answered.
Eurydice daubed her eyes. "When'd you get those, anyway?"
"I picked Dee up at a gay bar yesterday," Yves shrugged.
Eurydice boggled at him, watched him fight to keep the smile off his face, ready to punch him in the nose if he failed.
"Okay," Raspberry drawled, brows raised. "But how does Unyx know that? When did you tell her?"
"About ten minutes from now," Yves said. The purple and green girls stared at him.
CeeCee sauntered up, slow and steady but with the energy of an avalanche. "Is it time to save the world yet?"
Galatea broke the kiss, her face flushed with snowflake-fire. "I don't understand." The sights and sounds of the underpass faded around them, dreamlike afterimages melting into soft white light.
Eurydice inched her free arm up around Galatea's neck. "I think you do." She tugged. Galatea did not resist. "But there's more." Gel-flesh met gemstone.
Ursula's head peeped over the trembling curves of Galatea's calves. She wore a mustache and goatee of glimmering green nectar, grinning like her own evil twin from an alternative universe. "It's called the Venus Butterfly."
"A Technique?" Galatea demanded, dumbfounded. "You are using a Technique on me?"
"Half of one." Ursula rocked forward onto her elbows, her rump bobb
ing high in the air and her milk-white, elfin face descending below the verdant swell of Galatea's cleft. "For a proper Venus Buttery, my thumb would go up in here—"
"Ah."
"—my middle and ring fingers would go down in there—"
"Yah!"
"—and my tongue, well my tongue would go—hmmph, hm-mm, mm."
"Ooh, fuck!" Galatea chewed on a fist to muffle a scream and then begged, "Enough. Enough!"
"Wait. Hey." Galatea frowned down as the walls of Ursula's bedroom resolved into the cinderblock of the sorority house basement. "That was my memory."
Eurydice hummed, eyes sliding shut. "So you did fuck the loli-goth." She giggles, eyes still closed. "I had to feel that for myself."
Galatea ran a hand over Eurydice's thigh. "You really are me, aren’t you?"
"Mostly." Galatea's hand traced up Eurydice's back, making the shorter green girl shimmy. "Mm. Solid."
"Then you need to know this," Galatea said, palming the back of Eurydice's neck before kissing her hard and open-mouthed.
"Aren’t you even going to listen to what I have to say?" Galatea asked, frustration and ire rising.
"Yes," Dee said, "but when I get back."
Galatea felt a gush of relief. "You mean," she said, "you mean you aren't leaving me?"
"No," Dee said, "maybe. I don't know. You've done something to me. You're doing something to me. I guess I'm a control freak, because I'm really freaking out right now."
"Dee, I haven't done anything—"
"You're changing me, Galatea." Dee marched to the front door. "But it would be stupid to make any decisions about us right now. I've got to go out. Alone. I've got to get away, by myself, to be myself, for a while. I'll be back. If I can still move. If I'm still alive."
"But Dee," Galatea wailed, hating herself for sounding so desperate, "I'm not changing you. I can't tell you now…there's so much I still don't understand…but you aren't changing."