by Oblimo
Eddie staggered out of the pantry in a hail of canned vegetables and dry goods, kicking boxes and tins across the floor. "Thank God," he groaned, rubbing his naked rear end. "My butt is numb." He bent to massage the life back into his legs, then dipped his head to stare at the marble-top kitchen cart where he had been hogtied earlier that morning, although to Eddie it felt like a lifetime. "What's that?"
He hobbled over to the cart, rolled it aside, and stared in silence. He bent down, pushed away a tin of tuna, and picked something up. He shook it. It rattled, perhaps half-full of sand. He leaned over to the wall, flipped the light switch, turned the tin over in his hand, and read the yellowing label.
SRU THICKENING AGENT
"Oh, shit."
And the moral of this motherfucker is,
Ladies, make 'em act like they know:
You are, was, and always will be
Pussy control.
—Prince, Pussy Control
Coda: Nothing Like Us
He remembered a kiss, the taste of cupcakes, a brief but blinding pain, and then a sensation peculiar in its familiarity but terrific in its intensity—the floaty-feely side effect from taking a strong decongestant. "Medicine head," the commercials called it.
He remembered seeing himself from above, seeing himself fall to the floor. For a moment he had wondered if he were already dead, if this were the out-of-body experience before the tunnel of light, but no light had come. As the world narrowed and his mind dimmed, it occurred to him that the wet, rag-mop mess atop his body's shoulders was missing something. This was no spiritual, out-of-body head-trip. This was the real thing. This was not the sort of disembodiment you came back from and then talked about on cheesy cable television exposés at one o'clock in the morning. This was not life after death. This was dying from having your head torn off.
But as his awareness of the world, of himself, and of the difference between the two fragmented and fell away, one thought remained. One white-hot ember of memory and emotion raged and burned until there was nothing else left:
"And his name is Dee," she had said, and that was the last sound he would ever hear.
"…His name is Dee," she had said, and those were the last words ever spoken to him.
"…Dee," she had said, and it would be the last thought he would ever have.
Dee.
And then he sat up and screamed, "Dee!"
Echoes died around him. Bee's hands flew to his ears. His fingers scrambled of his receding ginger hair, his cheeks and neck, squeezing and pinching. They were all there and in their proper place. His fingertip touched his teeth, and Bee realized he was grinning huge enough to hurt. "I'm alive."
He leapt up, bare feet slipping once on the cold, clean floor. "I'm alive."
He tried to make sense of the tall, twisty shapes all around him but an unconscious, protean fear gripped him with one overriding priority. He trust a hand between his bare legs and almost wept the relief to feel his manhood intact, balls and all. "I'm alive!" he cried, and ran headlong into a hard plane of thick glass, stumped backward and flopped onto his ass.
"Wait," someone said. The voice was muffled and musical but also amplified and strange, as if some girl were talking through a loudspeaker outside his bedroom window. "What was that?" The floor trembled a little whenever she spoke. "I thought I heard something."
Bee splayed his legs. The floor was convex, gently bulging upward, the apex beneath his butt. He glanced up and snapped his legs shut.
"Take your time," said another voice. "Looking is free. You break it, you buy it."
A metal disc capped the space Bee occupied some ten feet into the air, but the distorted shapes around him rose higher still. "Oh, no," Bee said, "Oh, no fucking way." He bent down and knocked on the floor. It clinked like glass.
"I knew I heard something," said the first voice. Shadow and light cut wide swaths around him as something enormous moved in the distance.
Bee stood. "No way is this happening." He reached out, tapped the glass in front of him, and traced the clear wall as it curved inward until he came full circle to where he began, and stared up through the glass and into a sensuous mouth as big as a queen-sized bed.
"Oh my God," the mouth exclaimed, and Bee's world vibrated. "It's a little man in a jar!"
"Hm? Oh, him," said the other voice and Bee looked up into a pair of dark, merry eyes the size of dinner platters and framed and enough lush, raven hair to fill a football stadium. "That's a homunculus. Very rare these days. Hardly anyone has what it takes to make one, and Catherine the Great's been rounding them up."
Bee suspended all disbelief and rethought his surroundings. Everything he had seen made perfect sense if he were stuck in a tall mason jar on a crowded shelf of a supply closet, being scrutinized by two towering femme fatales straight out of a Russ Meyer movie. He glanced down into two seas of cleavage, one the color of cream, the other coffee. But with bigger tits, he decided.
The first girl reached for his jar but stopped when he shrank back. Bigger tits plus the muscles of pro bobybuilders, Bee added, watching the girl's pectorals bunch and swell beneath her breasts.
"Tomoe," said the first girl, pointing. "You'd better punch some air-holes in that lid." She pouted. "Poor li'l guy."
"He doesn't need 'em, Jo," Tomoe explained, "homunculi are immortal, if you feed them right."
"Immortal?" Jo said, eyebrows rising. "What do you feed them?"
Tomoe smiled at Bee with infuriating inscrutability, then tipped her head up and cupped a hand to whisper in Jo's ear. Jo gaped, "What?" Her cheeks flushed red as Tomoe continued to whisper. "I, I don’t believe it. You're kidding." Tomoe stepped back and shook her head.
Jo bit her bottom lip and smiled, "Really?" Tomoe nodded. Jo glanced at Bee, her fingers tracing the overstressed bust-line of her coppery one-piece dress. "Well, he is six inches tall."
"Seven and a half." Tomoe's eyes danced with knowing mischief. "And he doesn't need to breathe, remember?"
"Wow," Jo sighed, and reached for Bee's jar with both hands. Bee braced himself against the curve of the jar and he soared through the air in a great glass elevator. "Wow," Jo said again, gazing at him. "Hi there, little guy."
This is impossible, Bee thought, the pit of his stomach filling with ice. This is insane.
"You want him?" Tomoe asked.
Jo nodded, hair flying, hugging the jar tight to her chest. Bee was embosomed in warmth and darkness. This is absurd. He thought he heard the glass creak. His legs wobbled like water. This is obscene.
"For you?" Tomoe asked.
"No," Jo insisted, her muffled voice more bass and louder than ever. "For us. All of us. For Epsilon Zeta. For all of my sisters now, and those yet to come. Forever."
Jo's heart hammered all around the jar. This is… Bee could not bring himself to complete the thought. This is…
"For y'all? Five dollar," Tomoe offered.
"This is Dee," Bee said.
Jo slapped a five dollar bill into Tomoe's hand. "Done!" Tomoe declared, then fanned her hand. "Ow, ow, ow. Good thing he's unbreakable."
Jo wrenched off the top of the jar so fast it made Bee's ears pop. Eager fingers closed around him. "Welcome home, little guy."
Bee closed his eyes. "Oh, shit."
Church of women is made out of milk
Which their love turns to butter.
Church of women will have you give praise
With a laugh, bark and stutter.
Like us men, like us men, they are nothing like us men
Men have gargoyles ’round their hearts.
Want to worship at the church of women
Breathe ’em in until my head goes spinning around
Want to worship at the church…
Let me worship at the church of women!
—XTC, Church of Women
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