Into Painfreak

by Lee, Edward

  Sitting there beside me was another human, her face broad and framed with short, black hair. Above her tiny nose two eyes flared and her lips trembled. With one hand she worked the serpent (my name for it, as Teddy called it something else) between my legs until it warmed and stretched. She leaned forward, kissing the thin patch where her fingers had been, then following the kiss with a scrape of her teeth. Reflexively I grabbed the back of her head with both hands, but rather than pulling it off I pulled her face to mine. We pressed faces, I have no idea why, and she lowered herself on my serpent again.

  That’s when the two dark-suited men came out of the shadows followed by the headmaster.

  I pulled the girl off my serpent and pushed her off, trying to stand. The smaller of the men laughed, but the larger man and the headmaster just stood and watched me.

  “Congratulations, chinny. You’ve won the competition,” said the headmaster. I nodded, being as careful as always with my words.

  “I chose you specifically for this position. No one else would be right for it. The competition, that was a test for you alone. The other one, he was sacrificial.”

  “Thank you, headmaster.” I expressed gratitude on the outside, but it felt like trouble in my gut. Chinnys aren’t chosen special for anything except reconnaissance. We’re sneaky.

  “Don’t you want to know which legion? Where you’ll be fighting? Who you’ll be fighting for?”

  “Yes, headmaster.” This was true, completely true. I did want to know.

  “Here. Los Angeles.”

  “Yes, headmaster.” What?

  “This is where you’ll draft your legion and this is where we’ll fight.”

  “We will fight, headmaster? A legion?” Individuals were sent to man’s world but, to my knowledge, never forces.

  “Yes, we. You fight for me, chinny, and I fight for Angra Mainyu. I’m your daevu and you’re leading my first legion. We used to sneak among the humans, but no more. Now the strategy is changing. We’re moving in among them, then exploding outward. Today it’s only us, but tomorrow we recruit.”

  A legion of humans fighting for Angra Mainyu? I didn’t see how this could end well, but I’d had that feeling for as long as I’ve been, and it feels like I’ve always been. I could continue.

  “Follow us out, chinny.” The headmaster turned and the other two went next, but I paused. Only one thing wasn’t right.

  “I’m called Teddy now, headmaster” I said. I doubt he heard me, but it was saying it that mattered.

  | — | — |

  Sacred Meat

  ————

  Jeffrey Thomas

  1: Punktown

  It wasn’t as though there wasn’t already pain to be had in Punktown. Pain was the city’s quintessence. The wealthy and empowered, however—normally insulated from street level suffering—sometimes chose to experience pain on their own terms. Somehow it was more acceptable, that is desirable, to be beaten bloody by a beautiful mutant in a corset than beaten bloody by a homeless mutant in need of drug money. There was still a sense of control in such a situation, even when what drove the person seeking pain was the allure of loss of control. Some merely flirted at the edge of the cliff, while others plunged from the order of their clean existence into the wellspring of chaos, trusting it was a pool they could return from if they just kept their head above water.

  Clubs and establishments for those with a taste for pain—either given or received, or both—were spread throughout the enormous city, which had been built by Earth colonists on the world they called Oasis but had since then filled with immigrants from countless other planets. Among those clubs that catered to jaded tastes was The Poison Apple, on Folger Street, where the nude dancers were dead bodies animated by a series of implants manipulated by a nervojockey. There were rumors of a similar club called Low where the animated corpses were those of young children. There were brothels both modest and grandiose, chief among the latter being the licensed and multi-floored Solon, in which whole levels were devoted to B&D, S&M. Yet still, with familiarity, sojourners into chaos might grow bored with even such offerings. Numbness returned; dissatisfaction filled sterile hours. There were those who were ever on a quest to discover the next thrill or flavor. To experience that much more.

  Some of these yearning sojourners learned that a new place, a traveling place called Painfreak—most recently found in the city of Miniosis, and before that on far Earth—had made its way to Punktown.

  2: Khi Ma Soo

  Sinanese p-actresses were not uncommon now, and of course Bran Devoy found many of them attractive and exciting, because to his mind the blue-skinned women from the world Sinan—a planet existing in a dimension that abutted this one—were the most beautiful of the varied human and humanoid races. However, twenty years ago there had only been one Sinanese adult vid actress, who as a result had been quite popular, despite the mixed reactions those in the Earth Colonies had regarding the so-called Blue War on her doubly removed world. Devoy had developed a crush on her that came to exceed even those obsessive teenage infatuations he had harbored for mainstream movie actresses and music stars, images of whom had filled his wrist comp and sparked his fantasies in the privacy of darkness.

  That once-singular actress was named Khi Ma Soo, though Devoy had known even then that might not be her actual name, Sinanese though it sounded. Sinanese skin tones could range from vivid to pale blue; hers was somewhere in-between. She was of medium height, not quite as petite as the average Sinanese woman, small-breasted and athletic in build, beautifully proportioned; one might even say graceful in appearance and in her movements. In her earliest vids, when she was presumably in her late teens, she wore her black hair cut shortish, sometimes with red streaks through it. She typically wore makeup then, too, and false eyelashes, maybe to make her slitted eyes with their single eyelids appear larger. In her earliest vids she portrayed schoolgirls seduced by teachers played by male actors Devoy felt were chosen because they would be easy for viewer to identify with: unattractive middle-aged men. Though, she was also seduced by a female teacher or two, or an older female student, and sometimes students who were of other than humanoid races and sexes. One of Devoy’s favorite vids from the early and most popular period of her career had involved her being ravished after school hours by a minimally anthropomorphic robot, supposedly a school janitor.

  Devoy had lost track of Khi Ma Soo over the years. Later he came to realize there had been a large gap where she had disappeared from the scene. Had she married unsuccessfully in the interim? He knew he had. Devoy’s wife had greatly disapproved of p-vids, and that had been okay for a few years…while she was still having sex with him on a regular enough basis. But when his wife had ultimately left him (for another man; naturally), Devoy had dived back into that nocturnal realm of the net that had formerly provided him daily release from the stresses of school, then the stresses of work, and always the stresses of existence in Punktown. Not so much dived, as submerged himself utterly in a bathysphere.

  It was then he rediscovered Khi Ma Soo. She appeared to have resurfaced in the p-industry in her mid to late thirties. Though still stunning, to him she looked a bit worn. Her thick, space-black hair was now quite long: falling to the start of her superbly rounded bottom, falling across the bodies of the men and women she bent over and administered to. Her breasts were a little less firm, she no longer wore makeup, her cheekbones were more distinct, the soft freshness of her teenage years behind her. This only made her more real to Devoy, less like the surgically or genetically modified or computer-enhanced p-actresses that abounded on the net. He believed he found her even more attractive than before, or was it just that he himself had grown older along with her, like a brother separated at birth? Whatever the case, his infatuation with her returned full force.

  So much so, that he sought out every one of her previously unseen vids, every still image of her (not many of these being recent), until he could find no more in the net. Alas, there were no record
ings of her to be found in the more immersive ultranet, wherein one could experience virtual sex that felt thoroughly like the real thing. God knows he looked there (and along the way, dallied with some other Sinanese actresses, but they weren’t Khi Ma Soo).

  He watched and rewatched those vids he did save to his library, particularly the most recently discovered with the older Khi Ma Soo. Sometimes he felt a little flutter when she looked directly into the camera, as if at him. Especially, during those POV shots gazing down at her as she sucked upon a cameraman’s member. One of her signature moves, though, was to tongue a man’s anus while maintaining eye contact with the camera he held. Devoy found this act ugly and demeaning; he always hoped the men had washed first. He would never have asked her to do that to him, if she’d been his lover, his girlfriend, his wife, roles she had played in countless fantasies, multiply gifted actress that she was.

  Her eyes had often looked drugged to him, even many years ago. He didn’t like that thought, especially if it meant she wasn’t doing these things entirely of her own free will. He didn’t like the idea of her being exploited, maybe even through fear of pain. Or was it just the narrowness of her Sinanese eyes, the way her eyeballs rolled under their skin folds to gaze upwards, that made her look that way?

  Even as he was excited to release by the scenes he played, he found them equally disturbing, like a husband who masochistically invites men to have sex with his wife while he watches. He himself felt like a jealous husband. He might very well perform all these same acts with her, if he had the opportunity, but less brutishly. He would not claw his fingers into her mouth, pulling at her beautiful face like a mask, and thereby twist her head almost backwards while he took her from behind standing up. He would not place her bare feet (how he longed to lick their soles) on his chest and then lean heavily down onto her, so that her legs were bent back to the sides of her head. He wouldn’t squeeze the flesh of her haunches in his fists as he pounded her doggy-style, nor pound that savagely, nor pull her hair that hard, nor reach forward and take her by the jaw in both hands and pull her head back that far. Her anus was a round, ever-open hole, like a bullet hole, because another signature act for her was anal sex. That he would do…but not too often! Not too roughly!

  He would not slap her bottom, at least not that hard. He would not spend himself on her face, that beautiful face, like a dog marking its territory. (Though numerous times he had climaxed at the precise moment her vid lovers did.)

  She didn’t seem to like men kissing her on the mouth, never frenched with them, drawing away with a polite smile when they tried. Devoy liked that. Oh, but he would kiss her. Tenderly. Adoringly. It was like an act she had been saving all these years just for him.

  She had a little dark gap at the base of every tooth when she grinned one of her wide, slightly goofy, rather shy smiles. He thought it might have to do with the old Sinanese habit of cleaning between their teeth with a toothpick. It was just one of the homely little details like that single pockmark on her forehead that had endeared her to him, that seemed to make her accessible; letters in a secret code only he cared enough to piece together and read.

  What had she been like as an innocent child? Had she been happy; had she been loved? Or had she been orphaned during the Blue War? For her to have immigrated to Punktown twenty years ago, she had to have been one of the Jin Haa, the Sinanese ethnic group the Earth Colonies had supported, rather than of the Ha Jiin group that had then been the enemy. As a child she could never have foreseen the trajectory of her life. Did she ever reflect upon it now?

  In her vids she sometimes grimaced with clenched teeth when the bastards rode her, their skin smacking against hers, and her moans sounded as much like pain as pleasure, and Devoy would be as upset at the thought of her suffering as he was aroused by these grimaces and moans.

  He felt sorry for her, and he wanted to know if she were all right now.

  The most recent of this latter period of vids he’d discovered was several years old, apparently.

  He wanted more.

  3: The Quest

  He did everything he could think of to find Khi Ma Soo. Not just more vids, more still pictures, but contact with the woman himself.

  He didn’t have much to offer if he found her. His job was just adequate, and he wasn’t handsome nor all that young, but he would kiss her. He would hold her. She would be appreciated as an exotic goddess—not just some sweat-damp slab of meat—by a one-person audience.

  He wanted to tell her he didn’t really know her, but he loved her.

  He scoured the net. Contact listings for Punktown’s citizens, going back years. Census reports (though these were inadequate, of course, in Punktown.). Immigration records. He scattered messages like notes in glass bottles. He tried to contact the outfits that had made or distributed her vids, but they either didn’t respond or, if they did, told him they couldn’t provide personal information regarding their talent. One man, a little more approachable or sympathetic, told Devoy he hadn’t seen or heard of Khi Ma Soo for a number of years now.

  Devoy sought solace in other p-vids, compensation in ultranet VR sessions. One evening after work he sat at his home comp, affixed interface disks to his temples, and sank himself into the ultranet; his destination a VR brothel he had visited before. He shyly made his choice from the women lounging about in the showroom: a gray-skinned Kalian, with entirely black eyes and scandalously devoid of a traditional turban. Kalian prosties and p-actresses were hard to come by. He followed her into a spacious, classy bedroom like something out of a top hotel. The door closed behind him. Standing in the center of the pristine white carpet, the woman smiled at him seductively as she began to undress. “Have you ever had a Kalian woman before, Bran?” she purred.

  “Yes,” he said shyly. “Well…not in the flesh.”

  Sometimes these VR sex workers were merely constructs, but this brothel prided itself on having real live people on the other side of its avatars, themselves experiencing physical sensations. Problem with that was, maybe the woman on the other side of this Kalian avatar wasn’t a Kalian. Or young. Or even a woman. Then again, Devoy himself was using an avatar in the likeness of a popular young film star. Whatever the case, he could already smell the naturally spicy musk of her ash-colored flesh.

  Meanwhile, on a bedside table stood a virtual bottle of his favorite bourbon. Resting beside it was a new bestselling novel from an author he liked. Soft blue outlines around these advertisements sought to draw his eye to them. A trailer for a new movie played on a VT screen covering most of one wall, but thankfully the volume was low and muted the explosions.

  Devoy looked from the VT back to the woman and saw that she was unmoving, staring at him without blinking, as if frozen in the process of lifting one leg out of her panties. Balanced on one foot.

  “Ah, hello?” Devoy said to her. A glitch?

  He heard the room’s door unlock and slide open behind him and he whirled toward it, startled. He hadn’t ordered a ménage à trois.

  “Forgive the intrusion, Mr. Devoy,” said the person who stepped into the sumptuous room. The door panel slid shut again after him. This individual wore the expensive five-piece suit of a business executive, his hands buried in his jacket pockets, but his head was nothing more than an oval of red metal without features. Devoy might have taken it for a mask or a close-fitting helmet, but the oval levitated a few inches above the person’s shirt collar. Devoy saw his avatar’s face reflected in its surface. The intruder’s voice sounded like a hypnotized man speaking in an echoy tomb.

  “Did you hack into here?” Devoy demanded, hearing a quiver in his own voice. Was he going to be virtually robbed? It happened.

  “You have been looking for Khi Ma Soo,” the stranger stated.

  Devoy didn’t need to ask how this person could know that. His fingerprints would be all over the net. “Why do you ask?” he said, though the stranger hadn’t phrased his statement as a question.

  “We thought you might car
e to know that you can be taken to her.”

  Might care to know? Just as much as he might care to win the Punktown lottery and never have to report to his dreary job again. “Where is she?” he asked dubiously.

  “At an erotic establishment, a club if you will, that goes by the name of Painfreak—newly arrived in this city,” the stranger replied in his uninflected voice.

  “Does Khi Ma Soo work there?”

  A tick of hesitation. “One might say that.”

  “Well…that would be great, if it’s really true. So where is this place?”

  “Painfreak is presently situated in the old Milagroso Products warehouse, in the Battery.”

  Devoy knew the Battery was an area just off Industrial Square. Like Punktown’s more dangerous ghetto Warehouse Way, since the great economic crisis of thirty-plus years ago the Battery’s manufacturing plants and warehouses had been mostly shut down or converted into apartments. “What does it cost to get in?” he asked. This was one hell of an invasive advertisement. He’d be outraged if not for Khi Ma Soo, but he was still wary as to whether what was being promised were true.

  “Money is not accepted for admittance,” said the stranger with the hovering head. “Guests are admitted only by referral. I am offering you that referral.”

  “Yeah?” Devoy said, suspicious. What was the catch? He supposed this only meant there was no door charge, but that the entertainments within were individually costly. “Why?”