“Jesus Christ, Sam!” Richard shouted from the open doorway. “Drop the fucking cat and run! Now!”
I ran, but I didn’t drop the cat. I named her Tesla.
She wasn’t young. She wasn’t old. She lived for a long, and seemingly happy, time with us. Still, her death—from old age by all appearances—took us all by surprise. We buried her in what used to be the rainforest dome. Everyone cried. We hadn’t seen a cat, a dog, or another person except Others outside the glass in a long, long time.
After, we opened the jars of wine we’d put up with grapes from an unusually good crop. We’d been saving it for a special occasion, and this seemed as good a one as any.
We drank until dawn. In the middle of it, just for a fleeting few minutes, I was happy. Content to sit in the kitchen and drink homemade wine, and reminisce about a cat.
“Have you thought anymore about what Richard talked to you about? About Michael?” Christina asked.
Everyone else had gone to bed. We were alone in the kitchen. A candle burned between us on the table. I was drunk. Christina blurred when I looked at her.
I closed my eyes, resting my head on the back of the hard metal chair. “Yes. I think about it all the time. About him, all the time.”
“You love him.”
I nodded, without opening my eyes. “Yes. I do.”
“You know, he loved you too.”
A hot surge of anger flared in my chest. Opening my eyes, I found my eyes still blurred and my tongue quick. “You don’t know anything about him. About us!”
“Look. It was no secret I had a crush on Michael. He was smart, gorgeous and funny. Who wouldn’t be attracted to that? But he loved you. I admit it. I flirted with him. A little. Just enough, you know, to know maybe he thought I was cute too. I didn’t mean any harm, and he wouldn’t have any of it. All he talked about was you. He loved you.”
“Stop talking about him like he’s gone! You want me to do this thing, but you’re talking about him like he’s not even here!”
“He’d want this, Sam. He’d want to be a part of something bigger than just keeping him alive because you’re too chicken-shit to end his suffering.”
I stood up, knocking my chair over. It clanged on the tiles, bouncing off my shin so hard it would make a mark I would not find until later. “You don’t know what he’d want!”
This time, it was tears blurring my eyes as I ran away.
Alone in my apartment, I cried on my cot.
I had no pictures there to remind me of Michael—I hadn’t realized when I packed that I would need them—but he was all I thought about. His smile was becoming hazy in my memory. Did it tilt to the left or right? Were his eyes more sky blue or robin’s egg? The thing in the cage in the basement was Michael now. I’d come to accept it, and thought of him now like that— restrained, tested, drugged, bathed, fed, and always growling, always mindless, always staring with those vacant eyes.
What would Michael want? Would he have wanted to be studied the way I finally had allowed? They were gentle, kind, and did nothing to hurt him, but still…would he have wanted to be a lab rat?
Would he want all this to mean something? Would he just want to be dead?
Would he feel me, if I went to him? If he was drugged but aware, still, and unable to hurt me, would my touch reach him in a way nothing else had? Would it be that flash-fire, hot quickening that came over both of us like a fever; sudden, and only cooled when we fucked, the world dwindling away to nothing, every problem I ever had gone when he touched me? I’d never needed a man the way I had Michael. I’d never let down my guard so much, trusted as intensely or loved as fiercely. He’d returned it all and then some.
I owed him. I needed to do what he would want if he were able to tell me. Why didn’t he write that down in those fucking notes he took before he turned into one of them? Why hadn’t he told me what to do? Had he not realized this might be it? The end? No hope of rescue, of a cure, the human race facing extinction.
Days Later
“I’ll do it,” I told them at breakfast.
The Next Day
I let Richard sedate him. I never could bear to watch, and I didn’t then. When Michael was out, in the same kind of aware but immobile twilight sleep used for surgeries, I went to him.
His naked body was thinner than I remembered it, his flesh pale. Still, he was well muscled from days spent pacing his cage, climbing the bars. His arms were powerful, biceps budging, his stomach a washboard of muscle. He hadn’t seemed to miss meat, and physically he appeared to be in the best shape of his life.
I bathed him. Filling a bowl with warm water, using soap and a soft cloth, I washed him. His nipples hardened and his balls lifted into a tight little sack I remembered well. He hadn’t come in a very long time. I didn’t think he masturbated. He didn’t seem to have control over what his body did. I didn’t know if he wanted this, even though his flesh responded to the warm licks of the cloth and my soapy hands. His cock grew long, and thick, its head weeping a single droplet, the way it only did when he hadn’t had sex in days.
It had been so long. Alone in the sphere, Richard a constant temptation. I admit it. I had thought about going to him. It wouldn’t take more than an invitation; he’d made this clear though he was now sharing a bed and apartment with Christina.
But it was Michael I dreamt of when I was alone at night, touching myself.
My body responded. Still in my Biosphere blue coveralls, my nipples tingled and lifted, my breasts feeling fuller, a surge of heat between my thighs as I stroked his cock.
He lay so still. Like he was sleeping. His eyes were closed. I was glad. I didn’t know if I could look into them and go through with it, even though my body wanted to. I didn’t have to touch myself to know my cunt was wet and swollen, ready for the cock that Michael now pushed up at me, hips lifting from the bed as he strained against the restraints that bound him. I wanted so badly to untie him, to have him touch me again. For him to make everything the way it used to be. But I knew I couldn’t do that.
I wanted him to tell me this was okay, but all I had to go on was what his body said. And it said, yes, yes, yes.
The sound of my zipper was loud, stirring Michael from his slumber. He moaned and tossed about, but calmed when I lay my naked body alongside his and put my head on his chest. Tears wet his stomach and thighs as I took him in my mouth and loved him the way I had on a day that now seemed so far away, in a cornfield, under a perfect sun.
I knew how to do it. I knew what he liked. Soon, his hips were lifting off the cot, and my mouth held the taste of his excitement. I closed my eyes, and the world dwindled. Nothing mattered but this place, this moment.
When he was about to come, I stopped, wiping my lips with the back of my hand. Straddling him, I held his cock at the base and teased my slit open with its head. I wanted to come the moment his velvety hot flesh slid over my clitoris.
Inside me, he didn’t last long. I didn’t either. It was like it used to be. It was nothing like it used to be.
After, I cried. Head on Michael’s chest, listening to his heartbeat and the rumble of his stomach, I hoped I carried his child. I hoped this had all meant something, that it mattered. I hope as you read this that you understand why I did it.
Michael
Inside, his heart sings with love, drowned out by his urge to lick her and bite her, even as something primal within responds to the sex. It is good. It eases his need to taste her while inflaming his longing for what he cannot have. If he gets loose, he will kill her unless she kills him first. But he knows she doesn’t have it in her.
Sometimes, he wishes she would put a bullet in his brain. He thinks of the way he’d fucked Christina, lying to Samantha. The way he’d fucked them both sometimes in the same day, and he felt sick. If Sam knew the truth, would she let him die then? He wished he’d told her when he’d had the opportunity. But it was too late now. Too late now. He had let her love a lie, and now he was paying the price.
<
br /> He’d heard them talking about what was going to happen. He heard Doc ask Sam one more time to consider letting the others be inseminated, and her angrily telling Richard they’d have to fuck him just like she was going to do, but not until she was ready to allow it, which might be never. He liked the idea of that, of fucking all the women, even in front of the doc, especially in front of the doc, whose boys couldn’t swim.
I don’t deserve to live, he thinks. He wishes his wife would let him die. But not until she finishes fucking him.
Seven Years Later
The girls played in the dirt of the tomato garden. Laughter filled the air and brought back memories of other times when children used to play outside in the sunshine. But those days are gone and will never return. I’ve accepted this. Some days are good, because of the children. They are happy and healthy, and that’s all that matters now.
Sometimes, I wonder if keeping Michael alive, but in a cage, is the right thing to do. He was a good man when things were different, the father to these precious children now. He doesn’t deserve to die. He deserves better than to be kept like a mindless animal in a zoo. Still, I hope—when I am gone, if he lives on—the children we leave behind will care for him forever and love him as I do.
Outside, zombies still roam, unable to die yet not fully alive.
Inside, we bide our time, and go about our lives, no longer waiting for things to change back to normal.
I don’t know who’s better off.
One Day
We were in the kitchen, making breakfast.
And everything changed.
A man’s voice came through the speaker of the handheld radio Christina had been tinkering with for weeks. “Hello? Is there anybody out there?”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
DEANNA K. DEAVERS is a freelance writer and elementary school substitute teacher living in Beckley, WV. A member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, she primarily writes middle grade and young adult adventure, horror and paranormal fiction. Her short story “Not a Usual Day” was featured in Clubhouse Magazine.
DELILAH DEVLIN writes erotic romance with edgy stories and complex characters. She has published over 120 stories in multiple subgenres with Atria/Strebor, Avon, Berkley, Black Lace, Cleis Press, Ellora’s Cave, Kensington, Kindle, Running Press, Samhain Publishing and Montlake Romance, publishers of her Shattered Souls and Lost Souls. She lives in central Arkansas.
JANICE EIDUS is a novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. Her books include The Last Jewish Virgin and The War of the Rosens. Her work has appeared in Mitzi Szereto’s Wicked: Sexy Tales of Legendary Lovers. She is a writing coach and has won two O. Henry Prizes. She lives in New York City.
A. M. HARTNETT has been writing erotica since 2006 and her work has appeared in more than a dozen anthologies, including Cleis Press’s Sudden Sex, Irresistible and Best Erotic Romance 2013. She graduated from Mount Saint Vincent University with a degree in English. She currently resides in Nova Scotia, Canada.
LAURA HUNTLEY is an author from Sheffield, England. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and has won five competitions. Laura’s first novel, Black Eyed Boy, has been published by Crooked Cat Publishing. She is now working on the sequel and the final book of the trilogy series.
AUGUST KERT resides in Ohio with her husband and four pets. Her first publication Bring Me to Life comes out in summer 2015 from Samhain Publishing.
ASHLEY LISTER is a creative writing lecturer and the author of How to Write Erotic Fiction. He is also the author of the Sweet Temptations trilogy from HarperCollins. His many short stories include “Here There Be Dragons” in Mitzi Szereto’s Thrones of Desire. He lives in the northwest of England.
E. C. MYERS is the author of numerous science fiction and fantasy short stories and three young-adult novels: the Andre Norton Award-winning Fair Coin, Quantam Coin and The Silence of Six. He currently lives in Philadelphia with his wife, son and two cats.
THANA NIVEAU is the author of the British Fantasy Award-nominated From Hell to Eternity. Her stories appear in Mammoth Best New Horror and many publications including Zombie Apocalypse: Endgame; Interzone; Whispers in the Dark; Steampunk Cthulhu; Terror Tales of Wales and Best British Horror. She lives in Bristol, England.
CHANTAL NOORDELOOS was born and raised in the Netherlands and lives in The Hague with her beautiful daughter and wacky husband. She writes mostly in English and her work has been featured in several magazines and anthologies. In 2013 she published her first Steampunk novel and a horror collection.
MARK ONSPAUGH‘s sequel to his first novel The Faceless One (Hydra, Random House) will appear this fall. His novels The Thetis Plague and Kua’Mau: Kaiju Mother of Wrath are available from Severed Press. He has had over fifty short stories published and writes for film and television. He lives in California.
ERIN O’RIORDAN, (erinoriordan.blogspot.com) based in the Great Lakes region of the United States, writes in many subgenres of erotic romance. Her short stories have been published in webzines including Clean Sheets and The Erotic Woman. Her erotic romance novel series begins with Beltane.
SHANE VAUGHAN has been published in Cellar Door, The Useless Degree and Roadside Fiction. He runs the event Stanzas in his hometown of Limerick, Ireland; the theater group Cannibals Not Canadians; the music podcast #KantKopeOrchestra and works for the Munster Literature Centre, where he tweets about words.
ZANDER VYNE‘s (zandervyne.com) literary erotica has appeared in several anthologies, including Mitzi Szereto’s Red Velvet and Absinthe; Thrones of Desire and Darker Edge of Desire. She lives and writes in Chicago with her family and an adopted basenji mutt.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
MITZI SZERETO (mitziszereto.com) is an author and anthology editor of multi-genre fiction and nonfiction. She has her own blog, Errant Ramblings: Mitzi Szereto’s Weblog (mitziszereto. com/blog) and a Web TV channel, Mitzi TV (mitziszereto.com/ tv), which covers the “quirky” side of London. Her books include The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray (a sequel to Oscar Wilde’s classic novel); Darker Edge of Desire: Gothic Tales of Romance and its precursor Red Velvet and Absinthe: Paranormal Erotic Romance; the quirky crime/cozy mystery Normal for Norfolk (The Thelonious T. Bear Chronicles); Thrones of Desire: Erotic Tales of Swords, Mist and Fire; the Jane Austen sex parody Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts; In Sleeping Beauty’s Bed: Erotic Fairy Tales; Getting Even: Revenge Stories; Wicked: Sexy Tales of Legendary Lovers; Dying For It: Tales of Sex and Death; the Erotic Travel Tales anthologies and many other titles as well as short stories. She’s known for having pioneered erotic writing workshops in the United Kingdom and mainland Europe and has lectured in creative writing at several British universities. Her anthology Erotic Travel Tales 2 is the first anthology of erotica to feature a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Mitzi’s next book will be Rotten Peaches (The Thelonious T. Bear Chronicles), the second installment in the series cowritten with her celebrity bear, Teddy Tedaloo. She divides her time between London, England and various locations in the United States, where she occasionally provides safe harbor to lost (and hungry) zombies.
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