Everyone's Favorite Girl

by Steph Sweeney

  In that way, James was now my best friend.

  I wanted to show him some sign of sympathy, forgiveness, but Mr. Shriver was watching.

  Instead, I reached into his pants. I’d absorbed enough of the Libido Drug from Flora that with a single grazing of fingertips his dick went from limp to fully erect in seconds.

  I squeezed it, whispering, “Go fuck her. She wants you to. She loves you.”

  He shook his head. I squeezed harder.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Patton.

  I had to undress him myself. This part of the show turned into a comedy routine to the audience. For some reason, they found it hilarious, especially when Patton nearly tripped on his own pants.

  Mr. Shriver and the president had taken their seats again. They watched intently.

  I pulled Patton to the bed by his cock, but then I stepped around him and pushed him toward Flora. She had three fingers inside herself and she was thrusting her pelvis at him, moaning softly.

  “Do it,” I said, no longer whispering.

  “I—I can’t.”

  “You have to. When you have to do something, you do it. Just hop on. The rest will take care of itself.”

  I was cold to him. I feigned irritation, impatience. In his worst moment, I couldn’t be there for him because my life depended on it.

  Probably his, too.

  Patton looked down at Flora.

  From all around the room came random, hushed expressions of awe and admiration, like the voices of ghosts. These men who led, represented, and were known by millions all buckled at the sight of Flora. Any one of them, including the president, would do whatever Mr. Shriver asked while inside her.

  I took hold of one of Flora’s feet and felt an instant surge of pleasure. Pulling her leg straight, I brought her foot up and brushed it against his stomach. He took hold of the foot, raised it higher, Flora’s leg now near vertical, and he stared down at the base of it.

  I can’t say I wasn’t struck with insane jealousy. I was. That’s how I knew my feelings for Patton hadn’t gone anywhere—except behind a big brick wall like a wimpy kid hiding from bullies. Once he had his hands on her, he couldn’t stop. No one could.

  He started by kissing the bottom of her foot. Then her ankle. Then up her leg—or down, as her position dictated. Flora moaned louder with each kiss. It was like watching a collision in slow motion. I could tell she would reach orgasm the moment his lips touched her vagina.

  When he passed her knee, I had to turn away.

  Where I turned happened to be towards the bartender, who’d somehow fought his way to the front of the crowd. Knees bent, arms out, as if singly holding back the entire crowd, he looked like he was ready to pounce on her.

  The sight of him gave me an idea, a way this could all work out without Patton having to rape his own student.

  Turning back to them, I found Patton kissing Flora’s inner thigh, now using his tongue and inches away from her labia.

  I ran my hand between Flora’s legs, over the hand she was using to masturbate, pushed my fingers between hers, and even managed to slip two inside her. With sheer determination, I retracted my wet fingers and stuck them in Patton’s mouth.

  Patton clamped down on them immediately with his lips, running his tongue over them so expertly I facetiously wondered if he’d ever sucked a dick.

  I backed away from the bed, and Patton came with me, reaching out and yanking me to him and kissing me with my fingers still in his mouth. Pulling my hand from between our faces, I reached down and used Flora’s wetness to lubricate the head of his cock.

  Then he slammed me to the floor.

  I thought I was in for the pounding of a lifetime, but Patton just sort of fell on top of me, wrapping his big arms around my body, pinning my arms to my chest. He rested his chin on my shoulder and skillfully entered me without the guidance of his hand or mine. Not that it was a complicated task. He was rock-hard and I was dripping wet. You don’t need a key when the door is wide open.

  “I have to tell you something,” Patton whispered.

  It jolted me. We both only had a mild dose of the Libido Drug, but even I, with a much higher tolerance for the chemical, didn’t know if I could concentrate to talk at this point.

  And Mr. Shriver was only ten feet away.

  “Shut up and fuck me,” I breathed.

  “It’s about Brian. I have to tell—”

  I didn’t hear the rest because Mr. Shriver interjected with, “No, no, on the bed you two!” Then, at normal volume, to the president, “I have a clumsy staff.”

  Neither of us moved. Patton continued to fuck me slowly, in and out, in a savory sort of way. I didn’t want him to stop.

  A shadow passed over me and I heard footsteps near my head.

  It was the bartender. By the time I looked over, he had his pants down and was crawling atop Flora.

  Mr. Shriver threw a fit, cursing and shouting and ordering the bartender’s removal from the party.

  James stepped up and dragged the bartender to the floor, then got down on one knee and delivered punches to the man’s head until he fell unconscious.

  A short burst of applause rose and fell, not gaining enough traction to spread across the room. Everyone was still focused on Flora. A few eyes might occasionally steal a glance at Patton and me, but the suspense of who would deflower Flora held everyone’s attention as though this event would decide the fate of the world.

  “Mr. Shriver, if you would do me the honor,” said the president, speaking at speech-giving volume, “I would love to give the girl a try.”

  I closed my eyes and listened carefully for Mr. Shriver’s response over Patton’s breathing, Flora’s orgasmic cries, and the panting of the crowd.

  “Oh, what the fuck?” he finally said. “This whole show is a bust anyway.”

  “There’s no end to your hospitality, sir,” the president said.

  He stood and began to remove his tie, and this time everyone in the crowd cheered. He turned to address them, but I don’t know what he said.

  All I heard was what Patton said.

  “Brian cloned you.”

  When Patton came, we both stood awkwardly, Patton crouching to grab up his clothes, and moved away from the circle. We weren’t part of the show anymore. Mr. Shriver sat proudly, watching the president endorse his top-selling product.

  Patton and I went to the unmanned bar, where I popped the cap on two bottles of beer.

  “What the fuck do you mean he cloned me?”

  Patton took a breath. He seemed relieved already. How long had he known?

  “Remember when Sean brought you here?”

  “Yeah, I woke up strapped to a table, naked.”

  “While you were unconscious, Brian took DNA samples. He started growing a clone of you the day you got here.”

  “Why?”

  “For the new Favorite Girl.” The one Flora talked about, the one Patton hadn’t found yet. “That’s why I was so upset when you killed Brian. Not because he was my brother—because he wouldn’t tell me where he keeps you…your clone. I’ve searched this building up and down, but I can’t find her. Now I’m confined to Level D, and I don’t even know if someone’s keeping her alive.”

  Another me, floating in a jar.

  Patton looked utterly exhausted. He hadn’t even buttoned up his shirt.

  I hesitated to ask what was on my mind, but there was a dead stillness in the air, and I didn’t know when I’d be seeing Patton again.

  “What’s the new Favorite Girl?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Remember the deal we struck at the last party? With the pharmaceutical company?”

  It took me a moment to recall.

  “Brian
invented some kind of pain killer, right?”

  “Not just any pain killer,” Patton said. “This one turns your pain into pleasure.”

  “What’s her name?”

  I could have guessed in three chances.

  “Torture Girl,” Patton said.

  “Lie down, please,” he said.

  Now would be the time to run, but I couldn’t do it. Kate’s voice kept reverberating: There’s no way out. Make them want to keep you alive.

  I obeyed, returning to my original position, only I put my arms at my sides, praying he wouldn’t tie me up again.

  “Spread your legs, please.”

  He came around the foot of the table to the counter. My heart began to race as his hand glided over the surgical instruments to open a drawer next to the small cart. He pulled out a box of surgical gloves.

  “Are you going to hurt me?” I asked.

  “Not if you behave,” he replied without turning.

  I closed my eyes, drew my legs up, and spread them. A moment later I felt his forearm press against my thighs, gripping one with his latex-wrapped hand.

  He inspected me. Why, I didn’t know. Maybe he planned to have sex with me and wanted to make sure I didn’t have any diseases. Or a basic cavity search. Either way, my arousal intensified and I began to breathe deeply.

  Brian giggled. “You’re drugged, aren’t you? Kate thinks she’s so crafty.”

  He applied pressure, rubbing slowly, and I felt the birth and rapid growth of an orgasm. I slipped my hand between my legs and pressed my palm on the two fingers he was using to massage me.

  Before I climaxed, he jerked his hand away and said, “You’re quite the marvel, Melissa. A natural beauty. I think he’ll love everything about you.”

  “Who?”

  Suddenly he was next to me, the bulge in his pants a foot from my face.

  Another giggle. Brian crouched down so that we were face to face. He was smiling, and I got lost in those strange, cosmic eyes. “I bet you like to be on top,” he said, and after a thought, “but only for so long. Yes, at some point you want to be slung down on the bed and drilled. Taken over. Rendered into a flower, producing nectar for a bee.”

  I watched his mouth moving, barely comprehending his words, but when I rolled over to kiss him he grabbed a handful of my hair and jerked my head down. “If only you were a virgin,” he said.

  I felt pleasure instead of pain, and I screamed, drowning out Brian’s childlike laughter.

  I got wasted at the bar, becoming so belligerent that Patton finally got up and walked away. I was mad at him for not telling me sooner, solaced by the truth behind his reaction when I killed his brother, and stumbling through a surreal world in my mind, searching for a test tube replica of myself.

  I kept replaying my memory of waking up in this building over and over in my head, trying to recall if I felt pain from a needle recently plunged into my vein. Then I drew out the Level B floor plan and tried to guess where Brian might have some secret room or closet. A bookshelf that slid aside to reveal a door, perhaps? Or maybe my clone was sitting conspicuously on a countertop in some lab Patton wasn’t allowed to access.

  The party dwindled down to nothing. I was so drunk I didn’t even notice how strange it was. A big part of me believed Mr. Shriver was going to capture these government officials the same way he’d captured all those businessmen and local politicians.

  But he didn’t. He let them walk right out the door.

  The last guest to leave was the president and his team of Secret Service agents. James put on surgical gloves and turned off Flora’s device while the agents pulled their boss kicking and flailing and cursing away from her.

  He tried to fight them until Mr. Shriver commanded him to sit down and drink a glass of water. The president obeyed, and I could tell the Secret Service agents smelled something fishy in the air. They, I determined, were not drugged, probably because their jobs demanded that they not partake in Mr. Shriver’s expensive wine, champagne, and liquor.

  I wondered if that was the bartender’s duty for the evening: drug each guest individually as they ordered drinks. Good thing the beer wasn’t spiked with Love Drug, since I became my own bartender when he was removed.

  Then again, I knew Mr. Shriver to be more meticulous than that. More likely, he’d passed around glasses of champagne to every guest and kicked the party off with a toast—one worded just the right way, to secure their loyalty, if only for the evening.

  When the president was gone, Mr. Shriver came over to me. By then I was resting my head on the bar, trying to decide whether or not I was going to puke.

  “It’s time for the final test,” he said.

  I straightened up slowly, carefully. Nausea’s a bitch.

  “I thought that was the test,” I said.

  He shook his head, grinning, and pointed towards the bed, where Patton was helping Flora get dressed, fighting off her attempts to kiss and grope him. He’d gotten a pair of surgical gloves from James.

  “I want you to kill one of them,” Mr. Shriver said. “You can have the other, but one must die—at your hand. Do that, and we’ll go to my office to talk things over.”

  He handed me Sean’s knife. Then he went around the bar and poured himself a glass of brandy.

  I didn’t cry. I was stone cold. Mr. Shriver led me down a hallway I’d never been in before to a large office lined with bookshelves and mahogany trim. It had its own bar, a pool table, a small gym in the corner, three big flat screen TVs on the wall above the door, so that when he sat at his enormous flat-top desk he could watch security camera footage or baseball or porn or whatever he used to entertain himself.

  He offered me a seat in front of his desk and handed me a box of tissues. My hands were sticky with blood.

  “Melissa Reed,” he announced as he sat down opposite me. “This feels like a job interview, doesn’t it?”

  “It does.”

  “Well, Melissa, we accomplished a lot tonight. Our compounds are now legally sanctioned and will pass through customs without a hitch. We can ship to Russia, Iran, China—anywhere. Everywhere, to be precise. Wars will be waged this year without a single shot fired. It’s a more peaceful chemical warfare, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You saw what happened here, in Indianapolis.”

  “Softer blow than a nuke, no? Tell me, Melissa, are you ready to take on the role of production manager?”

  “I’m sure I’ll need training. But yes.”

  He shook his head. “It’s a simple job. The Favorite Girls have been well-trained. All you have to do is learn what they’re doing and make sure they keep doing it right.”

  “If it’s so simple, why’d you go through all this trouble to put me there? Why not just promote someone else? Hell, Liu could do that job.”

  “We’re talking about bulk shipments of our most sensitive materials. Gallons upon gallons of Love and Libido. I can’t trust just anyone.”

  “There’s still gotta be more to it than that.”

  “Actually,” Mr. Shriver said, “that’s where I need your help.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I want you for your ideas, Melissa. As my stone-cold enemy, you gave me ideas that strengthened the company’s security ten-fold. That’s why I’m giving you this.”

  He produced from his pocket what looked like a key card.

  I snatched it up like a Christmas present and held it up to my face.

  “That card bypasses any security panel Levels A through D.”

  I looked at him. “You mean I have full access to the building.”

  “Except Level E, of course.”

  “Of course,” I repeated.

  He leaned back in his chair, tapped the desktop with his thumb.
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  Where would I go first? Level D to spend the night with Patton? Level A to snatch up Flora and dive off the loading dock? This was unreal. In just a few hours I went from prisoner to manager, and all of it predicated on a simple illusion.

  Judy’s brilliance was endless.

  I stood.

  “Where you going?”

  “Level B,” I said. “To the lab.”

  “May I ask why?”

  Backing away from the desk, I said, “I don’t know yet. It just feels right.”

  Mr. Shriver seemed pleased with himself. Like he’d raised a kid to be proud of.

  “Be sure to get some sleep,” he said. “I need you sharp as a whip at eight a.m. Tomorrow is the big day. With your training complete, we will now begin production. Sean’s guards will be waiting for you. They’re yours now, by the way.”

  That stopped me. “What do you mean they’re mine? Who?”

  “Sean’s guards—I can’t remember their damn names. Sean has been relieved of his management and security duties, and before you go asking, let’s just leave it at this: Sean has proven himself unfit for leadership. It’s not permanent, and that’s all I have to say on the matter.”

  I nodded, winked at him, and started across the room.

  “One question, before you go.” I turned at the door and waited. Mr. Shriver interlocked his fingers contemplatively. “Why did you pick Flora?”

  I shrugged. “Patton has a job to do. Floras are a dime a dozen around here.”

  “Very well,” Mr. Shriver said.

  I was halfway out the door when I decided to take a shot at something.

  “You said I get to keep the one I don’t kill.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t want Patton. Can I have the next Flora in line?”