The Last Fembot

by KT McColl

  "Yeah," I said. "I've looked."

  The balding man tapped his nose with his forefinger, whatever that meant.

  "Who's your mistress?" I asked, figuring any information was better than none.

  He told me, his chest puffing with pride, but I didn't recognize the name. He seemed disappointed at my lack of response. "I'm new here," I said in explanation.

  "I started as a fucktoy and later as breed stock," he said without the slightest hint of embarrassment, "but time's winged chariot soon overruns the ardor of all, not that you have to worry about that quite yet." He winked at me. "But still, from time to time, Sister revisits old passions. For the most part, I now serve largely as an advisor."

  "What do you advise?"

  The question seemed to surprise him. "Household matters," he said. "Sometimes matters of a political nature."

  "I see."

  "Sister and I are more friends than anything else."

  "That's nice," I said. "To be a friend and not a peon. I notice that you don't wear a collar. Are you free to leave if you wished?"

  His brow furrowed. "Leave? And go where?"

  "I don't know."

  "Beyond the city? Lowville?" he asked, laughing.

  "That's where I'm from," I said, prickling at his tone.

  He looked at me with sympathy. "You're lucky to be here then."

  "I'm still deciding."

  He laughed. "And I pegged you as humorless."

  Aisha emerged, passed me a package, and took my lead without a word. I fell in step behind her, with Goyen trailing behind.

  It was the saddest parade ever.

  We made some more stops, and I was soon carrying several packages as I trailed carefully behind my mistress.

  Goyen seemed more relaxed than at the beginning of our outing, occasionally speaking a few words to passing Lozen and no longer scrutinizing me. Aisha made it a challenge, stopping suddenly, turning on a dime, all in an effort to trip me up. So far, I hadn't faltered. At one point, Goyen nodded her approval and I tamped down any response to this faint praise.

  An ancient yellow school bus drove by, emitting a cloud of thick gray smoke. I hadn't seen a school bus in decades. As it slowed and idled, waiting for a Sister and her freeman to cross the street, I caught a glimpse of Abigail in one of the windows. My step faltered. I thought that I must have been mistaken, but then she turned to me, perhaps having caught sight of me as well in her peripheral vision. Her mouth opened briefly in surprise.

  Her hand pressed against the window and I could see her lips moving. Of course, I could hear nothing. By the time I got over my surprise and started to raise my hand, the bus lurched off in a plume of diesel smoke.

  So now she knew that we were both captives. I didn't know how that made me feel. Crappy, certainly. Diminished too, maybe.

  I bowed my head and noticed that the lead hung down from my collar and the end lay on the ground. I'd managed to pull it from Aisha's hand as I'd slowed.

  Shit.

  I looked up. Aisha stared at me without expression. Beyond her, I noticed a few Sisters looking on with interest. Their freemen shared their expression, with perhaps a little schadenfreude thrown in.

  "Take care of him," said Aisha to Goyen. "Ensure that he is properly disciplined for this. And for the love of Mother, make sure he is better prepared next time."

  With that, she walked away.

  Goyen's anger was evident in the hardness of her eyes. I'd embarrassed her as much as Aisha, perhaps more so. She unclipped the lead from my collar. "I warned you."

  "May I borrow one of your freemen?" she asked one of the Sisters who was watching.

  "Certainly."

  Goyen instructed me to hand over the packages before stepping behind me. "Hands behind your back."

  I complied, only to have my wrists cuffed.

  She stepped in front and unfastened my pants, pushing them down to my ankles. Before I could respond, her hand was in my shorts, clipping the lead to my cage. I felt my face redden with the humiliation of it. Some of the Sisters tittered. Their men merely watched. I moved to step out of my pants.

  "No," she barked. "Leave them."

  With a painful jerk of the lead, she had me moving.

  I was deposited unceremoniously in my cell.

  It had been a long walk -- or rather, shuffle. I lost count of how many times I'd fallen, tripping over my pants, unable to protect myself with my wrists fastened behind my back. Our passage through the city was greeted with horror and laughter, which only earned me sharper tugs on the lead. Goyen spared nothing in giving expression to Sister's displeasure and her own resentment at being tethered to the likes of me.

  My balls were swollen and painful and I would gladly have given the left one if it meant being rid of the device. I lay on the bed, legs spread, trying and failing to will the throbbing pain away.

  I was bleeding on the sheets from the abrasions on my face, shoulders, and legs, but I didn't care. I lay there and thought of Rabbit, about how he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. At the time, I'd thought about how reckless he'd been. Now I wasn't so sure. That end seemed infinitely preferable to the situation I now found myself in.

  Even if I ever wanted to be one, I'd never be a freeman. I knew that for certain now. I'd never even be offered the illusion of freedom. Aisha wouldn't allow it.

  I gave myself over to thoughts of revenge, if only because it took my attention away from other pain. It was for naught on both counts -- the pain continued unabated, and there was no vengeance to be had. As tempted as I was to make Aisha's life a misery, I knew that she could make mine orders of magnitude worse and could do the same to Abigail. I had no leverage. Even if I behaved like the model freeman, obsequious and meek, Aisha would find something wanting. She would see to it that what little pleasure I'd enjoyed in my life would never be repeated.

  If there was one mercy in all of this, at least Abigail hadn't seen the latest chapter in my humiliation. That would have been too much. It was bad enough that she'd been inexorably marked by the likes of me, worse to see me as the pathetic creature she'd given it all up for...

  It had been a Saturday, typically a light day of work. It was also the day on which Abigail often left the city to visit the farm.

  I'd hung around the stable where the horses were kept, knowing that Abigail would eventually find her way there to look in on her foal. Occasionally one of the other hands would see me loitering around and tell me to do something useful. I'd perform my duties quickly, more often than not half-assed, and return to the stable.

  It was, in retrospect, pretty pathetic.

  I hadn't been addicted to anything until that point, but the feelings Abigail had introduced into my life... well... they had grown from an alarming infatuation to an all-encompassing need. I would think of her endlessly, relive each exciting and dangerous moment we'd spent together and think of where we might go from the places we'd already been. The situation itself was unprecedented; a Sister and a Lowville farmhand had little business even talking to one another, let alone doing the things we were doing. And because it was impossible and was happening nonetheless, I didn't really bother thinking about the consequences. On the one hand, I was smitten, on the other, I was half-crazed with a kind of intense hunger I'd never felt before. If I'd had more experience, if I'd been wiser and less selfish, then I might have realized that there would be consequences to sitting at the table Abigail had set.

  By the end of the workday, most of the others had gone home, and I was disconsolate. Abigail hadn't appeared, and the first tendrils of bitter disappointment wound themselves around my heart.

  "Jude!"

  Hearing my name brought an immediate flood of relief.

  Seeing her again robbed me of speech. I stared at her as she hurried to me, bewitched by her beauty and bemused that she would let the likes of me partake of it so intimately. On that day, backlit by the setting sun and wearing her usual white dress, I could clearly see the contours of he
r long legs through the fabric as she closed the distance between us.

  She smiled and I suspected that she knew the effect she had on me. It emboldened her even as it paralyzed me. She looked around to ensure that we were unobserved, then took my hand and pulled me into the barn. She paused at the stall in which her colt whinnied. With her pale hand stoking its muzzle, she whispered words I could barely hear. With a parting gift of a carrot, she moved to the stairs that led up to the hayloft. I watched for a moment as she climbed to our secret place, her dress swaying as she climbed.

  "Hey, handsome," she said when I finally joined her.

  I'd never been called that before and had no reason to think of myself in that way. I know I blushed. "You're beautiful," I stammered.

  And she was. Reclined on a pile of loose hay, illuminated by dusty sunbeams from a small window behind her, she looked absolutely beguiling.

  I'd convinced myself that everything we had ever done -- every exciting, arousing, sinful thing -- had been leading to an inevitable moment. There was a certain momentum to our meetings, and I couldn't help but to be swept up by it, believing that the outlines of my desire were shared by her.

  Lying down next to her, my hand falling to the softness of her belly, I lowered my face to hers and brushed her lips with mine. We kissed and let our hands roam shamelessly over each other's bodies, exploring freely now that we had journeyed these paths before.

  I watched her closely as my hand slid up her torso to her breast. So beautifully soft. With nervous, clumsy fingers, I started unbuttoning the bodice. She pushed my hand away after a moment to complete the task herself.

  I slipped my hand inside and gently stroked her, worried that my calluses would feel uncomfortable against the silken smoothness of her skin. She smiled and closed her eyes, and I soon felt the pebbled hardness of her nipple against my palm. Lowering my head, I took first one and then the other into my mouth, sucking gently, testing it and her reactions as I trapped the flesh gently between my teeth while stroked it with my tongue. It was enough to make her writhe beneath me and make sounds I'd only ever heard from her.

  Her hand alit on my thigh and then slowly, tantalizingly traveled up. "Oh," she whispered when she discovered the extent of my arousal. I'd ceased to be as embarrassed by it as I had been the first time. That time, to my mortification, she'd investigated it closely, seemingly surprised at the effect she had on me. As though it could have been anything else. With an irrepressible giddiness at having discovered something previously unknown, she tested my reactions to various sensations. It's big, she'd said. She seemed guided by pure curiosity, and the notion that this might be a sin never seemed to cross her mind. If it did, it was nothing she ever spoke of. For my part, any notion of sin was banished by a pleasure I hadn't previously known. Since that first time, she regarded my obvious arousal as a compliment of sorts and I didn't dare tell her that it often took a lot less than her touch to get me there.

  Before her explorations could go too far, I eased away from her and slid down her body. She gave a little sigh of disappointment. Kneeling between her legs, I lifted the hem of her dress and discovered with some surprise that she wore nothing beneath it.

  She grinned at me knowingly.

  She'd planned this all along, I thought with wonder.

  I showered light kisses on the periphery of her sex, enjoying how she mewled and squirmed beneath me. Gradually her legs opened to me.

  I wanted to taste her. She'd blessed all of my other senses but not that one. I bent over her and allowed my tongue to touch her fluted opening. She stilled immediately, and I could tell that I'd surprised her with a new sensation. Not bad for an inexperienced farmhand, I thought. My tongue drew wetly through her labia and landed on the small pearl at its apex. She gasped and her hands found my head, keeping it firmly in place.

  Beautiful. She was beautiful. This was beautiful. There was a certain poetry to it, her reactions to my actions. The give and take. The spiraling of sensation.

  I took the opportunity to taste her at my leisure. We were alone save for the horses beneath us, the occasional snort and stomp of hooves reminding us that they were there. I licked and teased, attuned to her reactions, her breathy moans letting me know what she liked. I inserted a finger and explored her secret channel, reveling in its warmth and tightness, finding a spot that made her gasp and whisper my name. I liked it. Liked the warmth of her and the slippery, welcoming texture of her folds. Emboldened by that single, soft syllable, I intensified my efforts until she thrashed her release between me and the bed of hay on which she lay.

  I was glad I'd made her come. Glad that she hadn't denied me that pleasure.

  After she'd sighed her last sigh, aglow with a sheen of perspiration, I rose up from the cradle of her legs and grasped her wrists on either side of her head.

  "What have you done to me?" she asked. "You've made me positively wanton."

  I let go of her and lowered myself to her for a kiss. My cock brushed against the heat that my mouth had stoked.

  "Don't you dare," she whispered.

  It sounded like a challenge.

  I pressed myself against her, my cock meeting the glorious warmth of her sex. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her hands rested on my shoulders, her nails biting into my flesh. I closed my eyes to better concentrate on the sensation as I submerged myself in one swift, inexorable movement.

  This was bliss, I thought. I'd imagined it a million times, but nothing came close to the reality. I knew it would be short-lived and I resolved to immerse myself in it completely.

  Her muscles clenched around me and she bucked. I was delirious with it. I thrust and she met me as best she could, or so I thought. We'd get better, I told myself. I'd heard that the first time was always a little clumsy.

  Her fingernails scratched my back, but I hardly noticed. My pulse roared in my ears. I felt dizzy, spurred on by an all-consuming hunger.

  "Stop."

  I told myself I hadn't heard.

  "Stop! Please, Jude!"

  My being thrummed with a bliss I hadn't known was possible. I was close... so close. I could feel it building.

  She clenched around me and my eruption was upon me before I could fully register it.

  I pressed into her as spasm after spasm rocked me.

  It was a sob that brought me back to the moment.

  I looked at Abigail. Her head was turned to the side, shrouded by her hair that had come loose. She lay quiet, barely breathing. Beneath the hair, I saw a tear as it traversed her cheek.

  "I'm sorry," I said, wiping the tear away, not yet fully comprehending what I had done.

  She said nothing.

  In a shaft of sunlight that speared from between the barn boards, I saw the glistening of my seed between her legs.

  Then I understood.

  In that moment, I'd destroyed the single thing in my life worth living for.

  Sol had once used an expression -- the dark night of the soul. I'd forgotten the context, but the phrase had stuck with me. And though I hadn't known what it meant or where it came from, it seemed to me that I was in it now.

  I ached and the worst of it wasn't physical. I'd been humiliated in the city, but the true ache was the realization that it was probably less than I deserved. I might have suffered atonement at the hands of the Sorority, but it was more than the physical marks that lasted a lifetime. This night I truly understood it.

  As ye sow, so shall ye reap. That one came from the Sisters, and I understood it now too. I'd sown and I was certainly reaping it.

  The green-eyed Lozen surprised me by entering my cell in the middle of the night. I'd been dozing as much as my injuries allowed and moved at the sound of the door, pulling the scabs from my skin where they'd dried to the sheets.

  I was naked, I realized belatedly, my legs spread as my swollen balls tolerated no pressure.

  She noticed the contraption between my legs and shook her head, frowning. It was too late
for modesty, so I just lay back.

  It was then that I noticed that her face was uncovered. Again, I was struck by her beauty.

  "I heard what happened in the city," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "I took a chance in coming to you. Here, I've brought you some painkillers and lotion that should help with the swelling. There's some disinfectant for the cuts."

  "It was you who left me the note."

  She nodded.

  "It said that I wasn't alone. What does that mean?"

  "It means..." She paused. "I don't know how much I can tell you."

  "Give me something!"

  "The city is a suspicious place these days. After tonight, I may not be able to help you for a while. Just remember that we're working on getting you out of here."

  "We? Who's we?"

  "Likeminded... individuals," she said. "Your friends. The less you know, the better. Just remember that you're not alone and there are those who recognize how perverted this world has become. Trust no one. They haven't found Jessie, but that doesn't mean they won't incriminate you by other means."

  "Jessie? Do you know if she's okay?"

  She looked away and nodded. My heart soared, propelled by a tiny thermal of hope.

  "Do you know for certain? Have you talked to her?"

  "Yes, but I really have to go now."

  I wanted to ask her any number of questions, but she had already opened the door. "What's your name?" I asked.

  She paused and then said, "Lexie."

  She slipped out and locked the door before I could thank her.

  Chapter 15

  I finished my work out early. I'd recovered from the more serious of my injuries but was finding it hard to muster the energy for much of anything. I recognized the weight of resignation despite Lexie's vague promises.

  The atmosphere in the exercise yard was off somehow today. Normally the younger freemen exercised with something approaching dedication, but today there was more nervous horseplay than sweat. Eli, in particular, strutted around with a loose-limbed cockiness that suggested that he owned the place. He bore the teasing and nudges of the other freemen with grinning indulgence while studiously ignoring me.