He sensed a liquid eruption boiling deep inside him, and he died.
He was staring at the white ceiling.
What am I doing here?
"No sudden moves, please," the voice said. "You wouldn't want to disturb the life-support systems."
Life-support?
Various tubes and IVs snaked out of his body. A tube was in his mouth and running down his aching throat. A respirator?
"Finally awake, I see. You gave us quite a scare, but we think you'll pull through."
He wanted to ask what this was all about, but only a weak croak came out.
"Don't try to talk. That will come later. After we get you out of danger."
Danger?
"You're lucky to be alive, Barney. We've temporarily interrupted the somatic transform process, but your condition remains serious. It appears that someone injected nanoconstructors -- tailored micro-organisms -- into your colon, the theta-null type used for altering body structure and metabolism."
Nanoconstructors? That load Earl shot up my ass . . . it wasn't jism? Oh, shit!
"Weirdest case we've ever seen. When you were brought into the emergency room, you were in the process of being transformed into an alien life-form."
Alien?
"That's right, an ozone breather. Able to process the atmosphere of Gehenna, that extraterrestrial planet the deep-space telescope photographed a couple of years back."
"But -- "
"But, you're in deep doodoo, fellow. Right at this particular moment, you're neither fish nor fowl. You could still breathe Earth-normal air, probably, but you'd have a miserable time of it. Unfortunately, we're unable, with the current state of the art, to reverse what's been done to you, but possibly our people in Exotic Disease Research . . . "
A guinea pig? No thanks.
"So, you're staying here, under quarantine, until the CDC decides otherwise."
Holy Moley! I'm a prisoner in a fuckin' quarantine ward because that fucker, Earl, fucked me and made me into a space alien. I'm really fucked now!
"So, it appears that you'll be our guest for the duration."
The duration? How the fuck do I get out of this joint? Maybe if I . . .
Fortunately, the doctor's clothes fit him reasonably well. Too bad he'd hit him over the head so hard, but he hadn't realized he had superhuman strength. Being a space alien had its advantages, even if trying to breathe the air felt like knives stabbing into his lungs.
What to do now? Can't just stroll out the front entrance of the place and try to disappear in the crowd. A glimpse into a mirror convinced him of that. He didn't even look human any more. Not necessarily ugly, mind you, just strangely exotic. Actually, ruggedly handsome, in a space-alien sort of way.
Out. Had to get out. A quick peek out the door showed the hallway empty of people. Got to get out of the immediate area. Maybe find an unused room to hole up in. Quick!
Damn it! Someone must have seen him. Rapid footsteps echoing down the empty corridor behind him. Run!
Catch an elevator! Over there. No one in that car. Punch a button, any button. Something wrong with the air. Can't breathe!
Why is it stopping? Thirteen? This hospital has no thirteenth floor. The door opens. Punch the buttons. Nothing happens. Stuck here! Getting out. Click. The elevator door closes behind him. Marooned in a long, dark hallway and having trouble breathing.
Over there. What?
A blank steel door. Press the blinking red button on the panel. The door slides aside. Step into a small chamber. The door slides back into place. Trapped inside! There's a loud hissing. Am I being gassed? No, it's getting easier to breathe.
The wall ahead opens up. What? There's light ahead, so bright it hurts. Strange colors, though. It's daylight. This is outdoors! But where? Stunted shrub-like plants with pale orange leaves. Luminous purple sky. It might be another planet!
"Correct," spoke a familiar voice behind him, "it's another planet."
Another planet?
"Congratulations, Barney. You led us on a merry chase, kiddo, but you did finally blunder into the gateway."
"Gateway? Gateway to what? Uh . . . Earl? I believe you have a little explaining to do."
"I'd prefer to let my associate do the explaining."
"Hello, Barney," Sharon said.
"Well, fancy meeting old friends here."
"Not exactly friends," Sharon said. "Earl, here, is head recruiter for the Outmigration Institute. And as for me, well, I'm your intended, your future mate. We've been selected as a matched breeding pair."
"Could you maybe run that by me again?"
Earl chuckled. "Welcome to the newly-opened colonization planet Gehenna. Be fruitful and multiply."
Barney lay behind Sharon, totally immersed in the blissful lassitude that comes after having made long-lasting and satisfying love. Her naked ass was beautiful. It was the finest ass he had ever seen on a woman, and he had seen his share. It didn't in the slightest matter that her skin had a distinct bluish tinge. Or that her sex organs were exotic. His were too, after all. The tip of his penis flared out into a prominent bulbous swelling, matching precisely the contours of the interior of her vaginal vault, and when they coupled they hooked together like earth-type canines in a mad mating frenzy that lasted hours. It was a distinct improvement on what he remembered from his previous existence.
"So, tell me again why Earl had to go through the whole song and dance. Why he didn't just whack me over the head and inject the nanoconstructors intravenously using a standard-issue hypodermic. And, why he had to ass-fuck me to plant the seed."
"Curiosity getting the better of you, my sweet? As you might have guessed by now, we Zhanoi have quite a reputation as practical jokers. It's in our nature to love theater. As for fucking you in the ass, that was strictly for recreational purposes. And, you do have a fine ass . . . and after we go through the seasonal sex change, I might just be tempted to fuck it myself."
A PERFECT LIKENESS
There was a parcel tightly wedged in the mailbox when Bill got home from work. It wasn't all that big, but damn, it was heavy for its size. Priority mail, and insured, too. Very mysterious. He couldn't remember having ordered any merchandise recently.
Bubble wrap and plastic peanuts littered the floor under his kitchen table. And there, up on the shelf above the stereo, there it stood. The contents of the package. A statuette. An five-inch tall finely detailed rendering of a nude woman. A very plump nude woman. And it was solid metal, shiny, silvery metal. Silver? Nah, it couldn't be.
It was. A friend of his who worked at a jeweler's shop verified it. Solid sterling silver. Four pounds of silver, worth something like $800 melted down. But Bill wouldn't be selling the silver statuette any time soon. It was just too strange. Too fascinating. The exquisitely rendered details. The erect nipples. Even the genital area, anatomically correct right down to . . . lust-engorged labia, the clitoris, and the vaginal opening itself. The jutting, pear-shaped buttocks, the inviting valley between them, and the enticingly puckered little anus. It was a classically voluptuous body -- quite a fat body by modern standards -- rendered en miniature, in a precious metal. And the facial features reminded him of someone he used to know. Someone he hadn't thought about for years. Someone he would have preferred to forget.
Brenda. Big-butt Brenda. His girlfriend for those two unforgettable months back when he was a sophomore at East Hampton U. She was the hottest, lustiest woman he had ever taken to bed. The problem was that she had fallen for him, hard. He had lusted for her, but hadn't really loved her. How could he? She was fat. Grossly fat. So fat people made fun of her to her face. In public. Fat! And that huge ass of hers. That ass he had so enjoyed bouncing against when he took her from behind. That ass that he had wanted so badly to fuck, and that, on one memorable night she had opened to him . . . that ass that made his face burn with embarrassment when his buddies joked about it. Being with her was damaging his rep. So he really hadn't had much choice. He had dumped her, of cours
e.
Fifteen years and a dozen girlfriends later, Bill still missed Brenda. Missed her warmth and . . . the joy it brought him just to be near her. Missed her laughter and her squeals of pleasure when she came. Missed her. Ached for her.
The statuette ended up on the pillow next to him that night when he drifted off to sleep. Somehow, it felt like it belonged there. And he had such vivid dreams. He was making love to Brenda. She was stretched full length on top of him, and he relished the feel of her 250 pounds enveloping him in her yielding, fleshy warmth, grinding him deeply into the mattress. (Damn, that was a sensation none of his subsequent girlfriends had been able to give him!) He awakened gasping for breath as his body let loose its built-up tensions in a prolonged, throbbing gush. The bedsheet reeked of sex . . . his sperm and something else. What? It smelled of Brenda. He remembered her particular odor, that body smell that meant she was horny, that she wanted him inside her. The scent hung heavily in the air. There were tears in his eyes.
The statuette. Where was it? There! That lump under the covers. It was . . . it wasn't quite the same. Its limbs seemed to have changed position, to have stretched out. And its face . . . The eyes were closed now, and there was that expression of ecstatic abandon he had become accustomed to seeing on Brenda's face after she'd had an especially powerful orgasm. What the hell was going on here?
This was way too weird for him. He'd have to get to the bottom of this or . . . Or what? Well, one way to find out. He'd get a hold of Brenda herself and clear up the mystery.
He managed to get her parents' phone number from Directory Assistance. They still lived in the same town, though at a different address. Her mother was not at all pleased to hear from him.
"Bill? Bill Hillyard? Yes, certainly I remember you. You were the one who hurt Brenda so badly back when she was in school. She had told us how much she loved you and how she hoped you might marry her some day. Then you went and brutally trampled on her feelings. She was never the same after that."
"Ma'am, I'm sorry. If I could only take back some of the things I said to her . . . I realize, I realize now that she was, she could have been the woman I've been looking for, the soulmate I've never found in all these years. What I want, I think, is another chance, or at least for her to hear me tell her how much I regret -- "
"It's a little late for that, Bill. Brenda, our Brenda, my little baby . . . Brenda is no longer with us."
"She's -- she went away? Tell me she's all right. Please!"
"I'm afraid she's gone. Dead. And I lay a large part of the blame at your door, Bill. Brenda went through two broken marriages, always haunted by your memory. She would tell me how she used to wake up at night crying out your name. You, only you could have saved her, I think. But, as unhappy as she was, at least she -- she was still alive until last month."
"What -- what happened?"
"She went on a skiing trip with some friends. We thought it might break her out of the cycle of depression, and she seemed to be really looking forward to it, but . . . "
"But what?"
"They saw her do it. She screamed your name, then threw herself into a deep crevasse. They haven't managed to recover her body, but there's no doubt. None at all. I'm sorry, but I can't talk about it any more. Now, if you'll excuse me . . . "
The line went dead. Dead. Just like Brenda. His lost love.
He took the statuette to bed again that night. The dreams came.
Brenda was clutching him fiercely to her. She had her tongue deep in his mouth and she was squeezing his erect penis in her fist. "Do me. Do me!" She was growling in his ear. And he did her. Did her twice, three times. Fucked her thoroughly and completely the way she liked it. Entered her from behind. Then he spread her ass cheeks and . . . and did what he had only dared with her once in the past. He fucked her, fucked her in the ass, and she screamed in pleasure, and he came, and she screamed something else, and the world spun, and . . . and he awoke.
The statuette lay there on the bed. Cold metal. Cold, hard, unforgiving metal. But still, somehow, alive. Its limbs had changed position again. It was on its hands and knees, just as Brenda had been in the dream, the dream where he had . . . had fucked her, fucked her in the . . . and . . . there were shiny streaks, rivulets of moisture, of fluid trickling from . . . what? It looked as if wetness was seeping from the exquisitely detailed body openings on the torso. Seeping from the vagina and the anus. Bill dabbed at the moistness with his index finger, then smelled it. Sperm. His own sperm.
The following night he had a premonition that it would be the last time. There was a last time for everything. His last conscious thoughts were of what the dream-Brenda had screamed at him just before he left her the night before. His name, and then, "Join me! Come, join me forever!"
Sergeant Frances Furbelow was in charge of the detail investigating the disappearance of William Hillyard. He had been reported missing a week ago, but they were only now getting around to searching his apartment. It was a matter of priorities, of course. With all the crime in the city, missing persons were pretty low on the list when it came to priorities.
There was nothing to indicate foul play or give any leads to his whereabouts. But what was that strange lump under the mattress? Sergeant Furbelow gingerly extracted a small object . . . what was it? It was a statuette or figurine of some sort. The object was silvery in color and fairly heavy. It was a meticulously accurate rendering of a naked male, anatomically complete all the way down to an exquisitely detailed erect penis. In all her years on the force, Sergeant Furbelow had never seen anything like it, and it aroused strange feelings in her.
Fanny Furbelow felt the tears trickle down her cheeks. It had been more than a year since her divorce and she hungered for physical closeness, for human touch. She was lonely and horny and mightily depressed. The figurine triggered something fundamental in her. She felt like . . .
Sergeant Frances Furbelow looked around. The other officers in the apartment were busy with their assigned tasks and no one was looking in her direction. Impulsively, she slipped the statuette into the side pocket of her uniform coat. No one would ever know. No one. She groped in the pocket for the cute little nub of the figurine's silver-metal hardon. She felt stirrings of . . . something. Maybe she'd keep the thingie on the pillow at her side while she slept.
A RED CHRISTMAS
Transcript from the hearings of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, December 17, 1952:
SENATOR MCCARTHY:
In the absence of more urgent matters, we resume the testimony of witness Ronald Bookman. Counsel Cohn, will you please continue questioning the witness.
COUNSEL COHN:
Mr. Chairman, the witness has been cooperative in describing the workings of the Communist organization of which he was a member. He has demonstrated irrational stubbornness on only one key point, the naming of the other members of that group. We have been patient and given him time to reconsider his lack of patriotism.
Due to a schedule conflict, I would like to hand over the questioning of the witness to Assistant Counsel Kennedy.
SENATOR MCCARTHY:
Counsel Kennedy --
COUNSEL KENNEDY:
For the record, I am Assistant Counsel Robert F. Kennedy, an attorney on the staff of Chief Counsel Roy M. Cohn.
Mr. Bookman, I remind you that you are still under oath.
Now, let us recapitulate your previous testimony. You stated that you were a member of the Communist front "Workers' Equity" organization during the period February, 1935, to August, 1939. You let your membership lapse because of your disgust with the purges and Bukharin trials and your dismay over the Nazi-Soviet pact. Is that correct?
MR. BOOKMAN:
That is substantially correct, Counsel Kennedy.
COUNSEL KENNEDY:
You have not been a Communist for almost 14 years, and have, in fact, repudiated all that the Soviet Union and Communism represent. Why, then, do you refuse to name names?
MR. BOOKMAN:
I won't have ruining careers and lives on my conscience. These people, the people you wish me to name, out of naive idealism joined a group dedicated to bettering the lot of the unemployed worker. Remember, this country was still mired deep in the worst depression in its history, and millions embraced Marxist doctrine as the only hope of averting a total collapse.
COUNSEL KENNEDY:
While we understand your concerns, Mr. Bookman, nonetheless, national security requires that you give us the names. Do this simple small thing, and the subcommittee will release you with your own name cleared of any taint.
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