by Logan Jacobs
When I slid my hand down the soft front of Emma’s nightgown to cup her small, firm breast in my palm, the hard nub of her nipple sent blazing sparks of sensation through my arm. My fingers twitched and danced over her sensitive flesh as the black-haired girl arched up to press her breast against my palm, and I could feel sparks of hot spiky pleasure burning against my chest and legs as she rocked her hips back and forth against my leg. Hot tingles of electric lust sizzled through my crotch, and a thundercloud of pleasure started to zap and swirl in my stomach as my hips jerked helplessly forward against Emma’s.
“Oh, oh, oh...” Emma’s cries of pleasure rang in my ear. “I’m burning, Dave, burning for you, up in flames...”
Emma’s voice broke off into wordless gasps, her fingertips suddenly dug into my back, and her hips pressed up against my rock-hard cock and started to rock up and down.
Lightning bolts of lust stabbed repeatedly at the inside of my stomach as my body crackled with the fiery waves of a sudden orgasm. My toes curled and uncurled spasmodically, my back arched of its own accord, and my hips swung back and forth as my body rode out the slow inexorable wave of my brilliant electrical orgasm. I couldn’t stop what felt like every aching muscle in my body from expanding and contracting anymore than I could stop white fire from sizzling along my veins and burning up my nerves in a trail of flame. Soon I was nothing more than a gasping sensation riding along an electrical current as it expanded and contracted through a brilliant blaze of bluish-white light.
“Dave?” Emma’s voice echoed in my ears like I was hearing her underwater.
The bluish-white light ebbed away into the corners of my eyes and left a faint green afterimage that quickly faded to black.
My arms, legs, and torso stopped contracting of their own accord, but my fingers and toes still trembled with the aftershocks of their spasmodic motion. I could feel my muscles stiffen and lock into place before they started to gradually relax, like a bouncy castle losing air to a slow leak in the side. When my body had finally melted enough that I was nothing more than a stretched-out balloon skin draped over some old bones, my consciousness faded like a neglected ember into the welcome nothingness of sleep.
When I opened my eyes into the golden sunlight of the morning, I felt lighter and more awake than I had in days. I swung my legs off the side of the bed, ran a hand through my frizzed-out hair, and started to whistle the chorus to “Electric Avenue” as I retrieved my boots and jacket from the corner. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. Sure, I might have left my entire life behind in a universe I could never get back to, but I’d also gained two amazingly hot girlfriends who’d both made me cum my brains out.
I pulled on my boxers and tried to remember exactly what had happened last night after Emma and I had started to get hot and heavy. I’d ridden an electric wave of ecstasy against Emma’s body for what had seemed like hours, but it also hadn’t really felt like any other orgasm I’d ever had. Had I gotten zapped into some kind of weird neural-only orgasm by Emma’s lightning somehow?
“Dave?” Emma’s voice called through the wooden door. “Are you alright? May I come in?”
“Yeah, I’m good.” I sat on the edge of the bed and started to shove my feet into my Red Wing boots as the door creaked open.
“I’m so glad you’re awake!” Emma rushed toward me, threw her arms around my neck, and started to pepper my forehead with kisses. She’d already gotten dressed and done her hair, but a few loose black curls already bounced around her heart-shaped face. “You poor dear, I feel just awful. Do tell me you’re not terribly cross with me?”
“For enticing me into your bed and then giving me one of the best nights of my life?” I laughed. I slid my arms around Emma’s back, tilted my head up, and brushed my lips against hers. “That was amazing, Ems. We can do that as many times as you like.”
“I nearly Westinghoused you, Dave.” Emma pulled back a little and frowned as she gazed into my eyes. “One moment you were driving me utterly mad with ecstasy, and then the next I just... let go. I couldn’t control myself. I just saw those lightning bolts spark right from my hands and strike you, and you were twitching and flopping about! You were still breathing when you stopped, but I couldn’t wake you up. I was so worried!”
“I just conked out,” I assured her. “Sometimes it happens, especially after a really good night or a really long day.”
“I know what I did, Dave.” Emma shook her head. “I… well… I had a… good time, but you… I mean… you didn’t even get to put your manhood inside of me. And then I nearly killed you!”
“You didn’t, though, and even though we… uhhh… didn’t have sex, I really enjoyed it.” My heart sank in my chest as I realized that though I’d loved the weird lightning-bolt half-orgasm Emma had given me last night, I might have to choose between never being able to make love to Emma or risking electrical death every time I made her feel good. I leaned forward, captured Emma’s rosebud lips with mine, and flicked my tongue against her soft lips before I pulled away. “I want you to do that to me again.”
“Dave!” Emma’s nostrils flared and her blue eyes widened. “You’re asking me to hurt you! I can’t possibly do that.”
“But you didn’t hurt me,” I reminded her. “Emma, that was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever felt in my life. And it was your first time. It’ll probably get easier to control your electrical field the more we, uh, practice.”
“Practice, yes,” Emma sighed. A pink blush spread across her porcelain cheeks, and she bit the corner of her lip as she looked up at me through lowered lashes. “I wouldn’t mind having more practice like that. I suppose I can learn to control it, the same way I had to learn to hold back from zapping Mama and Papa if we ever got into an argument. I just worry that I’ll lose control and hurt you, but I do really want to be your lover, I want to feel you inside of me.”
“We can start slow and work up to it,” I assured her. I pressed a kiss to her cheek, glanced at my watch, then stood and shrugged my Carharrt jacket on. “But right now, we gotta be fast. We only have five hours to get to the Dimensional Engine, Patent Pending, and that includes packing time.”
It didn’t take long for us to eat, load the jars, books, and quilts that Emma wanted to keep into the cart, and hook Floppy up to the harness.
I took one last look at the dilapidated little bungalow as I set the last jar of pickles in the crate. I had only spent a couple of nights in the house, but I already felt like I was going to miss the kitchen where we’d all eaten together as a pack, the cozy little living room where I’d made love to Fela, and the soft mattress where I’d made out with Emma.
“I’m glad to see the last of that place,” Emma remarked as she closed the front door behind her. She’d added a black waist-length jacket with puffy sleeves, shiny black buttons, and old-fashioned coattails to her ensemble, and a wide-brimmed black hat with a white ribbon tied around its flat top sat on top of her head. “I’ve gotten everything I wanted to keep out of the house. Shall we get a wiggle on?”
“Let us wiggle,” Fela agreed. “Lead the way, Dave Meyer.”
I checked the arrow on my watch, then pointed southeast.
“There’s four hours till universe-shift, we’ve got a full cart of provisions, it’s light out, and we’re carrying spears,” I said in my best Elwood Blues impression. “Hit it!”
We started out southeast toward Honest Abe, and I could practically hear the Oregon Trail theme in my head as we all plodded down the dusty road. It felt like we were all pioneers going to colonize the wilderness, even though for all I knew the next world might be Star Trek-level advanced. We had our own homestead to start, and that was brand-new territory for me.
We’d already gotten onto Grand River Avenue when the air took on the eerie yellow glow that I had come to associate with this world’s electrical storms.
“Oh, no…” Fela groaned. Her tail stood straight up, and the black puff of fur at the end looked like a Gothic dandelio
n. “I am very tired of these storms with no rain. At least in my world, storms bring water!”
“It’s alright, we just need to stay indoors.” Emma turned on her heel and headed back toward the bungalow. “We’ll wait for it to blow over, and then go.”
“We can’t waste time going back to the house.” I glanced at my watch. “We only have three hours left to make it to the DEPP machine or it’s going to leave without us. Do you want to be stuck--”
A pillar of fire slammed down into an oak tree right across the street. The tree exploded in a shower of woodchips with a deafening thunderclap, and when the lightning’s eerie white burst faded the trunk of the tree was splintered and in flames.
“Fuck!” I shouted.
“Ancestors save us!” Fela screamed.
“Heavens to Betsy!” Emma clapped her hand to the top of her hat.
Floppy reared back on his hind legs and blatted out a long, high trumpet of what sounded like surprise and fear.
“We gotta go, we gotta go!” I glanced at the arrow on my watch face, pointed the way home, and started to jog as fast as I could. “C’mon, maybe we can outrun this thing!”
“We can’t outrun a storm!” Fela shouted.
“Well, we gotta try!” I yelled back. “C’mon, get Floppy going!”
I led my pack down Grand River Avenue at top speed. I could see yellow bolts of electricity crackle from rooftop to rooftop as we passed the houses and stores, but the lightning stayed at the highest level it could even as it seemed to be jumping to keep up with us. I kept one eye on the road ahead of me and one eye on my watch face as the arrow rolled slowly downward, and when the arrow pointed directly to my left I turned and headed off the trail.
“Through the woods!” I yelled. “Come on, it’s the shortest way!”
“We cannot go into the trees during a storm,” Fela protested, “that is a forest fire waiting to happen!”
“There is no other way to get to the machine, Fela!” I glanced back to make sure that the cat-woman was following me, but she was running right next to Floppy, who was already trundling his cart right through the forest in my wake. “It’s in the middle of the woods. If we don’t make it there we’re just as dead anyway.”
“Sometimes the trees dissipate the charge a bit,” Emma panted as she caught up next to me. “We may be able to outrun this thing yet.”
I kept my eyes on the forest ahead of me, but I could hear the crackle and rustle of branches under Floppy’s feet as the mammoth pulled the cart through the woods, so I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that he was doing alright.
Floppy swung his head from side to side as he stomped through the forest. His big flat feet slammed down over green shoots and fallen branches, and his tusks ripped saplings from the ground before he tossed the uprooted trees aside with his trunk. The little mammoth left a trail of flattened devastation behind him as he squeezed his huge bulk between the old-growth trees. He rocked the cart up on two wheels a little to get through the trunks, and the contents clanked and rattled threateningly, but nothing fell out of the cart.
“Good job, Floppy!” I turned back to the woods and strode forward with a little more confidence.
We didn’t move as fast as we had when it had just been Floppy, Fela, and me without the cart, but we moved steadily through the trees, and the arrow barely wavered from its course.
There was less than fifteen minutes left on the timer when I felt the top of my scalp prickle again, so I glanced over at the cart to see if I could find something to ground myself with before lightning struck.
The iron chains we’d piled in the crates had started to rise up from the wooden boxes like charmed snakes lifting their heads from a basket.
“What the fuck?” I glanced up above the cart, where white bolts of lightning crackled back and forth between the leafy branches of the trees, then grabbed one of the chains and tried to pull it back down into the cart.
The chain buzzed gently in my hand for a moment and then crackled with white sparks of electricity as my hand started to burn.
I dropped the chain and hissed as I shook my hand out.
“It wants our harvest!” Fela growled. “This is no storm. It is hungry!”
“Leave us alone, whatever you are!” Emma raised her hands to the sky. Her eyes glowed bright blue as a haze of cerulean light collected around her hands and concentrated into bright points at the tips of her fingers.
Ten bolts of blue lightning shot forth from Emma’s fingers straight toward the sky. The lightning bolts converged about six feet above her head and blended into one thick blue slash of electricity that stretched upward to the leafy green canopy of the forest. It wrapped its squiggly fingers around the mass of yellow bolts above us before it dissipated into the crackling storm.
The brilliant cloud in the trees seemed to glow a little brighter as it zapped itself through the forest canopy.
“Evil spirit, leave this place!” Fela growled. She slammed the wooden shaft of her spear downward into the rising chains. “Let us have our harvest!”
The mailbags we’d filled with nails and screws started to shift around and crackle with faint yellow sparks. Dozens of tiny black points began to poke through the fabric, and the sparks started to burn black-rimmed holes in the white linen. Black nails and screws in all shapes and sizes began to tear away from the bags and fly up into the sky.
“Oh, that’s not good,” I muttered. I grabbed a wood-handled shovel from the cart and held it above my head like an umbrella. “Take cover, those are gonna come down soon!”
“Stop taking our things!” Emma grabbed a loop of rising chain, pulled it out of the cart, and folded it into a six-foot length that she swung above her head like a lasso. Her hands glittered with yellow and blue sparks, her eyes glowed cerulean, and the chains she swung crackled with blue and yellow bolts of lightning.
“Floppy!” Fela dropped her spear, grabbed two cast-iron pans by the handle, and held one over her head as she darted toward her mammoth. Before the cat-girl could get to Floppy to shield him with the other pan, a yellow lightning bolt slammed down into the appliance above her head. Fela’s pan crackled with electricity, then fell from her hand onto the forest floor, and the cat-girl collapsed after it.
“Fela, no!” I dropped the shovel and dove for Fela as iron nails started to rain down all around me. I could feel the sharp metal screws bounce off my hair and clothes with painful electrical zaps, but I shrugged them off as I raced through the underbrush toward my cat-girl mate.
Floppy raised his trunk and trumpeted a high, angry note as he reared up on his hind legs. He lowered his trunk to the ground, scooped up Fela’s body, and started to plunge forward through the trees again. The little mammoth shook his head from side to side as falling iron screws sparked off of his massive skull, but he held his trunk straight and stable as he carried Fela’s limp body through the forest.
“Okay, we’re moving, we’re moving.” My heart slammed against my ribs and my guts roiled with fear as I raced to keep up with the galloping mammoth. I put one hand above my head to shield myself from the falling hardware as I kept an eye on my compass arrow with the other. I didn’t want to lose Fela, but we couldn’t risk getting trapped in this dying electrical world no matter what. “Right direction, keep going...”
“This blasted thing is following us!” Emma cried as she swung the chain over her head and knocked nails and screws away. “Stop it, you--Dave, tell it to stop! Maybe it will understand you.”
“Hey, storm, stop following us!” I yelled. “Stop taking our shit and hurting my friends! Just fucking leave!”
The metallic clanking of the rising hardware got louder behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to see wrenches, hammers, rakes, and pipes slowly rising up from the cart. Yellow sparks and bolts crackled around the metal parts of the tools as they shivered in the air, and I realized that the cloud might not have as good of a hold on the iron objects as I’d thought. A few of the smaller tools s
piraled up into the air and disappeared, but when the cart went over a bump most of the metal things fell right back into their places.
“We gotta keep going!” I glanced at my watch and sped ahead. My legs ached and my lungs started to rasp as I ran, but I pushed myself ahead anyway. I knew we didn’t have very long left to go before the timer ran out, and every second was going to count now. “It’s not that strong! We can beat this thing, Emma.”
“Yah!” Emma screamed as she swung her length of electric chain at the falling tools. She whipped her chain to the side and knocked a hammer into the underbrush.
“Five minutes,” I panted. I could glimpse a glint of rusted steel through the trees, and the spark that ran through me at the sight sent a fresh surge of energy through my aching legs. “We’re almost there!”
“We can’t bring this into the next universe with us, Dave,” Emma gasped. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know, how do we lose something like this?” I could see the shape of the Lincoln clearly through the trees now, and I realized that the clearing of my pocket dimension was barely ten yards away. I’d gotten us there in plenty of time to shift, but we still had to contend with the storm following us.
“I have no idea!” Emma knocked a spinning pipe away from Floppy’s head. “I’ve never seen a storm do anything like this before.”
I felt sparks prickle at the tips of my fingers and the top of my head as I made it past the treeline and ran onto the open circle of dirt. I checked my watch to see that we had two minutes to go, glanced back over my shoulder to make sure my companions were making it through, then dove out of the way as Floppy barreled toward me with Fela’s limp body wrapped in his trunk and iron tools flying out of the back of the cart.
The little mammoth skidded to a stop just a few feet away from Honest Abe’s side, and didn’t even react when the heavy cart slammed to a stop against his tail. He lowered Fela’s limp body to the ground, knelt next to her, then raised his trunk and trumpeted plaintively at the sky.
“Is she alright?” Emma dropped the chain and picked up her skirts as the heels of her black boots hit the dirt of my pocket dimension.