Rogue Ragtime

by K Alexis

  There were tremors in Mea's fingers as she caressed Tath's face. "May I?" she panted.

  Tath slid her hand into Mea's and guided her into the room. She gently nudged the door closed and waited until there was a satisfying click of the lock.

  "You may," Tath said.

  Mea pounced on her. Her hands went everywhere: through Tath's hair, along the side of her face, down her arms and under her dress. Her tongue followed suit. It shot forward and back in Tath's mouth; then it slid out and began licking her cheek.

  Part of Tath, the part that was fully aware of her tingling skin and rising pulse, screamed at her to surrender to Mea's passion. It told her to lay down on the ground and let her friend touch, tickle, rub and devour any part of her until Mea had burned through her flame—and they held each other's glistening bodies while sleep and happiness overtook them. However, the experienced part watched the scene unfold with a sense of disappointment and haughtiness. It took in the unskilled grabbing and thrusting while assessing how much effort she would need to expend to have Mea satisfy her needs. It whispered to Tath that even with her friend, she would not be allowed to relax and enjoy the moment—not yet.

  When Mea failed to improve her technique after a few minutes, Tath let the burning coursing through her body expend itself and cool down into a distant simmer by imagining what terrible movie Agra was watching at that moment. Once she had regained her composure, Tath adjusted her expression so her eyes appeared more seductive and her lips plump. And with a slight change in position, she managed to arch her back so her breasts were as full as they could be.

  She put her hands on Mea's face and led her friend up so they were looking at each other. "I'm not going anywhere," Tath whispered. She took one of Mea's hands and placed it in her cleavage. "I'm yours."

  Leaning in, Tath tenderly pecked Mea on the forehead and then her nose. Finally, she pecked Mea on both lips. Her friend's haphazard inferno gave way to a soft focus, her eyes quivering rather than dancing. "Think of every action like a word to be devoured," Tath whispered before kissing Mea. She made sure her lips completely covered Mea's and held her position. Their gaze met and they lost themselves in the colors of each other's eyes: brown, green, tawny, emerald—until there was nothing left in the universe except them.

  Tath showed Mea how to caress a human woman's body to discover their sensitive areas. Then, she demonstrated how to sensually remove a partner's clothes so the action did not dampen the blaze that had been lit. Tath even endured the mutant's entitled grabs and squeezes that hurt but her friend needed for stimulation as it was their first time together. And, finally, Tath experimented with Mea's lithe form until she had found the most receptive spots for her fingers and tongue. With the delicateness of an expert pianist, she rhythmically caressed, licked and toyed with Mea's body as if it was an instrument to be played. However, just before climax, Mea shoved Tath away.

  From her position on the floor, Tath watched as her friend finished their first musical number. The mutant bellowed as her thighs crashed together and she fell to the ground, her whole body glimmering with sweat.

  Mea held herself and rocked back and forward. Her cheeks were flushed and her breathing heavy. After a while, she stopped swaying and dragged her legs out from under her. Mea encircled them around Tath and pulled her in close. "Mutants have to finish. We have—"

  "It's okay," Tath said, running a pair of fingers across Mea's shoulders. She pivoted so she could rest her back against her lover-friend. "Everyone has a fuck fetish."

  "It's not—"

  "Sexier if it is," Tath said, interrupting. "But, right now, it's my turn." She led one of Mea's hands to the top of her underwear and the other to her left breast. "And I love everything."

  Mea leaned in and kissed Tath on the neck. "What happens if I go counter-clockwise?" she asked.

  Tath moaned as she felt Mea's fingers test out the new techniques they had learned.

  * * *

  "IS THIS ROOM soundproof?" Mea mumbled to Tath several positions later.

  "Sure. It's an adjusting-room. Ste—"

  "Got it."

  Tath rolled over and looked into Mea's eyes. They were half-closed, but she could see they had become a light lime in color. Rather than the yellow and green indicating two different states like they normally did, they had merged into one. "Mea," Tath started, trying to rouse her head-nodding companion.

  "Yes?"

  "What do you want from this?"

  "I want you."

  Tath smiled and pecked her friend on the cheek. "Well, I want you too." Mea began to say something but then snored. Tath pulled the sheets up and over the top of them. She stared at the mattress above her. "But maybe in a different way than you do," she said to finish her thought even though it was wasted on its audience.

  Tath fluffed her pillow and rubbed her thighs, glancing occasionally at her snoring friend. "Fuck," she said, reaching under the sheets. She began to think of Agra, with an afro, his hands pressed into hers, his blue eyes twinkling as they danced together under the sheets. Her hand below matched the rhythm in her daydream while the other found her breast. She felt a surge of pleasure ripple across every inch of skin. "We can't keep doing this," she said to the fantasy. "I'm dating Mea now."

  Agra smiled at her, and Mea snored on.

  11:53pm: Junko [channel 37A4R]

  Come on, Newcastle was fun. I wore the red dress you liked … until we found a better way of using it. Remember? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

  And maybe we are searching for the same one. I won't know till I learn more.

  Wed, 22 Oct 65 P.C.T., 2:35am: Azra [P. Watcher 18034568X]

  Maybe while you're doing that, could you help me out? What do you know about Starfires?

  Steh almost blew himself up the other day by overtaxing his magical abilities. The whole scene looked similar to Sacramento, but Tath doesn't think he is one.

  Fourteen: The Spy

  AGRA SLUMPED IN his chair at the back of the zeppelin's relaxation lounge and spun a knife on the table. The room was half full with other passengers groggily discussing why they had been awoken from their slumber. The tepid consensus was that a Corsair raid was imminent, and they had to be prepared for the worst.

  Having been forced from their beds, Nucia's patrons were in varying stages of undress: some wearing pajamas while others only wore their boxers or underwear. Tath was one of these despite her attempt at modesty with a nightgown. She had left the gown open, giving anyone who wished to look a guilt-free opportunity to admire her sculpted abs and full bosom. Mea, surprisingly, was no different. Except she wore an unflattering sports bra with mismatched knickers, and no robe. Agra did not need a detective with an overly inflated sense-of-self to tell him what had happened between them.

  The downside of the general lack of clothing in the room was that it made Agra stand out and feel uncomfortable in his jeans and T-shirt. They had not been his choice. He had been watching The Iguana 25: Finding a Decent Verse when one of the crew had wanted to talk to his de-facto imagination partner, the Corsair woman. A few minutes later, the rest of the passengers, including himself, had been herded into the relaxation lounge.

  Oddly enough, the Corsair woman from the imagination bank was not sitting with the other fliers. She stood at the front of the room and stared out of its observation windows, seemingly lost in thought. She had also changed her clothes, swapping her baggy casual wear for a black, close-fitting, ankle-length dress that hinted at an athleticism Agra had not noticed previously.

  "Listen here, ya ground-gropers," Elia said as she approached where the Corsair woman was standing. "A calamity have befallen this vessel, and I thought it be best if I be breaking it to ya straight." The captain put her hands on her hips and looked around the room. "One of ya fellow travelers been taking a ferry from this fair land."

  Agra felt his throat go tight and breathing stop. There seemed to be only one person missing from the lounge, Steh. He brushed the thought away. If Steh was
dead, Elia would have told the three of them first. There was a good chance it was someone else; after all, Agra had not met every one of the other passengers. It was more likely Steh was late and about to receive a classic Elia tirade for his tardiness.

  Nucia's captain gently rubbed the woman's back. "Though it be a might difficult, ya best be talking us through Steh's life and loves," she said to her. "These here folk need to know who they be losing."

  The multi-colored-hair woman shuffled around. Her eyes were blood-red, and she wiped away some snot from under her nose. On the upper right of her dress, she wore a small, striped, triangular badge. The pin's colors went purple, azure, black and white from top to bottom. It was the symbol for a Leviathan Corsair in distress. "I'm Jetta," she said. "Stehlan Ehrans and I, well, we were planning to be married."

  Agra sat up. Having the two names laid out in front of him, Stehlan and Steh, he could not deny their similarity. However, Stehlan Ehrans was a missing child prodigy and partly responsible for the destruction of Cuba. He had also been the inventor of the goop pellet: a type of ammunition that created an expanding sticky liquid to trap its target in a sphere. Its non-lethality and breathability had made it ideal for Corsair raids. In contrast, Steh created portable umbrellas and folding clotheslines. Agra refused to believe his friend and the long-lost innovator were one and the same. What was more likely, Agra thought, was that Steh had probably been inspired by Stehlan for his moniker, hoping to ape his idol. Asides that, Steh was not dead; that was not possible. He was about to stagger through the door and sit down as if he had done nothing wrong.

  Jetta continued, "I know this might be a surprise to his travelling companions." She gestured to the three of them. "But our marriage was a promise we made to each other a long time ago. You see …" She looked away from the crowd, her eyes moistening. "I don't know how to say this, but Steh was a reader." The response from the room was mixed: some gasped while others shrugged it off. "Now, I know that many of you might feel the Neomer stance on reading is extreme or absurd. However, please understand, I'm not here to debate politics. Our history has shown that Neomers lapse into immorality when we do things by ourselves, such as reading. By loving such a man, I showed that I was unable to put peace above my personal desires. And I was giving the patriarchy a chance to take root in our communities once more. When my counselor found out, she was disappointed." Jetta sighed, her chest seeming to deflate as her secrets left her. "Deeply, deeply so. And she wished for him to be brought back into harmony with the local community. This misguided devotion to our mandate tore us apart. It tore him apart. He felt he had to choose between his yearning for me, and his love of books. So, he abandoned the decision and ran away, darkening his soul and shutting off the pulse of humanity."

  "We don't be needing a preaching, lass," Elia said.

  "I'm sorry," Jetta replied, sniffing. "I love my culture, even its waywardness. But it hurt him; it hurt my Stehlan. And I wanted to make the world right again. So, I've been searching for him—tract to tract and commune to commune. And during my journey, all I had to hold onto was the flame burning in my heart from our last encounter. Although it was difficult and I often doubted myself, I finally found him on the Nucia. Once again, I was able to touch his chin and gaze into his cinnamon eyes. And then, moments later, he was about to be re-captured and hurt by those same people who claimed to cherish us both."

  "Fortunately, this brave captain saved us. She promised to protect and aid us as we re-negotiated our return to the Neomer community. Steh vowed he'd try to begin again with me. He said he'd attempt to rekindle what we once had." She sniffed once more. "But that was a lie. He had no plans to go back. He never did." Jetta slumped into Elia's arms.

  "Stehlan Ehrans be dead is what she be saying," Elia finished. "Jumped from the walk." The room broke out in hushed whispers. The captain raised her right hand until everything fell back into silence. "Now, it be good and dandy to worry about yar souls, but this lass just lost a person she been loving. Hold yar twittering out of respect till all be said and told.

  "I been knowing Stehlan as well. All up, he been travelling on this here vessel nineteen times and never been paying a dir nor a credit. He been a good kid who been partnering with some rough company." Agra noticed Elia look at Mea. "But he also been smarter than the pack of ya after a full-day's study. Right as the sea be a tad moody, he been locating a flaw in that shield out there, but don't be thinking ya be stumbling on it. Ya be safe as safe can be. If ya be wanting a refund with all that said, then ya come and find me. We be making terms. There be issues with any of me yammering's?"

  Agra wanted to scream. He wanted to shout at Elia and tell her Jetta was a liar and a cheat and a swindler. Yet, as he attempted to open his mouth, it felt as if a heavy weight hung from his lips, and he could not. He clenched his fists and looked down to avoid the gaze of the people he desperately wanted to hurt, catching his reflection in his knife's blade. He looked ten years older and like a man trying to hold onto whatever purpose he had left.

  On the other side of the room, he heard a table flip over. "You're a fucking con," Tath yelled. "You and that two-bit sell-sword. Steh is NOT Stehlan Ehrans. He would've fucking told us."

  Agra did not look; he could not look. He had lost all control over his body. As he listened to the stewards and officers of the ship fight to remove Tath from the lounge, he kept staring at his blade. His blue eyes had become dull, their brightness had gone and been replaced with a murky sage coloring.

  "I'm sorry," Jetta said again.

  Agra found himself staring at her: the liar, the murderer, the devil. She was hiding something, he knew it. She had to be. After everything the four of them had lived through, Steh could not be dead, He was alive. He had to be alive, and this was a set-up by Junko to test him. Jetta was a Corsair, not a Grinner. She loved imaginations. She had an SOS Leviathan symbol embroidered on her dress. She had to be one of Junko's minions. Why else did he have the sudden urge to yank her hair back while he penetrated her deeper and deeper until she screamed in pleasure? Was his unexpected attraction to the fraud, the Jezebel, not enough evidence Jetta had been sent by Junko to test him?

  He reached into his knife sheath and pulled out a comm with a thick black trim. It was Corsair issue, a C-Komm, and its thickness plus lack of final polish reflected that. He wanted no record on any Grinner system of his next steps in case he was right. He raised the C-Komm up and took pictures of Jetta. The camera made no sound despite the repeated shots. She was sobbing and heaving against the stoic Elia as they waited for Tath and all her curse words to be expelled.

  "I'll talk to her," Mea commented before the lounge's doors clicked closed.

  "Right," Elia snapped after the commotion had died down. "It be a time to mourn for his friends and a time to be getting on with our sins. Now, I been down the line with all of ya. We looked hard at the matter: man went and killed himself. Simple it be and simple it been. But if ya be wanting to make it more, that be yar issue—not mine. We be continuing as planned, and if ya need any weight off ya chest, talk to Officer Mackinle." She pointed to one of the better dressed crew members, but Agra was not interested. He could barely focus. All the people in the room had blurred together, and the motions they made were more akin to a hundred-person chorus line than individual singers performing their parts on a stage.

  He wandered back to his cabin in a similar haze, the rich décor and animated paintings transforming into a muddied backdrop that had been stripped of all of its character. Even when he entered his cabin, there was no relief. The place felt hollow—as if someone had cut out the room's heart and hid it. He stared at Steh's bunk. In the middle of the unmade sheets, there were perfectly folded pajamas.

  Agra wished he had stopped his imagination earlier and listened to Steh longer. He wished he had said something funnier or taken a moment to eat dinner with his friend. He wished he had done anything rather than watch fake hamsters fight each other in a pastel-colored desert. "It wasn't
even that good," he said as a way of apology. "They had run out of ideas by the thirteenth movie."

  He took his weapon sheath off and tossed it on the lower bunk before sitting down next to it. The Corsair communicator had not been re-inserted properly into the secretive infinity pocket on his knife sheath. Half of it was visible and sticking out, revealing a sobbing Jetta. Agra withdrew the comm and swiped through the pictures, letting his mind wander as they shifted across the screen. They seemed to resemble a continuous smear of whites, blacks and greys that merged and moved of their own accord. When he had gone through them once, he started again and kept going until everything except Jetta had receded into the background.

  She was a lot prettier—sexier perhaps—than he remembered from when they had sat opposite each other in the imagination bank. Her face was diamond-like when it was taut, and the slothful aura she gave off while slumped behind her imagination player contrasted with the exercise regime she would have had to maintain for her muscular physique. Agra found his attention drifting toward pictures that more clearly highlighted her busty torso and wide hips.

  He wrestled with the idea she was Steh's type or, more precisely, Steh was hers. How had their late inventor not joined in when the group had discussed their night-time escapades if this was his girl? Even Mea, despite her limited number of sexual experiences, had regaled the rest of the group with a few exciting tales. What was so embarrassing about Jetta that Steh had to have kept her a secret? There was nothing to dislike about her physically and a lot to boast over, unless Steh had an issue with height-challenged woman. But what did Agra truly know? Steh had never engaged in their sexually charged discussions, always remaining aloof and working on his cards.

  Agra used his comm to create a short stop-motion film from the photos and played it on loop. If Jetta was not Steh's fiancée and acting, she deserved several awards. From the redness in her eyes to the jerky twitches when she teared up, she appeared to be in acute pain. The movie revealed nothing new about Steh's lover except how the infinite unfairness of the universe affected those it hurt.