Cyborg Merman

by Amanda Milo

  And my friend was dead.

  His heart gave out, the doctor said. I smelled for poison—I leaned over Baron and sniffed him like a trained hound, although I waited for the doctor to take Stella aside to tell her some-such thing while I examined Baron’s body.

  I could find nothing amiss. And believe me, I wanted to. I wanted to find an excuse—any excuse—to attack someone. But the doctor’s brain showed no hint of deceit when he ruled that the death was due to natural causes. “He was young, but it happens.” He shook his head. “One hell of a senseless tragedy though,” he’d said with genuine regret.

  No truer words. Baron was a good man. A fair man. Wise, easy-going, and loyal. He also adopted a slightly inconsiderate alien and taught him how to better operate in the world.

  I wasn’t ready to navigate the world without him. I never even knew I should worry that the day would come when I’d need to.

  I’m certain Stella felt the same.

  As we reeled and struggled to believe that Baron was gone, cattle ranch rivals rejoiced. And the opportunity for them to absorb Baron’s whole estate lay open before them like a picnic spread.

  All they had to do was marry Stella.

  And if she didn’t agree, then they could take her and have everything they wanted anyway.

  As far as Stella is concerned, she probably feels I’m barely an improvement on the vultures circling her husband’s assets, but I have every intention of treating her well and giving her all the freedom I’m able. I can also give her happiness artificially whenever I’m close enough to her to manipulate her brain. In time, I hope this is enough to see her genuinely happy.

  I round the hitched pair of horses and clamber up into the driver’s seat. My prosthetic legs have no sensation but in each limb and cybernetic toe, there are implanted sensors that send biofeedback similarly to a real digit. The technology allows me to sense temperature, walk, step up, jump, run with an accuracy I appreciate, and the tech gets better every solar.

  Seeing prosthetics makes some people uncomfortable. Sitting beside Stella, I think of how she never showed—outwardly or in the activity of her mind—that my cybernetic components unnerved her. She’s a very accepting lady.

  We’re both silent on the drive back to her and Baron’s home. Our home now.

  While I put away the horses, Stella loudly shuts the door of the house. She loudly locks it too, but I had the foresight to grab the house key that was Baron’s. I identified it because I could smell him on it, along with pocket lint and horse and Stella. The smell of him was faint, but I caught it as I examined the keys lined up on the hooks by the front door before I escorted her to the office where we signed our marriage documents.

  The ranch hands must not have seen me driving the carriage. From the way they creep up to the stall and peer over it, I think they expect to find Stella untacking the horses. The rear sections of their skullbaskets are aglow with a yellow so bright it looks radioactive. Perhaps they think to take Stella unawares as she cares for her mounts. So they’re startled to find me, and as I silently flash my ringed finger at each of them (along with my middle finger—an Earthen gesture that Baron taught me some solars ago but I’ve never quite gotten the hang of; my index finger always tries to rise too), they’re stunned. They slink away, their brains whirring as they process that I’m Stella’s protection now.

  They resume their duties swiftly, with more concentration than I’d wager they’ve shown in weeks. After all, the temptation for snatching the means to a better station is gone.

  At least it is so long as I’m alive.

  My life has just become precarious. I make a note to myself to begin setting aside emergency funds in Stella’s name starting immediately. Should I die, I’ll have an exit package she can escape with, enough to return to her native home planet or anywhere in the galaxy she’d like to flee, if she must. This time, should she become a widow twice, she won’t have to cash in cattle or bonds or stocks or sell land in order to have the physical credits to leave. She’ll have it in hand.

  If I’m dead, I want her safely away from here. We both know she won’t be safe alone. Upon being presented viable exit opportunities, I suppose she could take advantage of the option to flee me at any time once enough funds are available. I’m strangely reluctant to consider the thought. If Stella leaves, I would… pine for her. Perhaps because she was so dear to Baron, there’s something in me that feels connected to her.

  Now that we’ve literally made a connection, I sense our ties everywhere. Bonding emotions are threading through my consciousness. Intimate relationship chemicals are zipping through my system, binding to receptors, altering my feelings.

  As I stare through the house’s wall at Stella’s bioframework, I can see these same changes moving inside her mind too. I also see a welling block in the area of her brain where the signals for intense anger sit.

  I’m reluctant to enter the house. But I use my key and am met with a glare so intense I nearly excuse myself and step back outside. I don’t because as the man of the manor, my presence deters predators. (Predators other than me.)

  I busy myself in Baron’s office until dinner, sifting through paperwork and contracts, most of which I already reviewed. Now I’m familiarizing myself with his organization. I’m establishing an idea of what steps I’ll take next. It will be a matter of calling associates to the house to show them that I have Stella behind what defenses I can offer. A Yonderin is not popular in these parts, but perhaps providentially, my kind is somewhat feared.

  I can give her protection best if I’m alive, but when I sit down across from her at the table for supper, that hindbrain of hers is buzzing with angry yellow-green, especially when she sets my plate of food in front of me. Thus, I commit the unthinkable and decide I’ll waste the food rather than risk being poisoned. Just in case she’s that level of mad.

  When she stabs her steak knife straight down into a T-bone until it strikes into the china plate, I decide she’s that mad.

  I lick my lips and flick my gaze from her buried knifepoint to her furious face. “If I excuse myself, will it make your meal more pleasant? Or should I stay and provide you with silent company?”

  “You can go fuck yourself,” I hear her mutter through gritted teeth. But I only hear her because my senses are excellent. The average human would only be keen enough to pick out the decibels of her growling.

  I decide to stay still for now. It seems safest. I brush my thumb over the condensation on my glass, hypnotized like usual by the feel of water. I don’t miss my ocean home but I do miss swimming. My prosthetics can be submerged, which allows me the ability to swim some. They can also detach, although I no longer have the tail fins I was born with. That loss never fails to make me a little melancholy. But I’ve gained a lot since I began walking on the terra firma. I don’t regret my upgrades.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” Stella asks, with acid pooling just under every syllable.

  “I’ve grave concerns that you’ve poisoned my portions, but I thank you for the offer.”

  To my surprise, Stella barks a “Ha!”

  Just one startled shout, not a laugh. The areas for dark amusement are on low-level light in her head though. Which is better than rage, but I can’t help but notice there was no denial, thus I’m steadfast in my refusal to consume this meal.

  When Stella is done and excuses herself from the table, I thank her for serving me and begin to pick up my plate. She halts me with a, “Leave it,” and I murmur thank you before slipping out of the room, exiting the house, and taking up a spot on the porch.

  I don’t take the swing. I’ve never sat in the porch swing and have no interest in doing it now. That was Baron and Stella’s spot. I take the rocking chair that faces the river, one I’ve sat in many times.

  To my surprise, some time later, I glance over to find Stella somewhat beside me. She’s in the swing, also staring out at the river. She’s so subdued, I never sensed her approach.

  “A
re you all right?” I ask.

  She keeps staring at the water. “You did something to me. When you were… I felt you in my head. Manipulating my emotions.”

  I swallow. “Yes. I’m sorry. I was hoping it would help—”

  “Can you make me feel that way again?” Her eyes meet mine, the anger at me and her helplessness gone, replaced with a weary, bone-deep emptiness. It’s the hollow left behind when a crater obliterates your everything.

  Then her regard turns razor sharp. “Not sex. Just cover everything that hurts inside me. Like a blanket to cover a stained sofa.”

  That she would mention a sofa makes me wonder if she’s thinking of the couch I took her on. Maybe we left stains on it, but more likely she thinks of what I did with her as the stain. My senses taste a flattening sadness coming from Stella, and I loosely fist my hands. “All right. I can make you feel some of the same here, now, if you want?”

  “Please,” she whispers.

  I try to recreate the pleasant whirlwind in her mind. This time, she’s not fighting me. Eventually, I manipulate her to the point that her lips twitch up in a smile. But it’s not natural. It looks reflexive. It looks wrong. Like she’s my puppet. I have to turn away and pretend to be staring out over the oxyokes of land as I stimulate a patch of sectors in the midst of her wounded psyche.

  Dusk falls. I get up to pace the porch and end up on the lawn. Treading a path back and forth. When I take one step too far, my tether to her breaks and I lose the picture of her mind. She loses my tampering.

  Her chest rises and falls, her breaths coming a little faster as she comes back online for herself. It’s several minutes of silence between us wherein I wonder if I should ask her if she wants more, but I hold myself back, wondering how much interference is too much, when she croaks, “Will you hold me after?”

  Throwing her a nonplussed look, I frown. “After what? More of—”

  “After we have sex again. Will you…” She looks like she’s trying to stomach eating her own tongue. “Please hold me. I think I want to be held.”

  “Oh.” I’ve come to a complete stop at the foot of the porch stairs.

  I consider telling her that I’ll hold her irrespective of sexual acts performed, but just the option of sex in the future has me realizing that I may not be able to hold her close without wanting more. I didn’t know what I was missing in regards to the act of copulation, and now that I do, I find I want to experience it again. Very much. “Is now a good time?”

  Her eyes dart to me.

  I spread my hands. “I’m not certain how this works.”

  Stella blinks hard once, followed by two quick blinks and an open-mouthed exhale. I mount the stairs, coming close enough I can see the areas in her mind for disbelief and resignation.

  It’s with resignation glowing solidly in her brain when she gets to her feet. “Let’s get it over with.”

  CHAPTER 4

  STELLA

  I lead the way into the house. Unlike so many nights with Baron, I’m not holding hands with the man who is my husband as we make our way to the bedroom to reconnect. I also don’t stall just inside the doorway of the room to seductively undress.

  I stop in front of the closet, facing the open doors. My clothes are on the left… Baron’s things are hanging neatly on the right.

  A lamp comes on behind me. I almost ask C’vest to shut it off, but this is better. I’m not sure I’d want a relative stranger taking me in the dark. I don’t think my nerves could handle that.

  With numb fingers, I find the hem of my sweater and drag it over my head. I reach behind myself to fumble with the clasp of my bra.

  Alien fingers join me, and I freeze.

  C’vest doesn’t say a thing, and I’m grateful. If he’d asked for permission to undress me, I would have boiled over, the suppressed frustration that he can do anything he wants to me eating me alive. That any man can do anything he wants to me, and I don’t have the power to stop him. To change things. It’s infuriating. It’s stifling. It’s unfair.

  C’vest’s rough-skinned hand smooths down my spine.

  The knuckles of his other hand graze over the soft curve of my side. When he reaches my jeans, he pauses. When I don’t move, he pinches them at the loops and uses this point to pivot me around until I’m facing him.

  I don’t tip my head back. I stare at his throat.

  His Adam’s apple bobs and then he’s unfastening the button and zipper of my jeans.

  I start kicking them off, hooking my thumbs in the pockets to force them off of myself. There’s no passion in my movements. It’s undecorated, non-indulgent function. Get naked. Be passive. Don’tyoudarecry.

  My throat hurts and I feel tears draining or collecting in that spot below and behind the tonsils, whatever happens when your tears fall on the inside and not out of your eyes. When my jeans are kicked free of my feet, I pull my panties off without grace. I step around C’vest and marshal the courage I need to approach the bed.

  I loved the man I shared this bed with. And now I’ll be under his friend in it. His friend who doesn’t love me, his friend who I barely know.

  Behind me, I hear C’vest’s belt clinking. I hear him set his gun up high, on the shelf in the closet, it sounds like. Probably hoping he can catch me before I sneak out of bed in the middle of the night, bringing a dining room chair to the closet’s face so that I can reach to retrieve it and then—

  “What are you thinking?” C’vest asks, sounding curious and maybe… wary.

  Despite myself, I smile a little. Probably an evil smile. These aren’t nice thoughts. “Of what could happen to you once you fall asleep.”

  “Hm. I surmised as much. There’s an area of your brain that radiates with activity when you’re having violent thoughts. Specifically ones wherein you consider harming me.”

  Surprised, I look over at him.

  And he’s… naked.

  I’ve had an idle curiosity as to what’s under C’vest’s cloths. In that way you do when you see an alien and go, ‘What the heck does that one look like?’ Never thought I’d have the opportunity to know. Never craved the possibility.

  At his hips, his skin turns to fine scales. His groin is covered with the same scales, as is his considerable… erection.

  His penis is long and thick, and it weeps blue fluid. The sides of his shaft are heavily veined. It’s interesting. And I guess it’s mine.

  My eyes force themselves away from the sight of his dick, managing to shift my attention as far away as his cybernetic thigh. His C-legs look like any prosthetic; not quite human, but they’re sturdy and hi-tech and they get the job done that he needs. Unbidden, my gaze travels over the rest of him (skating over the sight of his penis and heavy sack more than once) until I can make myself meet his face.

  He’s watching me, taking in my expressions, I think. Or perhaps he’s examining my mind.

  “Can you tell if I’m nervous?” I ask through stiff lips.

  “You are, and yes I can,” he confirms.

  Inhaling shallowly, I gesture to my head. “Can you make me—” my words die. I’m not even sure what I want to ask for. Is it better to enjoy sex with him or should I silently suffer it? I’m not sure which will make me feel worse.

  C’vest’s eyes cycle from black to cyborg-blue. “Stella? Do you want me to stimulate you for ease of entry?”

  I’m not sure if he means in my head or by my body, but wordlessly, I nod.

  Turns out, he means both.

  I inhale sharply when he takes me in his arms. He leans back and looks between our bodies, running his thumb down my belly, adding pressure as he crests my mons, gentling his touch when he reaches my cleft and discovers my clit.

  In my head, I get hit with an artificial chest full of elation. Not sexual in nature per se. This could be anything. It’s pure happiness though, like when you learn you won something you wanted at a raffle. Or when you perform something exceptionally well.

  And then C’vest is turning
me and pressing me face down on the bed, my hips hanging off the mattress, him coming in behind me.

  Doggy isn’t my favorite position. Not that it can’t feel good, because it has and it can, but because I prefer the intimacy of missionary.

  But do I want to be staring into C’vest’s face for this?

  C’vest comes to a full stop behind me. He draws my hair back away from my ear and leans in to ask, “What’s the matter? Up here.” He traces a horizontal line above the top of my ear. “You have areas blowing up with color only to have it fade out and explode on opposite sections of your skull’s basket. You seem… conflicted about something.”

  It sounds to me like my brain looks like a Simon Says game, but because C’vest has probably never seen one of those old toys, I don’t mention the reference. “Don’t worry about it. Just hold me nice afterward, okay?”

  There’s a significant pause before C’vest gently pets my hair. “I will, Stella.”

  “Make me feel good again first, please,” I ask in a small voice.

  C’vest’s arm comes around my waist carefully. “Of course.”

  And just like that, satisfaction floods me, like that first bite of decadent melt-on-your-tongue fudge with savory rock salt on top. As C’vest probes between my legs with his fingers, fumbling with an earnest concentration to please my body, I let the strange pleasure happening in my brain take full root.

  When C’vest’s thick penis nudges my cunt, I arch my back and enjoy being bombarded with the floating feelings of meretricious happiness. He’s hitting me with an effect similar to what I get when I see a basketful of excited puppies.

  If I let myself go, it feels nice.

  I’m not here, Baron isn’t dead, and none of this hurts me.

  Physically, it isn’t hurting me, and I’m dimly aware of how wet I am as my body welcomes C’vest’s luxurious thrust. Instead of being greedy and aggressive—which he could be, he could absolutely take whatever he wants however he wants it and there’s no one that cares enough about me to stop him—C’vest is treating this encounter like it’s his delight-on-the-tongue, only he’s experiencing his shot of exhilaration in a very different place.