by Oblimo
"I guess it wouldn't. So Dee declares, 'It is done,' and stalks out of the room. Literally stalks, a panther moving to its next kill—maybe to repair a hard drive or something. Whatever he does when he gets worked up."
"He writes," Galatea said, meeker still.
"Dee writes? He never mentions it when I talk about my poetry. "
Galatea's voice was so meek it could inherit the Earth. "He writes porn. On the Internet."
"Oh, Jesus, never mind. I don't want to know. Just let me finish. I never really planned on using the computer. I'd always hated the things. But Dee's performance was so melodramatic that not trying out the computer he made for me at least once would've been like shooting a puppy. So I sat down, started messing around on the Internet, and—bam!—I found SRU in under a minute. With the stuff from SRU, I was finally real witch. 'It is done,' he said, and it was. He did it. Dee made me a witch…and now he's made you, so I was right to be terrified, wasn't I?"
"Yes," Galatea said, sounding stronger, "but Dee didn't make you a witch, at least not in the same sense he made me. And he didn't make me, not exactly. And that's what we need to talk about. Dee and me."
"What about Dee and you?"
"Sooner or later we're going to get in trouble, serious trouble, and we're going to need your help."
Galatea glared at Dee's blender and wondered how it would feel to be pureed. "Prob'ly like getting blown apart by house music." She glanced at the kitchenette microwave's digital readout.
9:03 PM.
"God dammit," she said, hefting a half-filled jug of Nyquil onto the countertop. "This is the last of the green stuff."
The front door of Dee's apartment trembled as sheets of green icing sleeted through the cracks on all four sides of the doorframe. Galatea poked her head around the kitchenette's doorway, squinting. "Izzat me?"
The growing ziggurat of icing darkening the front door filled out fuller than Jane Mansfield.
"That's me," Galatea decided, and wobbled into the living room. "About damn time too. You were gone two freakin' hours. I thought we just wanted to scare Ursula. What were you doing all this time?"
"I'm sick and tired of eating pussy," the returning Galatea responded. "How's 'bout we flip a coin, and the loser has to morph into Dee and do whatever the winner wants?'"
Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me,
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
'Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
—Hedwig and the Angry Inch,
The Origin of Love
Chapter Four: Ask Me to Enter
"…God damn, woman," Yves was crying out, "how do you always do that?"
The morning sun threw strange shadows in the doorway. Ursula shrugged, opened the door wide and stepped aside. "Come into my parlor."
"Very funny," Yves grumbled, crossing the threshold and barging into Ursula's living room. "Oh, wait." He stopped short at the antique French settee and matching oaken end tables. "This really is a parlor." He tapped a thoughtful rhythm on a lace-covered tabletop. "Doilies, even."
Ursula stood in front of a glass display case full of porcelain dolls. "I've never invited you to tea?"
Yves eyes watered from the patchouli incense and a lemony, astringent smell lingering in the air. "You have," he said, blinking. "I've always had to RSVP in the negative for…varying reasons."
Ursula waved a hand at the homey clutter of her living room. "You think all of this is affectation."
Yves pursed his lip and whistled through his teeth a bit. He espied a purple kitchen glove poking out of Ursula's sweatpants pocket. "You don't have a cat," he said eventually. He folded his arms, a gesture both defiant and protective. "Rooms like this are supposed to have cats in them."
Ursula smirked. "Black cats?"
"Maine coon cats," Yves countered. "One named Alabaster and the other Fusspot. This isn't a witch's parlor. It's my grandmother's."
Ursula laughed hard enough to snort through her nose. The tension in Yves' shoulders melted and he folded himself onto the settee. "Sorry," he sighed, "it's been a long night."
"Fuck the tea," Ursula said, her smile warm, "what about a hot toddy?"
"Only if it's a coffee toddy and not warm milk. I'd pass out."
"I'll grind some beans," Ursula said. Her bunny slippers scuffed the floor as she moved into the kitchenette. "Any roast preference?"
"Ursula, the only coffee I have in my apartment is made from instant crystals."
"That would be a 'no,' yes?"
"Yes," Yves called, peering into the kitchenette before settling into the settee, one arm draped over his forehead.
The coffee grinder grumbled and an undercurrent of freshly ground coffee added to the complex, reeking bouquet in the air. "Quit trying to smother it," Yves said. "I know already."
Ursula stopped puttering in the kitchen. "Know what?"
"You had sex with Galatea."
Ursula stumbled out of the kitchen, tripping over bunny-ears. "How did you—"
Yves sat up, ticking his reasons off with his fingers. "You've taken the day off…to clean. You're taking excuses to use every classic masking scent in the book. And your bed linens are hung out to dry in your kitchen. Either Galatea's gotten busy in your bed or you broke your hookah and got green bongwater everywhere."
"What are you," Ursula said, "Sherlock Holmes?"
"No. Holmes was bi."
Ursula stared for a second before scuttling back into the kitchenette. "I'm going to use more brandy."
"Good idea."
The solitary nanogasm burst against Dee's inner thigh and vanished faster than a top quark in a particle accelerator, a split-second lightning kiss barely strong enough to trigger a single nerve ending in Dee's skin. The surface of the green serum filling the tub remained placid and dead. Dee closed his eyes, trying to remember the first time Galatea told him about nanogasm.
["…One sperm makes one nanomek replication…"]
"Please, Galatea," Dee's voice rang, amplified by the porcelain tub, "come back to me if you can." The thin lime liquid stuck to his skin and congealed into scum as it cooled. Caught in reverie, listening to Galatea's techno-babble pillow-talk in his head, Dee felt no urge to wipe it away.
["…One replication gives me one nanogasm and produces two more nanomek—at least two, more if you really get 'em turned on…"]
A cluster of nanogasms trilled against his thigh in a sudden salvo before the brackish bathwater fell inert again. Dee smiled, his eyes still shut. "I bet you thought I was going to say, 'But only if you want to.' What did you call me? 'Sensitive and enlightened and stuff.' Well, add 'selfish' to that list. I don't want you back only if you want to come back. I just want you, period."
["…which combined with three more sperm gives me three more nanogasms and produces six more nanomek, which gives me nine more nanogasms and, well…"]
The next flurry of nanogasms arrived quicker and stronger than the last, zipping over Dee's skin like dozens of marching, electric ants. The ripple-tickle-tingle abated, petering out like the last few superheated kernels of popping corn, before surging in a cascade of strengthening waves thrilling Dee down to the bone. His eyes flew open and he cried out in uncontrollable laughter. "Galatea!"
["…after a few minutes of that I'll be back in shape…"]
The green syrup between his legs fizzed and radiated warmth in a room-temperature-but-rising boil. "I love you, Galatea! I—Whoa."
["…and hot and horny as Hell. Literally…"]
Thousands of nanogasms ran rampant into Dee's crotch.
"And after that," Ursula said, curled up in the wicker rocking chair across the parlor from the settee, her h
ands wrapped around an oversized, steaming mug of coffee hot toddy, "we talked."
Yves lounged on the settee. "Galatea sounds like the sort of person who hates to chat unless it's really, really important." His empty mug bounced on his stomach when he spoke. "So what did you two talk about?"
"Oh, this and that." Ursula slurped from the mug. "You know, girl talk."
"Uh-huh." Yves folded his arms behind his head. The mug on his belly wobbled. "Sure. Girl talk. So Galatea didn't tell you anything more about meliae?"
Ursula perked up. "About what?"
"Dee asked me to figure out what's going on, and I'd already gotten a few ideas on my own, but if I just had a little more information…"
"Wait," Ursula said, setting her half-full mug on the silver tea service. "What's this about meliae?"
Yves rolled onto his side to look at her, catching his mug as it fell and balancing it on his hip. "You don't know about meliae?"
Ursula sat back. "Sure I do. Nymphs of the ash tree, and pollen dust, I believe. Very sacred tree, the ash. Fermented ash sap is the most potent—"
"Dee said Galatea is a meliae," Yves interrupted, frowning. "He called her a 'honey nymph'."
"Honey nymph? Really?" Ursula sat back up. "Interesting. A few texts mention 'honey nymph' meliae as the nursemaids of Zeus. I wonder…Yves, what's wrong? You've gone all white."
Yves' coffee mug toppled and smashed against the hardwood floor.
Ursula stood up. "Yves, what is it? What are you thinking?"
["…My girlfriend thinks I'm a god…"]
"I've just figured out what's going on," Yves said, his voice distant.
Ursula stared at the broken bits of mug. "Well, that's a good thing, isn't it?" She shifted her weight as if resisting the urge to scratch an annoying itch, her eyes never leaving the shattered pottery. "I'll just go get the dustpan, shall I?"
"I've just figured out what's going on," Yves repeated, his attention focused far away.
["…If Galatea thinks you’re a god, she makes you a god…"]
"And I don't think I can fucking stand it," he groaned, "at least not sober." Ursula bustled back into the parlor armed with a horsehair bristle dust mop and bronze dustpan. "Do you have any more mugs? I'd like more brandy. Neat, if you please." Ursula bent over and swept. "Er, that's not what I meant," Yves stage-whispered.
"No shit, Sherlock," Ursula stage-whispered back, her ass bobbing as she chased after the last pottery fragments as diligently as an archeology intern on a dig.
Yves eyes followed the orbit of Ursula's derriere through the air. "Damn," he whistled, "has anyone ever told you you've got an incredible—"
"Pygmalion!" Ursula growled.
"What?"
"That means shut up! The next person who mentions my ass is going to wear it for a hat, I swear."
Dee's fingers crunched through the lip of the bathtub, the porcelain providing no more resistance than cracked eggshell. Green syrup bulged through the fracture but held just enough tension on its surface to keep from spilling over. The electrifying gel pulsed and churned in his crotch, nanogasms redoubling. Dee trembled, groaned, and grew rock hard. "God, I wish I could see you, Galatea."
A dome of foam rose from the surface of the fizzing gel. Dee could see outlines take shape before the crackling bubbles of foam boiled them away. "No," he insisted, "don't. Don't burn away your nanomek for me like that. You must have so little left." The dome dissipated. The ambient temperature in the tub continued to rise, washing Dee head-to-toe in waves of increasing warmth. "It's like you once said. I want to see you, but I don't need to. I know you're there now. I should never have doubted it." The jade gel started to steam.
You've got a plan, remember, Dee reminded himself. Stick to it, or she won't come back. "I want to be here for you, Galatea. And besides…" Fragments of porcelain fell to the floor as his right hand slipped into the viscous substance lapping against his ribs. "I've never masturbated for you before." His grin was slick and sly. "Time for you to learn the Dee Technique."
The mirror above the bathroom sink fogged over in the suddenly sauna-hot air.
Dee pushed his hand through the pliant gelatin trembling around his cock. "It's an underhanded technique." He laughed. "I mean an underhand, not underhanded. Palm underneath, thumb on top, like this. Start with the shaft. Don't work the head until it's primed—Christ, I suck at this dirty talk stuff." His shoulder rolled in a rugged rhythm as his hand ranged over his cock. "And you're so fucking good at it, Galatea. Even listening to someone talk dirty in a porn flick used to embarrass me and turn me off. But you, Galatea…The way your eyes glint and flick to the left whenever you say 'fuck' or how you get a little cross-eyed whenever you talk about my dick." His shoulder started to jerk. "You think my neck is hot, you think I'm a breast man, but it's your eyes, Galatea." Dee's voice dropped to a trailing whisper. "Your eyes."
Dee kicked as he came, shearing off the tub's stainless steel faucet and shooting it across the room with his heel.
Dee arched and flexed, gasping. "Holy shit. I talked. I dirty-talked. I can't believe that I…"
A slurping suction threatened to raise a hickey over his entire body as the foam rolled back and compressed at his feet, giving Dee the fleeting impression of a maddened mare rearing for a berserk charge. Galatea erupted, fully formed and finely figured, from the sea green froth gathered at the end of the tub. Her jelled flesh shimmered and shone, pure as green amethyst. She clambered over him, her hair twisting and braiding in nesting knots, her eyes unfocused and incandescent with lust. Galatea gushed, "Neither can I now shut the fuck up," and soul-kissed him hard enough to implode a bowling ball.
Dee threw his arms around her, hooked his right leg over the perfect arc of her ass, and hauled her down over him. Her kiss became a smothering, traveling smooch as their bodies met. Dee swiveled his hips and drove his cock deep into her sex. Galatea threw her head back in a delirious scream that rattled Dee's teeth and shattered the glass mirror above the sink.
Yves lurched out of the closet, natural-light grow lamp in hand, knocking over a small hydroponic tank of marijuana plants in the process. "What the fuck was that?"
Ursula scuffed into the bedroom, belting down brandy from a narrow, crystal glass. "That's just Galatea getting her magic back. Now you know what my life's been like these past few days—Oh, fuck, my pot!"
Yves, his eyes still wide in alarm, demanded, "You want me to what?"
Ursula wound her arm back to hurl the empty glass at him but just shook her head and rocked back on the balls of her bunny-slippered feet. "I want you to clean that shit up, asshole! That was going to be two months' rent!"
Dee got a brief glimpse of Galatea's cherubic, girlish face—Why does she look so young?—before her medusa's hair and eyes of burnished gemstone filled the world and her tart, honeyed tongue sought his again. He nuzzled and bit. She whickered into his mouth and rode him ragged. A thick cushion of gel buoyed Dee up to the middle of the tub. Dee shut his eyes tight and they fucked in freefall. The only resistance and weight was the slipping friction of flesh against flesh. The only sensation was Galatea's pussy sliding over his dick and the fervid, breathless French kiss that went on and on until the sweet sting of a second orgasm crashed through Dee and his cum poured into Galatea's core.
Her lips, still pressed over Dee's mouth, parted in a frenzied smile and three bubbling giggles escaped them: "Ah-hah, ah-hum, hm-mm." She tipped her head and kissed Dee slantwise. He heard a metallic sigh. The weight atop him shifted in a single, pulsing wave and the folds of Galatea's sex flowered around his mouth as her thighs sunk around his head. He felt her sultry breath bathe his crotch. With a guttural, mewling "Mrriiine," Galatea wrapped her pillow-soft hand around Dee's balls and sword-swallowed his prick up to the hilt. Her hips ground her pussy into his face and Galatea sixty-nined Dee toward a cataclysmic third orgasm.
Galatea pulled off his cock just long enough to whine, "Cum for me, Dee," before clamping down again. Dee's
eyes rolled over white as he felt the pressure build again. Still bobbing on a weightless, plush cushion, he reached out for purchase against the tub but his hands only met molten gel.
Citrus-perfumed breath tickled the hair curling around his ear and another voice whimpered, "Cum for us, Dee."
Dee unglued his eyes and turned his head. Above him, Galatea keened, vibrating the cock buried in her throat, and shimmied to keep his lips and chin muzzled in her sex. Below him, the lathering gel in the tub had welled up and overflowed the cracked porcelain rim, a soft and silent river of orchids, bearing Dee aloft and slowly spreading its kelly-colored cream across the tiled wall and linoleum floor. Galatea's keening dropped down into an impatient, thrumming growl and she pushed both her upper and nether lips hard against his flesh.
The gel beneath him sighed, shifted and took form. The swell of a heavy bosom pressed into his shoulders and neck. An hourglass waist arched into the small of his back. A pair of perfect jade legs rose and crossed in the air above his thighs, sandwiching his hips to Galatea's head. Delicate hands reached up from below his ears, hefted Galatea's squirming rump a fraction higher, and slid their fingers deep into her pussy. Above him, Galatea mewled and doubled her expert efforts on his dick, head bobbing merrily. Lush lips kissed Dee's ear and Galatea's green twin begged, "Cum for us, Dee."
Dee's third orgasm crested at last. He bowed upward as Galatea drank down another flood of his cum, chuckling and suckling, her rhythm unbroken. The shock of afterglow wracked him for only a second or two before the I-can-do-this-all-night sensation of primed glans returned. Dee pumped against Galatea's lips. Above him, Galatea mewled, shivered, and melted. Searing honey drizzled down from her pussy and spattered his cheek.
"Nay," said the green twin cradling him from below, affecting an antiquated brogue. "Nay, boy; don' move. You feel so good we'll burn up and melt away if ye do." Dee almost laughed at the strange, sudden accent, but the sight of the green twin prying and plunging her fingers into Galatea's sopping, steamy sex hovering just a few inches above his eyes sealed his throat with something a little like awe but a lot more like Aw, fuck, yeah. "Don' move, boy," repeated the green twin below him, her fingers working. "Just cum. Come again!" The more she whispered, the more the impish burr in her voice rang true, less Hollywood and more archaic highland. "Sweet love doth now invite thy graces that refrain to do me…" She thrust her fingers knuckle-deep and above him Galatea screamed, bucked and sucked harder than ever. "Due delight," the green twin whispered, her lips tracing a wicked grin against the back of Dee's neck.
