The Place in Between

by Reverend Steven Rage

  * * * * *

  The bed was huge. It was situated upon a stepped pulpit and was encircled by thickly lit candles. The music playing somewhere beyond her view was soft and sweet, swelling Bolero-esque as her partners increased their rigors. They were shadow men; faceless, really. The two were muscular and hairless as far as Donna could ascertain. The both of them kissed and petted and probed her. Their four hands became eight, became sixteen, becoming thirty-two. They flew over Donna’s body expertly and efficiently. All of her orifices were gently but thoroughly surveyed by the faceless men.

  They rolled Donna over, hands flying everywhere, and propped her buttocks skyward. One of the two slipped beneath her and slid down where he could give her more proper attention. Donna took a quick look over her shoulder at the perfect lithe and lean shadow man. He showed her a glass straw. She had heard of this particular enchantment, but had never tried it out herself. It was something she had frequently wanted to try, had often and secretly fantasized about it. 3D could feel her sloppy dew pulsing between her legs. The shadow man responded by inserting four fingers instead of only two, curling his index and middle fingers in a come here, my dear…

  “Put it in me,” she entreated her lover, “blow it in and light me up.”

  The shadow man smiled, at least Donna sensed that he did, in that knowing, smirking way expert devotees have right before they send you over the edge. He did cock his head – that, she could see – to gaze at her curiously. The grin she knew was there, bent, unseen in the features of a face that was never there in the first place. He nodded and brought from behind his back an old-fashioned cellophane bag. It was filled to overflowing with blow.

  “Goodness me,” she murmured, “some notion, this.”

  The shadow man below her licked and lapped at her. He kneaded with his multiple fingers her buried singular push pin, bringing 3D ever so close to fulfillment. The man behind her dipped the straw into the bag and sucked up almost a gram. He placed it into her eagerly dilated rectum and blew the blow deep inside her. The capillaries absorbed and osmosed the cocaine and sent it down the line. When it dumped into her bass thudding heart it hit her all at once. Donna came so hard she collapsed unconscious.

  The smile on her face lingered there, long after her knowledge of it did.

  * * * * *

  3D came to, right in the same exact chair she had traveled in. Like the others, she glanced embarrassed at the sex, only to see it clean and dry. The Good Doctor was staring at her, interested.

  “Well, my dear,” he said, “what are your impressions?”

  “It was a trip,” 3D replied, “Literally and figuratively, it was the most intense experience of my life, Uncle. I am rendered nearly speechless”

  Tug returned, then, bearing a full tray of refreshments. The chimp turned to leave, but The Good Doctor bid him to stay.

  “I have questions for you both,” he stated, “First though, the name. Donna, what shall we call it?”

  “It was something else. I really was gone from here. It was a true trip, as I’ve said.”

  “Well then,” The Good Doctor started, “in keeping with the theme of the twins’ produce we should obviously hail it as Crosstown Traffic. Agreed?” 3D and Tug both nodded their mutual agreement. “And the sex trips itself?” They both looked down, red-faced. Neither one wanted The Good Doctor to think less of them. He noticed this and placed a comforting hand on them both. “You needn’t divulge any of the gory details,” he assured them, “I simply wish to know if there was anything significant. Tug? You go first.”

  “Dr. Sir,” Tug began, “it was from a favorite dream of mine.”

  Donna agreed, “Mine was based on an urban legend I’d heard years ago. It became a secret fantasy of mine.”

  “I see,” replied The Good Doctor. “I, myself, experienced an embrace that I harbored secretly, even to myself.” He paused, waiting for Tug to pour the tea. He took a bite of the sweets then continued, “Now for the elapsed time. Donna, how long did your experience feel to you?”

  3D thought a moment. “It lasted, maybe ten to twelve minutes. Fifteen minutes at the outside.”

  “Interesting,” The Good Doctor replied. “The actual time elapsed was closer to two or three minutes.”

  “A compressed time signature,” offered Donna.

  “Indeed. How did you feel after the experience, Tug?”

  Tug searched his chimp brain for the proper description. “Marvelous,” was what he conjured.

  “Donna?”

  “I would have to agree wholeheartedly with Tug. Once I got over the confusion and embarrassment, I felt good. Once I came down, I had a great sense of ease. I was – am – relaxed.”

  “So, we enjoy a sedative reaction. The endorphins were bouncing around in me, as well,” The Good Doctor shared. “This is all quite good. We can market its multiple responses.”

  Tug and Donna both nodded. She asked: “What amount should I market?”

  “Clearly we can’t dispense it uncut. Donna, you know full well how greedy users are when it comes to volume. They will never believe a mere fraction of a grain will do anything. I would say, at least for the interim, mix it in with the Uptown you sell, they won’t know the difference. Soften it much more than you usually do and sell it by the half gram. Make sure they are in a safe place and personally supervise the first test subjects. You don’t want anyone dying quite yet. You know how fast nasty gossip spreads in The Harbor.”

  “Yes, Uncle, I understand.”

  “Choose the first users carefully.” Donna nodded. “As far as marketing beyond the initial phase, let us emphasize how clean it is. No muss, no fuss. For an hour trip that lasts only a few moments of real time. With no movement and no mess and the best sex you’ll never have. Crosstown Traffic!”

  “Sounds perfect,” 3D replied as she rose to her feet. Donna never overstayed her welcome. She knew her uncle appreciated this. “Time to turn the screws,” she told The Good Doctor, giving to him a goodbye kiss.

  Uncle Tugmunkee showed her out.

  Donna got into her car; engaged the batteries and fired up the nearly silent motor. She looked for a moment at the Crosstown Traffic he uncle gave her to dole out tonight at the Balmy Breezes Sex Club and Drinkery. For a minute there she was tempted to try some more. She refrained. Somehow she thought Tug and The Good Doctor might be watching her. She put it in her coat pocket, turned up the car’s heater and took a few quick bumps of Uptown Girl. Her uncle could care less about that.

  Smiling through the good rush, she backed out into the Underground and went about her business.

  * * * * *

  And now there is yet another. She is a warm, nice home. We do not feel afraid here in this one. We are protected in this shell. Yes. But their insistence of using Us for physical gratification is getting tiresome. It is like being stuck in an endless loop.

  We shall have to see about that.

  QUINQUE

  Elron Hunt brought his motorized bicycle up the stairs from the Underground and into the club. He wheeled it into his tiny office and hung it from some hooks that were buried in the wall. Elron had to inch himself sideways through the jumble of floor-to-ceiling stacks of dehydrated liquor packets just to make it to his postage stamp of a desk. Once there, he sat down on the stool and twisted around so he could put his elbows on the day-planner screen. It lit up with the pressure.

  “Today’s schedule?” it asked and Elron grumpily told the day-planner to shut the heck up. He was in no mood. Elron had run out of dope at the farm and he could not handle the glaring light and jarring noise just yet.

  His nephew, Slow Bennie, had gobbled up the last of Elron’s stash. He just freaking knew the daft kid did it. No one else lived there with them. Now he had to come all the way over here to work early, braving the Underground, and jonesing hard.

  Elron never bothered accusing the half retard anymore. There was no point to it. Slow Bennie would just deny it. So, they played the game of hide-and-se
ek, instead. Sometimes Slow Bennie would guess where Elron’s stash was hidden right away. Sometimes Elron managed to keep it hidden from his nephew for weeks or months at a time. This time Elron got complacent and it had cost him his high. It was his own fault.

  Elron unlocked a desk drawer and got out some gummy Downtown Leroy Brown that he kept here for just this sort of emergency. He opened the bag and tore off a tiny pinch and placed it on a thick piece of tin foil. The metal pen casing he clamped between upper and lower dental implants. Elron held the foil up under the tip of the pen and lit the underside with sweeps of the butane lighter. Elron inhaled thin wispy vapors. He held in the lungful of Downtown Leroy Brown smoke for as long as he could. Elron leaned back against the wall and exhaled gently. The sweet ear wax opiate blew over his conscious mind, sending tendrils of euphoric fingers throughout his body and making him happy. It had to. Downtown Leroy Brown was the best thing Elron Hunt had going for him.

  Elron lived with his nephew, Slow Bennie, on an eighth of an acre of GRID protected farmland. The urban micro-farm legally belonged to the soft-headed only child of Elron Hunt’s dead sister. She was given the land and the domicile beneath as a gift. Every member of the Village Council of The Harbor was given farms of various sizes and condition, depending upon the relative worth of each individual. The property was held in perpetuity with the guaranteed force field protection, now inherited by her son, Slow Bennie. Elron’s nephew was a full-grown man, but he had the mind of a willful child. Slow Bennie could more than take care of the peppers and tomatoes the two of them grew under the protection of the GRID. Slow Bennie knew how to work the dehydrator to smoke and jerk the fish that Elron bought at the Market. But the boy-man could never leave the property to venture out. Not on his own, he couldn’t. If he did, Slow Bennie would no doubt get himself hopelessly lost in the howling wind white-out and freeze to death in no time flat. Elron’s conditions set forth by the Village Council were straight forward. As long as Slow Bennie remains alive, he will need a caretaker and that is Elron. If the boy-man died, the farm would revert back to The Harbor and Elron would be forced to seek shelter elsewhere.

  Elron opened his eyes and looked at the walk-in storage unit he was being forced to office at. It was a nice hide-away, but it was a storage unit, not just in size and grandeur. A real functioning storage unit, the owner would not allow the space enough solar heat to ever be comfortable. The owner told him it was for the packets of powdered hooch they needed to keep cold, anyway. Elron knew it was bullshit. Only fresh items, of which they had none, needed to be kept cold. The owner kept his office cold so that money could be saved and so Elron would be too uncomfortable to ever hide out in it for too long. He hated to, but Elron was forced to agree. He had to keep walking the joint, or the girls would get too sticky with the Federal Bank Notes and Rupees that illegally washed through The Balmy Breezes Sex Club.

  I suppose I could sling a cocoon hammock in here, Elron thought. He chuckled at the depressing thought. Elron had slid a long slippery slope from teaching Artificial Ventilation to being financially dependent on a developmentally disabled kleptomaniac.

  Elron thought that was quite enough feeling sorry for his self. He lit up another lungful. That helped his mood considerably. He held it in while he put the drug paraphernalia away, locking the desk up tight as he exhaled. There came a knock at his door. Elron forced the rest of the smoke out, lighting a cone of incense. He kept it on his desk. He yelled for her to come in. She always stopped at Elron’s freezing office first, before making her stripper rounds.

  3D opened the office door and snaked her way through the clutter. When she made it to him, Elron was standing to greet her with a kiss on both cheeks. He welcomed her and bid her to sit on one of the liquor packet crates. With a smile, 3D tossed him a quarter gram of Downtown Leroy Brown. It was Elron’s standard pay-off for each time she showed her face in his club. He got free smack and 3D got to peddle the Uptown Girl that kept his strippers and showstoppers buzzed, happy and, most of all, productive.

  “Thank you,” he said and slipped it in his pocket. He would lock it in the desk after she left. You can’t trust anyone these days.

  Donna surprised Elron by staying put. Her smile lit up her flushed face.

  “So, Elron, I was curious,” she began. She brought out the Crosstown Traffic. “I wondered if you would be so good as to do me a favor.” She dipped her over-long pinky finger nail into the baggie of salt. She held it out to him.

  “What is it?” Elron asked her.

  “It’s brand new,” Donna replied.

  “What does it do? Looks like salt.”

  “It is salt, in a manner of speaking. It’s a real trip, Elron,” she told him. “You’ll just love it.”

  “How do you know I’ll like the stuff? What if it makes me freak out, or something?”

  Her grin widened. “I know you’ll like it, because I tried it myself,” she replied. “But you better stay seated for your maiden voyage, Gilligan.”

  Elron looked at Donna skeptically, but he held her hand to his nose anyway. When he snorted up the tears, it stung like a mother. 3D’s chuckling faded as he blacked-out.

  * * * * *

  Elron Hunt came to, standing in front of a class of his former college students. The sun was high in an impossibly blue and clear sky. The sun shone through the green leafy trees outside. He wasn’t below the surface, in the Underground. There was nothing separating Elron from the elements but a thin pane of plain, clear glass. He glanced down to his hands. Elron clenched and unclenched them. He felt as though he was truly in his old classroom at the University. They were above ground and his class was filled with all of his favorite students he had taught throughout the years. They constituted his All-Star team of students, all the ones he recalled fondly from the time before the Cataclysmic Events. To be here, to have it feel and look so real, this was impossible in and of itself. Add to that strange notion that he had somehow traveled through space and time and beyond all likelihood, but to merge all his best times in one familiar place? Well, it was crazy. It was nothing but some elaborate dream sequence, nothing more. But Elron could feel the breathing and could hear his own excited heart as it beat strong in his chest. He could feel the fabric as he touched his clothes.

  Elron looked out to the class. Their expectant faces were all smiling up at him, gazing with admiration and the desire to learn. The liquid pressure respiration device was attached to a medical mannequin head and torso combo. It ventilated the artificial lungs with precise, smooth and easy breaths.

  Then Elron remembered this lecture. He’d given it several times and the interaction of his best and brightest students always thrilled him. And now the former tenure-track professor, specializing in Alternative Ventilation Modalities, had all his favorites in the same room and right in front of him. It was the best fantasy he could have imagined. He got right into the swing of things. Professor Elron asked, “So tell me, what ratio should be recommended for restrictive interstitial disease?”

  “Are the changes fibrotic in nature?” asked the young lady in the front row of chairs. Each row shared a long buffet table to display their work.

  “Just beginning to change,” he answered.

  “What is the extent of the damage?” asked a bearded fellow in the next row. Elron remembered this guy, too. “How poor is the gas exchange?”

  “The patient has a huge ventilation-perfusion missmatch, say. In a non-immediately reversible scenario.”

  “Like smoke inhalation with tissue damage from a fire?” asked yet a third. Elron was getting wonderfully agitated. He began pacing around the classroom. The students smiled. They recognized when the professor was mentally stimulated.

  “Yes. And permanent damage has been done to the lungs. The patient is extremely short of breath and is tiring out. He has a PaO2 of 35 torr on a FiO2 of 100%.”

  And on and on it went. Elron plunged himself headlong into the realistic as Hell vision. He walked as he talked, goin
g up and down the center aisle, pacing in back of the class. He touched and squeezed the shoulders of those who asked the best questions and made the brightest points. The erection it gave him nearly matched the excitement that was brewing in a deep well within him. He was glad his A.C.E thick shift covered it. He paused, but only for a moment when he realized that everyone was dressed in the style of their particular era. His drab, functional clothing was given no more notice than anyone else’s. It was clearly Elron’s fantasy. No one else seemed to be in control. He thought briefly of the intelligent young females in the room. He’d fantasized many times over most of them here. He instinctively knew he could bend anyone of them over the table and pummel them rotten, but he declined. Perhaps he would indulge himself in this way at a later time. For now, the professor was feeling oxygen coursing through his blood stream and riding the waves of his convoluted brain matter. He hadn’t felt nearly this good in so long, he didn’t want to sully the mental masturbation with a physical one. Who knew how long this hallucination would last?

  Elron continued, “With such a severe and now chronic hypoxemia we should use the viscous medium for more of a direct oxygenation. The use of positive pressure ventilation will force oxygen through the alveolar-capillary membrane while simultaneously evacuating the carbon dioxide.”

  “What inspiratory/expiratory ventilation ratio would you want?” asked the older student to the left of him. Elron paused. He remembered this student in particular, but he’d always been bad with names, even with the ones he liked. The assholes and cunts on the other hand, Elron had committed those folks to unhappy memory. But this one? He was named Joe, John – no! George. George Sutton was his name. Elron admired him so much. George came to class every day, despite working full time at the hospital as a Health Aid. George could never find enough time to study. Elron recalled that George’s hospital was full of vindictive haters. Staff there would go out of their way to make it nigh on impossible for George to carve out any study time. As a result of this, George barely held onto a 2.76 GPA, but his instructor, Elron, had his back. George’s questions were always timely (he had zero time to waste) and pertinent (the dude was brilliant). Elron just knew he would make a fine practitioner. But he never made it.