I said, “That’s right.”
CHAPTER Six - Socializing
She said, “Crap. That’s awesome. Whoa, you feel good. I could absolutely just raise up a little and you’d be fucking me right now. Damn. Not yet though, right?”
I said slowly, with a hint of hope in my voice, “Well, um, if you wanted to, I mean, I guess we could.”
Allie grinned and said, “Oh, I think I’m starting to want to. But maybe we really should wait and do the whole thing after you fight. You know what? I believe that you are going to win. I believe it now. Um, Florin, your thingy is pretty big. I like it. Hey, you said that you know about sex from books, right? But you said you never saw movies?”
I said, “No, I never saw movies.”
Allie smiled and wiggled on my groin and said, “That’s OK. I saw plenty. My girlfriends and I watched movies. I have some ideas. Oh, you feel good. A real cock. Man, things here are stupid. Everybody here is so messed up. The way we talk is so stupid. They changed the words for everything. They say words like thingy and cunny and hoo-hoo and willie and honkers and they say fuck like it’s a bad thing.”
I said, “I don’t even know what some of those things mean.”
Allie smiled and pressed down on me and said, “That’s OK. You taught me to talk normal again, and I’ll teach you how to talk about sex. Oh, by the way, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I will…no, wait. I told you that I won’t do sex with you, and I won’t”
I looked at her and she grinned again and said, “But what I will do is fuck you with my pussy full of your nice cock, and I’ll ride you till we both explode in orgasm. Florin, I haven’t even masturbated for what, 18 years? I’ve never even been felt-up on my tits. Do you really think I’m pretty?”
I said, “Allie, you’re gorgeous. It’s just that I don’t know what to do. I mean, if you want to…” but I never finished my sentence.
At that instant, Allie lifted up a few inches and shoved her right hand between our bodies and grabbed my penis. I had never had anyone touch me like that before and I groaned loudly. But then, the girl pointed me at her slit and pushed herself onto me, settling smoothly until I was all the way inside.
Allie shouted, “Oh yeah! I’m…” and she grunted, and I felt her squeeze me with her vagina.
That was about enough for me, too, and I climaxed as well.
The whole thing had only lasted a few seconds, but it was more intense than any sexual stimulation I’d ever felt. And I hadn’t even gotten the chance to touch her breasts yet. She’d clearly had an orgasm and she couldn’t blame me for not lasting more than an instant my first time.
Allie was just sitting on top of me with her eyes closed, slowly churning and enjoying her new sensations. Before I lost my erection completely, I felt her shudder two more times, and then she opened her eyes.
She stared down from where she sat on top of me and said, “Hi.”
I said, “Hi. How do you feel?”
She smiled and said, “Weird. Good. It isn’t raining anymore.”
She was right, the rain had finally stopped. We were soaking wet and might as well have been living underwater for the past several days, but the rain had finally stopped.
I watched her as several expressions crossed her face.
Finally, she said, “It feels weird. And kind of scary. And different. It felt really good. The…what we did. They and the others call it ‘sex’ but it’s weird how they do it and talk about it.”
I said, “Allie, I do love you.”
She smiled and said, “Yeah, you do. I know. You know how I know? Because you are still here. And you didn’t rape me and throw me in the bushes and leave. I’m weird, aren’t I? Because I didn’t remember yesterday. A lot of the vegetables don’t remember yesterday.”
I said, “Allie, if you don’t remember yesterday, how do you know that you were a virgin?”
She pondered that for a second and said, “Um, I don’t exactly know. Does that matter?”
I shrugged and said, “I guess not. I guess what happens to us matters if it impacts us.”
She said, “But what didn’t happen matters a lot, too. You didn’t treat me like anyone one else. You treated me like a friend and like a person, not a Vegetable or a Mush or a Breeder. You love me but Florin, does that mean that you love me?”
I thought that I knew what she meant. She wanted to know if she could count on me still loving her moment by moment, not just in this instant.
I said, “Allie, as far as I’m concerned, we are part of each other now.”
She said, “Like you told me before, forever. And you won’t let anyone hurt me without a fight. And you won’t trade me for food if I belong to you.”
I said, “Allie, tell me about belonging to someone? I’m not sure what you mean. In a way, I belong to you because I love you but what does that mean here?”
Allie wiggled a bit on my lap where my penis still sat inside her and said, “Um, I don’t know how to say it. It’s kind of like old-time slaves, I think. No, you aren’t forced to belong to someone, so it isn’t like that. It’s like you belong to a family, right? I belonged to my parent’s family. I was part of it. I belonged there. Do you love me?”
I said softly, “I do. I love you, Allie. I belong with you now.”
She said, “OK, that feels right. I belong with you now too. So, I love you. So, I won’t leave you. So, I’m not a Vegetable. Well, I am, because I am but I’m a Vegetable with a…what?”
I suggested, “With a husband?”
She said, “Yeah, with a husband. Like a boyfriend forever. What’s your name again?”
I shook my head slightly and said, “Allie, I’m Florin.”
She said, “Right. I knew that. And I belong to you. Oh, you were asking me about that. The tribes have people who belong to the tribe. The tribe doesn’t own the people, but the people belong to it. I belong to you. I remember some things sometimes. Yesterday, I told you that I didn’t belong to you. But we didn’t have a tribe yet and I didn’t know you and I didn’t want to do sex with you anyway. You aren’t going to do sex with me, are you?”
I shook my head in misunderstanding again and said, “Allie, you’re sitting on my penis and we both just had pretty great orgasms. What do you mean?”
She looked down at herself, where our bodies merged and said, “Oh, that. That’s not ‘sex’. I wanted to do this. This is like in the movies where we fuck because we’re crazy about each other and like it and want to stay together.”
I asked again, “Then what is sex?”
Allie said, “Sex is when the Breeders just do whatever to whoever and nobody has a name or a face or a friend and no one knows if anyone is liking anything. Or the other way is when someone does sex with someone. We did it together, not like sex.”
I said, “Do you mean that when they ‘do sex’ that that one person ‘does it’ to another person? That one of them does it and the other one has it done to them?”
She said, “Right. I told you that I wouldn’t let you do sex to me.” Then she smiled and said, “But we can do this, like together, as much as you want to. You know about it from books, right? You can tell me, and we can practice it. I liked it. It wasn’t bad at all. If we’re a family, we can just do it. It’s Florin, right?”
I sighed and Allie laughed and said, “I was teasing you! You know what? Oh my gosh! You know what? I love you! I just realized it. I really love you and everything!”
I said, “I’m so glad.”
She said, “It’s all weird though. It won’t be weird soon, I promise. And after you fight, it’ll be less weird. I know you’ll win, at least the first one or two fights.”
I said sadly, “So, I still have to do that, huh?”
She said, “Um, yeah, unless we try to hide forever. But we have to trade eventually. And to trade, you have to fight. After that, you either join a tribe or become a tribe. We have to become a new tribe. You won’t like the way They are or how the Othe
r tribes are.”
I said, “Allie, when I fight, I’m going to have to do some bad things. I’m going to have to kill people, from what you tell me. And, I think that based on what you have said, I’m going to have to do it in a way that makes the others afraid to fight me. I was trained to kill quickly and mercifully. I think for the kind of fight that you are describing that I’ll have to kill in a way that I’d rather not. It’s going to be gruesome. People are going to suffer before they die so that everyone else is afraid to fight me. I’m going to have to terrify them.”
Allie frowned and said, “Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought of that, but I think it’s a good idea. If they are afraid then They don’t want to be your enemy and the Others don’t try to cheat you or steal from you or Mush you.”
I said, “I’m afraid that you will be afraid of me when you see what I have to do.”
Allie said sincerely, “I don’t think I will. I think that I will feel…um, loved? Maybe? What kind of things will you have to do?”
I described some of what she should expect when the fight took place, but she didn’t seem upset by it at all. Apparently, Allie had seen a lot in the past 18 years. I could understand her selective amnesia; her inability to hold on to what had happened the day before. We seemed to be making progress though.
By the time we were done talking about the upcoming fights, Allie was lying beside me on my shoulder. I thought to myself that I could also understand what she had been trying to say about what it meant here to “do sex”. She meant that sex was something that was done to you, or by you but not really with you. I had never heard it said that way before. That sounded like rape. Allie made it sound like they had a kind of almost consensual rape here. I couldn’t quite understand it. They put up with sexual activities when they didn’t welcome them? That was either rape or prostitution. The one was abhorrent and the other was unfortunate.
I worried about what would happen between Allie and me. I did love her but in a lot of ways, she was broken. We were all suffering from emotional brokenness but some of us worked hard to overcome it and evolve as people. Allie hadn’t had the chance to start healing at all. In a way, I had become her rescuer. I wanted to rescue her but to rescue her emotionally went against all of my mindfulness training. Sure, rescuing her physically was a no-brainer. I rescued her from the pit without even thinking about it. If she was threatened by another person, I’d deal with it. But as far as her emotional prisons, she would have to rescue herself. I’d show her the way out if I could, but she would have to “Walk the path” as I had been taught.
Her first issue was safety. That I could provide. If these people had any code of honor, and it sounded like they did, even though it was far from honorable in my mind, I could work within the system to keep us both safe. The second issue seemed to be an emotional “object permanence”; she couldn’t hold on to a relationship if she couldn’t see the person at that moment. She was getting better but there was no guarantee that she would ever get over it. I would be consistent with her and maybe she’d become more used to me being there every day, but it would take a breakthrough of some kind for her to overcome whatever trauma had caused it. I was committed to her now, but it might be a hard road.
All of my grandmothers, except for one, had emotional issues that had to be overcome. It happened for each of them easily because of the circumstances and the way that they helped each other. They had told me all about it. They felt that it was important for me to know since the entire world had been so traumatized and anyone that we met would have heavy emotional baggage. It was important for me to be able to observe and anticipate that baggage so that I would know how to navigate relationships. I was also supposed to try to help where I could.
Allie was wonderful but she was also an unknown. We liked, and even loved each other but I didn’t really know her or if she would make it long term. If not, I’d make changes.
I had told Allie that I was raised to “mate for life”. I had been. I was also raised to be “ruthless in doing good”. If it ever came down to where the truly good thing, for me and for her and those around us, was for me to in essence divorce myself from her, I would. If staying with her would kill me, I’d leave. I don’t mean that I’d let her fall in a pit and walk away, I meant that if my relationship with her turned into one where she was killing me, I’d kill the relationship instead. I wasn’t going to be my Uncle Clark.
My uncle stayed with Irene, even though she was killing him and everything around her. She literally tried to kill me by hitting me in the head and throwing me off my boat. That’s what I was talking about. If Clark knew that she was going to do that, then he was as guilty as she was. If Clark was going to survive, someday he’d be forced to face facts and quit rescuing Irene. He’d better figure that out before she decided that she’d be better off without him and threw him off the boat as well.
If it came to something like that, I’d leave Allie.
That didn’t need to happen though. It was a worst-case scenario. I was capable of it, but I’d do everything I could to avoid it. I had every reason to believe that I could. Allie wouldn’t become toxic. She might forget me every night when she fell asleep, but she wouldn’t try to kill me every moment that we were awake. She liked me and was learning to love me. She cared for me. She caught fish for me.
Yeah, fish. That was actually a good sign when I looked at it. Allie wanted to provide for me. When we had met, she didn’t need anything. She might have been OK even if I hadn’t taken her down from where she was tied above the pit as bait. If I had disappeared, the Others might have taken her down and she would have forgotten the whole thing by morning. The point was that she wasn’t providing fish and grapes because she had to; she was doing it because she wanted to. She didn’t want my shirt when she thought that it was in exchange for something she didn’t want to give up, but the fish and grapes weren’t in exchange for anything. They were just part of being together and being friends, and now lovers. It was the look of pure joy that she had every time she came out of the water with a fresh catch in her mouth that convinced me of her ability to love me.
Yeah, I’d look after her. I’d fight for her. I’d be patient with her strangeness.
Allie stirred in my arms and said, “Florin, I want you to touch me. I like it.”
I said, “Touch you?”
She nuzzled my chest and said, “Yeah. I didn’t like being touched. Well, I never got touched, just grabbed. I like touching you. It feels nice. If you want to touch me, I want you to. I like it.”
I asked, “Um, touch you where?”
She said, “Everywhere I suppose.”
I had my arm around her and started gently rubbing it up and down her arm. She cooed contentedly and when I looked, I noticed that her shoulder and upper arm were bruised. That was the kind of touch that she was used to. I hadn’t paid attention before, and it had been somewhere between five and ten days since we left the beach where I had landed, so the bruises should have faded significantly but they were still there. They must have been bad. Allie had lived alone but surrounded by people who had no kindness at all. I was kind of looking forward to the fight that was coming, now that I had a concrete vision of how she had actually been abused.
Did I believe in taking revenge? Not for myself, I didn’t. I didn’t believe in punishing someone physically for something that they might have done to me. It was an extension of what I had been taught about self-defense. I could choose to defend myself or not. I didn’t have that choice when it came to defending others. If Allie was threatened, I would defend her and there was no choice not to. I could take whatever insults I wanted to but if someone needed my help, I’d help them. And for that reason, I didn’t always have the choice not to defend myself. Because Allie loved me and depended on me, if I was threatened, then she was threatened. If I was hurt or killed, it would impact her. Now that we were bonded to each other, I would always defend myself for her sake. Of course, I’d probably always defend mysel
f anyway. And that meant that while I might not feel a need for revenge for myself, I could certainly feel a desire to avenge Allie for abuse that she had suffered. I pictured her again with that fish in her mouth smiling and walking toward me and hoped that some of those who had mistreated her were in attendance when it came time to prove that I really could fight.
I knew that I could fight. The non-organics had been great training partners. I couldn’t damage them, and they could adjust their speed and strength as my skills improved. Even the small ones could lift over 300 pounds and move several times faster than I could. Alice was full-size and when I started training with her, it was even more of a challenge. Lately we had been working out at 140; that’s 140% faster and stronger than a normal human male, trained to fight in several different disciplines. These people here might have been athletes 20 years ago, but I bet that none of them had ever learned to fight. They might have been in fights and had certainly learned to fight in the past 20 years but unless I was wrong, none of them had been trained to fight. They hadn’t studied the art of fighting like I had.
Pops preferred “The art of fighting without fighting”, and he was very good at it. He won his business battles without going to war. And I’d win my battles without going to war if possible. In this case I was going to war, but I’d minimize the length of the war by being a scary son-of-a-bitch who made war look like the gruesome hell that it was. Maybe I had some pent-up anger issues. I hoped that the fight would last long enough to satisfy the anger that I was feeling at the moment.
CHAPTER Seven - War
Allie said, “Florin, what’s happening? Is it getting lighter?”
It obviously was getting lighter as the sun rose, but she was right. We untangled from each other and stood up. Sure enough, it did seem uncharacteristically light today. The two of us walked out to the beach on the south side of the island and could see the ball of the sun behind a thinner layer of haze than I had experienced since the first days of the cataclysm, before the full amount of ash had entered the atmosphere. Yes, it had been getting lighter for the past ten years or so, but this was a few steps lighter than that. From my studies, I assumed that the weather pattern was about to change again. Less obscuration of the sun meant a different heating and cooling pattern. All weather was caused by differential heating and cooling of the Earth’s surface, and when the patterns changed, the weather changed as well. I didn’t know how it would change but I knew that change was inevitable.
The Dark Atoll Page 6
