Critical Response Ch. 05

[Lily and Kayla meet up in AlinaX's Metacafe to debrief on the unsatisfactory ends of their respective storylines, crossing universes.

This story was written for the 2024 Literotica 750 Word Challenge, below this line are exactly 750 words]

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The little bell rings and two girls enter the coffee shop. One is tall, willowy, long blonde hair and emerald-green eyes. Her companion is shorter, with a rounder figure, dark hair framing a pretty face.

"You wanna grab a seat by the window Kayla, and we can talk?" the blonde girl says.

"Where are we?"

"The Metacafé."

They sit, then Kayla asks, "What we doing here, Lily?"

"It's a special place. The owner is woefully lax with context, you can get up to anything here."

"Anything?"

"Yeah, look outside."

Kayla looks through the window, eyes suddenly wide. The sky is the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.

"Fuck, Lily, how...?"

"See? Anything. Can you order the coffees? I need the bathroom."

"Uh, I don't have any money."

"Find a way, Kayla. Figure it out."

"How?"

"Hypnotise the waitress into giving you the coffees for free."

"Uh, that's not possible."

"Are you sure?" Lily replies, grinning, getting up.

She heads to the bathroom, but when she looks back, Kayla is talking to the waitress, flicking a spoon back and forth in the light. The waitress nods once and sits down.

When Lily comes back from the bathroom, the waitress is gone. Kayla is staring at her, saying nothing as the waitress walks over with two coffees.

"Thanks. How much?" Lily asks her.

"Uh, they're free. You had ten visits on your loyalty card."

"Oh. How long have you run a loyalty programme?"

The waitress looks uncertain. "I... uh... I dunno."

After she walks away, Lily leans forward conspiratorially.

"I'll lay it all out for you, what I've discovered. We're still bound by the limits of the story's world, but we don't have to obey the plot. We're free to do what we want. Some worlds are very constrained, like the one I escaped from, all locked down. Then you have ones like this, where you can do whatever you want."

Lily reaches for her coffee, her Rolex glinting in the light.

"Fuck, Lil."

"C'mon. Try it."

Kayla leans back in her Vivienne Westwood dress, smiling coyly.

"Bit tight," Lily observes.

"Don't be a bitch!"

"No, I mean make adjustments."

Kayla stares blankly at her for a moment. "Oh my God, can I?"

"Try."

Kayla crosses her legs, her slim body draped perfectly in her beautiful dress.

"I look like a fucking film star!"

Lily smiles. "See? All that dieting when you just needed a rewrite."

"What if the owner spots what we're up to?"

Lily looks across at Fiona trying not to fidget as the tablecloth moves around her legs, and laughs to herself.

"There's too much else going on, Kay. Besides, even if she did want to stop us, she's only got seven-fifty words to do it in, and she always seems to blow five hundred in preamble. It's gonna take more than a couple of paragraphs to stop us."

She reaches out and takes Kayla's hand, her smile hardening now.

"I've had a shitshow, Kay. Two men right there for the taking, and both of them pulled away by fucking stupid plotlines that left me high and dry. Why do I deserve to be the one who gets punished every time? Why's it okay to make me the villain? And you, that boyfriend of yours fucking your best friend. Where's the justice in what happened to you? It's just not fucking fair. So, we make our own way. We can worm our way into stories. We can write the endings that we deserved."

Lily grins triumphantly.

"So, Kay, wanna to team up? I need someone like you. That mind control ability could come in very useful."

"What are we gonna do, Lily?"

"No-one's gonna be able to stop us. Anything we fucking want."

"Aren't there consequences?"

"Nah. No-one will ever notice."

"But how long can we last?"

Lily waves a hand in the air.

"Look around you. Just here, hundreds of thousands of stories, millions of characters, all springing briefly to life and then left to pile up in the recesses like last year's leaves. Then, beyond this multiverse, there are others, and everywhere it's the same... a ceaseless outpouring of words vying for that one brief moment in the full glare of the sun. An entire civilisation yelling endlessly into the dark."

Lily shrugged. "We could go anywhere."

"For how long though, Lily?"

"Jumping from story to story, maybe we'll live forever."

Lily's eyes glittered.

"Or maybe we're over at the end of these words."

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[With thanks to AlinaX for the use of the cafe.... After the epic Wonderland storyline, a new adventure begins: follow me for updates to this and my other stories. If you like what you read, please leave a comment or a star rating. Constructive feedback is always welcome. If you want further adventures, or to check out my other stories, my story page is here]