It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 03

Act Three: There's Always Room

Chapter Three: A Way So Familiar

"…Welcome to the club," Galatea was saying into the phone over the noise of the blender. Ice and Nyquil cemented into a thick, medicinal green slurry. "Listen, I've been thinking, and maybe you should tell him…"

"Thinking!" said the pixie voice over the phone, "Yeah, thinking's good! You go do that s'more. I gottagoseeyabye."

The line went dead. Galatea glanced at the digital readout on the microwave in Dee's kitchenette.

6:52 PM.

"God dammit."

She punched the power switch on the blender and poured some Nyquil slushy into a tall plastic cup. She took a tentative sip. The frozen stuff flashed down her throat, chilling her to the core, stiffening her nipples into ice the color of darkest myrtle. "Wow." she gasped, touching them tenderly. "God dammit," she said again after a moment. "I miss Dee."

Galatea emptied the contents of the cup back into the blender and lugged the full mixing bowl into the living room. She guzzled a long draught of slushy before extending a tendril to hit the Play button on Dee's DVD player. She giggled as the Nyquil took effect and the fuzzy logic of her nanomek mind web grew downright hairy and humor impaired. "Dee's Dee Vee Dee."

On the television screen, a severed head grew a pair of glistening eyestalks and scuttled out a door on crab legs. Galatea howled with laughter until the copper-haired hero burned the head-crab to a crisp with flame-thrower. "Aw, poor little guy," she said, tipping the mixing bowl against her lips before realizing she had emptied its entire contents in that initial sip. She plopped onto the couch in a huff.

Something solid pushed between the pliant flesh of her legs and nestled against her sex. She yelped and rocketed upright. The hard intruder bounced and burrowed further into her with each resulting shockwave. "God," she whined, reached between her legs and pulled Dee's square plastic universal remote out of her crotch with a shriek. "Dammit!" She throttled the remote. "Dee, Dee, Dee, everything here is Dee except Dee isn't here!"

She tried shaking the plastic gadget to pieces but gave up with a sigh, paused the movie, and then settled back onto the couch. She waited. She counted ice crystals of slushy dissolving in her body. She waited. She toyed with the universal remote, counting the infrared wave-particles it shot around the room. She waited. She queried her memory web and counted the number of times she had climaxed in the four days of her existence: one hundred seventeen. Then she counted the number of Dee's orgasms in the same period: three hundred forty two. "Typical," she grumped, glancing at the DVD's digital readout.

6:55 PM.

"I'm tired of waiting for Dee," she slurred, and burped. A rainbow bubble popped out of her mouth and burst against her nose. It smelled of Nyquil, citrus, sex…and homemade castile soap. Galatea growled, low and long, until the sound became a name, each syllable slowly toyed with and tasted before it rolled off her tongue.

"Ursula!"

A cascade of nanogasms started a fire in her belly. Waves of heated, melted gel gushed up into her chest and coursed through her legs. "Nanomek, do your stuff." Her body melted, slick and sticky like a well-licked lollipop.

The heat peaked as her meltdown went critical, her surface tension becoming so diffuse she lost all feeling of where she ended and the couch and the air around her began. Her vision doubled, each thought and sensation became muzzy and echoed. "Mitosis," she panted, "is so much better'n Nyquil. Almost better'n sex."

"Nah," said another voice, "who you kiddin'?"

Galatea's sense of self and her surroundings swam back into focus. "Not you," she told the nectarous duplicate sitting in her lap, "obviously. Oh, crap. I'm half as drunk now. Thanks a bunch."

The duplicates' flesh was still so oozy her ass liquefied into Galatea's crotch. Gouts of molten honey rushed between them, making her dizzy. "What do you think it's like," wondered her duplicate, leaning back into Galatea's chest until her breasts melted into the duplicate's shoulders, "to have boundaries?"

"Other than freezing myself into a lime popsicle," Galatea mused, "I doubt I'll ever find out. But who needs boundaries when you can bifurcate? And speaking of being bi…"

The duplicate pulled free and shook loose the remaining filaments and stringy bands connecting the two of them. "Galatea," said Galatea, "are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

"I think so, Galatea, but do we have enough food coloring?"

Galatea swaggered down the hallway and into the bathroom. Plastic vials of food coloring scattered about the linoleum faux-tiled floor. She lined them up on the sink, pausing to stare at the last bottle. "Why the Hell did I bother to steal the green one?" She set the full vial of finger-paint green, edible dye next to the others. "I can be such an airhead sometimes."

She popped off the caps and kissed a dozen drops of dye from each vial into her mouth, skipping the green with a frown. "There's plenty to go 'round," she said between kisses. Clusters of nanomek swarmed in her tongue and made off with the dye one molecule at time. "A little goes a long way."

"Enough for me too?" asked the Galatea on the couch.

"Sure," said Galatea, making her way back to the living room. The nanomek sported with the dye and her body pulsed with psychedelic paisleys. "But one of us has gotta stay here in case Dee calls or shows up. Can I go? Dee's 'little Miss U' has been on my To Do list for a long time now. Yours too, though, 'course."

"You can go," her green twin cautioned, "on two conditions: No reassimilation until after Dee gets back and I fuck him first while you watch."

"Masochist," Galatea accused.

"I'm drunk, jealous, and horny as Hell," her twin said with a squirmy shrug. "Do we have a deal, or do we reassimilate now and risk Dee catching us?"

"Well, it is every man's fantasy to catch his girlfriend with another woman, isn't it? The Internet doesn't lie."

"Dee isn't Everyman," the twin pointed out. "And it pisses you off to see Dee even thinking about another woman."

Galatea conceded, "You have a deal."

"Great. Now get the fuck out so I can get all the way drunk again."

"Alright," Galatea nodded. "But first, some advice: what should I be?" With a metallic sigh her mass morphed into a slobbering tentacular horror, a purple demonic monstrosity with extra sets of oversized sexual apparatus and rows of teeth in some very strange places. "Legend of the Overfiend?" its ivory-tusked maws hissed in a ragged chorus.

Her twin flew into a fit of giggles.

"You're right," the abomination spoke in Galatea's voice, "too silly. Okay. Hm. Oh! What about…" There was another metallic sigh and the beast morphed into a tall, raven haired, Amazon princess wearing nothing but red, white, and blue underwear, a pair of polished steel bracelets, and a golden lariat coiled on her hip. "…Suffering Sappho?" She tried twirling the lariat over her head but fumbled the third spin and somehow managed to lasso her own hands behind her back. "Suffering Sappho!" she swore. "Powerless! Again!" She wriggled and jiggled but remained bound. "Why does this always happen?"

Her green twin perked up. "Ooh, save that one for Dee. That will make him awfully quiet. Golden Age gals are his favorite."

"Something Dark Agey, then?" the Amazon suggested, morphing into a black vinyl clad sex kitten with a whip.

The twin buried her hands in her head. "We have got to stop listening to Dee's comic book lectures."

"You're right." Galatea morphed back into herself. "I'm thinking of Dee, not Ursula."

"We've been in her apartment a bunch of times," her twin noted, "and I didn't see any comic books. Lots of novels instead. And a whole shelf devoted to one author, remember? I don't know what the books were about, though."

Dee's white-box computer squat in the corner of the living room. Galatea stretched her arms to its keyboard and called up a web search engine. "'Anne Rice,'" she enunciated, typing out the name and hitting the Enter key.

Galatea and her twin elongated their necks into emerald crazy straws to get a close look at what the search engine produced.

"Ah," said the twin.

"Heh," said Galatea.

* * * *

Ursula was possessed of an antique vanity. A sheet of silvered glass framed in dark cherry wood still stained with its original varnish served as its mirror. Only the lining of its drawers and three dowels had been replaced in over a century since its manufacture in New Orleans by a journeyman carpenter whose accident while procuring matted felt for his masterwork from a nearby haberdashery resulted in mercury poisoning, Mad Hatter Syndrome, and subsequent suicide.

"I take pride in my vanity," Ursula said, as she always did whenever she sat before it. The vanity table's aged mirror cast her reflection in mottled brass, as if she were living inside a nineteenth century photograph. "But I hate my hair!" she added, grabbing up handfuls of her massive mane and shaking it in her tiny fists.

She spread her fingers and clouds of baby-fine, black-dyed hair unraveled past her waist. "Rapunzel I ain't." She cinched her silk dressing gown around her slender waist, plucked an ox horn comb from the selection of beautician's weaponry arrayed on the vanity table's blotter, and detangled herself without mercy. "Ow, ow, ow. Ow!"

A distressful hour later the battle was won. "There," she said, tying up her plaited pigtails with purple satin ribbon and turning away from the mirror for the first time since she sat down. "I deserve a Hot Toddy."

The vampire attacked.

For a second of blinking incomprehension Ursula just sat there, staring at the virago vampire towering over her—staring open mouthed at the buckles of a studded corset belt hovering inches away from her nose. The vampire bent in a mockery of a curtsey, flashing a flawless, ivory leg as her black velvet skirt flared over the floor. Ursula caught another fleeting glimpse of skin guarded by a velvet choker and a severe neckline before the vampire curtsied deep enough to look her in the eye and her mind went blank.

"Why hello there," the vampire chuckled, her voice throaty and thrumming with a power that made Ursula shake like a leaf, setting her legs and loins aquiver like she was eleven all over again. The vampire's tongue lolled over her curving, canine fangs as she tasted the words: "Little girl."

Ursula managed to produce a mousy Eep! noise from the back of her throat—which was tilting backward and to the side, exposing the curve of her milky neck, apparently of its own volition. The remaining shred of her pride and dignity seethed and hated her for it. The vampire cocked an eyebrow at her, an expression so familiar—Dee, that's Dee, why does she remind me of Dee—that Ursula's raging pride boiled up and nearly broke through her paralysis of fear and arousal, but then the vampire declared, "Let's move this to the bed," and hoisted Ursula high into the air, cradling her in both arms on the downswing.

Ursula squeaked in mindless passion, alarm, and assent.

The vampire strutted over to the cast-iron, four poster bed catty-corner to the opposite bedroom wall. Ursula rocked in her strange, rubbery embrace. Squashed against her captor's imposing bust and swaddled in the cool velvet of the vampire's cloak, Ursula felt suspended and enmeshed, enraged but enraptured. The vampire brushed the bed's white lace canopy aside, unwound her cloak and rolled Ursula onto the mattress' plush quilt. She loomed above Ursula like a languorous lion. Spikes of flame-red hair crowned a flawless but cruel face as white as pure marble. Ursula turned away from the vampire's cold, viridian gaze, shuddering but still presenting her neck.

The vampire traced a fingernail under Ursula's chin, clucking. "The carotid artery is so cliché."

Ursula tried to curl into a ball but the vampire pressed her flat against the bed and flicked the dressing gown off Ursula's shoulders. "I prefer the subclavian, myself," the vampire said, dipping her finger down and over the clavicle above Ursula's left breast.

Her left nipple hardened and hurt as Ursula squirmed, the material of her dressing gown scrapping against it. The vampire sat down on the bed as she nudged the top of Ursula's gown open to expose her shivering chest. The vampire leaned down and in, breathing deep. She paused just long enough to blink twice and crinkle her brow. "Slim pickings," she said, shaking her head and recovering from the split second of confusion. "And I'm very hungry." She loosened the knot of Ursula's belt apart and finger-walked across the skin below.

"So," the vampire said as her hand crawled passed Ursula's bellybutton, "tonight I'm in the mood for some profunda femoris." She skirted over Ursula's pudendum and clamped down on the meat of Ursula's inner thigh inches away from her sex. "That's quite an abbuctor magnus you've built up for yourself, little girl," she commented as she squeezed and Ursula squealed. "You must put it through the wringer. How many heads have you wrapped these babies around, hmm?"

The vampire shunted down the bed, pried Ursula's legs apart, and bent low, only to start blinking again. "I could say just about anything right now," she said, a green tint beginning to rouge her cheeks, "and you'd just writhe and pant some more, right?"

Ursula writhed and panted like a puppy.

"Good." The vampire padded down to the foot of the bed and knelt between Ursula's spread-eagled legs. She pulled the knot of Ursula's belt apart, yanking the gown wide open. "Where was I?" She stared at Ursula's creamy tummy and mousy brown mound. A few green beads of sweat spilled down her forehead.

Ursula tugged hard on her own braids, mewling in bewildered need.

"Arteries," the vampire muttered. "Right. Arteries. Good." She grabbed Ursula's ankle and raised her toned leg high. She palpated behind the knee with her other hand and found Ursula's pulse singing like a humming bird's. "The popliteal artery…" she said, greenish pallor spreading and statuesque features softening. Ursula's bucked her hips, her eyes rolled over white. "The popliteal artery," the vampire said again, mouth inching closer to the inner curve of Ursula's upraised knee. She gulped and tried one last time: "The popliteal artery is fine too—Oh, God damn it and fuck!"

The vampire let Ursula's leg drop and mopped away the runnels of green goo that had started to stream down her face. "Why the Hell," the vampire cried, "why the fucking Hell do you smell like Dee?"

The ratcheting plateau-then-tension-then-plateau-then-tension buildup toward the fearsome orgasm twisting into a fist in Ursula's abdomen petered out in a grating, itching ache. "Huh? Wha'?"

The vampire's clothes were melting into thick green syrup, or green syrup was eating through the vampire's clothes from the inside, Ursula could not tell which. The vampire slopped down to all fours on the bed and crawled over her. Droplets of green nectar struck and stuck to Ursula's thighs, searing and sensuous like candle wax dribbled over her flesh. The burning rain raced up her belly and then between her breasts as the vampire crawled up to look Ursula in the eyes.

"You smell," Galatea growled as every last molecule of food coloring burned up in her escalating passion. "Just…like…Dee—Oh, God," Galatea moaned and plunged her head down to wallow in the aroma.

"God! My God!" Ursula gasped in agreement, orgasm uncoiling through her body as Galatea's gel-flesh flowed over her neck, across her shoulders and down her chest. It felt soft but insistent, weighty but delicate, smooth but clingy, its pervasive but delicious heat penetrating down to the bone. "My God," Ursula whispered again as Galatea suckled on the crook of Ursula's neck, blades of living hair reaching up to cup and caress Ursula's face, "it's…it's…"

Galatea broke her full-torso kiss and pulled up and away with a loud, popping slurp. "Better than vampires?" she asked, eyes twinkling.

"Yes," Ursula said, reaching out and pushing her arms deep into Galatea's back for a piping hot, internal hug, and it was Galatea's time to buck and mewl, "yes. I'm never LARPing again."

Galatea laughed, shaking her head. "Now you even sound like Dee," she said, amazed. "And why do you smell like him? I don't understand this at all."

Ursula, lying prone beneath a living incarnation of carnality made of out lime gelatin, said, "I think it's only fair if I get to ask the first questions."

Galatea rolled her eyes. "God, you are such a man." She tried to roll over on the bed but the twin mattress proved too small and she splashed down onto the carpet instead. "Okay," she said, sounding muffled, "you can ask questions while I regain my dignity."

"How did you make me cum like that?" Ursula asked.

"You came?"

"Yes," Ursula said, examining the sticky green smears on her quilt, "when you kissed me."

"Really? Me too!" Ursula heard something slosh and slide about below the bed. "That's the wonder of nanogasms. Don't thank me; thank Dee for those. And no, I'm not going to explain that. Not yet, at least, 'cuz trying to explain it would probably fill a fuckin' book. Anyway, one more question before it’s my turn."

Ursula held the quilt up and over the side of the bed. "How do I get these stains out?"

Galatea's head peeked up. "What are you, some sort of Martha Stewart hippie?"

"I prefer the term 'Bohemian Bourgeoisie.'"

"Fine with me," Galatea said, rising to her full height. "As to your question: I have no idea. I like keepin' Dee too busy to clean up. Now it's my turn, right?"

Ursula nodded and drew the quilt over her naked form. "Right."

"Okay." Galatea crossed her arms. "I can’t help but notice you haven't asked me my name, or what I am, so I'm thinking that you already know. Am I right?"

"I know just a little," Ursula confessed, "Galatea."

"I've also figured out why you smell like Dee," Galatea said, and disappeared below the bed again. Huffing with exertion, she hauled out a small steamer trunk. She snapped open the trunk's fasteners, popped the lip up, and pulled out a handful of homemade castile soap. "You bathe with this stuff too, right? So it’s not the case that you smell like Dee. Instead, Dee smells like you."

Ursula shifted, pulling the quilt tighter around her. "Right."

"Well," Galatea said, standing up again, "I've bathed with it too. Sort of. I suspect you know 'just a little' about that as well. But let me tell you something I know: I know every single ingredient you've put into this damn stuff, and you can be sure as shit a bunch of it ain't soap. So I've just got one real question for you. Answer correctly and I'll fuck you so good that orgasm you just had will be a little nibble off a chocolate bar in comparison. Answer it wrong…"

Galatea surged onto the bed. Ursula clutched the quilt to her neck but Galatea just seeped under it from below and filled it out so Ursula suddenly found herself holding the quilt around Galatea's body rather than her own. "…and I'll get creative," Galatea continued, leaning in nose-to-nose. "My question to you, little Miss U:

"Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?"

"I'm a bad witch." Ursula dropped the quilt and scooted her round butt up against the bed's headboard. "Very bad. Terrible, in fact." Ursula saw a crinkle of confusion cross Galatea's brow, and added, "That is, I'm really bad at witchcraft." Galatea's silence felt like a vacuum and the lacey confines of the four poster bed became a confessional. "My older brother let me play Dungeons and Dragons with him and his friends when I was nine. After a couple of games the group thought my ideas were cooler than his and asked me to be Dungeon Master. I was still running the show in high school. One girl in my group, Marcie, had a real crush on me, but her character died…I think her name was Black Leaf or something…Marcie took it kind of hard. Anyway, that's how I got into the occult.