It's Always Time Act 04 Ch. 01

"Worry about it later," Dee insisted. "Yves's right; we've got to go. We've got to go to SRU."

Eurydice leapt between the three of them. "How's this?" She reached behind her neck and pulled. An olive, pullover hoodie stretched over her head and down to her waist. Drab, baggy fatigues unrolled over her legs and tucked themselves into green army boots, dark enough to pass for black. Eurydice reached into a pocket of her fatigues and drew out an oversized pair of tea-green, wraparound, Onasis sunglasses. She pushed them over her face, tucking a few stray tentacles into the olive hood.

Yves swore and stepped back. Ursula just boggled in silence. Eurydice turned to Dee, one hand on her hip, twirling the plastic bowl with the other. "Well?"

"You look like the Unabomber." Dee glanced down. "With a really nice rack."

The bowl clomped upside down onto the carpet before Dee's feet. Eurydice hopped atop her makeshift pedestal and bussed his forehead. "I can be anything you want," she said, her kiss on Dee's mouth lingering until Yves cleared his throat, "as long as it's green."

Dee looked at her with his inscrutable smile. "You don't remember the food coloring."

"Ooh, food coloring?" Eurydice clapped her hands. "Wuzzat?"

Yves cleared his throat louder. "The, uh, Unabomber thing will work great at a distance, but up close the clothes look, well, rubbery. That's not the right word. Fluid?"

Ursula found her voice. "Cartoon. She looks like a living cartoon."

Eurydice turned a sly eye to Dee. "Do I?"

Dee placed a hand on her hip. "Yes."

Eurydice reached down and slid Dee's hand back from her hip to the seat of her pants. "That's a good thing, isn't it?"

"God, yes." Dee pulled her off the pedestal. She squealed into his mouth, her legs kicked up into the air.

"God help us," groaned Yves. "They're worse than teenagers."

Ursula moved over to Yves. "Give them a minute—we've got a minute, right? Well, give it to them. You didn't see Galatea in full cartoon cosplay mode. It sticks in your head." She shifted her weight. "And other places."

"Still," Yves said, "all she needs is one genuine article of clothing and no one other than the cops or campus patrol will look twice. Do you have anything to give her?"

Dee murmured into Eurydice's ear and she sighed and giggled quiet replies. Yves felt the urgent need to brush his teeth.

"Are you kidding?" Ursula clutched the air before her chest, fingers curved inward. "Dee likes her big and busty, and all she's thinking about is him. Besides, I'm a size 2."

"We'll risk it, then," Yves decided. "But no food coloring or we'll have to hose Dee down." He raised his voice. "Guys, I'm going to my apartment to get Dee something to wear. You need to stay here, it's the most isolated place in the building and everyone's heading off to work now. Hopefully. Ursula, unless you need anything from your apartment, you should stay with them."

"I'd really like to change," Ursula said, "and if you want me to find Galatea, I'm going to need a few minutes to prepare the divination."

Eurydice sprang out of Dee's arms. "Wait. What?"

"You can find Galatea?" Dee asked.

Yves dropped a hand on her shoulder but Ursula shrugged it off. "Sure," she said. "Galatea established a sympathetic connection with me when she, ah, used the soap I made you."

"A sympathetic connection," Dee repeated, uncomprehending, while Eurydice said, "You made him soap?"

"At the trace stage of saponification process," Ursula explained, "I add an extra series of distilled oils and herbal essences—not that shampoo bullshit, the real thing, camphor basil, Jupiter's Beard, myrrh oil—anyway, a series of oils and essences that resonate with my nativity." She glanced around. "None of you understood a word I just said, did you?"

"Translation, please," Yves said.

"Let me revel in the moment for a second." Ursula bopped back and forth, humming. "It's wonderful to be on this side of a conversation for once. Okay. I gave Dee some soap. The soap has a magic tracer in it. Galatea ate it. I can use magic to trace her. I'm an apothecary, a pharmaceutria, a 'sorceress'," she said, enunciating each syllable and drawing out each sibilant, as if tasting the word for the first time. She threw her hands in the air. "I'm a witch!"

She stood in silence, arms high.

"Oh," said Dee.

Eurydice shrugged. "Meh."

"I'm going upstairs," Yves said.

"Fuck you," Ursula said, arms dropping. "Fuck you all."

* * *

"And then Dee said, 'Ready?'" Eurydice recalled. Yves' Jeep bounced over a deep pothole and it took a few moments for the green girl in the backseat to regain her composure. "And then," she said, sunglasses and mouth settling into their proper places and proportions, "it was like giving birth and being born at the same time. He tore me apart. He tore me open. He tore me free. He burned away all the nanomek that I couldn't control, anything that fought back." She blushed black, the flush spreading through the substance of her sunglasses and hoodie. "I gain nanomek by making Dee cum, but I burn nanomek whenever he makes me cum. Everything I do costs me nanomek, but an orgasm costs the most. I don't remember telling him that, but he must have figured it out, because…because he ripped and shredded and fucked me into pieces. The pain was worse than anything I'd ever experienced but I kept cumming and cumming, harder and faster and, God, stronger than anything I've known, than anything any of us have ever imagined in all our thousands of years. It was awful. It was terrific. It was …"

"Sublime," Yves croaked from the driver's seat. "I was wrong. I thought you were sublimating him. I thought you, Dee," he said, turning to Dee in the passenger seat, "had planned to sublime into Galatea in order to bring her back. But I was wrong, wasn't I?" Dee stared at him but said nothing. "When you kicked me out of the bathroom, you already knew. To get Galatea back, you would have to sublimate her."

Eurydice muffled a gasp with the palm of her hand. "Oh, Dee, is that true? Was that sublimation? Was that what subliming feels like?"

Dee twisted in the passenger seat to treat her to his inscrutable smile. "It's a good description of what I've been through a few times, yeah, but I've never gone as far as you did."

Ursula, her eyes shut tight, her voice drifting in from some other world, said, "Two miles to the north, two to the east, one behind the Sun." She shifted in the back seat next to Eurydice. "But don't worry about that last one."

Eurydice's voice barely rose above the rumbling of the road and the Jeep's engine. "All these years. All those men. I don't really remember, I mean, it wasn't really me, but…" She held her head in her hands. "There are echoes of them all in my head."

"Don't feel guilty," Yves told her. He tapped the touch-screen of his GPS navigation gadget. "It's what they wanted."

Eurydice pulled the sunglasses away from her teary eyes. "What?"

"Make a right at next traffic light onto Campion Street, then proceed two point oh three miles," said the clipped, synthetic voice of the GPS.

"Yves is right," Dee said. "You never forced me to do anything, not really. I bet no lime meliae ever forced sublimation onto anyone, either."

Eurydice shook her head hard enough to sprinkle Ursula and the window with tear drops. "The Demonic Fifteen Point—"

Dee bent backwards to grab her hand. "I loved it."

Eurydice stared at his hand wrapped around hers.

"I never said 'No'," Dee said. "Believe me, I know how to say 'No'. You may not remember, but I've said 'No' to you a few times. And 'Pygmalion,' too."

Eurydice opened her mouth to speak but Ursula shouted, "Stop the car!"

Yves swore, hit the brakes, and wrestled the Jeep to the side of the road. "You're worse than this thing," he said, jabbing the GPS.

Ursula turned her head this way and that, eyes shut and lips parted, as if sampling the air. "Galatea's a few hundred yards to the right of us." She opened her eyes and squinted out the plastic window. "We're on fraternity row?"

Yves called up a map on the GPS screen. "The next right turn doubles back into a cul-de-sac. We've found her."

Eurydice shrank into the back seat. "Galatea?"

"And Cherry Cupcake," Yves said, "If we're still assuming she's got Galatea imprisoned somehow."

Dee nodded. "I'm shooting for the Disney lovey-dovey ending: free the enchanted princess." He saw Yves' expression and smiled. "I'll explain later. Listen, should we leave the car here and sneak up?"

"I wouldn't," Yves said. "In case we need to cut and run."

Dee frowned. "I don't want Cherry Cupcake hurting anyone else. Maybe I should go alone."

Eurydice cried out, "No!"

Yves growled, "No fucking way."

"I slept with Galatea," Ursula said.

Eurydice glanced up, agog, before creasing her brow. "Yeahbuhwha'?"

Ursula's mouth worked wordlessly as Dee leaned further into the back of the Jeep. She gawked back at him, transfixed and aghast.

Yves worked the gearshift, speaking as fast as he could. "I have an idea—let's circle the block once and—say, when was the last time you ate—I'm starved and I think I saw a Waffle Shack around here somewhere—"

"I know," Dee said. He twisted sideways and engaged the emergency brake. His gaze did not leave Ursula's shocked face.

Yves flinched but relaxed when the brake handle did not snap off in Dee's hand. "You know…where the Waffle Shack is?"

Dee ignored him. "I know," he told Ursula again.

Ursula swallowed. "What?"

"How?" Yves asked.

Eurydice sized Ursula up, a petite moppet in a black poncho, distressed jeans, and Doc Martins. Plaited ponytails tied up with white-lace ribbons arced away from her head and into the foot well. "I fucked the loli-goth?"

"I'm twenty-two," Ursula murmured.

"How did you know?" Yves demanded, pushing the gearshift forward into park.

"Still," Eurydice said, eyeing Ursula up and down. "You're really not my type, no offense, but…" Ursula folded up one side of the poncho and held a bare, porcelain-white forearm under Eurydice's nose. "Oh," Eurydice breathed, mouth watering.

Dee turned to Yves. "What color are Ursula's eyes?"

"Oh. Um." Eurydice's eye's crossed. She brought her mouth within an inch of Ursula's flesh. "Oh."

"Green," Yves said without looking.

"Darkling green," Dee agreed. "Emerald on black velvet."

Ursula blinked, pulling her arm back. Eurydice's lips smacked together over empty air. "But…" Ursula began.

"They're usually hazel," Dee finished. He broke the sun visor off the windshield, flipped its flap open to reveal an oblong mirror, and passed it back. "They were last week, at least."

Ursula snatched the visor out of his hands, scrabbled the eyeglasses off her face, and glared at the mirror, eyes wide. "Holy shit."

Eurydice leveled a suspicious finger at Ursula. "She smells just like you, Dee. Except, you know, girly."

Yves shook his head. "You're paying for that mirror, Dee. How did you notice something like that when I didn't?"

"Give me some credit, Yves." Dee rolled his eyes and settled back into his seat. "It's an easy mistake to make, the two of you have hardly spoken before today, and I've got a thing for girls' eyes."

Eurydice grinned. "He does, you know," she sighed.

"Listen," Ursula said, her glasses slipping in her shaking fingers as she pushed the red frames over her face, "I didn't mean to tell you. I mean, I wanted to tell you, but telling you now would've been insanely stupid."

Yves nodded. "It was."

"Fuck you." Ursula flipped Yves off. "Dee, listen, maybe it was the divination trance. I've been concentrating on my memories of Galatea and they're pretty, uh, specific. Anyway, the words just popped out. I'm sorry."

"You have nanomek in you," Dee said, not turning around, "Galatea's nanomek."

"Dee, I'm really sorry."

"You don't understand. I'm not jealous at all. That's not the point. You have Galatea's nanomek inside you." He turned around again. "Eurydice?"

Eurydice squinted, looking deep into Ursula's eyes. "Yeah," Eurydice agreed, "she's been royally mindfucked, alright. It's amazing she isn't a zombie." Eurydice straightened Ursula's glasses. "You've got some serious firepower between your ears, sister."

Yves sat bolt upright. "Oh, crap, I get it now."

"That's not all she's got between her ears," Dee said, grinning like an idiot.

The Goth and the green girl crinkled their brows in confusion and chorused, "What?"

Yves met Eurydice's gaze in the rearview mirror. "Dee wants you to re-assimilate with Ursula's nanomek, Eurydice."

Eurydice blanched a pale celadon. "You know what I'd have to do to go in and, uh, get it, right?"

Dee's grin puckered into a smirk. "You've done it before, apparently."

"Whoa, whoa!" Ursula waggled her hands, pressing herself up against the window. "I'm not ready for Lesson Six."

Eurydice locked onto Yves' reflection in the rearview mirror. Yves read her silent, abject plea, nodded, and tapped Dee on the shoulder. "You know, Dee, you're acting awfully cruel for someone who says he isn't jealous."

Dee's smile vanished. "What?"

"I'll do it," Eurydice muttered, downcast, "if you want me too."

"You mean you don't want to?" Dee asked, reaching for her.

Ursula scooted forward and took his hand instead. "What do you want, Dee?"

"A show?" Yves suggested.

Dee shook his head. "No."

Ursula shrugged. "Revenge?"

"No, Jesus, what's with you guys?"

Eurydice caressed his arm, bare and cool in Yves' spare muscle shirt. "Then what do you want?"

"Damn it," Dee spat. He lurched back into the front seat. "Isn't it obvious? I want you to re-remember what happened, what happened between you and me." He sighed, quiet and sad. "So I can say I'm sorry. I guess that's pretty selfish."

Yves hauled the Jeep into gear. "No." He toggled the turn signal. "Wanting her to not remember would be selfish. Wanting her to remember your acting like an idiot, just so you can make it up to her is so hopelessly romantic I think I vomited in my mouth a little."

Eurydice slid the sunglasses back on her face in silence.

Dee grumbled, "Thanks."

"Ignore him, Dee," Ursula said as the Jeep pulled away from the curb. "Besides, the nanomek stuff in me wouldn't help."

Eurydice sat up, the oversize sunglasses hiding any emotion. "Really?"

Dee toyed with the GPS touch screen, zooming in on the cul-de-sac Yves had flagged as their destination. "Why not?"

"Well," Ursula said, "Galatea didn't mention anything about a breakup or even a fight to me. She was just pissed off that you were having sex with her, somewhere else. It didn't make much sense to me then." She glanced at Eurydice, who was watching her with the expressionless cool of reflective lenses. "But it does now. Plus, from what Yves' told me, whatever happened between the two of you happened late last night, after Galatea's visit to my apartment. So I all have inside me is Galatea's memories…of me."

Yves made a hard right at the next light. Eurydice rode the Jeep's momentum and sidled over to Ursula, faster than a sidewinder. "Really?" she said again, drawling, one brow arching high above the rims of her sunglasses. Eurydice's breath was warm against Ursula's cheek. "Now that's interesting." Ursula blushed and squirmed away but Eurydice just inched closer and wedged herself against the retreating Goth girl. She finger-walked a jelled hand up Ursula's thigh and wondered, "Did you smell as good then as you do now? Like Dee, but, you know…" Eurydice dipped her head to coo into Ursula's ear, "…girly?"

"Dee? Hey, Dee?" Ursula stammered as Eurydice wriggled and giggled against her. "Your Unabomber's sticking her tongue in my ear."

Dee turned around. Ursula sat sandwiched between one side of the Jeep and Eurydice's supple gel-flesh. Eurydice clasped one arm around Ursula's back, squeezing the Goth girl in a sideways hug. The green girl's hoodie had grown a zipper while the garment shrank two sizes too small. Dee watched Ursula's shoulder sink into Eurydice's corseted cleavage. The gummy fingers walking up Ursula's thigh flicked at the hem of the poncho and crept under and upward.

"Uh, Dee?" Ursula implored while Eurydice tittered, "Ooh, perky."

"The safe word is 'Pygmalion'," Dee said, facing forward again.

"She knows that already," Yves said, keeping one eye on the road ahead and the other on the GPS readout.

"I figured," Dee said, looking back over his shoulder. Ursula's eyeglasses dangled askew on her face. Eurydice nibbled her way down Ursula's jaw line, casting frequent wicked grins in Dee's direction. "You guys okay back there?"

"Yeah," Ursula said. Eurydice's arm rippled fluidly under Ursula's poncho and the Goth girl added, "Oh, yeah. Definitely."

Eurydice pivoted her head and pouted, "Maybe we should pull over and—"

The Jeep rocked to a halt. "We're here. I think," Yves announced.

Eurydice whispered, "Dammit."

Ursula pushed Eurydice's hands away with a quick kiss. "It will be alright," she whispered back. "Where are we?" she asked, louder, leaning between the two front seats to get a good look. "Oh, you have got to be shitting me."

Eurydice peered forward at the imposing, brick building and its columned façade. "What?"

"This thing is working fine," Yves said, tapping the GPS. "What about the one inside your head?"

Ursula shut her eyes for a second, gasped, and unclosed them again. "Galatea's dead ahead. This is it. She's in there, somewhere."

"We're fucked," Dee groused.

"What is it?" Eurydice urged. "Research lab? FBI satellite office? Culinary institute?"

"Worse," Yves said.

Ursula sighed, resigned to doom. "It's the Epsilon Zeta sorority house."

Eurydice glanced around the cul-de-sac. The E-Z house grounds were flanked by far less grand, unaffiliated student housing. A sporty, yellow SUV squatted in the U-shaped driveway in front of the E-Z house door. A gravel road branched from the paved driveway to an overcrowded parking lot on the sorority grounds, housing a few dozen more cars. "I don't get it," Eurydice conceded.

"E-Z's the biggest sorority in town," Yves said. "Over a hundred active members. Very active, well-funded, and well-to-do."

"Very homophobic," Ursula muttered. Eurydice looked quizzical. "The Easies have been drubbing out gay girls for years. Even got a professor fired back in the Sixties. Someone blew the whistle a while back and now, a couple of discrimination suits later…they're just more polite about it."

"Okay," Eurydice shrugged, "a bunch of rich, asshole coeds. So? Dee can just punch his way through the walls and…Oh."

"Exactly." Dee waved a hand at the sorority house. "I can't get in there, and get out again, without innocent people getting hurt, thanks to my public fuckability."

Ursula swallowed a bark of laughter and hiccupped. "Your what?"

Dee sunk into his seat. "Public fuckability."

Eurydice stretched to glower out the window at the sorority house.

"We're using the term 'charism' now, Dee," Yves said, smirking.

Ursula could not suppress her giggle fit. "Public fuckability!"

Dee twisted in the seat, face burning. "Take the wax out of your ears," he growled, "and see if you're still laughing…little girl." Ursula flinched and Yves cursed and thumped a fist against the steering wheel. "Oh, shit," Dee said, paling. "What happened?"

"I don't need to take the wax out," Ursula said, her voice small. "I felt that in my teeth."

Yves reached out an open palm. "Pass me the wax."

"Jesus, you too?" Dee said, head in hands. "It's getting worse!"

"Yes." Yves blinked. "Wait: No. Not like that, anyway. You didn't turn me on. You gave me a migraine." He ran a fingernail down a fault in the driver side window. "And nearly broke the window. I'm pretty sure this crack wasn't here a few minutes ago. Before this is over, we need to get you to SRU and get your charism, kiai, or whatever-it-is, under control."