It's Always Time Act 05 Ch. 02

Black Cherry tipped her head, listening to some distant voice. The wings on her back grew, gorged on blood red gel. "Zeus loved you best."

Eurydice shook her head. "You don't understand, Adrasteia."

"That's not my name," Black Cherry muttered. The symbols tattooed on her skin writhed and danced. "Zeus loved you best. Heracles loved you best. Sigurd loved you best." The little wings on her head spread atremble. "Dee loves…They all loved you best!"

"No." Eurydice fell back against the Jeep. "You can't love what you don't trust. And, in the end, none of them trusted us. Ever. Because of you," Eurydice added, eyes brimming with tears and defiance, "Adrasteia."

"That's not my name!" The mathematical formulae binding Black Cherry's flesh distorted, wavered, and finally faded into black veins marbling crimson gel, devoid of pattern or meaning. Her great wings opened, spanned the road, and a scarlet curtain of crushed velvet dropped between Yves and Eurydice. A battle cry built in Yves' throat.

"Hey, fruitcake!"

Yves clapped his mouth shut and spun about.

Tomoe strolled up the double yellow line in the center of the access road, white blouse ruffling in the sudden wind, little black miniskirt hugging above her knees, snake-skin purse slung over one shoulder. She dismissed Yves with a wave, dark eyes shining. "Pfft, not you." She pointed. "That fruitcake. The crazy lady with wings."

Black Cherry slumped. "This nick-of-time thing really gets tedious. Who ever heard of a team that doesn't team up? Ah, well, who is it now. Another shocker reveal?" She turned. The curtain rose on Eurydice, squashed against the silver Jeep, trying to peek around Black Cherry's head-wings. Black Cherry stood dumbstruck before stuttering, "Tiamat?"

"Say, there's an old nickname." Tomoe folded her arms. "Who's been giving the crazy lady flashbacks?"

Eurydice poked up a hand. "That'd be me. Sorry."

From his hole, Dee asked, "Are you okay, Eurydice?"

"Yeah. Plan B didn't work, though, so get your ass outta there."

"Working on it." Chunks of granite flew up. "Just a minute longer."

Black Cherry shrugged with arms and all four wings. "Tiamat," she whispered, pacing this way and that in the middle of the road, eyeing Tomoe from every angle. "You can't be here."

"No rule against it," Tomoe said, one black pump tapping on the pavement.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Raspberry asked.

"Me?" She met Yves gaze, matched his poker face. "Nothing."

Yves smirked, "Ah." He went down on one knee and lay Raspberry down onto the pavement.

"That, that's right," Black Cherry said, confidence returning. "You can't interfere."

"Yep. I can't interfere. Now there's a rule I never break."

"What're you doing?" Raspberry whispered to Yves.

"Don't worry," he whispered back. "You'll be fine. Besides, my arms have gone numb and I think I'm slipping a disk."

Wing claws clicked together over Black Cherry's head. "You can't interfere. So what are you going to do?" She edged closer to Tomoe. "Stand there and watch?"

"Pretty much," Tomoe answered, "Yeah." She adjusted the strap of her purse, looking bored.

Yves could not take any more. "You're asking the wrong questions." He shook his head, wore an idiot grin. "You stupid psycho-bitch."

Black Cherry shot him a worried glance. In the distance, an engine revved up.

"The question is," Yves said as the engine grew louder, "how did she get here so fast?"

"Oh." Tomoe brightened. She stepped to the side, inspecting a finger nail. "I drove."

A rose Mini Cooper raced around the bend in the access road. It bounced up a jagged slab of fallen concrete, soared through the air, and bore down upon Black Cherry, car horn meep-meeping. The car's grimacing oval grill rippled, split, and thrust out a single, diamond-tipped, ramrod spike.

Black Cherry reared back, eyes bugging. "Oh, shi—" The scarlet girl flew backward, impaled. She threw her wings around the little car, claws raking the sides and scourging the rear bumper.

Eurydice swore—"Whoa-shit!"—and dove away as the charging Mini Cooper clashed Black Cherry against the silver Jeep. The sideways truck folded up like a cardboard box. The little rose car disappeared in the vortex of crushing wings. Black Cherry's face contorted in some intense, silent emotion that Yves could not distinguish between exultation or exquisite pain.

Scarlet wings ruptured, falling away in splattering petals. SB ascended in the rain of crimson honey, muscles bunching beneath her tight dress, monstrous pink scimitar twirling a glorious arc in her arms. The hooked tip of the blade sped downward, shearing through the carriage of the Jeep. SB yanked back on her swing as the scimitar's curved edge cleaved into Black Cherry's hair. Black Cherry twittered nonsense words, shut her eyes and chewed on her fingers.

SB's rosy skin and coppery dress were plastered with cherry nectar. Black Cherry pushed her twitching fingers between the folds of her sex before mashing them back into her mouth. SB glowered, muttering, "Worse than Atlantis." She hefted the scimitar out of Black Cherry's hair and the scarlet girl fell into a post-coital fit, head rocking and feet drubbing the pavement. Her pageboy bob now bore a perfect, midline part.

SB lanced the scimitar down into the asphalt, crossed her arms and propped herself against the sword's hilt. "Well, cousin," SB sighed, "I hate family dramas so I'm going to cut this short." She exchanged a quick glance with Eurydice, who nodded. "Your sister, for some reason, wants to present you with a choice. Do you think you could, just this once, get over yourself, move on, and maybe—Oh, I dunno—try for happiness instead of the usual boiling bunny bullshit?" Severed wings wriggled past her, as flat and wide as Persian carpets, crawling up to bind with Black Cherry's back. "Aw, eeew. So much worse than Atlantis. Anyway, you can either cheer up, emo kid, or you and I can keep doing what we're doing now and you can cum yourself to death. Your choice."

Black Cherry gulped, "Who were you?"

"Oh, you know, you and your sister filled them with honey." She plucked her scimitar out of the ground and slung it over her shoulders. "I brought the milk. I offered them my horn." Her diamond-white eyes flashed at Yves. He felt a guilty flutter in his stomach and heat in his face. "They gifted it back," she finished and leveled the scimitar at Black Cherry's crotch. The scarlet girl crossed and uncrossed her legs beneath it. "So what's it going to be?" SB asked.

"Tiamat," Black Cherry spluttered. "Tiamat?" SB shrugged, moved aside, but kept her scimitar in striking range of Black Cherry's belly and sex. "Are you going to let her do this?"

"Sorry." Tomoe worried an unruly cuticle with her teeth. "There's nothing I can do. Can't interfere, remember? And call me Tomoe, or 'T' at least. Can't use the old nickname any more thanks to Gary fucking Gygax."

"I'm running low on nanomek and patience, little cousin." SB etched little circles around Black Cherry's belly button with the keen tip of her blade, making the scarlet girl shiver and pant, her cream-candy skin prickled with brandied dewdrops. "And frankly I'm inclined to keep cutting and cutting. But that's my dick talking and it's not my decision to make. What say you: sister, or sword?"

Black Cherry's lips curled up into that lazy, coquettish smile that Yves had grown to loathe. "I'll take the third option," she said, and rolled her eyes upward.

Yves, SB, and Raspberry followed her gaze, and swore in a ragged chorus. "Oh, shit."

Three half-naked coeds—the blonde, brunette, and redhead E-Z sorority sisters—their nests of bedraggled hair twisting serpentine in the wind, perched on the corrugated steel barrier running along the lip of the overpass, almost two stories above the litter of ripped asphalt and craggy hunks of ferroconcrete spiked with barbs of distressed rebar. Their arms shot out straight into the air, releasing their clutches of clothes. Yves thought of Hollywood Frankenstein monsters, or swimmers positioning themselves to dive off a high board. His blush faded and the butterflies in his stomach grew icicles.

"What the—Oh, yuck," Dee groused from his hole as the last of the coeds' skank-wear pelted down onto the road. "Why is it raining soiled panties?"

"Shut up, Dee." Yves limped to the center of the road, never taking his eyes of the girls above. "Black Cherry's got the skank-bots back and she's going to kill them."

Yves heard a growl and hiss from the hole in the road, sounding more locomotive than human. Yves spoke as fast as he could. "Dee no-it's-too-late any move and they're dead."

Tomoe paled. "I'm so sorry. I can't interfere, I really can't." She stared at her hands. "If I do, it just gets worse, so much worse. So I can't. I can't."

"I know," Dee said.

Tomoe looked up at the three girls. She balled her fists. "I can't!" Yves felt the breeze blow stronger and the ambient temperature drop.

Dee spoke in his new voice—"No more, Tomoe,"—and Tomoe gasped in relief, letting her arms fall, her purse slip from her shoulders. The electric tension in the air evaporated.

She wasn't apologizing for staying out of it, Yves realized, She was begging someone to stop her from getting into it. Yves turned to SB. The rose girl stepped back, choking up on the scimitar's grip. The first pinpricks of migraine pain skewered behind Yves' eyes. "I need a minute," he said.

"You won't get it," Black Cherry grinned, sitting up.

I need to think this through. Yves held up an open palm. "You kill them, SB kills you, and you know it." How is this supposed to end? Just like I said this morning: 'Galatea divided, brothers and friends dead.' How do I stop it from happening all over again if Cherry Cupcake's too much of a psycho-bitch to let it go? The pinpricks grew into stiletto points and Yves had to bow his head. Black Cherry. Party tonight. Skank-bot army. Dee sublimed. Eurydice fragmenting. Galatea divided.

     ["… She's lying. Black Cherry. About Galatea…"]

"Oh." Yves stood straight. "Duh."

From the hole in the road, Dee said, "Yves?"

"Let her go," Yves answered. "You already know what you have to do."

"SB," Dee ordered without any hesitation, "let her go."

SB shouldered her scimitar, fuming. Black Cherry sat up and brushed herself off. "Well, this was fun."

"Cherry," Dee said, "set the girls free, safely, or I let SB finish if she wants."

The huge scimitar thrummed in SB's hands as she rolled her shoulders. "SB wants," the rose girl purred. Eurydice came up behind her and gave SB a fierce hug.

"Of course," Black Cherry said, swaggering into the road and hopping onto a fallen concrete slab. "As soon as I'm clear. I'm sorry we were interrupted, Master. I could stay and play," she said, eying Yves, "but there's a choice you have to make. I told you I had work to do, remember?" She scampered over the rubble, crossing the road to the broken pylon. "Well, I did it, and it's perfect, just like I said. We'll be perfect, you and I, tonight." She stopped to peer down into the hole in the road. "Won't we, Master?"

"Go," Dee said.

Black Cherry sniffed and pouted. "You're not scared at all. Why not, Master? You were so scared last time. Why…"

"Go, Cherry."

"You're ready, aren’t you?" Black Cherry's laughter sparkled. "You're ready for me, finally. You're ready!"

"Go, Cherry."

Black Cherry, giggling and giddy, leapt onto the broken pylon. Claws and fingers punched their own handholds in the concrete. She loped up, her wings working as a third pair of limbs. She back-flipped up and around the lip of the overpass, onto the highway, and out of sight.

Raspberry fought against the straightjacket of Yves' overshirt tourniquet. "I can't be the only person who didn't understand a single damn thing that just fucking happened, can I?"

Yves shushed her, watching the three coeds balanced on the barrier railing. They rocked with a sudden tremor. The blonde and redhead's glassy, blank expressions came alive with alertness and confusion. The brunette only stood and swayed in her underwear. The blonde and redhead yipped in surprise when they noticed their surroundings and hopped back from the ledge, but wailed and fled down the highway in a hobbled, crouching run when they noticed their nudity. The brunette rolled her head and trembled again.

"Come on," Yves whispered. The brunette danced about on the railing, lifting one leg and then the other, pulling off her panties. "Oh, shit." Yves cast about. "Can anyone do the bed trick?"

Eurydice, SB, CeeCee, and Tomoe all raised their hands. Raspberry raised a delicate foot. The brunette's underwear dropped into the hole in the pavement. It was wet enough to splat. "Aw, man," Dee said. "The one fetish I don't have and I'm buried in it."

The brunette dove her fingers into her sex and drew out a blue-chrome, oval vibrator. She gave it a twist and shut it off. She raised it slowly to her face. She stared, aghast and unbelieving.

Yves squinted. "What the Hell?"

"Oh thank God," the brunette gurgled, toppled behind the railing, and sprawled onto the embankment in a blissful coma.

* * * *

The word is about, there's something evolving,
Whatever may come, the world keeps revolving.
They say the next big thing is here,
That the revolution's near,
But to me it seems quite clear:
It's all just a little bit of history repeating.

—Propellerheads (feat. Miss Shirley Bassey), History Repeating

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