It's My Party

"You know about the butchering table?"

"Ricardo, I know absolutely everything you ever did! All the horrors, all the tortures, all the humiliations. I know exactly how it felt to feel Uno's throat rupture from the other end of your cane. I know how you like to push tubes into stray animals and then kill them with a paring knife. I know exactly what my own anus looks like as I bend over a Bowie Knife counter. I know how you teased Jessica into making sexual advances to you, only to humiliate her for desiring sex with her father figure. Ricardo, do you get the idea? There are no secrets within the link. I examined everything and have decided your death is appropriate. The demon within you is just too strong. You are not redeemable."

The demon countered in a childish whining song, almost a chant. "And you'll die too-ew, and you'll die too-ew."

"Yes, gladly, to save my friends. Our minds are locked. I've locked my mind to you demon. Our temporal acceleration is extremely slow, less than three to one, unheard of for a boosted mind. But it's because your demon mind doesn't know how to trust. Acceleration is based on trust. I'm glad. It'll hasten our deaths."

The demon lost its taste for singing. "How long?" it whispered.

"I don't know. Both our bodies are in fair shape. One of us will die of dehydration first, and the locked minds will die together. The second body will die a moment later."

"Go away!" screamed the demon.

"Gladly. I really don't want to talk with you anymore. And I need to prepare for my own death. I need to pray."

And then the sense of her presence disappeared, but not before the demon started to howl. Amber had spoken truly. There was no place for lies within their linked and locked compound mind. The demon had seen Amber's last emotion for him before she left. The emotion was unbearable. He had seen her pity.

Was Ricardo alone now? No. It was impossible to be truly alone in a compound mind. He examined his mind and how it was joined to Amber's. He tested the lock. The hooks were monumental, impossible for his unboosted mind to resist. Try as he might, Ricardo could not defeat the hooks.

But could he defeat the mind behind them? Perhaps. Amber had revealed much. Such stupid compassion! Ricardo and Amber would be together for probably more than a week in subjective time. Amber's mind would have to sleep. Yes, that's when Ricardo would strike, nightmare after nightmare, images so vile it would make her puke. That's all he needed, one heave with her real head, one brief interruption in their gaze and the spell would be broken. And then Ricardo would be free and Amber still in chains.

He wouldn't make the same mistake twice, oh no. A flood of confidence filled Ricardo's mind. He would win! No sleep for Amber! Eventually she would hallucinate, her eyes would defocus. Ricardo shouted in triumph to the great ocean before him, "One hellish nightmare after another, you stupid bitch! Let's see how long you can last without sleep!" He smiled as the sun seemed to flicker for a moment. Amber would be defenseless once she became exhausted. She would not withstand a lack of sleep. The bitch was doomed, and her kitchen death would be slow, very slow indeed. No quick snips this time, oh no, the little paring knife would now do its work with infinite slowness.

Ricardo began to chortle, kicking wildly at the dream sand and laughing into the wind. He shouted out a maniacal rendition of an old Roy Orbison tune. "Dream! Bitch! Baby! Ah, uh, uh! How! Long! CAN YOU DREAM?!"

Chapter 101

Time: Sunday, October 3, 2019 2:58 PM

Jessica stood trembling at the doorway of the immense kitchen area. The servos! She thought they were leading her to freedom. Instead they had delivered her to Ricardo! Or did she have that backwards?

Across the kitchen on a steel counter Ricardo was lying with another women. Both were obviously naked, and Jessica could see a long pole keeping the woman's knees far apart, with a chain that kept her left leg high in the air. Amazingly, both Ricardo and the woman were unmoving, even though Jessica had screeched when she first saw them. Were they both dead? Was Ricardo fucking the woman? Were both questions true? Had they died while fucking?

Jessica slowly walked forward as quietly as she could. No, wrong on both counts, not dead and not fucking. They were both breathing, and Ricardo's groin was slightly too far away from the woman's hips for them to be fucking.

Jessica's eyes traveled up and down the length of Ricardo's body. The sight of his bare butt brought back so many memories. The little mole just to the left of his butthole was visible. It was little girl Jessica's duty to lick his anus clean after his toileting, and she would lick that little mole too. So many times she had licked him clean, and she remembered how she would be spanked if she let her tongue wander and lick his sac. Padre Ricardo would always pull down her panties before she was punished. All the sick training, with the punishments often focusing on her tender ass. Jessica tasted bile in her throat, and in her memory she also tasted the saltiness of Ricardo's brown shit. The urge to vomit was strong.

Instead she walked bravely forward. Amber! Ricardo was lying with Amber, and they were both gazing into each other's eyes. So close! Their noses were almost touching. And their gaze was so deep. Jessica had a thought of testing the gaze by putting her hand in between. But then in a premonition she thought that would be a really, really stupid idea. Somehow she suspected that would wake them from their trance. Oh no, she didn't want that.

Ricardo's face was very difficult to see from her angle, but Amber's face was clearly visible and Jessica studied it for a moment. "You've changed Amber," she thought silently. "You're face used to have such a hard look to it, but now that's gone. It's been replaced by… something extraordinary. Nobility? I don't know. But you're very pretty now."

Jessica blinked and brought herself back to reality. So what should she do? Did she have to do anything? Why not just leave? Yes, of course. She should just leave. That would be the safest thing. Let the sleeping monster lie. Jessica walked backwards from the steel counter and then turned to look at the exit door. The servos, were they still outside waiting for her? She walked over and opened the door and took a look.

The corridor was clear of the mechanical creatures. What did all this mean? Jessica thought about her journey here. She had only started out with maybe nine or ten servos when she first left her bathroom sanctuary, but as she walked their number swelled into the hundreds. She remembered her feeling of elation, her feeling of invincibility. She thought the servos were her army and would defend her against Ricardo. What a fool she had been! The servos were simply programmed to lead her to him. Shit! Ricardo probably wrote the program!

Jessica turned around and stared at Ricardo thoughtfully. But if Ricardo was the programmer, why weren't the servos more aggressive with her? The servos had not herded her. They stopped when she stopped, and once she tested heading off in a side corridor. The servos let her go but would not escort her in the new direction. Jessica decided that Ricardo would never write a program like that. Allowing people to exercise their free will just wasn't his style.

So the question remained. Should she just leave him? It would be easy to just start searching for an exit door and that's what she wanted, just to flee and escape. But what about poor Amber? The woman was in chains, and Jessica knew how Ricardo loved playing with bound women. She rubbed her wrists thoughtfully and remembered her handcuffs and his hands on her body. Oh yes, she remembered very well.

Ricardo loved more than anything to give enemas to bound women. Since her escape she had worked hard to bury the memories, but in this kitchen now she could smell the faint odor of shit. Jessica had little doubt that Amber's bladder and intestines were drained and empty. That's the first thing Ricardo liked to do with a bound woman, force her to pee and shit. And then…

Her mind drifted back to her toilet training in the Black Mall bathroom. She was alone with Ricardo, day after day. There was no one to appeal to, nothing on which to anchor her sanity. So Jessica abandoned her self-esteem and submitted. Twice daily she would lie on the hard floor of the shower area and then reach back and grab her ankles in her hands. That was part of the test. She was absolutely not allowed to let go of her ankles once the enema started.

She would be lying naked and almost prone except for an inflatable exercise cylinder that Ricardo would tuck underneath her tummy and hips. He certainly took his time with her too. The twice daily sessions often lasted an hour. He'd begin by stroking her butthole, adding lots and lots of lube with his finger, far more than was necessary, and then he would insert long surgical tubing. He started flushing her intestines from deep inside.

The worst part was holding the enema in while Ricardo rolled her. With the tubing still inserted and her bowels full of water, Ricardo would roll her back and forth across the cylinder, forcing her own weight to squeeze and churn the contents of her bowels into a brown soupy mess. Ricardo turning on the shower spray and having the hot water hit her upturned butt was her signal she could finally release the internal pressure. The relief was indescribable, and she was taught to cry out her gratitude when it happened.

Gratitude indeed! It seemed inconceivable now that she had allowed herself to be brainwashed so easily, and with her disbelief came a righteous anger. Her course of action was still unformed but it was starting to congeal. She had to do something. She had to take a stand. Jessica walked back to the kitchen counter for a closer look. What if Ricardo woke up? Sooner or later, of course he would wake up! Jessica could not abandon Amber to such a horrible fate.

There was a large carving knife left by Ricardo's thighs, tucked up against the curling raised lip of the counter. Jessica picked up the blade and gingerly tested the edge. Surgically sharp! Did she dare use it? Yes! But where? Jessica grinned. But indeed! Maybe she should stab him in the butt, stab him deep through his anus, corkscrewing the knife in and out in a hellish version of the world's most painful butt fuck. She could carve out a tunnel the size of a wine bottle. "Want to know what my version of a painful enema is, you dickhead?!" her mind screamed. Jessica wanted to, she wanted to slice his intestines apart, but somehow that felt… wrong.

Her cut should be for justice, not revenge. Slicing apart his rectum and colon might briefly give her a satisfying moment, very satisfying in fact, but Jessica realized she could not respect herself later if she engaged now in senseless brutality. No, she would refrain from such depravity.

So where to strike? Straight through the heart perhaps, from the back? That would be just and it would be an easy angle, but did she have the strength? Did she know enough about anatomy not to get stopped by a rib or something? And what about all the tough muscular tissue in Ricardo's back? Jessica had to assume that she'd only get one good stab before he would wake up. Did she have the strength and skill to stab his heart through the back? Debatable.

What about stabbing him through the eyes, a quick plunge into his brain? Yeah, that might work. But Jessica was reluctant to interfere with the gaze Ricardo was sharing with Amber. It was unearthly deep. A horrible memory returned, Ricardo whacking Britney's neck on Christmas with his damn cane, Britney falling to the fall and choking to death. "I know!" she thought. "I'll cut his throat! I'll do it in Britney's memory. Not revenge. Justice!"

She wondered if she would waver, but as she placed the knife edge along the side of Ricardo's neck, her mind shouted, "Do it now!" She made a hard slicing motion before she could change her mind, opening a fissure which immediately pooled with blood. Surprisingly it was not Ricardo who stirred from the trance. It was Amber's body that made a slight jerk. So strange. Jessica sliced again, and then again. She had carved a deep fissure now and Ricardo's blood was running. Jessica was definitely hurting him, but he was still breathing normally. So strange…

Jessica realized her mistake. She should be cutting at his throat, not at the back and side of his neck. She leaned over Ricardo's body and repositioned the blade and then sliced deeply and as closely along his Adam's Apple as she could. As she curled and sliced the knife around his throat, the blood burst from his neck and spurted up into Amber's eyes. Ricardo started to move. Jessica curled the knife back down quickly and then cut up again as hard as she could. Instinctively she knew this would be her last chance, her last stroke. Ricardo's hands flew like lightning to grab her.

What followed was like a dream, a nightmare that unfurled with crystal clarity. Ricardo's arm whipped like a snake striking at her wrist. He barely missed his target. Jessica had anticipated him just in time and she was pulling back as fast as she could. Ricardo's hand grabbed the knife blade instead, so fiercely that he pulled it from Jessica's hand. The blade sliced deep into his palm but he didn't seem to care. Ricardo was on his feet an instant later, holding the knife by the blade in his dripping hand, staring at a frozen Jessica three meters away. There was blood spurting from his throat in all directions. The scene was beyond horrific, and then Jessica's and Ricardo's eyes linked.

And the demon knew! His wounds were mortal! Mere seconds remained for his existence. Amber was defenseless behind him, still securely chained. In objective time, it would only take a moment to turn and drive the knife deep into her eye, but it was a moment the demon did not have. Already there was no sensation in his extremities. Ricardo's body was standing on pure inertia, no correcting balance. The demon was about to topple and be unconscious before he hid the ground. Amber was safe, untouchable, released from their compound mind by his blood spurting into her eyes. She would not follow his mind into oblivion. The demon howled.

And Jessica before him! She was a mere three meters away and Ricardo was a truly expert knife thrower. A moment ago he could have hurled the knife straight through her heart, burying the blade to the hilt with one precise throw. But not now. The demon howled again. His frustration could not be borne.

Was there no way to kill, at least kill Jessica? Yes! Their minds were now linked. Could the demon also lock? He remembered the mode with Amber, the mental positioning, and he tried to push his link with the terrified woman before him into a lock.

So close! He almost had her! She had no experience, no understanding of how to avoid what he was trying to do, and Ricardo had close to two subjective hours of experience under Amber's lock. His mind tried to lock again, his mental grappling hooks sliding against Jessica's weak and inexperienced defenses. She was fighting on pure instinct, a newborn fawn trying to flee from a sure-footed predator. His next attempt would not fail. His hooks would strike deep and entwine his mind with hers. The demon would then drag her down with him into eternity. One last triumph for him to seize, one last satisfaction.

But physical reality intervened. The lack of blood pressure in Ricardo's head was just too great. His vision faded, and all became darkness before he could set his hooks. Jessica sensed one last sad, plaintive howl within their link, and then the demon faded from her consciousness. Subjective time returned to objective time and Ricardo's lifeless body thudded to the floor. There was a long moment of silence. Jessica kept staring at the body on the floor until the blood stopped pulsing from the opened neck. Deprived of blood and oxygen, Ricardo's heart had stopped.

Amber called out in a plaintive voice. "Hello? I have something awful in my eyes. I can't see." Jessica walked stiffly to the sink and turned on the water. She cupped the water in her hands and made repeated trips to wash the blood from Amber's eyes. Her hands were kind and loving.

Meanwhile, approximately twenty kilometers away at the Red Mall home complex…

The library was in pandemonium. There was a large crowd of people gathered around Mark sitting at a console. A few minutes ago his displayed employment log showed the disappearance of Citizen ID #52 (Ricardo) and the continued existence of Citizen ID #30 (Amber). Amber had succeeded! And she was still alive!

Lucia wept openly. Earlier in the day Whitney and Kiyoko had voiced their suspicions over their Leophones of what Amber was trying to do. Lucia had then confessed to Fatima that Amber had been very interested in the mind locking ability her group had discovered, and that over a period of days Lucia had taught Amber the technique. Amber's plan became blindingly obvious. She would catch Ricardo in a gaze and then commit suicide, dragging his mind down with hers.

And incredibly, somehow Amber had succeeded, succeeded and lived. The employment logs were unambiguous. Outside of the Society, there were only two people left from Party #5, one male and one female, and that was clearly Jessica and Diego.
People were shouting in joy. A number were even acting as if they wanted to party. Fatima stood up and clapped her hands above her head for attention. She shouted loudly, "People, please! Let's not resurrect Earth's tradition of dancing on other people's graves!"

The room became quiet, a number of people nodding. There would be no party over Ricardo's death. And besides, there was still much to do. Kiyoko, Whitney, and Doug were together and holding at a position a few kilometers south of the linear building. Fatima began to give them new instructions.

Meanwhile, back in the butcher kitchen.

Amber and Jessica stared at each other for a long while. Jessica was caressing Amber's wet and clean head, and her hands were trembling. After one brief attempt, Amber had decided Jessica was too distraught for a link. They began to chat instead. Their words were gentle at first, almost small talk about the weather. Both of the women wanted to delay discussing the bloody horror on the floor. The large pool of blood on the floor started to congeal before Jessica walked over to Ricardo's pile of clothes. Inside the pile her hands found a nice set of keys. Amber was sitting up normally shortly afterwards, naked but free. She and Jessica hugged.

Amber's contingency plan with her team was for Amber to wait outside if possible or to wait by an exterior window and wait to be seen. She assumed that Mark would know about Ricardo's death. Therefore Kiyoko and Whitney and probably Doug would soon be circling the building looking for her.

Amber and Jessica would leave the bloody kitchen and hope that the servos would spare them the horror of dealing with Ricardo's remains. But before they left, Amber decided there was still one sad duty left to perform. With the vile echoes of Ricardo's thoughts still in her mind, she began searching the kitchen for what was left of Jenaro. Jessica stayed and added moral support. After a while she even helped. The gruesome cooked and uncooked pieces were not hard to find. Amber and Jessica made a small pile on the floor, at the other end of the kitchen from Ricardo's corpse.