With Teeth Ch. 02

*I have to find something that wouldn't put you in danger.*

"How considerate."

"Could we frame Richard for the murder attempt?"

*Um guys, the pilot can totally hear us, right?*

*****

The helicopter turned the big green empty space into a whirlwind of noise and tall blades of grass swinging about.

The architect, the mayor, the bankers and financiers, a bunch of assistants, they bent against the roaring wind, protecting their faces and their papers.

Yet remained immovable big brother Richard Andrew, as the girls could observe when they got off.

For once he was only looking at them, glaring. For once he was dumbfounded. Nervous. His face ashen.

Furious, in a word.

*Don't let him suspect anything.*

~That's what I was gonna say,~ Maddie thought.

+What?+

~What?~

+I can hear you??!+

~Oh my Gooooooooood!~

+We can hear each other now?+

*Yes. Look casual, look casual!*

It took half a minute for the rotor to brake to a full stop. They shook hands with everybody, screaming half-heard good mornings. Then the architect could start his speech, show his blueprints, negotiate the filling of the big green space with a compound that would raise so many numbers for everyone present.

Richard grouched a few remarks here and there. All agreed. Meeting's over. All went back to their cars.

Except for the Andrews.

They were standing in a line, Richard and Victoria facing each other, and Maddie behind, looking over her sister's shoulder.

Richard removed his jacket and hung it folded on his forearm. The sun was getting hot.

"We're going to sell everything to Störme-Sterne," Victoria declared. "All our shares."

He suddenly found back his work smile. "You can't."

+Goddammit, he's right.+

"Well, most of them, you get the point."

His smile was holding steady. "Ok, but why are you telling me this?"

"To get your opinion."

"Well, if it wasn't for the fact that it sounds pretty arbitrary and rash, I'd say it's a declaration of war."

"It's not. We're just tired of this farce. And they made the best offer."

"Got a legal team?"

"Yes."

He tilted his head toward Madison. "Anything to say?"

"She's kidding. We're not selling anything," she said.

He gave them a blank, unfocused stare and no reply, putting his jacket back on because his car was air-conditioned.

*****

It was always intriguing to see three people who were of the same birth and how they had developed such different behaviors and personalities.

Makes me wonder what kind of person Marcus was. If he was a douchebag. And it's why Richard had him killed first. Or maybe he was the best of them. With the same outcome.

It's a curse to be able to see what people have inside. Because beyond their actions, I don't see 'who they really are'--this stupid phrase doesn't even make sense--but I see their potential, what only their masks and the circumstances and the arrow of time prevent them from doing.

The curse had me fall in love. With both of these girls. My rich little incestuous pricks. And now I hope I will be up to the task. I can only whisper suggestions at the back of their minds, wishing they could stick, and I can only see.

As the helicopter was zipping across the sky, I could see Victoria getting two cars to wait for them at the heliport. Madison was conducting small talk with the pilot, taking genuine interest in it, his opinions, about trends and arts and even stuff, his peculiarities, coming from a profile as peculiar as high-end pilot.

And all the while they were using their newfound telepathic powers to plan and plot.

+If looks could kill...+ Victoria thought.

*So what was this all about?*

+Fucking with his head.+

*Nice, now he's gonna rush my boss into killing you harder.*

~Do you think Richie's fucking his secretary?~

+Ew, I don't know. Why?+

~Like Hera said: he's pissed off, he's gonna try to contact the witch ASAP.~

*She's not a witch.*

~If I can get to fuck the secretary,~ Maddie explained without wavering, ~maybe I'd get pillowtalk intel.~

+We've been together for less than twenty-four hours and you want to cheat on me just to play spy games?+

~I'm trying to save our lives here.~

+Why would it be you fucking her? I want to do it, that woman looks hot.+

~And since when are you a dyke?~

+I don't know, since I ate your pussy?+

~That's um...a very good point. Let's fuck her together then.~

+She would freak out that we're sisters.+

~I'll just wear a fake mustache!~

*Are you fucking serious right now?*

~+Shut up!+~

+Ok, what's the priority here?+ Victoria asked. +Do we deal with Richard? do we deal with your boss? or do we get rid of you?+

~It pains me but I'd say we have to put up with Ms. Oil Spill until that shit's sorted out.~

Maddie was right. As long as I was inside them they were somehow protected.

~What do we do now?~

+You go home and you lock yourself down.+

~Wow! Ok, mom! And you?~

+I have lunch with my booty-call. Curtis. I talked to you about it. I thought it would be the decent thing to do to say goodbye to him.+

~So you go out and I don't?~

+It'd be suspicious if I don't go. Promise me you go home, Maddie. We plan out how we bang this woman tonight, ok?+

~Ok yeah whatever. Hera, how does one hire your boss?~

*Usually you meet her through a friend who has used her services before. You don't know how shady stuff works?*

~I failed the Illuminati exam.~

*You two realize you sound very childish so far? with your big plans and everything.*

+You have a better idea?+

*Well, no. But I have something you lack. Something I'm gonna have to bring out from inside you, whether you like it or not.*

+What?+

*Teeth.*

*****

Funny how things change. Curtis was still handsome. Charming even. And it was a pleasant alfresco lunch overall. But Victoria was not able to find a longing for his presence anymore.

All his otherwise undeniable qualities were bouncing off her, watching him eat his gluten-free salad. All except the one that had only ever mattered: Victoria couldn't see a man in front of her, it was a penis sitting at her table, with the ocean in the background and thirty people sitting around them in the outdoor patio, ordering, chatting, oblivious of her guilty vision.

A penis she had genuinely worshiped. Loved, even, at some point, at the height of her loneliness. And actually respected so much she had made love to it in every way possible, not just with her ass.

A penis, but his balls too, of course. Semen was important. For Victoria, having her rectum get filled with cum was as orgasmic as the rest of anal sex. And that was why they had locked their booty-call agreement down to the point of being exclusive and thus not having to use condoms.

On the other hand, it was probably the fourth time in three years they ate out together.

They only had two things: mutual respect and mind-blowing sex.

And now that she had told him she met someone and was most likely in love, he reacted accordingly:

"Keep my number, in case it doesn't work out."

Victoria smirked. "You're already thinking about all the new piece of ass you're gonna get now that you're free. Aren't you?"

"Ah, yeaaah..." They chuckled.

They stared off into space, meditating on how unusual their relationship had been in retrospect.

"It was great. You and I," she said, low and sincere.

"Yeah, it was...spectacular, yeah."

+Did you hear that? My ass is spectacular.+

~Heh. You know the taste of his spunk but I bet you don't even know his favorite song.~

+Judge me, bitch.+

A waitress brought a Perrier to the 6'1" penis. He smiled at her and she smiled back.

+Hey Mad, can I ask you a favor?+

~Don't bother,~ Maddie sighed. ~The answer is yes: you can have breakup sex.~

Victoria sat up: "Check, please!"

*****

The lobby was a long and windowless vaulted corridor, devoid of any art, except--some would say--for a desk, très art deco, put there halfway like a checkpoint.

But it's the girl sitting at it that was the real piece of work. Piercings, ear stretchers, hair dyed orange and shaved on the left side of her head, sleeve tattoo, chest tattoo, who knows where else. Also, Maddie knew the worn clothes she was wearing cost a hundred times more than they looked. She was so outdated. People like her were hired at Target now, not an art gallery. But Maddie liked her. Because they shared (she had found out) two passions: crosswords and sex. And because most of the gallery's earnings came from Maddie's networking (and because she fucked the boss enough to keep him obedient), she had a say in who worked there.

So Sasha stayed.

"Yo, Sasha, waddup?"

"Hey, Miss Andrew. We got it!"

"Oh yeah?"

"The login arrived this morning."

Maddie didn't slow down, kept walking down the corridor, saying, "Oooh that's awesooome! Is Geoffrey here?"

"No."

Of all the galleries and studios she worked for, the Voormann Gallery was her favorite to go to when she was idling. The investments there were ludicrous, something was always happening. And Sasha always had some new kinky encounter to tell. It was better than staying home locked up.

The bare tunnel led into a spacious circular pillared room, minutely lit with neon tubes and cinema spotlights. The Dome, where the fun happened and the real dough was stored.

Like any marketplace, the architecture had been soundly thought-out. And Maddie and I, we walked in there like she owned it, I was straight away bombarded by the landscape, no time to digest. It made my head spin. Everywhere there was some crap hanging on a wall or sitting on a pedestal; that was for the most conventional stuff. More than once I wondered whether it was an artpiece or the fire extinguisher and didn't get the time for the answer. It was abysmal and it kept coming at us, left and right. I detest contemporary art so much it's actually hilarious, and because they all know the emperor has no clothes, I could hear all the contradiction of Madison's mind.

Deep down, where only I could see, she had begun to long for Renaissance paintings, like she had seen in the mirror this morning. And for Pre-Raphaelites, and Fauves, and pietàs, and etchings by candlelight...

After they had shower sex, she had returned in front of the mirror. She asked me to remove the V of hair and stood there naked, so hairless that in some way it was making her look less nude. She asked me to heal her vocal cords, because she had figured out I had this power too.

I had never seen her grave like this before. Grave this way.

She struck a few poses, as close as Botticellian goddesses without ever falling into parody, lost in nostalgia for her student years, for a particular memory of her charcoal-stained fingers lazily running over the pages of a big sagging Taschen book borrowed from the library.

Immobile then, settled apparently on a less tensed geometry, if only for a second or two, she said, "The Judgement of Paris," with her full voice but mostly for herself, and her sister came to join into the frame, curious. Naked too.

"Solomon Joseph Solomon."

Vic hadn't got a clue what it meant. But they remained like this for a little while, arms around each other's waist, looking at themselves without distinction, with me in the background, unless it was the foreground, or perhaps they really couldn't see me at all at this moment and it was just their reflection, full face, full-length and significant for Maddie.

"I haven't drawn in years."

"Oh yeah?"

"Would you pose for me?"

"Sure."

Then back to silence and contemplation.

And now trotting through this pricetag museum, while showing excitement for all this garbage Maddie was subconsciously asking herself where she had put her neglected sketchbook.

So it took her a second to remember--and it took me a second to notice--that we had stopped at the central point of the dome, where, obvious headliner, stood a tall digital screen arranged as best as they could not to look like the black monolith from 2001.

You could see it from pretty much anywhere. Now that I thought about it you could see it from the street.

Maddie turned the screen on. A prompt appeared, rolled down, disappeared, and then a picture faded in.

*What the shit is that?*

"Money laundering," she whispered.

*Obviously. I mean, I know where we are. But why is it on a screen? I thought the NFT market had collapsed already.*

"Not to some. Plus it's the new Clara Bigsby-May."

*A woman made this...*

"Don't start."

*She just fingerpainted 'MY STRUGGLE' with her period blood over a Windows 95 wallpaper.*

"That's what you see?"

*It's shit.*

"Oh my God, stop saying what I think..." she sighed.

*How much?*

"It's not for sale. Well, not exactly..."

*I see. How much will you make?*

"Go fuck yourself," she said flatly, then she shouted out, "Sasha, we're gonna make millioooooooons!"

"yeeee..." came muffled from down the hall.

*All the money in the world won't fill the hole in your heart, Madison.*

"But it's so funny watching them spending it on this trash."

*Is there one thing you genuinely like in this room?*

"Wait, you were serious!?"

*I can read your thoughts, remember?*

"Woe is me, I have nothing to care for in this life. I'm as shallow and cynical as they come. And falling in love with my sister was the first step toward meaning."

*I don't buy it, it's Victoria who's supposed to be the self-loathing one.*

"What are thoughts like?"

*Mh?*

"Our thoughts, are they words? Do you hear them?"

*Gonna be hard to explain.*

"Try me."

*Take bats.*

"Mh?"

*Bats hear space.*

Maddie considered the statement for a couple seconds, blinking. Until it made her say, "Holy shit, they do!"

*I see your thoughts like bats hear space. And um... there's the idea of depth. Your memories are kind of like compressed files.*

"Makes sense, I guess."

*Inner monologue is more like a waveform from an oscilloscope. I can zoom in to see the words if I want to, but most of the time I just...recognize the shape; there are models, it's rare to see a new shape, you're a pretty basic species. Sorry to say.*

"Aliens?"

*Stay on topic. So, the shapes, they change depending on the outside world and the deeper thoughts, which are more like...tags.*

"Keywords? The computer analogy is a lil' unnerving, y'know?"

*These tags are like big rocks that stand in the torrent of your superficial thoughts. They deviate its course and they're super hard to move unless they're taken back into the ground. Like, you changed the subject a few seconds ago when I evoked Victoria but it still brought up a tag in your mind.*

"I didn't--"

*Yes you did, I can see it right now, and it's a pretty big tag. And of course there's all the other ones related to it, standing around: fear; skin; maternity; evening; claws...*

"What's that?"

*Claws. You know. Like 'roaaar!' Like Wolverine. Claws. For protection. You wanna protect her.*

Silent, Maddie nodded imperceptibly, gaze somewhere else, far.

She looked at her fingernails. They were discreetly but impeccably manicured; their length reasonable but definitely feminine. And painted magenta.

She thought out loud: "You would expect Vicky to have these long fake nails, but she always keeps them very short. Pretty sure she clips them herself."

*Better for analplay.*

"Ooh I see."

But suddenly.

"So does it mean..." suddenly the universe, the air itself around Maddie started to dilate and intensify "Does it mean..." and all the bricks of cognition and the underlying cogs were shifting and changing place in a deafening crescendo of ascending fireworks' tails of sudden revelation as the whole reality of Madison Andrew was about to be so unexpectedly reshaped "Does it mean women with short nails like ana--"

*No.*

"Oh..."

The bricks had landed back to normal in a weighty noiselessness. Maddie was a little disappointed. So much that she kept thinking about it.

"Imagine the money I'd make if I invented an anal enthusiast detector," she said.

While I was working on a comeback for that, she made a calculation in her head:

Where was Victoria right now? Thirty minutes ago she was at that restaurant in Malibu with the intent to go home and have sex with this Curtis guy. Which means she--most likely--could be at her condo right now. Or his place. Check-drive-stairs-getting in bed. Most likely she was in bed with him, she was at it at this very moment.

"Hera, could I hear Vicky's thoughts without her knowing?"

*Yes, but I won't let you do that.*

"Oh pleeease!"

*No, fuck off, even a deviant like her would think this is going too far.*

"But she's having sex! And you can listen to her, I mean you have literally bugged her brain, so what's the difference?"

*You're at your workplace, don't you have work to do?*

"Come oooon, pleeease, just five seconds!"

I knew she wasn't asking me to do this out of jealousy. These two hopeless weirdos, their relationship would be an open one; they had not talked about it yet, but they both liked sex too much not to. I knew that it thrilled Maddie restlessly to know that Victoria was out there having sex. Or not to know. It was the sweetest torture, wondering if, while walking around, living life, wondering if maybe Vic was in the middle of an orgasm right now, or stroking a cock, or begging to be fucked.

Since they had left the heliport, Maddie had this flash, over and over, almost obsessive, this image of Victoria swallowing a load as it was shot inside her mouth, just her sister's face, lips around this cockhead, eyes up to its owner, gulping spurt after spurt, the sound it made, her larynx moving up and down her neck. The vision had no real context and no cause that I could find. Madison had no idea whether Victoria was a swallower. And the rare times she had herself tried, she had found the taste repelling.

But it was there, flickering, and Maddie couldn't do anything about it besides getting wet.

*Ok, five seconds, not one more.*

"Weeee!"

I couldn't connect her to Victoria's thoughts. As I explained, that wasn't possible. So I let her hear the room.

There was a ceiling fan. There were satin sheets. There was a man kissing skin. Goings-on were def ongoing.

+Sup, Maddie.+

~Sonuvabitch!~

+Hahaaa, you thought I was gonna let you sneak in?+

~Hera you fuckin' traitor!~

*There was no way I'd let you spy on her, that's immoral.*