New Story: Queens and Desperate Ladies

Synopsis: Trapped in an afterlife of nonstop BDSM play, a failed revolutionary falls in love with the woman he's helping escape.

I got caught smuggling counterfeit memories and they sent me to work at one of the brothels of Eudoxia as punishment. So now I'm standing in a floor-to-ceiling window display looking out onto the streets of the perfect city. It is snowing. Well-dressed ladies stroll about the cosmopolis, unhurried and pleased. They frequently cast a look in my direction, eyeing me like a pair of shoes they might like to try on but it is extremely difficult for me to meet their gaze for very long; each time I notice their beauty I blush and reflexively look down at their feet before giving a coy glance back up at their faces. They find it charming sometimes, smiling with wonderfully white teeth before coming into the building to make use of the services we offer. They can come into the building freely; I am forbidden from setting foot in Eudoxia.

The ladies are almost universally taller than I am and they're wearing a lot more clothes as well: things like chinchilla fur coats and designer stilettos compared to my ballet leotard and bare feet. I am situated in something like a storefront display. There are spotlights on me from above and below and a small square on the ground that I'm not supposed to move from until I get booked. The space isn't much larger than a shower / bath setup in a studio apartment – I saw something like this in the red light district of Amsterdam where the working girls would stand for potential clients to see. Written upon the wall behind me are some of the services we offer here: massage, 'cleanup', pedicures + manicures, laundry, oral service, 'play'.

The glass in front of me is slightly reflective so I can see myself: the unmistakable (but small) bulge in the front of my leotard telling passers by that I am a male. My androgynous, blushing, doll-like forever-young face. And my most striking feature: my hair. It's a kaleidoscopic array of colors from seafoam green to crimson red to ultraviolet and it changes color constantly the way an octopus cycles through camouflage. None of the women outside have hair like mine – nor would they want it.

This sort of hair signals that I died by suicide.

It tells everyone that I arrived to the afterlife not as a full citizen, but more like a staff member. Because even within this strange eternity there are bad days, inconveniences, and inexplicable funks. My job here – one of them, at least – is to act like a human kitty litter box: women can dump their bad feelings onto me and walk away feeling better afterwards. This emotional transference can happen any number of ways: the intimate body labor of a massage, the emotional labor of actively listening to a woman complain about her friends or lovers, or maybe a dance or cleaning a demanding woman's home to her impossibly high standards. My responsibility is to absorb their negativity with an eager smile and in doing this I eke out a living that's about as poverty-stricken and lonely as my time on Earth was.

Right now, I'm thinking about the way I died. It's never a pleasant line of thought, my last few months of biolife (that's how we refer to the time we spent on Earth here: our biological lives. Biolife for short). How much I was drinking, how hopeless it all felt. My hair turns navy blue and cerulean with inky black waves like a slowly billowing veil.

Even in Eudoxia, there are bad days.

"Lexi! Why are you feeling so sad?" Comes the bubbly voice of Little Sister. The sound is not broadcast from anywhere. It comes from inside my own head, like my inner monologue except louder. When she speaks I feel my heart flutter and my cheeks go red like I'm talking to my crush. My hair turns bubblegum pink. "Don't you know how happy we are to have you?"

The window which used to open out onto the city streets becomes opaque. Then it turns into a display screen with Little Sister smiling at me. She is a perfectly beautiful young woman with pink hair, a peaches-and-cream complexion, doe eyes, and a heart-shaped face. She's wearing white stockings, a white satin negligee, and white opera-length gloves.

"I--" I begin to say, but she holds up one finger and gives me a coquettish smile and I know to remain silent. Then she reaches behind herself to start unzipping her top slowly. The quiet sound of the zipper broadcasts directly into my brain; I swear I can feel the vibrations going down my own back and it causes the hair on the back of my own neck stand up. Her boobs are all-natural gravity-defying grapefruits with quarter-sized pink areolae but I only see them for a moment before she puts a modest arm in front of herself.

Little Sister is in her bedroom and I watch her perky butt as she walks to her queen-sized bed with its princess canopy and silk sheets. The camera floats over to her hand and she holds it like she's taking a selfie on a smartphone. Like she's streaming this. I feel a surge of jealousy because I realize she's not alone. A man is in there with her: tall and tan with chiseled muscles and a big dick. She gets on all fours and invites him take her from behind, holding the camera out for me to watch. But all I see is a closeup of her face: her biting her lip and gasping at each of his vigorous thrusts. This gets me rock hard but mine is comically small and trapped beneath my leotard, pointing up towards my bellybutton.

"You're so big!!" She says to him, meanwhile she's looking at the camera towards me. It makes me quiver.

Other, smaller screens pop onto the window display. One of them: a close up of her hands gripping the bed sheets. Another is a shot from below that captures the way her entire body responds to his thrusts from the heave of her breasts to the jerking of her hips. In this shot, Little Sister has an exasperated look on her face, like she can barely stand getting fucked this hard. Another screen: her toes curling in ecstasy. I'm more focused on the screen where she looks exasperated. She is wincing her eyes and exhaling sharply at each of his confident movements.

She looks at me and gives a foxy smile as if to say, 'Oh, is this what you want to see?' Then the pink-haired beauty looks like she's getting fucked so hard it hurts.

"Ow! You're too big! Not like that!" She pleads, raising her eyebrows and grabbing the sheets even harder. I'm completely transfixed as her face morphs into a rictus of pain. In the blink of an eye, there's a thick metal collar around her neck locking her to the bed with a short length of chain. Then she's not in her bedroom anymore, but in an underground sex dungeon. Her white stockings remain, but they're tattered and dirty now. She has a gold and diamond princess tiara on her head and adopts a cut glass accent.

"How dare you treat me like this!" Little Sister cries out. "Don't you know I'm the Baroness of Eudoxia?! I'll have you – AAH!!– I'll have you--!"

I'm unbelievably turned on by the show she's putting on for me. Like I'm watching a pornographic video and everything I would fantasize about actually happens. The proud elven princess captured and turned into a sex toy. The last of her line, kneeling defeated to the side of the throne, dutifully licking the cock of her conqueror. An empire built upon a tiny bulge locked away beneath my white muslin leotard. Pink-haired Little Sister looking at the camera, at me, as she cradles his balls and takes his entire length down her throat slowly. In my biolife I would be stroking myself and cumming buckets as I watched this sort of thing. But it works differently here.

I don't think this place is heaven; not even for the few lucky enough to live in Eudoxia. As I said, I can't even touch myself in this place. There's two snap buttons on the bottom of my garment but a magical force prevents me from opening them on my own. So while every part of me wants to free my cock and start jerking it, I'm trapped in this endless cycle of unfulfilled desire and frustration. I've also been endowed with the sex drive of a young man so that even touching a woman's hand gets me rock hard and I do a lot more intimate things than that.

I hear heavy high-heeled footsteps approaching my display case from somewhere within the building and it causes my blood to run cold.

"Ohh, sounds like you have company!" Little Sister says to me. "We'll catch up later, ok? Glad you're feeling better!"

The screen turns back into a floor-to-ceiling glass window and I'm looking onto the streets of Eudoxia. Several young ladies are standing outside watching me with amused expressions at how my hair glows brighter than the stage lights surrounding me. I barely think to look at them because I'm so fixated on the heavy footsteps so loud they can only be from a giantess.

It's Lady DiFrancesca.

Like many of the characters I encounter, she was inspired by pop culture in my biolife: the 'tall vampire mommy' from that video game series. A ghostly pale woman, she stands more than 7 feet tall with raven black hair and eyes that have glowing yellow irises. She wears an empire waist gown and a wide brimmed black hat and her role here is --

The door opens. I reflexively try to escape, but there's nowhere to go. Lady D stoops over to pop her head inside the room. She laughs as she watches me back into a corner away from her. She is so tall that she probably couldn't even enter this display case. And she doesn't have to.

"Come here, you pathetic man-thing. Mommy smells something delicious on you!" She calls out in a husky voice.

"Mommy! Please!" I beg, but it's no use.

She reaches one long arm into the room and grabs me by the waist like I'm a doll, lifting me up and pulling me outside without the slightest bit of effort. I reflexively reach down and try to pry myself free from her massive hand and fail. We're in her chambers now: Victorian furniture and Eastern European castle vibes. Oil lamps provide the illumination but it's rather dark. The vampire lady clenches her fist around my torso and squeezes the oxygen out of me briefly before relaxing her grip. It is a demonstration of her power, and a warning. She pins me me up against the wall at her eye level.

"Daughters! To me!"

I hear them before I see them. There is the sound of women's laughter: three distinct voices, each belonging to one of Lady DiFrancesca's three daughters but that I most attribute to Joy. Along with that, I hear the 'sk sk sk' sound and the soft fluttering of fingers that remind of of the ASMR videos I used to watch but nowadays that I associate more with Raja. And then there is the jangling of chains and cracking of whips that tell me Arezo is nearby. The three of them materialize into their human forms by way of a dark mist that shoots into the room. They all have snow-white skin, black lipstick, and varying degrees of fresh blood dripping from their mouths down their chins. The sisters kneel facing their mother, their heads bowed.

"How may we serve you, beloved mother?" Asks raven-haired Arezo. She is the oldest, and usually the first to speak. I never see her without her whip, which is now rolled up and latched onto her black hooded robe.

"Shall we harvest his tingles, dear mother?" asks Raja, the middle child with auburn hair. When she speaks, it sounds like she's whispering into my right ear from behind because of her uncanny ability to project her voice.

"I smell nectar!" Joy announces, "Will you share it with us?"

"You insolent child," answers Lady D – 'child' referring to Joy's status as a daughter, not her age. Each of the daughters is above 18. She goes on, "Arezo and Raja offer to help, while you just want to take his nectar for yourself?"

"It's been so long!" Joy whines. "And you were the one who taught us to speak up for ourselves."

This comment causes the vampire lady to smile, revealing sharp incisors. She glances down at my genitals.

"Let's see how much he made for us before we discuss this any more."

All four sets of eyes are on my crotch as Lady DiFrancesca reaches down to undo the buttons on my leotard, exposing my ridiculously small penis. Seriously: vampire mommy's fingers are much longer than my unit even if it were fully erect. With my cock out, Lady D's daughters move closer and eye it hungrily – a grape-sized bead of 'nectar' has accumulated around the tip of my dick like precum that neither drips away nor absorbs into the fabric of my costume. It's one of the resources my body produces: nectar from being aroused, mirth from laughter, tingles from ASMR, and pangs from pain.

"It's so much!" Exclaims Joy. "Give it to me and I'll get him to surrender memories to you so we can double our territory!"

"Give it to me," says Arezo, "And I will make you a super weapon from his pangs!"

"Give it to me and maybe you'll walk out of here without a bullet in your head," comes a familiar voice.

June Libertine struts confidently into the bedroom, her handgun raised in front of her. She's wearing her iconic blue tube top and black leather skirt and it looks like she went through hell to get here. Her attractive face is marred with splotches of dirt and fresh injuries: red scrapes and bruises. Something took a bite out of her athletic thigh and she's bleeding through the bandages. She keeps her shoulder-length brown hair swept over to the left side of her face – a face marked by pouty lips, a strong jawline, and high cheekbones.

"You idiots!" Lady D says to her daughters. "No one was watching the gate?"

"You called all of us here!" Arezo replies.

"It's four versus one, bimbo," taunts Joy while moving away from the rest of her sisters to get into a flanking position. "So why don't you crawl back to your containment zone, where we all know you let the zombies lick your pussy, and leave the man-thing with us?"

"Yeah I want to get out of here as soon as possible," replies June. "Because this place looks like one of Dracula's side castles that he doesn't want people to find out about... But Lexi comes with me... Looks like Discount Dracula in here."

Lady DiFrancesca drops me and turns on her heel to confront the heroine. Her daughters continue fanning out across the room.

"Kill her," Lady D commands. "Or better yet, let's capture her and we can ransom her to the Parasol Corporation for something nice."

I make a break for the door as the fighting begins, but without looking the vampire lady clasps one hand around my neck before I get very far. She lifts me up and body slams me down onto the stone floor and I am stunned by the force of the blow against my ribs and head. I regain my composure only to see that she's about to stomp on me – her massive stiletto-clad foot careening down towards my groin. I roll to one side just in time to avoid it, turning that motion into a dive to get underneath Lady D's bed. Her castle always has trapdoors and secret passageways; there's almost certainly something down there I can use. It's crowded down beneath her bed and I land with my face pressed into a jumble of her shoes, worn stockings and panties.

I hear Lady D's mocking laugh as I realize my mistake too late: I've escaped under this bed before. Which means that she's had time to shore up her defenses and put a trap here. Iron bars drop from the perimeter of the bed frame, locking into the stone floors before I can scramble away. June is firing her handgun, tossing stun grenades, and heroically dodge-rolling around the bedroom but from all her cries of pain, it sounds like she's losing. The three sisters weren't meant to be fought all at once – why did she burst in like that?

I feel something soft brush against my ankle and realize I'm not alone in this prison. Lady DiFrancesca's stockings have become animated, and they slither across my ankles to tie me up. Pretty soon her silk stockings have knotted themselves around my ankles and are spreading my legs apart. Then one of her gloves comes to life and shoves its fingers in my mouth, between my teeth, holding it open to tease me. I shake my head and try to bite down on the glove, but the fabric has been given supernatural strength. A stocking wraps itself around my mouth like a gag, in such a way that its foot rests against my nose when all is said and done.

The smell from the stocking is overpowering: acrid, sour and leathery, like the garment spent days on her feet as she walked around this castle. It's the sort of thing I might have enjoyed in my biolife, but too much of it. The enchanted clothing effortlessly drags my entire body towards the foot of the bed so my head is sticking out from between the bars. I am helpless but to witness June get her ass kicked by the DiFrancesca sisters.

The brunette heroine has some good moves, no doubt: I watch as June does handsprings across the room to create distance as she fires her Beretta with dead-on precision. But it's no use against the sisters who simply transform into mist whenever a bullet would hit them.

WHAP!

The crack of Arezo's whip fills the room again and again. Despite her enormous skill with the weapon, she keeps missing. From my perspective, the raven-haired sadist is missing on purpose. She's just trying to corral June; to control her movements and keep her on the back foot while Joy and Raja get into position. Sure enough, Raja has pulled an alchemical flask from inside her robe and gives the concoction a vigorous shake before throwing it at June to shatter at her feet.

A cloud of pink smoke erupts in such a wide radius that June can't help but breathe some of it in before dodging away. She starts coughing uncontrollably – the sort of hacking, retching cough that completely disables a person. From the gold flecks that float around the pink cloud, I recognize this potion as tear gas that also increases someone's sensitivity to pain. Raja, the middle child, is the most studious one and spends countless hours in her laboratory developing stuff like this. Even if June hadn't breathed it in, the potion also works on skin contact.

"AUGH! AUGH! AUGHHHH!" June rests her hands on her knees as she coughs hard enough to dislodge a boulder from her throat. Her face goes purple-red and I can see the vein in her forehead get big as tears run down her blue eyes. Joy approaches with her own signature weapon: a magic wand that resembles a miniaturized scepter with a cartoon star at its head. The star floats above the tip of the scepter and is flanked on either side by ethereal feathers,

"Time for a costume change~!" Joy announces before thrusting the glowing wand into June's solar plexus.

The heroine's blue tube top and black leather skirt dissolve into dust and fall away, revealing her humble breasts and neatly-trimmed bush. A new outfit appears on her body which could only be described as bondage gear. It's all black leather and metal studs: a cutout harness bra with a slave collar. The bottom is little more than a gunmetal grey chastity belt. Big black sunglasses appear around her eyes and backless platform mules appear on her feet. It even changes her makeup and gives her edgy tattoos: now she's wearing black lipstick and a very white foundation. Her handgun turns into a black digital camera, connected to her slender wrist via a length of cord.

My cock throbs as I look at her but I'm consumed by two impulses: part of me wants to see her spanked and disciplined until she's an obedient pussylicker and painslut for the DiFrancesca family. But the nobler part of me understands that she wants freedom and victory and should get that instead.

"Oh, you look so cute!" Joy gushes. "You should come to a music festival with me! We can cage dance together!"

It's noteworthy that vampire mommy hasn't been involved in this fight. Instead, while all this was happening, she was rummaging around in her wardrobe for something.

"June is being dealt with," Lady D says. "She won't be saving you. Which means you'll be staying with mommy for a little while! I want you to make more nectar for us. Especially now that we have this bimbo to play with. How about it, man-thing? Do you want to make some more of your special nectar for mommy?"

I shake my head, which makes her laugh. She was putting on a pearl necklace. Now she grasps my chin in her massive hand and cranes my neck up towards her so that we're making eye contact. Her iris are glowing in with a scintillating yellow light.

"But you'll do it for me, anyway. Won't you? You'll let us lock you away in our dungeon and spend every day teasing you, and tickling you, and making you squirm. Arezo has missed you terribly. She's too proud to admit it, but she's much happier when she has her little man-thing to dig her claws into. Don't you want to make Arezo happy? To make mommy happy?"

I'm getting sleepy. It's harder and harder to think. Her eyes fill me with a warm, fuzzy sense of well being. Lady D smiles and strokes my cheek and gives me an encouraging murmur. I giggle for no particular reason except that this all feels like a joke. More of the clothing is stroking the soles of my feet and brushing against my thighs and my groin. My body feels pleasantly warm the longer I look into her eyes.

"Mommy wants to make you happy. I'll have Raja read erotic poetry to you all night long and Joy will tell you her cleverest jokes. We can be a family."

When Lady D says the word 'family' and it breaks the spell.

I break eye contact and hear the CRACK of Arezo's whip followed by the anguished cries of June Libertine. I can't see much because of the way vampire mommy's enormous frame takes up my whole visual field, but I know that the daughters are tormenting the woman who came to rescue me. Lady DiFrancesca made a mistake using the term 'family' because it makes me think of my family in my biolife. Like throwing a bucket of cold water on a fire, it snaps me out of the moment and reminds me that her ultimate plan is to take all of my bio-memories. Stuff like nectar and pangs are all 'renewable' resources, to to speak. But memories are finite, and far more valuable.

Her eyes stop glowing as I see a flash of panic cross her face – she knows she screwed up. I hear the sound of an automobile engine outside the building, coming closer.

A vehicle crashes through the European balcony doors on the west side of the room, sending broken glass and shattered wood everywhere. A deep red motorcycle skids to a stop in the center of the room, piloted by an finely-proportioned woman wearing a skintight racing suit. And on her back is a formidable crossbow, which she flips around her body into her arms, crosshairs pointed at Arezo.

THWUK

The bolt flies through the air, catching the raven-haired woman right in the chest. Arezo tries to dissolve into mist to dodge it, but the bolt has been enchanted with anti-magic properties and forces her back into human form. It lifts her off her feet and pins her to the wall, provoking an enraged roar from the woman. To be impaled with wood like that means she's been 'staked' – paralyzed and unable to use her magic. She is deathless but defeated.

THWUK THWUK

Two more perfectly-aimed bolts catch Joy and Raja dead-on; and neither of them could figure out a countermove in time. All three of Lady D's daughters are pinned to the walls of her room, crying for help. Lady D stands to her considerable height and extends her fingers into vicious looking claws as long as katana blades, ready to slice up the crossbow bolt before it can touch her. In response, the unknown woman drops her weapon altogether, puts both hands on her motorcycle and revs the engine. With a swift kick, she spins it so it's facing her opponent.

The motorcycle itself becomes a weapon at the push of a button, firing a ballista bolt at the surprised vampire. She might have swatted away a crossbow bolt, but this one is five times bigger and much faster. Lady D doesn't stand a chance as the bolt lifts her body and traps her against the wall, right above the headboard of her bed. With the entire DiFrancesca clan defeated, the stockings that were holding me down lose their enchantments and turn back into inert objects. The iron bars fall away, too, as the motorcycle woman takes off her opaque helmet and cuts the power to her engine.

"Took you long enough, Claire," says June.

"You could have handled them yourself!" Claire fires back. "I think you just wanted to lose. That's a cute outfit, by the way. Did they make your boobs bigger?"

"Fuck you!" June says with a laugh. She glances down at her ridiculous costume and shakes her head. But when she notices the digital camera, she gets an idea.

"Claire, come over here. Let's take a selfie!"

The two of them take a position on either side of Arezo while June holds out the camera to take a photo.

"Screw you!" Arezo shouts. "I won't forget this!"

"Uh, we won't forget it either. That's the whole reason we're taking a selfie," Claire replies.

She and June laugh and I join in. I'm crawling out from under the bed as June approaches, but she doesn't look too pleased to see me. She's frowning, and even more injured from the fight.

"Are you serious with this costume, Lexi?" She asks, referring to the tight leather straps all over her body. "And a chastity belt? When I get this off, you're going to spend a long time making this up to me."

"I call first dibs!" Says Claire. "I did all the work, anyway. And besides, I'm younger."

June rolls her eyes and extends a hand to help me up. I'm a little impressed she can balance so well in her platform mules.

"Wait, you had her stockings across your mouth, didn't you?" June asks me.

I nod.

"Ugh, I thought so. I can smell it. I don't want that coming back with us. Open your mouth for me, please."

Just as I'm told, I open my mouth for this intimidating brunette in the leather bondage gear. Then June gathers a good amount of her saliva and spits it into my mouth! I'm shocked as the hot, salty saliva flies right between my lips and lands on my tongue.

"Claire, give him some of yours, too."

Red-haired Claire obliges, walking over to me with a mischievous smile on her round face. But when she spits on me, she misses and hits my cheek, right beneath my eye.

"Haha! Ew, Claire! You totally missed!" June cries out.

"Whoops!" Claire says with mock innocence. "Well, let me fix that."

She touches my face with two fingers to gather her spit, then puts her fingers in my mouth for me to suck it off. I look into her emerald green eyes as I work on her leather-covered fingers, taking a moment to appreciate her. Then she abruptly pulls away, wipes herself on my waist and walks towards her bike.

"Let's get out of here before they wriggle free. Lexi, you're in the middle."

I nod and take a seat behind Claire, putting my torso against her back and wrapping my arms around her shapely waist. June gets right behind me, pushing her pelvis up against my tailbone and squishing my body against Claire's as she reaches over me to wrap her arms around her friend's waist.

I love the feel of her soft boobs against my shoulders, and how it contrasts with the hard parts where there's leather and metal between us. Before we leave, June takes a moment to reach up to my ear and brush my hair out of the way to whisper something.

"You like being in a June sandwich?" I can hear the smile in her voice before she gives my ear a possessive lick and returns her hands to Claire's waist, this time resting over my own.

"Later, you freak bitches!" Claire calls out as she turns the ignition on her superbike. "Here's some mist for you!"

She doesn't go right out the window – instead, she holds down the front brake and guns the engine while leaning off to the side a little bit, so she's doing a bunch of donuts across the floor of Lady D's chamber. The entire place reeks of burning rubber. The vampire family is screaming obscenities at us as we smash through their antique furniture and knock everything over. We are laughing our heads off as we spin around, trashing the place.

Then Claire peels out, doing a wheelie and crashing through the hand railing of Lady D's balcony. I hold on tight as we free-fall towards the jagged rocks at the foot of the cliff. But the wheels of her futuristic bike rotate ninety degrees and turn into rocket jets putting out tremendous thrust. This creates lift, and a roller-coaster like sensation of my stomach dropping, then rising again as the bike ceases its fall and jets up towards the dawn sky.

"As if we'd ever let anything happen to you." June says to me in response to my holding on for dear life during the free fall. She tightens her embrace as Claire guns it, speeding away from Castle DiFrancesca.

We must be going over a hundred miles an hour but the hover bike has a way of cutting through wind resistance so I feel only a soft breeze through my hair. Its engine has gone quiet, too: a bit of magic to make riding it more pleasant.

Beneath us are the canopies of trees you'd find in a tropical rain forest – they wouldn't fit with the cold Eastern European climate of Castle Difrancesca but this place can have micro-climates right next to each other like that, no problem. We have a bit of a drive ahead of us to get back to the containment zone. Off in the far distance is the spire and Axial City. I have my head turned to the right, looking over the forest when it happens. Something falls from the sky so close to our bike that it nearly knocks us over.

Time slows down as I get a better look at what nearly knocked us out of the sky: it's not a cannonball, like I expected. It's a person!

I get a good look at her to see that she's an angelic lady; the definition of a Bambi style beauty with doe eyes, a very pretty face and a small nose. She has on a sleeveless white Victorian night dress that's provocatively short, revealing much of her bare legs. But what catches my eye more than anything, what really makes time slow down, is that she has glowing pink neon hair.

She's like me.

I savor every moment of being near her, frustrated that our time is so short. The last thing I see are her bare feet as she falls away. Porcelain white on top with rosy red soles and high arches I want to get nearer to.

"What the fuck was that?" Claire asks.

"Who knows," June replies. "Probably some automated defense from the vampires or one of their villagers. Let's get out of here."

Did they really not see her?

"Wait, I want to check it out," I say. Claire and June make no reply, but I feel a stiffness in their bodies that tells me exactly how they feel about that idea.

Anxiety creeps up on me. In my biolife, I was a passive person to a fault. I had an extremely difficult time asserting my own needs, especially when they were at odds with those I considered 'above' me and especially if it meant opposing a woman. In this place, that personality trait has grown far more pronounced. How could I have the audacity to go against these rockstar beauties who just rescued me? But with every passing moment I'm getting that much farther from the girl, and that's distressing enough that I can find the nerve to speak out.

"We need to get back quickly," Claire finally says in a curt tone, "You've been gone a long time and there's a lot of cleanup that we need your mouth for."

I'm going to be the zombie that licks her pussy.

"We can circle back and check it out later," June tries to convince me. She must have realized Claire was being too harsh and wants to be the good cop. "There's a lot at home we need your help with."

As soon as we get back to the containment zone, I'll be beneath their desks performing oral servitude for hours on end – it's a popular way to spend your time here. I'll be giving them back massages and foot massages and staying busy with a never ending list of domestic chores. I know what I have to do.

"You're right, let's just--" I say to misdirect them.

Then I reach up to the right handle of the hover bike and yank it backwards while pulling it towards myself , causing the vehicle to do a barrel roll.

"What the fuck!" Claire cries out, scrambling to keep the hover bike from crashing.

In the confusion, I slip my hands out from beneath June's and grasp both of her hands, twisting them and yanking them out in a sort of wristlock. With her grip loosened, I shove off with my feet and slip away from the June sandwich, dropping face-first towards the jungle. This sort of fall could easily be fatal in the real world, but here it's just extremely painful as I crash through the canopy feeling branches shatter against my ribs, my legs, and my face. I belly flop against the ground, and in doing so I create a three-foot radius where all the plant life goes from its usual green to a cherry blossom pink color.

My body is in such agony that it's a struggle to get to my feet. By the time I'm up, June and Claire have swooped down and are idling the hover bike nearby and glaring down at me.

"So this is the thanks we get for saving you?" Claire shouts.

"Lexi, this place is very dangerous," June says with an urgency in her voice. "I promise that we'll look for whatever just fell here. But we need to do it in a way that keeps you safe. You're so important to us! And not just because of what you can do... Please, just come home?"

They've lowered the bike enough that when June outstretches her tattooed hand to me, I could grab it and hop right back on. Now I feel guilty on top of everything else – I really do believe her. But I've already committed to this idea, and I want to see it through. Although I was very passive most of the time, I could be obstinate once I made up my mind and I suppose that's what I'm doing now.

"I'm sorry, June. I need to see who that was."

She gives a sad smile and nods her head.

"Okay."

Claire huffs and shakes her head so hard her ponytail flies back and forth.

"No! Not okay!" She says, "Our territory has already shrunk down to the gates of the precinct. Pretty soon, the Parasol Corporation will have us backed into a corner the size of a damn save room! Will it be 'okay' when Dr. Westenra captures us and uses us as guinea pigs for her experiments again?! You might be alright with zombies going down on you, but I need a real person!"

June gives a beleaguered sigh. She's much better at regulating her emotions than Claire is, probably owing to the age difference.

"We'll deal with that when it comes," she says, which just makes Claire roll her eyes impetuously. "Okay, Lexi. Go after your shooting star. When you find what you're looking for, promise me you'll find your way back to us, okay?"

I nod. June reaches to the opposite side of the hover bike and tosses something down to me. It's her RCPD detective's badge: a bi-fold wallet containing a detective's shield and a laminated ID with her headshot and vital stats.

"Take this with you. If you need my help, you can call on me."

"Thank you."

"We need to go now," Claire interrupts. "If the amazons find us here with Lexi, they'll say we're violating some treaty. I don't need that on top of everything else if we're going back empty-handed."

Then she guns the engine and the bike disappears into the canopy with little more than some falling leaves to prove it was there at all. And I'm alone, in an unfamiliar place, having bailed on my friends to go after someone who doesn't even know I exist.

I hope you enjoyed this first chapter! I plan on continuing it in my normal way. I enjoyed making this story and I hope you enjoy reading it!