Are We Human? Ch. 04

Distractions. Having an end in sight did nothing to facilitate the passing of time as Thursday continued the trend of lethargically marking off its hours. Drew tried to keep his mind busy, but the droning lectures and illegible textbooks only served to lull him back into Lady Sparrow's dream world until the butterflies in his stomach shook him awake. It was a suffocating sort of boredom that couldn't be eaten away, couldn't be pushed out with schoolwork or TV shows or video games, couldn't be bargained or reasoned with. It perched heavy on his shoulders and forced him to bear its weight for the remainder of the eternal day.

When he had finally lugged the crushing boredom to the final hour, he found an opportunity to lose himself in his preparations. As the clothes fell from his body in the bathroom, his bare skin prickled against the observation of an imaginary watcher. He was slow with his pants, sliding them over his swaying hips as his disrobing devolved into a striptease for the lone audience member. He hooked his thumbs under his waistband and exposed his ass to her, aching for the ghost in the room to become flesh and descend upon him. Drew waited. The water fell from the shower head, getting hotter.

She joined him in the shower, the ethereal grasp of her hands around his own guiding him through his hair, along his body, up and down his swollen cock. Her hands wrapped around his neck and held him against the shower wall. Apart from the quickening speed of his masturbation, he was docile beneath her touch. Her short hair hung down across her forehead, stopping just before they got in the way of her hazel eyes that never seemed to blink no matter how much water dripped down her face. She regarded him bitterly, in an almost calculating sort of way. Even when he choked out a weak moan and pumped away toward his climax, her expression never faltered. He stared deep into those eyes, frozen still but alight with fire.

Drew was going to finish. He was, up until he heard her speak.

"Did you just cum... without my permission?"

His hand paused at the base of his shaft, the words echoing in his head from their last encounter. A familiar fear crawled up his throat as he recalled the strange, distant way she had responded when he had finished so abruptly. She had warned him previously that his cock belonged to her; she alone dictated the time and place of its usage. Every orgasm was invoked in her name, at her discretion. That wasn't his cock he was playing with; it was her toy.

Of course, she wasn't here now. She would never know what he had done in the shower before he saw her. He could continue away toward his climax and skip on happily to his mistress's house without a care in the world. But his hand had already stopped, and despite how close he was and how badly he wanted to go further, the hand would not resume. Drew bit his lip to counter the agony of the unreleased tension as his penis shrank in defeat. Lady Sparrow was far deeper in his head than he thought; he couldn't even touch his own body without her stalking him from the corners of his mind.

Drew turned off the shower and tried to shake himself free from the weirdness sticking to him. He wondered why he had been so hesitant to cum; it couldn't actually be because he was afraid of finishing when she hadn't told him to. Where would it go from there? Would he ask her permission to take a piss? To go to sleep? Would she tell him what to eat and what to wear and what to think? Sure, maybe he did enjoy it when she told him what's what around the bedroom, but that's where her jurisdiction ended.

Until she had led him outside. Until she had groped him against a tree in broad daylight. Until she had come up to his front door and left him there to fawn over the marks she had printed on him. Of course Lady Sparrow wasn't confined to a bedroom; there was nowhere that she couldn't go, nothing beyond her reach. Her words and lessons could rule him no matter where he was. That's what it was to be her slave. Whatever freedoms he had left would sink into the sea, her hungry tides eroding his life and will until nothing but obedience remained.

He was staring at himself again. The vibrant bruises had decomposed into an unremarkable brown and would soon heal away completely. He thought he was going crazy. He thought he needed new bruises. He thought he was going crazy. Maybe he was blowing this whole thing way out of proportion. Maybe he was going crazy. Why was he thinking like this? Was this normal? Was his life his? He thought he was going crazy.

His reservations hummed quietly in the back of his mind when he stepped out into the road and recreated his Sunday stroll in reverse. Norman Boulevard was quieter on Thursday afternoon, and without the fresh hickeys blaring from his throat, Drew failed to draw much attention. The power of secrecy had returned to him; the dull masses accepted him as one of their own. It was a relief to not be noticed, he thought. A few times, he caught his fingers stroking the places on his neck that used to make him famous.

Once he made the turn onto Stygian Street, the quiet reservations had fallen mute beneath the buzzing of his fluttering heart. The wait, previously ticking away in hours and decades, could now be measured in footsteps. Part of him wanted to run, to cover grounds in leaps and bounds and end the wait for good. His hand clenched in anticipation of colliding with the white front door, opening up the portal between unfortunate reality and the blissful heaven where Lady Sparrow reigned as Goddess. The tendrils of destiny carried him forward, in footfalls calm and airy, to the place he was meant to be.

Knock knock knock.

It took a few moments for her to appear, tearing open the door to stun Drew with her presence. She had reverted back to her comfortable dress code: a close-fitting black t-shirt showing off the back of a red-haired woman in a denim jacket spray-painted with the words "Grow Up." She accompanied the aged shirt with a flowing pair of soft, thin pants, printed in red and white with convoys of elephants circumnavigating her thighs and calves. She wore the same thick-rimmed black glasses and the same lack of footwear; this time around, her toes had shed their traditional blue color for what Drew would call a purple, but what was actually a dark shade of magenta.

She hooked her fingers - also dark magenta - under Drew's collar and yanked him in for a kiss. He crumbled in place at the force of her lips against his weak defense and timidly placed his hands on her sides to brace himself. Before he could lose himself in the familiar smell of her "Mid-Afternoon Dream", she pulled from his mouth and moved in toward his ear.

"Act fucking normal," she hissed, quiet yet deathly serious.

Then, as if she had hit a reset button, she was standing before him with a bright smile.

"Hey, come on in!" she invited, loud yet warmly cheerful.

Still coming down from the high of her touch, along with the shock of the mood swing, Drew stayed still and silent. Abby narrowed her eyes at him, her bright smile wilting into a dark scowl. At the sight of her displeasure, he snapped himself awake and walked into the house.

"How are you doing?" he asked, in an acceptably normal way.

"I'm not bad, just busy as hell, ya know," she responded, mirroring his normalcy.

Drew slid off his shoes and followed after Abby. With her back to him, he could now read what was on the reverse of her t-shirt: "The Self-Titled Tour" was scribbled at the top in white letters that looked nearly hand-written. Beneath the large title was a list of cities where the band had played: Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, Boston, San Jose, Fairfax, Austin, New York City, Nashville, so on. Looking at the list made him wonder where she would have seen them play; maybe one of those cities was Abby's real home. It made Drew feel odd that he didn't know where his owner was from.

He almost bumped into her when she took an abrupt right turn into the dining room, but he was able to halt his momentum, swaying slightly as his balance dangled. He regained his footing without Abby noticing, but the person sitting at the table gave him away with a giggle.

"Jeez, don't hurt yourself now," she laughed.

Abby whirled around toward Drew while Drew whirled around toward the speaker, who was still grinning from witnessing his blunder.

"Drew, this is my roommate: Carly," Abby introduced.

The braids caught his attention first; Carly had dozens of black braids, coiled tight like steel cable, spilling from her scalp and descending from both sides of her head to reach just beyond her chest. Drew had to compel his eyes away from climbing up and down her many ropes, ushering them past the curtain to take in the details of her face. Her hairstyle revealed a prominent degree of dark, immaculate forehead that terminated at the introduction of a pair of thinly sculpted eyebrows. They curved up like rainbows over her eyes, which were a purer brown than Abby's mutty hazel. Just above her lilac lips, a small gold ring dangled from her septum.

She rose from her seat at the head of the table and extended her hand to Drew, who stepped in to meet her. They shook daintily and exchanged names.

"You do the flowers," he remembered aloud.

"Yes I do! Aren't they pretty?" she asked.

"I like the yellow ones."

"The Begonias? Yeah, those are lovely."

"You can take a seat," Abby offered.

She gestured to the chair across from her, toward the middle of the table. It was bizarre for Drew to hear Abby giving suggestions as opposed to direct orders; without an audience, she would have just shoved him back into the seat if she wanted him there. Drew began to wonder what she would do with him once she had him there, but he pushed the thought away when he remembered the sole order she had given him today: act fucking normal.

"They make me wish my house had flowers, but my roommates and I can barely take care of ourselves," Drew admitted, slipping into his assigned seat. "I don't think we'd give them the attention they need."

"Yeah, it's a big responsibility," Abby broke in. "You have to water them, and... oh, I guess that's it, isn't it?"

"Hey, if you think it's so easy, how come I never see you sweating in the yard?" Carly retaliated.

Drew tensed at the sound of sass fired in Abby's direction. It wasn't as though he expected Carly to receive the same punishment that he would for such flagrant backtalk; a roommate wouldn't be bound by the same rules that dictate the behavior of a slave. Still, Drew was expectant as the inconsequential sass hung around like a thrown ball that never fell to Earth. The naughty thoughts crept around again as he imagined himself in Carly's place, daring his mistress's wrath with a bold line of questioning. The Lady Sparrow in his head called him forward to lay across her lap, but the Abby of the real world just shrugged it off.

"I'm busy with my own hobbies," she defended. "Gardening is your thing and nobody does it better, so I'll leave it to you."

"I think you could be good at it if you gave it a shot," Drew spoke up.

The glance they shared must have appeared sweet to Carly, but the participants saw something else in each other's eyes: Abby noticed timid glee at playing normal, while Drew found amusement with subtle traces of murderous intent.

"Well, I think I'd rather sit on the lawn with a margarita and watch you do all the work," Abby returned, smiling so only Drew could see her dripping fangs.

"You're welcome to help out if you ever feel like learning how to take care of another living thing," Carly suggested to him.

Drew laughed and told her maybe he would, and all three of them knew they would never see him working on the boxes with Carly while Abby lay out on the lawn with margarita in hand. It didn't bother Carly. She reached for the wooden cigar box to her right and flipped open the lid, upon which a replica of a Ouija board had been imperfectly drawn. From out of the box came a black cylinder with a gray lid. Those cylinders used to hold rolls of film, but the declining popularity of film cameras meant they needed to be repurposed; Carly wasn't the only one who realized they could store marijuana as well as they could store film. She produced a simple glass pipe, yellow streaked with blue and white, and began to fill its deep bowl with the contents of her cylinder.

"So who are you, Drew? I disappear for one weekend and suddenly there's this new kid prowling around my house, and Abby has been pretty bashful about the whole thing."

"Bashful?" Drew repeated in disbelief.

Abby stiffened in her seat, and for the briefest of nanoseconds, someone could have noticed a look of embarrassment cross her face.

"Yeah, she never tells me about the people she sleeps with. It's always just 'this guy I met' or 'this one friend of mine.' If I ask her what she does with them, all I get is 'we hung out and stuff.'"

She paused to light her bowl, the crackling sound of burning grass going uncontested as Drew and Abby inspected each other in silence. She regarded his wide, inquisitive eyes with the ultimate disdain, as if she wanted to pluck them from his head and crush them beneath her foot. It couldn't be helped; Drew had always viewed his mistress as an unflappable sexual being. How on Earth could she be shy about anything?

"So what did she tell you about me?" Drew asked cautiously.

An ethereal smoke seeped out from Carly's lips as she recited, "'I brought a guy home from Grounder's on Friday. His name is Drew. I saw him again on Saturday but I haven't made plans with him again. I think I will though, he's fun to hang out with.'"

"I said you were fun, at least," Abby asserted quietly.

"Thank you," he replied from a distance.

The whole situation baffled him. She had been so adamant to make him admit his perverted fascinations, but all along, her secrets were hidden just as deeply as his own. Lady Sparrow could play with his dick in broad daylight, but Abby couldn't even hint to her roommate about the things they did together. Her two sides were more separate than he could have imagined. Stranger still, Abby seemed more similar to Drew than to Lady Sparrow; the truth stayed muffled in her gut as well, churning and rotting the same as his.

"What else do you want to know?" he offered, earning him a glare but no verbal opposition from his mistress.

"More!" Carly laughed. "I wanna know what Abby's preferred people are like. I wanna know what she's like! She and I go way back, but I still don't know what's going on in her bedroom. When someone's that private, I can't help but be curious, ya know?"

It was Drew's turn to shift uncomfortably. The roommate was turning up the pressure on him, but if Abby wanted her business kept secret, it wasn't his place to drag it into the light. On the other hand, she had forced him to carry some severely incriminating bruises for the past few days, delighting in his very public humiliation. She certainly didn't care about the exposition of his secrets, so was it that wrong for him to pay her the same courtesy?

Maybe it was. Maybe this was different than playful shaming. There had to be a reason why Abby would be mute toward someone so close to her, and Drew didn't know enough to make a judgment call on it. So much of Abby's life was a mystery to him; there could be forces at work that he knew nothing about, forces that demanded her lusts be locked away. He always thought of Lady Sparrow as an extension of her own personality, but maybe he had it wrong. Maybe Abby saw Lady Sparrow as the person she wanted to be: someone who didn't have to hide, who could be fearless and resolute and free from the scrutiny of the people in her life. What if Lady Sparrow was her escape? If Drew spoke her name, would he take this escape away from her?

"I'm curious, too," Abby confessed.

She caught confused stares from both of the people at the table, but only Drew had his stare returned.

"I wanna know what you have to say about us," she continued. "Go ahead, it's fine."

A deep search of her face uncovered no hints. Drew couldn't tell if this was a dare or a warning or perhaps even a plea for him to explain something she couldn't say herself. If it was a plea, Abby had placed her faith in the wrong person; Drew had the same opportunity to tell the truth on Sunday to Terry and Nathan, and he had covered his hide in shrouds the same way that Abby did. Now the stares had turned on him, everyone wondering what he would say.

Finally, they heard, "she never struck me as a shy person. She always carries herself so confidently. I didn't think anything could shake her, especially not talking about sex. When we're together, she tells me exactly what she wants. She's a fantastic communicator, much better than I am. What we do together..."

Drew trailed off as the images came around again: an onslaught of facial slaps, of gasping for breath against iron hands, of drool spilling from his lips as he watches her underwear float down her legs, of her pale ass between his fingers, of the mangled boy in the mirror kneeling beside the powerful, unshakeable, statue of a conqueror. What they do together. His descriptions enthralled the two women, perched like falcons to descend on the next words out of his mouth.

"...she does it passionately," he eventually resumed. "You can tell she loves every second of what she does, and it makes you love it too. She's always encouraging me to try new things, and every time I listen to her, I feel like I know myself better after. I've never been with anyone like her before, and honestly, I don't think any of the people I've been with can touch her."

Submission is deeper than a lust for another's strength; it's a loyalty of the heart, a holiest reverence, respect so profound it's almost love. The more Drew spoke of Abby Heyman, the clearer it became that his soul belonged to her. He wanted her to keep it in the palm of her hand, twirl it around her fingers, floss it between her teeth and braid it into her hair.

"Pussy game that good, huh?" Carly joked.

"Now you know why I keep it a secret."

Abby rose from the table and walked around to Drew's seat in between him and her roommate. Her warm light shimmered down on her precious angel as she cupped one of his hands between her own and kissed him on the forehead.

"I've been fucking with the same dudes for a year plus, and they never say anything that nice about me," Carly complained toward the tender display before her.

"Sounds like you're fucking with the wrong people," Abby informed her. "You oughta get yourself a boy like Drew."

One of her hands came up to stroke his cheek. With Carly's view obstructed, he felt safe enough to nuzzle his owner's loving caress, a potentially abnormal move that could not be refused. Neither of them had taken Drew's explanation lightly; it was the closest thing to the truth that either of them had dared to mention up to this point. Hearing it spoken aloud and feeling the mass of it swell in their chests left the pair in a sentimental state that leaked out through the glowing expressions they both wore.

"Oh, if only it were that easy for the rest of us," Carly lamented.

The glow stayed planted on Drew's face as Abby turned to stand at his side, her hand coming from his cheek to rest on his shoulder.

She continued, "it's easier than you think. Boys like him don't take much."

She gave Drew's shoulder a squeeze, affectionate, maybe a little firm.

"Isn't that right, dear?" she addressed him. "It didn't take me much effort to get you, did it?"

Upon searching her face, Drew saw that the sentimentality had vanished from her. With the warm light gone, her presence above him had taken on a more ominous atmosphere. He tried to keep his composure; in all likelihood, his submissive mind was making him misconstrue the situation. This was Abby he was talking to, it was still just Abby.