It's Always Time Act 06 Ch. 04

"I can't get enough of it," the strawberry blonde answered, plopping her chin into her palm, "but you're the last one, and that makes me sad. But Unyx said she was going to make it really special." She perked up, reaching to the vanity and clicking off the table lamp. The room gloomed. "And that makes me happy."

"Who?"

"Unyx." The strawberry blonde pointed to Ursula, who had slipped into the room as soon as the light when off, closing the door behind her. "You, know: snippy-snippy."

Unyx burst into giggles. "Not eunuchs. Unyx. U and Nyx."

Finally, something she understood. "Like the computer operating system thing," said the redhead.

Unyx gulped down a giggle. "The what?"

"UNIX, right?"

Unyx stared in the dark, then shook her fists around her head. "Ooh, dammit. They never told us! No wonder Yves and Dee kept smirking whenever we said it!"

"I'm lost again," the redhead groaned, flumping onto her bed.

"Nope." The strawberry blonde whipped off her cap and ruffled her hair. "You landed on target."

Unyx glided into the room. "We want to talk to you about Chapter Regulation 700: Citizenship, Morality, and Values."

Does she have rollerskates in those boots or something? "That's Reg 600."

The strawberry blonde shook her head. "She knows about the real one."

"Regulation 700," Unyx said, coming to a stop at the foot of the bed. "No licky-licky."

"So that's what this is all about?" The redhead clucked and lay back with her hands behind her head. Another dyke bitchfest.

"That, and stopping the blood music," Unyx said, folding her arms. Twice.

The redhead sat up. "Holy shit, you can do that?" Unyx nodded. "Oh, thank God. It's been so strange lately. I feel so, I dunno, disconnected, like I'm…"

"On automatic pilot," Unyx suggested.

"Yeah! Please, make it go away? I'll do any—Oh." A chill stole over her. "No. No fucking way."

The strawberry blonde sighed, standing up. "Well, here's the thing. While you were gone, the rest of us took a vote. And it was unanimous." She crossed the room to stand beside Unyx, putting her left arm around her. "No more Reg 700." Unyx put her right arm around the strawberry blonde. Twice. "No more code red hazing. Girls can ask and tell as much as they want, with no consequences."

"Doesn't matter," the redhead smirked. "You couldn't have had a unanimous vote. I know two sisters who'd never—"

"Jo Echo says you eat pussy like a pro," Unyx interrupted, eyebrow arched. "And she really knows her stuff. As for your cute blonde friend? Well, she and her amazing tits got here an hour ago. I didn't even have to ask. So it's unanimous, except for you, Madam Secretary."

The strawberry blonde peeled out of her top. "But, you know, Unyx, the Chapter Secretary has to approve or veto every vote."

"That's right," the redhead said, huddling at the head of the bed. "And I'll never change my mind. Never."

"Oh, I don't know." Unyx raised an arm and reached out. It reached and reached, stretching nine, ten feet to the wall switch. "Something tells me that it's time," Unyx said. and light flooded the room.

At first, the redhead wanted to scream. And then, she didn't. And a few minutes later, she was screaming her silly head off.

* * * *

"I feel like I'm forgetting something," Dee said. He waggled the Volkswagen's steering wheel, felt it tug to the left as the car picked up speed. "Why is the alignment shot?"

"Unyx had to drive like a bat out of Hell to make it back in time for me to tell her to go get the car in the first place," Yves explained from the front passenger seat. "Compared to a time paradox annihilating our existence, I'd say wheel alignment was worth the price."

"Glad I won't see the future," Raspberry said from behind them, "I didn't understand any of that shit."

Dee frowned at her reflection in the rearview mirror. "Did you say 'won't'? But doesn't that mean…"

"It's a Raspberry thing, honey," said CeeCee from the opposite side of the backseat. She twirled her index finger about her ear and winked. "You wouldn't understand."

"Eat me, fatso," Raspberry said.

"I would, honey, I would." CeeCee glanced up at the face of the green girl sitting between them "If tall, green, and horny weren't in the way. Look." She placed a buttery yellow hand on the green girl's shoulder and slid right off. "I don't know what you've got going on over up in that lovely head of yours, Ms. Eurydice-that-was, but you've got more nanomek inside you than the rest of us combined. A lot more."

"And she's just sittin' here staring at the back of Dee's neck," Raspberry added.

"There's only one thing I want inside me," the green girl said in a voice so sultry it could melt lead.

They drove in anxious silence for a while. "So," Yves squeaked, coughed, and started again. "So, you feel like we've forgotten something."

"Yeah." Dee turned off Campion Street and onto the main throughway. "Something back at the apartment, maybe?"

Yves pointed at a black shape circling high in the twilight sky above them. "Unyx has already checked it out. All clear, no cops, no nothing. Nemesis didn't hurt anyone else. Just pulled a mild Jedi mindfuck on the guards, although we don't know how long it'll last."

"What about Viggo?" Dee asked. "Cherry Nemesis…"

"Just Nemesis," Yves interrupted.

"Nemesis really put the whammy on him," Dee said. "He probably has some nanomek left in him. And I wouldn't ask Unyx to go all hentai on a guy."

CeeCee peered around the green girl. "Sounds like you and I have an action item, Raz honey," she said.

"Sweeeet," Raspberry drawled.

"Hentai!" Dee thumped the steering wheel. "That's it!"

"What?" Yves sat bolt upright. "What?"

"My story," Dee said, "I was supposed to upload a goo girl story to the 'Net, and I'm almost a week late. Man, those guys are going to kill me." Yves glared at him. "What? Oh, come on," Dee mugged, "that was funny. I did forget all about that, though. So, I'm thinking: what else have we missed?"

"You were supposed to learn the true meaning of love," Yves said, folding his arms.

"Oh, that," Dee waved, driving onto the highway onramp. "I figured that out awhile ago, back at SRU."

"Is it something really trite," Yves hazarded, "like trust?"

"Friction?" suggested CeeCee.

"A butt that won't quit," insisted Raspberry.

The green girl just smiled. Dee met her eyes in the review mirror and said, "Teaming up to fight crime." The green girl glanced away, heavy-lidded.

"Um, wow. Okay. Then that covers everything. Listen," Yves said, emphasizing each point by rapping a knuckle against the dashboard. "I killed Nemesis. Unyx saved the world. You got the girl. Raspberry got the hair and the nanomek, and that's that." Dee nodded, smiling.

Raspberry said, "Wait. What?"

"Unyx's braids and the tin of nanomek from SRU," Yves said.

"Oh," said Raspberry, plucking at her shoulder.

CeeCee, the green girl, Dee, and Yves turned to stare at her.

"I got the braids," Raspberry said.

* * * *

Dusk fell over the ivy-choked window of the Epsilon Sorority House kitchen. Shadows dappled the cluttered countertops, the empty boxes of Jell-O strewn across the floor, and the horizontal slats of the locked pantry door. The door jumped on its hinges.

"Hello?" Eddie's voice was muffled through the slats. "Is it over? There's a can of soup cutting the circulation off to my ass. Anybody? Dammit." A pair of slats trembled. "Ow, ow. Fuck." A finger wormed its way between them. "C'mon. Yes!"

A slat splintered then fell backward into the pantry, opening a narrow, lengthwise gap in the door. Two more slats soon clattered away. A hand fumbled out from the widened gap and wrestled with the knob. There was a click and the pantry door burst open.

Eddie staggered out of the pantry in a hail of canned vegetables and dry goods, kicking boxes and tins across the floor. "Thank God," he groaned, rubbing his naked rear end. "My butt is numb." He bent to massage the life back into his legs, then dipped his head to stare at the marble-top kitchen cart where he had been hogtied earlier that morning, although to Eddie it felt like a lifetime. "What's that?"

He hobbled over to the cart, rolled it aside, and stared in silence. He bent down, pushed away a tin of tuna, and picked something up. He shook it. It rattled, perhaps half-full of sand. He leaned over to the wall, flipped the light switch, turned the tin over in his hand, and read the yellowing label.

SRU THICKENING AGENT

"Oh, shit."

* * * *
And the moral of this motherfucker is,
Ladies, make 'em act like they know:
You are, was, and always will be
Pussy control.

—Prince, Pussy Control
* * * *

It's Always Time
A Ribald Farce in Six Lewd Acts

Coda: Nothing Like Us

He remembered a kiss, the taste of cupcakes, a brief but blinding pain, and then a sensation peculiar in its familiarity but terrific in its intensity—the floaty-feely side effect from taking a strong decongestant. "Medicine head," the commercials called it.

He remembered seeing himself from above, seeing himself fall to the floor. For a moment he had wondered if he were already dead, if this were the out-of-body experience before the tunnel of light, but no light had come. As the world narrowed and his mind dimmed, it occurred to him that the wet, rag-mop mess atop his body's shoulders was missing something. This was no spiritual, out-of-body head-trip. This was the real thing. This was not the sort of disembodiment you came back from and then talked about on cheesy cable television exposés at one o'clock in the morning. This was not life after death. This was dying from having your head torn off.

But as his awareness of the world, of himself, and of the difference between the two fragmented and fell away, one thought remained. One white-hot ember of memory and emotion raged and burned until there was nothing else left:

"And his name is Dee," she had said, and that was the last sound he would ever hear.

"…His name is Dee," she had said, and those were the last words ever spoken to him.

"…Dee," she had said, and it would be the last thought he would ever have.

Dee.

* * * *

And then he sat up and screamed, "Dee!"

Echoes died around him. Bee's hands flew to his ears. His fingers scrambled of his receding ginger hair, his cheeks and neck, squeezing and pinching. They were all there and in their proper place. His fingertip touched his teeth, and Bee realized he was grinning huge enough to hurt. "I'm alive."

He leapt up, bare feet slipping once on the cold, clean floor. "I'm alive."

He tried to make sense of the tall, twisty shapes all around him but an unconscious, protean fear gripped him with one overriding priority. He trust a hand between his bare legs and almost wept the relief to feel his manhood intact, balls and all. "I'm alive!" he cried, and ran headlong into a hard plane of thick glass, stumped backward and flopped onto his ass.

"Wait," someone said. The voice was muffled and musical but also amplified and strange, as if some girl were talking through a loudspeaker outside his bedroom window. "What was that?" The floor trembled a little whenever she spoke. "I thought I heard something."

Bee splayed his legs. The floor was convex, gently bulging upward, the apex beneath his butt. He glanced up and snapped his legs shut.

"Take your time," said another voice. "Looking is free. You break it, you buy it."

A metal disc capped the space Bee occupied some ten feet into the air, but the distorted shapes around him rose higher still. "Oh, no," Bee said, "Oh, no fucking way." He bent down and knocked on the floor. It clinked like glass.

"I knew I heard something," said the first voice. Shadow and light cut wide swaths around him as something enormous moved in the distance.

Bee stood. "No way is this happening." He reached out, tapped the glass in front of him, and traced the clear wall as it curved inward until he came full circle to where he began, and stared up through the glass and into a sensuous mouth as big as a queen-sized bed.

"Oh my God," the mouth exclaimed, and Bee's world vibrated. "It's a little man in a jar!"

"Hm? Oh, him," said the other voice and Bee looked up into a pair of dark, merry eyes the size of dinner platters and framed and enough lush, raven hair to fill a football stadium. "That's a homunculus. Very rare these days. Hardly anyone has what it takes to make one, and Catherine the Great's been rounding them up."

Bee suspended all disbelief and rethought his surroundings. Everything he had seen made perfect sense if he were stuck in a tall mason jar on a crowded shelf of a supply closet, being scrutinized by two towering femme fatales straight out of a Russ Meyer movie. He glanced down into two seas of cleavage, one the color of cream, the other coffee. But with bigger tits, he decided.

The first girl reached for his jar but stopped when he shrank back. Bigger tits plus the muscles of pro bobybuilders, Bee added, watching the girl's pectorals bunch and swell beneath her breasts.

"Tomoe," said the first girl, pointing. "You'd better punch some air-holes in that lid." She pouted. "Poor li'l guy."

"He doesn't need 'em, Jo," Tomoe explained, "homunculi are immortal, if you feed them right."

"Immortal?" Jo said, eyebrows rising. "What do you feed them?"

Tomoe smiled at Bee with infuriating inscrutability, then tipped her head up and cupped a hand to whisper in Jo's ear. Jo gaped, "What?" Her cheeks flushed red as Tomoe continued to whisper. "I, I don’t believe it. You're kidding." Tomoe stepped back and shook her head.

Jo bit her bottom lip and smiled, "Really?" Tomoe nodded. Jo glanced at Bee, her fingers tracing the overstressed bust-line of her coppery one-piece dress. "Well, he is six inches tall."

"Seven and a half." Tomoe's eyes danced with knowing mischief. "And he doesn't need to breathe, remember?"

"Wow," Jo sighed, and reached for Bee's jar with both hands. Bee braced himself against the curve of the jar and he soared through the air in a great glass elevator. "Wow," Jo said again, gazing at him. "Hi there, little guy."

This is impossible, Bee thought, the pit of his stomach filling with ice. This is insane.

"You want him?" Tomoe asked.

Jo nodded, hair flying, hugging the jar tight to her chest. Bee was embosomed in warmth and darkness. This is absurd. He thought he heard the glass creak. His legs wobbled like water. This is obscene.

"For you?" Tomoe asked.

"No," Jo insisted, her muffled voice more bass and louder than ever. "For us. All of us. For Epsilon Zeta. For all of my sisters now, and those yet to come. Forever."

Jo's heart hammered all around the jar. This is… Bee could not bring himself to complete the thought. This is…

"For y'all? Five dollar," Tomoe offered.

"This is Dee," Bee said.

Jo slapped a five dollar bill into Tomoe's hand. "Done!" Tomoe declared, then fanned her hand. "Ow, ow, ow. Good thing he's unbreakable."

Jo wrenched off the top of the jar so fast it made Bee's ears pop. Eager fingers closed around him. "Welcome home, little guy."

Bee closed his eyes. "Oh, shit."

* * * *
Church of women is made out of milk
Which their love churns to butter.
Church of women will have you give praise
With a laugh, bark and stutter.
Like us men, like us men, they are nothing like us men
Men have gargoyles ’round their hearts.

Want to worship at the church of women
Breathe ’em in until my head goes spinning around
Want to worship at the church…
Let me worship at the church of women!

—XTC, Church of Women
* * * *