Lucian Ch. 07

She lifted it with a pink-nailed finger. The tiny one-inch knob with its exposed baby-pink head was all he saw. No balls, no scrotum, just tight, smooth skin.

A chuckle from behind distracted him from Charlie's crotch.

"Comparing cocks, guys?" Nico said. She'd opened her robe too, showing another inch-long button rising from her soft olive skin. Fondling it she chuckled again and said:

"I bet mine is the smallest."

Charlie laughed with her; Lucian let his eyes travel from the girls' crotches to his own.

Despite Charlie's words his panic didn't subside.

"They castrated me! They castrate us all," he insisted.

Grabbing Charlie's shoulders he repeated the lines even louder while shaking her.

"They goddamn cut off my fucking balls!"

The girls closed in on him. He tried to shake them off, but they didn't budge. Hugging him they gave off soothing sounds.

"Shhh, Luce," Charlie said. "Nobody cut your balls off. They never do, with anybody. Like they promised, they're still there, believe me."

He pushed her away, screaming. Spreading his legs he gave the girls a clear view of his capped crotch.

"Believe you?" he said. "Look! Just look and tell me where they are. They didn't promise me anything; they didn't even tell me anything, as usual, and now my balls are fucking gone!"

Sobbing he sat down on the tub's edge.

Two bodies joined him on each side, arms wrapping themselves around his shaking shoulders.

"Didn't they tell you, Luce?" Charlie asked.

She paused to wait for his sobbing to end.

"I guess they didn't," she went on, sighing. "I don't know why. You see, they do it to all Bobs when they agree they're ready to graduate. It's a reward, really, a sign of progress - something to be proud of. Most Bobs ask for it."

Lucian snorted. Charlie looked past him to Nico, who shrugged. She pulled Lucian tighter.

"They did it to me a few months back," she said. "But they explained what would happen. They had Nico there and another Barb and showed what they did to them. How they still could come and make sperm and all that. I really don't know why they sprang it on you like this."

She reached for Lucian's crotch, but he crossed his legs to hide it. The metal cap pinched him.

"We can only graduate," the girl went on, "when our balls are small and soft enough to be pushed back up into our body. It's harmless and it looks so much better on us, don't you agree?"

She spread her creamy thighs to show. He didn't answer, still hiding his face behind his hands.

"But yes," she went on, shrugging. "It's a hurtful procedure, so they anesthetize you."

Lucian lowered his hands and turned his cried-out eyes to her.

"For a whole day?" he asked. "Knocking me out for a whole day just to kick my balls back up?"

Charlie's eyes were wide and calm.

He had no reason at all to believe her, of course. This whole year had been one long stretch of lies and betrayals. Why should he believe anyone? For all he knew they could have taken his balls and his damn penis as well.

That was when he recalled Drew.

She'd told him how her testicles had never lowered from her abdominal cavity like they do with most newborns. She was a freak of nature, she said. Was that a lie? She couldn't have been castrated, could she? There had been sperm on his hand, and later in his mouth, but what did that prove?

What did he know anyway?

"You don't believe Charlie, do you, Lucian?" Nico asked, bringing him back from his musings. The mocking undercurrent he heard in her voice didn't really help.

He rose from the tub's edge, letting his robe close over his body. The tight metal pinched his skin as he walked away from the girls.

"I never asked for this," he said. "But they did it anyway. I never asked for being turned into... into this. But it never stopped them, did it? I goddamned never asked to be here at all, did I?"

Both girls looked up at him, helpless.

"I'm sorry," Charlie said with a tiny voice.

Her sadness kindled new sparks of anger - at Parker and Kurtz who not only operated on him without his consent, but let this innocent girl pull every goddamn glowing chestnut out of the fire they lit.

He sagged down against the tiled wall across from the tub, wrapping his arms around his knees. The floor was cold and wet, but he didn't care.

"What more is there that I don't know about?" he asked. "What's the metal cap for? You don't have one, do you?"

"We had it; it's just temporary," Nico said. "To protect your stitches."

Stitches?

Repeating the word loudly he pushed himself up and off the wall, opening his robe and watching the contraption.

The girls shied away from his sudden aggression.

"So they did cut me!" he cried out, tugging in vain at the metal shield.

Charlie rose and also opened the flaps of her bathrobe. Lifting the short stem of her penis again she showed him the tight, smooth skin under it.

"When the eh... balls are up," she said, "You still have this ugly little sac of wrinkled skin, you know. Well, they cut it off and stitch what's left nice and tight together - smooth and invisible, see? Don't you think it's beautiful?"

Stepping closer and turning to the light she showed him her immaculate white skin. It only had an almost invisible hairline running from the base of the penis to her crack.

He looked back to his own crotch, and then to Charlie again.

"Is that all they did?" he asked, leaning back against the tiled wall. Looking from Charlie's porcelain face to Nico's bronze oval he wondered how an ugly place like this could create so much beauty.

"Luce," Charlie said, turning from him to a shrugging Nico and back. "I do hope they told you about your prostate?"

The room got out of focus as he felt a new nausea rise. His view became a tunnel, closing in on the girl's talking mouth. It formulated words and sentences, he saw, but he had to really concentrate to hear them.

"I guessed so," she said. "And I'm so sorry. But you have to know they're not bad, Lucian, believe me," she said. "They do everything to save us from the horrible life we had, and give us a better future. They make us beautiful, and prepare us for a life of joy and success - and of pleasure."

The tunnel widened and the buzzing stopped. The lovely girls' faces gained focus against the shining wall.

"Bullshit," he said - or croaked, really.

Charlie shook her head with a sad smile.

"They really should just have told and shown you, Lucian. Why didn't they?" she asked herself more than him. "It would have made things so much easier afterwards."

Nico shrugged, spreading her fingers to study her nails.

"Of course it wouldn't!" Lucian said. "They didn't tell me because they know I would have refused."

"You wouldn't have," Nico said, taking over from Charlie. Her voice was flat, disinterested. "Why would you? Deep down you know. You saw Drew; you even fucked her. You've known it all the time; you're just in denial. Dr. Kurtz has been stimulating your prostate for months now, ever since you arrived. That must have rung a bell, surely? Come on, Lucian... no one can be so naïve to believe that all the pills you took were vitamins - and all the dressing and making up just theater?"

She chuckled before going on.

"You have been unconscious all night and most of today because they needed you to lie perfectly still while one drip's needle was in your prostate and others... well, look at your lower arm."

The words were there and his ears could hear them; but his mind refused them entrance.

He looked automatically at his bruised arm, imagining a cool white room, a high bed with a deadly pale patient wearing his face. There were tubes everywhere, and beeping machines. Nurses and doctors slunk around the bed, whispering gibberish. Parker was there no doubt, wearing her corset and smiling sardonically.

It was Frankenstein revisited.

He knew what a prostate was for and where it sat in his body. There hadn't been a medical inspection without Kurtz prodding at it, and taking samples. He also knew about intravenous drips. Nico was right: he'd kept denying what was overly clear to anyone else.

He decided to ignore it again.

Sinking down the slick wall he sat with his arms around his knees - staring at the girls.

"What more didn't they tell me about graduation?" he asked instead. "What are you girls supposed to prepare me for?"

They looked at each other again, before Charlie retook the word.

"I'm not sure we're allowed to tell you," she said.

She blushed deeply. He looked away.

"But they told you, didn't they, back when you graduated?" he said.

Again they looked at each other. Now Nico rose and walked off, leaving the bathroom. The short white robe shifted on her moving ass.

"Yes," Charlie admitted. "But I was ready for it, you know? I wanted it. I'd been looking out for it since forever."

"And I haven't," he said. "I don't even know what you're talking about. Why is that?"

The girl sighed.

She rose and walked over to him, putting one delicate foot in front of the other - all so natural, all second nature. Then she turned around and sat down next to him against the tiled wall - resting her head on his shoulder.

Lucian couldn't resist laying his arm around her.

"I don't know why they keep you in the dark," she said. He could feel her breath against his neck. "I told you already. It hurts me to see you like this, being pushed around like a blind man. I doubt if you are really ready, but why would they let you graduate if you're not?"

As she lifted her face up to him he saw tears sparkle in the corners of her eyes. He leant in and kissed her lips. She responded hungrily.

"You know that I love you," she said as their mouths parted. "I already did on that first day we met. I was so shy."

He remembered. He smiled.

"Tell me about your graduation," he asked.

Lucian was never good at reading faces. Charlie seemed embarrassed by his question, but there also was a kind of eagerness - was it pride?

"I'm not sure you'll understand," she said, moving out of his embrace. "I was ready, you know?"

He remembered the last few months before she went over to the Barbs - how she'd changed: her ease and grace, her benevolent patience with the rowdy Bobs.

If that was being ready, he surely wasn't.

He held her gaze, waiting for her to go on. Her lashes fluttered and she blushed. He moved a curl out of her eyes and felt her cheek lean into his hand.

"It was... amazing," she said, almost whispering. "Like coming home."

Her eyes sparkled and yet her lips trembled.

"You might find it, well, demeaning, though, maybe," she went on, looking away. "But I felt power. I was the one in control, you know? I was... on top of the world. At one point I knew I could have made him do anything; give me whatever I wanted."

Her eyes blazed; she virtually glowed.

Did she say 'him?'

He just looked, watching her excitement slowly change into confusion. She moved back on the tiled floor.

"I... I'm sorry," she said.

"Why sorry?"

"I scare you. I can see it. You really don't know, do you? Damn Parker!"

At that moment Nico returned, carrying a small pile of clothes.

"Time's up, love birds," she said, grinning. "We really need to hurry."

***

A tremor crawled up his leg.

It caressed his thigh before disappearing under the flaring hem of his little dress where it touched his bare ass cheeks before dancing up his spine - and choking his throat.

The girl on his left touched his arm.

She leant in closer, whispering all was well. Her white blond curls tickled his ear. Her irises had a touch of violet.

The girl on his right squinted her dark eyes. Her oval Asian face was framed in bluish black. She nodded and smiled, pouting her glossy lips.

But the nerves kept shaking Lucian Gaines.

They had talked on and on about nothing while they prepared him, back at the bathroom - pampering his skin with lotions, pulling a mere whiff of a thong over his smoothened legs until it sat snugly over the exposed head of his little penis and the slick metal contraption.

Then they'd pulled his arms through the narrow straps of a bra, closing its clip at the back.

He remembered wearing one to see his mother and her lawyers at Parker's office. But this one had cups - small see-through little bags that covered his nipples in a sloppy way, emphasizing their emptiness.

Charlie giggled, noting his embarrassment.

Behind her Nico held up her hands, showing two little mounds of jelly wiggling on her palms. Her grin was as devilish as ever.

"No," he said.

"Oh yes," she answered, walking closer.

He tried to turn away, but Charlie's hand checked him.

"It's all right," she said. "You'll look great."

Lucian felt a cool, almost liquid jellyfish slide into his left cup, jiggling as it settled, filling out the semi-transparent fabric. There was a dark, firm nipple on it, pushing into the bra's silk as Nico's fingers moved the blob into its proper position.

His real nipple tingled under its caress, slowly warming the viscous material. A hot response radiated from his lower belly, increasing the thumping pulse behind the metal. His knees trembled.

The second breast followed. Hands turned him toward a mirror.

The woman staring at him through patches of condensed steam had become familiar over the last year, and yet she stayed a stranger - an achingly beautiful stranger. And here, naked in this damp room with its shining tiles, wearing no make up and having her hair wrapped in a towel, she looked as vulnerable as a child.

A grown up child, lost in limbo.

From behind, through the buzzing in his head, he heard cooing and the twittering sounds girls make when they are excited - or have to go to the toilet, he mused.

Turning to Charlie he said: "I can't do this. I won't."

Hands suddenly grabbed his lower arms and pulled them behind his back. Metallic clicks sounded as he felt cuffs close around his wrists.

"Hey!" he protested.

"Sorry," Charlie said, leaning in and kissing him.

"Whatever it takes," Nico said.

They pushed him out of the bathroom into a salon-like place. The liquid things on his chest moved and shivered as he walked, sending confusing sensations through his body - until they blended into a perfect mixture of arousal and horror.

Panic paralyzed him, as it always did.

They sat him down on a chair, fixing his arms to the back.

"Sorry for this, Luce," Charlie apologized again.

They did his face, accentuating its paleness while making his eyes as smoky as they could. They finished his lips with a high gloss, and painted the nails of his fingers and toes. Then they blew and brushed his hair, spraying it up into a tower of curly platinum.

As they worked on him, he didn't want to see himself in the large vanity mirror; but catching only glimpses made it worse. Being shackled only added to the turmoil that invaded every cell of his body.

Finally he sat there alone with his reflection.

The girls had left, leaving him tied to his chair and imprisoned in the body of an alien beauty. Sapphire eyes seemed to study him out of dark, sensuous clouds. A slow icy finger of cold realization touched his spine.

He might not know those eyes, but they knew him.

Whomever they belonged to, they were watching him, studying him, commenting on him. Were they laughing at him - poking fun at him?

No.

They just seemed to wait.

The girls returned, chatting and laughing - breaking the spell. They wore white dresses, short and flaring, tied in at the waist. It made the silky material billow over in long, lazy folds. Their flat chests and painted nipples showed inside wide-open, belly-deep cleavages.

Bare legs ended in white high-heeled platform sandals, making them seem even longer. Bracelets jingled and big metal loops danced from their earlobes.

"God, you look divine!" Charlie exclaimed. She hugged him from behind, adding her sweet face to the one in the mirror.

Hands undid his shackles, but he didn't rise.

All he did was lifting his arms and rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had been.

Charlie walked around his chair and went to her haunches. Her fingers traced his hair and cheek.

"Please believe me, Luce. We had no choice, you know?" she asked, letting her violet eyes roam over his face.

Her apologies started to irritate him.

"It's all right," he muttered. "I understand."

And now they stood here outside the main entrance of the old building, waiting for a limousine to take them to an unknown place where an unknown procedure would indicate his graduation from one unclear identity into another.

His ankles wobbled on the narrow soles and towering heels of white leather sandals, closed by a wide strap above his ankle and leaving his painted toenails exposed. It was too cold for sandals, he mused, shivering.

A cool breeze caressed his bare thighs.

The tightness of the bra was an echo of the tightness that grabbed his crotch. He looked down, watching the fake nipples appear and disappear through the filmy, soft material of his dress as it fluttered with his nervous breathing.

The white dress was short and thin, fitting tightly around the alien tits and his hips, where the high hem flared out. It made him feel about as naked as any dress could.

"We'll be with you," the blond girl on his left whispered, holding his elbow.

She'd said sorry and she'd said it again. And then she'd said she loved him.

He believed her and that had been easy. It felt just natural to love her, and believe her. He remembered her standing at the back of the group of boys that had welcomed him and showed him around, ages ago - the little doll of Meissen porcelain; fatally shy and deadly vulnerable.

He looked her in the eyes. Then he leaned in and kissed her lips.

She squealed, stepping back.

"No!" she cried out, laughing. "Don't spoil our hard work!"

Suddenly the atmosphere changed from nervous fretting to merry silliness. He genuinely laughed, feeling his tiny fake breasts vibrate with his glee. Embracing the girl he felt tears sting his eyes - easy never-mind-tears he didn't recall ever having shed. A dark cloud evaporated from his mind.

Their laughter rose into the evening air.

"Stop it!" Nico exclaimed, pulling them apart.

"Damn!" she said, studying his face as he laughed on, forcing a smile from her lips. She dabbed below his eyes with a tiny handkerchief.

The pebbles of the driveway crushed under rubber as a black shining limousine arrived.

"Come," Nico said. "We'll clean you up in the car."

"Lucian!"

Parker's voice stopped them from walking down the steps to where a tall black driver opened a door of the car. Lucian turned around, waiting for the woman to approach him.

She looked him over, touching his hair with her long, polished nails.

"You look marvelous, honey," she said. "You'll make us proud."

He stared down at her, his heels adding to the few inches he'd already gained on her this year. He might be taller, but her authority was evident. He almost saw the lie oozing through her saccharine smile. There was betrayal, arrogance, and indifference. He felt the nauseous response in his stomach.

But all he did was nod.

And all he did was follow the girls into the limo, settling on the seat between them. The rich smell of the leather became a heady mixture with their perfume; the buzz in his head hummed in tune with the idling motor.

"Girls," Parker said, her head poking into the car. "Make it unforgettable for him, please."