Chapter 18

Flotsam

Chapter 18: The Sadness Montage

I am sitting in an alien’s bed, propped up against alien pillows and an alien headboard. I’m studying the Holstein print bedspread, trying to imagine shapes in the black blotches, like a game of Rorschach cloud watching. Other than a cluster of cowprints that look like a jack-o-lantern face and another splotch that maybe resembles a dick, the activity is a total bust. Maybe I should try counting the 49 black spots on the blanket again? Ugh, I’m so bored! At least on Earth I could put on M*A*S*H reruns while I hid from the world.

But I am so not ready to face other people.

I hear hooves on metal and see Bluebell barging into the bedroom like she owns the place. Which, yeah, I guess she does.  I look away from her, which I know is shitty and rude, but I don’t want her staring at the pussy on my face. “Your arm please,” she says using her doctor voice. I raise my left arm straight up, hand hanging limply, while still pointedly looking away. She unhooks the limp band thing around my bicep and removes it, mooing critically before attaching a chubby blood-pressure cuff sized replacement. Breakfast is served.  “You cannot subsist on nutrient infusions indefinitely,” Bluebell says, not for the first time. “And indeed, that is this one’s medical opinion.”

I lower my arm and the big blue alien sighs. “You really must get out of bed. One knows you are sad, but remaining here indefinitely is not healthy for you. Isolation is not healthy for you. It is perhaps easy for this one to aver, but you must confront your trauma and learn to endure it.”

I turn and look at her, giving her my best eyes-only glare, before quickly hiding my face again. Fuck you, doc. 

Bluebell moos and shakes her head. “You cannot remain in bed forever.”

Just fucking watch me, I think at her back as she trots out of the bedroom. I’m amazing at hiding from problems. The best!

I just wish it wasn’t so fucking boring.

One black spot, two black spots, three black spots...

***

I can hear the sounds of Flotsam through the open loft window of my bedroom.

Bluebell’s A-frame clinic-slash-home might be hidden in a secluded courtyard, but it still manages to pick up an annoying amount of city noise. I can hear the hum of drone traffic zipping through the air carrying deliveries and the occasional sonic boom of spacecraft returning from orbit. I can hear the chirping of local cricket analogues and the weird hissing trills of the feral flying lizard population, which seem to roost on a neighboring building. There are sounds of people laughing and cooking and loving and being alive spilling from open windows and the rusty balconies of nearby apartments. I can hear sapients chatter and laugh at a cafe patio perched just up slope. I can hear people in our courtyard, young humans joking and flirting, maybe on a date. From the repurposed spacraft next door I can hear a woman moan and performatively squeal as she fucks someone. My eyes water with tears. It isn’t fucking fair!

I’m sure Bluebell meant for these noises to be comforting when she opened the window, probably thought it was a way to reconnect me to the outside world, but instead it’s just reminding me of all the things I’ll never do again. I’ll never be able to visit a cafe again without putting on a vulgar display. I can’t even eat without it being a sex act! I’ll never share a shy smile on a first date with a cute boy or girl. I can’t laugh or sing or embarrass my neighbors by screaming during sex. I can’t stick my head out the window and wave to a friend without letting them see my cunt. I’ll never be able to give someone a friendly chaste kiss or makeout with a stranger without it being oral sex. I’ll never be able to lick salt off my lips again, touch the tip of my nose with my tongue, make it a little taco. I can’t pick my nose or do a line of coke. I can’t even smile, not really. My face is just gone, and with it my whole public fucking life.

It’s almost enough to make me want to get out of bed and close the window.

Instead I bury my head underneath my borrowed pillows and cry.

***

It’s the middle of the night and I’m weeping. 

It’s the whole body, shuddering kind of crying, accompanied by a horrendous guggling sound which is what my face makes now. I gasp and snot seeps out of the nostrils behind my ears. I just want my face back. It isn’t fair! It isn’t fair! It isn’t fair!

I hear hooves on the floor and through red aching eyes I see the tear blurred vision of Bluebell walking to the bed. I wail-glug and try to hide my face in the pillows. Leave me alone!

Wordlessly Bluebell climbs into bed with me, slips herself under the covers, and holds me like a little spoon, her warm udder and breasts pressed against my back. And there she stays until my weeping becomes crying becomes sleep.

***

I hear footsteps and the door to the bedroom swishes open. The Destroyer walks into the room and I roll over, showing her my back.

“Oh please,” she says, “I’ve already seen it.” When I pointedly keep looking away she sighs, “I didn’t walk all the way here for you to ignore me.”

I turn and give her my leave-me-the-fuck-alone glare. Having fought other sapients to the death, Halley-11 is unfazed. “Better,” she says, a slight quirk to her scarred lips. 

“I think I have some idea what you’re going through,” she says with surprising gentleness. I regard her battered, harsh face with its patina of scars; study the place where her amputated head meets her white prosthetic body. “I remember laying in a bed just like this when I had my arm ripped off, staring at the stump of what was left. I was marked, broken, disfigured. I never wanted to get up and face the world. I could feel the dark place calling, knew how easy it would be to just let go and wallow in it.” She takes a deep controlled breath, appearing to find strength from it despite her lack of lungs. “But I picked myself up, Halley. I found the thing I wanted and kept moving. I remade myself. I became a Champion.”

“I’m proud of myself and what I’ve done, but there’s been a price. As my body was broken in the crucible of the Arena, as I was whittled down to just my head and my mind and my will... there were times I almost broke.” The Destroyer looks at me with a confessional intensity, “I do miss my body. My protesthetic is incredible, a super perfect replacement, but it’s not me, not like my flesh and blood body was. There are times I look in the mirror and see only what I’ve lost.” She shakes her head, “But I keep going, keep my eye on the prize, keep fighting. You have to fight. Have to.” 

She smiles at me, “This is a tough break, Rookie, I’m not going to lie to you, but I know you have the steel to get through this. We’ve already been through so much. This is all... just one more thing.”

I blink my eyes. My ultimate badass clone just made herself vulnerable for me, which I can tell is no small thing. I know I should be grateful, and on one level I’m touched, but I’m mostly just annoyed. What gives her the right to come here and lecture me for being sad? She chose this! Did it to herself! She could have stopped when she got her arm chopped off, had Clem replace it, found a gentler line of work. Instead she *decided* to become an inhumane cyborg murder freak. My hands ball into fists and I’m taking deep, angry breaths that make my facial vulva flex. I didn’t choose this! I don’t want a cunt face! Fuck you head-girl!

I raise my fist and flip her off.

“Whatever,” The Detroyer says. “Figure it out. I didn’t kick the shit out of a bunch of cultists so you could waste your life away in a cowgirl’s bedroom.”

***

I am staring at the ceiling again, which I’ve decided has lost it’s charm. Fucking ceiling.

I hear a knock on the door and Bluebell clops into the room. Why can’t she just leave me alone? I turn and glare at her, my face vulva flaring as blood rushes to my face.

The large Blue cowgirl is brandishing a flat screened device that looks like an iPad. “This one thought you might like to communicate.” 

No, I want you to fuck off and leave me alone! She blinks her big black eyes at me and her nostrils dilate, smelling the anger I’m putting out.

The alien cowgirl falters, licks her lips with her wide tongue, presses on. “This one had HAL-E send her your English Earthling lexicon and this one uploaded it to this simple interface device. This way we might converse and better address your needs.” Bluebell steps carefully forward and places the tablet on my lap. I look down at the screen which displays a jaunty ‘Hello :)’ in borderline comic sans. I feel enraged! I don’t want to type out my thoughts! I want to fucking talk! I want my voice back and my face back! Not some stupid app for fucking children! I cunt-growl and chuck the tablet at the wall as hard as I can. Fuck!

Bluebell moos in alarmed surprise and takes a step back before annoyance flashes across her usually placid face. She claws at the ground with her hooves and almost lowers her short horns at me, but instead she snorts, turns, and stomps out of the room, her hooves cracking loudly on the steel floor. The doorway seals shut behind her.

...and I realize that I’m an enormous cunt!

Fuck, she was just trying to help! And is letting me sleep in her bed while she plays nursemaid to me. I am such an ungrateful piece of shit...

The least I could have done is typed ‘thank you’.

***

I wake up in bed and find that my two and half pussies are furiously horny.

I’d been having a sex dream. The details are fuzzy, but I remember sitting in a movie theatre and watching Marlene Dietrich in her iconic top hat and tuxedo, an early bisexual fixation. Dietrich was slowly applying lipstick, shot as if from the perspective of a mirror. She was taking her time with it, dragging it out, making it sexy. As she coated and recoated and recoated her lips with makeup, her mouth swelled and changed, flowered into vulva and became vertical. Became a pussy face just like mine. Sitting in the theatre, I watched with rapt attention, scarfing popcorn, which had felt somehow sexual. On the screen Dietrich realized what had happened and started to finger her face, eyes lidded in pleasure. She gasped and closed her eyes, fingers furiously stroking and penetrating her new cunt, and as she approached what promised to be a shattering orgasm...

... I woke up in a puddle of my own pussy juices, three points of hot arousal pulsing, orifices begging to be filled.

Jesus Fucking Christ I’m horny! Vaginal drool flows from my face and my pillow is damp against my cheek, fragrant with cunt. My thighs are wet and slick, and my ass feels damp too. I grunt-moan and the sensation of the noise in my face makes me wetly gasp.

I start to reach for my cunts and stop myself.

I hate this feeling! This sick need! I want to get off so badly, but this isn’t me! This is the Sleeping God and His fucking perversion! I refuse to give in to this hunger, succumb to my changes!

I roll onto my back and clutch the sheets with clawed hands, take deep breaths, try to ignore how good even breathing feels.

***

I hear a heavy knock on the bedroom door and look up to see Steadfast Freya boldly enter, effortlessly carrying three large bags in her four muscular arms. “Hail 24th! How fare you in thine recovery?”

I sit up in bed and lift the blanket to hide my face pussy. What is Freya doing here? Does she know that I fucked Hank? My heart hammers in my chest. Is she angry? Furious? Is she here to yell at me? Beat me up? Jesus, even if this doesn’t prove violent it’s going to be soooo awkward.

“I know that you have fornicated with Hank,” Freya says, taking a characteristically direct approach. “He confessed his misdeeds when news reached us of your misadventure. I judged it unlikely that you would be returning to us, and decided that you might yearn for your belongings.” She brandishes the three large bags as if they weighed nothing, which is probably depressingly close to the truth. I really have so little. 

I blink my eyes, Freya doesn’t sound mad and this seems more like a kindness than an eviction. I must look confused because Freya says, “Of course I am not mad at you, 24th. I do not stake sole claim to Hank’s sex life. I do not believe in monogamy, neither for myself nor my lovers.” The Nordic woman sets my bags down in a corner of the room and sits on the bed, making the mattress dip under her weight. “You came to Hank in a moment of weakness and need, and like a cur he took advantage of that. It was dishonorable of him, but your actions are above reproach. Mostly.” Freya sighs, “I mightily love Hank, but he can be such a weak man. I fear he feels he has something to prove and acts the scoundrel to validate his masculinity.” She shakes her head, “It only makes him seem small. But love is steadfast and must tolerate weakness and nurture growth.” Freya looks at me with her clear blue eyes, her generous mouth in a serious line, “I just wish his weakness did not hurt my friend.”

The huge woman leans forward and crushes me in a four armed hug, squishing me and my bustier chest against her four large breasts. “I am sorry. I regret I was not there for you Halley.”

I’m shocked and sit up, letting the blanket fall away exposing my tits and cunty face. Freya looks startled for a moment, then intrigued. She smiles at me, “The next time you are in crisis, seek me. And the next time you need a lover...” Freya grabs me firmly by the shoulders and head and pulls me into a hard kiss, her lips exploring my face cunt. “Find me instead of Hank.”

The tall woman stands and leaves the room, her short tunic dress showing off the back of her muscular legs. My face drools and tingles and aches for more. 

***

I know I can’t stay in bed forever.

Sooner or later I’ll have to face up to my... face. I’ll have to figure out how to eat real food and drink through my face pussy. I’ll need to learn what taking a shit with a clit in my ass feels like. I’ll have to figure out a new way to communicate now that I’m mute. I’ll probably have to get an awful synthetic voice like Sister Teuthida or maybe learn sign language like those Robed people. I’ll even have to brave the world again, learn to live with people staring at my disfigurement. Maybe I could start wearing a veil or something? I wonder if the Robed accept applications. I sigh, it’s going to suck so fucking much. But what choice do I have? If stay here too much longer I might just die of boredom.

Besides, Bluebell has to be tired of this asshole patient and is probably just about ready to kick me out. Frankly, I’m astonished it hasn’t happened yet. 

What can I do though? Where can I go? I’m certainly not going to move back in with Hank, not after all that. Which ha ha also means I’m unemployed. Although a pussy-faced mute waitress probably isn’t on brand for the Hideaway anyway. I’m sure Clem would take me in, but that’s a whole tangle of unresolved feelings that I don’t need right now. Plus the whole catgirl sexpet clone roommate thing. Too many pussies there already. So what’s left? Where can I live? What job can I even do now? Maybe I’m going to end up in one of those awful Breakyards.

The one place on Flotsam I’m probably welcome is The Circle of The Sleeping God. Given how much they obviously pamper their current roster of Halleys, I’m sure they’d be overjoyed to have me. I could be a favourite, one of the popular special people. And my weird sex face? Well, everyone in the cult is a sex mutant freak, so I’d fit right in. And hell, with Teuthida around, I wouldn’t even be the woman with the weirdest mouth. I could avoid being a disfigured outsider, just go with the flow, buy into the cultist lifestyle, be a Very Important Pussy-face...

Who the fuck am I kidding? There is absolutely no fucking way I’m ever going back to that place! The Sleeping God is a fucking monster and I hope he rots in his space prison for eternity! Fucking fake deity asshole!

Which means I’ll have to deal with the reality of my situation.

I sigh and lay back in bed. 

Just not quite yet.

***

I wake up to find a baseball sized silver sphere floating in the bedroom. 

“Good you’re awake” HAL-E’s disembodied voice says. I sit up, not bothering to disguise my pussy face. What’s the point when the city’s surveillance system comes for a visit?

“Uh, hi,” HAL-E says awkwardly as her hologram appears in the room. “I was wondering if this is a good time to talk?”

As good a time as any. I giving her a get on with it hand waggle. 

She imitates blowing out a breath, “I wanted to start by saying I’m sorry. I promised to look out for you, and I totally dropped the ball; I never should’ve let you leave the city with those cultist fuckers. I’m a horrible digital guardian angel,” she looks at me, regret contorting her projected features. “The truth is, I lost track of you. I felt like devoting an entire shard of myself to closely monitor you would be deeply creepy, and since your Keyband was at Hank’s the whole time, I thought you were safe there... if maybe making a sex mistake.” She shakes her head, “By the time I realized anything was amiss, you’d already left the city and were long gone. It was straightforward to review the surveillance data and determine who you left with and when, but by the time I recruited Halley-11 and affected a rescue mission, well, the damage had already been done.” The hologram makes a sad little smile, “I’m sorry I failed you.”

It’s not your fault I’m a dumbass who voluntarily went with a bunch of freaky cultists to a second location. I’m grateful help came when it did, otherwise who knows how much more of me would be cunt right now. All of which I want to tell her, but I can’t unless she speaks glugh. Fuck this being mute thing! I can’t even offer an encouraging smile! And so I stare at her dumbly, hoping she somehow gets the message from my eyes alone. 

HAL-E must have seen something in the windows to my soul because she startles. “Oh right! That reminds me! I was thinking about your situation and how frustrating not speaking must be. And I think I’ve come up with a solution. Would you like it?”

I nod my head vigorously. Fuck yes I would!

The hologram smiles and the little silver drone floats closer to me where it sprouts a blister which coalesces into a golf ball sized sphere. The new sphere drifts over to me lazily, like a soap bubble on the wind, until it touches my neck and flows around it, becoming a seamless silver metal choker. I reach up and touch it, feel warm pliable metal fused to my skin. “What?” I say aloud.

I gasp, both audibly and physically. “Did I just? I did! Oh my god!” I can fucking talk! And it sounds like it’s coming from my still very much a pussy mouth. Fuck yeah!

HAL-E beams at me, “It’s a holographic sound projector, the same technology that let’s me sound like I’m talking from my hologram...” HAL-E’s voice suddenly jumps across the room and affects being muffled  “Or from over here in this confounded suitcase!” She grins “I modelled it on our voice and set it to generate sounds that seem to originate from your mouth, so you should just be able to speak normally again.”

Tears sting my eyes. I can talk again! I have my voice back! “Thank you! You have no idea how much this means to me!”

The hologram blushes and smiles, “It’s nothing, the least I can do....”

“Fuck that! This is amazing!”

Maybe I’m not so completely ruined after all.

***

I hear a knock on the bedroom door and Bluebell clops in carrying a new nutrient infuser armband. Time for my next meal. “Breakfast time already?” I ask.

Bluebell moos in surprise, almost drops the armband to the floor. “You can speak!?” 

“Yep!” I say happily. I point out the band of silver metal around my neck. “A gift from HAL-E.”

“That is a most exciting development!” Bluebell says, a wide smile breaking out on her bovinified alien face. “This one is so pleased for you!”

“I’m pretty stoked too,” I say. “....and now that I have my voice back, Bluebell, I just wanted to say thank you for everything. You’ve been so kind and patient with me, you’ve given me a place to live and taken care of me, and I’ve been such a miserable cunt... I’m sorry, Bluebell.”

Bluebell shakes her big head slowly, “Trauma seldom brings out the best in sapients, and healing is a gradual process. This one is glad she could help.” The cowgirl lays her large hand upon my shoulder, squeezes gently. “You are welcome to stay here as long as you might need.”

Tears tickle my eyes, “Thank you. But I really need to get out of this bed....”

“And bathe,” Bluebell says playfully, “Even for a human you stink.”

I laugh, my prosthetic voice perfectly imitating my giggle while my face vulva tingle pleasantly as blood rushes to them. “But maybe not quite just yet...”

***

Chapter 19