Lois Can't Watch Anymore

"No. That's enough. Turn it off."

Lois closed her eyes and turned her face away. There was a click, and the film stopped. They were left in the dark.

"All of them...they all ended up like that, didn't they?" Lois said. She spat the next word.

"Bred."

"Yes," Angelica Blaze said, the voice coming to Lois from out of the darkness. The chamber was hot. Stifling. The reporter's body was wet with sweat. Running between her breasts. Her thighs. Between her legs.

"It scares you, doesn't it?" Angelica was pacing around her, like a lion considering its pounce for the kill. "To see women like that. Giving in to their instincts. No...collaborating with them. Planning to get pregnant. Conspiring with their own bodies."

The reporter shuddered despite the heat. her lungs felt like they were burning, it was so hot in here now. She was sitting in a pool of her own juices. A hand pressed a cool bottle of water against her cheek, and Lois grasped it, tore off the lid, and drank it greedily.

"Not for you, though, is it?" Blaze pressed. "No babies? No happy marriage?"

Breathless, Lois let the empty bottle drop from her limp fingers. The water was a cool puddle inside of her, and she had drunk it so quickly she almost felt nauseous. She had barely tasted it...that strange, metallic aftertaste...

"I had dreamed," the reporter heard her own voice, as though someone else spoke it. "Once. I thought, when the time was right...when he asked me...but he hasn't, not yet."

"Tick-tock," Angelica's tongue clicked against her teeth. "Has your body been talking to you lately? Be honest."

"No," Lois said.

"You haven't been feeling the pinch? Other women having baby showers. Bumps showing at the office. Lingering over images of babies. It gets harder as you get older, you know. That's what they all realized," the voice was behind Lois now, a hot breath on the back of her neck like the opening of a hot stove. "That can be you too, Lois. You don't even have to say a word. Just...lie back."

Hands touched the reporter's shoulders, and Lois gasped as they burned her. Her body felt so heavy...hot...the water she drank...churning inside of her. A nasty taste in the mouth. So hard to move...to think...