You Shouldn't Be Alone

Kim knew nothing about brain slugs, and mistook Ai for an unemployed and homeless immigrant who spoke no Japanese. He fed the new host, allowed her to sleep above the shop, and offered her a job washing dishes in exchange for room and board. Ai sheltered at the Tokyo Ramen restaurant for three years, and their relationship grew closer. Kim taught Ai everything he knew about making ramen. Three years later, another brain slug host, a member of the Hong Kong Hive, entered the restaurant. Invited to join the hive, Ai refused. Her relationship with Kim superseded her desire to reconnect with the hive mind.
—Anaïs Nineveh, The Exodus: A History, Chapter 7

The afternoon saw Ha-Yoon out back on the phone with corporate, taking many pictures, and doing whatever managers do when the back of a building suddenly becomes a unique work of alien art. Inside, things were oddly calm. Mel moved languidly. When it was time for lunch, Jordan and Jenny guided him ot their usual table, set a rice bowl, a can of Quench, and a zinc supplement before him, and he ate. When they were done, they took the trash away, and Mel went back to sweeping. He missed the strange looks they gave him as he moved through the motions of life.

To Mel, it felt like he was weirdly not present. Like he had woken from a dream and wasn't sure if he was really awake or still dreaming. Little details jumped out at him. Etherling hieroglyphs that almost looked like they'd made sense. Little bits of pink dust seemed to float in the air in constellations that held particular meaning. When Mel emptied Ha-Yoon's trash can in her office, he noticed five pull-tabs on a paperclip. Soda tabs, not beer tabs. She was still on the wagon.

Bathrooms were cleaned. Shelves were stocked. Customers came and went, both regulars and those that Mel had never seen before.

Near the end of the day, Jordan shoved a handful of items into his hands and pointed to the men's room. She spelled out a name.

AMELIA

Suddenly, the world seemed to come back into focus. There was a small traveling toothbrush kit with mint floss, a packet of wet wipes, and a packet of laundry dryer sheets. So Mel flossed and brushed his teeth, carefully wiped every inch of his junk, and wiped himself down with the dryer sheets—an old trick Mel had learned in high school, as a way to hide the worst of daily body odor when a shower wasn't an option.

With focus came worry.

Mel was not looking forward to going back to the apartment. He was going to have to explain to Béibhinn O'Malley that he had let an alien mushroom access his brain, which he was almost positive counted as a breach in operational security. It is worse getting an ass-chewing when you both know it's coming and that you richly deserve it, and Mel knew there wasn't really any way to get around this. He should have at least asked Jordan and Jenny about it before he'd agreed to dreamsinging.

Fortunately, as they left the Cosmic Fill-Up, his girlfriends steered him not toward their apartment, but three blocks over, where they picked up 9th Ave. They passed restaurants, dive bars, comic book stores with bright manga characters plastered to the windows. Seacouver did not have a red-light district per se, but Mel started to notice an increase in flyers and posters of a provocative nature. Scantily dressed men and women. Modeling agencies, gentlemen's clubs, websites that ended in .xxx.

People in smart glasses on the sidewalks with them paused a little too long, staring into empty space, and Mel took that to mean that if he had augmented reality overlays, he could see the digital ads that peppered the streets, too. Video clips that played if your eye lingered on them. Advertisements for phone sex, for union-approved sex workers, links to webcam shows, coupons for lap dances. An invisible world of sex he couldn't see, smell, or touch all around him.

The Lovecraft Adult Bookstore occupied an entire stand-alone building on the corner of 6th Street and 9th Avenue. Old red brick painted black, the name painted on the side in white letters as tall as Mel. The double doors opened on the corner, but they didn't go up and through them to where a nice old lady waited to check IDs. Jordan and Jenny steered Mel around to the left, to the alley. A stairwell ran up to the second floor, and Mel saw that there was a little walkway to a door with a camera and a buzzer. The brain slug hosts looked at Mel expectantly as he studied the names by the buzzer.

202 O'HARA, A.

Mel pressed the button by her name. Looked up at the glass eye of the camera.

The door unlocked with a clunk.

The second story had been divided into four apartments separated by a narrow hallway painted a kind of institutional green that in a previous century probably promised lead or some other poisonous pigment. The three of them went up to 202, but Amelia was already at the door, opening it up.

She wasn't wearing a top, just a dark chocolate thong, almost the color of her skin. Soft brown breasts with stiff, swollen nipples bare in the open air. A waft of smells hit Mel—baby smells he knew from the nursery in the orphanage, cooking smells he couldn't place, hints of old incense or perfume, a whiff of ozone.

"Hey! Come on in. I was just getting li'l Mel his dinner," she said and stepped back from the door.

A tiny kitchen on the left, bathroom on the right. A main room that was living room and bedroom and what looked like recording studio all in one. There was a walk-in closet, stripped of all shelving, that contained a small crib, a dangling mobile, and various baby supplies. A bed occupied the far wall, nothing particularly fancy, but the wall had been painted green and there was a camera set up on a tripod facing it, lights set up around the space that defined. Everywhere else was plastic assemble-it-yourself racks holding clothing, books, plastiboard boxes labeled "Sex Toys" and "Cosplay." One of the shelves had been cleared out to form a kind of standing desk for a laptop.

There was a kind of controlled chaos to it all. Christmas lights strung along the ceiling. A pair of deck chairs, which was the only place other than the bed to sit. The floor was clear, the carpet having long ago been pulled up to reveal stained wooden boards. The baby was asleep in the crib in the closet.

"Like the haircut," Amelia said with a smile, as she ran a hand through Mel's hair. He smiled, not sure where to look. She hadn't changed much; there was still the slight paunch from having just recently pushed a baby out of her, the dark stretch marks on the skin, the wet-looking dark nipples that were stiff in the open air.

"Thanks," he said, and gestured at Jordan. "They gave it to me. Wanted me to look nice."

"So!" Amelia said. "I've got macaroni and cheese in the oven, green beans in the warmer, and pork chops in the sous vide. But I figured I'd suck you off first and then we'd eat and talk, okay?"

Mel looked at his girlfriends. They had crowded into the closet, staring down at the small figure in the crib. Jordan didn't even look back, just thrust an arm behind her and gave a thumb's up. Amelia gave a worried glance for a moment, but then the two brain slug hosts left, settling into the deck chairs.

"Okay," Mel said with a smile. "Sounds great. So, um, how do you want me?"

Which is how Mel ended up on the bed in just his fundoshi, with a camera strapped across his chest and pointed down at his underwear. Amelia slipped into a bodice that left her breasts bare but concealed her postpartum tummy. In the bathroom, she put in a pair of contact lenses. Mel saw her blink rapidly, and the camera lens started to move on its own, and the laptop screen suddenly came to life.

"Limited interface," she said as she sat beside him. "Recording stops and starts when I want, but I have to edit it later. For now—just go with the flow. Relax. And thanks in advance. I really appreciate it."

Amelia turned to the camera on the tripod, and a little green light came on. The screen on the camera on Mel's chest blinked into life.

"Greetings and salutations, citizens! We have a special guest with us today, a well-traveled gentleman whose dick you might recognize from a certain out-of-this-world encounter—"

Mel wasn't listening to the spiel. He was feeling Amelia's hand as she rubbed him through the thin red cloth of the fundoshi. Conscious of Jenny and Jordan's silent stares as he responded to that unfamiliar touch, to the warm brush of a stiff nipple.

"Ooh! Looks like someone's eager to begin. Let's just pull this off and see how big our friend really is!"

His cheeks burned with embarrassment as the fundoshi was pulled down. Mel could stare into his own one-eyed trouser snake as it popped free to slap against his stomach. He had to lift himself up so she could slide it over his legs, not even trying to unwrap it. To avoid spoiling the image, he tried to remain still, palms flat against the bed, a human tripod.

"Hmm. That's how I like my dick—tall, stiff, and ready to go!" Amelia said, eagerness apparent in the tone of her voice. Her dark eyes, limned with silver from the contacts, turned to the camera, and Mel had to fight to stay still, as she seemed to be looking straight through the lens and into his eyes. "I'll bet a dick that hard has to hurt. Don't worry, baby. Mama's gonna make you feel all better."

She shifted onto her knees before him. Her thumbs touched the inside of his thighs and Mel picked up on the cue to spread a little wider. Silver-limned eyes fixed on the lens as she pulled out a condom and pressed it down over the aching tip. It was thin, nearly transparent, tighter than any condom he had worn before. It didn't quite fit, a size too small, stopping an inch before the root of him.

On camera, it gave Mel's member an oddly streamlined appearance as Amelia extended her tongue and dipped it down until it just tickled his slit, playing with the sperm receptacle at the top of the condom. For a moment, Mel felt a sense that she was seeing herself through the camera, guiding herself down, watching herself as the tongue slid down the sensitive underside, over every vein, right down to his balls. To the part of him that the condom didn't cover.

For a moment she closed her eyes and just breathed in the scent of him. It was the most real moment, unscripted, un-rehearsed, just the heat of her face against his tumescence, that moment of warmth and connection to another being. Her tongue, when it slid beneath his balls and over his taint, elicited a gasp that brought a smile to her face.

"I'll bet with a dick like this," she said, loud enough for the camera. "I can do a proper tit-fuck!"

Mel's heart hammered in his chest, balls rising as she lifted up her warm milkbags and pressed them on either side of his manmeat. He hadn't seen her breasts before pregnancy, but not they were big enough that the dark nipples could rub against each other as the underside of his cock touched her breastbone. She squeezed, smiled, resting on her heels and pushing herself upwards with her thighs, sliding until all Mel could see was his glans, then back down again.

Her nostrils seemed to flare with excitement as she rose and fell, rose and fell, palms shaking gently as she generated more friction. Mel had to fight to keep his hips from shifting, but that just meant it was taking longer to feel that pressure build at the root. Amelia took her time, teasing him, drawing it out, until after what might have been an eternity or three minutes, she said.

"Lie back, baby. Lie back."

Mel slid down onto his elbows, chest at an angle. The camera on his chest now caught the dribble of milk that oozed from the ducts around her dark areolae, dribbling over her fingers, getting the condom wet. His own stiffness was painful in its intensity as she enveloped his glans with her mouth, upper lip curved over her teeth, tongue sliding down the underside. It was an awkward position, her stomach pressed into the side of the bed, chin pressed into her chest as she sucked and rubbed her breasts against his shaft, the camera catching every millisecond, and the microphones probably picking up on the way his breath sped up.

For a moment, there was a sound that didn't come from the two of them. Instantly, Jordan rose. Amelia never let up for a second, but Mel could see the panic in her eyes. She couldn't look away, couldn't see that Jordan had Li'l Mel in her arms, a pacifier in his mouth. Mel stared at Amelia over the camera and mouthed the words IT'S OKAY.

Maybe that's why Amelia rushed the crescendo.

Her head was suddenly a blur, eyes closed in total focus, milk bursting from her nipples in tiny white streams as she sucked at the tip of his dick harder and faster than he had ever experienced. A choke grunt came from Mel's throat a moment before his hips lifted off the bed and Amelia released it at the exact second so that the camera could see the reservoir at the end of the condom film like a balloon, spurt after sticky white spurt filling the transparent condom as all the pent-up sexual excitement of hours and days found release in one blinding, ecstatic moment.

Through the condom, her tongue tickled the sensitive underside of his glans, and she smiled in excited contentment as he jerked, her arms on his thighs keeping him steady enough that the camera wouldn't wiggle too much.

Until at last she pulled back, slowly, and let the full condom, half-pulled off his softening shaft, rest in the hollow at the base of her throat for a moment.

"So much!" she whispered. "Hmm, baby. We've got to have you back for some more fun. What do you say, subscribers? You know what to do if you want to see more!"

The ending spiel was rote. Amelia smiled as she gently pulled the condom off and held it in her teeth. Then the lights went from green to red; she blinked, and it was over.

Jenny took the condom from Amelia, who immediately spun away from Mel and looked at the baby, sleeping peacefully in Jordan's arms.

"Thanks!" Amelia said, as she stood up on shaky legs. "Let me, ah, just freshen up, and then we can eat. Dinner must be almost ready."

Mel didn't get a chance to unstrap the camera from his chest. The moment Jordan handed Li'l Mel off to his mother, the blonde brain slug host was on her hands and knees, licking and sucking at the now flaccid noodle, eager to catch the last drops, even as Jenny slurped the contents of the condom down in a single gulp.

When Amelia emerged from the bathroom, she was wearing a maternity bra and a purple t-shirt that ran down to her thighs. She smiled, helped Mel out of the camera-harness, and fussed about the kitchen. Thrift store plates and utensils. Baked mac and cheese, long green beans, and small rounds of pork soft enough to cut with a knife. Cold cans of some citrus-flavored soda, but what citrus Mel wasn't sure. It looked like a lemon with tentacles, and the label on the can was in some Asian language.

"So!" Amelia said. "Tell me everything. What's been going on?"

The brain slug hosts, seated back in their chairs, stared at Mel as he stood with his dinner in the hallway. The heads of the slugs peeked around their necks, their sensory tentacles extended.

"Well, I can't tell you everything," Mel said. "But, um, I met my sister Molly again. We have a new roommate, Béibhinn, who's a ghola. I got interviewed by this reporter for Slug Fucker Monthly—"

Mel talked. Amelia asked questions. What was a ghola? Who was the reporter? What did she ask about? Mel alternated eating and answering, eyes flicking at Jordan or Jenny occasionally to see if he was giving away too much. Yet neither of them gave him any sign to stop, and they finished long before he did, holding the plates in their laps as Mel and Amelia visited.

"What about you?" he asked. "How have you been?"

"Craving cock," Amelia said. "Feeding and changing Li'l Mel. Trying to exercise a little."

Jordan rose and took the dirty dishes from the pair, headed toward the sink.

"Oh!" Amelia said. "I mean, you don't have to—"

Jenny made the sign for "thank you," hand before her lips and extending forward. Mel translated.

"I think it's just their way to say thanks for having us for dinner," Mel said, as water ran briefly in the sink. Jordan was industriously scrubbing. Jenny slipped past them to grab a clean dishcloth to dry.

"I should be thanking you," Amelia said. "I just never realized how alone I would be after I gave birth. I've been going a little stir crazy, to be honest. I never realized how many of my friends and associates were just through my work."

Mel nodded. "I kinda of get it. Jordan helped get me this job and almost everyone I know now is through her or there—including you."

"Well, this at least gives me content. I really can't thank you enough," Amelia said. There was a yearning in her voice. Yet a restraint, too. Mel was aware that the brain slug son Jenny and Jordan's necks were watching them.

"You already have, really," he said. "Um. I don't know if we'll do exactly this again; you'd have to talk to the others, but maybe we'll find some way to hang out or chat. You shouldn't be alone."

Amelia smiled. It was a bittersweet smile, happy but also sad. Mel had seen that smile on other orphans. Had worn it himself.

"I'd like that," Amelia said. "But I don't want to mess up what you have. I'll stop by work sometime. We'll talk about it."

That was the point when it felt like it was time to go. Jordan and Jenny had finished with the dishes. The baby was sleeping. Mel had his pants back on. He said the goodbyes for all three of them, but on the way out the door, Jordan stopped and turned. Jenny stood close behind her, so close that their cheeks touched, eyes syncing as they stared straight at Amelia. Jordan spelled out something with her hands, while facing Amelia. Mel frowned as he followed it as best he could from the angle he was at.

"I . . . I'm sorry, I don't sign," Amelia said. She looked at Mel to translate.

"They said 'Until next time,'" he told her.

As they filed out, down the stairs and into the darkened streets, to return home so that Béibhinn could give him the lecture he so richly deserved, Mel wondered what that meant for the future.