A Good Day

For the refugees of the Exodus, the apocalypse had already happened. They lived in the aftermath of the end of everything they knew. Their home worlds, their native biospheres and cultures, were lost to them. They landed on a strange world, outnumbered, outgunned, with limited resources. Only what they could bring with them on ships hastily packed with as many as they could save. Several ships, we are told, did not make it. Diseases ran rampant in some. Political strife led to mutiny and disaster. Technical failures meant extinction. Those who made it to Earth are survivors.
—Anaïs Nineveh, The Exodus: A History, Chapter 1

"Does it hurt?" Rachel asked.

She had brought doughnuts. Soft cake-like donuts with white glaze and crushed peanuts on top instead of sprinkles. Mel had put some pants on. He knew, technically, he didn't have to. It was nothing **** hadn't seen before, and neither Jordan nor Jenny wore anything when it was just the four of them in the apartment. However, **** didn't seem completely comfortable with nudity outside of sex, so Mel figures he shouldn't make her any more uncomfortable than necessary.

"No," he said. "I mean, the ring around my base isn't that tight, it's not biting into the skin or anything, especially as long as I'm soft. But I can't take it off. So it's constantly just—there."

"Sounds like when Jordie and I got our ears pierced," Rachel said.

She had work. Mel didn't want to set off the metal detector again. They kissed at the door. On the lips. Just a little tongue, just touching, tasting. Stirring Mel within his cage. Then she pulled back, as if she didn't want to start something she couldn't finish. Smiled, and was gone.

There was cleaning to do in the apartment. Jordan took charge as Jenny lay on the couch, staring at the brain slug in the terrarium, making sure it had enough water, doling out dollops of baby food. They dusted. Swept. Sanitized the bathroom, which was not as easy to do without the swifter from work. Wiped down the fridge and the sink, and finally bagged up the trash and stripped the beds. With Jordan in exercise pants and a sleeveless white t-shirt, she and Mel went down to the laundromat. They split the cost; Mel bought the detergent, and Jordan paid for the washer and dryer.

On the orange plastic chairs, Jordan took out the note-cards and quizzed Mel on his alphabet-signs. Mel smiled at that. It was nice to spend time with her, to have something to do with her. Together, they shuffled and ran through the pack. Sometimes, she had to correct him, but after three or four runs, he felt like he was making fewer mistakes.

They stopped to move the sheets to the dryer. Mel wondered if they were going to do more with the cards. Instead, Jordan pulled her shirt.

No bra. The small, soft breast jutted towards him as she arched her back. Blue eyes locked on him, her tiny pink nipples soft against her areola. Jordan's back was to the door, her brain slug's eye spots watching for movement. They were all alone in the laundry.

It was an invitation.

Hesitantly, Mel raised his hands, just the fleshy pads touching her nipples. Traced the curve of her areola. The little milk-bumps. The soft goose-flesh on the gentle swell of her breasts. He felt the heat on his cheeks, her gaze measuring his arousal and excitement just by the color of his face. Until the silence became too great for him.

"I never touched a woman's breasts before yours," he whispered, just loud enough for her to hear. "Never had a girlfriend in high school. I think I didn't want to get attached. I knew I didn't have much of a future ahead of me. If I didn't get that apartment, I could have ended up homeless, on the streets."

Mel pressed his palms against the bottom of her breasts, just above the ribs. His thumbs found her nipples and began to rub them in slow circles. He looked up, into her eyes, and saw the color rise in her own cheeks.

"Thank you," he said. "For accepting me. I know you didn't have to. I know I don't say it enough. I never really learned how to be—expressive. I'm still learning so much. I—"

She leaned forward then, her hands about his neck as she drew him in. Mel went up onto his toes so their mouths could meet, her tongue sliding off of his teeth, to find his own. The heat of her body pressed against his made him ache against the cage between them. That seemed to excite her more, the nipples hard little nubs under his thumbs, her hips shifting, grinding against him.

Mel's ass hit the dryer. He felt it rumble through his body, and his hands pressed a little harder into those soft breasts with the stiff nipples.

It was heaven. It was agony. The weight of her pressed against his caged heat, and Mel felt an unfamiliar ache in his balls, a desire for erection and release that could not be satisfied. He knew, in his head, that he had to save it for the newly-budded brain slug. Yet he knew if the cage wasn't on, he might have creamed his pants right then and there.

Eventually, the dryer slowed. Gave a soft electronic chirp. The two broke apart, to fold the wash, carry it back upstairs. Mel's crotch throbbed with terrible unfulfilled need. A constant ache that made Mel regret his decision to accept the cage so readily. Six more days of this; the very thought was excruciating.

Lunch proved a small distraction. With permission from Jenny and Jordan, he tried his hand at boiling an egg. After the egg had been seven minutes in the boiling water, the two brain slug hosts watched Mel hold it under cold tap water for thirty seconds. They watched him crack the shell. Did not laugh at the hot, runny yolk that ran down his chin as he took an experimental bite, but then they never did laugh at such things.

"Maybe a little longer next time," he said.

Jenny leaned forward and licked the yellow goop off his chin. After lunch, she lay down on the couch for a nap, still watching the brain slug in its terrarium.

Mel debated what he should do. Read? Go out for a walk? He hadn't really explored the neighborhood. It was always home, work, library, co-op, bus stop . . . his thoughts of discovery were overruled when Jordan dragged him into his bedroom. It turned out they were going to take a nap too.

He lay on his back; she curled up next to him, the head of her body against his. Eyes closed. Breathing slowly, deeply, and evenly. She shifted, her leg coming up over his stomach, her breasts pushed into the side of his face.

For a while, Mel wondered if this was what a baby felt like. Warm. Cuddled. Safe. Secure. He closed his eyes and tried to relax, still unused to being held. The weight of the cage settled on his crotch, and he instinctively worked muscles in his abdomen, as if he could wriggle out of the steel ring secured around the base.

On a vast plain. Softly rolling hills like shoulders and buttocks, a range of small rises and depressions. The slug crept towards him, immense in its vastness. He could make out the transparent segments of its carapace and noticed that it was actually the insides of the slug that were emerald green. In place of a mouth, there was a face, Jordan's face, the blue eyes surrounded by luminous whites that hit his face like spotlights.

She crawled right up towards him. He saw the foot, the strange underside, the thick muscular underside divided into individual bands. Saw them contract and expand, to move the whole body. Then, when she reared up over him, Mel saw the slit. The vertical crease between two bands. It opened, as though invisible fingers pulled at the edges, to reveal the tight pink tunnel.

"Action!" Ha-Yoon said. He glanced to his left. She was seated on a wood-and-cloth folding chair, a black beret on her head, a megaphone in her hand. Beside her, Two-Click held a large, old-fashioned camera. Rachel held a clapperboard.

Mel saw the hard length of himself standing free. Jordan loomed over him, the hole so close he could see the juices dribble down.

With the weight of their expectations on him, Mel stepped forward, arms wide to embrace the brain slug as he buried himself in that tight, wet furrow.

"Honeys, I'm home!"

Rachel's voice dragged Mel up the steps of deeper slumber. Beside him, Jordan stirred, her eyes puffy.

It was evening. Dinner time. **** had stopped off at a bakery and bought day-old bread. Mel made enough ramen for two, serving it up in bowls that had belonged to Antonio and had migrated somehow into their kitchen. Jordan and Jenny made do with raw tofu sandwiches. for entertainment, an art program about a woman who acted out the mating rites of various animals using elaborate costumes. Mel wasn't sure he got the why of it, but Rachel was squeezed in next to him on the couch, and she enjoyed it.

He asked Rachel about her day. Heard more stories about Lacey, and a coworker named Samantha who vaped in the back rooms even when she wasn't supposed to, and her boss, Sinead, who was perpetually worried about the library budget.

"And what did you do all day?" **** asked.

So Mel told her about cleaning the apartment, making out with Jordan as the sheets tumbled in the dryer, the first half-successful attempt at boiling an egg, and finally the strange dream during his nap.

"You made out with Jordan? And got to nap with her?" Rachel said with an exaggerated frown. "That means you owe Jenny and me some loving."

Mel didn't have to think about smiling. It just happened.

"Well," he said. "You're right. How do I make it up to you?"

Jenny occupied the middle of the couch. Rachel was on her hands and knees, staring at the pussy as if it would bite her. Leggings and panties pulled down so that Mel, behind her, could get access to her own slit. It was still smooth; apparently, Rachel had taken to keeping it shaved.

"I know intellectually how to begin," she said as she stared at the other woman's labia. "But I'm still a little nervous. What if I'm not any good?"

"Get better," Mel said. "We can watch the oral sex video again, if you'd like. I'm still working on things myself. But I figure if it feels good . . . keep doing that."

Rachel took a deep breath, let it out slowly . . . and then leaned forward, tongue extended. Jenny didn't try to touch the blonde head as Rachel's tongue found her slit; her hands resting evenly on her knees. Mel, behind Rachel, carefully pried her buttocks apart so that he could lick at her labia. The three of them were each focused on their tasks at hand, as Jordan spoon-fed pureed carrots to the brain slug in its terrarium.

It was awkward. They adjusted angles, bumped into each other, explored. Yet none of them gave up. None of them stopped. Together, the three of them found a rhythm, Rachel shifting slightly back and forth as Mel's tongue teased her clit, and she sucked gently on Jenny's. A heat built up and seemed to circulate between them, Mel aching in his cage as excitement once again ran up against the immovable barrier.

After a long time, Jenny had slunk down, her hips pushed forward, thighs wider to give Rachel better access. The Asian woman's mouth was open, and though she said no word, little soft sounds came from her mouth with each exhale . . . and when at last she shook and shivered, pale thighs shaking slightly, Rachel raised herself up, Mel following as close as he would, so that she could plant a kiss on Jenny's lips, with closed eyes and a soft shudder of her own.

It wasn't the kind of climax that you see in pornographic films or read about in the pages of Slug Fucker Monthly. Nothing sanity-destroying or toe-curling. They were all still learning, their own bodies, their own skills, their own limits.

Jordan hugged Rachel as her sister dressed to go back across the hallway to her own apartment. Rachel hugged her back.

"I was joking, you know," Rachel whispered. "You make out with Mel as much as you want. I don't mind. Whatever makes you all happy."

Jenny gave a thumb's up. Mel smiled and kissed Rachel goodnight. He went back to his bed to read for a little while before sleep claimed him again.

Sometimes, in the future, he would think back and realize that it was a good day.