Revitalized Hope

I’m counting every precious minute as I drive to the store, park, and burst onto the scene. The store was in a squat strip mall of just four businesses decorated in faux stone reliefs, but inside was nothing but the standard, trendy corporate displays and furniture my provider has in every store. No one bats an eye at my presence this early on a weekday—why would they, I don’t even look like a student—and I quickly find the nearest salesperson, a woman about my age nametagged Chelsea. “Excuse me, Miss? I need a new phone fast, whatever you-” Shit, does OS matter? Custom Girls showed up out of nowhere on my Home Screen… so maybe I should match the OS at least. “Eh, the newest Android, please.”

I try my best to rush the salesgirl through the process as I show her my shattered device remains, my SIM card, and the expanded memory card. The new phone doesn’t even take either, having miniaturized both, but soon I’m throwing in adapters, a new memory card converter, and whatever else I can shovel onto the sales counter that might help make this new phone my own again.

By the time the phone is on and in my grasp, it’s been over twenty minutes since Ivette was frozen… and so far, the phone remains factory standard. The Custom Girls app is nowhere to be found. “Eh…”

The clerk picks up on the stone that sank in my chest, apparently, because she quickly asks, “Is everything OK?”

I glance up at her in a stunned stupor. “No… it just needs to… download an update, I think.” I don’t even hear the words I’m saying as a muted panic slowly creeps into my body. She responds with some corporate assurances and hands me the bag with the original box, accessories, and my broken phone bits in it, issuing a practiced smile before moving on to the next customer. I don’t even register what she looks like. Numbly I walk to my car, a shiny, fast phone in my grip… and no Custom Girls app to check.

As I turn the engine on, an idea comes to mind. I hold the phone before me and declare, rather loudly in my desperation, “This is my Focus! I… I want the app on this!” An elderly woman walking out of the nearby hair salon flinches briefly before glaring at me until she’s out of view. I flip through the pages; nothing. “Jane, if you can hear me… please install Custom Girls on this?” I continue to burn my time there in the parking lot, car running, doctor nearing her unfreezing, as I plead and beg and even search for Custom Girls on the App Store. Nothing. The succubi don’t answer my thoughts, evidencing perhaps how critical the presence of the app-bearing Focus must be. All I have is the taunting, factory-standard block of apps and pages…

Factory-standard. Something about that… no, about it’s properties. This phone is barren compared to my old one, loaded with games and stupid apps as it was. It has none of my contacts, none of my cringy notes, none of… me, in it. Not yet, at least. I speed home.

12:29, Haines Residence

No… no, damn it, no!

Another false hope, shattered. I transferred everything into the new memory card, smaller than a pinky nail but a hundred times more spacious than my last, but therein I find nothing labeled Custom Girls. The phone is now littered with my old files and apps, the wallpapers are restored, and even my voicemail is set up... and yet nothing. Nothing! I’ve restored my phone in this husk for almost nothing.

I lean my head back until I fall backwards onto my bed. The girls either sleep or stand where I left them, but soon I’d have little more say over what to do with them. Aside from the crazy kung fu doctor who’d sooner report me as a **** than fall in line, would it be so bad? To accept defeat here? To merely live a blissful, money-making life by having Alice and Sophia be my permanent little sluts? I could provide for them, after all… and a check on my banking app shows the money is still rolling in from all the orgasms I’m causing with Sophia’s video.

Fuck it. I can’t just sit here and mope while Ivette slowly unfreezes. Leaping to my feet, I take my worthless new phone back into the bathroom to fetch her and… oh wow.

Ivette remains in her half-leaning pose, but it is clear she’s been through the ringer as a result. Her thighs and shins are dirty with dried vaginal lubrication where new streams of the same are not still flowing, the bathroom rug at her ankles is soaked through and expanding a puddle beneath it, and Ivette's eyes, still open and unmoving, show the redness of the tears that have since dried up.

So the light really is enough to make her come… and her distress hasn’t been relieved by that phenomenon even after almost an hour. All the same, I don’t have time to process it; she’ll be unfrozen by default in about an hour's time and I’d rather unfreeze her and have “freeze” time left over in case I need to stop her. But first…

“I need insurance,” I advise her as I step into her view, “so we’re going to do a quick photoshoot and I’m going to send the pictures somewhere they can be leaked… and they won’t be, as long as you don’t try to hurt me or my family. Do you understand?”

Her unmoving features don’t say anything, of course… but her tears do flow heavier.

“Fuck, look, I didn’t mean to…” Well shit, didn’t I? But I just wanted a little resistance, to spice things up, to… well, there’s no good explanation for that which springs to mind, so I let the excuse trail off. I might as well own this, right? My back straightens slightly as I narrow my eyes. Why am I even worried? No one would believe her anyways... and yeah, she is my Custom Girl after all. My Custom Girl. At the end of the day, I'd make all their lives more fun and pleasurable than they ever could've hoped to be...

Alright, Dave, cut the messiah complex. “Whatever, let’s get you to my room.” As I try to awkwardly move her stiff body, I recall the range of Porcelain Doll and whisper, “Go limp.” Obediently, her body surrenders itself to my grasp. She’s fairly light and easy to carry, enough that I don’t struggle as I sneak out of the bathroom, past the still-sleeping duo on mom’s bed, and over to my room. A few towels later, Ivette is left dripping onto linens while I open my window and let the afternoon sun shine on her body.

My mind races as I try to think of how to actually back up my claim… and would it even work? Maybe she wouldn’t mind some nudes out there if it meant she’d snap my neck and be free. I look her body over again, wondering what the mystery punishment ultimately did. Nothing new and visible, as far as I can tell. My eyes drift from her body to my closet as I look for something to bind and hold her, maybe something to gag her, so I can hold her without relying on the app…

… and I notice a familiar, blinking blue light.

My PS Vita. What a wonderful, cursed little device that was. Commercial failure aside, jailbreaking it was so much harder than with the PSP, and I didn’t buy half as many games as I did for the 3DS, but the Vita certainly was precious to me for a time. So many Japanese porn games, a gorgeous screen for mobile porn watching, and probably the reason I got a C in World History. Hell, I carried the thing almost as much as I did my…

… phone…

I pocket my new device and almost trip as I run to the closet. I scoop up that sliver of black, covered in fine dust where it sits on my closet shelf, and never let my eyes leave that blinking blue light. An update or an unread message… on this? I haven’t turned my Vita on in over a year… in fact, shouldn’t the battery be discharged? How did it even connect to the internet, we changed our WiFi password just a couple of months ago.

These questions raise a mad hope in me, one that I can almost promise you was urged on by impatient, invisible forces waiting for my recovery. A press of the button reveals the startup animations and a brightly lit screen, followed by the menu with my installed apps dropping into place. All the blissful or pained expressions of the anime girls on display would make me cringe in less dire times, but all I do now is jump from icon to icon, checking the names, looking for a familiar picture. None of these are new…

… and then the PS OS answers my question by swooping to where a new app “bubble” is ready for install. The simple font below it screams the app’s familiar name.

CUSTOM GIRLS!

[Author's Note: I was torn between (a) this chapter, or (b) letting the broken device mean he just can't Custom anymore and doing a kind of epilogue stretch of chapters before ending the story. I'd probably write a different off-shoot once I capped this branch off with the destruction of the phone, mind, so let me know: would you rather see the "conclusion" of Dave's Custom Girls powers and the resulting harem, or continue on with the Vita edition? (This chapter being the latter, of course.) Let me know in the comments!]