Seeking Answers

I woke up with a new kind of hangover. Not the kind you get from vodka or cheap rum, but the kind that seeps into every cell of your body, until your bones ache and your tongue feels like a dried-out condom and the backs of your eyelids are raw with memory. The worst part was that I couldn’t blame it on blackout. I remembered everything. Every sticky, slapping, giddy, horrifyingly fantastic second of it. The sunlight had already kicked through the shades, painting yellow stripes across my bare chest and the crusted sheets. I lay there for a minute, inventorying the damage: neck stiff, thighs burning, lower back one continuous charley horse. My cock—miraculously—still throbbed, though more in protest than anticipation. Somewhere in the house, a smoke alarm chirped a single, petulant beep, then shut up again. I rolled over, ignoring the whine of my overworked muscles, and stared at the ceiling. The plaster was mapped with swirls that looked vaguely like bodies in mid-coitus. I traced a few, trying to assign them faces from last night, but the truth was the lines were already blurring. Janet and Barb and Lucy and Heidi and even Dad, all wrapped around me and each other, limbs braided, mouths and holes and hands in every configuration the human body could manage. It would have been impressive if it hadn’t felt like drowning. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was the voice in my head, the one that kept whispering that this was all normal, that I was the weird one for thinking any different. That maybe Janet—my mother—had always wanted to be used, not just by Marcus and Steve and every other sex-crazed relative who came through, but by me. And that maybe I wanted to use her, too, and not just because the new rules demanded it. I sat up, swung my legs over the side of the bed, and prepared to stand up. My phone was where I’d left it, under the pillow. I grabbed it, hoping for news from the outside world—a sign that this was a fever dream, or maybe an Amber Alert for lost perverts—but the screen was a parade of notifications from group chats, the generic time-stamp, and a battery warning. I scrolled absently, then dropped it, the slab of glass bouncing off the mattress and vanishing into a crevice.

Today was the day. I was going to visit Mindy, the only person I could thing of that was smart enough that she might have some idea of how I could get home... if she even believed my crazy story. I’d promised myself that last night, in the half-second before my mind blanked out for the final time. I was going to save my mother. Or die trying. The fact that my main competition was an ex-marine with a bondage fixation and a cock like a battering ram did not make this goal less noble. It just made it more urgent. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants—every other pair of shorts had been claimed as makeshift gags or impromptu cumrags—and hunted for a t-shirt that didn’t reek of pussy. No luck. I settled for a tank top that Lucy had drawn a crude dick on with Sharpie. Seemed appropriate. Then I poked my head out into the hallway. The house was awake. Or at least, it was alive. Sounds drifted up from the kitchen: the hiss of bacon, the dull clatter of plates, the wet pop of a tongue being suctioned off a cock. I moved down the stairs like I was tiptoeing through a minefield, one hand trailing along the banister for support. At the bottom of the stairs, I almost collided with Lucy. She was completely naked except for a blue silk tie knotted loosely around her neck. Her hair was wet, lips glossy, eyes ringed in smudged mascara. She carried a mug of black coffee in one hand and a Kindle in the other, and didn’t even flinch when she saw me.

“Morning, slugger,” she said, voice raspy from overuse. She looked me up and down, then grinned. “Nice shirt. You still mad about last night?”

I tried to summon a glare, but it was impossible. “You bit me,” I said, pulling the collar aside to show the bruise. “Right here. I bled.”

Lucy shrugged. “You heal fast. Besides, you seemed into it at the time.”

She sipped her coffee, then drifted down the hallway, hips swaying just a little. I watched her go, then followed the smell of food into the kitchen. Janet—Mom—stood at the stove, one hand on the frying pan, the other on her hip. She was dressed in one of Dad’s old flannel shirts, nothing else, the hem barely covering her ass. Her hair was a nest of wild curls, still damp at the roots, and her bare legs were streaked with what looked like lotion but was probably something else. Heidi sat at the breakfast bar, legs spread, one foot resting on the lowest rung of the stool. She wore a cheerleader’s tank and nothing else, and the marks on her inner thighs told me she’d been getting more practice than usual. She cradled her phone in both hands, giggling at something on the screen. Every so often, she’d reach down and rub herself absently, as if scratching an itch.

“Clark!” Mom called, turning at the sound of my footstep. She smiled, and for a second she looked like the old Janet, the one who cared about vitamins and balanced breakfasts. “Hungry?”

I hesitated, because the answer was yes, but not for food. “Yeah,” I said, voice hoarse. “Starving.”

She nodded, scooped a heap of eggs onto a plate, and slid it down the counter. “Eat up. We’ve got a big day.”

Heidi grinned, teeth bright against her tan skin. “You got plans, Clark? Or are you just gonna fuck off all day like Dad?”

I pretended to think it over. “Actually, I was going to visit Mindy. See if she’s still—” I groped for the word, came up empty. “Alive?”

Mom laughed, a bright sound that made the hairs on my neck stand up. “That’s sweet. She’s probably lonely over there.”

Heidi snickered. “She’s got, like, a thousand sex toys and a whole server farm to keep her company. You’ll just slow her down.”

I ignored her, shoveling eggs into my mouth with the **** speed of a condemned man. The taste was off—maybe a little too much butter, or maybe my taste buds were permanently fucked—but it filled the hole in my stomach. I finished in four bites, wiped my mouth, and stood.

“I’ll be back later,” I said. “Don’t wait up.”

Mom gave me a long, appraising look. “We’ll be here,” she said, voice softer than before. There was a lot packed into those three words, and most of it was not safe for public consumption.

I ducked out the back door and let the screen slam behind me. The air outside was cooler, washed clean by last night’s thunderstorm. The world was bright and sharp, like it had been Photoshopped for maximum saturation. Across the fence, Mindy’s place squatted like a concrete shoebox, the shades drawn and the front yard a disaster of weeds and old Amazon boxes. I braced myself and set off across the lawn, ignoring the way the dew soaked through my sweatpants and the way my heart hammered harder the closer I got.

I rang the bell. No answer. I knocked, three times, loud enough to wake a corpse.

The door cracked, just enough for one obsidian eye to glare at me through the gap. “Clark,” Mindy said, voice flat. “You look like hell.”

I tried to smile, but the muscles wouldn’t cooperate. “You should see the other guy.”

A pause. Then the door swung open, and there she was: Mindy Chen, five feet nothing, hair a waterfall of black silk, eyes so big and dark you could lose yourself in them. She wore a white tank that barely covered her nipples and a pair of boy’s briefs that left her legs completely bare. Her skin was flawless, but she looked tired, the way a shark looks tired after eating a cruise ship.

“You here to fuck or to talk?” she asked, already turning away. “Pick one.”

I stepped inside, shutting the door behind me. The smell of electronics and sweat and coconut oil hit me like a slap. The living room was stacked with monitors, each showing a different feed: code, news, webcam, porn. On the wall above the couch, a corkboard bristled with thumbtacks, scribbled notes, and a single, high-res photo of a black mirror.

“I need your help,” I said, voice so low I barely heard it myself.

She grinned, sharp and knowing. “Of course you do. Everyone does, sooner or later.”

She walked to the center of the room, hands on her hips, and waited. Her nipples were hard, visible through the thin cotton, and I tried not to stare. I failed.

“So?” she prompted. “You want to fix your mom, right? Or you want to fuck her again first?”

That stopped me. I wondered how she could possibly know. I was worried about how I would explain my situation... and somehow she already knew.

She looked at me, really looked, and then something softened in her expression. “It’s okay, Clark. It’s a little hobby of mine… following people that have fallen here from somewhere else, although most people think its crazy. .I could tell the first time I saw you that you weren’t from here. I thought you’d either learn to fit in, or you’d want to go back. My advice… this place changes you. Just go with it. Don’t fight it. Not unless you want to get eaten alive.”

I shook my head, trying to clear it. “I can’t do that. It’s not right. We don’t belong here. I’m losing her and need to get her home.”

Her smile got wider. “Yeah, well. You know what they say: ‘home is where the hole is.’”

I almost laughed. Almost.

She motioned me over, and I followed, every sense straining. “Tell me what you need, Clark. And be quick about it. I’ve got code to write and a buttplug that’s getting lonely.”

For the first time all day, I felt something like hope. It tasted dangerous. It tasted real. I cleared my throat, and started to talk.

Mindy's living room was two degrees away from a server closet: cold, bright, and so spare you could run a lint roller over the whole place and come up empty. The only furniture was a futon, and a low black table littered with the detritus of all-night coding sessions—empty Red Bull cans, a tangle of USB cords, a lube bottle with the label half-peeled off. The biggest feature was her workstation, a fortress of monitors that blinked and flickered with lines of code, some in languages I could read, most in ones I couldn’t. On one screen, someone was getting railed on livecam; on another, a spreadsheet rolled through rows and rows of what looked like user data.

Mindy herself was already naked. She’d ditched the tank and briefs by the time I closed the door. Now she wore only the same gold chain she always wore, a tiny padlock for a pendant, and a white fitness tracker that beeped and glowed with every twitch of her wrist. Her body was exactly what I remembered—less than five feet tall, slender as a fever dream, skin pale with that faint blue translucence of a vampire who never saw the sun. Her boobs were as flat as ever, small enough to fit in one palm, but her nipples looked bigger than I remembered, the color a neon pink that practically radiated heat. Her pubic mound was glossy and absolutely bare, no stubble or even hint of shadow, just a tiny slit with lips so smooth I wondered if she’d airbrushed herself. She watched me with an engineer’s focus, standing arms-folded by the server rack, weight on one foot. Her eyes flicked from my face to my crotch, then to my hands, as if cataloguing me for a bug report. She smiled, sharp and slow, then hooked a finger and beckoned me over.

“Couch,” she said. “And don’t sit on the left side. There’s a wet spot.”

I sat on the right, hands on knees, trying not to look like I’d just walked into a trap. Mindy padded over, bare feet silent on the tile, and perched next to me with her legs tucked under, knees pressed together. Her pussy was visible, shiny and already damp, but her posture was strictly professional.

She reached out and flicked the hem of my shorts. “You look like you haven’t come up for air in a week,” she said. “And you smell like gym socks and desperation. I love it.”

I tried to relax. “You said to come over,” I said. “Said you could help me.”

She nodded, eyes on mine. “I can. But first, a disclaimer: I’m only useful after I cum. Otherwise my brain runs hot, gets buggy.” She tapped the side of her head for effect. “So. Sex first, then debugging.”

I blinked. “Is that… a rule here, or just your own workflow?”

She grinned. “A little of both. Trust me, you don’t want my pre-orgasm advice. Last guy who asked wound up fucking his own reflection for three days.”

I looked for a joke in her face, found none. “Okay,” I said. “So we just… do it?”

“Right now, yeah.” She shifted closer, her thigh brushing mine. “Unless you want to drag it out. Some guys are into that, but I run on a tight schedule.” She paused. “Don’t worry. I’ve already sandboxed all the cameras. Unless you want to stream this. Your call.”

Her words hit me sideways. I’d come here to ask for help, not get sucked into a quickie with the neighborhood perv. But the way Mindy looked at me—hungry, clinical, absolutely certain of her own demand—made my cock start to fill without any conscious thought. She smelled like clean linen and ozone, and her skin was almost uncomfortably warm where it touched mine. I tried to picture Janet’s face, or Barb’s, or any of the women I was supposed to be saving, but the images slipped and slid away.

Mindy watched my dick rise, then gave a little snort of approval. “Good. Saves time.” She straddled my lap, her tiny body barely weighing anything at all, and slid her arms around my neck. Her breasts pressed flat against my chest, her nipples like erasers poking my sternum. She kissed me, fast and noisy, tongue already in my mouth. Her lips were pillowy, but she had a way of biting down at the end of every motion, as if to test the strength of the connection. Her hands roamed my back, tracing the outline of my spine, then dipped lower to my waist, fingers playing at the waistband of my shorts.

“Off,” she said, pulling back. “Or do you want me to rip them?”

I lifted my hips and let her yank the shorts down, my cock springing out and slapping her inner thigh. Mindy eyed it, one eyebrow raised, and muttered, “Fuck, you weren’t kidding.” She wrapped her hand around it, both hands actually—she needed both to get a grip—and squeezed from base to tip, her eyes glued to the spot where her thumb and fingers almost met.

“You have no idea how many dicks I’ve catalogued, and you’re still in the 99th percentile,” she said, almost to herself. “This is going to be fun.”

She spit in her palm, twice, then slid her hand up and down my shaft. Her hands were small and smooth, nails bitten short and painted a violent purple. She worked me fast, no buildup, like she was logging test cycles on a machine. Her other hand cupped my balls, rolling them between her fingers, then danced up to stroke the seam underneath. I tried to say something clever, but her palm twisted just so, and my brain flatlined. I gasped instead, my body doing all the talking. She smirked, satisfied, then angled my cock so the head pressed against her slit. She was already soaking, the slickness of her labia shocking even by this world’s standards. She lined up and lowered herself, the lips splitting wide to admit me. The first inch went in easy, but then she had to wiggle and breathe out to take the rest.

She paused, mouth open, eyes almost crossed. “Jesus, you’re fat,” she said, a note of real awe in her voice. “Hold still a sec.” She braced herself, then slid the rest of the way down, her ass landing in my lap with a wet slap.

She stayed there, impaled, breathing hard. The heat of her pussy was unreal, gripping me like a latex glove. I could feel every micro-movement, the way her walls fluttered and stretched to accommodate me.

After a few seconds, she rocked forward, grinding her clit against the ridge of my cock, then sat up straight and let out a shaky moan. “Okay, this is good,” she said, voice gone fuzzy at the edges. “Now, don’t cum until I tell you. I mean it. If you do, I’ll blueball you for a week.”

I nodded, already **** not to embarrass myself.

She began to ride, slow at first, her tiny hips barely moving. Each bounce **** her to rise nearly all the way off, then drop back down, the sound a sharp, wet pop that echoed off the bare walls. Her tits jiggled, and the little gold padlock bounced between them with every motion.

She leaned forward, one hand on my shoulder, the other pressed to her own chest, and picked up the tempo. Her pussy milked me, tighter than anything I’d felt in my life. She closed her eyes, muttering code under her breath—“Fuck, fuck, increment, increment, buffer overflow, god—” and then grabbed my face and kissed me again, harder.

She rode me like that for a long minute, sweat beading on her brow, the damp heat rising between our bodies. Then she pulled back and reached under the couch for something I hadn’t seen: a wand vibrator, cordless, with a head the size of a plum. She clicked it on, and the noise was a sharp, angry whine.

She pressed it to her clit, and the effect was immediate—her whole body shuddered, her cunt clamping down so hard I nearly shot inside her. She gasped, arched her back, and ground her pussy into me, the muscles spasming around my cock. Her orgasm was wild, almost feral: she clawed at my chest, hips slamming into me, her voice rising in a pitch-perfect shriek that didn’t sound real. I braced her with both hands, holding her in place, feeling the gush of fluid as she squirted, soaking my lap and the mesh couch below.

She rode out the aftershocks, breathing in sharp, shallow gasps, then sagged forward, her head on my shoulder. “Okay, good start,” she said, voice muffled. “Now we switch.”

She slid off, my cock slick and purple, then turned around and dropped to her knees on the floor, ass in the air and face pressed to the cushion. “Fuck me doggy,” she ordered. “You can go rough. I want to feel it tomorrow.”

I knelt behind her, lined up, and slid in. This time she was even wetter, the entry smooth and deep. Her pussy still twitched from the vibrator, but now she was loose enough that I could thrust at full speed without worrying about breaking her. She braced herself with both hands, back arched, and looked over her shoulder at me, eyes wide and a little wild.

“Go,” she said. “Just go.”

I did. I grabbed her hips, the bones sharp and delicate under my fingers, and pounded her. The sound was obscene, each thrust a slap of skin on skin, the echo bouncing off the hard walls. Mindy grunted with every impact, her face pressed to the couch, hair plastered to her cheeks. She reached between her legs, rubbing her clit furiously, her breath coming in short, **** pants.

“You’re gonna make me break something,” she said, voice shaking. “God, yes—fuck, yes—harder—”

I slammed her, feeling my own orgasm building. I tried to think of anything else—my mission, my mother, even Marcus’s stupid drill-sergeant face—but it was no use. I was going to lose it.

Mindy sensed it. She twisted her head, gave me a wicked grin, and said, “Not yet, Clark. Five more strokes.” She counted down, each number punctuated by a savage thrust. “Four. Three. Two. One—”

On the last beat, she clamped down, her pussy squeezing my cock in a **** grip. “Now,” she said, and I exploded, cumming so hard I saw stars. I shot inside her, the heat filling her up, and she gasped, her body milking me for every last drop. We stayed like that for a long time, Mindy panting, her back slick with sweat, me still twitching inside her. Finally, she slid off, flopped onto the floor, and rolled onto her back. Her chest rose and fell in sharp little jerks. She stared at the ceiling, then turned her head and looked at me, smiling.

“That was good,” she said. “You pass. Now you get to ask questions.”

I wiped the sweat from my brow, tried to find my voice. “That’s it? We’re done?”

She laughed. “No. That’s just the warmup.”

She sat up, legs splayed, and grabbed my cock, still half-hard and shiny with her own fluids. She stroked it back to life, her hand quick and sure. “I like to test my theories under multiple conditions. Call it replication.”

She dragged me onto the couch, straddled me again, and started the whole cycle over. This time, she leaned back, using my thighs as leverage, her tiny ass pounding into my lap with machine precision. Her pussy was even looser, the head of my cock visible every time she slammed down. The sight was hypnotic. She reached for the wand again, cranked it to maximum, and pressed it to her clit. The buzz was so loud I could feel it in my teeth. She came almost instantly, the muscles in her stomach rippling, her voice gone hoarse from screaming.

She slowed, then stopped, slumped against me, and let out a shaky laugh. “You are going to ruin me, Clark,” she said, voice soft.

She cuddled up, her head tucked under my chin, her hair damp with sweat. For a second, she was quiet, almost tender.

“Do you ever think about where you came from?” she asked, eyes unfocused.

I hesitated. “All the time.”

She nodded, then nuzzled my neck. “You want to go back, don’t you?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. She fell silent, and we just sat there, bodies tangled, the air thick with sex and regret.

After a few minutes, Mindy stirred, reached for a blanket, and covered us both. “Now you can talk,” she said, voice lighter. “But I can’t guarantee you’ll like my answers.”

We sat together on Mindy’s mesh couch, both naked, the blanket a half-hearted concession to modesty draped over our laps. Her head rested on my shoulder, damp hair fanned out like a black halo, and the glow from her laptop bathed her skin in a cold blue that made the flush on her cheeks even more obvious. It was the first time I’d seen her so still, not fidgeting or chirping or crawling inside my head with a question. She scrolled through a page of code with one hand, the other tracing lazy circles on my knee. The only sounds were the tap of her fingers, the click of the mouse, and the high, glassy ping of a wind chime she’d coded into her notification system. There was something almost domestic about it—two people, raw and exhausted, watching the world try to reboot itself. I watched the way her nipple—still swollen and impossibly pink—flattened against my bicep, the way her legs folded up under her, and the way she chewed at the inside of her lip every time she hit a knot in the logic. I wanted to freeze this moment and live inside it, if only for the peace and the faint afterglow.

“So,” she said, not looking up from the screen, “what’s the real reason you came here?” She snorted softly at her own joke. “Besides the obvious.”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to break the spell, but there was no more time to stall. “It’s Janet,” I said. “My mom. I think she’s… I think she’s disappearing.”

Mindy stopped scrolling. She closed her eyes, sighed, and turned to face me. “Tell me.”

I tried to say it without sounding crazy, but there was no way around it. “She’s not the same person. Neither of us are, but her more than me. She’s not even faking it anymore. It’s like something ate the real her, and now she’s just a… a hunger.”

Mindy nodded. “The world chews you up and spits you out different. Or sometimes it doesn’t spit you out at all.”

“Can I fix her?” I asked, hating how **** I sounded. “Can you help me fix us?”

Mindy didn’t answer right away. She bit her lip, thinking, then tapped a command into her terminal. The monitors flickered, showing graphs I didn’t understand and a map with red dots scattered over the city.

“Do you remember,” she said, “the night the storm hit? The blackout?”

I nodded.

She pointed at the graph. “I think that was it. The transition. There’s no record of anything before it, not on the network, not in any of the logs. Like the universe forked, and this version is all that’s left.”

I tried to follow. “So there’s no way back?”

She shrugged. “No conventional way. But you know what I think?” She nudged the laptop aside and shifted to face me, sitting cross-legged and naked and completely unconcerned about it. “I think the rules here are deterministic, but the starting state matters. You want your old mom back? You have to recreate the state vector. The initial conditions. Otherwise she’ll just iterate until she breaks.”

I blinked. “You’re saying I have to… what, re-run the simulation?”

Mindy grinned, teeth gleaming. “Exactly. You need a reboot. Preferably at the source.”

I stared at her, my mind running back over the whole saga: the attic, the mirror, the lightning, the first time I realized Mom was different. It clicked together like the tumblers of a lock.

“The mirror,” I said. “It’s still in the attic.”

“Bingo.” She pulled the blanket tighter around her waist, then poked at my chest with her finger. “All you need is the same parameters. Same time, same place, same—well, you get it. Should be trivial for a guy with your stamina.”

A thought occurred to me. “What if we get stuck in another dimension? What if it’s worse?”

Mindy rolled her eyes. “Then you fuck your way through it and hope you find a bug. That’s what I do.”

For a second, I almost laughed. But the fear was too real. “Will you help me?”

She leaned in, pressed her lips to my shoulder, and said, “I’ll monitor the weather feeds. You’ll get a text when the next storm is coming. Until then, keep your family on ice.” She grinned. “Or on fire, whichever. Just don’t let Janet break before you get the window.”

She closed the laptop with a soft click. “And Clark?”

“Yeah?”

“If you come back through, and I’m not here, remember me. Okay?”

I nodded. “You’re unforgettable.”

She smiled, for once without any edge. “Flatterer.”

We sat together for a while, not needing words. Then I stood, stretched, and gathered my clothes. Mindy watched me get dressed, her head tilted, eyes full of something like affection.

At the door, she called out, “Hey, Clark?”

I turned.

She said, “You’re the only person I know of who has ever tried to leave. That’s why I helped you.”

I smiled, and she gave me a little wave. The air outside was cool, the sky darkening with the threat of another storm. I walked home, my body spent but my mind crackling with possibility. I was going to save Janet. I was going to save all of us. Or die trying. The rules had changed, but the mission was the same. And this time, I was going to win.