As the shuttle hurtles towards the earth, Izzy’s brain retreats into her memories of the real world so far away; she feels herself trip and fall and land on a hard black surface under the light of a black sun. She feels helpless and lost.
“How long has it been since I used to have a normal life?” she asks herself as her mindscape fills with liquid, suspending her. The restraints of the shuttle are gone, her clothes are gone, and the only thing that is left is the beat of her heart and the sound of her breathing.
“A few weeks at most?” the voice that helped her fight against Charles answers, swimming up to her. The avatar of the voice is a copy of Izzy, a clone of herself. She looks at herself. Not just her brown hair or curvy body but her green eyes. Her smattering of freckles.
The real Izzy has a thought. “How did I get here?” She asks the shard of herself.
The other Izzy smiles and puts her finger to her forehead, pushing it in. “Remember,” she whispers.
Izzy is thrown down the well of memories.
She remembers the fight with Jacob. “That’s right. That’s how it started,” she states, looking around her for the copy of herself.
“No, I got fired. My boss fired me… Samantha? She was sad; she told me to go be happy.” Izzy whispers, seeing Samantha’s face and the park they ate lunch in.
“Then I fought with Jacob. I ruined his chances to be a pro gamer; he had worked so hard.” She floats with the memory of her betrayal of his trust, the water cold and angry.
“I decided to drive home back to my parents’ house. I left so quick…” She says and then skips ahead. “There was a problem; I was running out of gas.”
Her Ford Taurus drives into view, the water appearing to be only inches deep as the car splashes its way across her vision, the paint faded but still yellow. She hesitates. “I haven’t driven it in forever; it’s still waiting for me. In the parking lot right outside my motel room.”
Her mind flows to the next moment. “the gloryhole…. It was a shock to see a tentacle appear next to my face. I really just needed to pee.” She imagines what it looked like and can smell the melon-like flavor of it.
“Why didn’t you just leave and go back to your normal life? Make up with Jacob and go home?” the voice whispers. She looks up to see herself sitting on a ceiling a few feet above her, her breasts hanging down with her hair.
“I was just living out a fantasy; how could I pass it up? And I was so turned on, so needy,” she justifies.
She sighs, time skipping ahead. “He visited me that night, the tentacle beast. He used me…” She feels in her belly the slightly painful fullness of being filled with eggs. “My first pregnancy”—she blushes. She remembers the emptiness after the blue transparent doctor helped her deliver them.
A gruff man in his 50s appears over the black horizon. “You need to sign this, Isabela,” his voice echoes. “Even in my mind he is powerful.”
She lets the memories slide forward to the signing. ”It was strange to sign away my old life for this new one,” she sighs, thinking about his blatant obsession with Hawaiian pizza.
She imagines the pizza, and one floats before her in the blackness of her memories. “I had to tell Jacob that if he came here, there would be consequences—no more sex until the contract ended.”
She sighs, throwing the pizza away. She watches it slide out of view. The shard of her personality laughs as the figure swims around Izzy; it mockingly says, “He agreed, but I don’t think he understood.”
“Do you remember the puppydog look in his eyes when you saw him for the first time and you just felt so guilty?” It was priceless, the voice laughs.
“That night he insisted on eating me out. I was still full of the doctor’s healing cum and tentacle monster cum.” She squirms, the thought turning her on. She can feel him between her legs; when she looks down, it’s just the inky waters of her memories.
“But it wasn’t all sex…,” she protests to herself.
“I met a god!. Mars, the god of war, lives here. He isn’t as impressive as I thought.” She laughs. “I am pretty sure he really only likes women with dicks. So he leaves me mostly alone.”
A broad smile appears before Izzy with too many teeth and only snarky things to say. The cat forms around the teeth. He smiles. “Hello, Izzy, lost in thought again?”
“What are you? You are always well dressed and always behind the bar. You love purple, and your eyes are purple. You told me about the night Rome burned. How could you know that? How did it take so long to realize you’re not human? What are you?” Izzy asks, but the cat fades out without speaking again.
She sighs. “Oh, Grup,” she touches his overdeveloped chest muscles with a hand. “You’re a prisoner here. Trapped with your honor and your duty. On the bright side, you’re keeping the orc alliance and the united forces from going to war. You were so lonely when I first met you, and now you have Scarlet.”
She thinks about Scarlet: “You just gave birth to an alien baby… But I thought you had male parts…. I guess they have really good science… And Mars adores you, and so does Grup. I heard you once had a night with Jacob and Audrey.” Izzy bites her tongue. “I hate when anyone but me touches Jacob, but it’s not fair if it’s just me out there having fun.” She pictures squishing Scarlet down into the waters; she regrets it as she watches it happen.
“Is my problem that I am jealous of Jacob?” She asks the void, and the void doesn’t answer. She hears a howl in the distance.
“Cane, how could I forget you even for a moment?” She clenches her legs together. “Cane, you really do understand how the ranch works. How I work.” She remembers how he looks as a human: small, nerdy, and weak.
But when he sees her, he transforms into the confident and muscular form of a human.
But when he is emotional, he transforms again into the werewolf with long claws and teeth and a dangerous temper, a killing machine.
She smiles and thinks about the other times. Going to the arcade, watching movies. He was sleeping next to Jacob and me on the bed, curled up in his wolf form, looking more like a puppy than a monster. She sighs, feeling warm at the memory.
“Cane gets it; it’s about having sex and being nice,” she whispers. Looking around for her alter ego to yell at her, but she is nowhere to be found.
She remembers coming back to the room after mating with Cane. I thought he was going to leave me, but he stuck to me, forever loyal. That was the deal. I always love him first.”
“We had a good thing going for a while?” She imagines sitting in the back seat of the car with one hand on Cane’s cock and her other on Jacob’s. She was content; that was everything she wanted. “It’s what I still want,” she whispers.
She lets herself drift toward the present. “I challenged Grup to an origami competition. How was I supposed to know he is an expert? He made a beautiful flower from his world; he was so sad at the time he didn’t have Scarlet.”
She remembers how Grup’s room has skulls everywhere, and she was so afraid “until I found out they are plastic to keep up appearances,” she laughs.
“We had a date that night, or was it another night? just me and Jacob, but Cane barged in. I didn’t mind, and he didn’t seem to either.” She sighs and lets the waters of memory hold her.
“I spent time at the pool; the tentacle monster had his way with me again. I was getting out of control,” she thinks. She feels tentacles wrapping around her body, ready to pull her under the water. “That was the second time I got pregnant, this time with 7 eggs. I was sore for days.” She rubs her belly lovingly. “But something was wrong; that’s when things started falling apart. I was horny all the time, insatiable.”
She moves past this memory, away from the tentacles, and thinks about the butcher of Berlin. “That was the first night I met him; he was being snarky with the Cat. I should have listened to the cat and stayed away from him, far, far away.”
“It wasn’t long after that I met Dr. Blob. He is the best; he stripped the toxin from the tentacle beast out of me.” She thinks about the feeling of drowning. of his body invading every micrometer of hers. Of him slipping between her cells and then inside. She runs away. “That’s another time I disappointed Jacob; I didn’t tell him where I was, and he got taken to Audrey.”
“What is Audrey? She is not human; she seems mechanical, but she is warm and loving, and she really takes good care of Jacob. She has been helping him work through his issues with his mom.” She pictures Jacob cuddling up against Audrey, his diaper saggy.
Jacob spent the night with Audrey and Scarlet. ” Izzy feels the rage building in her stomach and puts it away. “ I rescued Jacob from Audrey as soon as his punishment ended. That’s right, he tried to attack Jack Harrington. He was so worried about me. I have to do better, be better.”
“I remember later we visited the other bathroom together after that. I thought, “If I make him like me.” If he joined me in just having fun, then we would be happy together.” She feels her heart beating fast. “I was so bold and careless; the ranch was a safe place. That night felt like the end of something.”
Izzy makes a wave in the waters of her memory: “But there is so much more!”
