The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (38 page)

She’d also made Arc laugh. Hard and real. It was a treasure, a prize. They’d been kissing – just that – lost in the landscape of each other’s lips, the sweetness of
their breaths, when that other, that loud and rambunctious part of Pell, reached down and tickled the tall street girl under the ribs.

Arc had exploded in a booming, percussive laugh that had rung and bounced around the tiny apartment like a frisky dog. Arc had wiped tears from her face, returned the tickle and told Pell that
if she did it again she’d “Break your face.”

A short time later, as more and more sunlight slowly started to come in the dirty windows, exhausted, they slipped into the cool, slightly smelly bed. They’d held each other for a long
time, spooning together, unintentionally matching their in and out breaths. Slowly, Pell had slipped quietly into a sleep. She’d dreamed of floating, drifting on a lake dotted with the
mountain ranges of pure white clouds, like warm, insubstantial icebergs.

When she awoke, Arc was gone.

The next time, it’d been raining. Pell had seen her before, in the rain, but this time Arc’s urgency scared her. Pell had been asleep, rolling in and out of
half-remembered dreams, worried because the Foxhole Buddies hadn’t heard from Jare in over three weeks. She didn’t really miss him, her embarrassment and self-hate over that a burning
kind of ache behind her eyes, but it was a reminder that his fate could be any of theirs. That day she’d checked her bank account, compared it with the SAC statement of the week before.
She’d stared at the flimsy paper strips for long, heart-rapping minutes, trying to perform some kind of mathematical legerdemain on them to make them calm her panic. But no matter how many
times she added, subtracted and counted on whatever extra income she could acquire, the verdict was still zero in six months. Ten if she didn’t eat. A year and a month if she moved out and
lived on the street.

The bed was a safe haven. She’d not washed the sheets, or thoroughly dried the mattress, since Arc had spent the night. The smell of her – of them – was a bath that she floated
in, not having to put her head out to face the next day or the one after that.

The buzzer was a scream of reality, one that almost forced her back under the covers. She almost ignored it, leaving the world outside to vanish in the surprisingly hard spring rains. But then
someone started banging on the gate – the sharp percussive clangs rattled up and through her apartment, making her teeth ache and her eyes squeeze shut.

Then a voice carried against the clamor, just a few pieces of words – not enough to make any kind of sense. But the tones spoke direct and hot to her.

Wearing only a large T-shirt, Pell stood in the doorway, looking down at Arc. The woman had a large plastic garbage bag over her head and was pounding on the metal gate with her matt black hand.
“Are you going to let me in or what?!” she screamed, panic rippling through those tones that had got Pell out of bed.

Inside, Arc threw the bag aside and grabbed a pile of Pell’s laundry off the floor and quickly, feverishly, started to dry her right leg.

“Fucking Swiss. They know how to build them but can’t weatherproof for shit. Get too much on the joints and the servos hesitate. Bitch for an arm, fucked for a hand, but for a leg it
means falling on your fucking face. Shit. It’s pouring out there. You got a hair dryer or something?”

Pell didn’t, and said so. She slowly closed the door. A pool of water distorted the worn wood floor, slowly bringing it back to a more natural shade of brown.

Finally Arc seemed satisfied she’d dried her leg satisfactorily. Her eye clicked with its finely tuned and expertly manufactured sight as she scanned her new leg for any sign of moisture.
Then, wadding up Pell’s shirts, underwear and socks into a mottled ball, she tossed them, hard, into a far corner. “I was gonna get it sealed, you know, but couldn’t find a place
that would do it good enough.”

Pell stood, folded her arms, and felt a chill race through her. “New present?”

“Yeah. Everyone’s a freak, right? Guess, in his case, he likes to improve on people. Not that I need any improvement or nothin’. Just gets off on it, I guess. Likes the metal,
the way it feels. Likes taking a bit and giving a bit. I don’t fucking know. He pays for it and that’s good enough for me.”

Pell sat down on the bed next to her. She wanted to reach out and touch Arc’s arm, to feel the corded mnemonic fibres, the brief chill of the ferroceramic framework, the humming current of
its circuits, the glistening neuroservos. She wanted to pull herself close to Arc, to hold her and lean against her. Yes, she wanted to lean against someone strong and firm.

The room was cold – brushing her hand against Arc’s arm made a shiver dance up her hand. Pell gathered up the blankets and shawled them over her pale shoulders. As Arc tucked herself
in, Pell jumped up and pulled her T-shirt over her head. Arc’s breasts were hard and small, her nipples tight and dark. Pell had seem them before, of course, but not so erect. They seemed
almost cracked from the cold, as if all their heat had been sucked out of them, all the life. A thin shine spotted parts of her body where the rain had managed to slip past the trash bag.

Naked, she jumped down next to Pell and pulled some of the covers over herself. Pell had seen a flash of her, naked and firm – corded muscles, a skeleton ghosting through her pale skin,
the puckers of arm and leg where the prosthetics mated with skin – as she moved. She realized as Arc snuggled under the thin blanket that the image burning still in her mind was not her
ghostly skin, but the way the metal of her, the alloys of her, had gleamed in the dull rainy-day light. It reminded her of the first time she’d seen Arc – what seemed like eons ago. It
had been her eye. The metal and jewels of it. Not the woman.

“It’s freaky,” said Arc next to her, face and body obscured by the sheets, the blanket. Pell could feel her body warmth and the cool firmness of her artificial elements against
her skin. “But it pays, ya know? Gotta keep food in the belly, that shit. Freaky but at least you gotta say that he has taste, right? At least the man pays for quality.”

“What does he do with the real parts of you?” Pell said before she realized she’d said it.

“Fuck if I know. Sells them. Jerks off over them. They’re gone, you know? Gone. Still me here, right? Still me – just a little tougher.” The last came as a barking laugh,
a deep, chesty sound that was as different as her giggling laugh under Pell’s tickling fingers as Arc’s real skin was to her new elements.

“Still me –” Arc said, worming a real, human arm through the sheets, the blanket to hug Pell clumsily. A sudden touch of cold metal echoed the movement, telling Pell that her
other arm was also around her.

It seemed cold in the little room. “Doesn’t it disturb you?” Pell was finally able to ask.

“He’s a creep – like they all are. Fucker pays – get it? I don’t really give a fuck about him – he just gives me the cash, and the toys.”

“Tell me about him.” Not jealousy, the heated emotion wasn’t there. But she wanted to know why – to understand the slow replacement, the methodical mechanical
encroachment into Arc’s life . . . into Pell’s life.

“Fuck, I don’t know,” Arc said, looking uncomfortable, fixing her real/artificial stare at a point somewhere over Pell’s head. “He’s a guy, you know. Rich
fucker. Lives somewhere up in North Beach. Big place. Art and shit – but classy stuff – not like your jerk-off friend.”

“Is he old?” The question was inane, but the only thing that came to mind.

A burst of hard laughter. “Aren’t they always? Fuck, I don’t know. Like a dad, kinda – he ain’t all wrinkles or shit. Latino, I think. Speaks English good enough,
though.”

“Where does he get the money?” Pell’s words went with her hands, gently stroking the real flesh, the real skin of Arc’s untouched shoulder.

“Not as expensive as you might think. People will give lots for real meat.”

“Then he sells them?”

“I guess . . .” Her clicking sight glanced over Pell’s, then dropped down to her plump nipples. Casually, like touching something just to be assured of its texture, Arc stroked
warm fingers across, seemingly fascinated by the way Pell’s skin responded: areola raising, nipple tightening, lifting from the satin skin. “Doesn’t say, don’t
ask.”

“What does he do?”

Arc was quiet for a long time – so long that Pell thought that she’d tripped, fallen into a trap. As guilt rose over her pushing, her strident inquiries, Arc slowly started to speak:
“Just lets me in – calls me first, you know. Then lets me in. Big, fancy place. A catalog, magazine, TV kind of place – matching shit, you know. He just sits there, in this big
chair. Watches me as I come in –”

A cool chill between Pell’s legs – too hard fingers playing with the tangle of her pubic hair. She didn’t want to, but two of those fingers – much stronger than flesh
– pushed her thighs apart. She couldn’t tell if she was wet or not, didn’t feel anything except for a slight chilliness across her nipples, but guessed that since it was Arc down
there, she must have been.

“I take it off for him, you know. Just take it off. No strip or nothin’. Just take it all over and stand there. He’s dressed, you know – fancy suit. Expensive shit.
Doesn’t jack off or anything, just sits there and watches me. Doesn’t even sweat – bastard.”

Wet, yes – shockingly, embarrassingly wet, thinking of tall and lean Arc standing in front of her swarthy patron. Was his cock hard? Part of Pell wanted it to be – for him to be
visceral and primitive. Throbbing but too corked to take it out, to stroke it and thus show himself for the little monkey he really was. But she also wanted it to be flaccid, a soft dick in silk
boxers – the deep and impenetrable sexuality of the fetishist, the elaborate and methodical orchestrations of the truly fixated. Maybe his sexuality was in his touch, the way he ran
dark-complexioned fingers across corded, street-strong muscles, or – deeper, darker, and Pell got even more wet – not across skin but across alloys, plastics, servos: the fetish of
replacement, a chrome and metal hard-on for rebuilding, remaking.

“He just sits there and looks at me. Sometimes, I don’t know why, I get all wet – like I want him to jack off or something. Other times he’s just a john, you know? But he
doesn’t – jack off I mean. Christ, I don’t know if he even gets a boner –”

Wet, yes – Arc’s hard fingers sliding up and down her swollen cunt-lips, from hard clit to puckered asshole. A rhythmic stroking. Pell looked down at Arc’s own nipples, seeing
them hard, hard, hard – and hoped it still wasn’t from the cool air.

“He just watches me, you know. Looking at my hands, my legs, my face. Sometimes he moves his hand, you know, like this –”

Glistening with cunt-juice on three fingers, the hand came up, whispering along the stained sheets, to demonstrate: a model showing off this season’s line in artificial fingers, hands,
wrists, arms.

Then Arc smiled, bent down and kissed Pell again – a sweet kiss, with no bite, no hammering tongue. Just a match of lips – silk to silk. Again, as they kissed, exchanging hot
breaths, cool metal between Pell’s spread thighs, cool fingers in her too hot cunt.

“When he finds something he likes, something about me, he’ll hold his hand up and I’ll stop right there and just let him look. Then he’ll pay me and send me
away.”

The hand was cooler than before – almost chilled – and Pell put her legs together. But Arc was stronger, and pushed them apart – hard.

“Then he’ll get me back – in a day, sometimes a fuck longer. He’ll still be sitting there in that chair, still in a fucking suit. But this time he’ll have a box on
the table – some Japanese thing, wood and everything, you know. I’ll take the box and leave.”

Arc was playing with her asshole, ringing it with slick, cool metal fingers, tapping gently at her back door. Fear made Pell’s ears ring and she, for a moment, pushed herself further up
the bed, with the illusion of going for another sweet kiss – but really to escape the penetration. Arc met flesh with the back of her head, though, bent her down and pushed her – too
hard – towards her tight nipples, and at the same time pushed a single artificial finger inside Pell’s asshole.

“He’s got this doc, over in Chinatown. Private place. Real fancy. I just show up, right, and he does it. Real classy shit, even a fuckin’ mint on my pillow when I wake up.
Don’t even see the fuckin’ knife. Just go in, take a fuckin’ pill and wake up – a little more.”

Arc’s fingers pushed hard, deep into Pell’s asshole. There was a feeling like having to shit, a deep pushing sensation that matched Arc’s movements into herself.

“I just walk in there and that box is sitting there, waiting, for me. Nurses like fuckin’ geishas, pasty-faced and quiet as shit. Give me this little blue thing on a satin
pillow.”

How many fingers now? Hard to say, hard to focus. Words in Pell’s ear, Arc’s tight little nipple in her hungry sucking mouth, Arc’s cold metal fingers in her burning asshole.
The world was tight, complete – none of it, not one element, was the reason for the fire in her: the finger – or fingers – methodically fucking her asshole were cool, strong and
persistent in their in-out, in-out pumping; in her mouth, Arc’s nipple tasted of hot skin and salt, the roughness of the tight flesh like a delicious treat that she rolled around in her
savoring mouth; the words were strange, unusual and frightening – and this fear made it all the more wrong, all the more disturbing, all the more hot.

Arc moaned, a growling sound like something a jungle cat might make. Her flesh-and-blood hand stroked the back of Pell’s head, tangling itself in her hair. Sharp pulls as strands broke
under her passion were like gentle fireworks in Pell’s mind.

“Fuck . . . one time I didn’t zap out so quick. So I got up and looked in that box. Fuck –” Growl again. “– it was an arm, that time. Already had the hand.
Real pretty thing, all metal and smooth. Like jewelry, you know. Like fucking jewelry. Strong, yeah, and firm – lot better than skin.”

Two fingers, yes, Pell could feel them – and the fear of tearing, the fear of blood, made her clench down hard, a shitting clench that stopped Arc’s methodical fucking for only a
second, till she grabbed Pell’s hair and pulled her away from her so-sweet (really salty) priceless nipple. That shock, that cascade of pulling hair, the strain on her neck, released her
control and her asshole relaxed. Then three fingers in her asshole – yes, three . . .