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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781885865267 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Circlet Press, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 02/25/2015 |
| Pages: | 204 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x (h) x (d) |
Read an Excerpt
It's a sin, a crime, for me to be here, but I don't care. The machine room is dark and quiet, the lathes covered in shapeless, ghostly shrouds for the night. The air reeks of oil and metal filings. Somehow the burnt-metal stench remains in the smoky air beneath the distant roof trusses, even though the floor is spotless, the debris swept up carefully by the day-workers and disposed in the massive recycle hoppers. It's a familiar, life-long stink that permeates my being, and penetrates even my dreams.
Other nights there's a second shift here and a third following that, but this is the end of the work-week, and the workers are allowed a two-day free period. It's an old tradition, meaningless, like many of the other things we do. We march in lock step, our identical faces turned toward the future--and it's blank, completely empty to my eyes. Our lives are an endless progression of vacant days, punctuated by the free periods, spent in the identical gray coveralls, the identical gray cubicles. We stand in the chow line with our identical scarred metal trays waiting for bland, overcooked rice cakes and then a bland rest.
All but me. Why am I so different?
I shiver, touched by the cold fingers of the ventilation, and slide into the shadow of one of the machines. I huddle with my shoulder denting the gray shroud that covers it, watching a vagrant thread flutter in the wind from the vents high above. It's always cold here; the machines require it, prone to overheating, and human flesh has to compensate. The machines are more important, of course, the major capital expenditure for a factory enclave like this. Human flesh is always less valuable, more malleable, more easilyreplaced and repaired.
That's a cutting thought, and it reminds me what I'm risking here with such a determined sin. Just now I don't give a damn. The sweetness of this crime is what has showed me the sterility of my life here, the possibilities that might exist outside this enclave, outside the empty circle of work and the blank existence we live--something I'd never thought of before. Is that why this act is banned by the managers? Because it makes one think other forbidden thoughts? In a way I'm terrified of doing it, as I always am--but this has brought me a taste of joy, and so I come again to wait every seventh day-period, hiding in the shadows and shivering, thrilling, even though I hate the terror it raises in my breast--hoping she'll come.
I hear a faint scrape, the tiny echo of something living amid the cold silhouettes of the shop machines. I retreat deeper into the shadow, holding my breath. Objectively, I know this wouldn't foil a heat-seeking monitor, but hiding must be an instinct built into me, like the faster beating of my heart, the rush of blood to my belly and thighs--the pulsing of instant arousal.
I dare a quick intake of breath, slide one hand downward over my breasts and belly, down to the throbbing warmth of my vulva. The lips of my flesh are open, pressed tight against the twill of the coveralls, the seam cutting through the center over my clit. The light stroke of my fingers is delicious, exquisite. I lift my hand away, turn my head sharply against the drape of the hanging canopy, scenting like an animal after the interloper.
Another shadow darts between the machines, lithe and furtive, crouches a few feet away.
"Hist!" she says to the darkness.
"Here," I whisper in return.
She moves, and in a second she envelops me. Her body is warm in the frigid air of the shop. Her lips are soft and honey-sweet, and her hands run quickly downward, tracing the path mine took only seconds ago.
"God," I say, as she touches my clit.
"Shh," she says, and pushes me backward. The fabric cover gives behind me, slides over the metal, and then I'm semi-reclined, feeling the smooth base of the machine through the shroud against my back.
I don't have to see the face above me. It's my face, my almond eyes, my short-cropped dark hair. It's my rounded body beneath the sheath of heavy twill coveralls. The only difference between us is the number tattooed in the flesh of her wrist. But still we're separate individuals--and I want her with all of my being.
She jerks at the snaps of my clothing, and the twill gives over my breasts. Her fingers move quickly within the gap, sliding over the coldness of my skin, stroking the sweet hardness of my areolas, the sudden pointing as my nipples rise to meet her palms. I can't help but moan as her lips follow her hands downward, closing around the sharpness of my right nipple like burning fire.
Her clothing is open then, too, and her breasts are thrust into my own hands. They're generous globes with sweet, hard-pointed tips, and they swell and move as she arches above me, straddling my thigh, the tight curve of her belly faintly visible against the exit icons far beyond on the rear wall. Our legs are wound together, and I feel the animal heat of her crotch rubbing against me. The hard seam over my clit is almost painful now, tightened by her rubbing, and I shove her away abruptly, shrug the coveralls off over my shoulders, push them down from my sloping buttocks, kick my heavy boots away. I'm naked then, burning with need for her, reaching, no longer feeling the cold around us at all. She's naked as quickly as I am, and we slide down to curl in the nest of our clothing. We're clasped skin to skin, breast to breast, mouth to mouth, with nothing between us but heat and lust.
I can feel the moisture between her thighs with my hand, the coarse curl of her bush. I probe within its forest and find the hard ridge of her clitoris, the mirror of mine. Beyond it is a softness, a cavern waiting to swallow my exploring fingers. She moans with pleasure as I stab through into her, filling her emptiness, working my fingers back and forth.
Our love-making becomes more violent. Her sucking on my nipple is more amorous, her pelvis grinding hard against me, meeting the thrust of my hand. She abandons my breasts with her tongue, searching for my mouth instead, crushing my lips beneath hard kisses, her fingers working at my nipples now, pinching the flesh. With my free hand I stroke her, massaging her rounded hips, the soft flesh of her thighs. Her nipples slide across my chest as she moves above me, lubed by sweat, and she rubs them against my own, the identical points probing at one another. She groans then, speeding the rhythm, and suddenly tenses, frozen and transfixed above me. I feel the contractions of her orgasm close around my fingers then, and she sinks, gasping, rises again, and then falls a final time.
She rests for a second, and then she's searching for me again, knowing I'm not far behind her. Her hands slide down my body, over my breasts and belly, down to the hunger between my legs. She penetrates me in turn, her fingers forming into a thick rod that strokes the ache within me. The heel of her hand grinds into my throbbing clit, pushing my arousal to utmost. It's nearly more than I can stand. I'm quivering, groaning, thrusting against her hand. I kiss her mouth, her ear, her breast. Then she nips at me suddenly, her teeth sharp on my earlobe, and I'm gone. The convulsion rises and shakes me like an earthquake, an explosion of clitoral pleasure that runs to the tips of my toes and back again. It's electric. I contract beneath her, stifling a scream, and she tugs at my nipples with her teeth, thrusts more slowly, letting me ride it down.
Spent, we lie in one another's arms.
It's a while before we move. She raises her head finally, searching for the time display on the far wall.
"We have to go," she says.
"Yes," I say. I sigh one last time and roll over to see what damage we've done to our clothes.
There's a final rustle of cloth, the faint sound of snaps engaging. Her shadow leans toward me for a final honeyed kiss, and then she's gone, darting away as furtively as she came.
Later we'll disrobe for our rest between the sterile rows of bunks in the dormitory wards. She'll be lost among the identical faces, the identical bodies down the line--but somehow I'll always know where she is.
She's my self, my sister, my clone--only another worker here at Factory Enclave IV, grown anonymously in the vats. We're nothing but cogs in a composite machine, working for the collective good. We know nothing about life outside the enclave, have no future but work, but somehow we've found one another--and this thing between us--something to make life more than it was. Lying on my cot between the sleeping, silent forms, I stare into the darkness, wondering about the state of things outside.
What we're doing is called sex, and the managers say it's obscene for us to have it. Is it incest for me to love my sister-clone, or only masturbation? Dammit, I don't care. Even if they catch us, no one can take this ecstasy away from me.
But still it makes me wonder, what else are the managers hiding from us? Some day I mean to find out.