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And Then No More of Thee and Me
By Vinnie Tesla

The door to his bedroom was ajar, but, maddeningly, not quite wide enough for her to pass through. Pushing herself through solid objects was still hard work, though she was getting better at it. The feeling of the heavy wood composite sliding inside her was intensely, indefinably uncomfortable, as if her entire body was one complaining funnybone. At one point she was seized with panic that she would be stuck there, unable to muster the strength to pull herself off in either direction.

Eventually, though, she made it inside the room. It looked just as she remembered. The pile of dirty clothes in one corner and the massive wooden dresser were vague, familiar shapes in the dark. A streetlight by the open window illuminated his nude, sleeping body. His torso looked pale; his cock lolled, a little swollen, against one bent thigh.

She shook her head, dazed with longing. *I don’t know what I miss more–sex or sleep* she said to herself.

After a moment’s hesitation, she climbed onto the bed and sprawled across him. Goosepimples rose on his arms as she pressed herself along his length. She kissed his cheeks, pressed her lips against his, and felt his breath pass through her. Then she lowered herself; tongued one nipple, which tightened just as it would have when she was alive. His cock twitched and slid along his thigh.

She slid down once more, ran her mouth over his cock, licked the head, loving its heat against her tongue, feeling its crinkled texture smooth as it continued to swell. She couldn’t take him into her mouth because she couldn’t lift his cock, but she continued to lap at it as it stiffened, encouraged by the faint undulations of his hips.

When his cock stood out, bouncing in the breeze through the window, she boldly pulled herself up on him, leaned forward, and sink herself onto him, feeling faint echoes of pleasure when he penetrated her.

He murmured and arched his hips for a moment, and her eyes filled with mist that she was able to do this with him, Then he rolled on his side, still asleep, moving through her insubstantial body though she remained in place, and began working his hips against the mattress.

“Death sucks,” she murmured aloud.

–
Vinnie Tesla is the author of the pornographic Steampunk farce The Erotofluidic Age. His short story “Ota Discovers Fire” recently won Circlet’s Fantastic Erotica Award.

Tags: microfiction, vinnie tesla

At the Temple of Healing
by T.C. Mill

The priest’s eyes were bright blue in the light of the oil lamp he had brought. Their focus never wavered as he inspected Alexis’s new arm.

“Can you move your fingers?” His voice was soft and clear, gentle yet impersonal. But his fingers ran over Alexis’s restored palm in a gesture more like a caress than a professional examination.

He’d been the same the day before, when he examined the broken remains of Alexis’s right hand and arm. Gentle and careful, with a hint of tenderness. He had peered so closely at the shattered bones that his breath ghosted over them like kisses. Alexis hadn’t minded the brief pain their touch brought.

Now Alexis thought of a motion, impulse shifting sluggishly from nerves to wires to clockwork, and then the metal fingers of his right arm closed over the priest’s hand.

The man’s breath caught, and then he smiled. “Very good.”

Alexis released him, but his hand didn’t move away.

“How do you feel?” the priest asked.

“Relieved, I guess. Grateful. This will change my life.” No longer a cripple, he could work again, painting the delicate patterns on the urns and amphora in his uncle’s pottery shop. He had always been so talented, fingers sure of every motion they made. “I’m good as new.”

“Really?”

Alexis looked down at the hand in his. He knew it was there, but even so he hardly felt it.

“What’s it like?” the priest asked gently.

Alexis raised the metal arm and pressed his palm to the priest’s cheek. He saw it there, silver against olive flesh, pressing hard enough to drive the color from the skin. He felt a distant warmth. “Like the world’s heaviest glove.”

“I understand.”

“Do you really?”

The priest sighed, then stood up. He parted his long robes and brought his left leg forward. It gleamed copper in the lamplight.

“Ah,” Alexis said.

The top seam of the leg ran along the man’s thigh. Alexis traced it with his living hand, felt warm skin beside hard metal plating, cool and polished smooth. The muscle jumped beneath his fingers, and the priest’s breath caught.

Alexis pushed the robe farther aside, revealing his erection. He looked up and met the bright blue eyes. After a moment, the priest nodded.

Alexis reached out and stroked his length from base to head with one metal finger. He hardened further, and even through the metal Alexis could feel the flush of blood, of heat. Slowly, carefully, he wrapped his fingers around the priest’s member and began to stroke it. His palm and fingers warmed from the contact with flesh, grew slick with a film of sweat so that they slid easier, faster. Alexis found himself smiling. So he had retained some skill with this hand, after all.

In moments the man’s hips rocked, thrusting into his hand. Alexis felt himself stiffening in response. Then warm fingers closed over his metal ones, and the priest stepped away from him. He stripped off his robe entirely, then removed Alexis’s tunic. Slowly, he knelt in his lap, metal and living legs straddling Alexis’s thighs. Raising his hand to his mouth, he moistened the palm thoroughly and gripped Alexis’s cock, slicking him.

Alexis grasped his hip to guide him down—his left hip, Alexis’s fingers running again over the metal plating of his leg.

“It’s all right,” the priest said.

At first Alexis thought he was being given permission, and indeed the way he traced the border between metal and flesh seemed to please the priest, even as they came together in a way that made lesser pleasures hard to puzzle out. But the blue eyes were boring into his, and a hand held his upper arm tightly as if its nail would dig into the steel. He felt the warmth of the touch.

“Yes,” he said, as metal and flesh moved together in a timeless pattern. “It’s all right.”

–

  T.C. Mill studies philosophy, watches too much BBC TV, and writes her next story on the world’s smallest netbook at home in a pleasant town in Wisconsin. Dreamspinner Press has published her fantasy novelette “After the War” and “A Spell of Passion or Fear,” a novella set in a steampunk version of Plato’s Republic. Her author’s website is tc-mill.com.  

Tags: microfiction, T.C. Mill

The Order of the Mantis

by Cèsar Sanchez Zapata

Greer always heard that shortly before death, a man’s life flashes before his eyes. He was not yet dead but, as doctors informed him, he was dying. It was just a matter of time. The cancer would not care that he was only thirty-five.

The night he found out, news channels reported a medical breakthrough which could mean the end of the P.M.A. outbreak. A pharmaceutical counteractant was being advanced through animal testing in hopes that this compound could avert further spread beyond quarantine.

The thought had percolated in Greer’s mind from the moment the doctor announced he had six months to live, but now he was convinced. He made the short trek to the river banks on foot, crossed over against the mighty currents, then slipped through the same breach in the palisade he’d used as a boy anxious to lose his virginity. It always seemed natural to him that the city’s prostitutes would gravitate to the other side of the wall. After all, what better protection could a sex worker hope for against mindless brutes, than a breed of woman whose very existence scared the wits out of all men?

Within minutes of penetrating the wall, Greer spotted a charming, little beauty sitting in a drinking hole where men typically sought the services of women. She wasn’t wearing an arm band. The prostitutes donned them to demonstrate they were not infected, but there was always a risk, logically. Not all carriers were beyond using deception in order to once more feel a man’s touch.

It was tragic, Greer thought; a girl so young, so delicate, relegated to this life, condemned to her unique version of hell.

Seemed like an eternity now, though it was closer to ten years, since scientists pronounced global populations had reached maximum sustainable yield. An evolutionary chromosomal mutation in women had resulted, aggravated with unlawful eugenic experimentation conducted by leading experts in obstetrics. What materialized was an unknown strand of polygenic disorder, colloquially titled by the press as the “Praying Mantis” Anomaly.

The rest of the world had watched in horror as male mortality rates steadily mounted.

“Hello, child,” Greer said to the young girl.

“No child,” she replied, promptly. “Eighteen years, hardly touched. No HIV, no AIDS. Real good price for this prize.”

It shocked Greer that she’d even contemplate the exchange of money, but he expected the disease had peculiar effects on their psyches. These younger ladies, especially, might not fully comprehend the magnitude of the compulsion, the demented craving that would consume their senses in the wake of orgasm.

Not his concern. He accepted her offer, and followed her through a short door carved from an aluminum plate, into a wide room with a filthy mattress at the center and lit by a single grimy bulb hanging from a string.

The government had always denied involvement, yet within three days of announcing the outbreak, military officials unveiled a fully-operational confinement quadrant designed to isolate all persons contaminated until a cure could be discovered. A decade later, more than seven hundred women were sequestered in what had rapidly deteriorated to a slum settlement unfit even for animals.

The young girl gestured for Greer to lie on his back on the mattress. He raised his hips to help her as she tugged off his pants then watched as she slowly undressed. She crawled on top of him, taking a firm hold of his prick. “You big, mister,” she said. “Biggest I ever saw.” He highly doubted that was true, but strangely enough, was grateful she’d bothered to lie. For a moment, she moved her petite hands up and down the skin, then unhesitatingly, adjusted herself and steered him inside her.

She felt and moved like a virgin, slow and cautious, but there was also something intimate about it; initially anyhow, something fresh like finding love. Before long, however, they were both panting, lightheaded with desire, and kissing brutally. She scratched at his chest, wild as a March hare, and he thought to himself with a sigh of relief, dear God, this is really it.

She howled whilst pushing feverishly against him, and with every passing second, he thrust up at her harder, plunging himself deeper, until he could hold it back no longer; his eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he poured his essence within. Her pussy still throbbed, her hips still moved lazily. He dropped his head back, sprawling on the bed, and whispered to the darkness that she’d been absolutely brilliant.

So it was. Suicide by prostitute.

He waited patiently for a long while, but nothing further happened. When finally he asked her how it usually progressed, she seemed genuinely perplexed. Did she wait until he’d fallen asleep before murdering him? No, no—not her, she promised, she wouldn’t do that. “It’s all right,” he said, soothing her trembling arms. His cock was still hard inside her. “You’ll be unable to control yourself. It’s an automatism, like narcolepsy. You won’t even remember the episode until you awaken, soaked in blood. It’s all right. Truly.”

Her eyes implored, as she swore to him she was not infected. But—you have no arm band, he countered. “My mother is tramp,” she responded, “but she wants me to be teacher. Won’t let me wear band, even as she starves. We need money, mister. We are dying.”

Once the realization sunk in, he buried his face in her breasts, weeping, soaking her flesh with the tears he’d suppressed at the hospital. For that moment at least, he was not alone. She squeezed him closely, her first ever customer, stroking the back of his head and humming a tender lullaby.

A small coterie of women crept from the shadows of the room, their eyes glowing like a horde of felines. Their prowl was hungry. No armbands. He felt the girl grip him tighter.

We are all dying, he thought. It is just a matter of time.

–

Cèsar Sanchez Zapata’s truest passion is conjuring prurient fantasies of erotic bliss, the dirtier the better. In recent years, he has had stories published in many different erotic anthologies, under a number of aliases.

Tags: Cèsar Sanchez Zapata, microfiction

Venus Inferno
by Gayle C. Straun

“I want to be your slave.”

She looked me up and down with piercing eyes, examining me, ready to toss me away unless I provided some amusement, and just maybe this was it. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, desperate not to be discarded and hoping that this desperation did not show—much.

“Why, exactly, do you want to be my slave?”

I gave her all the answers I knew. I told her that she was my Venus, my morning star, the distant fire in the sky that was the only planet I knew and wanted to know. My Venus, my goddess cruel and inspiring, the necessary choice of every Paris, every man, and but to be her fond worshipper for even a few brief seconds out of all eternity would be more than worth all the conquest of mortal empires I have achieved, all the destruction I have wrought upon countless lives. All this I told her, and more.

“But a slave? A true slave would do all that I command without a second thought—without even a first one. And you could never hope to achieve such perfection.”

“But we kings and despots are already slaves,” I retorted. “Always responding to the ambitions of princes and regents and wives, standing forever at the altar of sacrifice to be sliced open when our usefulness has ended.”

“How arrogant,” she hissed. “True slaves do not leave their name for posterity, either good or ill, but die anonymous deaths, live anonymous lives. You could no more imagine the life of a slave than you could the life of a worm. Unless….”

Oh, the oaths and promises that have been extracted in the face of that word, that “unless” and the space of silence lingering behind it like a wedding train dragging itself softly upon the ground. I, too, fell when that word was said. I, too, promised my life and more.

And she accepted.

Had I known then the mystical powers she possessed, would I have so easily offered myself to her fancy? She raised a commanding finger, as if bringing an offending hound to heel, and then said one word: “Down.”

There I reside now—down, no longer human as I remember it. On sunny days, I follow after her. I mimic her every step and sway. When she runs thin fingers through her hair, I do like to mine, my shape the very echo of hers. Always the slave, I crawl along below her, beneath her, a crisp and dark outline of her form on days when the sun hangs hotly in the sky, but vague and soft when clouds dampen its radiance. And when she ventures into her sacred glades, I follow along, shedding my borrowed clothing as she sheds hers down by the water’s edge, running my fingers through hair, across breasts, down into the tender folds of my borrowed sex as she dances circles around her swollen clit, as she plunges herself knuckles deep, deep, into her warm flesh. Should some stray mortal catches her eye, I follow her there, too. My shadow arms embrace the shadow of his body. My shadow lips merge and meld with the shadow of his mouth. My shadow self sinks upon the shadow of his erect cock, again and again, hips rocking and hands drawing circles around excited nipples.

When she comes, I follow her every movement. I arch my back. My arms go stiff. My mouth opens as she exhales her breathless moans, and my body collapses sweetly atop his. But I am a slave and do not share the treasure of her sensations. Sometimes, I think that she looks down at me, her shadow slave. Sometimes, I think that she even smiles at me, but I can never be sure.
Venus burns bright in her fancy. Venus infers nothing, imagines nothing, but takes whatever you will offer, lets you become exactly that which you wished. My hands are hers. My body is hers. My will is hers. But do I please her? I will never know, and it is not my place to ask.

–
Gayle C. Straun’s work has recently been featured in Like a Cunning Plan! and Like the Hand of Time.

Tags: gayle c. straun, microfiction

Awake in the Darkness
by Li Blaine

His heartbeat quickened as the lock fell to the ground and door creaked open. He raised his flame high, giving life to shadows in the depths of his holdfast. Water trickled down the cold cell walls, leaving puddles on the cracked stone floor. The straw that lined it was damp and rotten. His robe danced in the drafty air and he shivered as he stepped into the darkness.

He heard her before he saw her. The rhythmic breathing of the prisoner echoed against the stone and mixed with the haunting clatter of chains. Old tales filled his mind, as torchlight found her face; stories of harpies, wise-women, desire and dread. He did not know the truth, but bright green eyes reflected the flame’s flicker in the darkness. This woman wore chains—a steel collar that pulled when she moved—but that was her only mark of imprisonment. Her naked frame was perfect and pale without bruise or blemish. She stood tall, her lips were full, and her eyes watched him with a glint of curiosity, of amusement maybe, but not fear. She was beautiful but it was the softness that surprised. She did not have the look of a harlot and even less the look of a sorcerer.

“You seek me,” she said, stepping into the light. Her voice was a whisper.

He nodded as his words became thick in his throat. She moistened her lips, letting her brown curls fall across her breast and graze the tip of her budded nipple. Her body swayed ever so slightly, carelessly, like a trail of smoke. He swallowed.

“I have come—” he began.

“I know why you have come.” She spoke sweetly but her eyes narrowed. “You want pleasure. You wish to relive your every moment of passion. You want me to give you everything you desire.”

“Yes.”

She took a step back, closing her eyes. For a moment he thought she had refused him. As he moved toward the door, he tossed his torch to the ground. It hissed as it hit the stagnant water. He would have left but the skin on the back of his neck prickled. A wave of heat ran through him as he turned back to her. Her eyes snapped open and those bright green orbs burned in the darkness, brighter than any candle and hotter than any flame.

Her red-hot gaze moved over every inch of him; crawling down his neck as beads of sweat followed, and lingering over his shoulders before studying his trembling lips. Her hands never moved, and yet he could feel her touch with every glance. His chest tightened as he shrugged off his robes. Her lips curled into a smile as she trailed down his chest and across the soft flesh of his thigh. She stroked him gently with her stare as phantom fingertips teased the thickness between his legs. His face flushed as his body responded to her gift.

Her hips swayed to a beat he could not hear and he gasped as her imaginary grip tightened around him. She began to hum and he felt the weight of her voice wash over him like agony and desire. As he closed his eyes, the sensation deepened and he was drowning in her passion. He gasped but she continued. With every murmur his cock pulse. His legs trembled as she pushed him further. Her chest heaved with effort. Back and forth went her hips. Back and forth went her hands. It was only magic but his body didn’t care and his ragged breath kept time with hers. He squeezed his eyes tighter as his back arched and his fingers dug into his palms. Redness coloured his chest and cheeks and sweat dappled his skin as his body begged for release. His faced twisted in pleasure and pain…

And then he felt it, a simple kiss—the brush of thin lips on his own. He knew those lips. He loved them. His cock throbbed and tears tricked down his chin as the phantom tasted him. Her soft cheek pressed against him and for a moment she was real.

“Sarah…” he whispered into the darkness.

“It is time,” she said softly in a voice that wasn’t all her own.

His mind swam as reality and dreams collided. He dropped to his knees. She urged him to his back and straddled him, her sex wet and waiting as she lowered herself onto his swollen shaft. He groaned as she began to rock. Slowly. Gently. Sarah’s hands explored his chest; Sarah’s tongue parted his lips and filled his mouth. He dug his fingers into the cobbled floor as she quickened her pace. He could see her clearly—pale blonde hair, dark blue eyes. His hips worked with her, meeting her every motion. His need overwhelmed him. Panting, he threw back his head and she tightened as he drove towards ecstasy.

“Sarah,” He choked, his body quaking.

“I am yours,” she whispered back, kissing him hard. He would have stayed in that moment forever but his body betrayed him and the perfect agony of release pulled him from his illusion. His seed filled her and her wetness cover him. His body trembled. When he looked up, only the woman stared down at him. Her face was awe and sadness as she pulled away.

“Who was she?”

“My wife.” He slipped his robe back on and ran a hand through his sweat drenched hair.

“Then the gods were good.”

“Thank you.”

She nodded, her hips swayed as she slunk back into the shadows.

He locked the cell but hesitated, turning to her. “They say there is always a price for your comfort. What is mine?”

“She was your price, my lord. And your prize.”

He nodded. A light breeze caressed his neck and stroked his dampened cheeks. For a moment he felt fingers intertwined with his own. A sad smile graced his lips as the moment passed and he remembered the girl he loved.

–

Li Blaine is one of many names with the same voice, and dreams of telling you stories.

Tags: li blaine, microfiction

Jolilla’s Chamber
By Jax

Major Carter knew it was an honour. He had heard that only VIP guests were permitted to visit Supreme Leader Jolilla’s chamber to be entertained. He realised the lower ranking astronauts with him would not share his privilege – but what happened if he failed to please Jolilla? Would he and millions on Earth die simply because he came too quickly?

As he allowed the scantily clad lovelies to bathe him, he wondered if it was true that all the population of the planet were hermaphrodite. His eyes full of the servants’ full naked breasts, that seemed to bounce in time to the frantic drum beat, he wished he could touch one between the legs and find out. But it was strictly forbidden. He’d heard of the fate of Colonel Jakobs, and knew his honoured position would quickly change to that of a prisoner and he would also get fed to the monstrous one-eyed winged beast that was kept chained in the courtyard. No, it was better to wait and see.

Dressed in something resembling a kimono, he entered the ornate bedchamber and stifled the urge to sneeze. Such heady perfume, but in excess.

Servants disrobed him and he lay in readiness on the huge bed. Surely the servants weren’t going to stay? And the musicians too? How could he perform with an audience? What if he couldn’t perform?

Jolilla made a grand entrance. Long dark hair cascading onto an embroidered silk robe of an exquisite colour Carter had never seen on Earth. Such beauty made him gasp. Carter was sure that such a delightful creature was all woman.

To his relief, Jolilla clapped and the servants instantly scurried from the chamber, closing the mighty doors behind them. Carter heard the pipers and drummers playing on the other side of the door, and wondered if they’d risk peeping through the keyhole.

Jolilla climbed onto the bed beside him and permitted him to remove the heavy silk robe. Carter gazed in wonder at the pert breasts, milky skin…and gulped. Yes, it was true. Jolilla indeed had a penis and a vagina.

He would still only think of her as a woman. He was heterosexual, for Heavens’ sake! He was notorious for fucking his colleagues’ wives. He and his best friend Bob had only been experimenting as teens…

Carter caressed her breasts as he kissed her sensual mouth, feeling her penis rising just as his own was. Sucking her breasts, he ran his hands up the silken thighs and stroked the moist vagina. Encouraged by her moans, his fingers explored her hairless slit. Sliding one and then two fingers into her, he obeyed her telepathic command and began to lick her thick veined penis. The urgency of his own erection amazed him – he hadn’t sucked cock for twenty years, not since the camping trip with Bob. Alternating between chewing her glans and licking her scrotum, his fingers thrusting in and out of her vagina, he longed for relief.

Perhaps in response to his thoughts, she began frotting with him, her penis slightly larger than his, he noticed with some envy. Carter groaned at the sensation, his mind no longer closed. Yes, he wanted it – wasn’t that the real reason why he’d volunteered for the mission? Those in the know about Jolilla, probably admired his dedication to duty, a man prepared to do anything in the line of service, for promotion and yet another medal–but all he really wanted was to know if he still liked cock as much.

Silently telling him to lie back on the bed, Jolilla squat over him, lowering herself on to his phallus. Oh, so wonderfully tight. Jolilla rode his cock, her erection pointing straight at him. The musicians in the corridor played frenziedly.

As he came in the hungry pussy, Carter wondered if his sperm would impregnate his alien lover. Maybe he’d sire a new race! Panting with vaginal orgasm, Jolilla then knelt on his chest, her penis at his mouth. Carter craned his neck in order to suck. No inhibitions left, he gave furious head, sucking as hungrily as he had with Bob after smoking something, and Jolilla ejaculated seconds later.

As Carter obligingly swallowed the viscous fluid, remembering that Bob’s had been slightly saltier, Jolilla spoke aloud for the first time, ‘This communion has joined my people and yours. May we always love and never make war.’ She kissed him just once more and then her servants reappeared.

Nodding, Carter watched her disappear into the bathroom, servants and musicians following her. So that was it, just like that? She wasn’t going to attack Earth anymore! Licking his lips, he grinned and wondered just how his predecessors had failed. Well, his mission had succeeded: time to return to Earth. And, yes, it was time to visit a gay bar…

–
Jax lives in Plymouth, UK, where he works for the local theatre. Quite a few of his short stories and poems have been published in magazines, anthologies and ezines.

Tags: jax, microfiction

Witch
by Kannan Feng

The witches of the barrens rule over wild beasts. This is what people say, and it is both a truth and a lie.

When I was twenty, I went down to the deep ravines on the brightest night of the year, when the twin moons lit up like lanterns and threw deep shadows on the shifting sands. I could see each black branch, and I could see every head and horn and ear silhouetted against the deep blue sky.

They were men, and yet they were more than men that night. My sisters had told this to me, but I had not understood until I walked among them and found them masked in bone, in leather, and in wood.

I reached out my hand and found the sharp horns of Oryx, who towered above me and whose body was a column of fine and polished muscle. When I reached between his legs, I found him already hard and waiting. Behind me was the soft leather nose of Wolf, who panted in my ear and pushed his erection against my heavy buttocks.

I allowed their hands to bear me to the ground, and their tongues to caress every part of me, the slight curve of my breasts, the lushness of my lower lip, the tender places between my fingers. They fought for position, whining and howling and biting but turns, but it was sleek and sly Sand Cat who I found first between my legs, spreading me with his thin clever fingers and nudging his cock past lips that were already flush and damp with desire.

He entered me almost roughly, but I couldn’t think of it because someone else had begun to lap at my breasts, turning my nipples to hard berries, nearly black in the moonlight. I groaned and reached out blindly, grabbing at Hyena’s shoulder and leaving deep scratches.
“Witch,” he whispered and I smiled in the darkness, baring white teeth of my own.

When Sand Cat was done, he was followed by stout Boar and then beautiful Gazelle, who rained my face with kisses as sweet as date wine. I writhed and moaned under their skilled tongues and rolled over and over to allow their fingers inside, stretching me and oiling my channel when I grew dry.

I climaxed until it was nearly a pain, and by then the moons had set and there were only stars in the sky. I walked down to the water, the beasts of the barrens at my heels, and we passed by a drowsy young goatherd girl who watched me with wide and frightened eyes. I smiled and blessed her with ambition and strength; she would remember this night forever.

I bathed in the warm water and returned to their arms. It was slower this time, lazy and loving, and I sighed my pleasure instead of howling it as I had before.

They slipped away one by one in the early dawn light, and when I saw them next, they would wear their human faces.

I lay on my back the warming sand and watched the sky pale to pearl. Now I knew what it was to be a witch of the barrens and now I knew what it was to bring the beasts to heel.

–

Kannan Feng lives in a century-old building by an inland sea. Her current interests include old gods, turtle ships, and glaciers. She has also written the novellas Lord of Misrule and Under the Skin. Read more about Feng at www.kannanfeng.wordpress.com.

Tags: kannan feng, microfiction

I Am Sirius (Yellow)
By Gayle C. Straun

The smell of paint still permeated the narrow apartment, so Jenna opened the only window once she had flung down the bag of supplies. Rasmus followed her inside and sat down beside her on the mattress on the far end of the room. Casually, he began unbuttoning his shirt, and he was halfway down before she said, “You don’t believe in anything, do you?”

Without stopping, he said, “I helped you make these signs, didn’t I?”

Taped to the bookshelves that made this room that much narrower hung a variety of handmade signs, white poster board decorated with thick, righteous letters. A breeze coursing through the room briefly unsettled them, as if giving them a taste of the marches to come.

SIRIANS AND TERRANS UNITED
AGAiNST DOOMSDAY WEAPONS

Now he pulled off his shirt and threw it onto the floor with a flick of his wrist. His bare, pale chest glowed in the sunlight that dripped through the window, and he pulled her close and kissed her not tenderly, not shyly, but with open mouth and probing tongue that lit her body on fire.

THE BLOOD OF INNOCENTS
SHALL BE ON OUR HANDS

His hands lifted her shirt from her shoulders. Ever the liberated woman, she wore no bra underneath, and his thumbs circled the soft aubergine ringlets of her aureoles, which stood out like dark suns amid the light purple of her flesh. She arched her back just slightly, let herself issue a little grunt in place of the usual moan, before saying, “But you don’t care about the movement at all, even though it’s about saving your people.” Her eyes smoldered with an indignation the rest of her body did not reflect. “You just want to get into my pants.”

IF YOU WANT PEACE
PREPARE FOR PEACE
IF YOU WANT WAR
PREPARE FOR WAR

As if taking her last words as a suggestion, he unbuttoned her pants and pulled them off, and then her panties followed. The apartment air was filled with the aroma—and his eyes stayed fixed upon the dewy mouth—of her cunt as he struggled out of his own trousers. Then he was kneeling before her, between her parted legs, his cock standing stiff and erect and crowned with a little wet pearl. She raised herself to him as he drove into the folds of her flesh.

WHO IS MADE RICH
BY THIS WAR WITH EARTH?

He had her legs propped on his shoulders, held her tightly by the hips. She writhed with each stroke, each time he shot into her right up to the hilt, his balls smacking softly against her ass. And then she pulled him down on top of her, and her teeth bit into his ear—so unlike the pulled-back ears of her kind—and her fingernails raked lines of attack across the flesh of his back. She held onto him tightly as if struggling not to come, not to be obliterated in bliss, but under his ministrations she finally cried out with a mix of anger and release. He could feel the muscles of her cunt clench down upon him just as her nails dug once more into his back, and it sent him over the edge. He emptied himself into her in several spasms so powerful they almost hurt.

INTERSTELLAR WAR
IS A CRIME

“I think that I hate you,” she said when she had regained her breath. He lay beside her. “I think I hate all of you Terrans. You have no soul,” she said.”You don’t think with your heads. You think with your dicks. I don’t know why I’m still with you”

I AM SIRIUS TOO

He sat up, just as calm as before, and looked around the room, at all the signs that danced in the breeze, at all the books she had plied upon him to no effect, before saying, “The thinkers on both sides got us in this war. Would we be fighting if the men in charge followed their dicks instead of their bank accounts?”

I AM SIRIUS TOO

–
Gayle C. Straun’s work has recently been featured in Like a Cunning Plan! and Like the Hand of Time.

Tags: gayle c. straun, microfiction

 Dia de los Muertos,

by  Cèsar Sanchez Zapata

Viviana knocked the Jeep into fifth gear, as the sun descended over the Vallejo Mountains and the sea exhaled a breeze from Punta Raza, whipping her long, sable hair in a banner behind her head. Glancing at her watch, she stabbed her stiletto heel into the gas pedal and heaved past that point in the hillside where mahogany trees grow like bastions and the ocean is swallowed whole into the jungle.

She arrived at the cemetery shortly before dark.

From tiny curbside stalls at the market, vendors masked in calacas hawked a ghoulish selection of skulls made from chocolate or sesame seed candy. Families were regaling the night away beside tombstones, sharing memories, slugging tequila shots, and parading around with candles and ofrendas. They carried brooms, brushes, flowers, food of all sorts. They tidied and decorated the gravesites of their departed loved ones. Private altars adorned the graveyards, calaveras, marigolds, and mescal and jars of atole.

Viviana eased from her car unnoticed, walking across the length of the cemetery like a creeping shadow, or on this day, a spirit arisen from the dead to walk once more among mortals.

Guillermo’s tomb was at the farthest end, set well-apart from the rest as Viviana had requested. She cleared dust and soot off the stone tablet, setting down a single framed photograph of the two of them in easier times, attempting a kiss for the camera but laughing instead. Then on the grave she scattered petals from the orange marigold, which the old women believed helped souls find their way back.

Viviana peered around in the waning light, and when convinced she would not be disturbed, she removed her blouse as the sky turned black above her head. The evening air was cool and slick tickling across her bare chest. She kneeled beside Guillermo’s grave, and under her breath, for long minutes afterwards she mumbled prayers to guide him from the afterlife.

She bent forward, bracing herself on her forearms, knees locked, ass hitched high like a puta patiently waiting to be mounted. She brushed her lips on the base of the tombstone, a peppering of a kiss.

Suddenly, a sound came from behind her, not unlike a mocking jay’s whistle carried in the wind over dozens, if not hundreds, of miles. Viviana closed her eyes, whispering yet another prayer.

Even before she finished, he seized her on the ground, molding perfectly against her. His hands slipped around her waist—they were surprisingly warm, yet coarse as if sullied with sharp grains of dirt or the toothed edges of dried leaves. Slowly, so very slowly, he lowered the zipper on her slacks, tooth by tooth, leaving her sex and the fragrant dew clinging on its lips exposed to the elements. He slid her pants down around her thighs; his fingers, feeling like they were coiled in tight, spiral vines brushed between her legs, making her whimper.

“Guillermo, mi capitan…mi amor.”

He flipped her slowly around, but begged that she keep her eyes shut. He was not yet as he wanted her to see him, he said. His voice was labored, as if he’d traveled a long way to reach her.

She felt him spread her thighs, and bending forward, he took the tender mouth between his fingers, rubbing his now-smooth knuckles against her clit, and holding her fast as she writhed and purred from the pleasure. He feasted on her, famished yet charitable.
If only it could last forever.

“Ay, carajo! Dios mio!” she panted when the tip of his prick kissed her.

Her palm closed half around his pulsating erection. It was twined as his hands had been, but around it they were thicker like viboras, threadsnakes, stroking and pulling her apart. As she clung to the ground and ripped at the grass, he made love to her, wild as the spirits roam.

There had never been another lover like Guillermo, and she’d entertained a few in the decade since his death. He reached down and his fingers linked together over her soft, wet mound, teasing while he pummeled unrelenting.

Her moans seemed foreign even to her; unlocked from deep within, released only by the key he possessed. Then his thrusts became truly hectic, and she scratched her nails over his neck before violently sinking them into his shoulder blades when her orgasm ruptured through her body.

Abruptly, he slowed his pace, and she cried out, “Ni lo atrevas—don’t you dare!”

She was shuddering uncontrollably by then, somewhere between her second and third orgasm, sweating and panting just this side short of delirium.

He kissed her lovingly and obeyed her wish, gave her back what she desired, and then of course she impaled herself witlessly, until she’d tipped herself over the edge again into the abyss.

She opened her eyes finally when he instructed. He stood before her just as she remembered him; long, wavy hair tucked behind his sprightly ears, only slightly smudged with ground dirt. She recalled each ridge and rippling inch of the body she had spent many years exploring.

To the world, he’d been the youngest police chief in the history of Mexico City, only twenty-two at the time, an idealist combating the narcos overrunning the city. With her, though—he had always just been hers, the world and drug cartels be damned.

He kissed her forehead as he had on the eve of their honeymoon all those years back, when he promised she would never truly be without him.

“The police found him, Guillermo,” said Viviana, urgently, out of breath. “The man who shot you in the back is living high in la capital. We have to get to him before they do and he buys them all off. We must avenge your murder.”

He stroked her cheeks, and as he did, she felt his excitement, stubborn as a mule, press against the inside of her leg. All thought of vengeance evaporated.

“There’ll be time for that,” she said. “We have all night, mi amor.”

–

Cèsar Sanchez Zapata’s truest passion is conjuring prurient fantasies of erotic bliss, the dirtier the better. In recent years, he has had stories published in many different erotic anthologies, under a number of aliases.

Tags: Cèsar Sanchez Zapata, microfiction

Fresh out of Virgins
by Julie Cox

The men and women of the tiny village crowded around the platform where the Wise Woman spoke, a huddled mass of humanity in rough linens, wools, dust and fear. They watched her ascend the steps, stand before them, and speak. Her hands and voice shook, but her eyes were sharp and clear with fury and retribution.

“It is true,” she said, “the dragon and his priest come tomorrow.” A wave of murmurs swept through the crowd. “The oracle tells me they will come, and the priest will tell us to select a sacrifice for the dragon, a virgin of marrying age.”

Several people began to cry out at once. The Wise Woman whacked her cane upon the platform to regain their attention.

“They will come,” she cried, “but they will find no appropriate sacrifice. The dragon may yet choose to eat one of us, but we will not pick his meal. We will not be party to murder by offering up one of our own. If he takes one of us, he will do so against the will of the people, and it will not be a meal of his liking. You virgins – we cannot send you away – you wouldn’t get far in the mountains in the snow that still clings to the tops of the trails, and could he not just follow you there? We can’t hide you – where could you hide that a dragon could not sniff you out? So I give you this one curious command.” She smiled, toothy. “By tomorrow, if you are of age, don’t be virgins.”

A stunned silence fell over the crowd like a cloak, and as one they stared unblinking  Finally one fellow, known for his trickster soul, laughed and kissed his neighbor with great fanfare. She slapped him, but laughed too. Some cried out in protest, and the wise woman said she would speak to those with objections in private. In the meantime, the crowd scattered, each household retreating home for preparations.

A bonfire was lit and a feast was prepared. It consisted more of mead than of food, all the better for easing the nerves of the young things. Two fiddlers broke out their instruments, joined by a piper and a rotating cast on small drums. The villagers began to dance, to smile, to laugh  Two by two the unmarried stole away in the twilight to the tents set up around the square, then some time later would rejoin their fellows, flushed and alight from within.
There were a few who went through all in a rush and stole home, but the rest danced all night. Unfettered, they opened their bodies with joyful abandon, released and justified. They were under orders from the Wise Woman herself! It was a command. There were few who did not take up the opportunity to, for once in their lives, do exactly as they pleased, to whomever they pleased.

Three good girls pulled the blacksmith’s roguish son into a tent, and had him by turns on his back until he rolled all three of them off of him, and their shrieks of laughter summoned his friend to come to his aid. Into their late years these three would still smile at each other and recount the night they had shared those two dark, thrusting bodies.

The horseman’s youngest son sat alone on the edge of the light, watching and fretting. He felt hands upon his shoulders and looked up to see his closest companion, a thoughtful boy of few words who ran nearly wild. His friend said softly, “It doesn’t have to be a girl.” They kissed, and the wonder of another boy’s mouth upon his own made his heart sing and his body shake. They didn’t go to the tents, but to the barn and its drifts of hay, its smells of dust and leather and sweat. Before they went to war together, years later, they would go there again.

The weaver’s black-haired daughter found her future husband in the unlikely shape of the Wise Woman’s grandson. Try though he might, he could not shake the image of her hungry eyes above him, and he would ask for her hand within a month. Never was a pair so unexpected, nor so perfectly suited to each other, the secret sorcerer to the not so secret spellcaster.

By the morning there was not a single virgin of age in the village, but an exhausted crowd of still-tipsy, lust-sated young people wearing crooked grins and little else, even in the cold. They reluctantly dressed and met the rest of the village, still draped around each others’ shoulders. Hand in hand, they waited for the dragon.

The beast came, a glittery black creature with a crown of horns. He curled up near the remains of the fire while his priest argued with the Wise Woman.

“Go,” she said, “find a virgin of age if you can. There are none here.”

“None?” said the dragon.  He looked with his serpent-eyes into the massed crowd, and laughed, horrible and hot. With a demon smile he regarded the old woman.

“Well done, hag. It has been half an age since I was so amused with the cleverness of a human. However, I must have SOMETHING to eat.” His eyes flicked to his priest. “You’ll do.”
He picked up the screaming priest, tossed off the unpalatable robe, and gulped him down. Then up he rose, and started on the long road out of the village. He turned at the border and called back, “One question.”

“Yes?”

“What will you do with the babes in nine months?”

The Wise Woman straightened. “They will be our Dragon Children, and they will belong to us all, conceived in lust, and raised in love.”

And they were.
–

Julie Cox lives in Texas with her husband, children, and ever-expanding menagerie of animals on their farm. She runs a small online yarn business, teaches yarn spinning, and is the associate editor of Gearhearts magazine. She has numerous stories published with Circlet Press and elsewhere. For her full list of published works, see her website at www.lazypifarm.com.

Tags: julie cox, microfiction