Ysis In May
Ysis needs to be sure the implant works. On her own in China, she will be in trouble if it does not.
The local television news channel is droning on in the background about some murders. All of women. Raped as well. The police are baffled. No traces of sperm. In other places and other times, Ysis might have been hired to track down the killer and remove the threat he posed to the community, but the Chinese authorities have contracted her for a quite different purpose.
The language implant they have given her is starting to function. She grasps the gist of what she hears, and practically all of what she sees written down.
Her attention is on the other wall screen in the hotel room, which is luxurious by her standards. She is flicking through the profiles of women offering themselves on ZhongLes – “China’s Website of the Year, 2037”, as it proclaims itself – for a face, or just an expression, that triggers something in her, offering her the hope that someone might strike a spark of empathy within her, a first step in reconciling Ysis with her own race - the human race. The pain after the language implant operation reminded Ysis in no uncertain terms that she was indeed flesh and blood, but her emotions feel locked away, in a place outside her reach. The few men who had reached those shores had not stayed to explore them, and the feelings they aroused have atrophied like unused muscles. Now Ysis intends to try women, or a woman if she strikes lucky first time.
Each of the women in the photos has something in their features that interests Ysis, but nothing that draws her instinctively. One of the messages catches her eye: “Tall blonde seeks Ice Maiden”. She likes the thought of herself as an ice maiden. If only.
The accompanying picture is of a Chinese woman in her late twenties with hair the colour of a Pacific beach, streaked with that of retreating surf. And piercing eyes. Ysis is not attracted, but feels more interest than in the others. Her eye falls on another ZhongLes self-promotional boast: “Feelings Never Experienced Before”.
Well, she thinks, if she doesn’t do anything for me, I can do something for her. She voices her details and sends an invitation.
After twenty minutes, when the weather forecast is heralding another fine, smog-free day, Ysis receives instructions for the date.
Two days later, Ysis arrives by taxi at the rendez-vous in the late afternoon. It is on the seaward edge of the metropolis. At the base of the newly constructed giant ferris wheel known as the Nüdong Eye is a Reception building. Banners above the entrance proclaim “Lala Happy Hours. Eye to Eye Romance. Ladies Only.”
Ysis’s lip curls. She wants to feel human, not a lady; though she is willing to feel a lady if it will make her feel human.
She goes in. An ordinary, middle-aged woman behind a counter in an ante-room reads her identity and takes her fee. On the wall behind the woman is a sponsor’s banner. This one announces that “Sappho Cola welcomes gay women who practise safe sex – make love responsibly!”
Ysis refuses the tag the receptionist proffers. She expects to be recognised. She is sporting the clothes she was asked to wear for the date. What is visible is a blue denim man’s shirt over a front-buttoned blue denim skirt short enough for it to look as though she is wearing just the shirt. And she is noticeably Western.
Ysis heads toward the main room. Inside, she accepts a drink from a young woman wearing a vintage Cathay Pacific air-hostess uniform, and surveys the crowd for a tall Chinese blonde in a cheongsam.
My God! There are dozens of them! OK, Chinese hair dye is the best in the world, but where have so many tall women come from suddenly? And when did cheongsams come back into fashion?
As Ysis approaches the nearest woman who matches the criteria, part of the front of the woman’s cheongsam turns transparent, to reveal two Chinese characters tattooed, or henna’d, on her navel. Ysis does not bother to read them, and veers away. The next tall blonde she approaches smiles appreciatively as she surveys Ysis from head to toe. Her companion, a short, round brunette, bestows a less approving stare on Ysis. Ysis gives this one a hard look, and she drops her eyes. The fabric of the cheongsam over the blonde’s right thigh flashes diaphanous, showing the name Bijou written there in roman letters. Ysis turns away, and the brunette starts talking animatedly to her companion. Indeed, everyone in the room is engaged in conversation with one or more people. Yet Ysis feels she is being looked at, called to.
She locates the source at the far end of the room, near the entrance to the Eye itself. The tall blonde gazing in her direction is wearing a green cheongsam. She does not smile as Ysis drifts toward her, but her gaze intensifies. As Ysis comes close, she strikes a pose, and the slit in her cheongsam widens to reveal the word ZhongLes fluorescing on her left thigh.
“You can lick it off,” she says when Ysis comes close. “It’s like me: sweet on the lips, warm on the tongue, and burning inside.”
If you say so, thinks Ysis.
“My name is Mei You-le. You may call me May.”
Ysis gives her own real name as the two of them clink glasses. She takes a sip of the drink. It is a decent Great Wall white. Ysis taps her tongue on her palate, enjoying its dry taste with hints of melon, then knocks back the rest of her glass, enjoying the cold sensation rushing down her throat, and waits for May to finish her drink. May circles the rim of the glass with her tongue, keeping her eyes fixed on Ysis’s. Ysis takes the glass from May’s hand and puts it on the nearest table.
“Shall we go?”
May nods her acquiescence. Ysis slips her arm inside May’s, takes her hand, which is warm, and leads her toward the entrance to the Eye. As they wait, May raises Ysis’s hand to her lips. When she lowers it, Ysis sees teeth marks on it.
When I bite you, babe, I’ll draw blood, she thinks.
Most of the women are still engrossed in conversation, so Ysis and May are among the first to be ushered into a cabin as an empty one completes its cycle.
The cabin contains a table with two chairs, and a Japanese-style futon bed on the mat-covered floor, in one corner of which there is a ceramic basin. A large jug of water stands next to it. On the table, there is a bowl of fruit, two highball glasses and a jar holding an amber liquid. Towels are piled on one of the chairs. The windows are darkened glass, but Ysis can see clearly through them. The view to the east is of the sea; in the other directions, the city surrounds them. She assumes the windows are one-way.
Ysis flips off her sandals as she enters, and slides her feet into the slippers set just inside the door. May, however, strides straight up to the table and deposits her bulky handbag on it. Only as an afterthought does she walk back towards Ysis and stop in front of her. Ysis hears a curious hiss as the enormous platform soles May is wearing deflate. She stifles an urge to laugh. May kicks off what remains of her bedraggled footwear and bends towards the slippers, but stops before she reaches them and strikes another pose, this time with her right leg bent and her left buttock straining against the satin of her cheongsam.
Ysis does not feel aroused, but she is determined to play willing. She moves to May and places her arms around her waist from behind. She presses her pubic area against the raised, tense buttock. Then she moves her own legs apart so that the hems of her shirt and the short mini-skirt underneath it ride up over her panties. She moves slightly off May, raises her own pubic bone, presses it into the top of May’s buttock, and lets it slide slowly down over the fabric. She herself feels only friction, but May gasps. Ysis repeats the motion. May bends further, unbalancing Ysis, who takes a step backwards. May puts on the slippers in front of her. As she rises, her hand follows the path that Ysis has taken on her cheongsam. She turns and faces Ysis. Her eyes are now at the same level as Ysis’s. She moves closer until Ysis feels May’s hard nipples pushing into her own soft breasts. May’s eyes are misty and the pupils are dilated. Ysis feels something stirring within her. She reaches her hands into May’s thick, dyed hair, grasps her neck and pulls the Chinese woman’s mouth onto hers. The lips are firm, like her own, but cooler. Ysis runs the tip of her tongue along fine teeth kept even by good, expensive dentistry, then across an alveolar ridge kept unnaturally smooth and satiny. No man’s mouth was ever like this, in Ysis’s experience. The tip of May’s tongue pokes the flesh at the base of Ysis’s and brings it down in a reflex on top of hers. Ysis feels the surface of May’s tongue rubbing back and forth under her own. The taste is of wine. Then May’s mouth fills with saliva. Ysis sucks at it, sucks at May’s tongue and swallows the saliva. She sends her tongue back over May’s, seeking more, but May pulls away.
“Some beginner!” says May. “After that, we need a drink.”
May glides to the table. She stands there, with her back to Ysis, trembling slightly as she fills the two glasses from the jug.
She is smiling as she brings the glasses over to Ysis and hands her one.
“The famous Eyeball,” she says. “Whisky, cola – Sappho Cola tonight, I guess – a secret ingredient or two, and a twist of lemon. Here’s to you.”
“To us.”
They each take a sip.
“Tastes pretty foul,” says Ysis.
“You think so? I suspect one of the secret ingredients is mao tai, firewater from Guizhou province. You know, the economic powerhouse of Western China. Made from millet.”
Ysis almost chokes on her second sip.
“Notorious for giving drinkers bad hangovers.”
“I’ve never had a hangover in my life.”
It does not taste of millet. It has a metallic taste which not even the Sappho Cola can disguise. It feels like metal shavings going down her throat as she swallows it. It does not go to Ysis’s head.
“You can finish the rest,” she says.
May, though, is not interested in drinking. She takes Ysis’s glass back with her own to the table. She senses that Ysis has followed her, turns and looks levelly into the Englishwoman’s eyes, unsmiling. She pushes Ysis hard in the chest, above her breasts.
Ysis takes a step back, the better to swing forward and punch the woman in front of her, but then controls herself and takes another step back, going along with the game, if it is a game.
May draws level and pushes Ysis again, harder. Ysis lets herself be propelled backwards, until her heel catches the edge of the futon, and she lets herself fall back onto the quilt, automatically spreading her arms to break the fall. She smiles at herself, then moves her legs as far apart as her skirt will permit and raises her knees. May approaches the bed, drops to her knees in front of Ysis, on the edge of the quilt. Ysis feels her firm, smooth hands on her feet. May eases off Ysis’s slippers. She caresses Ysis’s toes, her instep, her ankles, her calves, the backs of her knees. As her hands glide up the inside of her thighs, May twists her head and follows her right hand with her tongue, while her hair brushes the inside of Ysis’s left thigh. When they reach the top of the thighs, May’s hands press them further apart, and her whole mouth covers and pulls at the black cotton fabric it meets there. Ysis feels her body responding. She shivers.
May’s hands move up and slide under the thin fabric. They turn away from Ysis’s tangle of pubic hair and close over the elastic. Ysis stiffens. She likes to bare herself before a lover, but she has always been the one who removes her underwear.
Before she can react, she hears the sound of tearing, and feels what is left of her panties pulled out from under her. She sees May toss the fabric into a corner and lower her head over the patch they had covered. Ysis has rarely encountered someone who can match her for strength and speed of reaction. She wonders if she is losing her strength, but abandons the thought at the touch of May’s mouth on her labia. She loses all thought as May sucks up the fluid that Ysis’s arousal has produced, then dances her tongue around Ysis’s clitoris several times before sliding it down and flicking it inside her vagina.
Apart from the unnatural smoothness of the upper surface of the tongue moving against her vagina’s inner walls, Ysis finds it much the same as cunnilingus performed on her by men. The emotional tone, though, is different. There is something in the Chinese woman’s hunger for her that draws her closer to Ysis’s deeply-buried wells of emotion.
Ysis shifts her position slightly, the better to help May’s tongue and mouth continue their exploration. May, however, stops. She climbs to her knees, grabs the collar of Ysis’s shirt and pulls Ysis's mouth onto hers. When she slips her tongue inside and rubs it around the walls of her mouth as she had done inside Ysis’s vagina, Ysis tastes her own secretions as they mingle with May’s saliva.
Abruptly, May pulls away. She gets to her feet, strides to the table, opens her handbag and pulls from it a smaller bag made of white cloth. Ysis looks at her slim, supple body, still clothed in the cheongsam. It is similar to her own, though May has clearly exercised for aesthetic reasons as well as to build and conserve her strength.
May turns and approaches Ysis.
“What do you want to do?” Ysis asks her.
“I want to fuck you and then kill you.”
Clearly, the language implant has not yet calibrated itself properly.
“What?!”
“I want to taste what is deep inside you.”
Kill me if you can, thinks Ysis. Just make me feel human first.
“Whatever,” she says.
May returns to the futon. She places the white bag next to it and sits on the edge, looking at Ysis. Then she swivels and stretches her legs out next to Ysis, so that her thighs are next to Ysis’s face, so close to it that Ysis senses their warmth before she feels May’s left hand in the warmth and wetness between her own legs. Ysis arches her body as the skin between May’s thumb and forefinger flicks back and forth across her clitoris, then relaxes, trembling, as May’s hand moves back up her thigh to her raised knee. May brings her other hand to Ysis’s right knee, uses both hands to move Ysis’s knees and thighs wide apart. Her hair tickles Ysis’s navel, then her lips are on Ysis’s inner labia, the friction engorging them further before her tongue trips over her urethral opening before again tasting the inside of Ysis’s vagina.
All Ysis’s senses are concentrated between her legs. The nerves in her sex organs are sending signals to her brain that stop it thinking while her body shivers and shakes. Still, a core of her resists. Rational thought fights to regain the control it has always exercised. Self-discipline is not ready to give up the ghost.
Ysis clears her head as best she can. She feels the urge to give back to May, to mimic her movements and her moves, to set her shivering and shaking, too, but May’s slim legs are pressed together and Ysis is not sure she has the force or coordination to prise them apart.
May’s words when they met come back to her.
You can lick it off. It’s like me: sweet on the lips, warm on the tongue, and burning inside.
Ysis’s right hand finds the slit in May’s cheongsam and moves the fabric aside to reveal the word “ZhongLes”. It does look good enough to eat, as though etched there in icing sugar, white under pink. Ysis gently moves May’s mouth off her long enough to struggle into a position where she can place her own mouth over the word on May’s thigh. The first taste is indeed sweet, like icing sugar, though there is an underlying acidic tang. Ysis’s tongue slowly dissolves the pink coating, leaving the white layer underneath it standing out in relief against May’s pale skin, even paler than Ysis’s own.
Ysis feels May’s index finger slip into her vagina, where her tongue had been, sliding in more deeply than a tongue can. Restraining the urge to focus only on the movement inside her, Ysis manoeuvres her teeth under what is left of the word “ZhongLes” and lifts it away from May’s thigh. She closes her mouth over it and chews. It is warm as it dissolves on her tongue. May now has three fingers inside Ysis’s vagina. Ysis swallows. The aftertaste is hot on her throat. May’s fingers are slipping in and out of Ysis, calling for her attention. Ysis will not be distracted. She slides her left hand beneath the satin of May’s cheongsam and between her silky thighs. As she had intuited when the woman struck her poses, May is wearing no underwear, and she has shaved off her pubic hair completely. May’s free hand grabs Ysis’s wrist, restraining her. Ysis is starting to feel sleepy. She rests her head on May’s thigh, feeling the strong but smooth hand enveloping her wrist, and lets it pull her own hand free of May’s thighs. Then she pulls herself away from May’s legs, falls back on the quilt and concentrates on May’s fingerwork.
May’s fingers are probing the walls of Ysis’s vagina, seeking behind them the nerve endings of Ysis’s clitoris. Ysis feels warmth seeping up to meet the warmth seeping down through her stomach and belly. She relaxes and lets her senses dive into it.
Abruptly, the warmth recedes. May’s hand is no longer pleasuring Ysis. She looks for May, and sees her standing beside the table, rummaging in her white bag. Ysis lets her eyes close once more. May’s hand is back, but this time it slides between Ysis’s buttocks. Ysis feels a tingle of cold as May spreads lubricating gel around the rim of her anus. Then May’s finger is inside her anus, twisting to spread the lubricant inside. The finger burns her before the lubricant cools her. Ysis opens her eyes.
May is spreading lubricant over a dildo. Its shape is not anatomical. Instead, it is smooth and tapered, with what looks like the tip of a protruded tongue at the narrow end, and an oval platform at the base. It is transparent, and Ysis sees that it has a battery casing inside. Her eyes widen.
“Relax,” says May. She places the sex toy between Ysis’s buttocks and moves the tip around the rim of her anus. Ysis stiffens, involuntarily.
“Relax, girl! Just relax.”
With an effort, Ysis relaxes, and May immediately slides the dildo a little way into her anus. Ysis’s muscles contract and push the dildo out. She relaxes again, and May pushes it back in, further this time. Ysis’s muscles contract again, but this time they hold the dildo in place. Ysis gasps as the myriad nerve endings in her anal sphincter respond to the foreign body. She relaxes, contracts, relaxes, gradually gaining control over her own contractions. May slips the dildo in to its full extent, where it is held in place by the oval platform at the base, one end of which presses against Ysis’s coccyx; the other nestles onto her perineum.
Ysis’s concentration on these new sensations is diluted by the return of May’s mouth to her labia and her tongue to the surroundings of Ysis’s clitoris. Ysis grabs the back of May’s head, digs her fingers into the blonde hair and presses it to her as though to engulf her. Then the dildo starts vibrating, magnifying the sensations in Ysis’s anus and loosening her control over her muscle contractions. She lets go of May’s head and places her hands over her own eyes, as if to obliterate the sense of vision and its intrusion into the realm of touch.
May moves her head, covers the hood of Ysis’s engorged clitoris with the inside of her upper lip then slides her tongue back towards Ysis’s vagina. Ysis arches her back to draw it in, and feels her own self dissolving, dissolving into a new universe that consists entirely of May and bodily sensations.
Ysis inhabits this new universe for several minutes as the cabin climbs towards the zenith of the Eye’s circle. Then its nature changes. Ysis feels the dildo in her rear expanding, filling her even more fully. Its surface is rippling as well as vibrating. Ridges are forming, then receding or changing direction, enhancing her excitation as the lower end of it moves back and forth over the anal sphincter. Yet Ysis notices that an element is missing. She falls far enough back into the everyday universe to realise what it is: May has withdrawn.
Ysis is devastated. Despite the throbbing dildo flooding her brain with pre-orgasmic tension, she feels alone, bereft.
Ysis wants to feel May’s hair in her hands again; wants to feel May’s head between her thighs; wants to feel May’s tongue teasing her clitoris; wants to feel May’s fingers in her vagina, probing and pushing and pressing its wall against the dildo vibrating in her anus. She wants May to feel part of her. She wants! At last, she wants.
Ysis opens her eyes in search of the woman who is the source of this joyous despair. She desperately wants May to come back and bring her to the ecstasy and release of orgasm, to help Ysis then do the same for her.
Ysis sees May standing by the table, her cheongsam askew but unshed, a remote control for the vibrator in one hand. May looks drugged. In her other hand, she holds a knife. It looks like an item in a Cosplay collection, but Ysis’s practised eye can tell that the blade is sharp metal.
The base of the dildo must have detached. Ysis can feel its tongue-like point worming its way more deeply into her rectum.
Ysis is finding it hard to focus, difficult to move. Even her words come slowly.
“May, you don’t need to coerce me. I’m here of my own free will. Whatever you want to do, we’ll do. I’ll do anything. Willingly.”
Ysis shuts her eyes.
Did May spike my drink? Was there something in the symbol I licked off her thigh? Why couldn’t she just trust me?
The dildo expands even further, and the feeling has become uncomfortable. Its ridges are no longer round and smooth but uneven, sharp. Ysis feels a trickle of warm liquid on the back of her thighs. She realises she has to act, but she cannot raise herself. Instead, she reaches her right hand inside her shirt and moves the nail of her index finger over the pad implanted in the flesh of her left shoulder. At the same time, she tries to concentrate her mind so that her brain-waves allow the sending of the alarm message. It is as hard to focus her mind as it is to focus her vision. In any case, how can her protectors react to the message in time to save her? And what is there to save her for?
Ysis opens her eyes again.
May is standing over her. She has abandoned the remote control but still holds her ornate, curved knife. She does not even look at Ysis when she speaks to her.
“I’m going to remove your breast cancer.”
“I haven’t got breast cancer.”
“Let’s just take a look, shall we?”
“I’ve got heart cancer. Soul cancer.”
“I’ll deal with those later.”
“I’m nobody’s victim. Let me live. I want to live. I want you to live.”
The word victim triggers memories that Ysis fails to bring to the surface. The pain from her anus is becoming too much to bear, even for her. She thinks her insides are going to explode. She feels a new acute pain, just below her hand, where the knife has pierced the skin of her chest. It is moving slowly towards her left breast. It hurts, badly.
Ysis gains a moment of respite as May steps back to admire her handiwork.
Ysis sees blood on her own chest. She feels more blood seeping onto her bottom and her thighs. Then she is covered in blood from head to toe. May is out of her line of vision. The near silence of the slowly revolving ferris wheel has been broken: the cabin’s glass windows have shattered and shards add new sources of pain to Ysis’s torn body.
The cabin is no longer moving. There are more people inside it. The pain inside Ysis stops getting worse. Two men are standing over Ysis.
“Nice show!” says one of them.
They are armed with laser-guided pistols. They have jet-packs on their backs. The front of their uniforms bears the legend Special Attack Squad China.
“How –?” asks Ysis, with an effort.
“We were tracking you,” he answers.
The other one is visually assessing Ysis’s condition.
“We’ll get you to hospital,” he says without emotion. “Just remember that your contract has an expiry date. With very severe penalties if you fail to complete the job you have agreed to do. And this isn’t that job.”
“May?” asks Ysis, although she knows the answer. She struggles to sit upright, and succeeds. May’s body is on the far side of the cabin. There is a hole in the head and several wounds in the torso, but her face bears an undeniable expression of scorn.
For the first time, Ysis becomes aware of the sound of the helicopter hovering near the motionless cabin. She turns in its direction and meets the stares of the pilot and the sniper sitting next to him, then turns away. The two men beside her are preparing a stretcher and harness for her. Her head is swimming. She pushes herself off the quilt and on to the floor. She crawls across it, every movement adding to her agony. She reaches May and looks at her torturer for long seconds. Then Ysis places her burning mouth on May’s cold lips and plunges into unconsciousness.
[end]