Qiuyue

“Fucking drive faster!”

“We’re retreating, not racing, Qiuyue,” Johnson spits back from the driver’s seat.

I snap back, “We have ranks, Private, and I’m pulling mine. Drive faster.”

I try to focus on the next step, and not on how far our position is from where Val’s hiding. The image of my wife cowering in our closet doesn’t care.

“Weren’t you a vent engineer before this?” some dipshit adds from the back of the gun truck, garbled by the hand over his face to block out the stench of dead algae – the byproduct of the horrible oxygenating bioreactors Viburnum has where a normal planet would have trees, which these inner city pigs clearly never had to deal with.

I check the seal on my respirator and the spare I keep at my hip. “Yeah and you bullied debt criminals for a living, so I guess we both came into this untrained, didn’t we!?” I snap. Shadows pass overhead in our direction – Affini shuttles, probably, despite their gargantuan size. We don’t have time for this shit.

The screw almost retorts, but the sound of the surface-to-air batteries cuts him off.

More shadows pass overhead. Craft of too many shapes and sizes to count fly overhead, some sleek with glowing underbellies, some much weirder, all seemingly undisturbed by the countermeasures and all with things dropping out of them.

No, not just things.

“Shit!” Johnson shouts. The truck swerves around a mess of foliage – a weed, eyes glowing and vines splayed from its landing like falling dozens of stories is an inconvenience.

“I thought they were supposed to work outside in and up!?” some crew cut shouts from the back, I don’t know or care who.

I shout back, “Oh no, the figurehead the suits put on the throne is a bad strategist, who could have seen that coming!” “We need stability,” they said, “just get behind the legal heir who already has a consensus,” they- fuck that’s our turn.

“Right turn, RIGHT TURN!”

Johnson cranks the wheel hard. The truck barely stays upright through the turn toward the city center. The wheels touch pavement again, and Johnson slams the gas.

“Next time try not to flip the truck!” I shout.

“Lady, I can go fast, or I can go slow, but for fuck’s sake pick one!”

“You go fast in a straightaway and slow down for a turn, it’s not jump physics!”

“Why aren’t they flying further in?” Some other crew cut asks. Crew cut number one starts firing the mounted gun up at a weed crawling along a building.

I clutch my carbine. Before I can answer, I spot a craft in the path of an artillery shell and brace for the pieces of it to crash right down over us. Impossibly, it lets the shell explode in its face, and is only knocked a dozen or so meters off course for the trouble.

“Fucking hell,” crew cut number two mutters from the back. Number two aims the mounted gun and fires at the probably-a-shuttle as though he didn’t watch it shrug off an artillery round. 

My attention is snapped straight ahead by the impossible, unmistakable sensation of the violation of spacetime. The ice sheets far in the distance bend up and around into a circle in the space above Hugo Tower – an Einstein ring, the corruption of a gravitational lens crowning the tower for a split second like a profane halo before a behemoth ship emerges from it.

The vessel looks like green roots dangling from a massive flower, positioned like a spider hanging on its thread.

The monstrosity lets out a horrible polyphonic wail, and then all the guns fall silent.

“What the fuck!?” shouts the crew cut behind the gun. I can hear it chewing through its ammunition, but the spray of gunfire winks out. I can’t see any shells in the air either. The number of shadows zipping along the ground explodes. I look up. Alien ships streak across the sky along the roadways trailing something pink and sparkling behind them.

“Left turn up ahead!” I shout, “We’re taking Via Tertia stellar eastbound out to the districts!”

“Why the fuck would we do that!?” someone shouts from the back. We have orders to help non-combatants down to the tunnels, my wife extremely included, but I wouldn’t expect the TCN larpers that kept the prison labor in line to give a shit about that.

“You wanna fight that thing instead!?” I shout back, pointing at the eldritch thing as a space craft briefly obscures it in pink haze, praying to whatever god will listen that they’re not stupid or gun horny enough to consider it. 

Johnson arcs the truck to the right, slowing down this time, then turns hard left. The wheels stay mostly on the ground this time.

Space bends in one, four, a dozen or more places along the skyline. Ships similar to but smaller than the one above Hugo Tower jump into the atmosphere to follow suit. Tentacles snake out from under their main bodies to penetrate building after building.

One of them floats over the road ahead of us.

I hear the clatter of multiple somethings hitting the truckbed, then a loud hiss. Something flies overhead trailing a shower of metallic-looking balls spewing out more of the pink gas.

I don’t have time to shout an order before I hear the crew cuts behind me slump down unconscious.

My hand flies to the spare mask at my hip.

Johnson shouts “What the fuck was-”

“Hold still!” I drag the respirator down over the idiot’s face and tighten the straps. The truck manages to keep all eight tires on the ground despite his flailing.

I look up as he recovers. There’s a weed gliding through the air above us with long pink structures streaming behind it like tail feathers, and ahead of us standing in an opening in one of the building-skewering roots is another one.

The first weed banks toward the buildings on the right.

The second one drops.

“Breaks, BREAKS!”

“The breaks won’t just-”

The xeno lands on the roof with a thud, then skitters down to the hood of the truck. Its blue-green vines are twisted into more than a half dozen thin, skewering legs, each dotted with metallic spheres pocked like hammered metal.

“Little ones, it’s very dangerous for you to be driving like this!” the thing says. “Why don’t you bring this truck to a stop so we can talk it out?”

I level the barrel of my carbine against the windshield.

“Jesus fuck-”

I ignore Johnson and squeeze the trigger.

The round fires. No bullet leaves the chamber.

Not even a muzzle flash for my trouble.

The thing taps the glass. “That was very dangerous, petal, we’re going to have to have a long discussion about safety once I’ve gotten you out of there.” It plunges several of its makeshift legs through the hood. “Don’t worry, I’m familiar with this model! I’ll have you out of there before you can say photosynthesis!”

“Gas pedal’s fucked!” Johnson shouts.

“There we go! And now for the brake system…”

I squeeze the trigger again and again. Nothing leaves the chamber.

I lurch forward as the truck suddenly starts decelerating.

“Aha!” the creature outside shouts. “Now, how about we get you both nice and calm?”

The metallic spheres all along its body light up.

I look away reflexively.

The truck’s horn blares, and out of the corner of my eye I see Johnson slumped over the wheel.

Fuck this.

I flick the safety on my gun and grip the door handle.

“Don’t be shy, little one! I would love to see your face~”

The truck slows enough for me to maybe land without getting smeared across the asphalt. Probably.

Good enough.

I check my knives, clutch my carbine, and throw open the door and jump. The truck falls away from me. I tuck and roll. My body stops moving after a moment, and I even managed not to snap my bones in half in the process.

I rise to my feet. The gliding affini from earlier drops down ahead of me.

Between me and the districts.

In my way.

“It’s alright petal, I promise I won’t hurt you,” it croons at me. It? She? Its voice is light and feminine, with subtler, quieter echoes in other registers. Its head looks abstractly humanoid, with long streams of small flowers like hair in dark cherry red dotted with light pink and two of those metal balls where its eyes should be.

I flick off the safety on my carbine.

“Ssh, it’s okay,” it croons. “That won’t work anyway, all you could do is hurt yourself.” It creeps closer, tail-like foliage gliding over the ground behind it. The similar red foliage around its torso opens like a coat, revealing squirming vines and the abstract suggestion of a feminine figure. Smaller pink petals ringing its “neck” like a fur cowl dance in the Viburnum wind.

The gun won’t work. If I sabotage it somehow, the explosion could distract it long enough- no, I don’t have time.

“I know you’re scared,” the creature says, “but I promise everything will be okay.”

She’s unarmored and doesn’t sound like a soldier, and plant flesh is still flesh. Maybe I can give her a bigger problem to worry about than me.

“Why don’t you put that toy down, cutie?”

I toss the gun away and keep my hand near my hip. All I need to do is hit her. It doesn’t matter where or how deeply.

“Very good!” she lilts. Two of her vines snap. “Now c’mere girl!”

That’s it.

I pull a knife from its sheathe and whip it at her.

Spacetime bends around it and swallows it whole.

I stare vacantly where the knife used to be.

I didn’t realize we were fighting gods.

“That wasn’t nice,” the affini says. “Petal, look at me.”

I raise my head. It’s too late when I realize my fuckup.

The affini’s tail plumage-foliage fans out behind it. Light flashes from veins and little dots woven into the feather-petal structures in time with its eyes.

I go blank.

The world comes back a moment later, and I’m already cradled in her vines. Something thick and slimy and dark wriggles against my lips. I open my mouth to curse the monster out. She takes the opportunity to slide the thing in.

“Shh, it’s okay little one, there there~”

I grab the thing with both hands and pull as hard as I can. My hands slip off a second later. It didn’t even budge.
“Oh, aren’t you a lively one~?”

The taste of viscous slime coats my tongue, sweet with a sourness underneath and sticky. I bite down on the weird tendril. It just squishes and oozes a thicker load of slime into my mouth.

“That’s a good girl, let my graft make you all~ll better~” 

Something about what she said makes me feel weird. I notice my vision swimming at the edges, and my eyes go wide. My hand flies to my other knife to plunge it into the thing. The blade glances off the tendril.

“Ow!”

I wince.

“That wasn’t very nice,” the creature says. The exaggerated frown on her alien face makes my spirits sink. A sourness blooms in my gut at the sight of it.

I raise the knife again and-

“OW!”

I wince before the blade even touches her. I lift the knife a third time, but even thinking about trying again somehow hurts.

A vine trails through my hair. “Poor thing,” the affini says, “you must be so scared. Don’t worry, whoever you end up with will take such good care of you.” She looks up. “Hm, I can’t have you nodding off just yet now can I?”

The “graft” slides out of my mouth dragging one end of a thick trail of slimy drool with it. Before I can get my wits about me, a mask of flower petals and clear membrane presses over my nose and mouth. Air blows against my face from the mask.

I tug on the mask and its connecting vine as hard as I can.

It doesn’t budge.

“I know it’s scary, but this is for your own good.”

As if to prove her right, I hear more canisters of pink gas hit the ground and hiss. The affini swats a few out of the air over us as the shuttle dropping them soars overhead. I hold my breath and keep tugging.

“Won’t you breathe in for me, petal?”

I feel a sourness in my gut and a pressure in my eyes until I comply. The air blowing over my face tastes sweet and makes my lungs tingle. A vine brushes down the back of my head, and the soft gentle pressure somehow overwhelms me.

I pull on the mask as hard as I can. The seal almost lifts from my face when vines shoot up to lash around my wrists and pull them down. I curse at the monster doing this to me.

The affini makes a clicking sound.

“Language~”

The sour feeling comes back, and I finally recognize it.

Guilt.

I feel guilty for upsetting her.

She pulls the mask off my face. “Would you be a dear and give me your name?”

“Fuck you,” I answer.

The affini deflates. “Flower, I promise I’m trying to help you.” She sounds disappointed, and it twists my guts. “Be a good girl and answer me?”

“Qiuyue.” Her disappointment and expectation pull out the answer by force. “Tso Qiuyue.”

She pulls a tablet out of her body. “Is that Viburnian Yue?”

I nod.

“Thank you, petal, good girl~”

Her words are a gut punch that erupts into a swarm of butterflies. Before I can process the feeling, the mask comes back down over my face. My eyes go wide and I thrash.

“Sssh ssh ssh, it’s okay petal~” she says as she taps on the tablet. “Oh, neither has…”

Her vines constrict tighter around me until I can barely struggle. Breath after breath of her poisoned air invades my lungs. The world feels brighter. I’m not more sensitive, but somehow every soft point of pressure on my body and every lick of the cool Viburnum wind across my face is a floodlight in my mind.

I’m not sure how many minutes go by like this, but the canisters eventually stop hissing, and the creature lifts the mask from my face. She turns her head to face me again.

“I have delightful news, little one! It looks like the one who gets to keep you is… me! Isn’t that wonderful?”

Her enthusiasm short circuits my brain for a moment and makes me double over from sheer euphoria. I feel sick.

“So!” she continues, “I’m going to bring you back to your nest to make sure you’re ship-shape before taking you home, but before that, I think we could use a little training!”

Val.

The affini lowers me down to the ground. If she drugs me into telling her where I live, where Valentina lives, she’ll do to Val what she’s doing to me. What she’s done to me. I know this monster would be upset if I ran, and the sour lump of anticipatory dread in my gut is already nearly incapacitating, but I resolve to do it. For her.

I run the moment the thing’s vines are off of me.

“Petal, please don’t run.”

I stop in my tracks.

Tears pool in the corners of my eyes. I will my legs to move, but even the thought of running further feels like committing murder.

“Be a sweetie and come back for me?” she says.

Agonizing guilt consumes me until I turn around. My feet carry me back to the creature. Her vines settle back over me and tilt my head to meet her eyes.

“I know this is hard, but it’s for your own good, little one. It won’t be long until the thought of disobeying me is just a bad memory.” She giggles. “I don’t know how some affini can drag this out over weeks.” She tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Now, would you please hand me that knife that’s still in your hand?”

My resistance lasts less than a second. I lift my hand and let her vines pry it open.

“Good girl~”

I shudder.

“Would you please pick that gun up off the ground and hand it to me?”

I squeeze my eyes shut. This can’t be happening. I crouch down and grab the thing, then turn it with the stock facing her for her to take.

“Goo~ood girl~”

She draws it out, and the lightning bolt of euphoria makes me squeeze my thighs together.

“Logistics, do you have my position?” She asks. I stand back up and try to think of something, anything to get out of this.

“Catch!”

She tosses the gun in the air. The familiar lensing of violence done to space time swallows it.

Oh.

I’m not getting out of this.

The creature puts the tip of a vine to her chin. “Hmm, what else could I have you do?” she asks, facing away from me. “You’re already disarmed. I need something as a reinforcement vector, but you’re already so docile. I’m afraid I might have overdone it on the C’s… oh, of course!”

She turns to look at me. Her face is alien, but through either convergent evolution or mimicry, its shape is familiar enough to send a message. The burning eyes. The cruel angle of her smirk.

When the volunteer militia scrambled in the morning, I was afraid I wouldn’t survive the day. Now, I’m terrified that I will.

“Would you be a dear and remove that coat for me, little one~?”

Every second my shell jacket stays on is a splinter in my heart. I carefully undo the buttons, then slide the piece off to expose my undershirt.

“And to think you put up such a struggle earlier. Such a good girl~”

I cringe and fight the impulse to curl my mouth into a smile. The familiar Viburnum wind blows against my bare arms. I’m not sure if I feel more exposed physically or emotionally right now. Even worse, there are clouds rolling in.

“You can go ahead and drop that down on the ground, petal. You won’t be needing it anymore.”

I let it slide off of my arm onto the cold ground and try to ignore the little tummy flutter that comes from knowing I pleased her.

“How about the top next?”

My eyes go wide. “Y-you can’t be serious!” I shout, and I loathe the way it sounds. No bite. No claws. Small.

“Oh, petal. I wouldn’t say I’m a terribly serious Owner, all things considered, but I would still like you to do as I ask.”

I feel her expectation as tingles of sinister corruption all along my arms and coiled around my heart. I slip my crude dog tags under my neckline, then pull off the undershirt in one quick motion. The least I can do is not give this thing a show.

The shirt lands in a heap by my shell jacket. I cross my arms and huddle for warmth. “There, happy now?” I ask.

“I am! I’m so proud of you, you’re doing such a good job~”

I slam my eyes shut and curl my toes to contain the overwhelming joy she’s poisoned me with.

“I think the pants should come next,” she says.

“Fuck you,” I mutter.

“Petal, that wasn’t very nice,” she says, the way one might lovingly scold a small child.

I wince. “I’m sorry,” my guilt says for me.

“Sweetest little flower,” she croons, “you will always have my forgiveness. This must be so scary for you! What matters is that we learn from our mistakes and do better next time. Now, would you like to try again~?”

I try to just do nothing, to neither fight nor obey. The sour guilt and disappointment bubble and grow until I feel like I might throw up from it. My hands fly to my belt to unfasten it. I take my pants by the waist and slide them down, then wriggle out of my socks and combat boots in the same motion, the way she told me to. I step back from the heap of clothing, and I’m not sure if the movement of my face is a grimace or a smile.

“You’re doing so well!” she says. My whole body reacts.

And then she just stands there, looking at me. Long seconds go by. Expectation seeps in like the Viburnum chill.

I shudder.

I wish I had the resolve to tell her to fuck off and die, or at least to make her say what she’s waiting for. The pattern is too obvious, though, and unspoken desire is still desire.

I slide the dog tag under my cheap sports bra, then slide it over my head and add it to the pile.

“Good girl,” she says, and the flood of euphoria is so much I wonder if it could physically hurt me. “And so much cuter without that horrible tactical gear on. Such a good, pretty girl~”

I bite my lip to stifle a sound. “You didn’t even give me a command that time,” I say. “I didn’t do anything.”

“But you did!” she says. “Oh, this probably feels dreadful from your perspective, but it really is for your own good. The thing I want most in the stars as your Owner is to make you happy, utterly and beyond measure, but I need your cooperation to make that happen. Do you see? I’m not interested in giving you orders to follow for the sake of it.”

Panic sinks its claws in me as I realize where she’s going with this.

“I’m not training you to follow orders, sweet thing. I’m training you not to need them~”

The first thought I have is of how good it would feel to take my boxers off for her. My eyes go wide.

“Oh, everbloom, how precious! I can already see the green buds of the sweet thing I’m going to help you become.”

I shove the thought down as hard as I can, but the seed is already planted. The math is obvious. I don’t want what this xeno wants for me, and I could never forgive myself for betraying Val even knowing I was coerced with drugs. Yet even the thought of displeasing the affini in front of me hurts me, even through inaction, and every second that passes makes the chemical euphoria of compliance harder to resist. I feel all these conflicting wants and needs tearing me apart, and I dread where the sum of their vectors leads.

“You’re so cute when you think like that~”

Her voice stirs something hot and sparkling in my gut. The disgusting, intoxicating feeling overpowers me and pulls me by a sickly sweet thread into the resultant vector of my desires.

My thumbs hook into my boxers’ waistband to tug them down. Some wretched spawn of the affini’s drugs and praise in the slimy back of my mind whispers sweetly to make a show of it, and the effort it takes to ignore it drives home how thoroughly I’ve lost.

These thoughts are as alien to me as the insidious thing that caused them. Never once have I derived joy or pleasure from subservience, not with my parents, not with my friends, and certainly not with any of the creeps who thought they could fuck me straight. But I know what submission looks like after so many days and nights with Val. If there’s a difference between that and what this creature has twisted me into feeling, it isn’t a meaningful one.

I step out of the boxers with one foot, then the other, and I tingle with honeyed dread knowing what comes next.

“Good floret~”

It’s all I can do not to collapse as her words lift the floodgate and drown me in reward chemicals. My body is electrified with joy, with gratitude, with pleasure that feels physical, a burning star behind my eyes, a glowing, bubbling heat in my gut, and a livewire running through my limbs and between my legs.

I pant. Tears form in the corners of my eyes. “I don’t want this,” I say, “Please, please I don’t want this.”

I feel a cold drop against my shoulder, and then another.

“Oh, I know,” she says, “but the worst part of any change is in the middle.” The scattered drops here and there become a cold shower. “I’m so sorry,” she continues, “I know it’s scary for you right now. But, you know? There’s going to be a moment when it gets to be so, so much that it overwhelms that part of you that clings to the way things were, and you’ll let go. It's going to be the most magical feeling in the world for you, and I’m not going to let you wait to feel it even a moment longer than you have to.”

The grey Viburnum sky opens up in earnest. The wind blows and the rain hisses. I shut my eyes and hug my naked self tighter for warmth.

“I think it’s about time I got you out of the cold, little one,” the creature says. “C’mere, girl.”

I look. Her vines have parted, and at least a dozen of them are outstretched like arms.

I take a step back. “No, please, I don’t want this, I just need-”

“Aren’t you cold, Qiuyue?” she asks. Her voice drips with concern that soaks into me like the cold rain. “Come nestle into my vines, Qiuyue.”

I take another step back. Anything but this.

“Aren’t you cold?”

I look down at the scattered heaps of clothing, already soaked through.

“Those won’t help you now,” she says, a sternness creeping into her voice. “Come.”

I squeeze out a tear, and then another, and then another. There’s no getting out of this.

I relent.

Her vines embrace me the second I’m in reach. She’s warm, and shockingly, concerningly soft. Even the humble comfort of a warm cocoon is dizzyingly blissful. One of her vines tilts my chin so that I’m looking into her eyes. I squirm, already knowing what’s coming.

“Good girl~”

I whimper under the onslaught of euphoria. Her praise carves into me and turns me inside out. Never before have I felt so needy or so comfort-seeking. The way she holds me makes me feel small, and it makes me feel safe, and the pleasure and the vulnerability of these alien feelings compound each other and pull me deeper and deeper into her corruption.

My downward spiral leaves me completely unprepared for what she says next.

“You know? I never did ask you for your address, did I?”

Cold dread washes over me.

“Oh, you poor thing, I must have startled you! Don't you worry one bit, I’ll play with you the whole way there! We’ll be there before you know it~”

I try not to let her enthusiasm buoy my spirits.

I’m not strong enough.

I’m so sorry Val.

Valentina

I don’t know if the screaming’s stopped, or if the rain is only blocking it out. I don’t know which one I want to be true either.

The sounds of missiles launching and cannons firing and guns popping disappeared hours ago. Maybe it was less than that. It feels like time is moving too fast and also not moving at all. I reflexively pick up my phone to check the time, then put it back down. Qiuyue told me to turn it off when she hid me. The news feeds never agreed on what specifically the affini want with us, but they all agreed it’s a lot more than just replacing the Accord, or even the Company. They want to take us, individually, for whatever insidious purpose motivates them.

And so I sit here with my phone off in our bedroom closet, alone but for unworn clothes and the handgun Qiuyue armed me with. All the little strands of my hair, carpeting the floor, contrasting and seemingly glowing against the copper skin of my arm, and clinging tightly to the unworn clothes around me, mine and Qiuyue’s both, are proof of the life we’ve made here. No one could mistake this hair as anyone else’s – Qiuyue’s, maybe, but there aren’t too many girls with wavy, dyed pink hair in the districts.

I hope she’s okay.

She isn’t a fighter either. She’s tougher than I am, but I remember the day she came home from militia training with guns – an assault rifle for her, and a handgun for me. She showed me how to use it after she calmed me down, and a couple of times after that she took me to practice at the range the Company’s enforcers used before the TCN took them in the Sack. She was a quicker study than I was, but even so she always looked at her rifle with the same expression as for spoiled food.

The apartment door opens. The shock alone feels like it could have killed me. I run through the evacuation plan Qiuyue taught me in case she’s here to-

“Oh, but you’ve made such a cozy little nest!”

The voice isn’t human.

It’s speaking Standard English, and it sounds feminine, but the timbre is all wrong.

“Ooo, is that an oil diffuser in the corner?”

It’s polyphonous, with softer voices in nearby registers subtly echoing the dominant one, and another quiet one preceding it.

“Where do you keep the water for it, little one?” the voice asks. A quiet moment goes by. “Aw, and you were doing so well a minute ago.”

Another voice answers that freezes my blood in my veins.

“I-in the pantry.”

It’s Qiuyue, but her voice sounds strained and distant. She sounds like me after a breakdown. I should do something. The thing clearly has her captive, and I have a weapon. I should do something.

“Oh, would you look at that!” Its excitement startles me. “It’s going to be some time before I can take you home. Maybe I should fix you some congee once we’re all done with our training. That’s commonly eaten here, isn’t it? Would you like that? A nice hot meal for a cold, rainy day?”

I try to find the courage to intervene, to drive the thing out of our home.

“Petal, I know you know how to address me.”

“I’m sorry,” Qiuyue squeaks, her voice smaller than I’ve ever heard it. “I would like that. Thank you, Mommy.”

My heart crashes through my stomach.

What did this monster do to her? Qiuyue’s not as invincible as she’d like me to think she is, but I’ve never heard her like this. I can’t imagine what horrible leverage the monster used on her, to say nothing of the title it’s forced her to address it with.

I jump when the bedroom door opens.

There are no footsteps, no soft thuds for me to track the xeno with. Instead, I hear what sounds like cloth or skin sliding against the carpet. The door clicks closed. Something passes by the crack between the two halves of the bifold door that separate me from the rest of the room. It settles onto the bed, and with the added distance I can better make it out.

It looks mostly red, with green vines spilling out from the bottom of its outer coat of layered red growths that look like a cross between feathers and the long and thin petals some flowers have. Its head is humanoid, though more iconographically than literally, with flower petal hair and a neck surrounded like a fancy collar by a bush of mixed red and pink flower petals. And parting the seam where its outer coat meets in the front is the back of a head of dark, soaking wet hair I’d recognize anywhere.

The coat parts. The vines on the inside are green too.

Especially the ones coiled possessively around my wife’s naked body.

“There, this is a much comfier venue for us to play in, don’t you agree?” It asks.

“Yes, Mommy,” Qiuyue whimpers.

The vines lower her into a straddling position and slide off her body. She shudders and gasps and makes herself small. I feel sick.

Vines stroke down Qiuyue’s back and milk more little whimpers from her. The creature pulls our aromatherapy diffuser out of its body and unscrews it. Another vine pulls out one of our metal drinking glasses and pours it into the water tray. It sets the glass on the nightstand by my side of our bed, then picks Qiuyue up. She gasps. 

Just pick up the gun, Val. Qiuyue can’t save you this time.

Its vines turn her to face away from its center, then hold the filled diffuser base in front of her. Her eyes are wide, scared, and unfocused. Smaller vines pry open her hand and place something in it, then close her fingers around it.

The creature wraps a vine around Qiuyue’s wrist and lowers its head to her ear. She forces her eyes shut.

“Now, I want you to drop these into the water. Can you do that for me, sweetie?”

“Yes, Mommy,” she whimpers.

The xeno lifts her hand over the diffuser base, then turns it over. Qiuyue opens her hand. A handful of little flowers and berries falls into the water.

“Good girl~”

Qiuyue shudders and makes an anguished sound – exhausted and afraid, but tinted with a quality I recognize from when she plays with me.

The creature screws the diffuser back together and sets it in Qiuyue’s hands. “Now, could you set this on that stand over in the corner, my little treasure,” it says, with a vine outstretched and pointing at the corner by the closet door.

Qiuyue nods.

“Ah ah, good florets verbalize their assent, petal~”

“Yes, Mommy,” she whines.

The vines let her go. Qiuyue’s hair is wet, and her eyes look like she’s cried a lot in the last hour, but her body is completely dry. Dry, but for the space between her legs.

What did it do to you!?

Qiuyue’s movements as she walks are slow and awkward, like she’s been wrung out. I feel around for the handgun by my phone. There might not be a better time than now, with Qiuyue out of danger. I just need to leap out of the closet, aim the gun, tell it I’ll shoot unless it leaves, and follow through if I have to.

The diffuser beeps on.

The moment passes.

Qiuyue stumbles back into the monster's vines, which pull her back into a straddling position.

“Good girl~”

Qiuyue whines and collapses into her captor. Vines stroke down her back and card through her hair, and every touch makes her quiver. The creature whispers down at her as it touches her, and every word seems to make her squirm. I know she hates this. Why isn’t she fighting back?

“You’re being so good for me~” the creature croons. “How about a treat for my good little girl?”

The alien pulls a bottle out of its chest. The sight of its vine plunging into its own body makes me queasy. A pair of our nice ceramic drinking bowls comes out next. I recognize the plain label on the clear bottle – it’s the gray market mijiu Quiyue got as a gift from the Geung family a few months ago after she helped fix their setup off the books. We were saving it for a toast, for after we survive the Affini invasion together. Something to look forward to.

The affini pops the lid off the bottle.

“You know, petal?” it asks as it fills one bowl, then the other. “On so many of the worlds we’ve liberated from your horrible Accord, the humans we’ve found have had traditions of celebrating meetings and greetings with alcohol, and some of them date all the way back to Terra itself. Is it true that it’s the case here on Viburnum too?”

“Sort of?” Qiuyue answers. She sounds so worn out and defeated.

“Well I think it’s a wonderful idea in any case,” the alien says, “and we affini have quite comparable attitudes about the role of intoxicants as social lubricants.” It raises one of the bowls to my wife’s face, out of sight. “Do you have a preferred toast, little one?”

Qiuyue shakes her head.

“Then allow me. A toast, to good health, and to a lifetime of happiness in my vines. ¡Salud!”

A vine taps Qiuyue’s cheek. Her head tips back, and then the empty bowl disappears into the creature’s body. She looks at the other bowl in the creature’s vines, still full. “You didn’t-”

“Oh, yes, silly me! We’ll have to do a proper version some night when I have some durataxin on vine. Ethyl alcohol rather disagrees with my physiology, you see. It would be such a shame to let even a drop of your neighbor’s gift to you go to waste though! Won’t you finish my drink for me, dear little one?”

“Fine…” Qiuyue quavers.

“Oh, before you do,” the creature says. The vines that compose its body part around a much thicker vine, dark grey in color and glistening under the time-sync’d LED lights in the ceiling. The sight of the thing makes Qiuyue flinch. The creature coils one of its other vines around the thick appendage and squeezes, then drags downward until a thick glob of its slimy coating drops into the bowl of mijiu. The weird vine slithers back where it came from while the smaller one stirs the drink. Only then does the creature lift the horrible concoction to drinking level.

“Ganbei~”

It taps my wife’s cheek again. She whimpers, but doesn’t even resist as it pours the tainted wine into her mouth. Her body looks so small against the affini’s.

The bowl drops away, and Qiuyue pants for air.

“Good girl~”

Qiuyue whines and crashes into the monster and seems to hang on for dear life.

“You’re doing so well for me, Qiuyue,” it continues, “so very well.”

“Please,” Qiuyue whines, “I don’t want this, please just let me go, I won’t fight back anymore, just please stop-”

The vines pull her in closer. She gasps.

“Oh petal, I know, I know,” the affini soothes. Its tone reminds me of my mother soothing me at the doctor’s office, when I was a small child and we still had a relationship. “It isn’t fair to expect a xenosophont to be so brave. You’re going to feel so much better on the other side of this, though, and I’m so excited for you, and so proud.”

She moans.

“But until then,” the monster continues, “you’ll just have to do it scared.” It strokes down her back. “Can you do that for me, sweetheart?”

Qiuyue answers with a wavering murmur. It isn’t a yes, but it isn’t a no.

“That’s my girl,” it coos. Qiuyue shakes. A vine tilts her head up. “Give Mommy a little kissie on the cheek?”

“What!?”

The thinly veiled order catches both of us off guard.

“That is how humans show affection, isn’t it?”

“Yeah…?”

“And don’t you want to show Mommy your affection?”

Qiuyue’s whole body tenses. She looks down and to the side, then she nods.

“Now petal…”

She tenses more. “Yes, Mommy.”

Of all the things this creature’s abuse of my wife evokes, the feeling it evokes most is the way she herself talks down to me during playtime. The affini is more saccharine than her, and more seductive than overtly domineering. It feels perverse to watch her succumb like this, intrusive, and like the violation of a natural law.

The affini bends down. Qiuyue leans up, hesitantly, timidly, and places a little peck on the xeno’s face.

I feel my breath quicken. This is wrong, I need to do something, I need to grow a fucking spine and do something. To confront the monster. All three or four meters of it, with all of its prehensile, twisting, grasping vines, vines so strong she can lift my wife like a cat.

Tears pool in my eyes.

“Could I have another?” The creature lilts. Qiuyue complies. Then it asks for another. And another. And another. My wife whimpers, or whines, or moans after each kiss, and each kiss comes with less hesitation, and each kiss lasts a moment longer. She starts to pant between kisses.

My heart beats faster in sympathy. I feel warm.

“How about one on the lips this time~?”

Qiuyue’s breath is heavy. “I’m- I can’t-”

The creature bends down anyway.

She barely flinches.

What was implied to be a peck on the lips reveals itself as something more lecherous. Her body relaxes, seemingly melts into her tormentor, and then she moans into the kiss.

My cheeks feel hot.

If I can’t work up the fucking stones to help her escape this, I should at least excuse myself, but I can’t even bring myself to do that.

A loud pop signals the end of the kiss. Qiuyue gasps for air, body unsteady.

Then her hips grind forward.

I remember the wetness between her legs.

Her hips buck again. She yelps and groans and strains trying not to move.

“My my, someone sure seems worked up~” the affini teases.

“No, no no this is wrong, I don’t want this, I don’t want this-”

“Please don’t lie to me, sweetie,” the alien interrupts. Qiuyue whines. It continues, “there’s no shame here, my precious, cherished little girl, only needs. And considering how many of the Class-C’s I’ve given you enhance sensation and heighten sexuality, and the aminocharisin on top of those…” it trails off, then whistles. “I would be surprised if you didn’t need this so badly. I suppose I should help you with that, huh?”

Qiuyue tries to push herself off of the affini. “No, no please don’t, please no-” Vines lash around her wrists. She yelps.

“I think I know a fun game we could play! I trust you’re familiar with the practice of edging?”

Her eyes fly open.

The vines turn her around, putting my wife on full display between the halves of the closet door. Her eyes are wild, unsure whether to seek or to flee, her tiger-eye brown irises barely visible around her blown out pupils. Her chest heaves with her panting breaths, and there’s a thin strand of drool on her cheek. And her cheeks are scarlet with humiliation, or desire, or both. Her halting, squirming, conflicted submission looks as foreign on her body and its slopes and curves as the vines do.

The vine around her right wrist weaves around her fingers and brings them down to her clit. She slams her eyes shut.

“I’ll get you started, and then I’ll let you take over, okay?” the affini asks. “No need to worry about telling me how close you are, or about when to stop and when to start again. All you need to do is what I tell you to. Aren’t things so much simpler that way~?”

It puppets my wife’s finger in a circle around her clit. She yelps, and her eyes open and stare at the floor. The affini uses her own hand to molest her, teasing her clit, tracing down between her lips, rubbing and massaging. Her hips buck. Her meek protests fade into the background of her whining, moaning, groaning, and crying. Her face switches from fear to overwhelm to bliss and back again.

I feel my own finger brush against my dick and startle. I don’t know how it got down there, but I’m almost as wet as Qiuyue is. I pull it out. This is wrong. This is wrong.

“I’m going to let you take over now, okay?” the affini asks. The vines around Qiuyue’s hand slip away.

Her hand slows down, momentarily, and her eyes focus fractionally more.

Then she shudders and rubs faster.

My wife cries out in her captivating voice, the voice that so many times has soothed me, reassured me, commanded me. Her eyes unfocus, her legs spread, and she leans back into the alien that’s stolen her from me.

My hand creeps back below my waist, and I don’t know what’s come over me, but I can’t help but follow suit. I trace a slow line down my cock and cover my mouth.

“I hate this, I hate this,” she repeats between pants and moans. A finger slips inside her, and she gasps.

“Oh I know, petal,” the affini behind her croons, “but you’re being so good for me.” The praise knocks the wind out of her, and she moves faster. The creature continues, “that said, that clearly can’t be the entire truth, considering the enthusiasm with which you’re doing this to yourself.”

“You’re a horrible pervert,” my wife whines as she touches herself, “you did this to me, I didn’t want this.”

“Is it really so perverse to help a sophont in need?” it asks. “My single greatest desire is health and happiness for you, and to see that no need of yours goes unmet, even those needs that arise from my help. If that makes me a pervert, then so be it. Though that reminds me…”

Vines slither over her body to touch her where her hands don’t, around her breast, around her neck, around her thighs and more.

“Humans of your hormonal makeup respond better to a multitude of touches, don’t you~?”

My wife’s keening cry is the only answer it gets. She loses all restraint.

“And stop!”

Qiuyue pulls her hand away from her pussy and pants, staring vacantly at the wall above the closet.

After a moment, the affini speaks up. “I’ve seen implanted florets more unruly than you, you know.” It pulls her hair back and hovers just above her face. “You should be proud of how well behaved you are for me, my floret, and how docile and obedient.”

She moans.

“Continue.”

Her hand flies back to her pussy. The creature leans down to take her in another kiss, and there’s no hesitation in her body when their lips meet.

I touch myself as the affini defiles the foundation of my life.

I don’t know why I’m doing this, or why I can’t stop. This is wrong, and what the affini is doing is wrong, and everything is wrong, but the honey sweet sound of Qiuyue’s coerced submission possesses me and moves me like a siren’s song. She’s so beautiful like this, and I’m so warm, and the room smells sweet like fruit and bitter like flowers and all of it overcomes me.

My other hand slides under my shirt to play with my tit. It’s like the creature said. Humans of her hormonal characteristics, and mine, need more than just to be touched between our legs. We need to be massaged, groped, squeezed, held.

Claimed.

The affini claims my wife, and I succumb to her spell as she falls deeper into the affini’s.

“And stop!”

Qiuyue obeys.

“Please,” she begs between panting breaths, “please stop, this is wrong, I have a- a-”

“Oh I’m well aware, little one. My notice of intent was for both of you after all.”

I freeze.

“Then- then you-”

“I’m not going to let something so simple as monogamous pair-bonding stop me from giving my little girl what she needs~” the affini says with a ravenous edge to its voice.

“But-”

“Continue,” it commands. Qiuyue’s voice betrays her inner conflict, but her lack of hesitation as she resumes her fingering betrays her desperation.

I can’t help but do the same. My fingers trace down my cock, then abandon it to press into the spot where it meets the base. Some trans girls are blessed with a dick that can still easily get hard when it needs to, but I wasn’t so lucky, and so instead I “finger” the base of my cock in time with my wife. 

“You don’t need to worry about silly things like that anymore,” the affini says. “All you need to want is what I want for you. Life is going to be so much easier for you once you let me in and accept that. I won’t suffer you to have even a single need unmet.”

“Val-” she breathes between moans.

“-is a need, of course,” the affini interrupts, “and I said not a single need will go unmet. That includes your pinnate. The position she holds in your life might have to change a bit, though, and yours in hers too.”

My heart hammers from fear at least as much as from whatever’s come over me. I try to keep my breathing under control. What gasps and breaths slip through, I hope they’re inaudible under the wails of my wife’s ruination.

“After all, it won’t be too very long until she has me to depend on, and then she won’t need you to be the sturdy pillar that supports her anymore.” It flicks Qiuyue’s nipple. She cries out and grinds harder against her hand. The creature goes on, “She’ll be so much better off with me to care for her, and so will you. As noble as it was to try, I’m unconvinced that it was good for you to be her sole support the way you were.”

“Leave her out of this!” Qiuyue shouts.

“Absolutely not,” the affini says, “I won’t even consider something so detrimental to your mutual wellbeing.”

“Please,” Qiuyue cries between grunts, shrinking under the affini’s scolding, “just take me, just don’t do this to her, don’t, please-”

“To take you away from her would shatter you,” it says, “and it would break her little heart too.”

It pauses for a beat.

“Wouldn’t it, Valentina?”

It looks right at me.

My blood turns to ice in my veins.

The world slows down, and something becomes clear to me.

There’s one thing the weed is right about. Qiuyue’s been a rock for me that I’ve never been able to be for her. This time, I need to be strong. For her.

I knock my phone aside and grab the gun, then stand on my feet and throw open the door and aim the thing at the ground, like Qiuyue taught me.

“Run!” I shout.

Her eyes are wide. “I- I can’t- I’m-”

“Be a good girl and wait outside the door, okay Qiuyue?” the affini says calmly. It sets her down. She backs away for a few paces, then runs out the door.

At least one of us will have made it.

I aim the gun directly at the affini’s center mass like I was taught and shove down my squirming horror at what I’m doing.

“Please put down the gun, petal,” it says. “I know how frightened you are, but it really doesn’t have to come to this.”

“You need to leave,” I say with as much confidence as I can muster. It isn’t much. My voice wavers. My hands are shaking, and one of them is still slick from before, but a gun is a gun.

“Little one, please, we both know you don’t want to do this. You inhaled quite a bit of that vapor.”

My stomach drops. I remember the flowers and berries.

Of course they were drugged.

“You get one more chance!” I shout. Icy terror creeps in as I realize I might have to follow through on the threat. I’ve never killed someone before, and despite everything, it’s hard for me not to see the alien invader as a person. Or maybe it’s because of everything.

“Your courage is very cute, little one, and noble too, but you’re only going to hurt yourself with that thing.”

I shut my eyes and pull the trigger.

Nothing happens.

“Look at me,” the affini says, and in my shock my eyes seek its own. I don’t think to ignore her until it’s too late.

Its eyes flash a sequence of colors.

The world fuzzes out for a moment.

I’m already in the affini’s vines when I come to my senses. She’s turned us both to face the bedroom door, and the gun is nowhere to be seen.

“It was very clever of you to disable your device this morning, you know. However, you turned it off in the exact place where you hid, and in shutting it off you broke a five month long uptime on a networked device with persistent communications with your world’s satellite positioning system, and that did defeat the purpose just a little.” It cards a vine through my hair. “It’s okay, though. I’m happy you made the choices you did. They brought you to me faster than the alternatives.”

I shove down the urge to thrash and scream and panic. If the affini distracts itself with me, then that’s more time for Qiuyue to run. Whatever happens to me, at least Qiuyue gets away, it’ll be worth it.

“Qiuyue, dear, could you come back in the room?”

The door opens.

She plods inside.

“Qiuyue, run, you have to run!”

She looks at me. “I- I can’t, I-”

“Look at me, petal.”

She does.

“On your knees.”

She drops down as though it hurt her to stand.

“Come.”

She stops, just for a moment. Her eyes slam closed. A tear rolls down her cheek.

She plants both hands on the floor, then crawls.

“No! Run! Please run! Ru-”

Something presses over my face in the shape of a respirator. Air flows in from the front. I kick and struggle and fight to shake it off me.

“Ssh, it’s okay little one, you don’t have to fight this.”

I scream for her to snap out of it and run, but my words drown in floral scented air. A few of the tears in my eyes roll down my cheek and trace the mask’s seam.

Qiuyue’s head is low, eyes down on the floor. Her pace is slow, halting, as though each step is a negotiation.

My wife crawls across the floor like an animal.

She reaches the foot of the bed and stops.

Her body tenses, as though bracing for an impact.

The affini behind me practically purrs.

“Good floret.”

Her lower body tenses,

she whimpers,

and then she convulses.

She cries out. Her legs shake violently. She grabs fistfuls of carpet, and then her legs give out entirely.

I watch my wife come from the alien’s praise.

When the orgasm passes, she’s on her side, fluid dripping down her leg and tears cascading down her face. She pulls herself back up, steadies herself, then stares daggers at the affini.

“I hate this!” she screams. She winces as she says it, but she powers through. “I hate this, and I hate you! Please, just let us go!”

“No.”

Qiuyue starts to sob.

“You deserve better than that. I won’t settle for anything less than everything that I can give you, and there’s no force in this universe that will stop me. And you’ll be so much happier once you accept that.”

Qiuyue meets the affini’s gaze. I thrash and kick and launch forward as hard as I can.

“Won’t you choose happiness?” the affini asks. “For me?”

Qiuyue’s eyes squeeze shut. She grabs more fistfuls of carpet, and then she wails.

Her tension leaves her as she cries.

Her screaming crying softens down to little sniffling sobs. She looks back up at the affini.

Her eyes look empty.

“Good girl~” the affini croons, and she whimpers completely unrestrained. “I told you it wouldn’t take long, didn’t I?”

Qiuyue chuckles between sobs. Then her eyes fall down to mine, and some of the tension creeps back into her.

“How about we get you up here, huh?” the affini says. It coils several vines around her and lifts her up onto the bed beside me. I turn to see her. She winces.

“I’m so sorry, Val,” she says with her wavering voice.

The affini turns my head back toward the door. “What do you have to be sorry for, my beloved?” it asks. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“But-”

“I know,” it interrupts, “the things that make social species so precious can also be such a burden sometimes. But little one, all you’ve done is choose happiness.” It pauses for a second and cards its vines through my hair, and it’s all I can do not to squirm from the overwhelming pleasure of it. “Can you do something for me, petal? I want you to close your eyes and imagine the Valentina that’s chosen happiness, like you. Do you see her?”

“Yes, Mommy.”

The way she says it twists my stomach in knots, and the glowing feeling that follows makes it impossible to pretend it only did that in a bad way.

“Imagine her easy smile. Relaxed. Care free. You’d think she’s never known the hardships she’s lived through. Now, open your eyes.”

It pauses.

“Don’t you want that for her?”

She sighs dreamily. “Yes, Mommy.”

“What a good girl you are!”

She moans.

“Go get her.”

The mask falls away from my face. Qiuyue instantly takes its place.

It’s like no kiss I’ve ever had with her. Not the chaste kiss of a vulnerable queer couple in public. Not the prideful kiss of a dominant playing with her food. It’s passionate and free, like the night I first took her strap, but more desperate. Ravenous. Violent. And whatever was in that mask makes me feel like I’ll burn up from the pleasure of it.

She pushes me into the affini behind me. Its vines coil around me and tease my body and light up my mind like only Qiuyue should be able to.

She breaks the kiss with a pop and looks up. A strand of drool hangs between us. I follow her gaze and spot the dark grey vine from earlier coming into view. More vines wrap around it, like before, and a thick glob of whatever goop is coating it falls into her waiting mouth. Vines tear my shirt off of me, and she looks into my eyes again.

“Qiuyue, please, don’t-”

She crashes her lips into mine while my mouth is open. The stuff in her mouth is thick and sticky, and it tastes sweet, with a sourness underneath it. I realize she probably doesn’t have the presence of mind to spit it out. As long as we’re both trapped like this, one of us is going to have to take the bullet. And I can’t stomach the idea of letting it be her.

I let her force the glob into my mouth.

She grabs my chin as she keeps kissing me. My heart burns as I start to fray at the edges. This shouldn’t feel as overwhelming as it does. There’s no intention to the way her mouth and body move, no structure, only hedonistic pleasure seeking. I don’t swallow, but the faint swimming at the edge of my vision tells me keeping it in my mouth might have been worse.

“Good girls,” the affini coos down at us, and her praise stokes something hot and unwelcome in me.

Qiuyue breaks the kiss and tilts my head up. The thick, grey vine hovers just above my lips.

“Won’t you open up for me?” the affini asks.

My lips part reflexively, and it slides between them and into my mouth. Qiuyue caresses my face as the affini violates me. I try to grab the vine and pull it out, but the drugged film it’s coated in is too slick for me to get a grip. It just sticks to my hands instead.

Desperate, I bite down.

“Ow!” the affini says. I feel horrible, like I just said something awful to my wife.

Oh no.

I bite down again and again.

“Ow!”

“OW!”

I try to go for a fourth, to do something to get this thing out of my mouth, but it feels like contemplating violence against a loved one. More tears cascade down my cheek, both from knowing what she’s done to me, and from even considering trying to stop it.

“You’re such a fast learner, aren’t you? Good girl~!”

Its praise is a blinding flash of pleasure.

I realize what it did to Qiuyue.

And she wasn’t in the districts when the invasion started. Her post was in the inner city.

She probably endured hours of this.

I don’t stand a chance.

“You know, your pinnate had a much harder time with this graft than you’re having. Qiuyue, flower, does your pinnate do this sort of thing often?”

She meets my gaze as the vine swishes around and slides deeper in. Her expression darkens, just for a moment. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, then opens them with that little bit of tension gone.

“Yes, Mommy, she likes it when I tie her up and make her choke on the long floppy toy I bought her for our anniversary to facefuck her with.”

The love and excitement in Qiuyue’s voice undercuts my cold dread.

“Is that so?” the affini asks with a lilt. “Can you be a good girl for Mommy and take more of my graft?”

My options are to let her down and feel like a horrible person for it, or to let it have its way and let the explosive pleasure of making her marginally happier sweep me away. One option is correct. Despite my protests, my empathy and submission choose the other.

My throat relaxes.

“What a good little girl you are!”

I whine. My chest tingles and my gut simmers in hot, gooey submission. The vine pushes further in, and it all gets worse.

Qiuyue lifts my right hand and starts to lick the poisonous slime off it. Her tongue licks slowly up my palm, then sucks one of my fingers and traces its edge down and then up to the next one. Even that shakes my mind like a mountain wind falling on trees.

The vine slides in and out, slowly, and not very far, but every push inward slides a little deeper than the last. I start to get hard.

Qiuyue switches to my other hand and makes quick work of it. The affini slides its horrible vine down deeper into my throat, then out, then back in, faster than before. It offers me words of praise every few seconds, it feels like, about how well behaved I am, about how cute I am, and about how proud she is of me. And without the use of my mouth, I can only whine and groan around her vine in response.

One of the affini’s smaller vines swipes up the part of the grey vine that I can see, right in the center of my vision beyond the growing swimmy borders, then dips out of my field of view. Qiuyue’s hand takes its place and gathers a thick glob of slime. Vines pull down my pants, something slithers over my thigh, then something wet and slimy presses against my ass.

I realize with horror where the vine went.

No, no, no please no!

I try to scream and cry and beg for it to stop, but all that escapes me is strained, gagged throat noises. The fact that the affini couldn’t hear me say ‘no’ comes as a relief.

The vine slides in. I cry around the thicker vine in my throat, then scream as I feel Qiuyue’s teeth bite down on my collar bone.

“Good girl, so good, you’re doing so well.”

The praise consumes me even more than the anal penetration. A tear rolls down my cheek. I’m so fucked.

The vine in my throat pushes deeper, the vine in my ass creeps inward, and Qiuyue’s slime-coated hand wraps around my cock, harder than it’s been since before the Sack. I scream as much as I can. I feel guilty for even asking them to stop, but I’m scared that what they’re doing might actually scar my brain. I can barely see through the visual hallucination, my body won’t stop squirming, and every drop of pleasure, every touch, every word, every penetration becomes a tsunami of blinding, ecstatic euphoria.

Qiuyue slides her hand slowly up and down my cock and plants little kisses along my body with little “I love you’s” whispered in between, and each impales me.

The grey vine pushes far enough into my throat that it finally decides to push back. The impotent gag reflex does nothing to repel the intruder, but it makes me clench around the vine in my ass, and that pushes me over a threshold.

“Oh, not yet, little one!”

Qiuyue lets go of me. The vine in my ass slips out. The vine in my throat slowly pulls up and out with a thick web of wobbling fluid still between us.

I pant. I can’t bring myself to beg for freedom.

“Only good girls get to come. Do you want to be a good girl, Valentina?”

She wants me to say ‘yes.’

I hate this, and I don’t want to answer, but she wants me to say ‘yes’ so badly.

More tears course down my face.

I nod.

“Do you know what good girls do?”

I say nothing.

“Good girls ask Mommy for permission, Valentina. Can you do that for me? Beg Mommy for permission to come.”

I only have one coherent thought in my head right now, and it’s for how fucking good it would feel to be given permission. I should be fighting, screaming, running, begging for mercy, or so many other things, but there isn’t room in my mind for any of it. My mouth starts to form the shapes. I strain as hard as I can not to succumb to the desire, mine and the alien’s both, and not to vocalize the words.

Desire wins.

“Please Mommy, please, please let me come, I want to be good for you, I want to be your good girl, please!”

The submission in my gut is molten.

The affini rumbles. “Good floret. Come.”

Her permission in that vulnerable moment shatters me.

I soar over the edge.

My world is light. I seize and clench and thrash and scream and cold fire surrounds me and lightning races under my skin and my heart hammers in my chest and in my ears and I can’t see or hear anything outside of my body or the feeling of it stretching and snapping and breaking as this pleasure I was not designed to feel sweeps me away, as my body snaps and cracks and splits apart for Her. 

I break.

The next coherent thought I have is of how bad my head hurts. I feel like I stretched and bent my body in ways it wasn’t meant to.

I realize what I just did.

And I don’t think I can take it back.

I want to. I want to so badly. This is wrong. But I know I can’t. To even suggest it would disappoint my captor and crush Qiuyue, and even ignoring that I don’t think I can live another day without the alien’s belittling praise.

It ruined me.

And I begged it to.

I look into the eyes of the woman I betrayed. Her irises are all but invisible around the black pools of her pupils. I watch the motion of light on her face, painted in colors of relief, of joy, of grief, and of love. A sob escapes me. She echoes it, colored warmly with relieved laughter. Our tears are in accord. If there was no way out of this, then at least the affini took us together.

I smile, and the last vestige of my spirit flickers out.

“Good girls, I’m so proud of both of you!” the affini squeals. We collapse into each other, and the surprise of falling, the relief of being caught, and the pleasure of my lover’s touch threaten to unmake me all over again.

“Now,” the affini starts, “I promised comfort food, and I intend to deliver. You two little ones stay here and don’t get into trouble. Can you do that for me?” It beams down at us, then slithers off of the bed and out of the room.

Qiuyue pulls my exhausted body down onto the bed. It’s warm, and she’s warm, and she’s so beautiful, and the way our hair contrasts makes me emotional, and I don’t think whatever the affini did to my pleasure center is going to wear off any time soon.

I look at the open doorway it left through. If we both ran, it could probably only catch one of us. We could both get away, if we were lucky. I know the evacuation plan by heart. We would see each other before simulated nightfall. We wouldn’t be separated.

That’s what I should want.

My wife pulls me into her chest. The sounds of dehydrated seafood sprinkling into a bowl and water running over rice soothe me and stir pleasant memories of times she cared for me.

Qiuyue doesn’t run.

I don’t either.