1-2. school daze
3. the maud couple
4. fake it 'til you make it
5. grannies gone wild
6. surf and/or turf
7. horse play
8. the parent map
9. non-compete clause
10. the break up breakdown
11. molt down
12. marks for effort
13.
the mean 614. a matter of principals
15. the hearth's warming club
16. friendship university
17. the end in friend
18. yakity-sax
19. on the road to friendship
20. the washouts (episode)
21. a rockhoof and a hard place
Spoilered: Questionable, corruption, mind stuff, horror
“Can I get a picture of you hard at work?” the guy asked. Without even thinking, Lexi struck a pose with her butt out, tail high, one arm crooked under her bust and the other on the register counter. CLICK “Thanks!” he said, beaming in satisfaction before practically running out of the shop. Lexi blinked and blushed, realizing she’d just become some guy’s special ‘inspiration’ and she hadn’t even thought to turn him down on the photo.
“Yeah, I didn’t have the number in my contacts,” Lexi said as she sipped her traditional lunch smoothie.
“Excuse me a moment, ladies. I need to get a drink,” Darius said uncharacteristically as he rose from the table. They watched him walk over to the barcade and get a small paper cup of something. Then he walked directly over to the restrooms and disappeared behind the baffle.
“What was that about?” Lexi asked.
“He’s got a hunch,” Selene said. “So anyway, are we still on for tonight?”
“Absolutely,” Lexi affirmed. “I managed to get the place… presentable-ish?”
“You know you don’t have to feel self-conscious around us, right?” Selene asked, taking Lexi’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “It’s not like I grew up having butlers and housekeepers. Hell, a little over a year ago I was surfing couches and doing ‘favors’ just to stay out of the cold. And you and Darius used to board together when you were gross, slovenly, awkward teens. Remember?” Lexi sighed. Of course she was right, they were just going to hang out. It’s not like she needed to entertain heads of state. “By the way, girl,” Selene said after they had chatted a bit longer. “Not that I mind, but you are aware you’re spreading while in a micro-skirt, right?”
Lexi looked down and clapped her thighs together in shock. Her face turned as red as a beet and she hoped nobody had been checking her out from across the food court. When Selene assured her there was nobody looking, she relaxed a little. Selene made a point of crossing her own legs demonstratively, and Lexi followed her example. Somehow, even that act felt like a titillating display. Then Darius came back, wiping his hands.
“Cleaning up a little graffiti,” he said.
“What was the drink for?” Lexi asked.
“Sharpies need alcohol or something like that to wipe off,” he said. “So I had to improvise.”
“Oh,” Lexi said as the implications fell into place. The conversation up to that point had been about people getting her number. “Oh… shit.” She sank into her chair as Selene continued stroking her hand to comfort her. Her phone pinged in her purse. Another number was sending boner pics now. They spent the remainder of lunch at a phone store getting her number changed, with a heads-up to Lexi’s mom before and after. ‘Too many spam calls,’ she explained.
“What?” Lexi asked.
“Nothing,” Selene said in a way that made it obvious there was actually quite a lot.
“She’s shipping us, bro-ho,” Darius explained. “She’s been doing it since we had our reunion the other week. ‘Lexi-ex-Darius OTP’ and all that. It even gets weird during sex.”
Selene cackled madly when Lexi blushed.
“You good, bro-ho?” Darius panted under her, giving her back a reassuring pat. Lexi kissed his chin, letting his well-cultivated curly stubble tickle her cheeks.
“Never better,” she replied languidly. She knew from her former life that Darius was spent for a good while, but as for herself Lexi was still feeling warmed up. So she was glad when Selene’s smooth little hands slide up her back and around her waist, pulling her backwards into the smaller girl’s embrace.
“I think my favorite part is the little tail twitch,” Selene whispered into Lexi’s ear, earning a cute little lip-bite from the unicorn girl. With help from the other two, Lexi carefully extracted herself from Darius, being sure not to pull the condom off in the process. It clung to his deflating member, wet and glistening, the little bulbous pocket at the tip heavy with his load. It was oddly gratifying to see. But now Lexi’s attention was drawn to the small hands caressing her oversized bosom, hefting them against the tug of gravity and rubbing them against each other to create delicious friction that tickled her nerve endings pleasantly. “C’mon, girl,” Selene said, punctuating her speech with smooches on Lexi’s neck and shoulders. “Let’s give our boy a half-time show.” Selene released her grip on Lexi’s breasts and reached back, before producing the rabbit-eared sex toy that had served her well just moments before. Lexi didn’t know her embers could be stoked back up so quickly.
She didn’t have to wait long before his abnormal silhouette emerged, a pocket of absolute black in the lesser darkness of the back rooms, with two glints leaping from his beady eyes as if to make their escape and be free of him forever. But they remained trapped, like two astronauts caught in the event horizon of cruel and greedy black holes, never to leave.
“Ye’r on time, good lassie,” he croaked. “Follow me. Got somethin’ ta show ya.”
“Yessir,” Lexi responded automatically, shuddering at how she couldn’t seem to stop saying that around him. Reluctantly, she followed as he led her through impossible passages that should never have been able to fit in the layout of the mall, let alone the store. Her heels clicked on the hard floor, making the only sounds as they passed, until her Creepy Boss spoke again.
“Gettin’ lotsa foot traffic lately,” he remarked. “Must be yer charms drawin’ ‘em in. How’s it make ya feel, lassie, ta be such a local ‘ttraction?”
“It’s really fudging annoying,” she said. Ah yes, the swear filter that somehow took over whenever she was in the shop. Even in the back rooms.
“Tha’ strikes me a mite hippo-criticul,” he replied with his amorphous accent. “Didn’t ya use’ ta drool over girlies of the sort ya are now?”
Lexi remembered her last few, vivid dreams. How it seemed like her fate was to become exactly the kind of fantasy girl she used to lust after when she was a guy named Alex. How several times she’d have visions of her body on display for others, feeding their lust, knowing in those fantasies that it was her purpose and she was fulfilling it. Her thoughts were interrupted when Creepy Boss spoke again.
“Didn’ ya always wish there were more girlies like tha’ in tha’ real world?”
“Yeah, well, fantasies are one thing but this…” she said, watching her head-sized tits bouncing as if on pneumatic suspension with each step they took. “This isn’t a fantasy.”
“Ah, ya never heard the ‘spression?” he chuckled as they approached a dead end… no, a closed steel door like the kind that sectioned off parts of a ship in war movies. “Ya gotta be the change ya wants ta see in tha world.” Before giving Lexi time to object, his meaty mitt slapped the handwheel with an ease that belied the momentum it imparted, spinning the locks free. He grabbed a handle and swung the steel door open, revealing a rough-hewn stone tunnel. Lexi was stunned; what was a tunnel doing on ground level? She hadn’t noticed them going down at any point during the walk. “Ladies ferst,” he said with a chuckle.
Trepidatiously, Lexi stepped over the threshold and into the rocky tunnel. She moved aside as Creepy Boss stepped through, occupying much of the area from floor to ceiling and wall-to-wall.
“Keep close, lass. There’s more here’n ya can guess at.” He then began walking on the dirty but generally smooth path, and Lexi trotted behind rather than be left alone in some underground hell maze. Now they really were moving downard, gradually ramping as the tunnel curved in a loose spiral. Every once in a while, a door similar to the one they’d come through indicated a hidden path branching off to one side, always the outside of the spiral. Its curve was tightening up. Finally, they came to a larger opening with a brick wall and several doors, all sealed shut. One was as large as the shipping bays on the service sides of the mall; one was a sort of hatch, intermediate in size; the other was a regular-sized door, again made of steel, with several bolts locking it securely. Creepy Boss’s stumpy paw made quick work of the various locks and he soon pulled the door to. On the other side was a strange purple-ish-but-also-not glow. He motioned for her to walk through and she could almost hear his raspy voice in her head, ‘Ladies ferst.’ Sighing, she did as he indicated and stepped out onto a steel catwalk. He followed behind and pulled the door shut.
“Where are we going?” Lexi asked, trying to suppress the rising sense of panic.
“Time ya larnt some other duties, lassie,” her improbably-shaped Creepy Boss said ominously. “Ya can’t live in tha kiddie nursery ferever, an’ ye’r already showin’ signs o’ growin’ ta yer other roles.”
“What the fuck does any of this have to do with a toy store?” she asked, surprised to find her weird speech filter seemingly disabled.
“This here’s just an interducshun ta more o’ the opper-ayshun,” Creepy Boss explained vaguely through his wiry white beard. “Taday ye’r just sayin’ ‘ello ta a fella co’orker, ya might say. Look o’er tha railin’, we should be ‘bout thar.”
Lexi absolutely did not want to look over the railing. But her resistance seemd to spark a counter-force of its own, a feeling… almost a gravitational surge pushing her forward. Reluctantly her heels click-clacked over to the edge of the platform. She touched the steel rail and was shocked at how warm it was; well above the rather chilly air in this pit or silo or whatever it was. She looked down and only saw the circular wall.
“Farther,” Creepy Boss said. Lexi’s head felt heavy, as if she couldn’t hold it up. It nodded down, taking her gaze about twenty feet lower. “Farther, lass,” Creepy Boss urged again. His words felt like a heavy hand on the back of her skull, almost forcing it to bend lower like a bullying victim being shoved into a toilet bowl back at boarding school. Down now about fifty feet, and there was something that wasn’t wall. Something that wasn’t solid.
A pallid, root-like thing clung to the wall of the pit, throbbing and pulsing as if it breathed or pumped fluids around inside itself. Definitely alive; too much life, she thought. Life kind of … all-at-once but not coordinated. The pulses and swellings didn’t seem to be related to each other, as if parts of the thing were operating without any regard for the other parts. Lexi watched as it sort of crawled around the confining wall, traveling with probing fingers ahead and trailing remnants peeling off in the rear as it progressed more like a slime mold than a tentacle across a wall. Her eyes followed its growth downward involuntarily. There were others just like it, fleshy ivy clinging to the walls even as they swept its surface. Further down still her view sank with the platform as it carried them closer and closer to the white, glistening flesh-vines that crawled aimlessly.
Lexi’s ears perked at a sound other than the rusty mechanical noise of their elevator platform. Whistling? Sort of… but tuneless, chaotic, changing pitch and timbre and color in constant flux. The platform clinked to a sudden halt, jerking Lexi away from the railing and whatever hypnotic power forced her to remain there previously.
“Ya hear it?” Creepy Boss asked. “It be pipin’. It knows we’re here. Take another look, lass. Down to tha very center.”
Try as she might, Lexi was powerless to stop herself from leaning over the warm railing again and forcing her eyes to scan past the flesh-vines, casting their gaze down into the center of the void. There wasn’t void down there, though. She saw a bubbling cauldron, a mud volcano, a coral reef, a sea anenome, all at once in the medium of ash-colored tissue. The fleshscape roiled below her, churning up blotches of dark and light tissues of unguessable functions that dissolved back into nothingness, jelly-like eyes that floated as if on convection currents and sank down again. Hollow towers of living matter grew, opened, and sucked or blew without rhyme or reason. A mouth… teeth… now mouthless again. Bulging bladders inflated with unknown fluids, then squeezed them somewhere else interior to the mass. Constant, tortuous motion afflicted everything about it like a cancer. The air shook madly as it blew mindless notes through a thousand pipes of all sizes.
Lexi didn’t even know her feet had left the floor and her body was teetering on the railing until Creepy Boss palmed her entire waist with one rough hand and pulled her back, letting her land rudely on the platform. He clicked another button on the panel, and the elevator began its return journey upwards. She was speechless, devastated, numb, and shaking.
“What the fuck is that?” she asked, her voice quavering.
“Raw materials,” Creepy Boss replied. “It supplyin’ what I need fer side bis’niss.”
“Why are you showing me this?” she asked, fearful of getting an answer but not knowing how else to deal with the explosion of horrified questions her brain was spawning by the second.
“Like I said afore, lass, yer role in this store be expandin’ soon. There’s parts o’ this commerce ya gonna get real famil’ar with.”
“Like hell!” Lexi spat out, as the very idea of ‘familiarizing’ herself with anything she’d seen repulsed her. “Fuck this job, I’m out!”
“Now now, lassie. Rem’mber ta be on yer Best Behavior, eh?” he said, turning to look her in the face.
“Fuck you, sir!” she said, disappointed by the unwelcome post script on her expression of rejection.
“Now there, lassie, I thought we talked ‘bout that insubordination? A shame, a real shame! Well,” he said, plucking something from some hidden pocket and gripping it in one of his thick talons. “Simon Says a job’s a job.”
The world around Lexi faded into obscurity. Yellow, green, red, and blue lights filled up her eyes and ears and nose and caressed her all over and even danced on her tongue, humming a merry tune for her about how a job is a job. They were right, of course, they couldn’t be otherwise.
Simon Said Lexi was a subordinate, reliable employee. It was good to have certainty about that; there’s no way Lexi could be anything other than a subordinate and reliable employee. Not even conceivable. Yellow, red, green, and blue lights sanctified the fact.