Wild Dolls

Thus I was leashed, and found myself brought to an artificial garden, a mossy grotto lit by warm sunlight filtered and refracted by rippling water. The room was a drum on its side more than ten strides in any dimension, with two walls that sloped up and two walls that were disks, the ends of the drum. The thick moss carpeting the ground was soft and deep beneath my bare toes. But the water itself was what demanded the eye. One of the walls was a rippling circular pool of water, suspended there as if the wall were a floor I floated above, and at any moment my body would realize, and I would fall into that pool.

Bright sun-colored lamps shone through the strange pool-wall. At the pool's center, another of the mother's daughters floated, palms and breasts just brushed the surface but her intense gaze was from behind the pool's surface.

The mother said, "This is the youngest of my three daughters, and the wisest. Or perhaps the most shy. Today then is either her reward or her cure, for today will be her zeroth birthday."

Her words did not register at first. I had recognized this doll. She was the first that I had seen in space; the doll that I had thought drowned and floating in the liquid tubes that threaded the ship.

"What does that mean," I asked.

"The day she is truly born, and her age is zero." Mother sensed I was still confused and continued. "She has never left the amniotic fluid of the womb. Rather she has pestered me endlessly to extend its reach ever further through the station. Much of the time she has shunned even that much physicality, swimming instead in the oceans of thought."

The mother stepped forward to brush the water's surface lovingly. "I admit I have spoilt her. Yet today she comes of age."

Drawing in the white silk in her hands, the mother pulled me closer to the watery wall, against my struggles. She raised my wrists above my head by the silk that bound them. Though my heels were lifted from the very ground and only my toes clutched at the mossy surface, her soft slim outstretched arm that bore the most part of my weight betrayed no sign of effort. Thus she presented me to her unborn daughter.

My naked chest was exposed to Youngest's gaze, and to Mother's stroking nails.

The youngest stared at me intensely. Finally she spoke. Her lips did not move behind the water but there was no doubt that the voice was hers. Lustful yet petulant. "This is unnecessary. I do not see why I must come out. Why not bring her to me?"

"She stays here," Mother said. A fingernail traced a breast, enticing her daughter. I do not know why it felt so sweet but I gasped. Youngest's pupils dilated expressively.

"Come on out, touch her" Mother encouraged.

Youngest frowned in thought then smirked with childish cunning, and placed a palm against the water tension.

The water wall ballooned forwards; a rounded tube poured towards me with the youngest swimming in its tip.

"Stop," Mother said, holding out a palm as the tip was about to envelope me. Youngest could advance no further. "Not fair!" the thwarted Doll cried.

"Such a pity," Mother murmured. "If Youngest will not come out, girls, then we will have to let our pet monkey go..."

The twins were not happy about that. Each gripped a leg possessively. "You wimp," one scolded Youngest.

"Don't be dumb," Youngest retorted. "Mother is bluffing. She'll never let Monkey go ever, ever, ever."

"Forever does not mean today. Shall perhaps we start again tomorrow," suggested the mother.

"No no," the twins cried. Even youngest looked shocked at the prospect. "We can make her come out, Just let us play with Monkey a little and Youngest will come right out. "

"Alright my darlings. But only her legs. No further than that."

The twins each took possession of one of my legs, lifting my toes from the moss and spreading me before the youngest. They began such indescribable attentions to my lower extremities, with nails and gentle teeth, that I writhed and cried and twisted as does a witch at a burning.

Always, even at my most delirious, I was aware of Youngest's envious gaze burning into me. Virtuous women do not earn such attention. That gaze more than my unclothed state taught me I was no longer a virtuous daughter. The thought of my father was all that saved me. The thought of his eyes on me like that. Inspired to lust and disgust by the bruises on feminine flesh.

Even through the hellish pleasure, my grief escaped as a thin wail. Honest tears escaped through my clenched eyelids. I was not shameless yet. My soul was still my own. Thank you father for gazing on your daughter with lust and revulsion. If I have learnt any wisdom from men, it is that what hurts us most is always what is best for us.

Wet hands encircled me. My eyes opened to receive the vision of Youngest's bedraggled face staring into mine. Startled, I did not resist as she kissed me. "I'ts ok to cry, Monkey" she told me.

Youngest did not seem so childlike any more, half out of the amniotic fluid. It did not seem to wish to release her but with smooth effort she slid free and took me in her arms. Her wet body was against me. She was as tall as I and taller than the twins. "Mother conceived of me first," She said, guessing my thoughts. "The twins were only first born. That is why you are mine."

They stroked my legs once more and I bucked in Youngest's arms, eyes still caught in hers.

Youngest went to kiss me again but I had just sufficient composure to twist my face away. She kissed my neck.

Understand that I did not passively endure her attentions. I twisted from her, this way and that. I whiplashed my body violently in hope against hope that the mother or the twins might be caught by inattentive and even a single limb freed.

Understand that for all my struggles, I might as well have been a taut canvas beneath her lips, that moist red artist's brush. To her my convulsions were an exquisitely slow sinuous dance, my screams of protest, my pleading: the low groans of whale song. That is a Doll's accelerated reality.

Her hands slid up my stomach to capture my breasts and she began to knead them as she kissed me. Then closer, a thigh between mine, her hands slid to my back and arms as she kissed me deeper, and her nipples traced delicate circles around mine.

She kissed lower, down to one nipple that she mouthed and tongued and blew upon until it blossomed for her. While she kept that breast stimulated with one hand, her mouth captured my other breast.

Mother's free hand took over the massage of my breasts and back as Youngest continued kissing down my stomach.

I tried to speak my litanies, but all I remembered was 'Oh Mary'... or 'oh Mother?' I cried in frustration. The tip of her tongue flickered within me with the muscular strength of a serpent.

"Patience, Youngest", Mother chided. "Be gentle, and subtle. Learn her before you attempt to teach."

Mother stroked my head gently. "The spoil does not admit you yet," mother continued. "Do not take her until she accepts you as her master. She thinks she has another. She thinks he will be jealous."

"Mary as my witness I will not accept you," I hissed breathlessly.

Youngest stood back from me, then the twins did also, forming a ring around me. My hands were freed when the Mother also retreated. Her three daughters took hands and began to slowly circle as I wrung my wrists to restore blood to numb fingers. They grinned at me, tempting me to break the circle.

Kneeling, eyes closed against that giddy spectacle, I placed my hands together in prayer. I began the Litany against Temptation.

"Oh Mary, Mother of God. Plea to Him that hears women not,.." The words that had been taught to us at convent. Words we recited ten thousand times before our bodies were old enough to know temptation. Words that were just words, without those cruel lessons in discipline, of depravation, of control, for which they were merely reminders.

I imagined I could feel her eyes upon me, the youngest's, considering me.. or merely this final, desperate, defense I had erected.

The litany against temptation is not an escape. Escape itself is the final temptation. The Litany does not dull pleasure or pain. It does one thing. It gives a woman choice. Her body will feel temptation but not surrender to it. Her soul may writhe like a worm on a hook, yet will not escape that hook. Though we are taught our flesh is weaker than a man's, our souls more wayward, in the end none of these will excuse a woman's damnation. With God's discipline our souls cannot be taken from us, not without our willful consent.

The litany did not prevent me from feeling hot breath upon my nape, or Youngest's hands around my shoulders as she knelt behind me.

"You have been trained," Youngest discerned in wonder, "To hold yourself at the very brink of orgasm. Now I have met pleasure, it seems oxymoronic to avoid it. Yet I see your strategy will inflict upon yourself an exquisite agony of pleasure. Your way is most intriguing."

Teeth brushed my earlobe. Fingers touched my shoulders, leaving me hyper aware of her presence. It was pleasurable but barely sexual. She wished me to rally every iota of my control, and then...

Fingers pulled me back, but it was not the youngest's into whose lap my head fell. My eyes flew open for just an instant and I saw the Mother smiling down at me. Her fingers stroked my hair. When had one become the other? Youngest was now in front, a hand running up one thigh as she grinned at my confusion. Did they become mere probability when unobserved?

Another doll trick. I resumed the litany but kept my eyes open.

I watched as she kissed my hands clenched in prayer, running her tongue along the furrows between each finger. She separated my palms and pinned them to each side with casual strength. I continued my litanies without breaking my stare.

Her mouth explored me, kissing my neck, my belly, sometimes so close to my own lips they tickled with each word I uttered. When she released my arms I beat them against her. My feeble human strength was no more than the patter of rain on her back. Her lips and now her fingers continued their violation of every inch of my flesh.

She became more savage in her attentions. I felt teeth as her tongue battered me and hands kneaded my breasts. A thrill of terror and desire, that she would literally consume me, flittered through my thoughts.

Other hands explored my thighs. Her two sisters. Fingers eased my knees apart and hot lips began kissing their way up towards my damp cleft. A rigid tongue of inhuman strength slid into me, shocking me into a startled cry. It returned again and again, never tiring but gaining cruel subtlety with each stroke.

Youngest captured my mouth in hers as my fall welled within me. Her tongue frictionlessly explored my mouth as that other tongue worked below. If she had been human my bite could have severed it. Muted, I could do nothing but scream the litany in my own head.

The pleasure grew until my body hummed like a tuning fork between these two wet violations but I would not stop the litany in my head. I clung to my soul with every remaining iota of my will, trapped at the very brink of my fall.

It wouldn't be enough.

Their assault eased. The tongues withdrew for just a moment, became kisses on my sweat-beaded skin.

Youngest gazed into my face, contorted in desire, as the faces of her twin sisters jostled and nuzzled for possession of my slit. Though together they were less efficient than a single mouth, their goal was not simply to defeat me, but to prolong my defeat. Whereas moments before I had been sure my damnation was only a breath away, now the fear that they would never let the moment come seemed more terrifying still, to my shame. I still had strength to resist, but in my core I silently screamed for them to finish me, to drive this sweet singing agony deeper and deeper until I popped.

Instead Youngest gestured them back. She stroked my belly gently as the heat faded from my loins, barely even sexual. I found myself weeping in shameless self pity, even as the words of the litany tumbled from my lips.

"And now," Youngest said, smiling down at me. I looked up into her eyes with gratitude outweighing horror. And now she would destroy me.

"The words," She said. I had faltered in my litany. "Oh Mary, mother of God.." I whispered as her hand moved down to my wet cleft. Two fingers pushed into me briefly, testing me. Then three. No strength remained in my abused loins to repel her probing digits. I wept in shame as they massaged and stretched, working the poisons of exhaustion from cramped muscles, making me ready. She withdrew, then returned, fingers bent into knuckles, then compressed into a sharp fist that she ground into me. Even then, my mind could not encompass the act she intended to perform, or that a body could be made so malleable as to gladly accept such an indecency upon it.

Her fist pushed deep into my lubricated slit, buried itself to the wrist, stretched my abused flesh beyond what I imagined possible. She screwed it deep within me as I gaped and gasped like a fish pulled from the sea, unbelieving that anyone could be used so. She did not stop but continued to roll her fist back and forth within me, in no way hindered in its frictionless motion by my convulsive grip upon it.

The twins had begun to kneed my flesh once more with slow strong hands in time with the fist within me. I was unwillingly aroused once more. The sensation was not so burning sweet as that of their tongues and fingers had been, but deeper. My body, long denied, shuddered like a newborn foal unsure of its footing but still the Litany I whimpered bound my soul to me, staving off that final release.

Beyond mouthing the words, control of my body was now almost entirely usurped by some wanton creature. My pelvis ground against that fist, striving to take it ever deeper with each thrust. Still the sensation grew without release. I thought of Cinder, Mega, all my girls whom I had betrayed and damned and now would follow, and almost broke then. I thought of my silly hope to resist where they had failed, to plead their case in heaven. It had not been fair. It had never been fair.

She spoke to me then, the Mother. "Foolish child," she said. "Open your eyes."

I wept for forgiveness, writhing in joy, singing Mary-Mother-Mary meaning everything and nothing. Just a moment as I looked up at her and she smiled down upon me, the Madonna and her slippery slithery angels, she became to me; became something undeniable. Into that false rapture I fell.

I felt it lift from me. Hot breath from my throat, singing warmth gushing between my thighs. Every muscle in my body shuddered as a soul's featherlike tendrils pulled free, untwined from my sinews and evaporated into the sweetest smoke. : Indescribable pleasure, unmistakable, and irrevocable, the little death.

They held me as I bathed in the warm afterglow of what I would never touch again. That one brief experience of glory. Nothing seemed to matter just then. Perhaps nothing would matter again. I was soulless. Never again, that glory. This certainty was the one rock in my turbulent heart.

And then with their tongues and their hands and the sinuous brush of their bodies, they stripped my soul from me once again. And again. I had nothing left to believe but that as their fingers found me once more, all I believed now belonged to them.

Part IV All Fall Down

11 Reunion

"Have you ever wondered what a spider dreams, Alice?"

I did not hear the Mother's question at first. My mind was too absorbed in sick fascination at the sight before me.

"I think I would rather not," I said, but of course now I could not stop images flooding my head: mainly of myself as a fly.

"Have you ever wondered what flesh dreams?"

"Why are you showing me this? ...And I don't think it dreams anything."

We stood at the heart of Terminus, the biomechanoid satellite that was my prison, or perhaps afterlife. The engravings in the floor's metal flowed together and became denser until this strange low altar formed. Magnified under a thumb-sized bubble of glass, four black orbs stared back. The face of a tiny spider. Just the face. I shivered.

The Mother gestured to the walls in a wide sweeping motion I knew included her entire home.

"It dreamt all this."

The spinnerets. I remembered the massive organic machinery I had seen endlessly spinning the sky thread as the space elevator had delivered me here.

"Terminus is grown from a spider? And the spider is still alive? Why would you do that?"

"It is my art. The spider is quite happy. In fact it exists in perfect bliss."

If a spider became the station that spins the skythread, I wondered what her art would make of one weak willed farmer's daughter, slightly used. I wondered again why she was showing me something so disturbing. Heaven shouldnt be disturbing.

Everyone's afterlife was different it seemed. For a girl who had betrayed everyone she loved to damnation and then failed her own test, I had expected worse; wished it, even.

The doll Mother allowed me observe the afterlives of the others. My Girls. They seemed happy. I saw only joy, never a trace of guilt. They took pleasure from the dolls without inhibition. They deserved happiness. But I? I watched them voyeuristically from my tower but could not bring myself to face them.

The Mother spoke, breaking my reverie.

"Few humans still look into the sky and wonder. Those that do cannot speak of what they wonder. They wonder why every day new blue stars appear."

She turned to me. "Do you want to know how the world ends?"

I looked up at her but my mind still wandered. My naked body was pressed to hers, my cheek against her side. Her hand was stroking my neck and shoulder absently, invoking shivers of pleasure. I huddled into the safety of her warmth.

I wondered how many Alices were simulated at any moment in her subconscious. A thousand? She didn't need my answers.

The Mother waited several seconds, till I felt vaguely ashamed. I wondered when her angels would come to ravish me today.

Finally she continued.

"Each new star is the blue-shifted glow of ionized hydrogen interacting with an interstellar ram-scoop. Humanity's children return. They have built heaven and now need someone to show it to. Soon the night sky will blaze with a thousand lights, and the history of earth will end. No one shall be left behind."

"Sounds nice." I didn't really mean it. I was just being polite.

"Someone really should tell them," The mother mused to no one in particular.

---

I had been a prisoner of the dolls for some months. My life lay suspended somewhere between heaven and hell. By day, the Doll daughters treat me like I am Cleopatra instead of a slave. I tell them to wash my feet or be my furniture just to see if they will. Im not sure why. I can't stop. I treat them abominably. It amuses them.

Then every night, with loving attention, they explore new ways of reducing their empress to a mewling, writhing, wanton, whimpering, bucking... a million adjectives and still no noun.

Sometimes I wake to find them making slow gentle love to me with their tongues and fingers, or blanketing me lightly with their bodies as they watch my sleepful face and I have this wonderful sensation of being where I am meant to be.. where I am wanted completely.

And yet,

There is a hole inside me where my faith used to be. For a while I even believed their magical paint was real, that silly tale the Mother had spun before they shattered my faith: the magical paint that prevented my soul from escaping in a moment of transportment. I think she knew that at the moment I lost everything I would cling to anything. So for a few days I was the most faithful (and only) disciple to the church of the magical paint. The Daughters didn't exactly laugh at me. They introduced me to some body painting fun. They were so artistic with me. For a day I was not only the sole adherent but also it's object of worship. They gleefully worshipped me.