John and I ducked around the corner. The tour went on ahead, and when I couldn’t hear the voice of that uppity sales woman, I sighed, relieved.

“Ye-ah!” John balled his fist.

“Shush!” I peeked around the corner to see if anyone was within earshot. Then I gripped his wrist and pulled him along. The couches on display were immaculate. Leather, smooth and soft to the touch over sturdy frames that, I heard, could support a fat woman up to eight hundred pounds—and pregnant, to boot.

John plopped his butt down on one side of a wine-red love seat. “Oh, Jenee!” He closed his eyes real tight and poked his lips out at me. “This thing is to die for!”

I snorted, like what a pig does when amused. “I know, right?” I took the cushion next to him. My fingers raked along the arm of the love seat. It was plush like a round pillow, but it felt like caressing perfect skin. That’s why Rau-Hyede’s summer discount sales were always the top of my list of things to do. There were more exciting things in Spodank, none of them smelled as good as Rau-Hyede’s warehouse.

“I could sit here all day.” He tilted his head back and let out a relaxed sigh.

“Yeah, too bad this place closes in an hour.” I had gotten quite comfortable with John. So comfortable that when I looked up and saw the masked face of a tall busty ginger strapped bosom to heel in what looked like one of those leather BDSM costumes, I shot up from the seat. “E-excuse us,” I moved around John and got behind the couch.

“Oh it’s okay.” She said. “A lot of people sit on the display models.” She lifted her mask and extended her hand. “I’m Nayla, I work here.” If ever sugar could describe the quality of tone in sound, her voice was a child’s ecstasy in a candy shoppe. I could taste every word she spoke.

“John.” He took her hand and shook it.

“I’m Jenee.” I took her hand, but I didn’t shake it. I stared dead into Nayla’s eyes. Her grip was tight on my hand, and in those green irises of hers I could see myself scowling. I didn’t like her, and I couldn’t place why.

She kept a genuine smile on her face. “Are you part of the tour?”

“We were.” He says to her. Honesty, I firmly believe, is John’s worst quality.

Her face became sad. “You just missed the part where you get to see how the leather is made.”

John smiled. I grabbed his wrist and moved close to his back. “I don’t trust her.” I whispered in his ear. “She’s too damn… airy.” I glared at her. My John. Mine.

He chuckled. “Nonsense.” He kept his voice low. “You’ll say anything when you feel threatened.” He was right. I will say anything to get away from any sort of bad feeling. I wanted to get away, with my boyfriend intact.

Her eyes were fixed on he and I. “Would you like to see how it is made?” That genuine smile graced her face again.

“Yes, we would love to.” John took my hand and pulled my arm under his.

“This way, please.” She motioned for us to follow, her face elated.

John tugged me along side him. “Try to relax.” He muttered.

“But—”

“No.”

“But!—”

“Relax, seriously.” His tone got sharp.

The warehouse closes in three minutes… I didn’t bother saying a word. Nayla lead us to the back of the lobby. She parted some hanging white-plastic flaps and we went in with her. “May I offer you something to drink?”

“Pepsi?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, we only have water in the tanning facility.” She turned to a narrow tap and poured a glass of water for both John and I. We took the drinks. John promptly sucked his down. I took only a few sips of mine.

Nayla smiled, and we continued down the hall after her. “This is where we dye the leather.” We stopped in a large, heavily ventilated space with big churning vats of assorted colors. Women on catwalks plucked leather pieces out of the vats with long metal poles. They all wore gas masks and BDSM-looking leather costumes.

“The next section is where we process the raw byproducts that get excluded from the leather making process.” Nayla moved her mask back down. She took a deep breath, and as we neared that section farther on back, I understood why. The stench of the ‘byproducts’ saturated the walls. It was fermented, putrid, nasty smelling heaps of stripped off sinewy flesh, and browning piles of jiggling fat.

I forced my arm out from under John’s to pull my shirt up over my nose. He shuddered, and collapsed to the ground. “John? John!” I got down and shook him. He wouldn’t rouse. “Damn you John!” I slapped him across the face as hard as I could, twice.

No response.

I looked up at Nayla, and though her mask covered her face those green eyes had that genuine glow. She was doing that smile again. “Damn it, bitch, help me!” I screamed. The room spun around me, the walls melted like puddy. My heart pounded in my ears. I slumped to the floor… She wore steel heels. Steel.

I groaned. ‘The Machine in the Ghost,’ a song that I had liked filled the room. I was laying on a couch. John was slumped over me, overcome by some awkward drugged stupor. I looked into his fluttering eyelids, until a leather-clad hand touched my cheek.

“You have such nice skin, Jenee.” Nayla’s sugar coated coo sent chills down my spine. I thrashed about, but my ankles and my wrists were tightly chained. My hands were numb, as were my feet, which had gone pale. I tried to scream, but a thick wet rag muffled my cries.

Two women lifted John up onto a surgical table. One woman had two long, thick needles. Attached to them was this even thicker tube that went to some pump that had a large plastic jug. They pushed the needles into is neck, one for the left, the other for the right, and turned the pump on. John groaned, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of the scarlet of his blood being sucked out of him into the jug.

“You should have drank the whole glass, dear.” Nayla ran her fingers through my hair.

I screamed. I thrashed. I didn’t want to be a couch.

The crux of her nonsensical appraisal, for her whole life, had been centered on you. When the handmaidens returned with you in tow, she established the very first matters.

She, is your mother; you, are their son. For good reason Madame had stressed over you and whether you were doomed to become a man or a woman. For, though your society is matrilineal, the Sons, skilled at whatever their craft, are the honor of their mothers; yet the Daughters, who become the heavenly Gateways of Life are the very pride of the blood of their fathers.

Sir was in no position to hold you in his arms, when the handmaidens finally let him in. Though Madame knew he had wished you were a girl, the birthing chamber was replete with her glee that his seed had screwed him out of one. He neared the head of the bed, and peered into your face.

“Ashskin…” Sir sighed.

“Barely a breath in, yet you’re concerned ain’that he’s White?” Madame pulls a fold of cloth over your head to shield you from your father’s disdain.

“Not a curse that runs in my line.”

“Are you not also Ioérshléan?”

“If even of Styres, yai! Yet, mine is not the crisp of gray, but the radiance of purity!”

“Mock your father-in-law later.”

Sir grunts, and a handmaiden approaches.

“Madame, should he have fed, may we prepare him for your departure?”

“Him?” His voice carried a sharp, hissing sentiment of disapproval.

“You may.” And she said it effortlessly, without hitch.

They bring you home, and from the moment you exited Madame’s womb, until you were weaned, you knew what she looked like. She will always be your mother, shorter than Sir, vibrant in the colors of her clothing, and spectacular in the sequins of her muzzle, behind the regal hues of her veil.

Sir also wears a muzzle, yet unlike Madame, he wears his behind a hooded mask. You’ve never known the likeness of his visage, yet his outward face is trunked like a tapir, but tusked like a great bull elephant.

You, too, wear a muzzle; you, too, are Ioérshléan. Madame’s comfort took precedence when Sir was asked to relocate to the surface world. The outfitting of a manor simply wasn’t enough, but for you and your young Sister, she ensured to bring the families of her staff, enough to found a village.

Underneath the suspended, forever-wet canopy of the hydrophobiome, the ground was as dry as the shielting rock of Ioérshléa. Sister’s small body is as giving and resilient as rubber, and despite your efforts, being three years her senior proves to be naught in the wake of her endless energy. The rough-and-tussle atop the mossy knoll soon becomes the excited squeals of her slipping freely to its foundation, and overcome with laughter, you quickly follow.

Yet, when her giddy squees cease in the shadow of a humanoid shape, you peer up and meet the cold, demanding gaze of another boy. The chub of his frame threatens to burst the seams of his skin, and he stares through you, as if malcontent.

“Oh, look, another one,” he scoffs, and the herd of followers with him jeer. “What’s behind the mask? Hideng sometheng?”

Your sister shrinks back. You, being none the wiser, stand there without a hint as to what you should say. But, you say something, “Ain.”

He puts out his hand. “Give’t me.”

At once, your mother’s voice rings between your ears: Please, you must never show your teeth among strangers. Our muzzles are our promise of fellowship. Surfacites do not underst —

The boy lunges forward. In one fell swoop he knocks you to your back, and to the backdrop of Sister’s shrill, distressed cries, he produces a box cutter from his pocket and severs the straps of your muzzle. Having exposed your face, he hoists the leathery article high over his head, his crowd wild with cheer, until he descends, pummeling you with his fists.

Confused, wracked with pain, you cradle your head and ball up. But they won’t tolerate you, and before long, his gang has pulled you open, holding your limbs taut. Not knowing what else to do, you open your mouth just as he thrusts his balled fist for your face. How effortlessly it entered the depths of your throat. You don’t gag, but clamp down, and the power of your jaws drives your ten serrated canines into his flesh, even to the point that you crush his bones.

The boy shrieks, and jerks back. His entire wrist comes apart, and the dark of his blood makes that glimpse of meat look like half-eaten red velvet cake.

His company is long gone, spooked out of their wits. Gradually, you stagger to your feet, and drag yourself over to him. As you gaze at the shock embedded in his color-drained face, you grin, your mouth rudely full. Then, you swallow.

The boy seems to lose consciousness. You collect Sister.

“Should we say’d Genfa?” she asks, latching onto your wrist just as she had when she first learned to walk.

Sir crosses your mind. A brief flash of thought for only a split second, then, “I ain’known. Do you think him’s get mad?”

“But you got ain for muzzkies, since when him’s ain fuss on that?” She had a point.

Sister would not be the only girl you’d hold hands with. You were six then, and eight years later, the floor seems a lot farther away from your head than you would have liked. Those days were fraught with anxiety as you perused the likelihood of failure your approach would bring, should you dare go up to your Crush.

Crush wasn’t the only one. There had been ones prior to her, yet, each time Crush appeared, she was different than the previous, and you wished her to be your last. It never worked out that way. Crush was a thing to be looked at, a creature to admire from —

“Yai? Taken?” As if materialized from your imagination, she comes near and points at the seat across from yours.

“Egh — er — ain.” This new voice still takes getting used to.

“Thanks.” She sits down, spreads the contents of her lunch, and begins consuming.

You try to keep yourself occupied. Yet, she scrawls something on a torn wrapper and slides it towards you.

Class sucks, it reads. Would you like to chill with me? (Yai/Ain)

What does acceptance look like? Was it not merely circling YAI just as it was screaming within your stomach? You do circle, and pass it along.

Unable to speak at the time, you remain with her in awkward quiet until she grins, rises, discards her trash, and with her hands wrapped around your wrists, Crush invites you off with her.

The secret place was a ways from campus. For the first time you witness how easily students can slip away without an inkling of the staff’s regard. It’s an old, barely lit shanty, cozy, spartan, ran down. She brings you to an old, musty futon. Its lumps and sagging pits declare its many years of use, but once here, she shoves you onto the creaky old thing, and with a face lit with glee, straddles the fulcrum of your waist.

“You ever take this theng off?” Crush runs her slim fingers along the front of your muzzle. You’re not wrapped in traditional garb like many of your race wear in Little Ioérshléa, covered from crown-to-sole and often veiled, concealing every inch of skin.

“When alone, yai.”

“Never with anyone.” Her palms ride up your stomach and rest, centered over your nipples, steadying her weight. She’s a light creature, maybe only a few months older than you. Still, she has you, and trapped, you’ve no clue how to escape.

No word forms in your throat, just your entire body goes rigid when she reaches for the buckles of the iconic article of benign intent, your muzzle, and undoes each one until she lifts it free from your face.

Crush speaks, but your ears a sealed by the sound of such insufferable ringing. Before you know it, her lips are flush to yours, and not knowing how to get out of the situation, you follow her lead.

She strips away your clothing, and wills you to lay back on the futon. This that was declared to be grand in pleasure was fraught with fear, such that it kept clawing at your limbs and stomach, demanding to be unleashed. Crush writhes and undulates, moaning, panting, tongue out, until that desperation to flee marries itself to the moment and…

You cradle her tongue between your teeth, gently sucking her intimate, meaty flesh. Yet, overcome by an electric, molten sensation cascading outward from your core, and permeating your being, you suck until her tongue is tight between you, and carefully, you bite down.

The taste of her wretched blood is inspiring. She gurgles, paralyzed by terror, and the scent of those pheromones are maddening. You enfold her in your arms, rolling with her until she’s situated back on top, and then weave your fingers between hers. That chunk of her tongue is long gone, and though her groans are muffled, her fear is rank.

It’s not sex, and never was. When its over, you shudder and pull away from a lukewarm body, stiff from shock.

Crush may have been the first to witness your skin; she will not be your last. Five years slogged by since then. Many Crushes came, and you let them slip away. Yet, there was one who had transcended into something else. She was able to speak to the intense, bright center of the dark energies of your being. For that, she was affectionately dubbed Doxy.

Steam from the shower fogs the mirror. You step out, and there she is, camisole lifted, pyjama bottoms down, examining herself in the mirror.

“I ain looket, do I?” Doxy tilts her head back, resting it on you as you fold your arms over her waist and pull her close.

There on the counter is a small device and a glass of urine.

“Squshie-squish is good.” You squeeze the soft pudge of her belly. “Podgy-podgy-pogdy-pogdy!”

Doxy chortles. “Stop, you!” No sooner had she gasped and settled in your arms than did she coo, “We’ar not ready for kids.~”

“Perhaps.” The fire within you turns into lukewarm coals. For the rest of that afternoon, while you don’t keep quiet, your ruminations vainly meander the endless, empty corridors of your mind. How are you supposed to feel?

As evening arises, the two of you arrive at the estate of your founding, where your mother and father and the myriad of your siblings dwell. Though you know them to be hospitable, the emptiness of your thoughts become shrouded in a dense fog of concern.

What if they do not approve of Doxy? You sit across from Sir, the both of you silent after having cordially removed your muzzles for the sake of eating.

“Have you been informed?” Doxy dabs her mouth with a napkin, puts her fork down, grins. “Am pregnant.” She says it with an awkward joy.

“Oe?” Madame blinks and sits back.

“Yai. We’ar not keepenget, though.”

Sir puts his utensils down, wipes his mouth, dons his muzzle, gets up, and leaves.

“That right?” Madame glances you over, and you don’t have the strength to return her gaze.

“Yai,” you mutter.

“I had hoped you’d’ve wed prior to…”

Doxy coyly shrugs. “That’s life, I guess!”

Madame draws breath to speak, but shuts her jaws as Sir abruptly returns and resumes his place at the table. “What’s your favorite number?” His tone is frank.

The room is clad in a bizarre quiet for some moments, then, “Eight.”

He jots down eight on the leftmost position of the amount line of his checkbook, looks her square in the eyes, and starts adding zeros to the right of it. One by one, Doxy’s eyes widen when the realization seems to hit her. Sir cants his head, and finally, she speaks:

“Stop.” Her voice is hushed.

Sir tears the check from the book, slides it towards her. “We will be haveng that child.” She can only stare at the check, yet his gaze, overflowing with a glacial wrath, settles on you.

All that night, you lay in bed with your pregnant Doxy. Stiff as a corpse, you don’t shift, though she rolls and wiggles comfortably underneath your arm. Sir’s words, his actions, his undeniable anger emanating from his being that evening —

What have you done? Finally the hour comes that Doxy is in labor. You had thought you’d be there, instead, the hallway outside will have to do.

“Excuse me, Sir’s Eldest Son?” A Handmaiden comes forth from the birthing chamber. “She is ready.”

Wait, she? “Doxy?”

She beckons, you rise, and follow.

The birthing pit is clean by the time you enter, and there in Doxy’s arms, attached to one of her bare, swollen breasts is the child. Immediately, you establish the first matters.

You are their father; they are your daughter. You are in no position to hold her, but not so much as a moment seems to have passed, when Sir enters, and scoops the fed child out of Doxy’s arms.

“W-what are you —”

“Our agreement,” Sir says without turning to you. “We have legal right to this girl,” he says to the handmaidens, as he produces a document, signed, dated, officiated. The women nod, and prepare the girl for departure with Sir.

“Genfa, Genfa, wait!” You chase after your father. Catching up to him, you thrust yourself to the floor and clutch his thigh, stricken with grief.

He immediately shoves you off. “Silence, boy!” he hisses, “Of what value are your wounds over this refuse? Be away from me!”

“Am I not the one who was in want? Yai, you’av seen me for right, ain’n’t you!?”

Sir squares his shoulders, his head rising as his posture straightens, and he stands at his full height. A galvanizing, dark energy blazes in his shadow, and your blood runs cold.

What have you done? In the months that follow, you ache to visit the infant. Doxy stays to her career, though your willingness towards sex has tapered off. Until, finally, a messenger arrives with Sir’s summons for the two of you. Eagerly, you accept.

The day comes just as all the others before it had. For once out of what seemed like aeons, the halls of your old home feel welcoming.

“Should we right matters?” Sir says, embracing you tightly.

“Ifet means I may see her, yai. Have she a name?”

He looks at the both of you, then gestures for you to come with him. His strides are like that of a loon, calm and calculated as if treading through mire. “Flesh begot of flesh is a type of contract betwixt individuals. Yaiet gives credence to the validity of many thengs, aset will always bear the signet, in blood, of the ones precedenget.”

He pushed the doors open, and there she was, nestled in a dark, varnished mahogany cradle.

“I am to disown you,” Sir says, “Unless you terminate your contract with that ignorant bitch, and devour your shame.” He stays by the door, along with two others, and your stomach sinks into the ground when you see your girl, and the cage around her head.

There was no intent for mercy, to make it quick, for her. Or for you. The thought nearly brings you to your knees, as your Doxy steps back and you bring your daughter up into your arms.

“Sweetleng,” you mutter, boiling hot tears streaking down your cheeks. “I’m sorry.” Your breath shatters your voice. “I’m so sorry!” You bring a tiny, chubby leg to your lips, and having gotten hold of it clear to her hip, you bite down.

Your child shrieks; you chomp the other leg. Hot, bitter blood cascades from the wounds; you devour two arms. When the thing finally falls silent, you crumble, defeated, yet you make certain what’s left is only the head within the cage.

Gasping, you gag, and Sir steps over to you. He clasps his hand over your mouth, and makes certain you don’t spew it back up.

Terrified, Doxy collapses to the floor, too faint for consciousness.

She was your first Doxy, and also your last. The lesson of your father was one seared into the depths of your core. Not a day passes where you are not reminded of his words, and the magnitude of his actions. Surfacites don’t appreciate skin. They revel in reviling flesh, exposing it indiscriminately, passing it out as a commodity. Yet, Ioérshléans were of a different extreme.

Perhaps the culture of cannibals had no place amid the metropolitan surface society. Perhaps it was best kept secret, tucked away from the shame that the hominid beasts, Surfacites, conferred when they ignorantly chided the intimacy of it.

No one remaining on Earth knew the exact day or hour that it happened, though they all agreed that it took place in the spring. Or fall, depending on if someone was asked in the northern or southern hemisphere.

Several weeks had passed since that day, Geiam knew because he was keeping count, drawing tiny tallies on the back of the last postcard he had received while incarcerated for his faith.

The outside world, though, had changed. He was a citizen of the United States for eighty-seven years.

Was. There was no America these days.

That much was all the more manifest by the lonely flag poles, the patriotic symbol that normally blew in the wind missing from its place near the top.

As he wandered down the pier and searched through the boats, even the novelty flag racks were empty. He came to the one little vessel that was fully stocked. The keys were in the ignition and just as he ran his finger along the rim of —

“Hey!”

His shoulders jumped to his ears. He turned around.

“You know how to operate this thing?” The voice belonged to a black man. A clean-shaven, tall, dark-skinned man who didn’t appear to be a day past his thirties.

Geiam shook his head. “No.”

“Well then whatchu fiddlin’ with ma’keys for?”

“I’m trying to get to Germany.”

“There ain’t any Germany,” the black man said. “But if you need to get to the other shore, I suppose I could get you there. The name’s Niklas.” He offered his hand.

“Geiam.” He took and shook it.

Niklas motioned for Geiam to take a seat. He went down to the pier and untethered the boat. After some routine checks and other things, Niklas eased the boat out of the dock.

“So what’s got you tailin’ it off to the eastern shore?”

“A lady.”

“Sister of ours, eh?”

Geiam nodded. “We’ve been in a long distance relationship for a good number of years now, and we’ve always wanted to meet.”

“Well, ain’t any better time to be gettin’ face-to-face than now, ‘specially with them governments not being anymore.” Financial concerns were non-existent, national boarders were dissolved. There was even the possibility that everyone spoke one uniform language. For the first time in Earth’s history, Humanity was united like never before.

Even the air, crisp and fresh as it was, caused ruminations of peace, and the ocean was calm as if they were rolling along the glossy surface of glass. Geiam hadn’t paid much attention to Niklas, although he agreed: there was no better time than now.

Then Niklas came up from below deck with a pair of fishing poles. “You know how to operate a rod?”

“I guess I do.”

He tossed one to Geiam.

***

He hummed a soothing though upbeat song the whole way across the coast. Nothing could dampen his spirit, not even the water that leaked through the rotting roof of the old barn he spent the night in.

The Eastern Continent was a massive place, and since the national boarders had dissolved, he had no idea where exactly the old Germany would be. Or if, for that matter, the woman in the picture on the postcard had survived.

She was a wrinkled old thing, having lived to see 92. A frizzy mess of thin white hair crested her head, and her spotty brown skin was as appealing as a dehydrated potato. By the standards of the Old World, she was hideous — most of her teeth missing, and a face with cheeks that rivaled those of an english bulldog.

He tucked the postcard into an inner jacket pocket and arranged a cover over a couple bales of hay. Not the most comfortable of arrangements, but it would do. He disrobed down to his underwear, rinsed and scrubbed them in a bucket and hung them in a dry corner to air out overnight. Then he folded the blanket and slipped into it the same as he would a sleeping bag.

***

The thrum of a human’s heart was never meant to be extinguished. Every time she stood and stretched from sewing the crops, Fonzé peered down at the horizon. It had been some 30 years since the dissolution of the Old World, with its governments, and she was determined to remain on her father’s farm.

The sun had barely broken into the sky, and the quiet of the cool morning shattered with the chorus of yapping dogs. Before she could direct her attention to the old rotted barn, the one that her brothers were supposed to tear down, the six of them were already swarming around the dilapidated structure.

She poked her head in.

“Now is everything alright for you?” asked her oldest brother.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to intrude on your farm. I just needed a place to rest, you see.” There was a pale-skinned young man, dressed from the waist down, whom she’d never seen before. Yet his voice was terribly familiar.

“Could’ve knocked on the house, we’d’ve been happy to let you in.”

“It was late that night. I didn’t know anyone was here. Or up, for that matter.” He pulled his shirt over his head and threaded his arms through the sleeves. “I think I best be going. I’ve got someone I need to find, you see —”

“Geiam!” She stepped into the doorway. Geiam was around 117 years old by now, she figured. Yet he didn’t look a day over thirty. His flesh was taut to his frame, a peachy creme color, and his curly hair, though short, was a rich burnt-toast brown.

She didn’t give him time to recognize her, throwing her arms around him and kissing his cheek.

“You sure don’t look like the Fonzé I remember!” he said.

“Are you saying you’re disappointed?” She couldn’t fathom that he was. Her youth had returned, and what were once saggy breasts and spotty splotches of discolored skin were supple, uniform, and smooth. A rich reddish-brown hue saturated her once white hair.

She stared him down, and he kissed her forehead.

“Not at all, Fonzé.” His pearly smile beamed brighter than the mid-morning moon. “Is this the part where I whisk you away on horseback?”

“To where?”

“Wherever we’d like to call home.”

***

 

No one knew the exact day or hour that it happened, but that it resulted in a world of peace. A world with genuine freedom from political strife, religious contention, and commercial strain.

There was happiness on the earth during those days. Those days that would never end.