The Games at Ingpin Island

Nicole threw in a kitschy hat and ran the zipper across her bag. It was hard to pack for a trip when they told you everything you needed would be given to you once you got there.

"So I'm lost," her roommate Penny said, agitated, for the umpteenth time. "Where are you going, again?"

Nicole's chores at last completed, she reached for her joint, smoldering on the coffee table ashtray, and took a shallow puff. "It's just a country getaway," she said with hoarded breath. "Halloween fun." She offered Penny the spliff.

"I get that. I mean, we were gonna go to Heather's costume party, I even bought a witch getup special for it, but I don't even care about that. The part that's weird to me is where you say you might be back in a day or two, or you might never come back at all."

"Yeah, it's complicated. I'm trying out for something. If I wash out, I'll be here for class Monday. If it's a smashing success, I'll be gone for who knows how long. I mean, I'll send for my things and pay up for the rest of the semester's room and board; I'll do right."

Nicole took another puff. Easy, she scolded herself. You don't want to lose focus, not now. Not during this conversation. "You can't tell me what it is you're trying out for? What if somebody calls for you?"

"I'd rather not. I don't mean to be rude, and you know I'm fond of you, but I only met you a month ago. It'll be fine."

Changing her mind, Penny put out her hand for the joint. She hit it with squinty eyes and pursed lip, as though no one had ever shown her how. Still, she harshed and a plume curled out of her nostrils. "I guess we had a different idea of what was going on here." Water welled in her creamy verdant orbs, giving Nicole a flash of guilt and a spark of awakening. "I mean I've told you. I was never with a woman before I met you. You're, like, the first—anyone—to really have me."

Nicole moved in on Penny and the two, practiced, mingled lipstick. Nicole tasted cannabis and toothpaste in his pretty roommate's mouth. Penny's body slackened. A tension eased out of it.

"The boys don't count anymore," she stammered, close to Nicole's ear, a hitch in her voice. "Not since I met you."

Nicole collected the J, took one last snort, and snuffed it out. "I'm confused," she whispered into her roommate's parted mouth. She gathered her hands around Penny's face and regarded her at an inch's breadth. "You can't feel anything for me. Please. I don't know what I'm doing."

Penny fumbled for Nicole's sex and, like every time, Nicole closed her thighs jealously. Bartering, she gathered Penny's breasts in her palms and massaged them until Penny relented. Penny sighed in Nicole's ear, sailing on velvet wings.

Nicole chased her roommate to the bed, stealing kisses. She slipped her digits up Penny's skirt, gathering its laundered hem in the underside of her knuckles. Beneath Penny's underpants, her fragile slit massaged Nicole's intruding fingers, lit up with the shock of the sudden invasion. Penny stumbled, nearly falling.

"Lie back."

Penny did as she was told and Nicole flipped the lap of her skirt, baring the front of her panties. Not for the first time, Nicole smiled at what she found upon undressing pretty Penny. Where did this lust come from? This cruel, usurping lust?

She made eyes, pried at the cotton underpanel of Penny's intimates and mated her mouth with Penny's stripped, blooming slit, lip to lip, staring her down all along. On the flat front of Nicole's greedy tongue, she lathered up Penny's seeping human cream. Penny was already wet! Nicole lapped Penny up, momentarily forgetting her task was to pleasure her, and wanting only to taste her, and fill her belly with the nectar of Penny's bursting flower.

Penny twitched at the hip with a groan. Her chin went double and her dimple reappeared. Her cheeks, freckled hills from Nicole's prostrate perspective, waxed crimson.

Nicole pressed her tongue into Penny's inner depths, and Penny's pelvis ground into Nicole's face by reflex; she was instantly beside herself. A hungry dig and Nicole probed Penny's clitoris. She circled it wetly until it bobbed like a buoy in a rainstorm. Her whole vagina slickened. Before long Nicole's tongue ranged over it without effort. She was fully lubricated.

Penny's hips bucked and a Hole CD tumbled off the night stand. Nicole upper-armed her loose, twitching thighs to steady her, then went in for the finish. It never took too long to make Penny come. She cried loud enough to prompt dull thuds on the wall from next door, and all the vitality oozed out of her body, leaving a settling, restful bliss in its wake. She ground her pussy in Nicole's face hard enough for her clitty to click her nose. Her legs waned limp on Nicole's shoulders. Her underbody settled too, twitching and then relaxing on the soft, lower-bunk mattress. She lay akimbo, spent, cheek pressed against Nicole's zipped-up overnight bag.

"Nicole," she sighed. "You can stay or you can leave." She sobbed, eyes to the ceiling, cheeks glittering with tears, tears that soon would sting. "I knew I'd never have you for long. You were always too beautiful to be real."

Nicole rose and kissed Penny once more, giving her a taste of her own slippery ecstasy. As it turned out, it would be the last time.

***

Nicole bounced the tablet as though it, not she, were the thing on the auction block. The catalog realighted on her entry. She looked at herself again.

The photo, though inexplicit, exploited her. Her shorts were too tight. The blouse too lax over her bosom, showing too much cleavage. And yet it was as tight in the cup as it was loose in the fringe, so much that you could see her headlights. She didn't know how they'd gotten such a pose out of her. It looked like a horny teenager'd photoshopped it, and for all she knew, maybe one had.

She scanned the knockout again. "Nicole. Age: 21. Hair: Dirty Blonde." Vital statistics followed, including things about herself she'd never told anyone..

She squicked. The tablet shook in her knuckles, her hands not wanting to hold it. She looked at Mr. Nickerson, hoping to show the betrayal she felt.

"That." She backslapped the tablet, gingerly but hard enough to register her protest. "That's my entry?"

He nodded.

"With all the measurements? And the value judgments and so on? That's how it'll look to the volunteers?"

"Sadly so," Mr. Nickerson said. "Your statistics turned out odd. You had some outliers. Some came out in your interviews and your measurements, some we knew about you coming in. I mean, twenty-one? You knew the range was eighteen to twenty. You'd have seen it on television."

"Yeah, I was hoping to get out here before my birthday, but some things came up."

"That's not all." He held up a Scotsman's blanket of carbon-copy greenbar printout, all covered with legalese and Nicole's signature, in multiplicate. "Your physical measurements are out of limit. Your psych profile, I mean, you were in spec but it wasn't stellar."

"You're telling me I failed. Then why am I here?"

"No, I'm not telling you you failed. I'm telling you that based on your results we've decided we need to recalibrate our tests."

Ten minutes later she was tugging at the waist of her ill-fitting tube dress, feeling exposed. The short skirt barely covered her hips. The strapless top could be yanked down, baring her breasts, without effort. They'd given her nude thigh-high stockings to wear but no underpants. What would happen when someone reached up her skirt for her bare sex? She'd never let anyone touch her there before. Would she be able to do it?

"And we have you now for, what, Nicole? What time?"

"Two hours. Three to five. I'm hoping."

"Seven percent of girls make their first time commitment. Thirteen percent of men. Don't be too hard on yourself." Mr. Nickerson went into the shadows, retreating through the nearby open door in a descending crouch. As he vanished he waved his fingers high. "You'll see digital clocks, near the ceiling. Nowhere in the East Wing is a clock not in view. But you have to look. You can leave anytime you like, and there will be no penalty other than pecuniary."

Nicole caught on that word, and regarded Mr. Nickerson askance.

"Pecuniary," he went on. "You know what it means." He winked at her. "You're smart. You'll make the right decisions. I have no further information. Enjoy the East Wing."

The door mellowly slid shut behind him. Nicole stood alone in the dark. She circled the too-high hem of her tube dress, waiting.