Brain Freeze

Quiana almost didn't answer the doorbell when it rang. Answering the door meant putting clothes on, and right now the thought of getting dressed seemed like an invitation to misery. She'd just barely managed to get herself cooled down to merely unpleasant levels of sticky, sweltering heat through the application of a lukewarm shower and a battery operated fan applied over as much of her sweaty topaz skin as she could reach; she knew that even the sheerest fabric was going to feel like a fucking sweater in this heat. She didn't want to deal.

But it was probably the electrician, and the whole damn reason she was lying naked on the couch instead of out at an air-conditioned mall or something was because they told her that she needed to be here to let him in. Or more accurately, they told her that she didn't need to be here and he could just let himself in, and Quiana thought about her asshole landlord and his habit of hiring his high school buddies to do handy work around the apartment complex, and she said she would wait. Because she didn't want any of her fucking panties winding up in some creep's stroke bank. Reluctantly, she pulled on a bra and a pair of panties and her lightest, silkiest bathrobe and went over to the door.

It wasn't the electrician. But what Quiana saw when she looked through the peephole made her pretty glad she went to the door anyway. There was a woman there, the chubby little butch white chick that moved in about a week ago down at the end of the hall. Marlena or Maura or something. The one with the electric blue hair that was shaved on one side and the thick chunky hipster glasses and the tattoo on her neck of two Venus symbols linked together. Just in case there was still someone out there who missed the subtext, she wore a t-shirt that said, 'DYKE BITCH' in big black letters.

That wasn't what made Quiana happy she went to the door. Even if it wasn't so hot that Quiana couldn't imagine wanting to touch another human being, she'd tried it on with girls her freshman year. The sex was okay, but she didn't have any real urge to do it again now that she'd checked it off her bucket list. No, what was exciting about Maura/Marlena/Marcia was the great big fuckoff bowl full of ice cream she was holding. It looked like there was almost a full quart there, glowing with that beautiful sheen that ice cream gave off just as it was beginning to think about melting. The big spoon stuck into the bowl looked like an engraved invitation.

Quiana fumbled with the chain and opened the door. "Hi! It's Marlena from down the hall," the other woman said, giving a cheery little wave. "Your power's out too, right? Sucks so hard. I figured I'd stop by with a little homemade ice cream to help you get through it. Mind if I come in?"

"Mind?" Quiana's face broke into a child-like grin as she stepped aside to let Marlena in. "Girl, you are the answer to my every prayer. Come on in, there are clean bowls in the dishwasher. I'd tell you to put the rest in the fridge, but if you open the door it's just going to let all the cold air out. We'll just have to eat it all."

Marlena let out a chuckle as she swayed gracefully around Quiana to get to the kitchen. "Don't say 'we' until you've tried it," she said, her voice alive with amusement. "I've been working on this recipe for about a year now, and I've never talked to anyone who hasn't fallen absolutely in love with it." She scooped up a bowl from the top rack of the dishwasher and dug into the massive heap of soft, slightly melted ice cream. "You are going to adore this, I guarantee it."

Quiana wasn't dumb. She could tell that Marlena was hoping that it was more than the ice cream that Quiana was going to fall in love with. Marlena couldn't have been more obviously flirting if she was wearing a fucking t-shirt advertising that she was in the market for lesbian sex, mainly because she had already done exactly that. Quiana felt a momentary twinge of guilt over inviting her in just because she had something Quiana wanted.

But it wasn't like Quiana was leading her on or anything. Eating Marlena's ice cream didn't obligate Quiana to eat her... her. This was a friend thing, it was a no strings attached offer as far as Quiana was concerned, and if Marlena got weird about it, well, the electrician would probably be coming by in about twenty minutes. She could stall that long and kick Marlena out then if things got messy.

And speaking of messy... "Here you go!" Marlena said, handing Quiana a bowl of pale gray ice cream with tiny black specks in it. There was already a puddle of liquid in the base of the bowl, one that seemed to be growing with every passing moment. "You want to eat it up before it melts." She wandered down the short hallway into the living room. "Mind if I sit down?"

"Mmm, nn'n!" Quiana mumbled around her first spoonful, as she followed Marlena into the living room. Her eyes opened in surprised enjoyment as the taste hit her tongue-Marlena hadn't been kidding, this stuff was amazing. There was a mild vanilla flavor, and just a little touch of honey, but the taste that hit Quiana's tongue most strongly wasn't vanilla at all. It was... Quiana couldn't quite place it. She took another spoonful, letting the ice cream melt in her mouth a little to see if she could figure it out without asking. The little dark specks were full of it, whatever it was, but she didn't recognize it from any ice cream she'd ever had before.

"Honestly," Marlena said, settling onto the couch, "it's kind of amazing I got it to set at all. I was cranking on that stuff for what felt like an hour, and I was sure the ice was going to melt before the mixture froze. It's still a little bit softer than I usually make it, but there's only so much you can do without a freezer. Still good?" She gave Quiana a quizzical look, as though she hadn't had a chance to taste it herself and didn't know how it turned out.

Quiana gave an enthusiastic nod, settling onto the opposite end of the couch with the fourth spoonful still in her mouth. She took care to arrange her robe to avoid revealing anything-the last thing she wanted to do was give Marlena the wrong idea. This was just ice cream, not a date or a hook up. Marlena was welcome to bring some by any time she wanted-damn, it was good! But dessert was not the way into Quiana's panties.

(Quiana suddenly hoped to hell that the other woman didn't know how to make jambalaya. She did not need that kind of temptation in her life.)

Before she knew it, the first bowl was entirely gone, and Marlena was hopping up to get her some more. "I'm so glad you liked it," she called out from the kitchen as she scooped out another bowlful. "Like I said, I worked really hard on the recipe. It's a vanilla base-I used extract, but that's pretty much the only place I cheated. The honey is genuine sourwood honey from the farmer's market-I get it from the Hollinger farm, they keep their own bees there."

She came back into the room and handed the bowl back. The ice cream was a little soupier this time, but Quiana was almost embarrassed by how fast she dug into it. There was just something about that taste, and the way that the silky, almost-liquid ice cream coated her tongue with it that made her crave one spoonful after another. She felt a little sheepish, just sitting there eating without talking while her guest made all the conversation, but Quiana didn't seem to mind.

"The eggs and the milk are from the farmer's market, too-the Dierdorffs have the best cows for making ice cream, the butterfat content is almost four percent. It's the most decadent thing you can imagine on cereal, and it makes this really rich, lustrous custard when you mix it with eggs. And the eggs the Dierdorffs have, well..." She chuckled. "I think if you let them hatch they'd give you a chicken that could take out Tokyo. They're huge."

Quiana laughed along with her-she wasn't really a foodie type herself, but she could at least appreciate the effort that Marlena put into her food. Especially when it paid off this well-Quiana could feel the ice cream cooling her off from the inside, making the unpleasant heat of the late summer afternoon finally bearable. It felt like the first time in ages that her body was even approaching comfortable, and she happily swallowed another spoonful of ice cream as she let her neighbor chatter away.

"But it's the poppy seeds that are really my pride and joy," Marlena said. Quiana made a little surprised sound around her spoon-that was the flavor she'd been getting all this time! Now that she knew what it was, she could place it from the poppy seed muffins she got some mornings on her way to work; it was a lot stronger than any muffin, though. Half the time those just added a little bit of crunch. This was a thick, heady, floral taste. No wonder she hadn't really recognized it; she'd never had enough to truly pick up the flavor before now.

"You like?" Marlena said, giving Quiana a little quirk of her eyebrow behind her thick, chunky glasses. Quiana only nodded, her mouth once again too full of ice cream to talk. She was near the end of her second bowl, but it was so nice to finally feel cool that she didn't care. She'd hit the gym an extra time or three this week to make up for it.

"Oh good!" Marlena said, taking the empty bowl from Quiana's fingers and going back to the kitchen. "I'll admit, that's the one part of the dish I feel like I can truly call my own. I've been carting those poppies around with me from one apartment to another for the past six years now, ever since I graduated college, and they're about the only good thing that ever came out of my botany degree. Do you know that I have hand-pollinated every single one of the current generation? Seriously. It's taken me something like two weeks. But it's all worth it for the seeds."

She came back in, putting the bowl in Quiana's hands again. Quiana looked down at it, feeling suddenly like she didn't quite know what she was supposed to do with it. The ice cream was delicious, absolutely fucking wonderful if she was being honest, but... this was her third bowl. And she was feeling like she might have had a little too much already. She could feel her body shading over from 'comfortably cool' to 'actually kind of a little chilly', and she knew it would probably get worse before it got better. She decided to just let her stomach settle for a few minutes, let Marlena talk (and man, could she talk!) and decide whether she really needed any more ice cream.

"I don't get a ton of seeds from each harvest," Marlena went on as she settled back onto the couch cushions, seemingly oblivious to Quiana's change of heart, "but really, I don't need a whole lot. I'm not greedy or anything, you know? I think that I used about half my current supply on the ice cream, but I've still got more than enough to get me through until the plants produce seeds again. So long as I haven't guessed wrong about your weight, that is. How much do you weigh, Quiana? About 145 pounds, 150?"

"Um..." It seemed like an odd, absurdly personal question, but what surprised Quiana most was how difficult it seemed to answer it. She felt like she'd been sitting there, eating ice cream and letting Marlena do the talking for so long that now that she finally was given an opportunity to speak, she'd forgotten how. Her head felt strangely numb, and thinking was suddenly a tremendous effort. It was like an ice cream headache without the pain, just a burst of brain paralysis that made Quiana feel like each individual thought was forcing its way through thick fluid.

It felt too exhausting to try to think about why she couldn't think; it was all she could do to answer Marlena's question. "153," she murmured, noting the strangely monotonous voice that came out of her mouth. She didn't sound like herself. She didn't feel like herself. Something felt off, like she was... was... like... Her train of thought slowly ground to a halt. She stared down at the bowl of ice cream in her lap with vacant eyes, somehow certain that there was something vital right in front of her face that would answer the mystery of her sudden brain freeze. If she could only make the connection. If she could just... just...

Marlena scooted over to sit right next to Quiana and scooped up a spoonful of ice cream. "Well, that should still be fine," she said, sliding the spoon through Quiana's slightly parted lips and into her mouth. Quiana felt the surprise and confusion in her own head-what the fuck was this girl doing, why did she think she could just start shoveling food into Quiana's mouth like that? But it all seemed to be locked away behind a wall of glassy, tranquil calm. She swallowed down the mouthful of ice cream with placid indifference, suckling on the spoon for a moment before letting Marlena pull it back out.

"So yes, we're kind of at the point in the conversation where it's okay for me to be a little bit more honest with you," Marlena said, dipping the spoon into the bowl and feeding Quiana another mouthful. "Not that I was lying to you before or anything-I mean, I told you that you were going to love this ice cream, and I did say that I worked really hard on it, I just kind of... left out a few things. Like what the ingredients do to you." She chuckled as a little dribble of liquid trickled out of Quiana's mouth, the pale gray contrasting with Quiana's warm brown skin.

Marlena dabbed up the liquid with her finger, then slowly slid the sticky digit into Quiana's mouth. Mechanically, Quiana licked and sucked every drop of the melted ice cream off. "I've been working for years with my special poppies, cross-breeding them until the seeds have just the psychoactive effect I've been looking for. Everyone who's tried them has loved what it did to their mind, but it wasn't enough for them to love my poppies. I wanted them to love me."

She removed her finger from Quiana's mouth with a pop, then pulled open the sash of Quiana's robe. She brushed aside the thin fabric, exposing Quiana's body to the warm air. One finger traced slowly down Quiana's chest, leaving a trail of saliva behind it. "So I kept working. I had to move a couple of times, when people started to poke their noses into what I was doing with my poppies, but that just made me more determined. And when I saw you last week, looking so cute with that long curly hair and those deep brown puppy-dog eyes of yours, well... I thought maybe it was finally time to give it a real go."

Marlena pressed lightly on Quiana's forehead, and Quiana's head tilted back into the couch cushions like a sleepy kitten flopping onto the floor. Her eyes were open, but somehow the thought of moving on her own seemed like a tremendous effort. The thought of thinking on her own felt like a tremendous effort. It just seemed easier to listen to Marlena, absorb the other woman's words and do as she was told. Her mouth hung open in a vacant, slack-jawed half-yawn, and Marlena scraped the rest of the bowl full of ice cream soup into it with a thoughtful, studious expression on her face. "That's my good girl," she said, as Quiana swallowed automatically. "That's my obedient girl."

Quiana didn't move as Marlena got up and went back to the kitchen. She couldn't imagine moving-she didn't feel sleepy or exhausted, but she had no real motivation to do or say anything. Her mind was deliciously free of volition, blissfully numb like it was coated all over in Marlena's smooth, thick, sticky ice cream. It felt good to relax, it felt so delightful to simply float in emptiness and wait for Marlena to fill her. Quiana could already imagine exactly what that might mean, and her panties were slowly soaking through with arousal at the mental image.

"Let's just get you up to a therapeutic dose," Marlena said as she returned with the serving bowl. The remaining ice cream had melted in the heat, but Marlena simply tilted the bowl into Quiana's mouth and poured the liquid right down her throat. "Get you nice and blank and horny and obedient for me. And tomorrow, you'll be more than happy to just swallow the seeds on their own. That sounds so nice, doesn't it, pretty girl?"

Quiana let out a little grunt, her mouth too full of thick creamy liquid to speak. She could feel it dribbling out of the corners of her mouth, running in rivulets down her cheeks and her chest to soak into her bra, but even that didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered except obedience now. She just needed to swallow Marlena's medicine like a good girl, drink it all down and let it turn her into Marlena's mindless slave. Her eyelids slowly fluttered shut as the drug took her deeper into numb, empty bliss, and all she wanted was for Marlena to fill her wet cunt the way she'd filled her mouth.

It didn't happen just yet, though. When the electrician knocked on the door, Marlena had to guide him through to the fuse box in the hall closet and show him where the outdated electrical system had given out under the load. Quiana heard him ask about her, in that sort of awkward way that people did when they felt like they were out of their depth and prying into someone else's business and just wanted an excuse to pretend that everything was okay. It didn't surprise her at all that when Marlena said, "Oh, my girlfriend? She's just had a long day," the handyman fell silent and let the matter drop.

And then finally he was gone. And then Marlena led Quiana back to her apartment, stumbling like a sleepwalker down the carpeted hallway. Quiana nodded in agreement as Marlena detailed their new future together, responded in a vacant monotone with details about when her lease expired and how soon she could move into Marlena's place. And then finally, blessedly, she slumped onto the bed in a mindless daze, her legs spreading automatically as soon as Marlena pulled her panties off. She was so wet. She was so horny. She was so empty.

"That's my good girl," Marlena purred, putting on a strap-on harness. Then she filled Quiana up completely at last.

THE END