Oh Suzie Q

"Thought you'd have more of a selection of chimps," I said in all innocence.

"We don't use that word," he told me brusquely. "They're not monkeys."

I hadn't meant to offend. "Sorry. I mean, your Demmies." I didn't bother to point out I hadn't actually used that word, or that chimpanzees are apes like us and not monkeys at all. I wouldn't ever call them monkeys; that's clearly offensive. A few of my old college friends used to call them that, but not me. I mean, they don't even have tails. Chimp, now that's practically a term of endearment. We're all great apes together, in this hard cruel world, right? No insult to a Demmy is implied with that word. Hell, even my mom calls them that. But I can see how someone might view it differently.

"There's no chimpanzee DNA in any of my girls," he elaborated firmly, clearly not mollified.

"DNA? It's 98% the same." I knew there was no upside in arguing with him, yet I couldn't help myself.

He slammed shut the slim binder of photos and pedigrees. "Not even close, bud. This isn't that kind of shop. My girls are 197-certified, and I've got the lab papers to prove it for each one of them. 99.1 to 99.4%, minimum to maximum, stricter than the law anywhere requires. No knuckle-draggers. No borderlines, either, that might turn out to be FR later on. And no dwarfs and midgets, no Down syndrome, none of that shit. I run a tight operation here."

I did my best to smooth things over, assuring him that I wasn't making any accusations. My father had gotten one after the divorce, I told him, and he had been very happy with his until he had to put her to sleep. At least, he never mentioned any downside to having Vickie in the house. Potty-trained. Good for some light cooking. And of course cleaning. The best of all worlds. At least, in theory.

Though, Dad hadn't gotten another one yet, and it wasn't a topic a son would bring up with his papa. But I assumed he would approve - now that I had the means to afford one.

I didn't give all of that background to Raoul, of course. I just asked him to go back to showing me what he had in stock, and emphasized again that I hadn't meant any offense to his girls.

Yes, girls. I know some people call them by other names, but they really are girls. I consider myself at least a little enlightened. Sure, it's a real stretch to call them women. Only someone in the SPCD would. But I wouldn't refer to them dismissively as, simply, females either. They're worth an extra three-fifths of a vote on election day, you know? So they're not dogs, cats, or sheep. Simply females of some wildly different species? No, they are not. Women? No, they're not that either. Girls. Period. It's just that, unlike our girls, they're girls with no potential to become full adults. They know their place, we know ours, right? But no, I didn't explain any of this last part to Raoul, either. He surely sees it nearly the same way. He interacts with them on a regular basis, for goodness sake.

Grudgingly, he opened his binder again. There were only four sheets in it, acetate-covered pages with photos. Very old-school. He addressed my original observation, by reminding me that the fourth Covid pandemic had hammered the Demmies worse than us, until the vets could devise a variant of the mRNA vaccine for them. The strains of the disease didn't pass between the two species. But the strain that affected the Demmy population had been, to them, almost like the Black Death had been to humans nearly a thousand years earlier. Their numbers dropped by almost a fifth - worse than that, in some localities - and had only started to bounce back in the past ten or twelve years. Supply and demand, he reminded me, even with the number of ten-percenters being allowed as high as thirty percent of late, thanks to emergency legislation.

"Demand ought to be low. The economy, you know." It really hadn't rebounded either since the last banking seize-up.

"Supply's low, though. And that's the key. In any high-end market there's always people with cash on hand, for what little supply there is." He clearly didn't want to let me open the door toward bargaining on price and seemed to prefer changing the subject back to his binder. "Would you consider a girl that has a little one of her own?" he asked. The photo showed an unusually busty specimen in a tank top; a B-cup or maybe even a C, I estimated.

"A baby girl?" I asked, intrigued. It was a topic I hadn't even considered.

"Hell no," he shot back quickly. "Not even close to legal. A little dude. Already been neutered."

"What in hell would I want with a male?" I countered. "You think I'm a fag?" Okay, I admit I'm not consistent. The boy Demmies are males. The female Demmies, they're girls. Take me to woke court over it.

It was his turn to walk it back a tad. "I'm not implying anything. Good riddance to those. I'm not talking about that. I mean, a girl's maternal instinct is just as strong as for an FR. Claudine might be extra, you know, grateful if she's sure her little one is being taken care of. Share a little nooky with you, after he's fed, know what I mean?"

"But she's a ten-percenter?"

"Definitely."

I sighed. "Still. Not sure if that's something I'm ready to tackle. Diapers in the trash, inspectors coming by unannounced, all that. Not quite yet."

"Understood." He turned to the next page. "Though, you realize, they all are expected to breed eventually. That percentage's gonna come back down. Comes with the territory anyway."

"I'll cross that bridge when it comes."

"It's how you pay it forward," he said, not quite willing to drop it.

The photo for the second one was cute enough, in her monkey-faced way. Oops sorry, what was I just saying about that word? Anyway she was wearing a tiny swimsuit. She was slim and trim like all of them. Barely any tits. There are no fat Demmies out there. All I'd ever seen, anyway, whether in person or in photos or in porn vids, were skinny and angular, with arms just a little too long. "How old is she?"

"Suzie? She's just barely of age. They do hormone supplements that speed things up a little."

"That's legal, right?"

Raoul cleared his throat as though to say something profound, then seemed to stop himself. "Of course," he said tersely.

I looked at the next page. Having finally caught on to the format of the table in each bio writeup, I asked, "what's wrong with her?"

"Ming? Nothing wrong with her."

"But she's 25."

"A little bad luck, that's all. Nothing the matter with her."

"What kind of bad luck?"

"Recently? Her owner died."

I looked at him for a moment. "Nothing she did, was it?"

He scowled derisively and shook his head. "Dude was 107. Heart attack."

"That's not even that old."

"It's getting up there though. No warning. Maybe she was too much for him, at that age. But it sounds like he must have gone out the way he wanted to, heh."

"Wouldn't we all."

"Heh. She's kind of torn up about it, though. She was blowing him, right when it happened." He paused for a moment, in contemplation. "I'll be honest. Ming's afraid to do oral anymore, She thinks, doing that, she might kill the next one too. Poor thing. I'm sure you could build her confidence back up, though."

I thought for a second. "The one my dad had, she barely made it past 30."

"With good care they should live to 40 or 50, no problemo."

That sounded like optimistic sales-speak to me. "Yeah, well, I don't know if I want to go against the odds like that. if she's already 25."

"I might be able to come down a little bit, on her."

A discount on damaged goods didn't improve my opinion on Ming. "Pass."

"So be it. Let me show you one more."

The last girl, also in a bikini, appeared to be flat-chested. I did want a little meat on the bones, so to speak. "Yeah, go back to Suzie," I told him.

He turned the pages back. "Wanna get to know her?" he asked.

"What? You mean right now?" I replied.

"What do you think, numbnut? Yeah right now. Got 'em all, right in back. Kennel, doctor, office, all in one place. Service after the sale."

"Well, sure, let's see her."

"See her? I mean, you can try her out. You and she hit it off, you Blitz me the funds, and you can take her home later this afternoon, soon as I can file the paperwork." Raoul was, if nothing else, the prototypical sales puke. Always Be Closing, that was obviously his motto. He saw my skeptical look, and added, "as long as you end up buying one, there's no charge for the test drive, heh. I've got your hundred T of earnest money to cover it if you walk. You and she can have an hour. If she's not your style, come back tomorrow, or whenever you're ready again, same arrangement with another one, Ming or whoever. Hell, try all four. That's worth twenty-five apiece, easy. Right?"

"Pretty sure I can rent one for ten anywhere downtown. Five if I'm not choosy about how she looks."

"You get what you deserve if you do that."

"Oh, I know. Look, I'm not here to waste your time, or mine. Yeah, bring her out. Test drive. I'll kick the tires, sure. Why not? Little privacy, I assume?"

He escorted me to an adjoining room and told me to wait. So, I sat down at the table in the middle of the room, and waited, amusing myself with my screen. Fifteen minutes I waited, at which point I was starting to wonder whether there was some kind of snag. And then the door at the other side of the room opened, and Raoul escorted the raven-haired girl in. I stood up.

She was just shy of four feet tall, wearing the same bikini as in the photo. That silky black hair was done up in a high-ponytail, with a dainty pink bow either for decoration or to hold it together. "Kind of tall for a Demmy," I commented to Raoul, receiving only a shrug for a response.

Looking at me up and down, with a shy - borderline sly - smile that indicated interest and probably approval, she waited patiently for him to unlock her handcuffs. In person, her face was less simian than in the photo. But her lack of incisors or canines was jarring when she smiled, and I told him so.

"Teeth, fingernails, toenails, all removed when she was an infant. Standard protocol since the Wave. She has her full set of twelve molars in the back, of course. So she can chew. She just can't bite. It's all in the vet's report. She's clean. She's got both ID chips and her location chip. I don't deal in strays."

I understood his implication; things had changed a while back, after the FR First movement swept into power. Changed mostly for the better, with a lot of legislation to buttress the principles behind the 197th. Demmies are usually peaceful creatures. But if frightened or extremely angry they might bite or scratch - not so different from a human 3-year-old in fact. A little precaution regarding the ten-percenters only made sense on top of that since their sex drive was still intact. Because she was barefoot, I could see the faint outline of the scars marking where the nails on hands and feet would have been. Didn't make her toothless grin any easier to get used to. Vickie had had all her own teeth, and it had never been an issue for Dad. At least, one assumes not.

Raoul left her electronic collar in place and gave her a little nudge toward me.

"Shuh mup ell soo zee," she said in a husky whisper. Her thin lips did little to shield her lack of dental structure when she spoke.

"Huh?" I said by way of clever repartee.

"Too gross beet," she continued. She opened her small mouth as wide as she could, displaying her collection of molars as advertised.

"What's she saying?" I asked Raoul.

"Suzie just asked if you have a big dick," the bearded fellow chuckled. "And then she showed you she can handle one."

"What the hell language is that?"

He laughed again. "French. Sort of? Had her brought down from northeast of Montreal. They teach 'em how to suck dick real good, up there."

I wasn't too sure about this. "She doesn't speak English? I don't know if I can deal with French. I haven't taken French since, oh, freshman in high school."

"You can teach her English as you go, just the words you need. Or, you can enroll her in a dunce corner for a week, don't cost much, and they'll teach her the basics. She won't ever be able to count above ten anyway, whatever you do." He addressed her. "Un, deux, trois?"

She caught on that he was quizzing her. "Cat, wheat, set, deece." She beamed as though having just won the Nobel Prize for Counting.

"See what I mean?" he laughed. "You can teach her the words in English for colors, some numbers, and whatever slang you like to use for fucking and sucking. And of course I guess for cooking simple meals, cleaning up, and doing laundry. There's pretty good cookbooks for them now, you know. After that she'll be good to go. Easier than training a dog. She tested as having a real good memory for following a routine. Cleaning and cooking, like I said. Not so good at figuring out something new, but she tries."

"I'm not a schoolteacher," I emphasized.

"Swah saw nuff," Suzie volunteered enthusiastically.

"Okay," Raoul laughed, "and she knows the number 69, too. Imagine that. Yeah, there's gonna be a learning curve, for both of you. Start slow for the moment. Tell her your name." I didn't react quickly enough, and he repeated, "let her know your name."

I tried to give her a friendly smile. "Hey, Suzie-Q. I'm Randy." I almost held out my hand for a shake, but that would have seemed weird and inappropriate.

She returned my smile but didn't say anything more. Clearly she had comprehended nothing except maybe my rendition of her name.

Raoul opened his backpack and handed me a tooth rotter. "Give her this," he said. Then he told her, "il s'appelle Randy."

She saw what I had, and seemed very interested, and held both hands out, one palm cupped beneath the other. I placed it in her hand, and she popped it into her mouth and chewed it up. "Messy, muss your Ran Dee," she said, then suddenly lunged and gave me a big hug around the waist, which of course was about shoulder height for her. The candy had a fruit scent that I found overpowering, but she seemed to like it. Good to know something that would please her.

I gave her a little push back, as the hug quickly had become more of a rubbing session against my rapidly developing hard-on. "Looks like she's seen the inside of a Catholic church once or twice," I commented, since the way she had held out her hands reminded me of times long ago.

He chuckled. "The nuns up in Kay-beck have their mysterious ways. The Pope still decrees that Demihumans have souls, and the nuns have to follow that teaching. Lucky for us, the Hundred-Ninety-Seventh Amendment draws a pretty clear line of distinction."

She finished chewing and swallowed the last sweet morsel, then stepped toward me again and placed her hand directly on my crotch. That hand was hairless, as was her entire bony arm, but it was a little more simian-looking than I was quite hoping for. "Too emm lay peep, muss your Ran Dee?" she asked. Ugh, that grating low-register yet nasal voice was definitely going to require some getting-used-to. She opened her mouth wide again after asking. Her tongue was bright blue from the candy.

Suddenly she recoiled. I looked at Raoul and he gave me a knowing nod. "I'll show you how to use the controller. She'll mind her manners once she gets to know your ground rules. For now, to start out I mean, I recommend keeping a pretty steady hand on the tiller. You don't want her to get in the habit of fondling men she's only just met."

"What did she say?"

"What, you didn't get the idea? She pretty much spelled it out for you, when she showed you her tonsils, didn't she? She asked whether you like blow jobs. I'm surprised - usually she wants to fuck straightaway." His laugh was unkind.

"So you gave her a zoot? Why?"

"Thought you didn't speak French. Zoot zoot. Nah, gotta keep her in line, bud. She'll be fine once she learns your rules, but to start out she may try to, uh, take liberties. You don't seem like a real tough nut. She'll try to exploit that. Her IQ's 23, according to the vet, which is actually pretty high, but Demihumans have a really good emotional quotient, know what I mean? They can read you a lot better than you expect. So, discipline is a must."

"The web page said something about discipline, but I didn't think it would be like that. I'm not buying a Demmy to hurt her."

"Oh, I'm with you on that. They can't help who they are, after all. Didn't ask to be born, did they? And they're too expensive to abuse. You wouldn't buy a brand-new climate-changer only to take a sledgehammer to it, right? Unless you're a sick fuck who happens to be rich."

"So then why?"

"The collar? Gotta keep it simple. For her sake." He handed me the slightly bulky device, the size of an old-style TV remote. "So she'll understand. There, the red button, that's all you really need, to give her a quick zoot. I've got it set on medium low right now. If she doesn't behave, turn it up a notch with that green dial. Try it."

"I don't want to hurt her."

He scoffed. "Either establish your dominance now or waste more time later wishing you had."

I pushed the button, and instantly wished I hadn't. A look of pain if not downright anger again crossed her face.

"Déshabille-toi," he told her in confident if not perfectly accented French. "Il t'aime tellement." Her expression changed back to a happier one in an instant at the praise, and she reached behind her back to unclasp the floral bikini top she had on.

The small titties she revealed were hardly the stuff of fantasy, but at least looked more normal than I was worried they might. Nice erect nipples with a bit of darker areola surrounding them, contrasting with her medium brown skin. Not much more than an A-cup of breast tissue, but tits are tits and more than a mouthful's a waste anyway, as they say. She then slipped off her matching swimsuit bottom. There was a black and very full bush that was likewise more human than I expected.

"Nice," I said.

"She shaves frequently," Raoul told me. I wasn't sure exactly what that entailed, but didn't choose to ask right then, because he next gave the girl a command, and she promptly demonstrated her gymnastic ability by bending over backwards and executing an adroit headstand. After a moment in that vertical pose, she spread her legs like an Olympian, into a full straddle position.

"Agile," I said. I was a little at a loss for words, due to the impromptu Kiev-type skin show. Apart from letting me see her athletic side, she was also letting me see her cunt.

"She is that," he agreed. "And now you've got your proof that she's a ten-percenter." I couldn't really see, and he encouraged me to get in right beside her. Up close now, I could tell that beneath the mass of pubic hair, there was fleshy tissue that would have been absent on the vast majority of Demmy girls, who typically were circumcised Sudanese-style shortly after birth and would go on to enter a life of productive work when they were old enough, little different than the males, whether studs or neuters, except of course that the girls would periodically give birth. Field Demmies or Factory Demmies, in other words. Unlike Suzie, or any other ten-percenter.

Anyway, Suzie's labia looked meaty, like an elite ten-percenter's should, considering the premium prices Raoul was charging. I was pretty sure I could even see her clit. If she shaved frequently, as Raoul had indicated, the razor didn't go anywhere between her legs, because that growth of black stuff reached to her asshole and well beyond, nearly to her tailbone. I wondered if keeping herself clean down there was a problem.

"Go on, have a feel. Check her out for yourself," he urged.

She was balanced surprisingly stably, on her hands like that. Gingerly, I caressed the hair with my index finger, then worked down through the growth to touch her Venus mound directly. I drew my finger across her protruding clitoris, and was surprised to hear a throaty, chuckling kind of sound from below. "Whoa," I said, and pulled back.