Imagcasm

This story is really, really messed up and depraved, in many ways. You have been warned!

*****

At least I got to fuck Margot one last time before the Earth was destroyed.

I'd begged and pleaded all week for her to change her mind. The sheer misery of knowing she was moving out but being unable to do anything about it almost drove me mad, and more than once I cried myself to sleep wishing she hadn't given me so much notice. But on the other hand, if she'd waited until the day her new apartment came open, I'd have gone to bed clueless Wednesday night without that one last screw and then woken up Thursday morning dead like everybody else.

But Margot told me ahead of time, and I groveled all week long until I finally convinced her to take a last walk with me in Asherton Park, where we'd first made love a year earlier. As with that long-gone magical night, the park was surprisingly deserted, and after lots of walking and crying and her consoling me while remaining absolutely firm on the breakup, I asked her to have sex with me one last time "for closure." Surprisingly, she agreed.

So I lay down with her in a little clearing off the main paths, looked at her dark hair spilling across the grass, looked in her eyes, colorless and black in the night. I tried to kiss her, but only got a hand across the mouth in response. She reached between us and undid my belt and pants with an expression I'd have to call "clinical." Then she eased her dress up and her panties down and waited.

The reality that this was the last time I'd be with her, man and woman, truly set in. And it left me completely limp. I felt helpless and emasculated, like my world was ending (little did I know) - or had already ended. None of which lent itself to arousal. So Margot took me in hand and began to tug, something my body reacted to even though the situation made me want to cry.

Once I hardened up, she spat on her hand, got me wet, and guided me to her soft, about-to-be-lost entrance. Then she paused and looked me in the eye.

"Before we do this," she said, "I guess I really ought to tell you I'm not moving into the new place alone. Kevin's moving in with me."

The quiet of the dark evening no longer sounded quiet. Instead, I heard an uproar of crickets mocking me with laughter.

Kevin? The poser with the ponytail from the ballroom dance class we took?

"I just don't want you thinking that if you make this good enough, I'll change my mind."

"Kevin," I said. "Christ."

Which meant that where I was at that moment, Kevin had been too. Hovering over Margot's sleek, wonderful body poised to thrust into her - but looking down on an expression of welcome and desire instead of the blank indifference that I saw now.

The right thing to do would have been to get up, put it back in my pants, and get on with my life. But my head was a mess, a stew of dismay and hurt and betrayal, and instead of doing the right thing, I found myself clenching my jaw and slamming down into her, hard and angry.

Margot grunted in surprise, tight and dry around me with not much more than her spit on my dick for lubrication. Her mouth opened as if to say something, then shut itself as I started thrusting. She didn't respond or move with me, just lay there taking it.

The more I pumped into the rough tackiness of her unaroused cunt, the angrier I got.

You goddamn fucking bitch. After everything you ever said about honesty and faithfulness and how people who cheat are assholes because they should respect their partner enough to break up first, and you've let Kevin hit this enough times that you're already ready to move in with him? What the fuck!

I jammed harder and harder, accelerating as it hit me that I'd thrown away a year of my life on a two-timing slut and a liar. Part of my brain knew that was an unfair characterization, but I told that part to shut the fuck up. Pretty soon I was rocking her entire body back and forth on the grass of the clearing, watching her face twitch slightly in discomfort at the penetration and drag of my erection through her disinterested vagina.

And then I realized that it didn't feel quite so disinterested anymore. That my shaft had started gliding instead of chafing. That her eyebrows weren't tightening in pain but with the uncontrolled tremors of a woman beginning to enjoy herself.

She started moving her hips, and I humped even more fiercely.

That's right, you treacherous skank, take it and like it from

me

this time when Kevin's thinking he's the only one you're happy to spread for.

"Ohh," she groaned, "Jesus, Cale, you're never like this ..."

I hammered faster still, a firecracker-fuse of fury starting to burn its way from my chest down through my belly and into my balls.

Well if this is what you wanted, maybe you should have fucking

asked me

to be this way instead of jumping into bed with a ponytail schmuck.

"Cale ... shit ..."

Wham. Wham. Orgasm rampaged from my spine through my scrotum on its way to my dick.

"Oh god - Cale - "

And then, in the searing white light of ejaculation, I shouted, "Fuck you, Margot!"

She screamed and clutched at me as cum shot from my cock deep into her cheating-witch womb. A hateful, liberating, ecstatic release shuddered through me and spouted out to fill that faithless cunt, strobing my brain with flashes of dead love and revenge and pure physical pleasure.

And then, with the last pulse of semen from my urethra, the flickering stopped.

But the light stayed on.

"Cale, what the hell?" Margot had finished coming too and now threw an arm across her face against the glare from above.

I looked up, only to blink and flinch away, half-blinded.

Shit, is that a police helicopter? What -

But there was no chuffle of rotor blades, only a deep and growing hum.

The light cut off.

And Margot, the park, and Earth were gone.

* * *

A sky of steely grey and a bed of hard, cold rock greeted me when I woke.

Or maybe, I realized, looking around, it wasn't steely grey but actual grey steel.

Hills and ridges and ravines of off-white stone surrounded me, running away into the distance where for all the world it looked like the slate-colored sky curved down to meet them.

As if it wasn't a sky at all, but a miles-across dome.

Sitting up, I found my clothes gone, a tight silvery jumpsuit in their place. My hand bumped something metal when I moved - some kind of rifle.

Not the hunting kind. Not the army kind. The kind you'd expect to see in a sci-fi video game.

What.

The.

Fucking.

Hell.

A sound made me turn: "Ping!"

Just over my right shoulder hovered a fist-sized metal egg, lines of blue phosphorescence etched around its surface.

"A contest," it said metallically. In the air beside it, an abstract human figure and an abstract not-so-human figure appeared, the first silhouetted in peach and the other in yellow holographic light.

"Two contestants." The figures lunged and grappled. Above the struggling silhouettes, a pair of spinning oblate spheroids began rapidly orbiting about a central point, each of them covered in scribbly continents. "Two planets."

As the holographic battle continued, the peach and yellow colors all shifted to green, making it impossible to distinguish one figure from the other.

"One victor," said the metal egg. A green figure sprang upright while the other toppled and lay still. "One corpse."

A circling planet settled into place above the triumphant figure. The other cartoon world began looping in wider and wider ellipses.

"Then one planet."

The careening green sphere winked out, along with the prone loser of the animated fight.

"Your victory, your planet."

The remaining holographic world zoomed up in size to reveal familiar Earthly continents. The figure beneath it took on my exact and detailed features.

Then the miniature me rotated to the horizontal and sprawled out, bleeding. "Your corpse ..."

A rapidly dispersing cloud of rubble displaced the projected Earth.

With that, the metal egg shot off across the hills, too fast to follow.

"Fuck me."

The worst part was, there was no point in thinking, "Am I dreaming? Am I in a coma? Did I snap and go crazy? Where's Margot?"

I was on a spaceship. Or maybe already on an alien planet. The beam of light hadn't been any helicopter, that's for sure.

Some nonhuman

thing

had kidnapped me, brought me here, and pretty clearly threatened to blow up the Earth if I didn't win this Thunderdome arena deathmatch.

The light fell all around, directionless. I couldn't see any defined source; my shadow just spread in a hazy grey pool on the ground.

I stood up feeling lightheaded.

Earth is so fucked

, I thought. I suck at videogames, and I've never held a real gun in my life. I picked up the rifle. It felt heavy, awkward, unbalanced.

At least there aren't any complicated controls.

Just a button on the grip I assumed served as the trigger. Maybe it wasn't entirely hopeless. Maybe whoever they'd captured from the other planet was as big a shmo as me.

Should I try some target practice, so I at least have a chance of hitting something when the ... alien shows up? Or will the light or noise just give away my position and let them snipe me?

[It will not matter either way.]

If my finger had been on the button, I'd have sprayed bullets or laser blasts all over the place at the sound of that voice - because it

wasn't

a sound. It came through my head, not my ears.

I spun around, and around again, looking for the source.

Fucking shit hell fuck me. Can you read my goddamn mind?

[Yes. I'm about to step out from behind the boulder on your right rear flank.]

I pretty much jumped out of my shoes turning around.

[Feel free to shoot if you like. You will not hit me.]

And there she was.

I assume something about the voice in my brain subconsciously told me she was a she. I certainly couldn't have guessed from her shape, sinuous and slim, a couple feet taller than me and a lot thinner. She stood on two legs, with a bulbous tail or abdominal extension stretching out behind her like a blunted wasp's sting. Her skin had a sandy yellow tone and a texture so smooth she might have been sculpted from butter. Her arms hung long and seemingly jointless, ending in hands with four fingers that came together in a point. Narrow, rounded, unthreatening shoulders supported the arms. Between them on a long, lithe neck sat her head, oval, framed by some kind of horns or tendrils that looped in curls at each side like the antlers of a bighorn sheep only heavier and smoother and the color of lavender. Her eyes shimmered purple on the flanks of a central ridge that ran down the front of her skull to a tubelike projection, slitted at the end ... her mouth?

[I am very relieved that they have finally happened across a species with compatible brainwaves. Since we can communicate, perhaps I will not have to kill you.]

I raised my gun, hoping I had the sights lined up right. But I didn't fire.

"What makes you so sure I can't hit you?"

[I possess an excellent sense of trajectory and can read from your thoughts the exact moment you intend to pull the trigger. I need only shift a few inches to avoid your shot. Were your reflexes quicker than mine, you could detect my motion and compensate, but your reflexes are not quicker than mine. By the time you see me move, you will already have missed.]

I hit the trigger as quickly as I could, half in case she was playing mind games to get the drop on me and half just to see if she could really do what she said.

She didn't move. My shot winked vivid and blue, vaporizing part of the boulder several feet to the side and behind her.

[Also, you have no idea how to aim that weapon. Less technically, you suck.]

I should have been panicking, but the unreality of it all - or something in those projected thoughts - kept me detached and feeling only mildly anxious.

"So why haven't you already killed me? Didn't they give you a weapon too?"

[I do not need a weapon.]

She sounded sure enough of that to be scary.

[But as I told you, I do not want to kill you.]

"One of us has to die, though, right? Or is this like Captain Kirk and the Gorn, where it's all a test?"

[You should stop speaking aloud. They are monitoring us with audio receivers and will have absorbed your linguistics from your world's data web. And no, it is not a test. It is a trick. Your planet has already been destroyed.]

"What?" I felt a worse kick than when Margot said she was leaving.

[Our captors, the Xh'stuk'tes'shei, are a race of sadists and amoral gamblers. They have scoured approximately ten percent of this galaxy, annihilating every intelligent race they encounter. Before destroying a world, the fleet commander assigned to the attack randomly selects one inhabitant for these games. Then the planet is obliterated.]

Mom. Dad. All my friends. Margot ...

Well at least fucking ponytail Kevin is dead.

[Commanders whose champions triumph receive the most prestigious ships and assignments. Those who lose must return to the ranks and attempt to earn their way back into positions of power. The commander who chose me is only a few matches away from attaining a position on the high council. Twenty-three matches after that, he will be emperor.]

I guess he really picked lucky.

[No. He learned of the planet I was on from the databases of one of his victim species. Once he reached the planet, it was assured he would pick me, because no other intelligent being lived there.]

Something about the way you say that makes me nervous.

[It should. The planet was a prison. I am the most dangerous creature in the universe.]

Uh...

[Well, possibly just in this galaxy. I have not been to others. At any rate, where the Xh'stuk'tes'shei currently control a tenth of what you call the Milky Way, two million years ago I ruled ninety-one point three percent of it.]

Shit.

[Yes. Fortunately for everyone else, I had what you might call a religious conversion, and allowed the most moral of my remaining opponent species to eradicate the bulk of my population and eventually capture me. I am genetically incapable of suicide or I would have taken that route instead.]

I looked around. White rock for miles and miles. An enormous steel dome. A bizarre mind-reading alien. Considering how little there was to see, my brain had a very difficult time processing the reality of it all.

What exactly ... makes you so badass?

[Think of something dangerous.]

Half a dozen alien sci-fi horror movies flashed through my head. Before I could settle on one, she said:

[I can do that.]

Which?

[All of it. I am a volitional polymorph, a telepath, and able to inductively metamorphose and mentally enslave any biological construct that my senses can assay, provided I have a brief period of time to manufacture the appropriate seeding formula along with opportunity to inject it.]

That's fucking terrifying. And horrible.

[Acknowledged. But it took me almost two million years and hundreds of trillions of victims to perceive and admit to that truth.]

Why are you telling me this?

[Because the Xh'stuk'tes'shei are only a few degrees less monstrous than I am. They destroyed the species whose extraordinary soulfulness convinced me to give up my galactic conquest. They've destroyed most of the species whose diligent, selfless armed struggle eliminated my sub-hives across the galaxy. They have every intention of carrying out a universal genocide if not stopped. I at least retained the genotypic riches of conquered species and incorporated them into myself, along with memories of any interesting cultural ingenuities. The Xh'stuk'tes'shei only destroy, gamble, and destroy more.]

And ... that pisses you off.

[Exactly. Given the circumstances, I can either keep defeating their champions one by one, thus murdering a helpless string of innocents, each the last of its race, or I can break my promise to myself and make use of my abilities to overwhelm the Xh'stuk'tes'shei and undo them.]

So why are you talking to me instead of going out to kick their asses?

[Because, while our captors have no idea just

how

dangerous I am, they know that I am very, very dangerous. There is a field around this enclosure that will incinerate me if I come within a quarter-mile of it. I cannot escape. But you can. The last indignity that the Xh'stuk'tes'shei inflict on a race is to make a feast of the remains of its final member when that being dies in the games. If I impregnate you with a metamorphic formula, rendering you apparently lifeless, you will be taken to the kitchens for preparation, and along the way you will change, leaving you free to assault and similarly impregnate every Xh'stuk'tes'shei you meet.]

Holy crap. That's fucked up.

I looked around some more. It still didn't help.

Would I even be

me

after that?

[Mentally, yes, although the transformation would inextricably link your psyche to mine and allow me to fully control you whenever I wished - an ability I promise not to use unless absolutely necessary. In terms of physical form, I could allow you to retain some elements of your current configuration, but significant changes would be unavoidable if you are to engage trained Xh'stuk'tes'shei soldiers in hand-to-hand combat and avoid being killed by those with ranged weaponry.]

I shook my head, blinking.

Jesus. So I'm supposed to let you brain-slave me, turn my body into an alien-impregnating super-weapon, and then help you bust loose to probably take over the whole galaxy? How could I possibly trust you enough to do that?

[You can't. I am enormously smarter than you, with access to your entire lifetime of memories, even those you do not consciously recall yourself. So I could easily say exactly the right things to make myself seem as trustworthy as any creature in the universe. But you've recently had an experience of betrayal from someone you trusted absolutely, and while I am smarter than you, you are intelligent enough to realize that anything I say could easily be a lie. The only evidence that might have any weight with you is the fact that I am asking your permission, even though I could easily immobilize you and do whatever I wished.]

But if I don't give you permission, you're going to kill me.

[Sadly, yes. As I said, I am genetically incapable of self-destruction, which includes willfully allowing others to destroy me. So you cannot kill me, and if neither of us dies within a prescribed time, this entire arena will be sanitized by hard radiation, destroying us both. Hence, I will have no choice but to take your life if you do not agree.]

I looked one more time at the rocky, desolate landscape and its domed metallic sky, my brain as empty and barren as any of it. How was this happening? Why was I not home, in my apartment, with my beautiful girlfriend building the perfect life I had expected for us?

[If it helps your decision any ...]

Yeah?

[When I seed you with the metamorphic formula, I can fuck you much better than Margot ever did.]

I turned back to her - tall, alien, with that unreadable, purple-eyed face and unsettlingly devilish horns. The easiest thing would probably be to tell her to kill me. Did I really have anything left to live for anyway? If she was telling the truth, she'd probably make it quick and painless. But ... if she was telling the truth, I'd be forcing her to do something terrible that she didn't want to do. And I'd be letting these too-many-fucking-apostrophes-in-their-name bastards continue blowing up helpless planets like my own.