One in Ten

*Thanks to PokingFun for her editing expertise*

*No true sex again in this part, but there is close contact*

*There are three horrible events in this section; a suicide, a murder/suicide at a daycare, and our protagonist gets fisted as part of a police intimidation tactic. I do not feel they are gratuitous. They feed into the dark desperation of the story's world. I wish there were not real-world events that planted these ideas within me.*

My date with Bethany started off poorly before it even got off the ground. Detective Kristi called to inform me she couldn't find a private attorney who would take on my case, sight unseen. She had finally called the Public Defender's office to get someone for me. Beggars couldn't be choosers, or so I had been told.

The restaurant was as Ms. Silverhorn described – well lit and decently populated. Upon entering, I was the third guy in the establishment. I could have done without that observation as well as Bethany standing up from 'our' table, smiling and waving me over. I had this insane impulse to turn and run away. In hindsight, it wasn't so insane considering how our last date had gone.

There were no whistles or cat-calls. It was a quality establishment, but that didn't stop them from looking and whispering to their female companions. I wanted to wear a burka while Bethany reveled in the attention I was getting. At the five foot mark, she moved forward to hug me. I couldn't help myself; I recoiled.

"Don't be like that," Bethany scolded me. "You invited me to dinner to apologize, remember?" In her perversion of reality that might have been the case, but in the world I lived in, she was my tormentor and betrayer. If I was going to apologize for anything it was for not reaching out and strangling her on the spot.

There were a dozen things I could do. Even ignoring the violent ones, I could still cause a scene and humiliate her, ignore her, or even hit on another woman (if my courage held out). I was having to pump sunlight down into the hole I had dug during the day but I opted to not dig it deeper at that moment.

"Bethany, I'm trying," I sighed. "This is a lot for me to deal with – us parting on such...unstable terms."

"Okay," she graciously allowed. She resumed her seat and I took mine. She automatically reached her hand halfway across the table. There was a time when we held hands all the time.

We would feed each other too. If I did that now, I would stab her in the eye. My resolve was barely limping along but I summoned up enough energy to put my hand in hers.

"Do you miss the way we used to be?" she mused.

"I think about it a lot," I said. Usually in things called nightmares.

"Do you miss the sex?" she leered. My stomach lurched.

"I'm sure you've had better since then," I gulped. Her eyes sparkled with desire.

"No," she purred. "No I haven't. We had real passion, Israel. The way you would look at me after we made love, the way our eyes met and how you ran your hands through my hair."

'Then you shouldn't have thrown me to the wolves, you stupid cow,' I inwardly screamed.

"Why did you share me with your sorority sisters?" I asked instead. I had never asked that before. I never had the guts to face her. No rush of bravery had altered that. My back had been shoved against the wall.

"It is a girl-thing," she grinned playfully. "You wouldn't understand." I wonder if she realized how lame that sounded. I wouldn't understand? Hell no, I wouldn't understand.

"Try me," I whispered.

"I loved being with you, Israel, but I have to live with those girls too," she began.

"Being in a sorority is a sisterhood. We agree to help one another through thick and thin. That means we share in our good fortune as well," she explained. "You were clearly superior to the dick the rest were getting so they voted for me to bring you over. I have to admit, you did your job well. Eighteen of the girls became pregnant. That was amazing."

That was insane. That had to be total bullshit.

"No," I moaned.

"Oh yeah," Bethany smiled. "All those fertility drugs plus your stamina succeeded beyond our wildest expectations."

"No," I repeated with greater hopelessness. "Wait – fertility drugs take weeks to work."

"Well duh," she giggled. "That's why I held off so long in bringing you over. We wanted to be ready." I had been used as a stud. Corralled, fattened and led to slaughter. I almost missed what she said next.

"You have three sons, Israel," Bethany continued. I'm sure the blood must have drained from my face.

"Three...did any of them live?" I muttered. I didn't know if I was praying more for them to be dead than alive. Knowing the monsters they would be with...

"All three lived," she lilted. "Technically you had five, but three of them lived and that is awesome." The first question that blew through my mind was 'why am I not in a lab?' My sons' survival rate was beyond phenomenal- 60% versus the normal 10%. It probably couldn't end the decline of my gender but it could slow down the rate – give humanity more time to find a cure.

"You covered that all up?" I asked quietly. Did I even want to know where my dead sons were buried?

"First we were surprised, then we couldn't figure out why and we couldn't access your records without raising too many red flags," she informed me.

"Had we informed the government, we'd have lost you," she squeezed my hand. Even with the infinitesimal chance that I might have some clue to the cure for the Gender Plague, the sorority decided to keep that under wraps. Unholy hell, they were worse monsters than I thought.

"You didn't have my child, did you?" I worried.

"No," she moaned sensually. "God knows you and I tried – and tried." After a short pause, "I miss you Israel. I was really upset that you dumped me. Sure, I got more guys, but they were...so boring and vanilla compared to you. Let's go back to my place and fuck." Who said romance was dead?

If she had tried to drag me to a taxi I would have slammed my dick in the car door. I figured I could do it two or three times before Bethany and the cab driver could stop me.

"I think we are moving a little too fast," I evaded. "I'm not like I was with you in college. In fact, since you I've never had an attachment."

"That's sweet," she stroked my palm with her fingers. "We don't have to go straight to an attachment tonight. We can wait until the second or third date. Can't we still have sex?"

"Honestly, I've only gone for faceless encounters after that weekend. It was something I doubted I could repeat," I gulped. I needed something else, some lie to peddle.

"I'm still adjusting to us working so close together," I added. "I not ready to return to a sexual relationship yet. I hope you can wait." Total lie. I was hoping for the end of the world so I wouldn't have to have sex with her.

"Hmmm," she regarded me cat-like. "Are you planning to sex up someone else while I wait?"

"No, definitely not," I all but shouted to the rafters.

"Not that nasty old cop?" Bethany teased.

"I'm not even sure how to compare the two of you," I smiled weakly. I was fading fast, but I was a freaking PR guy, after all, and I could still bail myself out a little longer.

The waitress came, took our orders then left. I steered the conversation toward work, our co-workers and the Mayor. Bethany didn't have much interest in policy. Politics was her expertise – who was who and who she knew. Only when dessert came around did she drop a hint about the party I had been invited to.

"I hear you have your first secret party coming up," she teased.

"Not if I can help it," I answered.

"What do you mean, 'not if you can help it'?" Bethany stared at me with no comprehension. "Why aren't you going?"

'None of your damned business', 'I'd rather floss with razor-wire', or 'I'm going to cuddle up with a good book in a non-extradition country' all worked for me. I could scream out my rage over having her fucked-up friends raising my sons to be slaves and my daughters to be as deviant and uncaring as their mothers. None of those would work.

"We are going deep sea diving," I fabricated. "Heading out Friday night and won't be back until late Sunday."

"Ah – ah – really?" Bethany blinked. "I didn't know you liked to do that. Hell, I wasn't sure they let men do that anymore. Isn't it dangerous?"

"It is no more dangerous than going out on a date with you," I smiled wanly. Sadly, Bethany wasn't a total idiot and I should have picked a better lie. She pulled out her phone and began doing some online research. Me, I went to the bathroom – then through the kitchen and out the back door. I flagged down the first cab I saw and was gone two minutes when the phone rang.

"Israel, where are you?" Bethany sounded pissed.

"I couldn't control my emotions around you and I don't want to screw things up like last time, so I left. Sorry," I murmured.

"Damn it," she sounded petulant, "I was really hoping to get some tonight."

Uh-uh, no way. Had Bethany tried to drag me anywhere for sex, it would have been a murder/suicide and that would have still counted as a victory for her.

"Maybe next week?" I put her off.

"What about tomorrow night?" she countered.

"Wa – what was – at – I'm – you are – ing up. I'm – into a tunnel – bye," and I hung up. The cabby looked over her shoulder and smirked at me but at least didn't give me shit about the fact we were nowhere near a tunnel. I had gone out with Bethany and made it through dessert, so had accomplished the mission Francesca had laid out for me, in my mind anyway.

To be safe, I cut off my phone. I paid for the taxi with money I couldn't afford to spend. My instinct was to race into my complex, up the stairs and get inside my condo as quickly as possible. Then it dawned on me; could being murdered or kidnapped be that much worse than the life I was currently living? I wondered how many of the two thousand missing guys felt the same way.

After getting cleaned up and dressed for bed, I found myself laying on the sofa, bat on my chest and staring at the ceiling. Isobel Diaz was going to crucify me – that was pretty much a given. If not, I'd have to date Bethany again, eventually. Death really was preferable because they'd already bludgeoned me as a person, stolen my children and gotten away with it.

Me ending up with Bethany as an attachment would be the removal of my only weapon – denial. She'd pleased her sorority friends but lost me in the process, or so I had told myself. Now it looked like she'd still end up possessing me anyway. How was that worse than what Isobel had in store when she finally got her hooks in?

To dwell solely on my harsh reality was no way to nurture the desire to fight on. I had to think about Angel, Kuiko, Roni and perhaps Francesca. They didn't get me. How could they? They were trying, though, and that put them head and shoulders above most womankind. I severely doubted they would turn down an offer of sex, but they weren't making it the focus of our relationships either. That had to count for something.

I was still staring off into space when Angel rang the doorbell. The first thing to occur to me was that it wasn't past midnight yet.

"Come in," I told her. She glided into my place, scanned the area then looked me over.

"You okay?" she inquired.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?" I answered.

"Bethany Harmon has been squawking into the ear of anyone who will listen that you got into a cab but didn't make it home and that you have been out of communication since leaving the restaurant," Detective Angel Kristi explained.

"That's none of her damned business," I groused.

"Take into account that Ms. Harmon is connected and 28 men have disappeared recently," Angel reminded me. "Give her a damn call."

"No," I muttered. "Why are you here anyway? Isn't this off your normal beat?"

"For some reason Patrol thinks you are a pain in the ass and a trouble-maker, so I volunteered to make this problem go away," she told me. "Did the date go that poorly?"

"She wanted to have sex. She told me I was the best sex she'd ever had. Then she told me about the children I had with her sorority sisters – children under the care of some of the worst women I've ever met," I sighed.

"Beyond ducking out the rear before she could trick me back to her place for a fuck session, it went stunningly," I concluded. She sat down on the arm of the sofa by my feet.

"How do you feel about that?" Kristi inquired. I looked at her as if she was delusional.

"Like hell I'm telling you," I snapped. "You are still a cop first, a woman second and a friend a very distant third."

"Israel, I can't help you if I don't know what's going on," she grumbled. Arguing was pointless anyway.

"They have my daughters. They are going to raise them to be the same kind of horrors they are. God knows what they will do to my sons," I growled.

"You want to know how I felt? I desperately resisted the impulse to put my fork into Bethany's eye socket and scoop out her brains. Do I get to go to jail now?" I glared at her.

"No, I – wait, did you say sons?" she stammered. Oh fucking hell. I was far more fatigued than I thought. If I didn't say anything, she'd just go looking.

"Yes, I have three sons. I also have thirteen daughters, if that matters," I groaned. "It does to me."

"God, how many women did you knock up?" Angel gasped.

"Eighteen of the forty-one. They were on a fertility drug regimen," I explained. Angel quickly did the math and jumped up.

"We need to..." she suddenly stopped. She'd done the same mental calculations I had in about .03 seconds. "We need to tell someone," she whispered.

"That doesn't work out so well for me," I pointed out.

"Israel, this is important. We can't just sit on this knowledge," Kristi insisted. "Don't you want to help?"

"Not really," I confessed.

"God damn it!" she leapt to her feet. "You can't hold onto this poison forever."

"It is not poison, Detective Kristi. You see me helping the Human Race limp along a few more decades," I related. "I see passing on my experiences to my sons and their sons."

"This isn't going to make women change their perceptions or attitudes towards men," I added.

"If we do nothing, women will never have the chance to change," Kristi countered.

"Do you deserve another few decades?" I inquired.

"Yes, we are human beings and we deserve the chance to fight off extinction," Angel persisted.

"It is not really up to me anymore anyway," I shrugged. "You know now and forty-one sorority girls have known for over a year. Certainly people in their families know, maybe some doctors as well." I figured nine months for the children to be born and then twelve more months before the abnormal number of males surviving was noted.

"That's right," I chuckled ruefully, "Bethany and her clique knew this way before I did and since I'm not in some lab somewhere, I have to assume they aren't rushing to save the Human Race either."

"That doesn't mean we should make the same poor choices they have," Kristi stated.

"They aren't going to help you, Detective Kristi," I regarded her. "You live on the wrong side of the social dividing line. Hell, Bethany has already told me that you aren't good looking enough, and too old, for me to date. The people you want me to save have already written you off genetically speaking."

"I'm not doing it for them, but for my colleagues on the force and the girls in this complex," Kristi kept on coming. "Don't they deserve a chance?"

"It is too late for them," I responded. "It will take them a few years to figure out if I'm anything special and what makes me so, if I am. Then it is seventeen more years before the male children I help become available."

"That means the youngest woman here will be thirty-six or thirty-seven. There will be many younger girls out there who have priority over them," I did the math. "You and I aren't going to save anyone we know."

"No matter what, we have to try," she insisted.

"Go ahead," I replied in a resigned voice. "You know we'll never see each other again if you do. You are not naïve enough to think they'll ever let me come back."

"Fuck you," Kristi snapped. She paced back and forth. "Fuck you," she repeated violently then stormed out of my condo, slamming the door. I fell asleep where I was.

(Thursday)

Steve threw himself in front of the metro.

He was behaving normally, mumbled to a few women, then gave me a slight wave and stepped off into the void and whatever afterlife awaited suicides. The ladies were screaming, crying and yelling. They were aghast and surprised. They couldn't understand why he did it and a few insisted he stumbled by accident.

One girl said they had sex the night before and had a great time. He had seemed happy. I knew exactly why he was happy and it had little to do with the sex. The guy missed his dead wife and had finally resolved after having intercourse with a total stranger that he would never recapture the magic on this side of existence.

So he had exercised what little free will he had left and given his tormentors a final 'fuck you'. I hoped there was a Heaven and he found his wife waiting for him there. The triple downside of all this was that we were all going to be late for work, I was now the ONLY male in a two block radius and the women were crowding in on me.

A few were clearly worried that I might become inspired to join Steve by ending my life. I wasn't sure how that would work – the metro had already stopped and wasn't going anywhere until the paramedics removed Steve's body. Some wanted to be comforted. A person had died and they were suitably shaken by the event.

Of course, there were always the ones who found this to be an opportunity to grope me yet again. Ambrosia, Fatima and Carrie appeared to have formed a coterie. I would have been more scared, but I'd seen this behavior before. Girls could readily accept a three (or four)-way and getting male enhancement drugs was insanely easy.

The precautions were the same. Don't take food or drink from anyone (a man could spike an offering just as well as woman), keep to public places and don't let them into your house, or go to their house – ever. As it was, we bought some drinks from vending machines and waited around for the police to process us.

Detective Somerset Trainer looked both physically tired and happy to see me. Not happy as in 'hey, how are you doing' but happy as in 'I'm going to take great joy in crushing your nuts' – figuratively speaking. My testicles were far too valuable to be ground into putty, but she could dream. She had a patrolwoman retrieve me from my protective cordon of females.

"Mr. Jensen," Somerset greeted me intensely.

"Is this the cry-baby?" her partner chimed in.

"What, is your tampon rammed in too tightly?" I blurted out. What the fuck was I saying? And the area around us got quiet too.

"Detective Gayle Seger," the woman extended her hand. I looked down at her hand then up at her face once more. I didn't shake the offered hand because I didn't feel like having my bones ground together. I couldn't win a brutal handshake contest with a cop. If I prevailed, I had assaulted her and if I lost and complained, I wouldn't be taken seriously.

"You talk a lot," Gayle commented.

"I'd be quiet if you'd let me," I bantered. "Hell, I'd never talk to a cop again if you would let me."

"We want you to talk. We'd really like it if you made sense from time to time as well," Somerset stated.

"In our experience, bravado normally indicates the perpetrator is hiding something," Gayle continued. "Are you hiding something, Mr. Jensen?"

"Clearly not my dislike for you and your ilk," I glared back. "Are you here to solve the mystery of what happened to Steve this morning or did you come all this way to chap my ass?"