Chapter 6: The First Performance
The holographic glyph of entwined figures pulsed once more, then dissolved. The silence from the spectators felt heavier than noise.
Sarah’s hand stayed on Emily’s face, her thumb tracing the curve of a freckled cheekbone. The gesture was a claim, but her eyes were scanning the perimeter of their prison, the rancher assessing the fences. “We need to look at this place,” she said, her voice low.
Emily nodded, the logical part of her clinging to the task. The heat in her gut was a constant thrum, a background program running behind everything else. She followed Sarah away from the central mud bank.
The pond was the first lie. Up close, the water wasn’t murky—it was utterly black, viscous, and warm to the touch. It gave off a faint, coppery odor. It reflected nothing, a hole in the world. Sarah crouched and dipped a finger in, jerking it back out immediately. “It’s not water. It’s like… thick oil.”
“A substrate,” Emily whispered. “For something else.”
They moved to the cave. The opening was wide, the interior dark. As they approached, the vein-like tendrils lining the walls twitched, pulsing with a soft, internal light. The air from within was warm and humid, carrying a scent of damp soil and something sweetly fungal.
Sarah stopped at the threshold. “I’m not going in there.”
From the gallery above, the Overseer hummed. A different tone—impatient.
A shudder passed through the ground. Near the cave mouth, where the weird ferns clustered, a plant with thick, rubbery leaves began to tremble. With a soft, organic tearing sound, a new stalk pushed up from its center. It thickened, lengthened, curving slightly. Its surface was smooth and mottled, the color of bruised flesh. It grew to the length of a forearm, the tip bulbous and rudimentary.
It was a perfect, biological phallus.
Emily stared, her mouth dry. Sarah let out a sharp, bitter laugh. “Convenient.”
“It’s part of the set dressing,” Emily said, her voice hollow. “They provide the props.”
The crowd’s chatter resumed, a wave of clicking and trilling. The expectation was a physical pressure.
Sarah turned from the grotesque plant. Her gaze landed on Emily, and the conflict in her eyes resolved into something darker, simpler. The need awakened by the silver fluid wasn’t just in Emily; it was a loop, a feedback system. Sarah’s dominance was a demand for submission, and Emily’s submission fed Sarah’s control.
“They want a show,” Sarah said, not looking at the aliens. She was looking only at Emily. “Fuck them.”
She closed the distance between them in two strides. Her hand tangled in Emily’s short auburn hair, not gently. She pulled Emily’s head back, exposing the pale line of her throat. Emily gasped, her body arching into the rough handling, a sudden wetness blooming between her legs.
“This is for us,” Sarah breathed against her ear, but the words were a ritual, a spell against the watching eyes. “Only for us. You understand?”
“Yes,” Emily choked out.
Sarah’s mouth crashed down on hers. It wasn’t a kiss; it was consumption. Teeth clacked. Sarah’s tongue, rough and demanding, mapped the inside of Emily’s mouth. Her free hand groped down, palming Emily’s ass, squeezing the soft flesh hard enough to bruise. Emily moaned into the kiss, her hands fluttering before settling on Sarah’s hips, clutching the strong bones there.
Sarah broke the kiss, a string of saliva connecting them. Her eyes were wild, hungry. “On your knees. By the water.”
Emily went, the damp, warm earth soaking into her skin. She knelt at the edge of the black pond, the viscous liquid lapping at her shins. Sarah stood behind her, a hand on her shoulder.
“Touch yourself,” Sarah commanded, her voice gravel. “Show me how wet you are for this. For them.”
A tremor of shame, hot and sharp, went through Emily. It was extinguished by a greater wave of need. She reached between her own legs, her fingers slipping easily through the slick folds of her cunt. She was soaked. She spread her lips, showing Sarah the glistening, pink flesh, then circled her clit, a low whine escaping her.
“Good girl,” Sarah growled, the praise a bolt of lightning down Emily’s spine. “Now bend over. Put your hands in that muck.”
Emily obeyed, leaning forward until her palms sank into the thick, warm mud of the bank. It oozed between her fingers. Her ass was raised in the air, exposed to the crowd, to Sarah. She felt the cool air on her wetness.
She heard Sarah spit, then felt the broad, hot stroke of Sarah’s tongue, flat against her from clit to tailbone.
Emily cried out, her back bowing.
Sarah ate her like a woman starving. There was no finesse, only relentless, driving need. Her tongue speared into Emily’s hole, fucking her with it, then laved broad stripes over her swollen labia. She sucked Emily’s clit into her mouth, worrying it with her teeth, then soothed it with her tongue. Emily’s moans became ragged sobs, her hips pushing back against Sarah’s face. The mud squelched under her hands.
The alien audience was a cacophony now, a rising wave of clicks and hums.
Sarah pulled back, breathing hard. Emily was dripping, her juices mingling with the alien mud. “Stay,” Sarah panted.
Emily heard her move away, heard the soft, wet sound of the fleshy stalk being ripped from the plant. She trembled, knowing what was coming.
Sarah’s hand, slick with Emily’s own wetness and something slicker from the plant, rubbed the head of the alien phallus against her asshole. It was warm, surprisingly soft, but unyielding.
“This is mine,” Sarah hissed, a raw, possessive sound. “This feeling. This is mine.”
She pushed.
The intrusion was brutal, immense. Emily screamed, her body seizing. It was too big, stretching her to a burning, tearing point. The strange material of the phallus seemed to pulse, adapting, secreting a slickness that cooled the fire even as Sarah began to move.
Sarah fucked her ass with a slow, devastating force. Each inward stroke was a claim of territory, each withdrawal a vacuum that made Emily gasp. Sarah’s other hand snaked around Emily’s hip, fingers finding her clit, rubbing rough, chaotic circles.
“Take it,” Sarah grunted, her own breath coming in hot puffs against Emily’s back. “Take all of it, you fucking perfect thing. My perfect thing.”
The pain blurred, transformed. It melted into a deep, devastating fullness that somehow echoed the empty, needy ache in Emily’s cunt. Her mind shattered into sensation: the grind of her hips in the mud, the slap of Sarah’s thighs against her own, the brutal, perfect fullness in her ass, the rough magic on her clit. The audience’s noise faded to a distant roar, then to nothing.
There was only Sarah. Her smell, her strength, her voice.
“I’m gonna come,” Emily shrieked, the words torn from her. “Sarah, please!”
“Come,” Sarah ordered, driving into her harder, her fingers a frantic blur. “Come on their fake grass. Come for me.”
Emily’s orgasm detonated. It was a seizure of pure, white-noise pleasure, her vision spotting, her cunt clamping down on nothing, her ass clenching around the invading shaft. She shook, silent screams racking her body.
The sensation triggered Sarah’s own release. With a final, deep thrust that buried the entire phallus inside Emily, Sarah stilled, a raw, guttural shout ripped from her throat as she came.
The moment their climaxes synchronized, the thin control collars around their necks—which they had forgotten—vibrated. Not unpleasantly. A wave of artificial, magnified euphoria, clean and chemical, washed through them both, prolonging the pulses of their orgasms into a shimmering, endless plateau.
The alien crowd erupted in a frenzy of approving lights and vibrations.
The euphoria receded, leaving them hollowed out and trembling. Sarah pulled the softening phallus from Emily’s body with a wet pop and discarded it. She sank to her knees in the mud beside Emily, pulling her into her arms. They clung to each other, covered in muck and sweat and other fluids, their hearts hammering against one another’s ribs.
The holographic glyph reappeared, pulsed three times in rapid succession, and vanished.
From a slit in the rock face, a smooth tray slid out. On it were two lumpy, protein-rich cakes and a shallow bowl of clear liquid. Their dinner.
Sarah looked from the food to the ecstatic, chattering audience, then down at Emily’s wrecked, blissful face in the crook of her arm.
A profound, icy stillness settled over her. She helped Emily stand, guiding her to the water’s edge. They used the black, oily liquid to clean the worst of the mud away, not speaking.
As they approached the food tray, Emily saw it. Etched into the stone beside it, a new, simple glyph: a circle with three vertical lines beneath it. Sun. Rain. Growth.
It was a schedule.
This was their life now. Their mating, their feeding, their existence—all part of the curated daily program. Sarah picked up a protein cake, her jaw tight. She took a bite, chewed, swallowed. Her eyes never left the watching gallery.
“Eat,” she said to Emily, her voice flat. “You’ll need your strength.”
Emily ate. The cake was bland, nutritious. The water was cool. She ate under the gaze of a thousand aliens, the taste of Sarah and the phantom ache of the alien shaft still on her tongue, in her body. The heat in her belly, momentarily sated, was already coiling again, a low ember waiting for the next programmed wind.
Sarah finished her cake. She stood, pulling Emily up with her. Without a glance at the audience, she led Emily toward the dark cave. The tendrils twitched in welcome.
“We sleep in here,” Sarah stated. It wasn’t a question.
They stepped into the warmth and the sweet, fungal smell. The light from the pulsing veins was just enough to see by. The cave was shallow, ending in a soft mound of a strange, spongy moss.
Sarah lay down, her back against the wall, and pulled Emily against her, Emily’s back to her front. She wrapped her arms around Emily’s waist, her face buried in the short hair at Emily’s nape.
Outside, the artificial sun-cycle dimmed, plunging the habitat into a deep, simulated twilight. The crowd’s noises gradually diminished as the spectators moved on to other exhibits.
In the dark, Sarah’s voice was a bare whisper, a sound for Emily alone.
“Tomorrow,” she breathed, her lips moving against Emily’s skin, “we learn the fences.”