Chapter 13: They learned how to text
The car interior had cooled, the windows still opaque with the ghosts of their heat. Harry’s body ached in unfamiliar ways, a pleasant, deep-boned weariness. Demona and Belphina were slumped against him, a tangle of spent limbs and drying skin, their breathing slow and synchronized. For a long while, there was only the sound of that breathing and the occasional distant rumble of a garbage truck.
Demona stirred first, her lips moving against his chest. “You have to leave soon,” she murmured, the words thick with regret. “The sun.”
Harry looked at the digital clock on the dash. 5:47 AM. A cold knot of reality tightened in his stomach. Work. The library opened at nine. Mrs. Gable would be there, with her clipboard and her disapproval. The thought of that sterile, silent world felt like a distant, gray dream.
“I can’t leave you two here all day,” he said, his voice rough. “Not after… everything. What if something happens? What if you… need something?”
Belphina lifted her head, a sly glint cutting through the drowsiness in her blue eyes. “Need something? Master, we only need one thing. And you’ll be gone.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He ran a hand through his hair, feeling the gritty residue of dried sweat. “I mean, what if there’s an emergency? A real one. Like a fire. Or… I don’t know.”
Demona sat up, the leather harness creaking. Her monumental breasts shifted, the weight of them a visual anchor in the dim light. “A communication tether,” she said, her ancient mind turning over the problem. “A scrying glass for the masses. You have one. The flat, luminous slate.”
“My iPad,” Harry said. “It’s just for anime.”
“It will serve.” She nodded, a queen decreeing a new law. “You will leave it with us. We will learn its mysteries. If a true need arises, we will send a signal.”
It was a fragile plan, riddled with holes, but it was the only one he had. The alternative was leaving two chaos demons unattended in his apartment with no link to the outside world. The iPad felt like throwing a life preserver into a volcano, but he had to throw something.
An hour later, he stood by the front door, clean-ish in his button-down shirt and khakis, feeling the absurd disconnect of his two realities. Demona and Belphina knelt on the floor, naked but for their collars, the iPad propped between them on the carpet. They had refused to put on clothes, claiming the fabric was a “barrier to his scent.” They looked like pagan priestesses before an altar of sleek technology.
“Just tap the green icon,” Harry instructed, pointing. “That’s the messages. My name is at the top. Tap it. Type here. Only for emergencies. Got it?”
“Emergencies,” Belphina repeated, her gaze fixed on the screen with predatory intensity.
“Yes. Serious things.”
“We understand, Master,” Demona purred, but her hand was already stroking the device’s edge with a reverence usually reserved for holy relics.
He left them like that, a final glance capturing the surreal image: the two inhuman figures, their curves glowing in the morning light filtering through the blinds, hunched over the cool glass rectangle. The door clicked shut behind him, and the silence of the hallway felt like a physical pressure.
The library was a cathedral of hush. Dust motes danced in slants of sunlight between the towering shelves of the History section. The air smelled of paper decay and lemon-scented polish. Harry was reshelving a cart of returns, the repetitive motion soothing the last jangles of his nerves. For a blessed hour, he almost felt normal. Just Harry. Awkward, invisible Harry.
His phone, set to vibrate, buzzed in his pocket.
A flicker of anxiety. An emergency? Fire? He slipped the phone out, shielding the screen with his body.
It was a text message. From his own Apple ID. The iPad.
The preview showed a single word: Testing.
He unlocked the phone. The message was indeed from his iPad. Just the one word. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. Okay. They’d figured it out. Good. He typed back, thumbs clumsy.
Got it. Remember, emergencies only.
He slid the phone back into his pocket. Two minutes later, another buzz. He retrieved it.
A new message. This one was a photo.
It was a close-up, slightly blurred. A sea of pale, creamy skin, stretched taut. At the center, in deep, hypnotic focus, was a nipple. Demona’s nipple, he was sure. It was puckered, a dark, flushed pink, beaded with a single, pearl-like drop of moisture. The lighting was terrible, the angle was clinical yet deeply intimate. It was the most aggressively lewd thing he had ever seen delivered to a cell phone.
Heat flooded his face. He looked around wildly. Mrs. Gable was at the front desk, her glasses on a chain, squinting at a computer screen. An elderly man dozed in a wingback chair by the periodicals. The silence pressed in, now charged, dangerous.
His phone buzzed again. Another photo.
This one was from a different angle. It showed the underside of a breast, the impossible weight of it resting on what looked like the iPad itself, the screen dark beneath the pallid, veined flesh. The caption read: Heavy.
A choked sound escaped him. He fumbled with the phone, typing.
Stop. That’s not an emergency.
Buzz.
A new image. This one featured Belphina. It was a selfie, her blonde hair framing a face flushed with mischief. Her tongue, pink and wet, was extended, curled upwards towards her nose. Her free hand was pinching her own nipple, hard. The background was his messy bed.
Bored, the text below it stated.
Then they came in rapid succession, a silent, digital avalanche.
A picture of Demona’s lips, glossy with spit, wrapped around the corner of the iPad.
A shot of Belphina’s thick thigh, a finger tracing a path through the glistening wetness there.
A video, three seconds long, of Demona’s hand slapping her own ass, the jiggle shockwave propagating in slow, mesmerizing waves, the sound a sharp crack that made Harry jump even on mute.
Then a collaborative one. Demona holding the iPad, the camera facing Belphina, who was on her hands and knees, head turned to the lens, her back arched obscenely, her face a mask of theatrical desperation. The text: Emergency. Empty. Hurry home.
Harry’s knuckles were white around the phone. His blood was a roar in his ears, a tidal pulse that drowned out the library’s quiet. He was painfully, achingly hard, trapped in the stiff fabric of his khakis. The cool, rational air of the library was now a taunt. Every squeak of a shoe on polished floor, every rustle of a turned page, felt like an exposure.
He staggered towards the staff bathroom, a small, single-occupancy closet near the storage room. He locked the door, leaning back against it, the cool wood a shock through his shirt. The phone buzzed again, a persistent, angry insect in his hand.
This final picture was a masterpiece of depraved ingenuity. They had used the camera timer. It showed both of them. Demona was on her back, her head hanging off the side of the bed, her riot of black hair spilling onto the floor. Belphina was straddling her face, facing the camera, her body lowered so that Demona’s tongue was just visible, a dark pink intrusion. Their eyes were locked on the lens. Their expressions were not of pleasure, but of challenge. Of hunger. A united front.
The message below was simple.
We found the toy box. The remote one. Charge it.
A final buzz. A close-up of the sleek, black remote control, still in its packaging, placed deliberately on the pillow where his head should be.
Harry slid down the length of the door until he was sitting on the cold tile floor. The silence of the bathroom was absolute, broken only by the ragged saw of his own breath. He stared at the gallery of obscenity on his screen, a portfolio of his new life. The library, with its rules and its quiet, was the dream now. This, the vibrating, insistent truth in his palm, was his reality.
He had no idea how he would make it through the next six hours. But he knew, with a certainty that was both terrifying and exhilarating, that the moment he walked back through his apartment door, he would not be holding an iPad.
He would be holding a remote.