I wanted more.
I’d been looking forward to a nice round three this morning, but then we discovered this mysterious doorway. It didn’t look likely it would happen now.
To be continued…
“What’s going on?” I said. “What are we doing here?”
I fingered the items on the table. They appeared to be separated into two piles. There was a single item of clothing with an electronic device beside it.
“Don’t touch them,” Chax said. “We don’t know what they are. It could be some kind of trap.”
It didn’t seem like a trap to me. The room we just came from was the trap. A prison. This felt like we were getting closer to freedom.
But maybe I was wrong.
There was no doorway out of here either. When I turned back to the doorway we’d stepped through, I found it was no longer there. In this space, there was no comfortable bed, no replicator to make the things we needed, no toilet.
Nothing.
Had we just walked into the trap? Had we made the wrong decision?
“Good morning,” an ugly and unfamiliar voice said.
Lights flickered in the three corners of the room—it was triangle shaped. Beams of light met in the center, atop the table. A figure materialized. He was taller than Chax but stick thin and disgusting. He had hard natural plating across his body and was built like an insect. Just looking at him made my skin crawl.
“Welcome! I am Quus,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
Finally meet us? What was he talking about?
“It must come as quite a shock for you to wake up in that room,” he said. “No matter how many times I see it, I can never quite imagine what it feels like. Do you know why you’re here?”
He spoke not so much as if he were speaking to us, but projected his voice as if he were in a stage play.
“You abducted us,” Chax said. “You’re a Changeling.”
“Guilty as charged,” Quus said. “But we don’t like to think of it as abduction. We prefer to think of it as recruitment. A chance to give you a more… eventful life.”
Why did I get the feeling this was scripted? That this creature had said these words many times over in the past?
“You were both chosen for a very unique and important purpose,” Quus said. “You’ve been chosen to partake in one of the noblest causes there is… Entertainment!”
The walls flickered into life as hundreds, then thousands, of Changelings appeared. They were not holographic projections like Quus. They were regular screen images.
“How about we show them what we think of them, fellow Lovers’ Escape fans?”
The crowd roared. As one, they morphed into replicas of me and Chax. And when I say morphed, I mean, full-on Mystique from the X-Men movies style morphed. They looked identical to us. I couldn’t even tell the difference.
I gripped Chax’s hand between both of mine. I’d never seen anything like this before. It was terrifying.
The crowd roared with adulation as they waved their placards above their heads:
WE LOVE YOU, MADDY!
SEXY CHAX! BE MY SAVIOR!
“These are your fans,” Quus said. “And they’ve been watching you every minute of every day since you first popped up on our screens.”
I gulped.
“Screens?” I said.
“You’re the stars in our breakout hit show, Lovers’ Escape! Wave! You’re live to over fifteen billion Changeling viewers throughout the galaxy!”
I just gawped. Chax reacted better than I did and waved absentmindedly. I did the same.
They’ve been watching us? Then that means…
They watched us have vigorous sex last night. But there was no way they would show that on TV.
“Now, we’ve had active contestants before but we’ve never seen anything quite so smokin’ hot as we did last night!” Quus said. “Have we, viewers?”
The crowd roared with excitement.
“I imagine we’ll be expecting a boost in reproduction yields this cycle for sure!” Quus said. “But things didn’t begin quite so hot and steamy for you, did they?”
Half the screens switched over to images of me when I first appeared in the room. I wandered around, lost, and alone.
“Hello?” I said. “Is anyone there?”
Half the crowd of creatures performed their version of my terror, copying every step and subtle cadence of my voice.
“Hello?” they said. “Is anyone there?”
“And then, of course, you met your partner, Chax,” Quus said.
The images flicked over to the highlights of me leaping out of bed and sliding across the floor on my ass. Then me arming myself with a pen and piece of paper and aiming it at Chax, who was still groggy with sleep.
The presenter chuckled and hid his smile behind his cue cards.
Chax’s taut muscles were on show for everyone with eyes to see. I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous—he was mine!
“Your romance didn’t take off on the right foot,” Quus said, “and we began to fear things might not work out after all.”
On the screen, we argued and my expression of rage was truly an ugly thing. I felt a little embarrassed at my reaction—even though it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. Our audience appeared to enjoy it.
While they were mesmerized by our memories replaying on the screen, I tapped on the back of Chax’s hand in tap code. He was new to it, so I tapped slowly. He made no sign he felt it but his attention shifted slightly in my direction.
WHAT IS GOING ON, I said.
I DONT KNOW, he said. WATCH.
“And then, of course,” Quus said, “we watched as you fell in love.”
There was a collective sigh—what sounded like a chittering noise—as the audience gazed in silence as, on the screen, I kissed Chax on the lips and shoved him back and straddled him.
Whew. I sure was aggressive.
Chax stood staring at the screen, as mesmerized as the audience was. But they wouldn’t show the full video. It was too x-rated for that—
They showed his hard throbbing cock sliding inside me. And if they showed that, they could
