291: Angling

on October 3, 2008 in Book 11

In Which Mackenzie Is The Light Of Feejee’s Eye

Feejee didn’t dive right in. I think she was trying as hard as she could to hold back… that could be why she had ditched the scales and “humaned down” except for her eyes and mouth. She didn’t have a lot of restraint, but I’m sure it helped her some… it sure helped me a lot. She put her face down by my legs and inhaled, letting her seaweed green hair trail over my thighs as she moved around.

I felt her tongue on the inside of my thigh, and then she nuzzled me with her nose. I shivered. This was her idea of not being gay?

I felt her teeth on my skin, and they were flat and human again. She nibbled my thigh, licking and biting up towards the top. Then her face was… it was…

I found myself forcing my mind into accepting her position: this wasn’t sex. It was backsliding, but I was on the razor edge of flipping out already. Contemplating her mouth… there… it was too much.

Not sex, I told myself as she nuzzled the soft skin on the side of my mound, that this was a feral act, not an intimate one… but I couldn’t quite make myself believe that.

She was taking her time, savoring it. She moved across to the other side, the barest edge of her lips just barely brushing over my clit. To say I wasn’t used to a lot of direct stimulation there was an understatement. My other lovers had largely avoided the whole area… but I was prey to Feejee, and she had no thoughts of my boundaries. My knees jerked, and I kicked the rug with the heels of my feet. Even with the padding, the sound was pretty loud.

A moment later, there were three sharp thuds from below and a muffled shout I couldn’t make out. Feejee sat up, looking horribly guilty, like she’d just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar… well, not exactly her hand. The sudden awareness of neighbors below me made something slip into place: “I have to tell Trina right now.”

The girl the nosey triclops was always gossiping with lived right beneath me, it seemed. That was a chilling thought.

Feejee was frozen, mouthing the words “oh shit, oh shit, oh shit” over and over again, and rocking in place. She looked genuinely frightened. Considering she’d been about to go down on me against my will, I felt an odd need to reassure her.

“Uh, they aren’t going to be able to tell what’s going on and who’s doing what by a couple of thumps,” I said, propping myself up on my arms. “It’s my room.” I forced a laugh. “They’re probably used to a little noise.”

“Are you sure?” she whispered.

“Feejee, if you don’t want to do this… then we’re kind of in agreement, actually,” I said. “I think. I thought. I don’t know.”

“I want it… I just, I couldn’t handle it if people thought I was gay,” she said, twisting around and getting to her feet, her back towards me. “I don’t know how you manage it, actually, but you’re at least a citizen. I’m so far from home, and there’s no embassy or anything.”

“Feejee, it isn’t against the law to be gay, you know,” I said.

“I know,” she said, turning back to face me. “I was really surprised to find that out. It seems like it would almost have to be.”

“Is there a law against homosexuality among the merpeople?” I asked.

“Not really, no,” she said. “What we do is… well, it’s different. If people want to swim together or be really close friends, though, it doesn’t matter whether they’re male or female.”

“So why would you assume it’s illegal here?”

“Don’t you know?” she asked me, looking shocked. “Humans hate gays.”

“Well, some do,” I admitted. “But, by and large…”

She shook her head.

“It’s the worst thing in the world to them,” she said. “Rick and his friends talk about them all the time, and everything about them… their tone of voice, the posture. Well, you learn to read prey, you know? It’s a real visceral hatred.”

“That’s really just a guy thing,” I said. “Just some guys, even. I mean, not that there aren’t other people who don’t like gays…”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Feejee said. She began to pace around the room. I winced to see her bare feet straying off the rug and onto the cold tile, but she didn’t seem to notice. “At first, I didn’t know what they were talking about when they said ‘gay’ or ‘fag’… and Rick’s first try at explaining it… well, um, we do things differently and I couldn’t even begin to picture how it would work. I mean, if two guys blew their cloud next to each other it wouldn’t really… but then we had sex, and I started to understand, but I still couldn’t see how it was a bad thing. But when I asked Rick to explain that, he got pissed.”

“That’s called homophobia and it sucks,” I said. “But… really… there are worse things.”

She shook her head, her green lips drawn tight and her skin looking kind of sickly. She was actually turning greener than normal.

“I’ve heard them talk about what they’d do if they ever caught a faggot,” she said.

“Well, I think usually gay guys get it a lot worse than girls… which, again, sucks, but it means you’d be pretty safe even if people did think…”

“Oh, no!” Feejee insisted, her voice full of horror that was hard to believe from a fierce predator. “They say even worse things about you. Rick’s friend Tony said he’d rape you with a fencepost and saw off your tits and slit your nose and… and… all kinds of awful things, and Rick just laughed. It’s funny, to humans.”

I stared at her.

“And you’re dating this guy?” I finally managed to ask.

“I’m dating Rick,” she said. “He says it’s normal, it’s how guys talk.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s normal, but seriously, Feejee, it probably is just talk,” I said. “Horrible talk… and it might lead to something else, but it’s not like being gay is an automatic death sentence..”

She shook her head. Her eyes had faded back to white and green, but they were as big and wide as I’d ever seen them. Hearing her boyfriend and his friends talk about gay-bashing had evidently traumatized her fiercely. It seemed strange that a predator, an admitted man-eater, would be so affected by this, but I suppose that was the way things were compartmentalized for her.

Humans were food, but people were still people. If somebody fell in the water… or was delivered to her dressed and cooked… that was one thing, but she wasn’t pointlessly cruel and she could still be shocked by brutality.

It didn’t make sense to me, but I could almost see how it did to her. It made me feel a little bit better about her.

Now, if only I could give her a better perspective on one thing… I might be able to talk her around on some others. It was just a matter of finding the right angle to view things from, I thought.

“Feejee, what you’re talking about is a problem with the guy you’re dating, not with being gay,” I said. “Or having people think you are.”

“No, you’re wrong,” she said, still shaking her head. “It isn’t just them, it’s very widespread… I pay attention to things, to try to fit in… people even use ‘gay’ as a swear, right up there with ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’.”

“Feejee… human society is pretty fucked up in some ways, and that definitely includes this one,” I said. “But it’s not as bad as it sounds. There are gay groups openly on campus. If Rick and his friends ever did the kind of shit they talk about, they’d be arrested, which is one of the reasons they probably won’t ever dare.”

I could see that she still chose to believe the evidence of her own ears over what I was saying, and to be honest, I couldn’t blame her. I remembered the kind of shit I’d heard in the halls of my high school. Had I been an outsider witnessing that, I probably would have concluded that being gay was the worst thing you could possibly… actually, check that. I had concluded that.

“Okay,” I said. “It’s true that things can be bad or even dangerous for somebody who’s openly gay… but we’re alone in here, and there isn’t anybody in the dorm who can see through walls. That I know of, anyway. So all that matters is what you want to do, and what I want to do.”

“I’m still not clear on the last part,” she said.

“You have to listen to what I want and what I don’t want.”

“Yeah, see? I don’t get that,” she said. “I don’t understand it… I mean, I hear the words and I know what they mean, but… they just don’t add up.”

“Even if we say it’s not sex, if you jump on me and put your mouth on me, that’s some kind of assault,” I said. “Legally. ”

“But you wouldn’t press charges,” Feejee said. “You’re my friend, and anyway, that would lead to all kinds of questions…”

“It would,” I said. I pulled my legs back and sat up, folding them beneath me. “I’d really rather work this out between the two of us.”

“What is there to work out?” she asked. She didn’t sound stupid or ditzy… it was more like I’d just said “we have to figure out what’s one plus one”.

“You have to respect my rights,” I said.

“But food doesn’t have a right to not be eaten!” she said. “You don’t ask a cow how it feels about being bacon.”

“There are a couple reasons for that,” I said. Remembering how she’d reacted when I went off on her for not knowing what fire was, I closed my eyes to keep from rolling them. “But… even if a cow is food, I can’t go into a pasture and start, I don’t know… carving my initials on the side of one. It has rights, and I have rights, and my rights don’t include that.”

“Oh… I think I get it,” Feejee said. “If you were in the ocean and I really was eating you for real, I could do that without permission, but since you’re in the pasture waiting to be killed, so to speak, I can’t just do whatever I want? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Um, I guess so,” I said. I could feel my skin trying to retreat inward at the thought of the analogy, but if it got the point across, I supposed that was a good thing. “Though, really, it’s not a perfect example because cows are dumb beasts and humans are an intelligent race, but that doesn’t really diminish the parallel. I mean, I think most people would say that the intelligent being just plain has a right to not be eaten.”

“Are you saying a cow wouldn’t eat a person?”

“Uh, a cow wouldn’t,” I said. “But I get your meaning… there are other animals that would. But that’s because they don’t know better. Animals don’t have enough intelligence to understand the concept of rights. We do, and so we should respect each other’s.”

“But… you eat intelligent races, too.”

“Not when I can help it,” I said.

“I mean, humans do,” she said.

“Uh, not really.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Well, I don’t know so much about way over here, but closer to the shelves they eat whales.”

“Whales are animals,” I said. “Lower ones.”

“Uh, no,” she said. “They’re an intelligent race, like dolphins.”

“Dolphins are animals, too.”

“Have you ever talked to one?”

“No,” I said. “Because they’re animals.”

She threw back her head and laughed.

“What?” I asked, feeling irritated.

“Oh, you’re one to lecture… at least we don’t pretend the people we’re eating aren’t people!”

“How is that better?” I asked.

“You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” she said. Her head twitched and her eyes blackened. “Not about dolphins, not about gays… not about anything. You’re just prey, wriggling and warm and waiting to be eaten…”

Her mouth shifted as she came at me, becoming like a horrible jack-o-lantern grin in the dark room… only with blackness behind it instead of candlelight.

Candlelight

I raised my hand up and lit it, then thrust it out towards Feejee’s face. She shrieked and jumped backwards, landing in a crouch. I stood up. Her skin was melting into scales, all over. Her whole body changed. I had a feeling that apart from the split legs, I was looking at her natural form, the real Feejee.

She raised her head, her eyes huge and black, but focused for the moment on my hand.

“Feejee… look at me,” I said, extinguishing my hand and lighting my eyes. I narrowed them, squinting at Feejee through the reddish haze. Her black eyes reflected the fire.

I felt cold fear gnawing at me, but with her looking more frightened than fierce I was able to push past it a bit.

“I am not food,” I said. I had to force the words out, and they came out as a growl. There may have been some very minor squeaking, but it got the job done. “Do you understand?”

She nodded, and I turned my head and extinguished the fire. I was shaking… she had to be picking up my fear, but hopefully she was feeling enough of her own to distract her.

“People aren’t food,” I said, still not looking directly at her. “They shouldn’t be. I can’t control what you do in your homeland… homewater… whatever… but you know how things are here, and you know that you’ll get more than yourself in serious trouble if you try to do things your way here.”

“I… I know,” she said, nodding.

“And you can’t be my friend and then not respect me,” I said. “My friends push my boundaries all the time, but… they know where they are, and they acknowledge them. They know when they’re going too far, or they listen when I tell them.” I felt my lip twitching, and decided I need to add something for accuracy. “Kind of… usually. And they’re all pretty much interested in getting better at it!”

“Oh, well, I guess I can try to get better at it, too,” she said. “Um… so…”

I thought for a moment. The fact that oral sex was on my blacklist was a reason she had to stop. It didn’t mean I had to. I mean, at this point… after everything else I’d done… was it there because I didn’t want to do it, or did I not want to do it because it was there?

I was willing to find out, I decided. If I didn’t like it, I could at least tell Amaranth I’d tried something new… and if I did like it, everybody won.

“If you want to try again, I don’t mind,” I said. “I mean, I can’t promise… but as long as you stop when I say stop, or… um… I catch on fire, or anything…”

“Wow, you make it sound so tempting,” Feejee said. She laughed shakily. “Was that really… could that have happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably. I wouldn’t be trying to, since I know I’m not in any danger, but I’ve done it involuntarily when I felt like I was being smothered, once.”

“Maybe we should try it in the w… well, no, that’s probably not a good idea.”

“You took a hit to the face pretty easily,” I said. “How do your scales handle fire?”

“I have no idea,” she said, lowering her face towards the floor. She looked up, her twinkling emerald eyes peering out through the curtain of seaweed hair. And they really were emerald, this isn’t just some bullshit where her eye was green and I say emerald to be poetic. “But… burns are treatable, aren’t they?”

It was probably the first time in the history of the world that anybody ever said that and had it come out sexy.

I nodded.

She smiled.

The whites of her eyes turned black.

There was no way in hell I was ready for this…

But at least I was ready for being unready.


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9 Responses to “291: Angling”

  1. MadnessMaiden says:

    “You don’t ask a cow how it feels about being bacon.” Feejee, that’s because PIGS become bacon, not cows. XD
    That’s a very subtle way of showing that Feejee has lived in the ocean her whole life.

    Current score: 4
    • JN says:

      It makes me curious though. If you used the equivalent cut of beef and did all the same things you do to the pork to make it come out as bacon, what would it be like?

      JN

      Current score: 0
      • MackSffrs says:

        I think we have a metaphor for the process in what we call “turkey bacon.”

        Current score: 0
      • paralvr says:

        I’ve had beef bacon. It is DISGUSTING don’t try it EVER trust me on this one.

        Current score: 1
      • Serendippity says:

        I ate at a jewish deli once that served “beef bacon”. Was’t that bad. Wasn’t very close to good bacon, but was interesting. And of course there is turkey bacon that was soooo popular when the no fat trend was in; acceptable but still lacking. Good bacon is all about the pig.

        Current score: 1
  2. Arkeus says:

    Mack, Feejee just told you that Dolphin and Whales are as intelligent as Humans, and you just repeated ‘they aren’t people’. That’s not going to help your case.

    Current score: 8