My favourite position in our shared farm house is for me to be on my couch, my legs up, and with a magazine on my lap over my bare thighs, just in case anyone comes in., and that is exactly where I was, at peace with myself and with the world, just before everything kicked off. There was no sound from outside now that the Crant Authority had culled the rescue animals from my thirty-acre farm, because the animals were non-productive and a drain on society; and no sound inside the house either, because everyone was thankfully out, enjoying themselves, and leaving me to my thoughts.
The magazine, gardening, or fashion, or gossip or something, provided a modicum of decency over my tiny-tight-mini, as the latest trend setters called them, should our friend Kert come in, but the magazine being there also served to show I was doing something and not just staring at the blank wall opposite me, with fantasies running through my head. I could see now that it was filled with gossip, the magazine, not my fantasy. They’d become more frequent, the full-blown ones, over the past century or so, and as hubby Brad had slowed down to once a week, my body seemed to compensate for his slowing with at least one a day being the norm for me.
Mantra; fantasy is fantasy, real life is real life, never the twain shall meet.
Talking of hubby Brad, which I wasn’t, because I was really talking about my fantasy man rolling me about in the hay field we owned, changing my positions so that he could get maximum friction on my sensitive bits… where was I? I think that maybe wondering what the hell a twain was has thrown me off the tracks. Oh. Yes, Brad my husband was out walking with our daughter Bronwen. Tilly, Kert’s wife, was in work, her having the only job between the five of us, and her hubby, Kert, was throwing javelins in the field down by the woods, or chucking spears as we called it when he wasn’t about. Well, throwing javelins in the real world but would soon be in my head, trying hard to finish me off. If he did manage it, and he usually did, I will have retired to the bathroom because there’s only so much that a magazine can hide and he was usually quite good at knowing how I liked him.
“Jodee,” he usually said as he approached me at the beginning of my fantasy, shirtless, the sweat of his spear chucking covering his huge chest and arms, “I didn’t realise you were alone or I would have come back from practice earlier.”
I would look down, not to be seen staring at his magnificent physique and he would take my chin to raise my eyes. “No need to be coy,” he would say in that sexy voice of his. “We’ve known each other for a hundred and fifty years now, so surely, we are close enough not to get all coy with each other.”
I would smile, he would remove his hand from my chin and it would gently pass across my jaw, over my neck and would then lightly grace my cleavage as it moved away, making me gasp. He would apologise immediately, but smile to show the apology was insincere.
“No need to apologise,” I would tell him. “In fact, it was my pleasure.”
Having given my fantasy man the green light, something that would be impossible in my real life, he would stare into my eyes, and I would stare back into his and that would be his cue. Scooping me up in his strong arms he would kiss my cleavage as he carried me out through the main door and immediately into the hay meadow that is half a mile from the house. But who the hell walks for half a mile in a fantasy? Laying me softly in the long grasses he would resume his kissing, all over and…
I was contemplating a trip upstairs, maybe with a pit stop in my bedroom to pick up one of many toys that Brad had bought me over the years, but I heard the front door open. It could only be Kert I thought, and my heart seemed to get warm, burning my chest. Smoothing down the mini skirt and wiggling to lift the hem slightly, after ditching the magazine to the seat next to me, I imagined him coming through the hall as I pushed back one side of the unbuttoned part of my shirt to make it look sexy but not rude, boob skin on show but no bra visible. Ample room for a chin-holding hand to accidentally pass over my cleavage to stimulate both of us.
The lounge door opened, I breathed in, chest out, it was Tilly and I breathed out allowing my chest to become lower and less of the man-trap that any man could easily fall into. I tried hard not to show the disappointment on my face, but her face told me everything. Her face looked as if she’d had a bloke almost climax her and then get up and walk away, which was ironic really.
If you live close to a fellow female for a hundred and fifty years, you get to know her moods and foibles, so when Tilly came into the room and dragged her heels across the floor, ploughing furrows in the lounge carpet, obviously trying to hide a depressed expression, I knew I’d have to prise something out of her slowly. When I use the words obviously and prise, what I mean is that she wanted to make it obvious to me that something bad had happened and that I should ask her what it was, because she’d rehearsed a speech for me. This, I decided, was more than a slack day at work for her, with no customers. This was a depressed friend and her husband would have to wait until later to take over my body and abuse it, because there was no way I could stay on the boil and I would have to start from scratch, with the fingers over the cleavage thing. Once I’d sorted my friend’s woes, I’d get Helen, the computer, to erase the carpet furrows that were now annoying me because they weren’t even straight.
“Sit down love and tell me all about your day.” I demanded as I moved the magazine onto the floor. My knees were still up on the couch, my right-hand kept twiddling with my Helen-dyed, blond locks and my left hand pulled on the bottom of my shirt to slightly close the top bits, but then I held my left arm out, inviting her onto the couch.
She sat next to me, leaned her head into my chest and her action invited me to put my arm around her shoulder. Her arm leaned across me and wrapped itself around my waist, meaning that what was about to come out was serious enough for me to stop twiddling my own hair and concentrate on hers. I was mothering her and it was obvious to me that it was what she needed. Had her and Kert argued, or even split up, I wondered? She’d just come home from work and he was throwing javelins in his field so surely not. I tried, unsuccessfully, to imagine their moods that morning, before Tilly left to go to her veterinary practice. Asking Helen our computer for help, was pointless as she never divulged the moods, problems, or secrets of others. My fantasies were safe from others, but so was Tilly’s problem, unless she herself decided to divulge.
The dark blue of her shirt contrasted with the white of my own but we both wore the trending black tiny-tight-mini-skirts, restrictive but making legs look long, and she threw off her high-soled wedges that landed next to mine, so normal legs for both of us again. We may be old in actual years lived, but we both study what we are told women should wear in the current year, and nobody wanted to be told that what they were wearing was “so two-thousand, one-hundred, and seventy-five.” All was silent for a minute or so but then she opened up.
“Those bloody Crants have gone too far this time and they’ve only gone and closed me down permanently.” She blurted out the words as the tears came at the same time. I didn’t think tears blurted but things like that sometimes occupy my mind in difficult circumstances. It’s a coping mechanism, I think.
She wasn’t sobbing, but I felt it wouldn’t take much for the tears to really start flowing. I decided to stay silent and let her continue, but only if she wanted to. I ran my fingers through her long black hair and felt the wetness on my shirt, and she did continue and had probably worked out what she was going to tell me while she’d been driving home.
“No need for a vet for individual animals they told me. Factory farming is the only way now, and when I argued against them, they threatened me with prison for spreading false information. I was offered a place in a state-run factory-laboratory but took the compensation credits instead.”
The tears gushed, as expected, as her plight became reality by telling someone else, and my grip on her shoulder tightened. “What will happen now then love?” I asked her, as I could feel the patch of wetness on my top growing in size, and knew I’d have to later change my shirt, rather than the expected and hoped for change of panties.
The closing down of her practice had been inevitable for some years, so this news was not a surprise to me, what was a surprise though was the amount of perfume exuding from her body. Not the squirt from this morning but a reload, either in the office or on her way home in the car, or both. I was close to choking. The money wasn’t important to us because Helen, our computer, that the Crants didn’t know about, formed money in the computer records of a dummy bank account in Australia, transferred it into a Crant account in a Crant run bank in Cabo Verde and from there, the invented Crant sent us money every week to more than survive on. The job was precious to Tilly though because she’d done it for a century and a half and people get used to things like that. In fact, I think sometimes she went into the office, sat there for hours without seeing anyone, and then came home again.
“They gave me three-hundred-and-fifty credits compensation and I was allowed to keep my company car. My staff got nothing.”
“Did Helen help at all?” I asked, knowing that the Crants were unaware of the computer that had attached itself to mine and Brad’s brains, and had then taken three years of self-reprogramming to be able to attach to Tilly and Kert, then another year to attach to my daughter, Bronwen. Helen would know everything that happened to Tilly, but was also loyal to each one of us and kept our separate lives just that, separate.
“No,” Tilly’s squeaky voice told me, followed by some sniffing up of the snot that invariably comes with tears but hopefully wouldn’t reach my shirt. “I asked Helen to stay out of it, because things were inevitable and I didn’t want to argue and end up in a Crant cell.”
“Did they hurt you? I’ve heard stories where…” Where minuscule offers were made on compensation, but agreeing to breed with a Crant gained more credits. If I’d saved face by bringing home more credits than my practice was worth because I’d had sex with a Crant, I might pour a bottle of perfume over myself to hide the smell of sex.
“No love, nothing like that. Just credits and get out. The building will become homes for Crants, as they expand in numbers, which is why they wanted it so badly, and the reason for the compensation value.”
My hand moved from her shoulder to her hair again and she moved her head with my soothing. The slowly soothing head stayed on my upper chest, I had no desire for it to move to my boobs but looked down to hers to notice buttons done up that wouldn’t normally be. Crants could be cruel and manipulative. The four of us that were living in this house had killed two Crant-pregnant women, Chloe and Michelle, and also my full Crantis Marcian ex-husband, in an attempt to rid Earth of their invasion, but these aliens already sewn their seeds throughout the world and by the time our three were killed, there were women throughout the globe carrying Crants. Steve, my ex-husband, who could change from a three armed, three legged, ten-foot-high monster, into a hunk of a human, had told me that the beings of Crantis Marcia were afraid that Earthlings would reach a level of technology where they could attack Crantis Marcia, so bred with humans to make them sympathetic to their roots on that distant planet. The result of a breeding between a Crantis Marcian in human form and a human was called a Crant, and because of their increased intelligence they were slowly taking over the planet.
Talking of intelligence, I was quite clever in my treatment of this young girl on my breast. “So,” I said with a smile to brighten Tilly up, hopefully. “Do I make you a coffee? Or maybe a bowl of ice-cream with your favourite raspberry sauce? Or maybe get Helen to tell Kert to come in from the fields and give you a damn good seeing to? What would lighten your mood the most? What would take your mind off things?”
Refuse the sex bit, and I’ll know there’s a possibility of pregnancy with a Crant baby.
She looked up and focused her wet, brown eyes on mine and she smiled, so I’d won.
“Shower, coffee, Kert, ice-cream in that order please Jodee. What would I do without you?”
“Mope about probably, but then, you’ve brightened my moods so many times in the past, perhaps I’m just trying to catch up in repaying you. I’ll make the coffee, and while I’m doing it, I’ll ask Helen to contact Kert to tell him that you’re feeling randy and going to bed on your own, so he’d better rush. If you want, I’ll make your ice-cream and stand outside your bedroom door and when I hear you scream his name, I’ll bring it in. But I’ll knock before bringing it in because I know how disgusting you two can be. I know what you’re thinking. Jodee believes ice-cream is the answer to everything. But let’s face it, we both know that having a man roll off us and having a bowl of ice-cream take over from him, is heaven.”
Tilly was still smiling. “I come home depressed and you get me laughing and looking forward to having my bloke look after me, and I do not scream his name. Is Brad about?” She sniffed up some more tear-snot, saving my shirt while enquiring about my husband, but why?
Organising Tilly to be in bed with Kert when he was supposed to be in my head was a sacrifice that I had to make, but I still wondered why she’d asked where my husband was. “He’s taken Bronwen on a nature walk, up in the hills somewhere, for a bit of father and daughter time. She’s fitter than him though, after Helen stopped her ageing at twenty.” But if you want him in your head, you can have him because me and your husband were just about to get it on together so it’s only fair. Fantasy is fantasy and real life is real life. What is a bloody twain?
It had been Bronwen’s choice to get Helen to regenerate her each year at twenty, because she saw Brad and me as old at twenty-five and we were remaining twenty-five with Tilly being an older thirty-five, all of us having cells regenerate at the same age each year. It made me remember something. “Do you remember Tilly, being scared of Kert being only fifty when you were going to be sixty-five. We all have to be thankful for staying young. Crants may find out mind and then that would be the end of us all, so there’s less chance of that happening with you out of work and out of the system.”
Explain that to a Crant baby, if it arrived.
“Is it time to get out of here Jodee love. Get away to a planet where things are a bit easier? That’s why I asked about Brad, maybe a big discussion is needed.”
I kissed the top of my friend’s head and massaged her scalp with my long fingers again. “Maybe I’ll suggest a holiday to Brad, I think we could all do with one. I can never remember the names of planets we’ve been to because they all had stupid names, but Helen will remember the name of a holiday planet she once took us to, a long time ago. Going somewhere on holiday may either give us the incentive to stay away, or we may miss Earth and want to return.”
I got up, stretched my legs, and smoothed down the ten-inch skirt again before slipping my feet into shoes and checking my leg length. I don’t know why but after checking the front, I always lean back and check that the backs of my legs are still there. I didn’t want to leave Tilly on her own, but had to so that I could make the coffee that she’d asked for. A quick glance down showed the expected mascara on my shirt that would have to be changed soon and I would have to pretend not to have noticed it for Tilly’s sake.
I offered her three things and she added a shower. Maybe for her it’s just the thought of showering away the Crant presence, and I’m reading too much into it.
“Helen?” I asked while the coffee ran through the machine in the kitchen. “Can you clean up my shirt please. And can you tell Kert that Tilly is having a weird turn and taken to her bed with her favourite sex-toy, so he needs to get home and take over before becoming a permanent second best?”
Helen answered in my head. “Tilly has already asked Kert to come home Jodee dear, but used slightly different wording. And no, she wouldn’t have been happy about you warming him up for her as your thoughts have been.”
“Thank you, Helen. And my husband and daughter?” I always ignore Helen’s sarcasm that she insists she learned off me.
Helen still sounded sarcastic. “Brad and Bronwen are returning and I estimate six point seven minutes but Kert will arrive just after them. Brad’s legs are tired and he will not feel like bedroom antics. I suggest that you leave it to Tilly to massage Kert’s stiff javelin-throwing shoulders as they are married. You do well to keep it in your back brain.”
“Thank you, Helen. I wasn’t looking for bedroom antics as you call them, with Kert or my husband. Just concentrating on looking after my friend at the moment and keeping everything else in my head. I’ve gone off the idea now anyway, and will maybe dream something up overnight and act it out with a vibe tomorrow, if they all leave me alone.”
I took Tilly’s coffee into the lounge for her, Brad and Bronwen came in shortly after and sat with us so I got up to make another two coffees, then Kert ran in and looked at Tilly as if she was about to give birth. Always the one to tease, I told Kert to sit down in an armchair, I would make him coffee and we were all having a chat, and that Tilly and I needed to be together on the couch. As I left to make the last coffee, I looked at Tilly as I passed her and made a long, tyre-puncture, hissing sound through my teeth, our longstanding code for the deflating effect of an unused erection as it returned to being a floppy, harmless, peeing machine, possibly waiting for me not Tilly to reinflate it.
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