Content Warnings

Suicidal ideation
Alcoholism/alcohol abuse
Vomiting
Internalised homophobia
Sexual content
Toxic sexual dynamics

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Grimgrave resuscitates me with a kiss.

Raw lip-to-lip contact rips me back from the brink. A sudden dose of magical energy, a gush of white-hot flame squirted directly into the failing furnace-mechanism of my soul, an injection of ‘girl-juice’ like a shot of adrenaline into the twitching half-dead muscle of my shrivelled heart.

Consciousness gutters back, an engine struggling to fire, pipes clogged with silt, combustion chamber flooded. Grimgrave’s lips move against my own, velvet-soft, skin-warm, urgent. Her face fills my vision, eyes squeezed shut, ragged curtain of messy hair swept aside, grey concrete a blur beyond, splashed with a riot of writhing blue. Despite the heart attack and the aborted orgasm and the lake of vodka in which I have attempted to drown myself, my rebooting brain is fully aware that Grimgrave is not sexually assaulting my still-warm corpse. She has just saved my life. Again.

I gurgle and groan, a strangled scream, half-panic, half-disgust, half-bewildered dismay, too much in excess of a hundred percent to keep inside. Lash out with my left arm, shove Grimgrave off — or rather, try my best, flailing weakly at her face and shoulders, barely strength enough to part a burial shroud.

Grimgrave jerks upright, breaks the kiss. Eyes wide, cheeks pale, birthmark down her throat standing out like blood on snow.

“Occy! Occy, hey, hey, can you hear me!?” Hands feather-light on my shoulders, afraid to shatter me like spun glass. “Don’t get up, don’t move, hey? Just lie there, let me—”

Sensible suggestion, but no. I bolt upright, almost knock skulls with Grimgrave, stopped by the tangle of my bedsheets, the horrible roiling in my gut, the blinding throb in my head. She scrambles back, a splotch of white against swirling grey.

Gagging and gasping, spluttering for air, as if I’ve been dredged from deep water. My fingers find the concrete floor but fail to find a grip. I’m going to fly apart, disintegrate into my constituent atoms. Chest shuddering, heart juddering, breath heaving hollow as magical energy fixes my insides with imperfect enthusiasm. Retching and choking and whining, head spinning like the world is going too fast and the doorway is filled with blue slime and ribbons and giant dark eyes and Grimgrave is babbling on and on about oh shit she’s gonna hurl and—

A liquid plug of vodka and stomach acid boils up my throat. I vomit into my lap, all over the displaced bedsheets. Once, twice, the third a dry heave.

Three deep breaths to match, vomit dripping from my lips. Pressure eases off my chest. Head begins to clear.

I actually feel better.

When I raise my sight to meet Grimgrave’s eyes, she’s poised on the precipice of action, ready to leap forward and grab me by the shoulders, stop me from stepping backward off the cliff a second time. But then she sees that I am going to live, whether I wish it or not. She lights up with a mad little grin.

“Ayyyyyy, Occy, there you are! Better out than in, right? You back with us, yeah? Yeah!?”

“ … you … ” Rough croak, throat aflame. “Grimmy … you … ” Doesn’t seem worth the effort, but it’s all I can think. “Kissed me. First kiss. Took it.”

First kiss? No, that went to Scarlet Edge. If Willow only ever kissed me in dreams, then Scarlet was my first. Unless that counted as a bite. Point to Grimgrave? Victory for Grimmy?

My face must look like murder; Grimgrave raises both hands and shakes her head. “No no no no! Occy, you were having a heart attack again! You were fucking popping off, I had to do it! I was giving you girl-juice, right?”

Nod. “I know. I … I was … I … I was trying … ”

And then the tears arrive.

Clear and clean at long last. No sobbing, no screaming, no shame, no rage; not even sorrow, just total defeat. Crying for myself, not for Willow, or what I’ve lost, or things which never happened. For me, right here and now, because I’m drunk and pathetic and have managed to masturbate myself into a heart attack; because I’m covered in my own vomit and I’ve ruined my bedsheets and there’s vaginal mucus on my fingers and pornography on my laptop screen; because Grimgrave the bright and cheery moon jester has witnessed every last pus-filled wound and festering wart of what was once Octavia Carter.

Grimgrave pulls a toothy grimace. “Ahhhh shit-balls. Tissy, can you, like, help? With the sick?”

A flute answers, slick and bubbling, a woodwind instrument submerged in warm oil. A mass of diaphanous blue glides from the doorway to render assistance.

Good thing I’m still drunk and weeping; Tistis is quite shocking, but I’m too preoccupied to recoil or scream or otherwise offend, which I certainly do not wish.

Tissy is humanoid, but too far from human for any mistake. Semi-translucent flesh, mottled and in motion from cerulean to indigo. Two legs, four arms, a curved torso, shoulders, and a head, budding into great limp snakes of thickly jellied tentacles in the place of hair. Wrapped in frills and ruffles of shifting blue membranes, like the skirts and petticoats of an impossibly complex dress, but these are not fabric, she doesn’t wear clothes; the lace-like folds and ribbon-structures are part of her body, extruded and flowing, rippling and shifting, like the outer layers of a huge jellyfish or the foot-fringe of an exotic mollusc. Darker blues lurk within her body, solid structures in spirals and helixes and ladders of flexible material, glowing with muted luminosity, anchors for the mass of ever-shifting gel-like flesh, but without the interconnections or outline of a human skeleton.

Massive eyes, each the size of my fist, the colour of sapphires at dusk. Lips a vague sketch, darker structures lurking within like a barrage of coiled tongues. No ears, no nose. Her head bristles with a pair of massive feelers — rhinophores, wide in the middle, narrowed to fine points, feathery and delicate at the edges.

Tissy looks like a human being crossed with a sea slug. Pure Dreamlands, doubt she could survive long outside an overlap. The kind of truth so ruthlessly censored in England, the kind of esoteric beauty the waking world can never know.

Grimgrave and Tissy work together , get me cleaned up. Grimgrave coaxes me from my soiled cocoon, which I have neither the dignity nor the willpower to resist. Tissy silently unwinds the tangled sheets from around my body, balling them up and scooping them into a pile with her four arms; her hands have no joints, no fingernails, just flowing triads of elongated jointless fingers. She says nothing, dark lidless eyes flickering over me and back again, jelly-fleshed face impossible to read. As soon as she’s got the sheets secured and the vomit hidden away she turns and heads for the door, floating footsteps silent as the ocean floor.

“Thanks, Tissy!” Grimgrave calls after her. “Laters!”

A moist and oily fluting sound echoes down the corridor. Then Tistis is gone.

Grimgrave gets me sat down on the edge of the bed, wets a flannel at the sink, wipes my face, dabs at my lips. Sniffs my left hand and wipes that as well. I’m too exhausted to be mortified.

“Tissy’s real shy, like,” she explains. “Don’t get used to seeing her or nothing. Only showed herself to me ‘cos you was having a heart attack and all. Still, hey, kinda a big deal for her, coming so close like that. Guess she likes you.”

Tears trail off. Throat feels worse. Still drunk, but rapidly sobered by adrenaline and cortisol, despair and defeat.

“Head hurts,” I croak. “Thirsty.”

“Yeah, no fuckin’ wonder!” Grimgrave fetches a glass of water, then another, then another. I grumble, turn my head, reject the third, tummy too delicate, so she leaves it on the bedside table. “You’re like, speed-running a hangover,” she says. “It’s all the girl-juice. It’s flushing you out with the excess after it fixed your heart. You’re gonna feel like mega super fucked up shit in record time.”

“Can’t be much worse than this.”

Grimgrave inhales through her teeth, a mechanic about to deliver the damage. “Yeeeeeah, fair do’s. You got real cunt-blocked there, huh? Bad fuckin’ luck, that’s all. But hey, at least you were having fun at first, right?” She thumbs at my laptop, at the anime girl still on the screen, collared and dog-eared, perfect tits spilling from pajamas and bra. “Wouldn’t’a guessed you liked them juggs so big though!”

She breaks into a cackle, mimes cupping a pair of gigantic breasts, two feet out from her own flat chest.

My eyes slide off and away, beyond shame.

“Ahhhh it’s cool, it’s cool!” Grimgrave says. “I like ‘em too! Who doesn’t? So you like big sloppy bimbos, whatever. Who gives a shit?”

No point to denial. Grimgrave was right all along, about me and more. Freed from Willow’s brain parasite, my true colours have been so quickly revealed. Any defence now would be pathetic self-incrimination.

Grimgrave steps over to the desk. She’s going to look through my browser history, isn’t she? Cycle back through all the pornography which led me to my inevitable act of shameless self-pleasure. She’ll comment on anime girl boobs and lips and pretty faces and skintight bodysuits and buttocks exploding from tiny shorts. She’ll ooh and ahh over shiny skin and erect nipples and girls making out with other girls. She’ll turn to me and grin and say ‘Hey Occy, this is what you’re into?’ She’ll know me better than Willow ever did, better than I know myself.

I don’t brace for humiliation; suddenly, dizzyingly, in a moment of numb exhilaration possible only in the depths of utter defeat, I want this. Grimgrave’s approval and attention. I want her to rake through the twisted, blackened, carbonised scraps of what passes for my sexuality, and find the bits she recognises, hold them up, say yes, yes Octavia, here you are.

But she ignores the laptop.

Grimgrave picks up the bottle of vodka, twists the cap back on, shakes it. Almost empty.

“Shiiiiiiiit, Occy!” She snorts. “You downed all this!? Damn, I should’a drunk it myself before you got to it.” She pauses, passes the bottle from hand to hand, a little frown on her face. “Eh? Why’s the side sticky?” She sniffs it. “Oh!”

“That’s me, yes,” I croak. “Vaginal mucus.”

Grimgrave bursts into a cackle. “Drinking and gooning! Jacking and jilling!”

Shrug. Can’t even blush.

Grimgrave wipes the bottle on her sleeve and makes it disappear somewhere, though thankfully not up her skirt. She’s not dressed for Oxford streets, nor for producing weapons from unlikely locations. Loose white jogging bottoms and a tight white thermal t-shirt with long sleeves; she looks like a pixie who has waded through too much snow. The great messy mass of her long brown hair hangs loose down her back, all curls and up-flicks and thick stray tresses trailing behind as she moves.

She sits down on the opposite end of the bed. Nothing but the pillow and a fitted sheet now. She leans forward, one knee up on the mattress, white sock dangling over the edge, jiggling her ankle to a silent rhythm.

“Sooooooo,” she says at length. “Do you wanna like … you know. Talk about it?”

Raise my head. A bowling ball stuffed with bruises. “There’s nothing to talk about. I’m done.”

Grimgrave snorts. “Ain’t done ‘till you’re dead! And you aren’t dead. Come on. Serious.”

“What is there to talk about?”

“I’unno.” She shrugs. “You tell me, yeah? You’re the one who locked yourself in here for three days and spent half that time all screamin’ and shoutin’. And then drank yourself into a second heart attack, like.”

Frown. Forehead aches. Grimgrave has an irritatingly good point; I’m not dead, and if I don’t want to be dead then I probably need to avoid having another coronary event.

“Second heart attack,” I echo. “Why?”

“‘Cos you’ve been in here for three days having a massive wobbly! Why the fuck do you think!? Not that like it’s your fault or nothing. Shit, I ain’t blaming you. Just like, you’ve been going bananas in here, Occy. Stress doesn’t help with girl-juice. Burns you up. Bad.”

“ … the tantrum gave me a heart attack?”

Grimgrave rolls her eyes. “You had one heart attack, right? Back on the hospital roof, ‘cos your transformation got cock-blocked. Nerys says that’s never happened before, so like, whoops, just bad luck. You were already primed for another, then being so stressed kept you right on the edge. Rest up for real a bit, make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Right. Okay. So it wasn’t the masturbation?”

That word comes out like nothing. No stutter, no blush, no shame. What’s happened to me?

“Hahahaha!” Grimgrave laughs, waves that down. “Naaaaaaah. If you just let the juices do their job, you’ll be fine. Let ‘em fix you up.”

Silence settles. Stare at the floor. Nothing more to say.

Grimgrave shifts on the bed, rakes her hair back. “So hey, like I said, you wanna talk? About locking yourself in here and stuff?”

I manage to sigh. “Is it really such a mystery?”

“Nah, not the why part. Just … you know. Talk?”

“What if I don’t want to?”

Grimgrave shrugs. “Told you I’m no good at this. Can’t leave you alone now though, can I, hey?”

“You could.”

“Sure. But I’m not gonna.”

Time oozes by, every second an hour, my head a drum, my guts a clogged sewer. Grimgrave rocks back and forth on the bed, twiddling her thumbs, playing with the ends of her hair, refusing to give up and leave me alone. I might not be a corpse anymore, not now that Grimgrave brought me back, but that doesn’t mean I’m truly alive. Octavia Carter is just a poorly reanimated memory. To sit and not think, that is what I wish. I don’t want to talk about any of it.

Furtive claws slowly scrape along the corridor outside; tentative grey muzzles peer around the doorframe. A trio of zoogs slink into view, sniffing at the threshold, freezing when they see Grimgrave and myself, thawing when I stare back and decline to chase them off. Grimgrave gets up and goes over to them, squats down, ruffles their fur, scratches behind their ears, strokes their backs.

Lucky creatures.

“Is … ” I croak, realise my throat’s gone dry. We’ve been sitting here for almost ten minutes, perhaps longer, in creaking silence. I reach over, take the glass of water, drink half. “Is Nerys okay? I saw her in the Big Room.”

Grimgrave answers without looking up from the zoogs. One of them paws at her legs. “Yeeeeeeah, she’ll be fine. Siggy thinks so too.”

“What happened to her? She said it was a fight, but then she fell back asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her again.”

Grimgrave shrugs. “Dunno. She doesn’t tell us everything. Dream-Gods gotta fight Dream-Gods, I guess? She took an opening while the Trio were distracted, something like that. Siggy knows more, if you wanna ask.”

“Mm. Okay. Did she win?”

Grimgrave looks up, blinking, almost surprised. One of the zoogs rasps, “Yaaaaaah! Yaaaaaah.”

“Good.” I nod. “Good. That’s what matters.”

Grimgrave smirks, approves, something we can agree on. She selects a lucky zoog and scoops it up in her arms, carrying it over to the bed, settling back into position. The other two start grooming and washing each other, licking at each others’ faces, venturing no further than the doorway. The third zoog gets comfy in Grimgrave’s lap, snuggling down, one of her hands stroking it from skull to tail. She smiles at the zoog, her lips a neat little bow; I still cannot believe how soft they felt.

Does she know that I was thinking of her with my hand on my cunt? Does she know that, sitting on my bed, inches from the spot where her name was trapped behind my clenched teeth, her phantom weight in my lap, her imaginary tongue down my throat?

I raise my left arm, wipe my lips on the sleeve of my robe. “Can’t believe you kissed me.”

Grimgrave shrugs it off. “Shit, Occy, I wouldn’t call it a real kiss, you know?”

“You put your lips on mine—” A shudder passes beneath my belly. “—what else could you call it?”

“Medical stuff! And hey, I’m not even sure it did anything.”

“What do you mean it didn’t do anything? It revived me. You revived me. And … well … thank you.” I mutter the words, but I do say them. “I would be dead. If you hadn’t. I’m not … ” My turn to shrug. “Thank you. I’m not trying to make it weird.” Am I?

Grimgrave pulls a lopsided grimace. “What I mean is it’s not like putting petrol in a car or jamming a plug in a socket. You don’t, like, slam faces together and girl-juice flows. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.” She snorts. “Nah, it’s more like everyone’s gotta be into it, you know? And I wasn’t, really, cross my heart, for serious. I just panicked, thought you were done for. I wasn’t like, turned on. So it probably didn’t actually work, see? It was probably just your own reserves kicking in after you passed out. So like, hey, it wasn’t a kiss, didn’t mean shit! Don’t worry about it!”

Grimgrave didn’t feel a thing; but I did. I was still riding the tail-end of my almost-climax, clinging to the fading tatters of my dirty little fantasy, in which Grimgrave was snogging me to orgasm. That’s why the transfer worked, why I’m still alive. Saved by my first kiss. Second kiss. Whatever.

“Saved by being a slut,” I murmur.

“Eh? Occy?”

“Nothing.”

Now she’s got me talking, the process cannot be halted. So many sensible subjects I should raise, practical questions and speculative questions and inquiries as to the probable shape of the future. So that was Tissy; what is she, what’s her role in this, why does she look after Plato Base? Have you seen the footage in the news — who am I kidding, of course Grimgrave’s seen it, we’re at war with the Trio, with England now — and what’s the fallout of our debut on the world stage? What does Signal think, what does she predict? Why haven’t I heard Bright outside my door, raring to cave in my skull as revenge for her sister’s attention? What happened after my first heart attack, can you tell me more? Did you bury that one dead zoog you found? What’s for dinner? When are you going to leave me in peace?

Can’t voice any of those, can’t pretend this moment is normal. Dressed in a robe and pajamas, my right arm in two pieces on the desk. I’ve never been this naked and vulnerable in front of anybody, except in dreams of Willow, and those were never real.

I curl inward on myself, hunched and tight. Desolation takes hold.

“Why am I still here?”

Grimgrave takes a moment to answer. “Beats being dead.”

To my own incredible surprise, I almost laugh. “Look at me.” I gesture with my stump, inside my sleeve, a half-hidden half-shrug. Grotesque, not something I’ve ever done in front of anybody else. My other hand waves at my prosthetic. “I’m in pieces. Literally. I don’t understand why I survived any of this. Not just the last few days, but the whole last ten years. Why drag myself through all that, with all the pain and struggle and hate, if this was the result? If it was all lies, all a dream? And now I’m left dismembered.”

Grimgrave glances at my prosthetic. “You can repair your arm, right? Siggy’s got all those 3D printers and stuff, I’m sure she can figure it out.”

Shake my head. She doesn’t get it. “I’m broken. I can’t even transform. She took that from me. Took away the last piece of reality I had.”

“You’ve been trying? To transform, I mean?”

“With no success,” I murmur.

“Not forever!” Grimgrave says. “When you started it, back on the hospital roof, what did it feel like?”

“Feel like?”

“Yeah.” Grimgrave sits up, her eyes so untroubled, face an open book. “Like, for me, it feels like being freed. Free to laugh, free to jump around, total freedom to go in any direction, at any speed. You know what I mean? But it’s different for each of us. What’d it feel like for you?”

Stare at the floor. At my knee. At where my right hand should rest. Phantom pain creeps back as the alcohol wears off. Dead muscles clench tight, an imaginary fist.

“Powerful,” I say.

“Well hey, there you go!” Grimgrave says. “Focus on that. And hey, I bet repairing your arm will help loads! We can start with that, right?”

I sigh. “I’m an exile, stuck on the moon. What’s the point in starting again, starting over? I can’t ever go home, either. Everything’s gone.”

“Yeah,” Grimgrave says, suddenly a little softer. “Me neither. Home’s up here now, you know?”

I glance at her, at her half-smirk, at the dozing zoog in her lap. Plato Base, home? For her, maybe. For me, Willow was home; even if I do successfully transform, there is no going back to her, not ever.

“Why would Willow treat me like this?” The words take me by surprise. “Why would she do this to me? Any of this? Kept me like a pet. Kept me in the dark.” A great shuddering breath flows down my throat; if it wasn’t for the hangover, I might start crying, but I’m too spent for tears. “Why.”

Grimgrave tilts her head to one side, messy curls of hair sticking up from her scalp. “Maybe she loved you?”

Hate stirs behind my eyes, trapped between my teeth. “What? What? Repeat that. Grimgrave. Repeat that.”

“Woah woah!” She puts up a hand. The zoog in her lap stirs, eyes snapping open, ready to leap clear. The pair by the door stop licking each others’ fur. “Occy, no, I mean like, love comes in all sorts of fucked up forms, you know? I’m not saying it was good, just maybe that’s how she saw it?”

Hate boils off. Can’t hate Grimgrave. “What would you know about love?”

She shrugs. “I know you gotta love yourself.”

We trail off together, an oddly comfortable silence. The zoog in Grimgrave’s lap goes back to sleep. Three more zoogs appear at the door, sniffing the ones who’ve been here a while. A long time trickles by until I can find words better than an empty grunt.

“Thank you for shooting her,” I say to the concrete floor.

“Ha,” Grimgrave barks. “No probs! Not like she’s dead, which sucks shit. Dreamers are like that.”

“Still. I wish you’d been there, ten years ago. I wish you’d blown her head off before I’d met her. A Dreamer. A Dreamer all along, all my life, all of it was a lie. She was a lie. Everything with her, all of it was a lie. She and I, we were … we were so close, and none of it was real. And now I’ve got nothing, nothing left. There’s nothing left of me. I’m a walking corpse. I feel dead.”

“Bullshit,” Grimgrave spits.

“Ah?” Lift my head, meet her eyes, grin cracking across her face.

“‘Nothing’ doesn’t filch my bottle of vodka and wank herself into a heart attack to some big-titty anime babes!” Grimgrave cackles. “Come on, Occy! That’s real, that’s you, right!?”

“Alcohol and regrets. Nothing more. Doesn’t mean a thing.”

Grimgrave gives me a sceptical look, like I’m being an idiot. Which I suppose I am. Not like I can blame the pornography on anybody else.

“I … ” I swallow, take a breath, unburden myself. “I think I might have been an alcoholic. Before. Maybe. But I don’t know. I can’t know, because Willow overwrote any memories of that, filled my head with nothing but her. Do you see what I mean? I don’t even know who I am.”

She thumbs at the laptop screen again; it’s gone dark now, screen switched itself off, but we both know what she means. “That’s real. That’s who you are. A little bit of who you are, whatever!”

I snort, hollow, empty. Shake my head. Subside into silence.

Grimgrave tilts her head the other way. “Did you cum?”

I expect a shit-eating grin accompanied by half an invitation to punch it off her face; but Grimgrave is dead serious, guileless, genuine. I stare, dumbfounded. Even in the aftermath of a heart attack, totally numb, I am stunned she can ask such a question.

“Shiiiiit,” Grimgrave says. “No? You didn’t? I thought you went once and then tried again or something! Shit, you’d probably feel better if you did. Want me to come back in like twenty minutes, give you time to—”

“Grimgrave. Stop.”

She snorts with muffled laughter, then waves me down, as if I was about to lunge at her. “Soz, soz! Serious though, you wanna finish up, let me know, I’ll fuck off for a bit.”

“Just stop.”

Grimgrave bites her lower lip, the only way she can contain herself; I have to look away from how her teeth dimple her pale flesh. She can’t know, can she? She can’t possibly know I was thinking of her right at the end. She’s not trying to seduce me, that’s all my fault. All of this is on me.

Arousal doesn’t return, for which I am deeply thankful; a headache is ramping up behind my eyes and my belly is a ball of rotten nausea. A fumble for the glass of water almost knocks it to the floor, but then Grimgrave is there, catching it before it falls, pressing it into my hand, waiting to take it after I drink the rest. She puts the zoog down gently on the floor, where it rubs against her ankles, begging for more lap-time. Clever thing. If only I could be so shameless.

“Ugh,” I groan, belly full of fluid, eyeing the toilet. “Feels like I’m going to be sick again.”

“I’ll hold your hair back, if you need it!”

Another empty snort. “Don’t need my hair held, it’s not long enough for … ” My left hand rakes back through my hair — past the nape of my neck, still going. I hold up a strand, black hairs longer than I recall, well past my shoulders. “What?”

Grimgrave lights up. “You ain’t noticed ‘til right now?”

“I don’t … what?” Time wrenches out of joint. Have I been in this room for months without knowing? I haven’t been paying attention to my body or my appearance, not even when I showered; I try to think back, and realise that my hair was already like this when I left the room. How hard was I dissociating, for how long? “How … I don’t … ”

“Girl-juice does that sometimes!” Grimgrave says. “Hair, nails, sometimes other stuff too. Everyone reacts to it different, like. Stuff gets all out of whack.” She holds up a thick lock of her own brilliant brown hair. “I got sick of cutting it every week. Gave up, let it rock!”

Such mundane strangeness sobers me up further. I run my left hand down through my hair, testing how long it’s grown; far past my shoulder blades, the longest I’ve had since I was a child.

“I can cut it, if you want?” Grimgrave says. “No joke, I actually know what I’m doing with a pair of scissors. Serious like, serious offer.”

I shake my head, which hurts a lot, because now I’m more hungover than I am drunk. Grimgrave’s hands in my hair, stroking my scalp, grooming me? I couldn’t handle that even on a whole bottle of vodka. I’d die, or I’d kill her, or worse. But she would do it, wouldn’t she? She would touch me in all sorts of ways, and all I would need to do is say yes. She would do what I dreamed of. The notion sets my heart shuddering.

“Grimgrave.”

She picks up the gravity in my voice, bounces on one foot. “Yeah?”

“Sit down. You’re making me dizzy.”

Grimgrave perches on the edge of the mattress, leaning down to give the forlorn zoog another few pets, scratching it behind the ears before it trundles off to join the others. The group lingers in the doorway, not really watching us; perhaps they like being close to Grimgrave, what with her petting them all the time. I understand, I really do. Grimgrave waits for me to gather myself, bobbing her head from side to side, like a puppy who knows she’s going to get a treat, but isn’t sure when it will arrive. I force myself to look at her, at her sparkling green eyes, her neat little lips, her smooth hands, the subtle lines of her body beneath her clothes. She’s so tight and lithe, I wonder what she feels like to touch and—

“Occy?”

“Why did you fight for me?” I ask. “On the roof. With Scarlet Edge.”

Grimgrave shrugs. “‘Cos she was coming at you? Coming at all of us! That bitch needed a good slap-down, any of us would have—”

“No. That’s not what I mean. I saw. You were going to die for me. I saw.”

She doesn’t have an answer to that. Blinks like a rabbit in headlights, brilliant green eyes shining against the grey.

“I don’t want you to die for me,” I say, low and rough. “I don’t want that. I don’t … I don’t get it. I don’t get you. I’m nothing, I’m nobody. I’m just leftover pieces of a girl who died ten years ago. And I don’t understand it, I don’t get why you’re like this. Why do you keep trying and trying and trying? Why are you so nice to me, when you barely know me? Why break my door down, save me, offer to hold my hair back? And no, I haven’t forgotten your previous answer, all that stuff about how people like us have to stick together. But that’s not enough to make somebody like you do this, that’s not enough. I don’t believe it. Not enough to throw yourself away for me.” I pull myself up, because I know the truth, a nasty little thing I must turn to and look at on purpose, force myself to see, swallow the bitter medicine. “And it’s not because I’m me. It’s got nothing to do with me. You would do this for any new magical girl, wouldn’t you? Because you’re a slut.”

Grimgrave is rendered, for once, speechless.

“No offence,” I add, because I’m an idiot and I said it all wrong. “I guess. Since now I’m a slut too.”

Grimgrave bursts out laughing.

Big loud cackles, rocking back and forth on the bed, bright green eyes alight with hidden fires behind her face. She reaches over and slaps me on the shoulder, makes it clear she’s laughing with me rather than at me, which makes no sense because I’m not laughing.

“Occy! Occy, yo, hey, shut the fuck up, bitch!”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult,” I try to say. “Really. I mean, I—”

“Shut the fuck up, for real!” Grimgrave can’t stop laughing, a maniac grin spreading from ear to ear. “Occy, you dumb fuckin’ bitch! I fought Scarlet for you because you were there, duh! I’m in here with you now because you’re the one here! You’re here, right here.” She reaches out, grabs my left shoulder, squeezes hard. “Flesh and blood and spit and piss and ‘vaginal mucus’ and all, yeah? Yeah!? You’re no fuckin’ ghost or zombie, Occy. You’re here.”

She leaps up off the bed, stands tall before me, the brightest smile I’ve ever seen on her face, a lunatic glittering behind her eyes.

“Fuck yeah I’ll fight for you,” she says. “Fuck yeah I will!”

For one filthy fleeting moment my sordid heart hears exactly what it wants, filtering Grimgrave’s words through rotten tissues of desire and lust and worse. She did it for me, for Octavia Carter, because I am, to her, in some way I cannot comprehend, special. Her shining green eyes and her fluffy riot of hair and her mobile little lips and the petite curves of her body under that skintight t-shirt, and it’s me she fights for, me she defended, me she wants.

Cum-brained and pent-up, her body right before me, her presence in the room where I was trying, for the first time in my life, to actually masturbate. The memory of her lips against mine. All too much.

I twitch forward, lean in, start to stand, the first inch of going for a kiss. Because I’m still just about drunk enough to try.

But only the first inch, because Grimgrave carries right on.

“Same as I’d fight for anybody who joins us!” she says. A bucket of cold water on my disgusting desires. “Same as I’d fight for Siggy, or Bright. Don’t like, let me and Bright fool you, yeah? If those bitches went for her, I’d fight for her too. But even if Nerys had like, I dunno, fifty magical girls, a hundred magical girls, whatever, you’d still be here, and I’d still fight for you. Get it? You’re here and I’m here, doesn’t matter how. I’m with you, Occy. Kay?”

Nod. Swallow. Ease away. She didn’t notice. None the wiser.

Grimgrave doesn’t want me in that way; we established that before. If she was privy to the contents of my dirty little fantasy, she would recoil from me. Or maybe she wouldn’t, and that would be worse, because it’s all just perversion, nothing like love, nothing special, nothing personal, and then I would lose whatever purity is left in my false memories of Willow.

Grimgrave doesn’t want me. She just wants her revolution.

How many magical girls has she seen die? How many times has she done this before? How many has she fucked prior to me? How many has she lost?

“And hey,” Grimgrave rattles onward, words pulling me apart, “I didn’t get a chance to say this before you bolted yourself in here, but Occy, shit, the way you went up against Scarlet?” She cracks a fresh grin, like the first breath of spring while I’m trapped underground. Mimes a right-handed punch. “You rocked her! Like, you get that, right? She’s never been hurt that bad, let alone on camera. She’s not shown up on telly or a press conference or anything, not for days. The other two bitches have been out there, but you fucked Scarlet up real good. Hey? Yeah? You should be proud!”

But I don’t want to punch Scarlet to death; I want her dressed in dog ears and a collar with her face shoved between my legs.

A shiver passes through me. Want to call it nonsense, deny it all, say it was just the vodka.

“All that shit that went down at the hospital,” Grimgrave says, “Siggy and I’ve been talking it over a bunch, asking Nerys too. Your transformation, I mean, and Willow, and all the other stuff. Dream Control working with a Dreamer, I mean, wow, shit’s fucked, you know? Anyway, Signal’s got a bunch of theories, and Nerys needs to rest up, but she’ll be cool soon, and then you should really ask Siggy, ‘cos she’s got some ideas and stuff. Like, when you’re feeling better, yeah?” Grimgrave rocks side to side as she speaks, shifting weight from foot to foot, hips swaying in a hypnotic metronome. “And those three girls we saw in the hospital, that bitch who tried to stop me getting in the room? Siggy thinks they were—”

“I’m never going to feel better,” I mutter. “How can I?”

Grimgrave snorts. “No more booze, for a start! No booze, get some proper food in you, and ask Siggy about her 3D printers to get that arm fixed. Occy, you ain’t dead, you’re just injured. Your robot arm is the coolest thing ever, and it’s gonna get fixed easy—”

“Not that.”

Grimgrave pauses. “Yeah? Then what? Hey, Occy, what—”

“This,” I snap. “This.” Gesture at the blank screen on my laptop. “You. This … I can’t … I … ” Squeeze my eyes shut. Say it now or forever be silent, because I’ll never get another chance. “All my memories of … of … s-sex with Willow, they were dreams. I’ve never … this was … this was my first time.”

Silence. Shivering. Open my eyes.

Grimgrave is beaming.

“You got uncorked!” She cheers. “Yeaaaaaaah!” The zoogs by the doorway all look up, trying to figure out if they should join in. “Well, like, not all the way, like you said, but you know what I mean.” Her grin widens. “Hey, I wasn’t joking about me buggering off so you can finish. Might be just what you need. Get all that tension worked out. No joke, not even being dirty—”

“Stop”.

“—just biology, yeah? And hey, Occy, if you need some help, a helping hand, two hands, I got two hands right here.” She raises her hands, wiggles her digits; my chest tightens, twinges inside, an electric current running down low into my guts. “And I’m pretty fuckin’ expert, if you know what I mean—”

“Stop!”

A shout, so loud it echoes down the corridor outside. Sends the cluster of zoogs at the doorway scurrying and skittering off into the darkness, claws scraping on concrete, hissing and chittering.

Grimgrave’s grin won’t cease. “Shit, Occy, I’m just messin’ with you. A joke, yeah!? Cranking one out’s nothing to get worked up about, it’s funny, like, just laugh it off—”

“I am not a homosexual.”

Grimgrave stops, grin frozen.

“I told you before,” I carry on, hissing through clenched teeth, telling a lie neither of us believe. “If you keep making this joke, if you keep mocking me, then we will never be friends. I will not tell you again.”

An absurd lie. I’m a dyke slut pervert and denial is useless. If only I could go back, if only I could pretend, if only I could keep Grimgrave out beyond the crumbled walls of my ruined fortress. But she’s already inside, and the only weapon I have left is ridiculous denial. How can I ever back up a threat to reject her, when she saved my life so completely, when she pulled me from Willow’s clutches? How can I ever say no, when her imaginary shade almost kissed me into my first orgasm, and then she brought me back from a heart attack with the real thing?

Grimgrave’s face crumples with amazed incredulity, looking at me like I’ve told her that up is down and black is white, a full-bore idiot-squint.

“What!? Occy, come the fuck on!”

No answer to that. Look away, avert my eyes, stop digging.

Grimgrave springs over to the desk. She wiggles the mouse, wakes the screen, reveals once again the pair of gigantic cartoon breasts and sunny submissive smile that inspired me to put my hand down my pajama bottoms to grope my own cunt.

“What’s the fuck’s that then, huh!?” Grimgrave gestures at the screen with both hands.

Heat in my cheeks and neck, first sign of life since my revival. Can’t meet Grimgrave’s eyes.

“Drunken foolishness.” My voice shakes, can’t grip the lie. “A failed experiment.” Only because I got interrupted.

“Oh, failed, right, riiiight,” Grimgrave croons, mocking. “Only wanked yourself so hard you popped your heart again!”

“It wasn’t—” Truth catches in my throat. “It wasn’t like that. It was—”

“Oh yeah!?” Grimgrave bounces back over to the bed, towering over me, hands on her hips, grin splitting the world. “What was it like then, huh? Miss not-a-homo-sex-you-al!?”

Shoot to my feet, now I’m the one towering; Grimgrave is so small, so petite, if only I had both my arms, I could pick her up, make her stop, make her squirm. Lump in my throat, anger stirring in my chest, a potent cocktail with outrage and pent-up lust and the way Grimgrave’s tongue flickers out to wet the edges of her grin.

“I couldn’t— she was—” Willow was in my head. “I had to— couldn’t—” So I couldn’t do it. “You can’t understand, you can’t—” Can’t tell you, because it was you, right at the end, you in my fantasies, with your tongue down my throat, and it makes me want to be sick and grab you and bury my head in the pillow and tell you all about it and have you slap me for being wrong and I’m going to be sick, I’m going to vomit, I’m going to curl up and die.

Grimgrave won’t stop laughing, snorting, giggling, swaying her head from side to side as she mocks something that will never leave my lips. Grinning up at me, teasing me, that maddening and maddened smile from ear to ear.

“Can’t believe you’re still doing this!” she says. “Occy, you’re gay as fuck! We all are, it’s part of how Nerys picks us—”

No way out. Raise my left hand. Make a fist, make her stop.

Lacking the benefit of my prosthetic arm and the clarity of clean anger, the strike is not even a real punch, just a loose-handed flail, too weak to wound wet cardboard. But it overbalances me, takes me off my feet, blunders me into Grimgrave’s front. She squeals like the little fiend she is, mounts a counter-attack, cackling in my face, tackles me around the middle. We go down together, glance off the edge of the bed, roll onto the mattress.

Grimgrave has the advantage, two arms, well-rested, not wrapped in a robe. Her weight on me is so slight, a slender wriggling warmth as she tries to pin my left arm, narrow thighs straddling my hips, messy waterfall of hair all in her face.

I buck, kick, grunt, levering her up and off, bouncing her off the wall, rolling her onto her back. Grimmy squeals again, high-pitched between her giggles.

My turn on top, heavier and meatier; she wriggles like a greased weasel, slipping out of my one-armed grip, head jerking every which way, teeth snapping and clacking, closing once on the side of my palm but only gumming against my flesh, chewing and moaning around a mouthful of me. She bucks too, but she’s smaller and lighter, just jerking and thrusting against my hips, heels drumming on the mattress, squealing and yelping and laughing, pushing and shoving and twitching.

Finally I get a good grip on her right wrist, pin it to the mattress over her head, but she still won’t stop twisting and squirming in an effort to throw me off.

Jam my knee — my prosthetic knee — between her legs, grinding hard up against her groin through her jogging bottoms.

“Unnnnh!”

Grimgrave goes tense, lets out a high-pitched squeak, lips parted, eyelids heavy, fluttering. Stops wriggling, gives up, submits.

We’re both panting, flushed, red-faced. Grimgrave’s slender chest rises and falls beneath her white top, messy curls of hair spread out across my pillow. Heavy-lidded eyes meet mine, an intoxicating moment, lost in the sensation of my knee between her thighs.

“Trying for a third heart attack?” she breathes.

Then she grins. White-hot maniac intensity rips her wide from ear to ear. I’m on top, but she’s won.

Like snapping out of a trance. I jerk upright, pull myself off her, scramble from the bed. Stagger sideways, almost fall, catch myself against the smooth concrete wall. Shaking and shivering all over, covered in boiling sweat. Heart racing behind my ribs, strong as an ox, all better now.

Grimgrave sits up, drags her hair back, flushed, breathing hard, still grinning like a lunatic.

“Hey, Occy,” she purrs. “If that’s how you wanna play—”

“Stop … ” I murmur, so weak I’m surprised she hears.

Can’t slow my breathing. Can’t stop quivering. Now I’ve violated Grimgrave with my hands, not just with my mind. Maybe Willow was right, maybe I should have been kept as a pet, where I couldn’t hurt anybody real, locked in a dream. Or worse, maybe Grimgrave wants to keep going, and I’m going to lose myself.

Grimgrave bounces to her feet. “Keep trying to tell you, Occy. We’re all raging lesbos up here! It’s part of Nerys’ criteria, why she picks us! You ain’t no different. Shit, it’s nothing to freak out about, you’re not in England anymore—”

“Shut up!” I shriek. Whirl on her. Raise my hand like a claw, nothing with which to punch, nothing to throw. “Shut up! Shut up!”

Grimgrave’s grin fights and loses, flickers out, eyes wide, creased with sudden hurt.

“Occy? H-hey, I thought we were playing—”

“Get out!” I scream. “Out!”

Can’t pass her to grab the pillow, so I stumble two steps aside and close my fist around the back of the chair, the first thing to hand. Swing it with my whole body weight, wrenching something delicate inside my left shoulder, spinning the metal chair up and over.

I hurl it in Grimgrave’s general direction. She leaps out of the way, a standing-start full-body bound into a forward handspring, cartwheeling back to her feet, hair trailing behind in a whip-wave of brilliant mess. The metal chair crashes into the wall, chipping the concrete, clattering to the floor in a clamour of clanging steel.

“Get out, get out, get out!”

I lunge for the bed, scoop up the pillow, throw it at Grimgrave’s retreat as she slips through the doorway, out into the corridor, beyond my sight.

Silence.

My own ragged breath, my dry and dusty throat. My skin prickling with sweat, unshed tears in my chest. My heart, at least, now firmly intact. A ghost of arousal lingers in my head and down low in my groin. My body still feels Grimgrave pinned beneath me, her slight wriggling form, the heavy-hooded look in her eyes, her parted lips. Lips that kissed me back to life.

Seconds trickle by. Sweat grows cold. Silence goes stale.

“Grim … ” A weak murmur, too little, too late. That look on her face as it fell, as I screamed at her to leave. “Grimgrave?”

She’s gone. I’ve chased her away. I was defeated and dead and done, but she brought me back. I pinned her to the bed, driven by the abortive first orgasm of my life, and the comfort and confusion she offered, and then I screamed and threw things and drove her out.

Stumble toward the doorway, but there’s only silence beyond. “Grimmy … I’m … I’m sorry—”

Burst out into the corridor.

There she is.

Grimgrave stands two doors down from my own, safe distance in case I picked up the chair again. Chewing her lower lip, feet firm on the floor, eyes aslant, head tilted aside, braced for a backhand blow.

We eye each other for a moment. I’m speechless.

She shrugs. “Apology accepted.”

“ … why … why are you still here? Why? After I … ”

Another shrug. A quarter-power grin, false flame, no heat. “Told you before. People like us gotta stick together, no matter what. I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

You ain’t getting out of this so easy, Octavia. Wouldn’t it be so much cleaner and tidier if you could just drive Grimgrave off and stew in some nice juicy unadulterated self-hatred? But she’s still here. Why not try some ‘wrestling’ again? Ahem.

Well well well, out of one crisis and into another, that’s our Occy. At least her heart is physically intact, if rather ragged emotionally. Amusingly enough the ending of this chapter did originally call for Grimgrave to run away, but during drafting it became blinding obvious she wasn’t going to do that. No escape, Octavia! Not from Grimgrave or from me.

Anyway, looks like the rest of arc 4 is still going to be 7-8 chapters. Things are on track, terrible nightmares are a-brewing, and Octavia is still a mess. Better get that arm fixed, o’ magical girl.

Meanwhile, if you want more Maidens right away, you can always:

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Right now my patrons have access to three chapters ahead! For the moment I’m going to try to keep it as three; in the future I hope to push this out to more.

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you all for being here and enjoying my little story. Thank you for reading it, following along with Octavia’s rather terrible no-good bad embarrassing time. Thank you all so much!

Next chapter, Grimgrave’s not going anywhere.