Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (66 page)

“
Hey, these gnomecycles were
a really neat idea,” Dean observed in a snidely genial tone as the
others gingerly straddled the machines on aching
crotches.

Emma watched the City whiz by on her left as
they made their way back to Manassa’s loft. She was smothered
between the huge woman and her companion, who governed the
gnomecycle’s rumbling frame in moody silence along the wide avenue
tracing the perimeter of the park. Mark and dean were a little
behind them.

Emma was aroused, angry, scared and drunkenly
defiant all at once—a complicated mix of feelings that was
awkwardly magnified by her immobility.

“
Fuck you,” she called to a
solitary mannerman as they passed by, knowing her relative velocity
and inaudibility rendered the insult meaningless.

“
Shut up,” Ione tiredly
advised.

A few revelers stumbling their way home
crossed the street to give the man a wide berth, adding to her
resentment. “Fucking hate them,” Emma mumbled, felt something deep
within suddenly resonate to her gradually hardening antipathy for
their kind. Manassa had told her that mannermen in the “tent”
smacked women on the site of their stylistic inadequacy. If your
panties were wrong you got strapped on the cunt. If your bra was
off…

Another mannerman loomed out of the
vapor-choked tree line on the right and she stood on the foot
runners, reached back to unlatch her brassiere, yanking it free
with a deft tug. The wind sent her hair flying.

“
Sit down!” Ione
shouted.

“
Strap on this, asshole!”
she screamed, tossing the garment at the man. It caught him around
the neck and clung like a scarf.

Manassa bellowed in
laughter, but a moment later Emma realized the gravity of her
mistake. The mannerman had
seen
her remove the article, was instantly certain of
her compromised attire.

“
Halt!” he shouted, voice
rasping with surly masculine imperative.

“
Oh fuck!” Ione wailed as
mannermen materialized to either side ahead of them. One unknotted
his tie with the same elegance Emma had just demonstrated and flung
its free end across their path to his associate, who pulled it
tight just in time to catch Emma across the chest.

The gnomecycle shrieked as Ione furiously
braked. She couldn’t let go of the handlebars and Manassa couldn’t
see what was happening because of Emma’s vertical stance, so
neither woman could change her fate as Emma was torn off the
machine to slam down on the pavement, gasping for breath.

A moment later she was effortlessly lifted
over a burly shoulder and hustled into the forest, calling
piteously for her friends.

The trees loomed thick about Emma, black
shapes swallowed by the omnipresent fog just overhead. Dripping
foliage reared densely underfoot, but the Mannermen traversed it
with uncanny skill, barely audible as they trod steadily deeper
into the wood.

They were far past the outer margin of the
park where anything and everything grew, from carrots and peppers
and tomatoes to apples, blueberries, peaches and plums… Emma had
been overwhelmed by the various odors as they passed among thick
groves that hungry pedestrians plundered by day when a little
sunshine made its way in. It was long past midnight though, and
Emma saw no one among the plants.

Gnomes were hung at distant intervals,
beaming a queer ultraviolet light that penetrated the otherwise
blinding mist well enough to see for a little way. There were three
mannermen with her, one carrying her shoulder-slung mass and two
flanking him. They had passed many more of their kind along the
way. Emma watched them from her upside-down vantage in alternating
terror and animosity. Her new life would be dominated by their
rigid expectations.

She wept, contemplating everything that had
been lost. Ione, her friends, the good times at the Club… but
mostly Ione. To never lay by her love again, flesh joined along the
curve of her body, nourishing the heat between them… the beautiful
woman’s sharp laugh and restless ambition… her special needs as a
lover…

It was all to much to bear. Tears ran
heedlessly down her forehead, sputtered to the forest floor as she
began to cry hysterically. The mannerman’s broad back lunged and
relented, lunged and relented, an endless rhythm that conveyed her
step by step away from her life as she rained salted water to the
earth. In time sleep softly impinged on her exhausted mind, and she
didn’t fight it, decided it was all a bad dream…

She was roused from her drunken torpor at
some point by an awareness that the situation had changed. The
mannermen were no longer moving.

The ground seemed a little closer and she
blinked, realizing the one carrying her had lowered his mass. As
she watched two mannermen joined them at either side, swelling the
party to five.

They resumed their trek, but moved far more
slowly now, cautiously listening to the forest. A glow gnome slid
by on her right, peering lugubriously down onto their sordid
business. Its light vanished over a long sequence of careful steps,
departed entirely when they reached a fog-drowned glade, just
visible to its far boundary.

The mannermen halted on some unspoken
consensus, staring ahead as one creature. Gathering closer, they
proceeded to advance with extreme caution, moving a few steps at a
time, then listening again. Emma was terrified and confused. They
had traveled what seemed a straight path to this place, presumably
a familiar destination. What could scare them so deep in their own
domain? She felt her skin crawl.

The men stepped into an oval clearing
dwelling beneath the inscrutable black canopy of the trees, moving
in tiny, tense increments now. Vapor swirled past Emma from ahead,
a silent, nether wind.

The mannermen stopped and Emma felt her
captor jerk suddenly, weight dropping in alarmed anticipation. The
forest went completely silent and she knew something was about to
happen, desperately forced herself to think. Her enemies had
enemies. What would Ione do?

She tried to call out, but her cramped
diaphragm and dry throat conspired to silence her. Emma put
everything she had into forcing some kind of sound from her
throat.

“
Help…
” The word emerged as a faint croak.

Nothing happened for a timeless,
pulse-thudding interval, then in the distance she heard a faint but
familiar voice.

“
Now.”

The glade was suddenly lit to the intensity
of daylight.

The mannermen staggered blindly as a huge
noise arose before them, the sound of flying earth and skidding
rubber. Emma briefly witnessed the direct radiance of the
gnomecycles, as overwhelming in effect as everything else about the
machines, powerful enough to overcome the cloying cloak of mist,
then her ears were assaulted by the shouted challenge of her
friends as they charged straight at her captors.

Muscular legs projected stiffly from the
cycles and Emma was awed by their audacity as four of her guards
were assaulted by the combined momentum of flesh and metal they
commanded to be flung violently into the underbrush.

The gnomecycles skidded around to reverse
direction, returned to her position. Emma saw Dean and Ione beyond
the handlebars. Mark was hurtling off the seat. The mannerman
clutching Emma spun to face him and Mark roared, tackled him at the
waist. She felt the forest spin giddily as her friend lifted the
man from his feet, raised both of them overhead.

The mannerman reflexively released Emma and
she tumbled to the ground, looked up to see Mark’s skulk-like mask
of rage for an instant, truly terrifying to behold. He turned and
threw the other man after his comrades and Emma heard him land with
an agonized groan. Then Manassa leaned over from Ione’s cycle to
haul Emma crosswise over the seat on her belly.

“
Hurry!” Ione screamed to
Mark as a crowd of mannermen emerged from the mist behind them. He
vaulted behind Dean and the drummer desperately stomped on the
cranks. Ione did the same.

They didn’t move for a time-slurred instant
as the gnomes unloaded their total kinetic reservoir. Dirt was
dislodged in torrents, twin rivers of high-velocity ejecta that
pummeled the army massing at their back, forcing them to turn away
for a critical interval of vulnerability. Everyone was shouting.
Then Emma felt the frame shiver through her abdomen and a
tremendous force hauled them forward, out of harm’s reach.

The trees hurtled by. Ione and Dean were
shouting to each other, trying to gauge the fastest route back to
the City. It seemed like they were free.

Then mannermen were
suddenly
everywhere
.

“
Keep low!” Ione yelled,
remembering the wily tactic that had been used to strip Emma off
the bike. “And don’t slow down for anything!”

They blasted their way through a line of
burly men, scattering them with the unopposable momentum on call. A
small pool glistened off to the left, densely ringed by suited
figures, then the way was clear. The forest was supernaturally
silent but for the noise of their own passage.

“
Look!” Manassa whispered in
awe.

Ahead Emma saw what seemed like the base of a
windowless, wooden tower rearing out of the fog. It was many paces
in diameter. Vapor poured from its unseen altitudes, thick enough
to smother the entire park. They veered to avoid this ghastly
apparition and it was soon behind them, out of sight.

“
Just keep to a straight
route,” Ione called over to Dean. “The City’s the same distance
everywhere from here.”

Emma fixed her attention on the giant trees
hurtling in and out of visibility until they were among the
gardens, then back on the streets, safe once more. By then Manassa
had freed her hands and feet and she was seated between the other
women again, arms circled tight around her lover, sobbing
quietly.

The sun was high overhead when Emma
awoke.

Manassa’s loft was strewn with evidence of
yesterday’s dangerous affairs, but it all seemed small and messy
and pathetically inconsequential now. The others had already risen,
were sulking quietly about the salon. Mark head was in his hands,
and he was muttering softly to himself.

Emma sat at the counter, gaze lowered, unable
to face them. Manassa put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder and
pushed a bottle of pear juice in front of her. She drank it
mechanically, waiting for Ione to acknowledge her presence.

“
So. That’s that,” Dean
murmured disconsolately. No one spoke for a while.

“
Every mannerman in the City
will be on the lookout for our clothes,” Mark dully opined. “And
the gnomecycles.”

“
But not us specifically, at
least,” Manassa noted. I’ve already been out for a walk. They took
no interest.”

“
Yeah. We can go back to our
regular lives. I should be glad for that, I guess,” Dean
sighed.

“
I better return to the
Dowser’s Club,” Emma said.

Ione was looking out the front window, still
hadn’t spoken. She had changed into a flirty red camisole that was
nothing like her ensemble from the previous night. The ambiguous
silence of the salon built as they turned one by one to stare at
the tall woman, waiting for her judgment. She stepped back from the
window at last, faced them with grim formality.

“
I am returning to the
Gnomon’s Tower. I have a lot of work to do.” No one said anything
in response, but Emma knew their ambitions had been decisively
canceled by Ione’s resignation.

She looked away from her lover, felt a tear
gently depart one eye. It was all her fault.

“
We
all
have a lot of work to do,” Ione
continued, stepping to the door, opening it to the cryptic ambience
of the metropolis. “Because when the full moon rises in a dox of
days we will be throwing the most scandalous party the City has
ever witnessed. And screw anyone who thinks otherwise.”

With that pronouncement she angrily slammed
the door behind her to leave them in stunned silence.

Relief overtook confusion a moment later.
Then it erupted into full-force smiling as Mark swept the last
bottle of plum stillwater off the counter, expertly struck the tip
against its edge to send the cap skimming across the salon, imbibed
ferociously and lofted the bottle to Emma with covenantal
generosity.

“
Alright. We told everyone
we’re gonna celebrate. We got into the place where it’s gonna
happen. We faced down the neighborhood bullies. Now it’s time to
plan specifics.”

“
Sundown!” bellowed Dean.
Emma could hear the anxiety and anticipation in his voice. It was
the night of the party.

She made a last adjustment to the
“eyeballer”, their most complicated attraction, then grabbed a drop
line and made the three-level descent through the atrium to meet
the others by the bar.

Ione had finished dressing and everything
else fled Emma’s mind for a moment as she regarded her lover. “You
look gorgeous,” she breathed. The taller woman twirled, fanning a
blue and black full-length dress with a wide sash laced
suggestively across the waist. Her makeup was flawless and little
clamp-on earrings twinkled under her fine brown hair. Lapis
bracelets graced her elegant wrists and steeply arched high heels
vaulted her past even Dean’s altitude.

Ione reached for Emma, kissed her
languorously, washing her tongue round and around as her slender
fingers kneaded Emma’s flared rump. “Love your dress,” she
murmured, plucking at its white and turquoise fabric, gathered up
tight at the abdomen to dramatically emphasize her bosom. “Can’t
wait to see you lose it,” she teased.