“There’s nothing down there.”

Sera is hooked over the side of the well, trying to discern a glint of metal from the soft shimmer of sunlight on the water below. This is made all the more difficult from the frayed rope that stretches into the well proper; the shadow it casts muddies an already unclear picture. Still, Sera is pretty sure that there’s nothing in the well.

“I’m telling you, something fell in there last week.” Laurence, a balding man with glasses larger than Sera had worn even before she took to contacts says. He frowns and crosses his arms, “You know, after the big protest? It might be a sign or something.”

This takes a moment for Sera to process. She furrows her brows before she pushes herself back up—narrowly avoiding hitting her head on the low wooden roof—and gives Laurence a look. “A sign? You told me that it was metal, and I-,” she shakes her head after a moment. If her phone were not dead she could just use that to get a better look. Sera purses her lips, “Are you sure that you don’t have a flashlight?”

“I didn’t say that I don’t have one,” he responds with a shrug, “Just said that I don’t know where it might be.”

“Great. Well, I’d recommend calling a professional if you see it again. I don’t have the equipment to pull it out.” Sera looks around the neighborhood. This well is pretty much entirely decorative, she knows that much. This house, like every other one of the homes out here, is connected to city water. The water in the “well” is probably brackish and has almost certainly never actually been used for anything, Sera would guess. None of the other homes in the neighborhood have anything like it; they’re all white or light gray two story houses with respectable basements and SUVs in the driveways. This house, one story tall and wider than it is long, never joined the local HOA. This isn’t her first time being here. It probably won’t be her last, given how often people out here love to complain as of late.

There are a million better ways that Sera could be handling a Friday morning a week after kicking her cheating ex out of her apartment. Unfortunately for her, dealing with situations like this is kind of Sera’s job. Such is the joy of being an elected official.

Sera knew that the protest last week was going to be a problem. The original route had to be tossed due to unscheduled emergency bridge maintenance and so instead of the queers going through the metropolitan city center, they had to take a detour through a couple of working class neighborhoods to reach their intended endpoint. Not a soul in the city wanted this outcome. She had been part of the meetings when the new route was decided on; she had hoped something so long and out of the way would have deterred the fags and their ilk from the entire sordid affair. Their insistence on going through with the parade despite the hostile terrain was only slightly less disheartening than finding Philip’s ex’s panties in her bed. On her fucking comforter. Only slightly less so, though.

Most of the southwest side of town knew of her particular views and politics. Admittedly, most of the rest of Pondsdale did too, given that she was the loudest voice for “restoring a sense of reason” to the city ever since they elected a gay woman to be the city's mayor and a transgender woman to the city council. She and the tranny, Penelope, do not see eye to eye on almost anything. Sera knows this quite well. She is especially certain of their mutual disdain ever since she almost succeeded in killing the Pride festivities altogether until the crying trannies managed to sway a couple of the votes from other councilpersons away from her side.

Ugh.

It isn’t quite fair to say that it was only their crocodile tears that managed to sway Jenny and Kat towards voting against the interests of the actual women in Pondsdale, but Sera has never been an especially fair woman. Thinking about the so-called “women” who poached her formerly stalwart allies away from her brings with it a flash of rage that threatens to boil into her working life. In a few weeks, she is sure that she’ll get over it and once more manage to work with the two of them. At the very least, they are biological women: definitionally, chromosomally, accurately, women. She still cannot believe that “Penelope” (Sera does not know the person’s birth name) is afforded a spot on the city council. Her girlfriend is a witch, and another tranny at that. Whatever the folk in Shiverton think of Pondsdale, it must include the word “degenerate” at least thrice in their definition. Pondsdale used to be the county seat, way back when. With its current trajectory Sera would hardly be surprised if it is fated to descend into being known as some urban shithole within the next decade.

Despite this, Sera cannot let herself get too distracted. She is out for a reason today, and the houses in this subdivision all look alike. They look almost like reused sets from film; a dozen different ways to make the same beige two story look unique, and none of them are particularly successful. The largest discrepancies between them is in whatever limited decoration they’re allowed: the exact placement of trees (if present); the specific drapes they have hanging in the windows (within color guides, of course); the exact color and model of car in the driveway.

All the same cookie-cutter homes save for, of course, the house that she is currently headed to.

Neighbors have been complaining about 2301 Point Cadence Drive. They claim that it is threatening, something that almost anyone except for Sera—driving up in her black SUV with a series of recently developed, suspiciously baseball bat-shaped dents all about the hood and sides of the vehicle—would have dismissed out of hand. The neighbors collection of evidence is primarily made up of the “LOVE IS LOVE” sign prominently erected on the front yard, or the three flags (Fag flags, Sera thinks) that adorn the porch of the mistletoe colored home. It isn’t even up to the neighborhood’s code for acceptable exterior paints. According to the neighbors they apparently have been intimidating the local HOA. They must have, they say, because there has not been a single ounce of code enforcement done on the property.

Something about the property seems familiar to Sera. Not in how it looks; she has never been on this particular street in her life, she would have recognized the actual home from a mile away given how it sticks out from everything else around it. No, the address is familiar. It tickles something at the back of her mind but she cannot place what it is. She’s seen it on a form somewhere, hasn’t she? Thinking this makes her frown; she’s forgetting something important.

She shuts off the engine and steps onto the cracked concrete. There’s a small divot in the driveway between her SUV and the garage. That is definitely another violation, and that ticks up the tally she’s running in the back of her head on how likely it is that the inhabitants are actually threatening their HOA. The door to the garage, old and dull and faded blue, is stuck open a few inches off the ground. Large enough to let light and cats in. Sera squats down and places her hands to the ground. She tilts her whole body to the left to get a look inside. She can see the bottom of shelving, tables, and a whole heap of other things. Car wheels, too, but she can’t quite make out what sort of vehicle it is.

Sera frowns and shakes her head. What the fuck am I doing? She stands, dusting the collected detritus of the pavement from her knees. There’s not much grass to stain her pant legs, but that’s more a function of the lawn being a bit overgrown than it is any particular sense of cleanliness on the part of the homeowners. A couple of heads from down the street have turned in her direction, a fact that causes a light blush to bloom on the woman’s cheeks. She takes in a long breath and marches her way up to the front door.

Sera already knows what she’ll say. She’s rehearsed it enough: “Hi, there. I’m Sera Whitlock, your representative in the city council. I’m just responding to some concerns your neighbors have had regarding the property. May I come inside to chat?” It’s not too friendly, but not too cold, either. She doesn’t want to immediately alienate a voter, even if she doubts the homeowner is going to be friendly with her after today. She notes this as she sees a trans flag hanging out from the mouth of a carved pumpkin sat atop one of the two mesh patio chairs that flank the door. Her lips twist downward, ever so slightly, in disgust.

She gives the door three sharp raps (tap-tap-tap) but barely finishes the third before the door flies open. The smell of incense, some sort of novelty scent meant to mimic sugary cereal, immediately flows out and onto the porch before she even spots the homeowner. Her intended words die in her throat as the woman standing before her grins.

The woman is wearing a rather large oversized t-shirt that hangs loosely off of her right shoulder, with no evidence of a bra in sight—though, Sera thinks with a smidge of cruel satisfaction, there is no evidence that a bra is necessary, either. If she is wearing anything below it, they’re likely rather short shorts or underwear, because her darkly tanned legs, covered in vulgar tattoos as they are, are utterly bare from the mid thigh until they reach her cheap, black sandals. Though her curly hair is quite unkempt right now, Sera can still make out the purple eyes hiding beneath it and the thin grin of recognition that gives way to a frown as the woman realizes where Sera currently is.

“Any reason you’re on my property right now, councilwoman? I thought you’d still be too busy cooking up a new way to make Penny cry.” Echo says. She speaks flatly, but an obvious undercurrent of anger. Her face visibly strains to maintain a neutral look. For now, at least.

“I wasn’t aware that this was where you lived, Miss Martins. Either way, I’ve received a handful of complaints about your property lately,” Echo’s eyes narrow as Sera speaks, “and I’d like to talk to you about them. Is that alright?”

“You aren’t a member of my HOA, are you? Did you move in or something?”

“Nothing like that, just—”

Echo inhales sharply through her teeth and interrupts Sera, “Then, why are you here? Not your jurisdiction.”

“Be that as it may, I do have a responsibility to my constituents. Can I come inside?”

Echo starts to say, “No,” before she stops herself. She looks past Sera, out into the street beyond, and then back at the woman in her doorway. Her face cycles through a few emotions as if she were trying out different ways to feel about the situation before it settles on a rather bemused, impish grin. The look makes a shiver roll out from her tailbone and all the way up the length of her spine. Echo clears her throat, steps aside, and gestures into her home, “Yeah, whatever. Feel free to come inside, Whitlock. Don’t mind the smell; Penny bought me some new incense for my birthday. I usually pref the more herbal or floral scents.”

Sera does not want to go inside. A small impulse, surely originating from her distant mole-like ancestors, calls out in protest at what seems to be like walking directly into a trap. Something is wrong, the little part of her claims. She can’t disagree, but she has been seen here. Sera cannot be seen capitulating to a tranny, retreating with her tail between her legs as if she were a schoolgirl running from a rat on the playground.

The interior is well-furnished, though alien to Sera’s own sensibilities. Echo leads her along. The woman says something to Sera, but she is too distracted looking over the increasingly large cat skulls proudly displayed on a shelf and then further at what must be a shrine to some deity within an open closet. A single candle lay lit in the middle of the wooden shrine, with what must be a handcrafted fetish in the shape of a near-human cat-like figure that rests on a stand, held up with three hook-like antlers. Sera wonders if they are true antlers, or if they are something that Echo either bought or made herself.

The kitchen and living room combination is far more understandable. They head past the old, turquoise couch and its black coffee table. Echo walks to and pats the top of the table, directing Sera to sit at it. It is square, cheap, and pushed against the wall such that only three of the four sides have a chairs to sit on. In the center of it is the source of the smell currently filling the room. The incense holder is black and purple and shaped like two spheres in the process of merging together with a tight, tilted nozzle at the head. Sera takes a seat while Echo walks into the living room to pick up a glass of tea and brings it back to the table. She sits opposite the woman.

“What did you come to talk about?” Echo asks, “I see that you didn’t bring a clipboard, so I’m guessing this must be more informal than a proper complaint.” Echo takes a sip of her drink. Sera debates scolding her for not offering a beverage, but she does not want to get so nasty that she is immediately kicked out. Not just yet, at least.

“Like I said, there have been some complaints. Normally, the HOA would handle these, but your neighbors—whose names will remain anonymous, I’m sure you understand—have been unsuccessful in getting them to enforce the organization’s bylaws. I’m just here to check what’s going on, since according to my records your home is part of the HOA’s territory.”

“We are, yes, though I’ve come to an agreement with Milly.”

“Milly?” Sera asks.

“Head of our HOA; I forget her whole name,” Echo says casually, her eyes doing something as they look over Sera that makes her want to squirm, “She and I are on good terms, so I call her Milly.”

Sera does not squirm, but she does pause for a moment. She clenches her hands in what might be a reflex against absurdity, “Milly? I thought your head was Milton. Was he replaced recently? I’ll have to get better acquainted.”

The look on Echo’s face grows far more insidious. The grin deepens and a glint of mirth flourishes in the woman’s eyes. She shakes her head, “No, no, same person. Milly recently realized she’s a woman. World’s wonderful like that, isn’t it?” Sera’s expression must be quite amusing, because Echo breaks out into a fit of chortling, cruel laughter.

“So, what, did you spread your disease to Milton, then? Is that it?” Sera interrupts Echo’s laughter to ask. She can’t help it. She wants to reach for those words and drag them back into her throat as she says them. The grin on the other woman’s face seizes and tightens into a scowl. When Echo starts to approach, Sera stands up. Or, no, she tries to. Her legs won’t react.

Why won’t her legs react?

Wait, no, why can’t she stand?

It’s too late before Sera realizes another thing that she cannot do. She can’t tear her eyes away from Echo’s own plum-tinted irises. The woman moves slowly, but she still reaches Sera with only a handful of calculated strides. Echo leans forwards until her nose is nearly pressing against Sera’s own. The neck of her oversized shirt gives way to gravity with the motion and reveals an uninterrupted view of her breasts. The twin mounds are each peaked by silvered barbell piercings through her dark nipples. They are half the size of Sera’s own, a fact that invades her mind before she can shove it out.

“You know, I didn’t need to let you into my home, right? I let you in. I let you in,” she says, practically spitting the second “you” out as if it tasted foul. “I let you inside, and what do you do? You insult me, you insult Milly—”

“Milton,” Sera hisses. She’s scrabbling for any sense of control over the situation, but saying the name makes a sense of dread wash over her. She has done something very wrong. She stammers to try and correct herself, but she’s not given the opportunity.

“—Milly. You insult Milly, you made my beloved cry at the last city council meeting. What, exactly, do you expect to happen if you’re going to come into my home and try and be so awful? Huh?” When Sera doesn’t respond, she shakes her head, “C’mon, councilwoman. This isn’t rhetorical, babe. I’d really quite like for you to say anything to save yourself right now.”

Sera’s legs still don’t want to function. She makes an effort to stand and she can feel her legs tense but there is no force, there is no action. She cannot move. Her heart thumps heavily, almost achingly in its own attempt to spur her onwards, as a wave of sweat and panic washes over her. Echo has moved and now stands behind Sera. Her hands drape over the councilwoman’s shoulders. They’re warm, almost enough to feel scalding on Sera’s skin. As they tighten their grip, Sera is thankful that the nails are trim; the rising pain is at least not going to be met by drawn blood. Sera doubts that Echo would intentionally spare her such an indignity if not for the physics of the situation.

Sera can tell that Echo is about to speak and she rises to the challenge first, “Get your fucking hands off of me! I’ll call the cops, I swear to God, I will!” she barks. Her face twists into a grimace that bares the points of her canines. “If you drugged me or something, I’ll have your tranny ass in a fucking prison, bitch! Get off!”

Echo cocks her head to the side. Despite her words, Sera doesn’t make any move to try and fight back. She can’t. Her arms rest on the table rather limply. Her legs are so static that they’re cramping on Sera. So much talk. So much hate. It all pours out from Sera and, despite her intentions, all that it manages is to make Echo laugh even harder. This draws an unwanted blush to the woman’s face. She swallows, harshly, and bites down further words.

After giving Sera enough of an opportunity to dig her own grave, Echo speaks. She is behind Sera now, at an angle that makes it impossible to see her face. Her voice is cooler now, quite calm, and has picked up an echoing quality that is so subtle Sera thinks that the room’s acoustics may be causing it, “So, Sera, my girlfriend told me that I really shouldn’t fuck with you. You know that, right? When you made your little mistakes, I had told her what I intended to do with you. Do you know what she said?” When Sera doesn’t reply, Echo digs her digits further into Sera’s shoulders, “Speak, bitch. Do you know what she said?”

Sera shakes her head. Her continued inability to do anything is making her more scared than anything that Echo herself is doing. Her vision is going blurry and she is struggling to contain her breath. Still, she does not stammer nor does she sputter when she manages to respond, “No, I don’t.”

“Mhm. Of course you don’t. When she told me to spare you, she said ‘She’s not an awful person, babe. I think that she’s just misguided.’” Echo’s left hand drifts from Sera’s shoulder to cup the underside of her jaw. She shakes the woman’s head left and right, her digits tugging uncomfortably on her skin. She’s so fucking warm. If she were running any more hot, Sera’s skin might actually get singed. “Yet here you are, being an awful, transphobic little bitch. Why’s that? Can’t be because you’re a decent person,” Echo says. There is an odd, almost ephemeral quality to Echo’s voice.

Penny trying to calm down Echo, despite how much vitriol Sera showed her, makes Sera’s chest grow tight. She feels guilty for a fleeting moment. Perhaps she squandered something precious? Sera shakes this idea out of her head; even if Penny herself isn’t awful, she is dating Echo. Echo, who has drugged her or worse and whose claws seem to sink ever deeper into her.

“I want you,” Echo says close enough to Sera’s ear to make her shiver, “to apologize. I know that whatever you say won’t be genuine, though, so I’ve come up with a way to make sure that it is. I’m so fucking generous, you know?” Echo snickers and her other hand moves away from Sera’s shoulder as well, sliding down her front until her fingers trace the outline of her breast, “If we’re being honest? I’m so gracious for trying to make you a better person.” Echo’s teasing fingers grab too strongly onto Sera’s tit, causing the woman to groan. “You really aren’t worth my time. ”

“Echo, you’re insane,” Sera says, her voice near a whisper. She closes her eyes. Is Echo going to kill her? The odds aren’t in her favor right now. “But I didn’t want to make your partner cry, if you—if you think that that was my intention, it wasn’t. Okay? I promise.”

“Oh, obviously. You’re too careless to aim directly at Penny, but thank you for confirming that your bigotry is unguided. You’re not helping make a case for yourself. You realize that, right?” Echo lets go of Sera and heads deeper into the kitchen. Sera’s arms suddenly jolt; she can move again. She’s looking around now. Behind her, Echo’s bottom clothes, small black and white sleeping shorts with purple fabric inside of them, litter the otherwise clean floor. Echo is at the sink to fill a glass with water from the tap.

Sera does not wait. Sera does not even spare a moment to consider why Echo might have walked away; this is her chance to escape. She bolts towards the door. Her limbs feel stiff and a numb pain fires through her foot. She realizes that she probably hit her heel against the chair as she ran. Sera makes it to the front door but then, inexplicably and without entirely realizing what she’s doing, diverts to the left. She throws open a door to a wooden basement staircase. She rushes down with enough speed that she misses a step and crashes into the wall at the landing before the last two steps. Her cheek and arm absorb much of the blow, but she doesn’t have the time or wherewithal to check herself for injury.

The basement is well-furnished. A green carpet runs the length of the L-shaped room that she stumbles into. There are several doors adorning the walls, and the room itself looks like it is set up for some form of gaming. A few folders full of papers sit towards one end of the table, alongside some sort of illustrated barrier and a couple handfuls of dice. Sera does not have time to process the tabletop roleplaying setup that she has come across; Echo is coming, she can hear the woman’s steady footfalls coming ever closer to the basement door. Sera rushes towards the middle of the three doors inset into the walls and tests the knob. It’s unlocked. She hurls the door open and throws herself through the darkened portal.

The scent of incense, though different from before (perhaps something vanilla?) is present here alongside small hints of human exertion. Sera gropes against the wood tiles that make up the room’s exterior before she finds a switch and flips it on just as Echo starts to make her way down the stairs. Echo is whistling some jovial, fast-paced tune that might have been birthed as easily from a cartoon as a fae circus as she comes down the steps. For her part, Sera doesn’t find anything in the room that will be especially useful for hiding in.

A bed makes up the center of what is a much smaller space than she had expected. The mattress and frame are heart-shaped, with gaudy dark and tan brown patterns placed atop a hot pink surface. A great deal of pillows and plush animals and monsters adorn the far side of it. Further up, the curved headboard has hanging cuffs securely attached to the elm frame via small slots. Behind the bed is a small window that sits high, letting in just a bit of light that scatters across the carpet. A spattering of lube, vibrators, butt plugs, and other such sex toys make the purpose of the room obvious even to someone as lacking in sexual experimentation as Sera. A blush rushes to her cheeks. So overwhelmed is she that she fails to notice when Echo makes it to the floor of the basement. So enraptured is she in the maid dress and chastity cage combo sitting at the foot of the bed that she doesn’t even think to check and see if there is a lock on the door (and there is not) in time.

Without warning, the other woman makes her way into the room. She is topless and bottomless now. Nude, Sera cannot help but notice the thin trail of dark, curly hair that makes its way from thin strands around Echo’s belly button until they merge into a manicured bush. Echo’s cock is half-erect and already drools a hint of pre-cum at the promise of whatever Echo has planned for Sera.

“You know,” Echo practically purrs, “I did think it’d be harder to get you to come to my little dungeon. I guess you really want this, huh?” She laughs an unkind laugh and crosses her arms in a manner to squish her breasts together and emphasize their shape in spite of their size. Sera is still gathering her courage to fight back when Echo catches her gaze.

Echo’s irises grow just a hair's breadth wider and suddenly and all at once Sera’s world cascades fully into them.

Vibrant, electrical lights dance through the endless expanse of her irises. Violet hinterlands break away into indigo clouds.

Both of us know how this ends, don’t we?

Too many people, too many worlds, all of them clatter and clank in the infinite void within those perfect pupils.

Service without grace. Service without even your own dignity. It’s what you deserve.

A thousand women united in prayer. A cracked foundation. The greatest and the holiest of them sat at a table held aloft by a hundred women with Sera’s face.

You will chase. You will yearn. Your hate yields to the weightier prospect of kink and fetish. This is your purpose.

Scorn is given to the masses. By the masses. A circle, a square, an endless looping path of two points with a million bends between them.

You came here to cause pain. Bear that weight on your shoulders and repent with your tongue.

Voices drown out. Too much sound. Wet, thumping noises and the gurgling of a half-clogged pipe. Her nose and lips and cheeks coalesce into a conclave of sensation; a thousand-thousand tries to find something tantamount to entry into her soul.

Open wide for me and mine, let us flood you with naught but what you need to reach salvation.

Too many thoughts. Too much to believe. Too much to know. Pain fills the void. A push. A shove. The hundred Sera’s are sullied by hands that come from unseen owners. Larger than her own, more feminine and perfect all the same. Sera feels pressure build in her mouth and a growing ache in her jaw and throat.

Divinity is yours to worship; praise us, for we are your gods walking amongst you.

There are few words to describe the way that agony pulses its way through Sera. She struggles to breathe. She struggles to think. If she had to work for it, she’d likely struggle to struggle. Nothing exists in her thoughts for either minutes or hours but the desire to escape from the pain. She can feel, ever infrequently, the flash of sensation in her limbs. She is being moved or moving of her own accord. There are voices, but their words and nature are as impossible for her to decipher as any ancient and dead tongue. She is lost.

Flickers of dreams are the best that she can manage. Selfsame dreams of supple curves and flesh, of contours that entice her in manners best left to matters of the divine. Voices, deep and feminine, both similar and alien to her own experiences of femininity. A chorus of laughter and giggles and sneering jeers. More than any of that, though, is an unnatural allure to the flesh. To specific places, looking for particular tells. Sera floats on this sea of want and thought, content because that is all that is allowed for her in these briefest of moments.

Occasionally, the dream shifts. Something heavy, something with a particular scent and a particular shape, a part of the form that she wants to recognize as alien. She panics as she realizes what she sees, and then forgets why she was scared at all. She resists the forgetting and then the effort of trying to do anything would make her scream if she were capable of anything right now, if screaming itself didn’t threaten to rip her psyche apart with its suffering.

The cycle continues. Minutes and hours and days and weeks and years. How long has it been? She can’t say. She suffers, she is content, she suffers, she is content. Around, around, around.

The flesh. The feminine. The divine. All becomes one in the mess of her broken mind.

Sera awakens refreshed, alert, and unknowing of where she is. The ceiling is not the soft white that she is used to; she is greeted by an off-blue pop ceiling, its shade one that was maybe in vogue twenty years ago but is most definitely not anymore. A million points of softness gently make themselves known to her, engulfing her from her head to somewhere just south of her shoulders. She turns her head to either side and is met by a gulf of plush animals and characters, more than she has ever known even exist. They come in any color, perhaps every color, and carry a faint and musky scent that seems oddly alluring to her. She can’t quite place what the scent is, but it reminds her of someone, doesn’t it? She frowns and sits up.

Her joints hurt. How long has she been laying here? The feeling that she should be anxious, that she should be fearful of her uncertainty as to where she even is, is evident to her. Despite that, however, she cannot make herself actually be scared. She feels safe. She feels at home. That, too, should be alarming to her.

Sera never feels safe. Never in this way, at least. Philip is—was, was—fine, but he was a drunk, just like her father was. It was not an infrequent occurrence that she’d sneak out for a few hours until he had calmed down, and then they would hammer out a three or four or ten step plan to fix things that would be hopelessly and wordlessly discarded not two weeks later. Yet, somehow, in this nowhere space that might be anywhere on the whole of globe, Sera feels safe. She chews on the inside of her cheek as she processes this.

Her adjustment to her position causes the pile of stuffed figures to avalanche around her. The way a handful of them sadly plop to the ground makes her feel momentarily guilty, but that silly thought is discarded almost as quickly as it surfaced to the top. The room is lit by a small window with half-drawn blinds, giving everything a slightly eerie quality and making it difficult for her to gauge what time of day it is just by the light. She feels around for her phone and notices something else.

Sera is nude. Not a stitch of fabric covers her deeply pale, extensively freckled skin. Her tan lines are absurd; she always wears the same couple cuts of shirts, which has led to a very pronounced grade between where the tan ends and the pale begins. There’s no gradient, it looks like someone took a brush to paint her skin tones in and forgot to blend the colors. She is extensively conscious of this fact: her now-ex-fiance makes no shortage of jabs at her about it when they’re in bed together. Thinking about him and her in sexual congress makes Sera’s stomach twist and then the fear, having patiently waited at the sidelines, sees this as its opportunity and it all rushes in at once.

“Where the fuck am I?” she asks aloud, grabbing tightly at the sheets she found herself beneath and pulling them roughly against her. The bedsheets are a soft, unpatterned maroon and are surprisingly comfortable when they aren’t pulled taught against someone’s skin.

There’s a rustling sound somewhere outside of the room and then the unmistakable scraping sound of wood against wood. Someone has noticed her. Realizing this, Sera scrambles. There are vanishingly few places she could hope to hide in this. Two doorways, one a standard brown wooden door and one a set of sliding doors for a closet, are all that she can see for any potential egress. The dressers are too narrow to hide behind, the bed would be difficult to fit under, and all the same whomever has her here would assuredly know that she must still be within the room.

With this in mind, she grabs what is nearest to her and hopes for the best. She lets the sheet be looser so that she can snatch up stuffed representation of a gray-skinned woman with a black leotard, a cape, and a red diamond on her forehead. Whatever character this is meant to depict is lost on the woman as she readies it to be a projectile, huddled up into the mass of plushies and prepared for stuffing-on-flesh violence.

A small rattle comes from the knob as it opens and Sera launches her projectile with as much force as she can muster in her position. The early 2000s-style gothic woman bridges the distance just in time for Sera to recognize the intruder as Echo. She barely manages to begin to part her lips to shout a warning before the violence is committed. Sera sucks in an anxious breath and sits there, perfectly and utterly still.

It was just a stuffed character, though. It harmlessly strikes Echo, who looks more stunned in confusion than she is from the concussive blow of what is probably half a pound, at best, of softness slapping against her cheek. The plush near-silently plops to the ground, joining its myriad kin from the previous avalanche of fluff that has disturbed what was once a rather meticulously crafted battlement. Sera’s arm, still outstretched, slinks back down and towards her lap. Her cheeks burn hotly enough that she knows she is blushing, but she is not quite sure why.

“Did you just throw Raven at me?” Echo asks, perplexity winning out over any other emotion across the spectrum of her face and voice. She looks down at the floor and then up towards the woman on her bed. “What did you even think that that would—” Echo shakes her head, “Never mind. Whatever. How are you feeling, cissy?”

The term sparks an electrical impulse that floods Sera’s nethers. Her stomach twists into an uncomfortable knot. She shudders, both revolted and aroused. The woman’s fingers clench at the bedsheets that she uses to shield the source of her shame as best as she can, though she fails to notice her exposed left breast and how stiff her nipples have become.

Echo’s smile is downright nasty, a fact that makes Sera moan despite herself. “Oh, huh, you’re really down bad, aren’t you? Good to see; it took me two days to fix up your silly little head, you know? How are you going to make that up to me, huh?” Echo approaches Sera and runs a finger beneath her jaw. She adds a second digit when the woman leans into her affections. “And, of course, you’ve got to apologize to me and my girlfriend for how cruel you were.”

It occurs to Sera that she would, that she should, tell Echo to go and fuck herself. It occurs to her that she is acting entirely out of character. It occurs to her that she is letting a fucking tr—

Sera squeaks. She flushes and twitches as a surge of deep pleasure and visions of Echo’s cock, or at least what she imagines it to be, are forced into her mind. Whatever she was about to think is drowned out in a sea of pleasure and subservience. Sera puckers her lips before she speaks.

“I’ll do whatever you ask me to do, miss. It’s all that a bitchy cissy like me is good for, right?”

Somewhere nearby, a smartphone with a black and pink case receives a call. The phone, plugged in to a charger with a feline mascot sticker attached to the side, has been on silent for some time now, set by the unknown hands that plugged it in to charge. The call is discarded along with the rest of the growing pile of forgotten messages from a rapidly disintegrating past life.