It had been, to that point, an agreeably low-key Sunday afternoon. Her regular diner Maxie’s was as still as a church. Denise, the girl on the counter, who played an instrument or sang or something, Paula could never remember which, took the lull as permission to put on WFMT. The day was raw, windy, uninviting to foot traffic. Paula sat at a befogged window in the booth at the rear, steeping a second cup of tea and working her way through the Times crossword, while Live from the Met brought them Die Entführung.

She wouldn’t have thought she was that absorbed, but Paula didn’t clock the girls coming in at all. Just all of a sudden she had seatmates: one opposite, one to her left, blocking her getaway. Pair of college-age blondes. Neither of them said a word, just shared this conspiratorial leer. Instantly Paula thought, sorority gag. Some kind of hazing deal maybe. There was that Kappa-whatever house a few blocks over. That, or they were about to try selling her subscriptions. Paula abandoned the paper and sighed. “Look, I’m sorry, ladies, is there something—”

“TZZZTT!” The one opposite, the shorter and just slightly darker-haired one, put her finger up and hissed at Paula, who almost jumped in her seat. It was weird how viscerally unpleasant the girl’s buzzer imitation was. The pouty glare that went with it had something of the four year old annoyed you weren’t playing her game right.

“Ground rules,” she announced. “You are the Respondent. The Respondent does not ask questions. The Respondent answers them.” She nodded at her comrade. “She is the Questioner. She does the asking.”

Paula couldn’t help herself. “So what does that make—”

The second “TZZZTT!” was just as unexpected and somehow more rattling than the first. Like it was coming out of an overdriven amp. It didn’t seem like a sound you should be able to make with a human mouth. Paula was eager not to hear it again.

“I am the Recorder,” the girl continued. She produced a palm-sized top-bound notebook from her bag and a click pen. “This is my notebook,” she said, clicking with a flourish, “and this is our Cube™.”

A featureless matte black cube, not much more than an inch wide, joined the notebook on the table. Paula opened her mouth but the girl glowered her into silence. “The Cube™ monitors our interactions for correctness.”

Well that’s a load off, Paula thought, you wouldn’t want any of this to be incorrect. She wondered if it was something to do with rush, did the greeks do that this time of year? She’d never paid attention in college. Paula didn’t want to be a drag, the girls were harmless after all, but with the notebook and cube rigamarole she could feel a dull ache starting behind her eyes. “Guys, look, if there’s something you need out of me, it’s a scavenger thing or whatever, could we maybe just, cut—”

The Cube™ flashed three white flashes—she might have said blindingly white, except she wasn’t blind, or in any discomfort at all. Denise didn’t seem to have even noticed. But it absolutely terminated Paula’s train of thought. She blinked exactly three times back, startled into imitation. It was uncanny seeing what she thought was a prop come to life.

“Question One.”

From her pal on the left, who she’d almost forgotten about. She was wearing, Paula remarked now, a pink cat-ear headband. Leopard print. They both were. How was that not the very first thing she’d noticed? Oh my god this is gonna get so much stupider, Paula told herself. She was almost impatient to find out how.

Trixie number two’s face was solemn and expressionless. “How long have you been a lesbian?”

Paula pressed her fingers to the point where the ache was gaining hold. “Really?” she said. We made up questionnaires in middle school that were subtler than that, she didn’t say.

“Non-responsive,” Trixie One proclaimed. Paula braced for another noise from hell but it seemed the Cube™ had taken over scolding duties. It flashed the same way it had before, that blindingly non-blinding triplet, but the affect was different: less impatient, more stern, unyielding.

“For god’s sake it’s not a quest—” Paula realized she was starting to raise her voice and broke off. Not the time to go on about rhetoric, she told herself. Nor the audience.

She glanced down apprehensively at the Cube™ but it seemed to have chosen to ignore her little outburst. “Never,” she said abruptly. She switched her gaze back and forth between the girls, unsure which one she was supposed to be addressing. “Alright? Never been one. Put that down.”

“Non-responsive,” said Trixie One. Another flash, and this time the Cube™ read more disappointed than anything. Paula couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. “Never is not a length of time.”

Oh you’re so smug, she thought at the girl. Her jaw clenched, and her hand balled up into a fist. “You know what?” She tried to slow her breathing. “However long. Long as you want.”  She spread her hands apart. “Whatever gets us where we’re going.”

Trixie One picked up her notebook. Paula had the fleeting impression the three of them, the Trixies and their Cube™, were in some kind of silent cahoots. The Recorder clicked her pen. “Lifelong,” she intoned.

“Sure. Absolutely.” Paula fixed her with a level, deadpan gaze.

“Respondent will answer in the form of a sentence.”

Before Paula could say anything her Questioner repeated, “Question One.” The girl’s affectlessness was so complete she might have been saying it for the first time. She might have been reading it off a card. “How long have you been a lesbian?”

What a Beth, Paula said to herself. She had a sharp pang of recollection. Her old high-school nemesis. Hadn’t thought about Beth in a minute. Not that she was any actual nemesis: just one of the pretty-girl crew, one that Paula had a secret crush on her freshman year. Before she’d sorted out the whole sexuality thing. She’d been mean about Beth with her friends. It’d been mean of her, turning her name into an adjective like that.

Lesbian though. The word always made Paula feel slightly icky. But that instinct of hers to snark her way out of the question—she flicked her eyes toward the Cube™ again. We’ll be here all afternoon. Besides, Beth there didn’t look like she had enough mental process she’d even recognize snark.

Give em what they want then. Maybe a little more than they want. Paula set her lips and narrowed her eyes and tried to adopt a predator mindset. “I am a life. long. lesbian,” she sneered, staring the girl down, making sure to get her tongue visibly into the Ls.

The Cube™ flashed at her approvingly. Beth didn’t blink. “Accepted,” Trixie One said, making a note in her book. Officious little slut, Paula thought at her. Quit horning in.

Beth seemed kind of pleased, actually, in her unfocused way: she was still looking right through Paula, but like she was gazing at something scenic off in the distance. Waiting in suspended animation for the next card to drop. Her eyes were a captivating, radiant blue. Paula couldn’t leave off staring into them. There seemed so little of the girl herself in there she couldn’t feel self-conscious about it.

“Question Two.” This time, Paula caught a shimmer of consciousness on the girl’s face, like she knew there was a person in front of her. It was very pretty. She held a longish pause while the ether brought her her words. “How often do you think about eating pussy?”

Paula snickered to herself and looked down at the few inches of banquette separating them. The girl’s skirt—pleated and patterned like a cheerleader’s—was drastically short. Especially for this weather. She had on a pair of opaque dark thigh-highs, and all Paula could focus on was that stretch of bare flesh above them. Those few inches were an eye magnet. She ached to think how cold it must have been on the walk over. That smooth firm skin all goosebumps, all the way up under her skirt. Little downy hairs pricking up where maybe she’d missed a spot, so fine you’d barely even feel them on your fingertips.

Let’s see where this gets us, Paula thought. The Cube™ seemed to be anticipating her; it was pulsing warmly, repeatedly, in this sort of flowing way that made her feel daring, almost tipsy. “Every—” she started, but caught herself and remembered, complete sentences. She directed her attention pointedly back to Beth’s crotch.

“I think about eating pussy every time a hot girl shows me thigh,” Paula purred.

“And why is that?” Beth droned unperturbed. Paula grinned. She flirted her chest at the girl, just to up the stakes a little, and went for a babydoll voice. “Because I am a life. long. lesbian,” she simpered.

The Cube™ glowed a calm, satisfied white. A crisp click of the pen. “Accepted,” said Trixie One.

Paula practically floated the three-odd blocks home. Scarcely noticed she was walking. She’d had so much fun! She kept replaying to herself what Beth said to her when the girls were ready to leave. That almost formal way she bowed from the waist so she could put her lips against Paula’s ear. “Leave your door unlocked tonight.” Came back from the front by herself so she could say it private.

Even through the chill, Paula felt the heat of the girl’s whisper.

She had a funny look from Denise a few minutes later on her own way out, but Paula didn’t care. OK she cared a little. She felt like a doofus toting her hat in her hand, with how the weather was getting. But they’d been so cute about her putting the ears on! Like it was her graduation day or something.

And for all the dumb questions and the cheap laser gizmos, at the end Paula felt comradely towards the girls. They’d shared an experience. What, she had no real idea. But taking the headband off would have spoiled it. At least not till she’d seen herself in the mirror. She promised Beth.

Paula wanted to dash straight into the bedroom, but right as she got in inspiration struck. There was a pair of joke stripper heels up in the hall closet, violently pink, that she’d chickened out of wearing at the last minute last Halloween. Wouldn’t match the ears but they’d do. She stripped off in the open closet door and put the shoes on standing.

Once she survived that balancing act, then Paula went in and looked. And it was not what she’d have thought. Paula had never really been able to take herself seriously playing sexy, but the girl in the mirror was hot, and no joke. Slut in the mirror, more like. It wasn’t a word she was in the habit of using, and Paula copped a little buzz off it. She looked like some vixenish twenty year old her that she could only wish she’d been, and that chick was giving it out. Even her tits looked younger. She bounced them at herself a few times, just for fun, and then Paula did laugh. All this nonsense from a couple of sorority chicks winding her up! But she couldn’t resist the urge to dip her hand down to her thatch and start tugging at it. Did other girls masturbate in the mirror? Paula never had. The naked chick on the other side licking hungry lips at her was making a real strong case for it though.

The ear Beth had kissed bore a trace of red. Paula wiped a finger there and put the finger idly in her mouth. Strawberry. She grinned a wicked grin at herself. The cliche little minx was wearing actual strawberry lipstick.

Paula wondered how sorority girls kept their pussies these days, if they shaved or what.

The bathroom was a wreck, though. Paula gave up the thought of doing anything in there but tidying. She didn’t even stop to take the stripper heels off, just clacked around over the tile floor managing her balance while she wrangled spent towels and half-heartedly sprayed and scraped the crusts off the various surfaces.

Soaping out the sink, Paula got distracted a bit by her nipples reflecting in the medicine cabinet; but then that became another surface to de-spot. “Towels,” she muttered, straightening herself up, and clopped out to the kitchen to grab a roll.

She was so conscious of herself as a rickety, moving platform of heaving breast meat that Paula was halfway across the living room before it hit her we’ve got company. She yelped and about jumped out of her skin and had to steady herself up against an end table to keep from toppling over.

Three of them. All lined up on the couch. And the Cube™, placed on the coffee table in front of them on a kind of a pedestal, like a votive. It pulsed warmly at her, and Paula collected herself. Remember, these girls are your friends. She took a couple conscious breaths and felt her heart rate drop.

Beth stood up from her end of the couch and came over. Paula, who’d thrown an arm instinctively across her chest, lowered it just as instinctively and put her hands together behind her waist and pulled her shoulders back. She couldn’t help herself pouting though, and she avoided meeting her sorority pal’s eyes. “There’s two of them now?” she muttered. It was fine with her if they were all there—she was the one who’d left the door unlocked—but Paula couldn’t help feeling like Beth had pulled kind of a bait-and-switch on her.

She might as well not have said anything. Beth was gone in her bubble, all perfect blank passivity. The emptiness in her eyes was so beautiful it took Paula’s breath away.

“There will be a series of Poses.” Trixie One’s voice from the couch was no less grating than it was in the diner. “The Namer will name each Pose. The Performer will perform it. When the Pose is correct, the Recorder will record.” From the other end of the couch, New Trixie stood, her requisite cat ears in place, holding a camera.

“Recorder, what …” Paula sputtered, “wait who’s supposed to—”

Just then the card dropped. “Pose One,” Beth said in her uninflected sleepy-girl’s drawl. “Kneel.”

And it just,— happened. Paula noticed the concussion in her knees before she understood she was on the floor. Arms behind her still, clasped at the elbows. From its pedestal the Cube™ was practically chirping its approval at her.

“Adjustment,” Trixie One barked. “Shoes.”

Sourpuss, Paula thought. She wanted to stick her tongue out at the girl. She tried to catch Beth’s eye but she was slow on the uptake or something: Beth was behind her already, squatting down and undoing the straps of her stripper heels. Every cell in Paula’s body was on fire at being so naked and so near to her girl crush. When she slipped the shoe off Beth gave her foot an extra squeeze, a deliberate little massage, and it turned Paula on so hard she almost felt guilty she couldn’t return the attention.

Beth resumed her posture. “Accepted,” growled Trixie One. What’d I fuckin tell ya? Paula crowed in her head. This time she did stick her tongue out.

Right then was when the Recorder Trixie chose to record. Paula caught her moving and found herself staring directly into the flash: the sudden distortion of vision made her feel like she was in some kind of acid trip movie.

Why were they taking pictures anyway. She was naked. What were they for. She didn’t remember asking anyone for pictures.

“I don’t think … actually …” Paula tried to edge around toward a protest that kept slipping away. Her head was buzzing. Everything had gone wobbly. She couldn’t tell which of them she was even trying to plead to.

“Pose Two,” Beth chanted. “Kneel.”

But she just said Accept— Paula felt sick, clammy and feverish and at bay. Were there multiple kneels? How could you tell them apart? Were you just supposed to know? She wanted to howl unfair at someone but was too overwhelmed to find speech.

The Cube™ glowed, bright and then unutterably bright. It stopped her: the sick, the words, all of it. The glow filled her and she popped like a balloon.

“Pose Two,” Beth chanted. “Kneel.”

Paula spread her knees apart and separated her arms and brought her hands together fingers interlaced at the top of her neck. There was no effort involved. She was water, finding its level.

A few rounds of Adjustment got her knees to the right width and her tits pushed enough out, while Paula remained a passenger, gaze steadfast on the Cube™, glowing her calm, glowing her a kind of lullaby.

The Cube™. The Girl’s Best Friend™. All your Sisters went crazy for them.

Paula was ready this time. When Photo Trixie got up to Record she gave her rack a little shake, like fluffing it out for her, and flashed the camera her brightest smile, a contest winner’s smile.