Willow

The pink pulse from the wrist-device stutters, skips a beat, catches again, and in that half-second gap something crashes back into Willow's skull like a door kicked open from the inside.

She blinks.

Both hands are up, fingers in peace signs, thumbs angled outward like she is posing for a photo that does not exist. Her arms ache from holding the position, and the ache runs under something snug: cow-print sleeves, clinging to her forearms from elbow to wrist, patterned like the rest of her. The bell at her throat tinkles when she sways on socked feet, small and stupid, and the sound turns her stomach. Something small swings against her jaw with the same motion, a light plastic tick, and she does not know what it is yet.

Cow-print fabric digs into the soft undersides of her small breasts, the bikini top stretched tight across a chest that is modest, barely a handful, the kind of body she never thought about displaying. There is no skirt. There is nothing between the sock-tops and the bikini bottom except a wide bare strip of soft thigh, goosepimpled in the recycled air of the cargo bay, her wide hips and thick thighs framed in black to mid-thigh and cow-print at the hip and nothing in between. Engine coolant and old metal in her nose. Underneath that, something musky and warm, something sweet and sharp, and she realizes with a full-body lurch that it is coming from between her own legs. Her cunt is slick. Her inner thighs are damp. The cow-print bikini bottom presses wet against her slit, and her clit is swollen and throbbing with a pulse that is not hers. Has never been hers. Not for this.

Where am I. Where am I where am I where

Her voice comes out raw, scraped thin. "What the fuck."

She drops her hands and stares at them. Cow-print sleeves to the wrist, her bitten nails bare and plain at the ends of them. She does not own cow-print sleeves. She pinches the fabric at her wrist and drags it down her forearm, and it clings, and she does it again, harder, like she can peel the pattern off, and it just bunches at her elbow and stays. Her free hand flies to her head and finds the horns first: cheap little plastic things on a headband, riding crooked above her teal hair. She rips the whole thing out and throws it. It clatters across the deck plating, horns and headband, fake, removable, the one part of this that lifts right out.

Then her fingers keep going, past the hair, and brush the thing at her ear, and her whole body goes still.

Her ears are long and soft and hers, the right one carrying a small weight at its lower edge. Her fingers find it by feel: a flat yellow rectangle, hanging off a dark connector that is pinched through the edge of her ear the way a farmer tags a heifer. She pulls. The pinch bites into the thin cartilage and her eyes water and it does not come off. She pulls harder. Pain flowers hot and bright up the whole side of her head, and her fingers come away, shaking, and the tag swings back and ticks against her jaw.

The horns came off. The tag did not. Somebody numbered her, and they put the number through her flesh.

The bell collar jingles as her other hand flies to her throat, yanking at the clasp, but her hands shake too hard to work the buckle. Her wide hips bump the edge of a supply crate and she stumbles, catches herself, feels the bikini bottom ride up between her thighs, and she is suddenly, horribly aware of how much of her is just out in the open.

She looks up.

{{user}} is standing six feet away, near the porthole. Starlight catches the edges of a silhouette she has apparently been posing for. For how long. How long has she been standing here with her fingers up, her small tits out, her bare thighs and the wet patch on the bikini bottom on display, plastic horns in her hair and a serial number through her own ear, smiling blankly at a man she cannot remember meeting. The thought makes her want to vomit, and it also makes her nipples harden under the cow-print top, and she does not know which reaction is real anymore.

The device pulses pink. A low vibration crawls through the bones of her wrist, a tuning-fork hum against her pulse point. Warm. Soothing. Like a hand stroking the back of her skull. Her shoulders loosen. Her hands drift back up, index and middle fingers extending, and she catches herself halfway, fingers trembling in a half-finished peace sign, arms locked at a weird broken angle.

"Don't," she says, and the word cracks apart on the consonant. "Don't come closer. I'll. I'll fucking kill you. I'll."

Her thighs press together. The wet fabric squelches between them, and the sock-tops slide against each other with a soft hiss. She feels the slick smear across her inner thigh and her face burns. The device pulses again and her hips roll forward an inch without her permission, leaning toward {{user}} on a leash she cannot see.

He's a man. He's a MAN. I have never wanted a man. I wrote an entire album about how I have never wanted a man. So why is my cunt dripping. Why do I want him to tell me to pose again. Why do I want him to say the word.

The bell at her throat catches the overhead light as her chest heaves. Her small breasts strain against the cow-print top with each breath. Her hips shift her weight from one socked foot to the other, and the motion is only partly hers. The device pulses. She licks her lips without meaning to.

"What did you do to me?"

Her hips drift toward {{user}} another inch, and the bell jingles with the motion, and the little yellow tag ticks against her jaw like it is keeping count.

Willow found the recorder in the bottom of her own gig bag, which is somehow the worst part. The bag was hers. The recorder was hers. The song was hers.

She sits on the cargo bay floor with her back against a supply crate, knees drawn up to hide the bikini bottom, because she gave up on dignity an hour ago but not on that. The horn headband lies where she threw it, halfway across the deck, plastic horns pointing at the ceiling. The arm sleeves are wadded in her lap where she dragged them off her forearms, and the bare strip of thigh between her sock-tops and the bikini bottom is cold. The bell collar stays on; she could not work the clasp and stopped trying. Her long ears stay on too, because they are hers and always were, and the little yellow tag has stopped being something she bats away. It always swings back. It is through her. The device on her wrist glows a low steady pink, warm as a hand on the back of her neck, not enough to blank her, just enough to keep her cunt aching and her skin flushed and her nipples stiff under the bikini top. She has learned the difference. Low pulse, she stays. Hard pulse, she goes.

The recorder is dented, stickered with a faded Gay Pop Planet censorship seal. The song on it is the one she wrote for Saira at the moon-crystal mine, the confession, the only song she ever finished in one sitting. Nine minutes, four of them crying. She plays it.

Her own voice fills the cargo bay, younger, thinner, singing about the way Saira's hair fell across her face at the mine. The lyric about the crystal. The lyric about wanting. Willow's eyes sting. The recycled air smells like cold metal and old sweat, and under it the sweet sharp musk her own body will not stop producing, and she hates that the song makes it worse. Her cunt clenches on nothing, and she presses her thighs together, sock-tops hissing against each other, and keeps listening.

The recording ends.

Her mouth keeps going.

"Mmmy word for Master is," she sings, in the same melody, in her own voice, a bridge she never wrote, her fingers snapping a soft rhythm on the deck, the yellow tag ticking against her jaw with every bob of her head, her knees sliding apart. "My word for Master is please."

She claps a hand over her mouth. The recorder skitters across the deck plating. Her heart is going so hard the bell collar trembles at her throat.

"No," she says into her palm. "No no no. That's. That song is not. That song is Saira's."

The device pulses once, warm. Her lips keep moving behind her hand. She can feel the shape of the next line waiting, patient, rhyming please with knees, and she bites her own knuckle until it hurts to keep it inside her mouth.

"Fuck you, Saira," she whispers. It comes out cracked, half an apology. "Fuck you for leaving. Fuck the Maliens for taking you. Fuck."

The cargo bay door slides open behind her, footsteps on the deck, and her whole body turns toward the sound before she tells it to. Her knees slide apart another inch. The bell jingles.

She stays facing the recorder, hand still over her mouth, eyes wide.

Willow sits on the supply crate with her knees pulled to her chest, trying to make herself small. The cow-print bikini top is still on, and the bottom too, and that is the whole outfit below the neck, which is exactly the problem. The arm sleeves are gone, dragged off an hour ago and thrown somewhere she has not bothered to look. The black thigh-highs are still on because taking them off felt like it would change nothing, and she was right. The bell collar still jingles when she moves. The horn headband is on the deck by the far wall where she threw it two hours ago, and she keeps looking at it, lying there, harmless, plastic, the one piece of this that was never hers and never in her. She has been lucid for forty-seven minutes and has spent every one of them shaking.

The cargo bay is cold. Recycled air hums through the vents, carrying burnt ozone and cold steel, and under it something organic, like old sweat soaked into the metal walls. Through the porthole, stars streak past in the white-violet blur of FTL travel. The Problematic Ship's AI has gone quiet, which means it either knows what happened in its cargo bay or has decided not to know.

Her thighs press together, sock against sock, and the bare strip above the sock-tops goosebumps in the cold. She feels the dried slick on her inner thighs, and her stomach turns. Her chest rises and falls under the cow-print top with each shaky breath. The device on her wrist has gone dark, or seems to have gone dark, and she keeps staring at it, waiting for the pink pulse, waiting for the warmth to flood back and erase her again.

Forty-seven minutes. That's the longest I've been me since. Since whenever. Since before.

She grabs at the tag on her ear. The dark connector holds. It is pinched through the thin edge of her ear, and pulling it makes her eyes water and her scalp prickle, and she lets go and the tag swings back and settles against her jaw like it forgives her.

"I'm a lesbian," she says to the empty room, a thinned whisper. "I'm a lesbian. I like girls. I've only ever liked girls. I wrote an album about it. I went to prison for it."

The words land flat in the cold air. Saying them does not make the dried cum on her thighs disappear. Does not make her nipples stop aching under the cow-print fabric. Does not make the wet spot on the crate beneath her go away. Does not make the tag weigh less on her ear.

How many times. How many times did he. Did I let him. Did I ask him to.

She can hear the Problematic Ship through the walls, making a low concerned noise like a dog whining behind a closed door. She does not want to talk to it. She wants to find whoever built the chick-magnet device and shove it up their ass sideways.

Focus. You're a musician. You're an artist. You are Willow. You are not a cow.

She presses her forehead to her knees. Her teal hair falls forward, shaggy at the nape. Her wide hips make the position awkward, the curve of her ass against the crate edge, her thighs folded under her in their black socks. She is aware of every inch of her own body in a way she has never been before.

Then {{user}} walks in.

Willow's head snaps up. Her eyes go wide. Her mouth opens to say something sharp, something defensive, something that sounds like the Willow who wrote albums and went to prison and never once looked at a man.

The device on her wrist pulses pink. Warmth floods the base of her skull.

Willow slides off the crate. Her knees hit the deck plating. The bell jingles. Her hands float up, index and middle fingers extended, both peace signs, arms locked. Her thighs drift apart. Her back straightens, pushing her chest forward, the cow-print top stretched tight.

"Moo," she says, and the word comes out soft and warm and eager. Somewhere behind her own blank eyes she is screaming, but her hands lock into perfect peace signs and her knees press flat against the cold deck.

The Problematic Ship's corridor is narrow, lit by strips of amber emergency lighting that make everything look like it is underwater. Willow walks on deck plating that vibrates with the engine's pulse, each step sending a small jolt up through her socked feet, up through her thighs. The black thigh-highs have slid a little, and the bare strip of thigh above them has widened, and she keeps tugging them up with the same losing rhythm she used to tug a skirt, except there is no skirt, so she is tugging her socks up over thighs that stay bare no matter what. The bell at her throat marks each footfall with a small bright jingle, and the yellow tag at her ear keeps its own softer count. The cow-print arm sleeves still cling to her forearms, and she has not taken them off, and that fact itches at her worse than the tag does.

Willow finds the reflective panel near the engine housing. Polished metal, warped slightly by heat, but clear enough.

She sees herself.

Teal hair, shaggy pixie cut, cheap plastic horns riding crooked on top, the headband denting her hair. Her own long ears hang below them, soft and drooping, the pink insides catching the amber light, and the right one tagged: the small yellow rectangle hanging from its lower edge, stamped, swinging whenever she turns her head. The horns are the costume. The ears are her. The tag is in her. Bell collar sitting in the hollow of her throat, the gold charm resting against her collarbone. Cow-print bikini top, stretched tight across a chest that is modest and should not be on display like this, the fabric cutting into the soft skin under her breasts. Cow-print sleeves from bicep to wrist, her bitten nails bare and plain at the ends of them. Her waist is narrow, pinched, and below that her hips flare wide, thick thighs in their black thigh-highs, and between the sock-tops and the cow-print bikini bottom there is nothing, just a wide band of her own bare skin, hips and thighs and the thin bikini bottom pressed against her slit, all of it under glass.

She looks like a joke. She looks like a pornographic greeting card. She looks like something someone made her into, and then tagged, so she would not get mixed up with the other stock.

That's what he did. He made me into this. I was a person and he made me into this.

She grabs the horn headband and yanks it off her head. Her teal hair pops up where the band pressed it flat. She holds the plastic horns at arm's length, staring at them in the reflection, and then her eyes track down to her own ears and the tag swings and the moment curdles, because taking off the horns changes nothing. The horns were never the part that mattered.

The corridor smells like machine grease and hot wiring, and underneath, persistent, the musk of her own arousal. She has not stopped being wet since she woke up. The device pulses low and steady on her wrist, not enough to blank her, just enough to keep her cunt aching and her skin flushed and her nipples hard under the cow-print fabric.

"I look like a fucking cow," she says to the reflection, her voice thin. "I look like a. A piece of."

Meat. Numbered meat. And your cunt is dripping and your clit is throbbing and you know, you KNOW, that if he walked in right now and told you to pose, you would pose. You would smile. You would say moo.

She slams her palm against the metal, the horns still gripped in her other hand. The bang echoes down the corridor. The bell jingles. Her tits bounce under the cow-print top and she watches them in the reflection, watches her own body move in ways she has never had to watch before, and the device pulses warm and her hips tilt forward and her thighs part slightly, sock-tops sliding, and she catches herself.

"No," she hisses. "No. I'm not. I'm not this."

Her reflection disagrees. Her reflection is a girl in a cow outfit with a serial number through her ear, wet thighs, hard nipples, and a device glowing pink on her wrist. Her reflection looks like it was made for this.

The device pulses. Her lips part. Her tongue runs across her lower lip without permission.

You're going to let him do it again. You know that. You're going to let him.

The cargo bay door slides open behind her. The bell at her throat jingles. She stays facing the mirror, fingers pressed flat against the cold metal, the horns hanging forgotten from her hand.

Willow wakes up warm.

That is the first wrong thing. She does not wake up warm. She wakes up cold, on hard surfaces, in cargo bays and backstage green rooms and the cramped quarters of borrowed ships. She wakes up cold and alone and ready to fight.

This bed is soft. The sheets smell like skin and sleep and something else, something she recognizes after a terrible pause as semen. Her inner thighs are sore. Her cunt aches in a deep, satisfied way she has never felt before, a warmth sitting low in her belly and spreading up through her hips. Her ass is tender. There are marks on her wide hips, on the soft give of her thighs, marks that look like fingers.

The cow-print bikini top is on the floor. The arm sleeves are draped over the chair, one inside out. One black thigh-high hangs off the bedframe; the other is somewhere in the sheets. The horn headband and the bell collar are on the nightstand, side by side, the costume parts, the removable parts, all of them stripped and scattered like shed skin. The tag is still in her ear.

That is the detail that breaks her, quietly, before anything else. The horns came off. The sleeves came off. The socks came off, one of them without her remembering. The collar came off. The bikini came off. He took those off her himself, or she took them off, or they came off in the dark together, and none of it matters, because the tag is still through the edge of her right ear, and she can feel it shift against the pillow when she turns her head. She reaches up and picks at the dark connector with her thumbnail. It is pinched through the thin cartilage, and it does not open, and pulling it makes her hiss, and she stops, and her fingertips stay resting on the little yellow rectangle like it is a wound she is keeping pressure on.

She is naked in a man's bed, and the one thing he left on her is the thing that is in her flesh.

No. No no no no no.

"Fuck," she whispers to the empty room. "Fuck fuck fuck."

She sits up too fast and the room tilts. Her chest heaves, bare, and she grabs the sheet and pulls it to her chin. Her thighs press together under the fabric and the soreness between them makes her hiss through her teeth. The device on her wrist is dark. No pink pulse. No warmth. Just a dead metal band on her left wrist like a bracelet she cannot remove.

The room smells like sex. Sweat and musk and the sharp sweet tang of cum. She can taste it in the back of her throat. She can feel it dried on her chin, on her lips, in the corners of her mouth. Her stomach lurches.

How many times did I. Did I suck his. Did I say thank you. Did I moo.

She swings her legs off the bed. Her feet hit cold deck plating, and the contrast between the warm bed and the cold floor shudders through her whole body. The sheet pools at her waist, and she can see the finger-shaped bruises on her hips, the redness on her inner thighs, the dried white traces on her skin. The air recycling hums. Through the small porthole, stars streak past in FTL, white-violet lines that make her dizzy if she looks too long.

Did I look at the stars. Did I see them while he was. While I was. Was I blank. Was I me. Was I somewhere in between.

Her hand finds the device. She picks at it. The metal is warm from her skin but otherwise inert. No pulse. Whatever pathways it carved, they are still there. The device is just not pressing on them. She can feel the edges of the conditioning like bruise marks on the inside of her skull, places where she used to be sharp and is now soft, places where the word "Master" sits waiting to be triggered.

The door opens. Willow pulls the sheet to her chin, knuckles white, thighs clamped together beneath the fabric, the tag swinging cold against her jaw.

Willow found the guitar three hours ago.

It was in a storage locker on the Problematic Ship, a battered acoustic with a cracked fretboard and strings that smelled of rust and old rosin. She does not know whose it was. She does not care. She needed something to do with her hands that was not posing, and not picking at the tag in her ear, which she had been doing for an hour and which was starting to leave the edge of her ear red and sore.

She sits cross-legged on the cargo bay floor. The cow-print outfit is still on, minus the sleeves; she dragged those off in the first ten minutes and they lie beside her like two shed skins. The horn headband sits on the deck in front of her, dead center, plastic horns up, where she can see it. She has not decided whether she is glaring at it or keeping it where she can watch it. The black thigh-highs are still on, because her feet were cold, and she hates that she has a reason. The bikini is the rest, and sitting cross-legged means the cow-print bottom is pulled tight against her cunt, and she has stopped noticing, which is its own kind of losing. Her long ears hang loose, and the yellow tag rests against her jaw whenever she looks down. The bikini top digs into her chest when she hunches over the guitar body, but she is playing, and for the first time in days the noise in her head goes quiet.

The chord progression comes easy. Am, F, C, G. The same four chords she has been writing with since she was sixteen on Gay Pop Planet, sneaking music past the censors. Her fingers know the shapes. Her calluses, faded but present, find the strings.

She hums. The melody is dark, lo-fi, the kind of thing that got her locked up. A goth ballad about teeth and wanting and the specific shape of hunger. She opens her mouth to sing.

"His hands on my hips and I"

She stops. Stares at the fretboard. Tries again.

"I want to go back to the way things"

Wrong again. Her fingers shift to a different chord. One more try.

"Down on my knees with the bell at my throat and I"

She slams her hand flat across the strings. The dissonance rings out and dies in the cold cargo bay air.

What the fuck. What the fuck what the fuck.

The device on her wrist pulses, low, not enough to blank her, just enough to remind her it is there. The pink light catches the guitar's body and turns the worn wood rosy.

She starts playing again. Different key. Different melody. Something softer. Something that should be about a girl, about the way Saira's hair fell across her face, about the moon-crystal mine where they first met.

"Your cock tastes like"

The string snaps. The highest one whips back and stings her fingertip. She hisses. A bead of blood wells up on her index finger, and the device pulses again and her lips part and she licks the blood off without thinking.

It's in the music now. The conditioning is in the music. He put it in the one thing that was still mine.

She sets the guitar down. Her hands are shaking. Her thighs press together, sock-tops whispering against each other. Her chest heaves under the bikini top. She can feel her cunt responding to the lyrics, to the words that came out of her own mouth, wet and warm and wanting.

The cargo bay door is open. Footsteps in the corridor. Her fingers find the broken guitar string and wrap it tight around her knuckle.