28. Eva

In my destroyed nest of a mattress, I punish the Magus for saying I'm just like the woman he copied me from. But I'm not really punishing him. I'm kissing him. I'm punishing myself.

We kiss for a long time. I feel like a parched plant, on the verge of dying, drinking in the rain. He tastes like adrenaline and pine trees.

I'm a wicked woman. I should be mourning Theo. I should be truly punishing the Magus, not drawing pleasure from him. I should, I should, I should. I'm tired of it. What I should want, what I should do.

This is what I do want: his mouth on me, my mouth on him.

I'm a liar. I've been lying to myself all my life. I've been trying to be good, to be ethical and normal. But this is what I've always wanted: him.

His hand travels up the curve of my hip to my breast. He gives it a squeeze, drawing a moan from me. He groans into my mouth.

"Eva, please," he begs.

Is he begging me to stop? To keep going?

"No," I say. I'm angry at him. I hate him.

His fingers find my nipples. He's too rough. And not rough enough. Those thick, strong fingers are driving me insane.

He growls and rips off my shirt to get better access. My pants are next. "Eva," he's panting. I've never heard him pant before. "I can't, I shouldn't, I've never–" His tongue finds my tongue and says something else. His words contradict his actions. He looks at me with eyes that look as insane as I feel.

"Destruction Number 7," I order. But I don't know what I'm ordering him to do.

He grabs my hair near the skull and deepens the kiss. His hand finds my neck. He holds me there, so gently. Yet he could snap me like a twig.

"You're too fragile," he murmurs into my mouth.

My hands find his thighs and squeeze them; they're thick and hard and masculine. His raw sexuality is juicing the liquid from my core. "You're too strong," I pant. I run my hands over his shoulders, trying to find purchase somewhere.

He nips at my lip, gently. But not gently enough. I bleed.

He recoils.

"Destruction Number 7," I order.

He resumes kissing me, my collarbones, his nose against my jugular, breathing me in. My hands tracing the veins of his forearms. These aren"t human forearms, but there are no seams. He pulls me to sit on his lap, straddling him. I wrap my legs around his torso. He smells so good.

"Take off your shirt," I murmur into his trapezius muscle, that strong triangular muscle connecting his shoulder to his neck.

His shirt is ripped off and there is no barrier preventing my hands from exploring his warm, smooth skin. I squeeze his biceps and find them as hard as bunched metal. I press myself closer to him, tighter against him, our bare skin pressed so close together that he ends where I begin, and I begin where he ends. I never thought he'd feel so human.

"Eva," he moans as his thick arm goes around my waist, pulling me even closer to him. So close that I feel my spine creak.

"Ow!" I yelp.

His arm releases me. "Eva," he says. "This is dangerous."

A thrill goes through me. It is dangerous. I'm throbbing with need.

"Don't stop," I tell him.

He meets my eyes with such intensity that I think I'm falling into the sun. "I won't stop," he tells me, his voice low and gruff.

I feel his massive hand slide under and palm my ass, squeezing and massaging. Pleasure courses through me like the blood in my veins. Then his other hand goes to the top of my thigh, stroking, squeezing, gliding higher and higher. He teases the outside of my slit with his thick digit.

We gasp in unison as he plunges it in.

"Your cunt is so wet and tight," he whispers. He begins moving his finger in a come-hither motion that makes me buck while he pins down my hips. "Tell me: is this good?" With another finger, he simultaneously rubs against my clit, gently enough that I want to scream. I'm going to cry.

He rubs and rubs. I notice the hardness of his cock straining against his pants. It is too big. It will be a punishing sort of pain.

He's still rubbing, back and forth, using my wetness to lubricate and rub. His finger continues to call me to him, though I can't get any closer.

I scream as the building sensation snowballs into an orgasm violent enough to shake my whole body. An earthquake, starting in my core, shakes the world. The only thing that holds steady is him.

He freezes.

"Did I hurt you?"

"No," I gasp. "I want you to fuck me."

With my legs still wrapped around his waist, he stands up, bringing me with him. With one arm, he holds me, and with his other arm, he shreds his trousers. I feel his hard cock against my ass. I see the v-line of his hips and abs. I smell him. He smells masculine and heady. I hear our ragged breaths. I feel our sweat intermingling. His heat. He lowers me and adjusts me until he is just at the entrance. I clench and unclench in nervous anticipation. I cross my ankles around his waist, against his hard ass.

"This will hurt," he warns me. "Anatomically–"

"Shut up," I say.

He impales me.

Too fast. Too hard.

I scream as I adjust to his size, clenching and unclenching. I thrash against him while he holds me tight.

He moans and goes still as a tree on a windless day.

"More," he murmurs into my neck. "I need more."

He uses his hands to move me up and down on his cock, faster and faster. I scream and scream.

He kisses my neck, smells me, as he fucks the breath out of me. The life out of me.

"You're bleeding," he says. "I hurt you," he says. But he doesn't stop. He doesn't apologize.

"This is my first time," I gasp between his thrusts.

"Your first time? You didn't—with the boy?" His thrusts become more powerful. "It is my first time, too."

Each thrust slides along my core and makes me weak with pleasure. If he weren"t holding me up, I'd be falling down.

Up and up, like music reaching a crescendo, the pleasure builds. It is ecstasy. I claw at his shoulders in my passion. I hate him. I love this. The scratches I leave against him heal as quickly as I can make them, like ripples in water.

I have a momentary reprieve from his cock when he tosses me to the ripped shreds of the mattress, but then he's on me again, thrusting in me again, making me scream again.

His hands find my breasts and his eyes devour me. I arch as another pulsating orgasm runs through me.

He groans as he pulls out his cock and shoots strings of white hot cum all over my stomach and breasts.

Then he kisses me again. He tastes like ecstasy.

I'm melted butter.

"Can we? Again?" he looks down at me with wild blue eyes and reality hits me. His arms are on either side of me. He's so strong. He can do anything to me without having to ask for permission. Did he really tell me his true name? Do I really have control over him? He is on his hands and knees above me, straddling me. He's massive.

"Get away from me," I say. He doesn't move. "Move away from me, Destruction Number 7," I say.

He slides off me and sits beside me, still leaning over me. There is a feather stuck in his hair. Without thinking, I pluck it from him.

"Are you hurt?" his blue eyes turn worried. "I'm sorry, Eva. Do I need to find a doctor? I'm sorry. I couldn't…"

I sit up and scoot away from him. I grab a shredded piece of fabric from my mattress and wipe the sticky semen from my skin. I wad it up and toss it across the room.

"Did you enjoy that?" I ask.

"What do you want me to say?" he says.

I stare at him, and he stares at me. I ache. I hope he aches just as much.

Finally, I say, "Destruction Number 7, go find me fresh clothes, food, and something to drink. I'm going to take a nap, and when you come back, you're going to answer all my questions."

I fall asleep and I have nightmares.

I watch him, as he doesn't watch the sitcom playing on the holoscreen. His head is turned towards it, his eyes are open, but they are vacant. The blue light radiating from the holograms of mockingly healthy actors plays across his face, illuminating the bones right beneath the surface of his skin. He looks like an anatomy drawing, a something—not someone—I would have used in university to learn more about the human body. As a thought experiment, I try to look at him like that: impersonally, objectively. He is just one man, one man who is dying. One man I wouldn't care about dying if I had never met him. But of course, I have met him, and in some ways, he has carved a deeper imprint on my life than my very DNA. I am who I am because of him. He is as much a fact about me as my sex. To watch him die is to feel my own vagina rot inside out, to watch helplessly as slimy black slugs of dead meat fall out from inside me. Only a sick, twisted metaphor like that can begin to describe what I'm feeling.

The need to cry comes in aching waves, hurting me behind the nose, the eyes, building a lump of sediment in my throat I can never swallow. I think I have an ear infection. I keep staring at him, trying to force as much of him in my lungs as I can, before I drown. Like those last breaths of the people who drowned on the Titanic. I imagine they took one last breath, and held it as long as they could, all the while knowing it would do them no good. Knowing they were as good as dead.

Yet I can't touch him. He is in my armchair, and I am on my couch. He is too cold to touch. Too alien. Too frightening for a coward like me. Have I always been such a coward? We haven't had sex in so long. I know that even dying as he is, he still wants to, but I can't. I know it is not necrophilia, not yet necrophilia. But I am too afraid.

I pull my eyes away from him and back to my port screen. Searching for a solution has become more of a nervous tic than an actual task. I do it all the time, scanning the same articles, looking at the same overpriced artificial organs, finding nothing new, nothing that a destitute man who is being eaten alive by his own body and pride can or will use. I desperately want to save him.

I also want to punch him. I want to scream at him. But punching him wouldn't hurt him any more than he hurts himself. I teeter between sorrow and rage, rage and sorrow. I could save him, if only he'd let me pay for treatments. I have the money. Or I could borrow it from my parents. I could easily save him, and we could forget about this life, this entire world. We could evacuate to Mars. We could go live there with my parents and brothers and forget that the pain of this world ever existed. It's said that Mars is a Utopia.

But he is the prototypical man. He won't leave this dirty Earth that has stolen his dreams from him and now his health. He doesn't believe in running away or asking for help. He has principles. He does not think it would be fair for me to spend my money to save him in particular when there are so many like him. He is the most stubborn, single-minded person I have ever met.

I love him for it. I love him for his principles, his intelligence, his absolute integrity. He is the wind that has directed the creaky weathervane of my life. I'll be nothing without him. Tears drip onto my port screen. I wipe them away with the hem of my shirt and glance at him; he does not notice.

I'm done swiping through images of artificial kidneys that are both overpriced and cheaply made. They'd be as likely to extend his life as extinguish it, and he couldn't afford them anyway.

I type into the search engine instead, ‘My boyfriend got cancer from pesticides,' and hit ‘enter.'

I don't know what I expect. Maybe some other sad sap who has the same sorrows as me posting about it, looking for virtual sympathy from complete strangers. Maybe nothing at all.

The first result, though, is an ad. The headline says, ‘Unhappy with the world falling apart?' Below that it says, ‘Join today.' Intrigued, I click.

A recruitment page for the military's cloning division stares back at me. This is not the first time I've seen this ad, attempting to recruit me for the military's cloning division. My parents encouraged me to join, and ever since I visited their website once, I've gotten ads from them. Caesar and I have discussed it before; we"ve always found the military's cloning division to be incredibly unethical, but that headline was so fitting. I am unhappy with the world falling apart. My world, and the world in general. Everything is falling apart.

I scan the membership page. Identity verification is required, as well as in-depth information about myself—my occupation, my income, my blood type, and a section to fill out my reason for joining. I can't see any more of their website before I join.

"Caesar," I say, and say again after he doesn't respond the first time. "Caesar."

Slowly, weakly, he turns his head towards me, "Yes, Eva?" His chapped lips attempt to smile. The sicker he's gotten, the farther downhill his life has gone, the more he smiles. I've started to really hate his smiles.

"I'm thinking about joining the military's cloning weapons division."

He blinks at me, not comprehending for a moment, then the smile fades from his face. For a moment I can see the old Caesar in him, the cocky, vitriolic one who was full of ideas and dreams about how to make the world a better place for everyone.

"Good for you," he says.

"I'll do it to sabotage them," I rant, trying to get him to actually listen to me. "I'll get revenge on them for what they've done to the planet. You wouldn't be…" I can't say the word. "... If they didn't allow companies to destroy the planet and then act as if it is the fault of the average person just trying to survive."

He makes one more attempt at a smile before turning back to the holoscreen.

Maybe I am in more pain than he is, I realize. He is the one who is leaving, and I am the one who is being left behind.

He is so selfish. I hate him for dying.

When I wake up, it is such early morning that the birds aren"t singing yet. The Magus is there waiting for me. He's still naked, looking like a Roman statue. He has fresh clothes for me, as well as food, cheese, wine, and water. He stands at the foot of the mattress and watches me with a creepy grin on his handsome face that makes his eyes crinkle. His teeth are so white. It makes butterflies take flight in my stomach.

I want to slap that grin off his face. I want him never to smile again. I want him to smile forever.

I run my fingers through my hair, trying to dislodge feathers and knots.

"I don't want to know about the so-called ‘original Eva,'" I finally say after I've settled in with a glass of wine and a few bites of cheese. "But I want to know who you are. I want to know who Iago is. I want to know what our world's history is."

The Magus smiles down at me. "You're not ordering me?"

"Sit down," I say. "I don't want to talk to you while you're looming over me with your dick in my face."

His smile only widens, and he makes no move to sit down.

"Destruction Number 7, sit down," I order.

He sits before me in the pile of white feathers with his legs crossed. Nausea flips my stomach. He really did tell me his true name, I think. Which means he just handed me an irresponsible amount of power.

"What do you want to know first?" he asks.

"Why does Iago call you Genji?" I ask my most basic question first.

"It makes me happy that you want to know more about me, Eva," the Magus keeps smiling.

The End