TITLE: Fishbowl
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Chapter 5: Hairtrigger
It was impossible to know when I woke up, or whether I remained asleep, or if some higher power had taken mercy upon me and snuffed out my lifespark without me ever feeling it in the expected sharp, sudden matter of fact. As long as I could remember, I was here?—completely subsumed by the dark. My body, as void as my surroundings. My future, as black as my past. And when everything is black like this?—everything?—even that category loses its meaning. All is (or isn’t), and I was part of all or else complicit in its nothingness. Maybe that’s what death is like, I thought, or whatever comes after.
Two sensations kept me conscious of the possibility that I remained alive in some sort of stasis: first, the nagging feeling that I was, indeed, a being apart from my surroundings?—a being who thought within the limited grids allowed by language (and not beyond them), a being who wondered what had become of itself. It seemed encouraging, upon reflection, that my ever-pressing thought?—where am I??—had its own beginning and its own end. A dead and infinite thing wouldn’t concern itself with such survival-based anxieties. I must be alive. Another complete thought?—this one even concluding with a period!
Second was the pressure bound around my chest and hips. I may have been unable to move on my own accord (and didn’t know what I had available to move), but I could definitely feel. Tight and secure, like a seatbelt or a paramedic’s stretcher.
This world wasn’t exactly silent, either. For a while I conceived of the possibility that I’d been plunked in the ocean, drifted away and sunk without anybody noticing. I don’t know why that made sense like it did (it’s not like I had ever been scuba-diving or anything) but that’s the only environment I could imagine would look, feel, and sound like this one. Deep space. Lightless. Deep tones and whispers of waves cresting.
But the pressure that deep would crush me. I’d suffocate. No, this couldn’t be the Marianna’s Trench. This couldn’t be?—
And then I began lowering. Gravity gathered around those seatbelt straps. A strange revelation, “lowering” was. Until then, I hadn’t known which way was up, or even thought about “up” being a concept around which I should orient myself. The same with that aforementioned “black”ness. Only coming into light?—slowly, gradually?—did I realize that my world had been black. What were these colours? These bright lights? What was this concrete, spotlit square I was descending toward, and who was that beautiful girl waiting for me?
In retrospect, it is strange that my apparently eternal residence in oblivion was solely occupied with the philosophical preoccupations swirling around location and mortality. Identity, on the other hand, is usually taken as a fundamental given. I think, therefore I am, isn’t that right? And clearly I was thinking, so it didn’t ever occur to me to wonder whether or not I was?—let alone who I was.
But descending from the starless sky into the barest of rooms (unfurnished, save a single stretcher, unless you count the stains on the concrete floor), it struck me that I might benefit from knowing what name I might find on my driver’s licence, if I had one on me. Partly because my body, as it arrived in the corporeal world, felt unfamiliar. Partly because my reflection in the glass, obscured by streaks and the odd handprint, didn’t look like anyone I’d ever met before. And partly?—alright, mostly?—because of the reaction I drew from the woman toward whom I made my slow descent:
“No!” She demanded of someone in an adjacent chamber?—I wasn’t yet low enough to catch the right angle. “God no not her!! Veronica don’t let her see me like this!”
For the record, this woman looked perfectly respectable. Her hair was on the short side, sure, and her face held a few masculine features, but the androgynous look really worked. Slim shoulders, long legs. A pert butt, slim waist, and what looked like the two palm-ready handfuls beneath the sheer fabric of her hospital gown (if those two embarrassingly erect nipples were any indication). In any case I pretended not to notice, being occupied with my rather awkward entrance-from-above.
I was wearing one of those ugly gowns, too, but as is always the problem with them, the open back had billowed out and exposed my rump to the elements. The dramatic, slow-motion swivel of my crane descent didn’t help matters. I heard a giggle from behind the window, and the upset woman behind me (out of sight, for a moment) grunted like she’d stubbed her toe.
“Aw, can you not hold back at all anymore, little Hairtrigger?” a voice from the adjacent room, vaguely familiar but I couldn’t put my finger on it. “You lasted twice as long for me! I almost feel like I’ve been insulted!”
By the time I had spun back around to face the window again, my knees were just coming in contact with the floor. I gasped at the scene before me: a naked woman, probably mid-twenties, twirling her blonde hair on the other side of the glass. Closer still, a sight to behold: the androgynous girl from just a moment ago was definitely a shade more feminine from this angle. Her dainty hands had lifted the hem of her gown up above her crotch—still wringing the fabric painfully. Eyes squeezed shut in sharp unwanted pleasure, translucent gloop dripped out from the tip of her tiny, pink-plastic penis.
“Hairtrigger” wasn’t a girl after all. But she certainly wasn’t a guy, either.
Now to figure out what it all meant, and how I factored in.
Was it always the case that I couldn’t walk? Was that normal for a girl my age? That couldn’t be the case, because the three of us?—Veronica, Hairtrigger, and I?—couldn’t have been more than two years apart. Veronica had a mature look about her that both endeared her to me, and made me wary. I was jealous of her lush curls, her sharp little nipples. She had curves, but they were strung from muscle and bone. When I crawled about, hands and knees (the only way I seemed to remember how), I felt unfamiliar bits of me jiggling in a way I knew I should be embarrassing, when set against these two slim companions. A quick inspection assured me that I wasn’t fat by any means. I had a nice, big bum. And I liked the way my boobs felt hanging (not swinging) below. But my stomach ribbed into a few round creases if I let it?—I was sure that if the girl behind the class hunched over like me, we’d only find a michelangelesque muscle group guiding our eyes directly to the neat triangle of stubble above her privates.
My lady parts were open to the elements, much to the seeming discomfort of the still-silent “Hairtrigger”. He, upon opening his eyes to find me exploring my surroundings hand-and-foot, seemed painfully conflicted with regard to my lower half. I’d adjusted the gown to cover my ass back up, but still felt my pussy exposed to the wide world, breathing in and out?—cold air on moist skin.
“Where are we?” I asked, not particularly caring who interpreted the question as being launched their way. But both ignored me.
Hairtrigger, instead, spoke to the floor. “How did you get her in here?”
I crawled towards him, hoping he’d acknowledge me. I repeated my question, whining, and his eyes met mine for the briefest of moments before returning downcast.
“Why is she talking like that...” He looked fit to cry, still wringing the bottom of his gown and making no effort to hide his locked-up bit of shame. “Why can’t you leave her out of this?”
I had no idea what he meant, and looked to Veronica for an explanation. She stood mischievous, smiling. “What,” she spoke, “you mean you can’t tell?”
Hairtrigger shot a sharp questioning look to his adversary, before turning back to meet my eye directly. Before he could study me, though, his whole face was forced into a squeeze. “Hurghk Hmmfph Hmwah,” three feminine yelps passed through his lips. Jism leaked out his shrinking penis, and those lips plumped up a deeper shade of red. “Veronica,” that sweet voice cried, “it?— it hurts!”
The villain cackled, and even I could feel how deep those shrieks of laughter cut. “You might, little preemie, be relieved to know that that,” she nodded her head toward me, “isn’t actually your stupid girlfriend barking like a dog.”
The boy, breathing heavy and trying his darndest not to touch his too-sensitive dangly bits, still had the emotional capacity to look confused. “Then…” his eyes opened into squints. “Then who?”
Veronica’s lips curled, I could see them from my spot on the floor. Hairtrigger braved a look directly at me. I sat on my haunches, patient.
“Dad?”