Who Would Subscribe?

Maven’s fingers were already knuckle-deep in the torn chiffon, brushing against the wet, startling heat. Dana gasped in profound recognition. She arched, a bowstring pulled taut, as her head fell back.

The fading light caught the pale column of her throat. The internal clench, the intimate, muscular welcome beckoned Maven’s fingers.

It was unmistakable.

And irreconcilable.

A feedback loop of pleasure. The giving of the tissue, the liquid warmth, the tiny, shocked sound Dana made that was almost a sob of relief. It was the exact antithesis of the delivery room. Except Maven didn’t push a life out.

That life pulled her in.

The censer in Maven’s left hand purred. A deep, satisfied thrum that traveled up her arm and settled at the base of her skull. The cold, leeching weight of it was gone, replaced by this resonant, living hum.

As if they had fed it, and now the censer regurgitated a darkened version back into them.

The golden thread that had pulsed between their chests tightened, thickened. It was no longer a thread but a rope, a braided cord of light, stitching them together, sewing through muscle and memory.

The entity’s voice was a sigh of wind through a crack. “The question is not only what you find precious.”

Dana’s eyes fluttered open. They were pure gold. No pupil, no iris. Just molten metallic sheen. Her honey-sweet voice, when it came, twisted with the dry, ancient one. “The question is also: how far will you go to keep it?”

Maven tried to pull her hand back. Her muscles screamed, but her arm didn’t move. Locked. Dedicated. Her fingers curled inward, a gentle, reflexive exploration that made Dana moan and push her hips forward, taking Maven deeper.

“Yes!” The gold leached slowly from Dana’s eyes, leaving them glassy and human. “So precious.”

Maven’s mind growled like a cathedral of screaming noise, but her body hummed like a quiet, warm chamber. The censer’s hum synchronized with her body; with the pulse she could feel inside Dana. A terrible, sacred rhythm.

Dana rolled her hips. Not frantic, but with a slow, inevitable rhythm. She rode the heel of Maven’s hand, her own hands coming up to fist in the bunched cashmere at Maven’s chest. Each rock forward was a soft, damp press. Each retreat, a whispered drag.

Maven shut her eyes. It didn’t help. The afterimage of the golden cord, now winding around her ribs, her lungs, her heart, painted the darkness behind her eyelids. Greed and ownership overcame her. For Dana. Of this moment. This devastating connection.

The entity was right. This was the precious thing: the raw act of this intimacy. The power of being the only one who could do this. Who Dana allowed. Maven released a shuddering sigh. A counter-rhythm began in her own core, an echo of Dana’s movement. A second pulse, deep and inexorable.

Shame pooled hot in her gut, but it was morphing, melting into something else.

A fierce, protective greed.

“That’s it,” Dana slurred. Her hips lost their measured pace, stuttering. “Show me how much.”

The golden rope pulled taut. And it sucked at Maven’s very center. As if a ghostly mouth had clamped over the secret, warm place where all her love for Dana lived. It was drinking it, translating it into this.

Dana’s voice changed again. Almost to what Maven remembered. Almost the girl from before Bologna. Dana leaned in, kissing Maven’s cheek, her lips lingering by her ear. “I have always wanted to be you. A mother. I mean, just look at what I had to become just to bridge the gap.” She looked down at her new, enormous form.

“Please. Nurse on me.”

Dana’s words hung in the muted light as moth dust and just as irreversible. Maven’s breath stopped. The word nurse detonated in her brain, a synaptic flare that lit up a gallery of memories: the ache of full breasts, the tiny, snuffling mouth, the profound, holy exhaustion. It was the most primal code they shared. Dana was asking her to rewrite it. To cross a line that would atomize every definition of mother she’d ever clung to.

Dana didn’t wait for permission. She began unbuttoning the front of her own peach chiffon dress. Her fingers were steady and methodical. Each small button slipping free was a punctuation mark in the quiet room. The fabric parted, gaping open.

Maven’s vision tunneled. The massive, otherworldly breasts were a surreal contrast to the girl she remembered. Pale skin, blue veins tracing a map of changed biology. They were obscene in their perfection, a cartoon exaggeration made flesh. Dana took Maven’s limp hand and placed it on the warm, heavy curve. “You fed me from your body,” Dana said, almost inaudible. “A secretion of safety. Like home.” She guided Maven’s thumb across the taut skin. “Now experience the same from me.”

A shudder, deep and seismic, racked Maven’s frame. The golden rope between their chests, now thick as a wrist, glimmered. It exerted a phantom pull, a hollow, aching need.

“This is wrong,” Maven choked out, but her hand didn’t pull away. It cupped the weight, her thumb finding and circling a nipple without her conscious command. Her body remembered the mechanics, even if her soul was screaming.

“It’s only biology,” Dana leaned into the touch while her eyes fluttered closed. “And love. You built this, Mom. You built all of me. Is it so wrong to want to live inside what you’ve made?”

Dana shifted. She straddled Maven’s lap on the leather couch. The position was dauntingly intimate. It overwhelmed Maven. Dana cradled Maven’s head. Her fingers tangled in dark hair and guided Maven’s face forward.

The aroma was honey and warm skin. An unbearable softness. Maven’s lips touched the offered skin. A choked sob vibrated in her throat, trapped against Dana. She remained frozen, a statue of conflict, her mouth a centimeter from fulfillment.

“Please,” Dana’s voice cracked. A single tear fell from her chin, landing on Maven’s cheek and mixing with her own. “It’s the only thing that’s real anymore. It’s the only thing that makes the buzzing stop.”

Dana was asking for an antidote. A mother’s kiss to make the monster go away. And wasn’t that the first, most ancient promise? A mother fixes the hurt.

Maven broke. Her mouth closed. The world reduced to skin, salt, and a rhythmic, gentle suckling that had no milk but pulled something else forth. A current. Not the violent, mimicking thrill from the censer earlier, but a slow, deep syrup of connection. It flowed from Dana into her, warm and thick as honey, a golden calm that seeped into her marrow. The screaming in her mind didn’t stop. She simply drowned it out as her hand returned below to Dana’s core.

Dana sighed, a long, unraveling sound of profound relief. Her waist grew yielding, softening within Maven’s touch. One hand stroked Maven’s hair, over and over. “Thank you. My precious mother.”

For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing, ragged and syncopated. The censer’s hum settled into a low, contented drone, like a beehive at dusk.

Dana slumped forward, her forehead coming to rest on Maven’s sternum. Her body was limp and heavy. Maven could feel the frantic beat of her own heart against Dana’s brow.

Slowly, carefully, Dana pulled back. Maven’s hand below slipped free with a soft, wet sound. She stared at her own fingers, glistening in the hazy light. They seemed alien. Instruments of a strange and terrible diplomacy.

Dana looked up. Her eyes were clear now, human, and filled with a watery, exhausted love. She smiled, small and broken. “You didn’t run.”

Maven couldn’t, nor could she speak.

Reaching over, Dana pried the censer from Maven’s locked left hand. It came away easily. Dana held it in her lap, gazing into its perforated lid as if reading tea leaves. The furious, intricate symbols on its surface were now dull and inert.

She placed the censer on the cluttered coffee table with a definitive click. Then she turned back to Maven. With a tenderness that cracked something open inside Maven’s chest, Dana gently pulled the cashmere turtleneck back down over her mother’s stomach. She smoothed the fabric, a mothering gesture. Her hands went to the torn seam of the black tights, pulling the edges together as if she could mend them by will alone.

They gaped irreparably.

The two stayed like that for minutes, the only sound the soft, rhythmic pull of breath. As the sun moved across the floor, it left them in the long blue evening shadows.

Maven felt disembodied. A vessel filled with a tranquil, golden poison. Her thoughts were sluggish, wrapped in velvet. The wrongness was still there, a cold stone in the pit of her stomach, but it was distant, muffled under this blanket of terrible peace.

Dana finally stirred, shifting back. She looked down at Maven’s face, her expression one of drowsy, beatific satisfaction. She smoothed Maven’s hair back, tucking a strand behind her ear with infinite tenderness.

“You see?” she asked, her voice hushed. “It’s just love. A unique version of it.” She leaned down and kissed Maven’s forehead with lingering lips.

Dana climbed off Maven’s lap, her movements languid, and stood on shaky legs. She re-buttoned her dress with a strange formality. Then picked up the cold censer from the table, cradling it against her chest like an infant.

“I’m going to take a bath,” Dana announced. Her eyes, clear and preternaturally calm. “You should probably change.”

She padded barefoot toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms; the censer clutched tight. At the threshold, she paused and looked back. The dying light from the windows cut her in profile, a sculpture of impossible contradictions.

“Don’t worry,” Dana said, not quite meeting Maven’s glassy stare. “The question is resting. We answered it for now.” A small, cryptic smile touched her lips. “Dad always fought it. That’s why it broke him. You’re so much stronger.”

Then she was gone, the soft sound of her footsteps fading.

Maven sat alone in the gathering darkness. The golden syrup inside her was hardening into a cold, leaden weight. Her lips felt branded. She looked down at her hand, the one that had touched, explored, claimed.

In the dark, her mind began its inventory. Honey and salt. Softness of warm flesh. Moans and suckling. Each memory was a bright shard of glass she turned over, examining its cut. She brought her fingers to her nose. Her tongue probed the sticky essence. Sweetness and spiciness, all fused into a new, permanent perfume.

A laugh bubbled up, thin and hysterical. It echoed in the small space.

Who would subscribe to this?

A clear, synaptic, and absurd question.

Who would subscribe to this horror? Subscribe to this bliss? Sign up for scheduled deliveries of damnation?

The laugh died. Maven pressed her forehead to her knees.

But if someone did.

If there were others out there in the world, sitting in the dark after their own rending, then she wouldn't be a monster.

She would be part of a demographic. A market segment of the damned.

At least she wouldn’t be alone.