Liquid
(Talisman, part X)
 
by D. Monster
 
 
The prisoner awoke in darkness.  He took a deep breath and choked on the viscous liquid that flowed into his lungs.
 
Coward.
 
For longer than he knew – it could have been days…it could have been years – he’d breathed no air, drunk no water, and eaten no food.  The liquid alone sustained him.
 
Coward.
 
And the liquid buoyed him.   This was fortunate, as his cell was too small to allow him the luxury of lying down or even sitting.  He was thankful that he was not a claustrophobic man.
 
Coward.
 
I’m not a coward.
 
In fact, the close dimensions of his prison were the only things standing between him and the insanity that complete sensory deprivation would have brought.  Tracing the cracks and contours of the cell’s interior with his fingers enabled him to discern reality from dreams and allowed him to keep his mind intact.  To remember.
 
Then who’s the coward?
 
He is.
 
My jailer.
 
He smiled – not happily – as he thought about the man who had imprisoned him.  A man strong enough to change the world if he wanted, but too weak – too cowardly – to act.
 
Unable to control me.
 
And too much of a coward to kill me.
 
So here I am.
 
He ran his hand along a seam in the stone wall of his prison – a seam he imagined to be part of the door – and took another labored, liquid breath.
 
And continued to try to remember.
 
To remember his jailer.
 
To remember himself.
 
And to remember her.
 
*          *          *
 
Wouldn’t do to have any spills, thought Lloyd as he adjusted the position of the barrel.  Kate would kill me.   Satisfied, he stepped back and surveyed the current state of his newest stage illusion.  Suspended from a large frame was a life-sized blue plastic mold of a shapely woman in a provocative pose.   A thin stream of milky liquid the same vivid blue color drizzled from a valve at the foot of the mold and into the barrel Lloyd had just finished adjusting.  As he watched, the top of the mold lost its blue opacity, becoming colorless and transparent.  An observer would immediately have noted that the mold was transparent plastic filled with blue liquid that was currently being drained into the barrel below.
 
He rummaged around the workshop, finding a length of rubber tubing and a small hand pump.  The finished illusion would have two molds, fancy tubing, and a mechanical pump, not to mention a clear Perspex barrel for liquid collection, but the current setup would be fine during the testing stages.
 
Liquid was now draining out of the breasts of the female form within the mold, leaving them hollow and empty.  Lloyd felt an erection coming on.
 
His reverie was broken by a ringing.  He jumped slightly, startled by the sudden noise. 
 
“Excuse me,” he said.  “Phone.  Be right back.”
 
He plunged off into the next room.  There was a crash as a pile of boxes succumbed to his attempts to reach the phone before the answering machine caught the call.
 
“Hello?”
 
“This is he.”
 
“Oh hello Mr. Strickland.  How can I help you?”
 
“Yes, certainly.  Anything at all odd.  Why?  Has something happened?”
 
“Strange.  Out of the blue?  Yes, I understand your concern.”
 
“How long ago?  Two weeks?”
 
“Was he certain it was her?  The man is an alcoholic, after all.”
 
“You should know as well as I do.  We were both at the funeral.”
 
“Okay.  Okay.  Calm down.  I’m sorry.   I’ll look into it for you.  I just think you shouldn’t get your hopes up, that’s all.”
 
I’ll let you know if I find anything.
 
“Thank you very much for calling.  Okay.  Yes.  Goodbye.”
 
There was a click and then another crash followed by a metallic clatter as Lloyd tripped over the boxes he had knocked down in his haste to get to the phone.  He re-entered the room, pausing to prop a large sword up against the wall.  He didn’t know how it had gotten in with the boxes in the other room, but he intended to find it a proper home befitting its status…when he got a chance.
 
 He walked over to the mold, which was now empty.  He tilted it slightly, trying to drain the last little bits of liquid out.  He thought about carving out portions at the bottom of the mold so that drainage would be easier, but decided that that might make the second half of the trick a little problematic. 
 
Speaking of which…
 
He peered into the barrel, now  two-thirds full of the blue liquid.  He stuck his hand in and swirled it around in the warm liquid.  He cupped some of it in his palm and lifted his hand out, letting it flow out between his fingers.
 
Moves like quicksilver, he thought, noting a slightly metallic sheen to the liquid that made the comparison even more apt.  He hadn’t noticed that before, but it made sense, considering….
 
“Okay, time to finish the trick and conclude this, the first test of Lloyd’s Magnificent Whatever-the-Hell-I’m-Gonna-Call-This-Thing!”
 
“Ala-ka-za-bloom…ba…boom…ba…oh forget it…”
 
He closed the valve on the bottom of the mold and attached the tubing to the hand pump.  One end of the tubing he attached to the top of the mold; the other end he stuck deep into the barrel.  He turned the handle on the pump quickly and the blue liquid flowed up the tube and began to refill the mold.  When the barrel appeared to be empty, he carefully lifted the tubing to made sure that all the liquid inside was allowed to flow back into the mold.
 
Dropping the tubing and pump and pushing the barrel aside, he undid a chain on the frame and carefully lowered the mold to the floor.   Then he flipped open a couple of latches, previously unseen, on the side of the mold.  The mold split in half.  A lithe female form, covered completely with a skintight blue metallic catsuit and quite solid, stepped out of the once-again colorless transparent mold and gave Lloyd a hug.
 
“Alakazabloom?” she asked in an incredulous voice.  “What kinda friggin’ lame magic word is that?”
 
“Hiya Kate,” said Lloyd, returning the hug.  “How do you feel?”
 
“Wonderful!” she said, pulling off the hood of the catsuit.  “When you dipped your hand into me, I thought I was gonna….”
 
“What’s wrong?” she asked, puzzled, as he had turned away and was frantically rummaging through the pieces of the illusion, examining and then tossing aside the tubing and the pump.  After he upended the barrel, however, the situation became clear.
 
There, on the floor underneath the barrel, were several drops of opaque blue liquid. 
 
“Well, I’ll be…” she said, moving her hand up to run her fingers through her short blonde….
 
Oops.
 
She dashed across the shop to the bathroom.  There in the mirror was her face, as whole and as beautiful as ever and…
 
“Bald as a billiard.”
 
There wasn’t even any stubble.
 
Lloyd appeared behind her, a tiny vial of blue liquid in his hand.  “I got it all, so we can…”
 
Kate was giggling, looking at their reflections.
 
“We match.”
 
She reached up with both hands, rubbing Lloyd’s bald pate with one and her own with the other.  She laughed even harder.  Soon he was laughing, too, though he had that embarrassed look he always got – the look that she loved so much.
 
“I really am sorry.  I’m sure that we can fix it.”
 
“It’s okay, really,” she said, still laughing.  “I was thinking about giving this a try anyway.  This means I don’t have to shave to do it.  Just don’t lose that vial.  We might need it in case the hair doesn’t grow back on its own.”
 
“Okay,” he said, looking relieved and pocketing the vial.
 
“Now,” she continued.  I got terribly turned on while I was swishing around in that barrel and I need you to tear this ridiculous blue suit off me right now and give me a right good rogering.   That or I’m going to have to do it all myself.”
 
He smiled.  “Yes ma’am,” he said, hoisting her effortlessly into his arms and carrying her to the door.
 
“By the way,” she asked as they ascended the stairs.  “Somebody called while I was in the barrel.  What did they want?”
 
The sight of her emerging from the mold, solid and sexy, had completely knocked all thought of the telephone call from his mind.   He knew he’d remember eventually, but at the moment he had much more interesting things to think about.
 
“Nothing important,” he said, smiling and closing the door behind them.
 
*          *          *
 
In her room, Clea didn’t notice the sound of the door closing down the hall.  She had other things on her mind. 
 
“There there,” she cooed to the tiny blonde woman in the palm of her hand. “Everything’s going to be just fine.  You know I would never hurt you...”
 
The tiny woman was trying to scream something at her, but no sound emerged.  Clea contemplated this for a moment, and then amended her previous thought with a wicked grin on her face.
 
“…much.”
 
She pressed her index finger down hard on the chest and abdomen of the miniature blonde.  The woman’s face went purple with agony and began to swell.  Clea pushed harder, the woman’s head swelling to twice, then three times its previous size. 
 
Then it popped.
 
Purplish liquid sprayed across the palm of her hand.
 
She raised her finger to reveal the tiny woman’s arms and legs flailing furiously, despite their lack of a head.  Clea’s eyes went wide with delight and she popped the wiggling body into her mouth and chewed slowly.  Miniature bones crunched between her teeth.  She swallowed and gave a small, satisfied burp. 
 
“There,” she said, licking the purple goo from her hand.  “That just gets more fun every time we do it.”
 
“We’ll have to try this again sometime.  Don’t you agree?” she asked, patting her stomach.  She looked around.
 
“Now where did the rest of my toys go?”
 
*          *          *
 
A dish clanked into the sink.  Prita cursed quietly and then offered a brief prayer to whichever deities watched over dropped dishes.  There were many things that she was very, very good at…but doing the dishes would never be one of them.
 
The door to the kitchen crashed open and a large, extremely fat man stomped in.  His immense belly stuck out from underneath a dirty t-shirt.  Prita turned and smiled at him.
 
“Good evening, Hartmut.”
 
The fat man regarded her with his beady eyes and scratched his face through several weeks’ growth of red beard.  He grunted to acknowledge her.  Reaching past her, he pulled a bowl from the sink (one she had yet to wash, but she knew that he did not care), a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, and a large box of dry cat food from one of the cabinets.  He sat down at the table, filled the bowl with cat food and emptied the contents of the bottle on top of it.  He began to eat noisily, using his fingers.
 
“You’re very big this evening, Hart.”
 
“Hungry,” came the response.
 
“And how are you?”
 
“People mouses.”
 
“Hmmm?”
 
“People mouses.  Squeak squeak.  Chase.  No catch.  Hungry now.”  He stuck his face into the bowl.
 
“Where did you see….”
 
She stopped in mid-sentence.  Hartmut looked up from his meal, beer dribbling down his chin.  She reached underneath her sari and felt a slick wetness on the inside of her legs.  She rested her other hand on her swollen belly.
 
“Hart dear?”
 
“Ya?”
 
“Please fetch the others.  Tell them it’s time.”
 
To be continued….