Knock, knock, knock.  The door opened right away.
     “Oh, good, Brian, you’re here,” said Marcus.  “Glad you could come.”
     “Evening, Marcus.”  I looked his costume up and down.  He was wearing a dark coat and a white button-down shirt with the collar popped up.  His wings were on display, his hair was spiked up, and his eyes were red.  “I see you put your modifications to good use.  I’m sensing a sort of vampirish theme here.”
     “Yeah, I was going for a modern take on Dracula, like in the Blade movies.  Come on in.”  I walked into their apartment, which was for the moment lit mostly by candles.  The few electric lights had red bulbs in them.  I followed Marcus into the kitchen, where Minerva was setting out drinks and mixers on the counter.  For a second, I thought she was topless when she turned around and offered me a drink with her lower left hand.  She had a garland of plastic heads around her neck that covered her breasts, and she wore a little skirt/loincloth thing.  Her hair was piled on top of her head, and she was barefoot.  After looking at the garland, though, I realized that she was wearing a flesh-toned string bikini top.
     “The Hindu goddess of death offering me a drink.  Should I be worried?”
     “It’s a vodka tonic.  And Kali’s not really a death goddess.  She is usually associated with time.  There are a lot of interpretations,” said Minerva as she handed Marcus a Bloody Mary and took her own drink.  
     “Are you expecting anyone else?” I asked.
     “Yeah.  James, Christina, Felicity, and her friend are coming, too,” said Marcus.  “You’re the first.”
     “Figures.”  I tossed my drink back while Minerva and Marcus inspected my costume.  I was wearing a cloth cap, brown corduroy blazer, tie, shorts, and leather shoes.
     “You dressed as a British schoolboy?”
     “It’s Angus Young from AC/DC.”
     “Ah, good.”
     “Yeah, I needed a costume with shorts so I could still get to my sword.”
     “You expecting a fight?” asked Minerva.
     “Hey, who knows, right?”
     They gave each other another look.  What the hell were these guys up to?
     There was a knock on the door.  Minerva went to answer it, and James and Christina walked in.  James was wearing a very shiny set of medieval armor, and Christina wore a soft dress and blouse with flowers and leaves in her hair and clothing.  Both had cloaks over their backs.  When they had entered the apartment, they took off the cloaks to reveal their wings, which completed the costumes as a warrior angel and a woodland nymph.  
     “Wow, guys,” I said.  “That looks great!”
     “I don’t know,” said James.  “I think the Ms win.”
     “Told you so,” said Marcus.
     A few minutes later, after the rest of us had had a few more, the phone rang.  Marcus picked it up.
     “Hello?  Oh, hey, Felicity.  Yeah, I’ll buzz you in.  Hang on.”  He pushed a button on the phone.  “Okay, see you in a minute.”  He hung up.  “They’re here.  They’ll be right up.”
     A few minutes later, there was another knock at the door.  Minerva went to open it, and in came Felicity, dressed as slave girl Leia from Return of the Jedi.  Behind her was a stunning redhead in black and red pleather, stilettos, and a cowboy hat like from Coyote Ugly.
     “Good evening, everybody,” said Felicity.  Marcus came up and gave her a big hug, and Felicity looked him up and down.  She gave the same look to Minerva, and then threw me a suspicious stare.
     “You’ve been busy, haven’t you, Brian?”
     “Oh, you noticed.”
     “Oh, Brian, this is my roommate, Letitia,” she said as she introduced the redhead, who walked up and shook my hand.  
     “Call me Tish.”
     “So, Marcus,” said Felicity, “you got anything to drink around this place?”  She followed the Ms into the kitchen, and James and Christina went with them.  Looking back, I should have been a little suspicious at that, but at the time I couldn’t take my eyes off the lovely creature in pleather.  
     “So, Brian,” she said, “you had something to do with Marcus and Minerva’s costumes?”
     “James and Christina’s, too.  I did the wings and stuff.”
     “You build a lot of costumes?”
     “Well, the wings and arms aren’t exactly costume pieces,” I said as we sat down on a sofa in the living room.  “Marcus and Minerva came to my place earlier today to get some work done.  They said they wanted it to go with their costumes.”
     “Your place?”
     “Yeah, I run the Cyber Shop downstairs.  I do stuff like that all the time.  Mostly I replace people’s stuff with other stuff, but I can add new stuff too.”  Something about this woman was making me want to tell her everything.  I don’t know what it was.  Then again, it might have been the booze.
     “Yeah, I heard about that.  What exactly do you do down there?  Is it like a piercing and tattooing place, or what?”
     “Oh, it’s way more than that.  What I do is more like a prosthetic.  It’s this thing that I attach to someone’s body that they can use as if they were born with it.  It’s awesome.”
     “So those wings and arms are pretty much like the real thing?”
     “Yep.  And actually, Marcus can use his wings to fly with if he puts some practice into it.  Well, anyway, you know all about me.  What do you do?”
     “I’m a dancer.”
     “Where do you work?”
     “Wherever I can.”
     “Oh, so, you aren’t part of a troupe or anything.”
     “I pretty much audition for whatever I can.  I tend bar at a club to pay the bills.”
     “Wouldn’t be a country-western club, now would it?”  I tapped her hat and fingered some of the fringey stuff on her outfit.  Yeah, this is pretty much how I talk to girls, especially when alcohol is involved.  Me and socializing?  Not so much.
     “No, no, this is just a costume.  It’s not far off from what I wear at work, but I usually leave off the hat.  But I want to know more about what you do.  So they’re, like, robotic, or what?”
     “No, not really.  I can’t really tell how they work.”
     “Well, how else could you do it?”
     “There’s ways.”  I could feel the alcohol taking effect.
     “Well, do you use batteries, or cables, or what?”
     “No, they don’t use electrical power.  It’s all powered by the person’s brain.”
     “Well, without power, it’s not scientifically possible, what you’re doing.”
     “Oh, there’s more to life than science.”
     “Ah-ha!”  Damn it, I knew I’d said too much.  “I knew it!  They’re magical, aren’t they?”
     “I, uh, …”
     “Look, I may not know as much as you about mechanical stuff and robots and stuff, but I know that robots aren’t anywhere near being able to do everything people can physically do.  Besides, how could you make something like Minerva’s arms work otherwise?”
     “Well…”
     “Come on, show me a trick.”  She started poking me in the ribs.  I couldn’t help but squirm.  “Do a bit of magic for me.”
     “No, I can’t,” I said between gasping laughs.
     “Why not?  Your boss told you not to?”
     “I don’t have a boss.”
     “So what’s the problem?”
     “Well, it just – it seems like the sort of thing I’m supposed to keep to myself.”
     “I promise I won’t tell anybody.”
     “Yes, you will.”
     “Who am I gonna tell?  All of my friends are here, and they all know, except for Felicity.”
     She kinda had me there.  “Well…”
     “Tell you what.  I’ll show you a trick if you show me a trick.”
     “What, a dancing trick?  You gonna show me a dance move?”
     “Not so much a move, it’s just something that I, as a dancer, am able to do.”  She put a hand on my leg and started to play with my tie a bit.
     “Excuse me, Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?”
     “Hey, what’s with the Mrs. Robinson?  I’m not that old!  Although I have to admit, I’m enjoying being able to seduce a schoolboy.”
     “I’m not a schoolboy, I’m Angus Young.”
     “Angus who?”
     “The schoolboy guy from AC/DC.  Back in Black?  Highway to Hell?  For Those About to Rock?  Any of these ringing a bell?”
     “All right, fine.  You want me to go first?”
     “What do you mean?”
     She got up and stood at one end of the sofa.  She then kicked off her shoes and laid down over the arm, and her legs came up over her back until her feet were on either side of her face and her arms were crossed in front of her.  My God, she was flexible.
     “Okay.  I’ve shown you what I can do.  Now it’s your turn.”
     “Wait, I never agreed to do anything.”
     “You know I’m not to quit bugging you until you do it.”  She lifted her legs and put her feet on my chest, where she started playing with my blazer with her toes and rubbing on my chest until I couldn’t take it anymore.
     “Okay, okay, fine.  You asked for it, young lady.  Give me your arm.”  I brought my sword leg to where she could see it and opened the door.  The sword clips popped out, and I drew my sword from its sheath.
     “Whoa!  That’s sweet!” she said.
     “Oh, no, don’t try to back out now.”  I put a hand on her upper arm and sliced her arm off at the shoulder.
     “Hey!”
     I waved her arm at her.  “There now.  You happy?”
     She was occupied with waving her severed arm around at me, and as soon as she realized what kind of control she had over it, she started using it to mess around with my face, poking me in the ear until I tossed her arm back at her.  
     “Oh, come on, an arm?  Is that the best you can do?” she said as she pressed her arm against her shoulder.  Eventually, she got her arm stuck back on and resumed playing with my face with her feet.  She also started using her hands to play around on my legs until she was almost on top of me.  “Come on, be impressive.  You know how much of a turn-on magic can be.  Show me something turn-on-y.”
     “You definitely don’t know anything about me.  Nothing I do is really capable of turning anyone on.”
     “Are you sure?”  She ran her foot along my jawline.
     “All right, you.  You’ve pushed me to it,” I said with equal parts frustration, eager anticipation, and drunken…well, drunken something.  I don’t know, this part is still a bit fuzzy.  “Unroll yourself and lie down on the floor, face down.”  She did.
I knelt down next to her and gently stroked the exposed small of her back.  I started to press my thumbs against her back in some vague resemblance to a massage technique.  Slowly, I pressed into her back, separating her body into two pieces.  As I pressed, Tish started moaning softly, as if she were really enjoying herself.  Before long, I pressed through her midriff and my hand hit the rug.
     “Oh, man.  You can give me a massage anytime.”  She rolled her upper half over and propped herself up on her waist stump.  “See?  That wasn’t so hard, was it?”  She walked on her hands over to me and set her upper half in my lap.  
     “Um…”  I stared at her, trying to figure out just what was going on.  The alcohol wasn’t helping.  Have I mentioned that I don’t drink very often?  “You’re certainly taking this well.”
     “I suppose you thought I would be all ‘Ooh, ahh’ about this, huh?”  She started to stroke my back and shoulders a bit.  I could almost feel the blood beginning to drain from my brain.
     “The thought crossed my mind.”  I held the flat skin across her waist.  Holy shit, she smelled good.
     “I gotta be honest with you.”  Her lower half came up behind me and started caressing me.  “When I showed up here, I kinda already knew a little bit about you.”  She gave me a peck on the check.  “Minerva showed me that – trick she does with her jewelry.”
     “Wait, so – “  I was about to say something else to the tune of wondering what the hell had just happened, but she interrupted by pushing her face into mine and wrapping her legs around my stomach from behind.  
     Now, I normally like to think things through.  I usually do my homework, consider my options, that sort of thing.  This time, though, I was too busy holding half of a beautiful woman in my hands to be using anything resembling a brain.  I just laid down on the floor with my head in Letitia’s lap and kissed her as many ways as I knew how.  Her clothing didn’t leave much to the imagination.  The pleather clung to every lovely curve, so it was almost as if she wasn’t wearing anything at all.  She grabbed my head so hard I thought it would come off.  I showed her how to do it the right way.  
     It wasn’t long before the cloth cap and tie were thrown across the room.  The cowboy hat was right behind them.
     At that point, the alcohol really started kicking in.  
     The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the sofa with a blanket over me.  It threw me for a moment, and then I remembered that I’d fallen asleep in a woman’s home.  It was bound to happen.
     Pretty soon, Marcus walked into the living room from the kitchen.  It was strange seeing him walking around in a t-shirt and shorts with a huge pair of wings sticking out the back.  
     “Oh, morning, Brian.”
     “Good…morning, I guess.”  I checked my watch.  “Oh, damn.  It’s a good thing it’s Sunday.”  I got up from the sofa and started to look for the rest of my clothes, but I was struck with a massive headache and had to sit back down.  “Whoa, okay.  Damn, Marcus, what the hell was I doing last night?”
     “If I recall, you were enjoying yourself with Tish quite a bit.”
     Oh, shit.  Oh, shit.  You see?  This is why I usually don’t drink.  “How was she?”
     “Couldn’t tell.  She left in a hurry.”
     “Son of a bitch.”
     “What do you mean, Brian?”
     “I think I made a huge ass of myself last night, Marcus.  Hey, do me a favor, will you?  The next time you see Letitia, tell her I’m sorry for me.  I gotta get out of here.”
     “Wait.  Brian, I should tell you…”
     “And Marcus, if I ever pick up a drink of alcohol again, just knock the glass out of my hands, will you?”  I grabbed my tie and hat and headed for my apartment.