This is a short, one-shot Cyberpunk Trashcan side-story about buying delicious juice.
It’s supposed to be a simple transaction, right? I just come in here, I open the fucking fridge door, I pull out the juice, my account gets charged, and then I get to go back to my life. Super simple. Easy stuff. Probably babies do it every single day. Shouldn’t take more than a minute. But this undulating walrus has been waddling back and forth in front of the display for like ten goddamn minutes hoarking about what to get and then looking over at me with a coy smile like I’m supposed to relate to the idea of not being able to pick out a drink or maybe like we’re sharing a moment or something.
She’s looking again, playing with the sides of a dress that would be a bed sheet under normal conditions.
“Hey. Are you going to get a drink or what?” That’ll do it.
She gasped. I heard mucus catch on the inhale. Or maybe it was just that thing… sleep apnea? What’s that called when you’re awake? Awake apnea doesn’t make sense. Is it just apnea? That seems to make sense. She’s probably going to die in her sleep or something. I wonder if anyone brings that up to her.
“Well, that’s very rude. Maybe I’ll just take my time.” She turned what she probably thought was defiantly back toward the drinks.
“Hey, you’re gonna die in your sleep, you know?”
“WHAT?!” She was yelling. Maybe that didn’t come out right. I should correct course here.
“Not, like… It’s because you’re so fat. That you’re gonna die.”
Her mouth dropped open in what I think was shock and then curled into a smile. “Oh, I see what this is.”
“A stranger offering unwanted health adv–”
“You’re trying to pick me up.”
Not good. “Okay. I just need the little box of grape juice. I’m going to pick that up.” I started toward the juice. “And you’re going to stay there.”
“Yeah, I bet that’s what you wan-tuh.” Weird inflection on the word want. She took a step toward me, rubbing her hands around on her belly, slapping it and letting out what my brain refused to process as a moan. “Tell me more, mmmm–” She aggressively licked her lips– “about what you wan…tuh.”
I narrowed my eyes, possibly in terror. “Please stop saying it like that.”
I was groping behind me… poor choice of words. Let me rephrase. I grabbed for the handle on the drink fridge. I found the handle and pulled on it. I kept an eye on her for as long as I could and then turned with all the speed my disused core muscles could manage, reaching for the box of grape juice. A sweaty– I think– hand slapped the closed fridge beside me and I heard a grunt. The other hand squeaked down the door I was holding open. The weight was too much and my arm wasn’t out of the door. I pulled it back as fast as I could but her meaty food grabber won out and the door closed on my wrist.
I watched, helpless, as the juice tumbled to the floor. There was a melancholy about the whole scene, I thought. The juice was innocent in all this. Anyway, the door pressed into my wrist and it hurt, but before I could think to make a noise about it, my back was assaulted by a hot, curiously moist wall of flesh.
She snorted breath in next to my ear with the impact and quickly pushed it back out. Her breath was minty, pleasant. I tried to lose myself in the smell but the moaning wheeze in my ear brought me back to the waking nightmare. “This is what you’re after, aren’t you? Bad boy. This body–” she moaned. That was the end of the sentence.
Pushing against the glass was just going to cause more problems, so I shifted, sliding my trapped arm into the fridge and giving my free arm room to turn on her. I placed my hand in the first place it landed.
“Oh!” Her eyes lit up.
I’d flat-handed her tit. The least sexy maneuver a person can possibly do to a breast. I think she’s intentionally misinterpreting things. Keeping my hand platonically flat– aggressively platonically flat– I shoved as hard as I could from my compromised angle. Luckily, she had leaned back when I made my purely non-sexual self-defense maneuver. That gave me enough leverage to push her off. She stumbled back and I pulled my hand out of the fridge. Hubris took me and I reached for the floor to grab my juice. This was good stuff. 100%. Can’t leave it on the ground.
When I came up with the fruit water, she was just catching her footing. She turned her head, looking toward the door. She knew I was going to run. More quickly than I was comfortable accepting, she moved to block the aisle, putting herself between me and sweet egress.
“I like this game,” she growled.
“Ma’am, you are making me uncomfortable and I do not appreciate your physical and/or emotional advances.”
She smiled and took another step toward me. The mandatory seminar I attended insisted that would work and their lies had left me without a plan. I whipped the juice at her face, turned, and ran. It was worth a shot, anyway. She was fat, no problem. I heard consistent thudding behind me as I rushed down the drink aisle and cut over. The far side of the store ran the risk of her turning around and heading me off at the front. I picked the chip aisle. I was halfway down it when the floor went slick.
The juice!
It fucking betrayed me. I can’t believe this. My foot lost traction and I tumbled forward. I did a slick banana position and kept my chin from bouncing off the concrete. I heard the chirp of a security warning and the whirr of a cleanup robot.
“Mariiiine!” It was all I could manage before I was flipped over. I slapped at her face, not entirely sure of the etiquette around a situation like this. “Marine! Get the fuck in here!”
I felt a yank at my pants. I whipped my head around to see the beast going for my precious, precious genitals. She yanked again and they came down, my underwear going along with the still-buttoned pants.
She frowned at my entirely flaccid penis.
“Hey! Fuck you! It’s normally massive! Fuck you!”
She grunted. “Doesn’t matter. I can work with it.”
She lifted up the dress and pulled her panties to the side. All I could see in the forest of lost souls above me was hair and slime and folds of skin so grey that I felt my soul try to leave my body. She groaned and started down. Her balmy hand slapped at my dick before grabbing it up and shaking it. She dropped to her knees and started trying to force it into her. I decided that the proper social moors were likely out the window here and started swinging at her face as best I could. I caught her on the cheek and she grabbed my arms, slamming them down.
“So rough!” She croaked out what, among her kind, was likely a moan and started grinding against my crotch. I shut my eyes trying to think of things that would make me vomit faster than the situation itself. Maybe that would just make her hungry though. Still, it was my only plan. I started to practice retch just in case.
“Hey.” Marine!
The walrus shot up. As she did, I heard a mechanical whine. It wasn’t something Marine’s electronics ever did unless they were under load. The next instant, the moist slime was off of my crotch and I opened my eyes to see a blur of skin, hair, and cloth whip tumble end over end, clattering against the aisles, tearing dozens of racks down. She came to a stop near the far end of the row. I jumped to my feet, immediately inspecting my crotch. There was hair and slime. I grabbed the nearest bag of chips to start wiping it off, though the plastic was not well-suited to the task. I gave up quickly, remembering the security call. QuadSec would be here soon.
I pulled my pants up and realized that Marine was walking down the aisle toward the barely moving pile of human meat. The walrus was groaning, so she wasn’t dead. I grabbed Marine’s arm.
“We can’t.”
She turned to me, her eyes blazing with anger. “Can’t?! I’ll peel her fucking skin off, are you kidding me?! Are you telling me you fucking–”
“QuadSec!”
Marine stopped dead, she looked at the door and then back at the fat. “…” Marine balled her fist and turned toward the door. I followed. There were napkins by the door, I grabbed as many as I could on the way by. She’d dropped her bag as she came in and grabbed it on the way out. They seemed nice for napkins. Plush almost. Who makes that sort of decision? How come there’s not like a standard napkin? Do people get together in a fucking meeting room and sit around thinking about this sort of shit? Is there a complex series of meetings that go into deciding whether to go with the white or brown ones? How much does it cost to get the little logo put on? Did someone agonize over that decision? Why isn’t there just a standard napkin? I feel like that’s something we could strive for as a species, maybe. Decide what napkin basically works best and just make that. People want to solve shit like war and being nice to ugly people, but we can’t even get together on napkin texture. You only ever even notice a napkin when it’s shitty. Which means people make shitty napkins. And some dickhead buys them and no one even says anything about it. Next time I get a shitty napkin, I’m doing something about it. Somebody has to.
We walked off casually to keep from drawing attention. It was about two blocks before Marine pushed me into an alley.
“I’m not sure my heart’s ready for–”
She hit me with her bag. “Drop your pants.”
“You’re just going to repeat that angrier if I ask questions?”
She nodded.
I pulled my pants down and Marine reached into her bag. She pulled out a bottled of water and, with almost no regard for my tender emotional state, poured the water on my crotch.
“Ahhhhhh! Cold!”
She hit me with the bag again. “Your dick’s out, Laze. Try to think a little.”
“Me?! You iced up my already traumatized penis.”
“Wipe yourself off. Who knows what that thing had.” She turned around.
I took some of the remaining napkins and got to cleaning. “Thing, huh? You went pretty hard back there.”
Marine huffed and kicked her foot shyly back in my direction. “Of course I did.”
“Of course, huh?”
She sighed and turned around. I was hunched over, grinning like an idiot, wiping my shriveled dong with convenience store napkins. Nice ones. I had apparently started chuckling to myself. If you’ve ever seen a person take a bite of actual feces while watching their childhood pet get run over, that look probably approached the one Marine gave me.
“I’m going. Don’t follow me.”
“Hey! Don’t just leave me here! Marine!” I stood up straight, dick in the wind, arms wide out in protest. “I’m the victim in all this!”