Oracle didn’t jerk awake sweating profusely, because he was a reptile, but he had been pretty darn close to. After a thorough polishing of the orbs, he emerged out of Cutbastra’s pocket to find his friend taking a nap, leaning against a blushing maiden of an apple tree.

The sun percolated through the leaves and reflected the red shine of turgid fruits above, causing revulsion on the still drowsy skink. He imagined one of those big balls of red death falling upon him and granting him a crash course on chiropractice.

He snapped out of it and began the sacred ritual to wake up Cutbastra. “I wonder who will fuck this cute plump wife whose husband works all day?” he whispered.

Cutbastra’s eyes shot open, pupils constricted. The man scanned hectically around, his balls cracking their knuckles, ready for action. He pulled the skink out of his pocket after noticing he had been tricked. “Where? Where is this Martina beauty you speak of?”

“Jade,” he corrected his oriental pal. “Nowhere, I had some visions. Three, to be exact. One concerning, one befuddling, and the other just … weird. Which one do I inform you of first?”

Cutbastra scratched his cheek a bit. "I am in the mood for weird."

“Somewhere with silk floss trees a group of sentient cattle emancipated from their farmer and started a sect to further their cultivation.”

Cutbastra smiled. “Maybe they have beef with somebody.”

“Laughter,” Oracle deadpanned to his friend’s joke.

“Okay, now the befuddling one.”

“Kalon, that boy with the Rottweiler from a couple years ago, seems to have engaged in a well-intended-blood-feud against grass.”

Cutbastra took a second to process what the skink had said.

“That’s a new streak of words if I ever heard one. Who’s winning?”

“It’s a draw so far,” Oracle said, lowering his stare. “If we are going to bet, my bet is on the grass.”

“Then we are not betting, because nobody would place theirs on Kalon.”

Cutbastra stood and circled the tree to stretch the legs a little. This little valley inhabited solely by apple trees and their slaves was a soothing sanctum, a place of holy respite where both body and spirit could know peace. “Now, shower me with the concerning news, Oracle.”

“Chalazarian the Uncucked has taken the determination to torture the world until the love he harbored for his now-deceased wife dies down.”

“His wife died? How?”

“My dreams didn’t tell me. Let’s bet: Auraucaria aeternitus cone to the bonnet.”

Cutbastra didn’t answer, examining an apple within his reach to then grab it and give it a single bite, to which the fruit moaned in pleasure.

“… I forgot they did that,” he mumbled. “How much time do we have before he unleashes his rage? I have no chance against Chalazarian, and I think I may have killed the one who had one.”

“More than three years, less than fifteen. The signals were unclear.”

Cutbastra sighed in relief. “Well, that means I have some time to increase my power before the confrontation.” He punched the tree with the force of a man, so to let out his frustration while avoiding harm to the plant. “But… Cucking all men women-wed won’t be enough.” He began sweating, out of shame and impotence, wetting his perfect, now short golden hair.

Oracle began trembling. “Cutbastra… no…”

“I know a man that can make me gay, Oracle. Like, not in the casual sense: I am talking a professional homosexualizer of the soul.”

“No,,,” he invented the suspensive commas for this dialogue.

“Yes! I need to cuck every living woman too. I need to break the trust of millions in their partners. I need to become the ghost under marriage counselors’ beds, and then fuck them too.”

“I am not repeating myself,” Oracle popped back inside the pocket. His reptilian brain enjoyed a low tolerance for bull.

“But I am! Every man, woman and children shall be cucked, as long as the children are married to non-minors… in which case I should beat their rapists after the happy time… or before… mhm.” He sat on the air, legs crossed, and with the gaze lost in the clouds, considered what he would do in those cases. “Beatfuck them it is.”

“I believe that’s called rape,” Oracle decided to interject once more.

Cutbastra raised and shook his hands. “No, no, no: I fuck them consensually, and meanwhile I beat them, hopefully without consent. The lay is consensual; the beating is deserved.”

“This is the weirdest case of vigilantism I have ever heard of.”

Cubastra hoisted Oracle from the scaly skin of his neck and held him in front of his face. The cucktivator smiled softly. “I can make it weirder, if you will. I can put on a wig, pink panties and a push-up bra. Refine my voice into that of a lady.”

“You are not going into a drag cucking rampage, Cutbastra.”

Cutbastra raised a finger and squinted: “I can cross-dress when I feel like it.”

“You will only cross-dress when asked by your partner, and you cannot ask your partner to ask you to cross-dress, or I jump ship right here, right now.”

“Ow. You are boring.” He let himself fall on his ass, furthering Kalon’s genocidal mission by a few blades.

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Samari massaged her temples as she realized she had got into quite the quandary. For how intelligent she was, months of uncivilized living had made her forget people used cups to drink tea.

She screeched like an orgasming Porkerosaur, frustration pouring out of her mouth in a normoflowing river. Kalon covered his ears. Jagger, instead, closed his eyes and prayed for a revolver. The heavens heard his plea. Then laughed at him and refused to grant it. The gods work for me, Jagger, and you cannot die: the book is named after you.

Kinda named after you.

Stop being a Rottweiler if you are so bothered about it.

Semari Joined her hands and inspired gravely. “We are all out of cups.”

Kalon dislodged one of his scarf puppies, squeezed it so the little one wouldm open its mouth in pain, and with the puppy pointing upwards and frozen in a rictus of pain and horror, he extended it to Samari. “I can make my own pcups.”

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Eek!” Samari exclaimed as she served the steaming green liquid into the scared pup’s mouth.

Kalon looked at the infusion, and the little pained tongue of the puppy stirring, not shaking, it. What was going on inside his mind was only the gods and mine to know. And I’ll tell you about it some day, when I accumulate enough brain damage coupons to decipher what such imagery meant.

Kalon raised the puppy’s lips to him, pinky finger extended with aristocratic pride, and drank the tea from the pup cup mouth. “Guhh,” he let out a moan of delight after a few sips. “Tastes like Jagger’s breath.”

Jagger melted in his spot, a mound of dog that seemed to stray away from the tissue level of organization as it gave in to the heat irradiated by the smug sun. To complain was useless, Kalon wouldn’t change. To speak against his barbarism and to speak against electromagnetism[1] had about the same effect on reality.

Kalon finished his drink and crumpled the cup, sending fleeting puppy entrails flying over everyone present, for them to dissipate into a white, lazy smoke after inflicting enough runt force trauma to Samari’s mind.

“What’s your fucking problem!”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Kalon stated the obvious. “The tea is good, though.”

“Everyone of Kalon’s rotties, except Brunhilda and I, are spirit constructs. So fear not, he did not troglodyte a puppy to death. Merely a representation of a puppy.”

Samari dug her nails into her scalp and pulled form her hair. “Pair of savages, spirit constructs resembling a dog, created within the framework provided by a road, feel like dogs do! That puppy felt his life escaping him between Kalon’s fingers and perhaps his mouth burning!”

Kalon and Jagger stared into each other’s eyes, seeking the input of their pal on the matter. “Yes, we know,” Kalon confessed, dislodging another puppy from the scarf.

“What?” Samari let her hands fall and incredulity overtook her face as easily as Argentinians and Venezuelans conquer a Sonic fanart competence.

“While, on average, We Are That Stupid (properly capitalized, mind you), the truth is that Kalon bears ninety-nine percent of the denseness himself, and I am slightly above the human-average-sans-Valelike-Vale intelligence. And Brunhilda is merely an average Rottweiler with a penchant for incidental vigilantism.”

The Hag of Holding vomited a set of stacked drinking glasses next to the bonfire.

“Doubles as luggage,” Jagger added.

“Subject change!” Samari exclaimed, ignoring the pile of glasses Brunhilda had produced. “I shall tell you about my disgrace, about the time that the flaming head cultivator came and subjected me to a torture worse than being Kalon’s dog.”

“Hurray, I will order a drink.” Jagger closed his eyes, retracted his ears and used his Piña-Colada-manifesting powers, causing his bowl surge from the earth in front of him, a spring of manatee-unrelated debauchery ready to be consumed. “If alcoholism were a Road, I’d be immortal already.”

“Wait a second. That wasn’t arcagnosticism nor cultivation. How the hell did you do that?”

“Heavens fund my drinking.”

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“Well, I’ll ignore the dog’s alcoholism and begin my narration, if you don’t mind…”

----------------------------------------

It was a undark and unstormy unnight —this is, a sunny day, but pretentious— when he arrived here. I was too engrossed in setting my traps to feel the approach of such a demon, with his ginger complexion and horrible cargo shorts. His shadow, cast over my frail figure, felt like a cold, tight to the bone blanket as he consumed me with eyes full of the particular kind of lust that makes the soul shit its pants when witnessed. I…

Kalon, stop cutting grass blades! I am telling my tragic story!

As I was saying, you pair of brutish mammalian parsnips, I turned to find myself facing this woeful presence. He held himself standing in a slouched position. It was as if someone puppeteered the man from the skies, an invisible hand controlling the movements of a vile creation. He stepped on one of my landmines and came out unscathed, a force field made of breasts making itself briefly visible as falling debris bounced against it.

Paralyzed by fear, my legs betrayed me, and couldn’t run. My throat knotted, and only a pathetic whimper came out. That’s when he closed in and spoke, his voice a sound so horrible my mind refuses to remember it clearly.

He grabbed my arm with his despicable claws, and smiled like a predator. He licked his pale lips and then said, “Hey, little girl, do you want to talk about my fantasy novel?”

Samari had to wait until Jagger and Kalon finished their gasping and whistling and panicking and flirting with each other —Jagger was that drunk— to resume her narration.

I tried to jump away, but his grasp was unescapable. I thought about cutting my arm, in the future as an arcagnostic I can grow another anyway, but he caught me firmly from the back of my neck, and if I cut my head off I cannot grow another one in the future, as you may imagine.

Because I would die, Kalon. Dying is bad for arcagnostics.

The man dragged me into a suspiciously intact shed —the savages that burned down this town were unusually fond of sheds, methinks—tied me to a chair and stood in front of me, with that nauseating smirk never leaving his face. He cleaned his throat and so began my torture. “In the world of Retrieribia elves above double-d cup, male or female, and humans can mate with the mere thought…”

He went on and on and on, made me memorize eleven made-up continents, seventy-four kingdoms, an insular state managed by what I think were sentient cappuccinos or capuchin monkeys, I am not sure anymore, and three thousand fabricated species of fauna and flora, most of them female-only, most of them anthropomorphic, and most of them in dire need of ibuprofen for the back pain.

My kidnapper stood proud and recited two thousand years of detailed make-believe elven history while I pleaded for mercy. After four hours of inhumane treatment he forced me to drink and eat some stale cookies and fresh water. The water was mid. The cookies were nearly decent.

By the sixth hour I yearned and asked for a quick death, but he attacked me with the details of his boob-size based magic system. Mana was stored in the boobs, and mages had won battles by drinking their fallen enemies’ breastmilk. I did not need to know that, but he cursed me with that knowledge, and now I am cursing you in turn. Because I am as childish as my age would make you assume I am.

By the ninth hour, I was pleading him to sexually assault me and tear my limbs form my body, one by one, and then be done with this. In any order he pleased. That trauma, arcagnosis can heal.

No, sexual assault is not rifles wearing skimpy outfits, Kalon. You may lower your hand.

The hand that’s raised.

Gods aid me.

But he had no interest in any part of my body, except for my hitherto virgin ears. I was his to listen to the politics of the Kingdom of Haulabari and their approach to women (They didn’t). I was his to be showered with facts about Elven pregnancy. I was his to suffer his discovery of a fetish he had not included in his worldbuilding (It was floor tiles).

This went down for so long that I lost my bearings, that have nothing to do with bears nor rings, Kalon. Time turned to molasses, seconds stretching like those long cats that are so fluffy that I like very much.

Jagger, you cannot mate with my leg. No. My leg cannot have your puppies! It’s not biologically possible! Shoo!

By the end of the fifth day, he began ranting about homosexuals. I had lost not only my will to live or talk, but also to think. My brain had devolved into an animated film featuring dancing robot horses. They weren’t very conversational, as they talked in Morse code. Launching missiles. Against each other.

By the sixth day he had turned homosexuality in a coupon-based magic system where intercourse—Jagger… stop laughing Jagger… Jagger!—where relations with prodigious elf mages of the twink order were attained by assisting to a determinate number of pride marches and getting the official stamps there.

By the seventh day he had theorized a non-arcagnostic way to change a person’s sexuality. It included beatings and killing off their favorite character.

By the evening of the eight day he let me go, because he had to worldbuild some more and also found himself going over his self-imposed limit of gay-thoughts-per-month. Before he went away, I asked him how many pages he had written so far. One, he said. An action scene in a tavern, he clarified. A start in medias res, he boasted.

And so he marched, leaving me exhausted, malnourished, slightly dehydrated, depressed, and aware of the menstrual cycle of all his female characters down to a T. And tied, too.

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[1] Luckily, electromagnetism is the chillest of the fundamental forces. It only took exception once, and the being that offended it —teller of the greatest your mamma joke in the universe— can now be admired in the rural night sky during moonless nights, a pinkish blotch recognized by astronomers as the Jerkstain Nebula.