My Friends the Allens -- Hello In There
by Mark Aster

= = =
Note: this story takes place in a fantasy world where
vaccines against AIDS and pregnancy are safe and common,
and casual sex with strangers is not suicidally stupid.
The real world, sadly, is not like this: so don't try
this at home!
= = =

There are still a few trains with old-fashioned corridors
and compartments, where you can sit by yourself on a long
wooden seat, look out the window, and doze off as the
scenery rattles by outside.  Then, leaving a station
at some small city whose name you didn't notice, someone
knocks at the door of the compartment, and wakes you up.

"Hello, in there!" she called out, and I shook my head
slightly and yawned and said "Hello?"  She slid the door
open just a crack and looked in with one eye.  "Can I come
in?"  "Of course."  Of course.

She slipped into the compartment and closed the door behind
her back.  She was slender, maybe skinny, but not without
curves; long black hair rather shaggy, pale skin, a thin cotton
dress moving nicely over her body, worn leather shoes.  She
sat down opposite me, by the window.

I thought her face was ordinary until she looked into my eyes.
Hers were large and deep and very dark.  A gnarled pink scar
pulled up her left eyelid and broke the symmetry of her face.
She was silent for a long time, looking at me intensely, but
with no definite expression.  Then her eyes released me, and
she turned away and stared out the window.

"I hope you don't mind," she said after a long silence,
"I don't like to be alone on trains.  So fragile."  Her
back was long, and her position, twisted away from me on
the seat, pulled her dress tight over her spine, each vertebra
neat and distinct.  No bra strap.  A dark woody odor came from
somewhere.

"Fragile?" I asked.  She jumped in her seat.  Her eyes, wide
and surprised, caught me again, and we sat facing each other
in silence for another long moment.  Then she sighed and wilted,
and her eyes shrank.

"Sorry," she said.  "Sorry, it's just me.  Sorry."

"No, um, I..." I couldn't think of a sensible reply.  Her
eyes widened again, her face brightened, and she almost smiled.

"I'm crazy."

"I know the feeling," I said, grinning.

"No, no, really.  Really!"  Her arms were stiff at her
sides, her hands wrapped around the edge of the seat, her
knuckles white, her lips smiling.  "I was in hospital for
five years and six days.  Five years and six days!  But
you know how you get out?"  I swallowed and shook my head
slightly.  Her eyes slid away from mine, and she seemed to be
talking to someone over my shoulder.  "If you're eighteen,
and you're not a danger to yourself and others, and you
don't break anything of David's, and you just let them in,
then they'll let you go.  You know?"  I found I was chewing
on my lower lip.  Her eyes slid back to my face, locked on
mine, and she breathed in and out, looking at me, her chest
rising and falling, her lips moist.  My forehead felt hot.
She looked away again.  I closed my eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly.  "You can go.  Or I can.  I..."

"It's okay," I said, "I like company, too."  She sighed,
and stared back out the window.  I watched her body move
softly up and down with her breathing.

"I made up a game!" she said suddenly, turning toward me, and
then flopping down forward on her seat.  "You have a square
board," and she tapped her forearms on the wood, outlining
a square, "and...  do you want to play with me?"  She turned
halfway onto her side, looking at me.  One knee was up, and
the dress, not long to start with, slid down, uncovering her
thighs.  Her legs were long and slender and very good.  She
licked her lips.  "Do you want to play with me?"

We passed another train going the other way, rattling and
clanging.

I think I smiled.  "I need to know the rules."  And I knelt
on the floor of the car, the better to see her board.  Her
face was suddenly smooth and innocent, except for the scar above
her eye, and she turned back onto her stomach, and pointed at
the imaginary board, and very earnestly she explained the rules.
"This is a place and this is a wall," she said, dividing the
board with long fingers and a clear singsong voice.  The
rules were long and intricate, and gradually they stopped
being rules at all.

"The King is here between the walls, and unless he can see
the Queen, he can't move.  In the night, another piece comes
between the walls, but the King blocks the way.  The Queen
is across the board, about to be captured, and the King
can't move because he can't see her, and the other piece
can't move because the King is in the way.  So nothing
happens until daylight, but in daylight the King sees that
the Queen is gone, and all his other pieces are gone.  Only
the walls are left, but with no other pieces to watch him,
the King can drift over the walls, so there's nothing left
at all, and the King leaves the board, off to look for the
Queen.  And that's the end."  She looked at me very
seriously, her eyes narrow.  She sat up, and I got off of
the floor and went back to my seat.  The train sped along.

I started to say something about the weather, the train,
the election.  I opened my mouth, but nothing happened.

"Does he ever find her?" I asked, finally.

"Who?" she said, and then she closed her eyes, bent down
her head, and massaged her eyebrows and forehead with the
fingers of both hands.  The middle finger of her left hand
moved rhythmically along the rough tissue of the scar.  "I
have some aspirin if you want," I offered.  She tilted her
head back, eyes still closed, body limp.

"There's no pain," she said softly, "there's never any pain
at all."  Her neck was long and smooth and pale, a few
tangles of long black hair crossing over, straggling down
over her chest.  Outside the window, a row of dirty brick
factory buildings rushed by, an empty lot, a small river.
Someone went by in the corridor, bumping softly against
our door in passing.

"I like you!" she said suddenly, her eyes open again, deep
and black.  "You didn't leave, and you haven't tried to hit
on me."  She stood up, legs apart.  I looked up at her; the
scar above her eye seemed redder.  She walked forward and
lowered herself into my lap, facing me, her thighs straddling
me, her body pressing against me.  I didn't move.  The smell
of her and the warm female weight of her were irresistably
erotic, and I felt my body responding.  She put her hands
behind my head, twined fingers in my hair, pulled my face
towards hers.  "Do you want to -- kiss me?" she whispered,
low and intense.

Her lips were thin but supple, suddenly entrancing.  Her eyes
were deep and hungry, her breath hot.  "I wouldn't want to take
advantage..." I started, and stopped.

Calmly, she backed away from me and sat on her seat, her legs
tucked under.  "Take advantage of a lunatic?" she asked.
"You're not sure I can give informed consent?"

"I'm not sure."

She nudged one shoe off with the toe of the other.  Her foot
was thin and bony.  "There are lots of me in here, you know.
Is that it?"

"They might not all want the same thing?"  Treading carefully.
She slipped off the other shoe.

"There are lots of you in there also!  They just," and she made
an entirely sane and very wry face, "they just usually agree on
things.  Right?"

"Usually, I guess."

Her hand on the seat beside her pounded rhythmically, slapping
the palm against the smooth wood.  Her eyes held me.  "So what
if every single one of us in here wants you to make love to her?
What then?"

She stood again, abruptly, swaying gently with the movement of
the train.  She reached both hands under her skirt, and
slowly slipped her panties down her pale thighs, down her
long legs, over her bare feet.  "What then?" she said, low,
almost whispering again.  She twisted the damp fabric in her
hands, and stepped to me, her knees against mine.

"Trust me.  I know what I want."  She looked at me quickly, then
looked down.  She dropped her panties in my lap, and began to
gather the front of her dress up in her hands.  As it rose past
her thighs, pale creamy skin with a few dark beauty marks, I
felt my blood pounding.  "Can you trust someone who's just
a little bit different from you?" she breathed.  I reached
forward and ran my palms up the bare skin of her flanks.  Her
pubic hair was dark and tangled.  She let go of her dress, and
the fabric fell back over my hands.  She reached down and slowly
undid my belt.

Her lips on mine were soft and sweet and hungry; her
flesh under my hands was smooth and resilient.  Her fingers
stroked and squeezed me, and she slid her body forward into
my lap, trapping my swelling penis between her hand and
the open softness between her legs.  I slipped my tongue
between her lips, and she shuddered and moaned.  I took
her buttocks in my hands, and pulled her body closer to
me, and she moved slowly up, and slid down over me, just
the tip of my staff parting her lips and moving inside.

"Do you trust me?" she said, and then her mouth opened in
a long slow sigh, and slowly she lowered herself, her hips
circling, and the hot wetness engulfed me.  She put her arms
around me and moved slowly up and down.

I moved my hands up under her dress, over the warm pale
miracle of her skin.  I took her breasts in my hands and
softly rubbed her nipples; she moaned and kissed my face
and moved her hips faster, and my penis swelled and
lengthened inside her.  My hips began to move, thrusting
into her, escaping control.  "I'm going to..." I tried
to speak, to slow her down, but she kissed my mouth
again and thrust back against me with her body, and as
I groaned and came and filled her with semen, she
tightened her arms around me, clutching her body against
me with all her strength and making small high noises
deep in her throat.  Two more long pulses of pleasure,
and my body relaxed under her on the seat.

"It's more whether I can trust myself," I whispered into
her dark hair.  Her head was on my shoulder, her arms
and legs still around me, her body limp in my lap.  Then
I felt the wetness on my shoulder, and just sat and stroked
her hair while she cried and my penis slipped out of her body.
Eventually her breathing got deeper and more regular, and
I thought she was asleep.  I closed my eyes and touched her
back and listened to the wheels moving over the tracks.

She moved her head.  Her cheek slid against mine, her nose
rubbed across my face.  Her lips closed over mine, hot and
urgent and passionate.  Her hands moved over me.  Between
us, my cock hardened again as her tongue probed into my mouth,
and her legs tensed on my lap.  She pressed her body against
me, and whispered, her lips touching my face, between kisses.

"You want me again, don't you?  You want to have me again.
You're going to put your prick into me again, and fuck me.
God, god, GOD!"  And she bobbed in my lap, her hand down
between her legs, and guided me quickly into her, and again
she thrust her hips relentlessly at me, sliding up and down
on my cock, kissing my mouth, her eyes closed now, shut tight,
the scar crumpled above her left eye, breath quick and deep.
Her ass bounced up and down in my lap, she impaled herself
urgently and eagerly, and she threw back her head and she
came.  Her cunt contracted rhythmically again and again, and
her hands clutched painfully at my shoulders.  Just as her
thrusts began to slow, I came inside her, and she opened
her mouth and drew a long gasping breath as I filled her
again.

Almost before I stopped spurting, she was out of my arms and
across the compartment, curled on her seat looking out the
window, her head on her arms.  I wiped myself gingerly with
a tissue, reached across with another one and laid it gently
on her foot.  She took it without turning, put her hand down
and awkwardly, gracefully, cleaned herself off.  I picked up
her panty from the floor and put it on the seat beside her.

"You won't tell David?" she asked.  I touched the edge of her
foot with a finger, tracing one of the long bones.  "Promise,"
I said, "Are you travelling far?"

She made a small angry sound, stil not looking at me.  "You
want to take me home with you?  Put me in a taxicab?  Introduce
me to your pregnant girlfriend?  Take me out of the closet at
parties?  Is THAT it?"  I licked my lips and sat back.

"My station's next," she said, turning to me and smiling.  The
train began to slow.  "You know?  I really LOVE being out."  Her
palm was tapping the seat again.  "Sometimes when I'm with
people, those others go all the way away.  Sometimes."  She
stood up, holding her panty and shoes, opened the door.  Went
out.

I shook my head suddenly, and bolted up.  "Are you going to be
okay?" I shouted down the corridor after her.  She looked back,
smiling a little too wide.  "I don't know.  I don't know!"

I didn't follow her, didn't see her stand with her arms braced
as the train came to a stop, didn't watch her feet step from
the train to the platform.  I sat by my window.  As the train
pulled out, I saw her out there looking, and I waved.  She
waved back, her face smooth and young and earnest, and the
train pulled away.


My Friends the Allens -- Hello In There
by Mark Aster
The End