(This isn't a long chapter, but I couldn't stop writing until I'd gotten past this part.)
Lunette sat quietly, staring at Connor, as he spoke.
"I was part of Operation Enduring Freedom," he snorted, sipping his coffee. "Fucking retarded name, especially considering what we were doing. It was my final trip over, you know? I was in TF Bowie in Kandahar, and they had us running all sorts of reconnaissance crap in the region. Half of our orders contradicted the other half, because we were getting instructions from different branches who were interpreting everything differently. Our allies were our enemies the next week. It was... well, it was pointless, most of it. On a macro scale, we got the job done, but on a personal level, it was a clusterfuck.
Anyways, I don't mean to get off on a rant or anything, but TF Bowie finally got deployed out of the city, thank God. At least now our job made sense: look around, report back. Specifically, we were looking into a flood of Chinese finding and material that was coming into the country through unofficial channels. It wasn't sanctioned by the Chinese government, so they wanted it stopped for different reasons. It was all people just covering their asses on a global scale. Big fun.
Sorry, right. Anyways, we're working the mountains outside Kabol, and this whole area is just warlord territory, little Hitlers by the dozen. They got some cash, they got some guns, and they got some people. That's all you need to make life hell for an entire region. We get intel that a hospital in the hills, which used to be part of a church and sanitorium in the area, is being used as a base, so our job is to go in and see if we can make friends with the criminals there. If not, we leave them alone. God Bless America.
Sorry, again. I... more coffee. There we go. Thanks. Anyways, the place may have been used as a base, but there was almost no-one there. Blacked out three guards, and the whole outside area is ours. We go in, and sure enough, the hospital is outfitted with the good stuff, American and European hospital gear, Pfizer drugs, you name it. We thought it was just an emergency hospital for bigshots, officers, to get the best treatment, but it was mostly empty, except for a couple doctors, and I use the term doctors VERY loosely, and a few prisoners. Kila was one of them.
I should backtrack a bit. Many parts of Afghanistan are still a bit behind in the women's rights department, and a lot of girls there are still subject to arranged marriages, and sure enough, Kila was one of them. She didn't like the guy, she was afraid of the guy, but she was more afraid of getting killed, so she didn't say anything until the wedding night, when at long last he gets to see her without her robes on, and he discovers that his wife has some extra equipment.
Yeah, that's right... she was a hermaphrodite, too. She wasn't like you, she couldn't become anything else, she was just born that way, and from what she told me, she was bigger than he was at the time. Well, her new husband didn't waste much time before arranging to have her die in an accident, but she got saved, sort of, when he decided to call some contacts in the military first, and sure enough, he found who he was looking for. Everyone thought that Kila had simply robbed him and run off, when in reality, she was sold... to these doctors in the hills, who were doing some experimenting.
I'm not sure who she was meant for, you see... they burned all the incriminating documents before we could sieze them. This hospital did... did custom girls for people. Cosmetic surgery, radical changes, even changing skin color. Rich clients. Some wanted amputees. Some... well, some killed themselves when they found out what they were going to be, or had become. And someone in China, apparently, a big spender, had asked for a hermaphrodite. They'd never had any success turning a normal female into one, so when they got ahold of Kila, they were thrilled, but... but they did a lot of work on her. Surgical stuff, chemical stuff, and some sort of process using pseudo-organic tissue. She... well..."
Lunette blinked, eyes tearing slightly, as Connor dropped his mental guard, and she could finally see what Kila had looked like. She gasped, and not just from the individual appearances. Kila was beautiful, with dark skin and huge brown eyes. Midnight black hair fell to mid-back, and her cheekbones made it appear as if she was on the verge of laughing. She was wearing a white shirt and jeans, but these did absolutely nothing to hide her surgically augmented attributes.
Only once had Lunette ever had a bosom as large and magnificent as Kila's had become, and she had struggled mightily to handle having that much mass up front. They were spectacularly full and round, and artificially high, but they in no way looked out of place, as she saw it through Connor's mind's eye. Farther down, only with Mr Black had she ever been as well-endowed as Kila had become, as well. The thick, heavy bulge reached her slender knee, looking like three pop cans stacked on top of eachother. She saw past the clothes, through the clothes, and saw the thin scars, the stretch marks, the porphyric rashes, but she saw everything as Connor saw her, and Connor saw her as the most beautiful girl in the world. The scars and the stretch marks only added to her beauty and uniqueness. Connor loved her, and Lunette could see, through him, exactly why.
"We found her strapped to a hospital bed. With the blankets and gown, it was hard to tell exactly what we were seeing, but when I figured it out, I wrapped her up in some sheets, and we took everyone, the prisoner girls and the doctors, and we left. Some of the doctors escaped, and in those hills, I really don't care what happened to them.
Kila didn't talk to anyone for the entire trip, she was just hunched over in the seat of the Humvee with her eyes closed. She walked, if I led her, but she didn't look up. She'd been drugged into a stupor, and when we got back to the camp, we took all the girls to the medical tents, but I couldn't let Kila go there, she... she was in no state for what they were going to do to her. I took her back to my tent, since I had my own. I let her sleep on the cot, and she did, just... just curled up and whimpering. I slept on the floor. I was used to it.
She screamed when she woke up, and I was on my feet, trying to calm her down. I spoke pretty good Dari, and I tried to reassure her, but she didn't seem to care that she had been rescued, just that she didn't want anyone staring at her. Eventually, I got her to calm down enough for me to go and get her some breakfast without worrying about her running off. I came back with some coffee and stuff, after checking on the medical tent, and sure enough, Kila hadn't been reported as a no-show... they just didn't report her. A lot of people slipped through the cracks in the war, and I was happy to help this one stay slipped. I fed her, and she actually did seem to be a little grateful for being rescued now, since apparently she was being picked up in a week, and she'd been on restraints so she didn't damage herself.
She was hunched over the entire time, she was just sort of resting her chest on her lap and curling up so I wouldn't see. I had to get her some real clothes, she couldn't wear hospital sheets for the next month. I got some we had in Stores, and brought them back, and told her I'd give her privacy while she changed, since, well, we were in a war and I had a lot of stuff to do. I convinced her not to leave the tent, showed her where I kept my snacks and how to use the tent-a-john, and I spent the rest of the day doing reports, sat meet-ups with the people in charge, organizing the next sortie. Boring stuff.
I got back at night, and... she'd cleaned. It was crazy, she'd cleaned everything up. She had her head down when I came in, and the robes fit her, sort of, but you could still tell right off the bat that she was either smuggling beachballs, or she was really, really fat. I thought I could use it to my advantage, her being that big, so she wouldn't get noticed, but first... but first, I had to try and convince her that she wasn't a prisoner. We talked... we talked almost until the next morning. I got her story, she got mine, and she kept breaking down and asking if the doctors in America could fix her, because she thought she was broken.
You should have seen the look on her face when I told her that I thought she was beautiful. She was so pissed off, she thought I was the freak who had ordered her, but I just explained that, no, I'm just a freak from America who has a thing for impossible beauty, and she was about as impossible as one could get. Well, she figured out I wasn't screwing with her, and I guess she was happy, because... well... she jumped on me, started hugging me. She had a heck of a tackle, too!
We spent the rest of the night on my bunk, but we just laid there and kept talking. Our heads were about yay far apart, too, because of her chest, when she asked me if I'd seen all of her at the hospital. I said yes, and she asked if I thought that she was still beautiful, and I said yes, some guys would love nothing more than to meet a girl with her qualities. So she took my hand, and she placed it on her thigh, and I felt it... I hadn't felt it when we rescued her, I just saw it, and I was a little startled, so I covered it up before the other Bowie guys could see, but it hadn't been out of my mind since the rescue, but feeling it... I'd only dreamed of a girl like that my whole life, and now, my hand was on it.
She started to undress, and I told her no. She was upset, she thought I was rejecting her, but I explained that it wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be respectful if I rescued her, and the very next day took advantage of her like that. She was still in shock. She didn't believe me, but I kept grabbing her hands to keep from taking her clothes off, and in the end I got through to her. We got a couple hours of sleep, and then I had some recon in the hills to do again. I told her to stay put, stay dressed, and if anyone came into the tent, explain that she was just cleaning for Mr Flannery. See, the base had a lot of locals on it, as staff. Cooking, cleaning, that sort of thing. We had a lot of local currency, and we figured this was the best way to get rid of it, so for the next few weeks, she was known as Kila, Connor's Fat Cleaning Lady. She walked hunched over, and no-one could really tell.
It was on the third night that I couldn't say no to her again, she was just... she was just so much the girl of my dreams, and I'd been in the desert for a long time. She'd never been with a man before, and I'd never been with anyone who looked even slightly like her, so things were a little awkward, but we both learned a lot that night."
Lunette smiled as the image in Connor's mind was replaced, first by a naked and soft Kila, who was bashfully smiling, and then by an engorged, saucily-leering Kila. She gasped at Kila's size, both up top and down below. She didn't think she'd ever been that big before, even for Mr Black, but through Connor's mind, she couldn't imagine Kila being any more gorgeous.
"Getting her back into the country wasn't easy, but I pulled the last of my favors, and managed to smuggle her onto the plane to Egypt, and from there it was easy to get her onto a friendly Special Forces transport back stateside. I had to send her on ahead without me, and she was terrified, but I gave her the military passport, I gave her all the cash I had, and we spent two days in a hotel in Egypt going over the plan, what plane she was boarding, what to do when she got off. I wrote down everything she had to say or do on a piece of paper. Get on the plane, get off the plane, go through Customs, get your bag, hail a cab, and give the driver this address. If Customs gave her any trouble, to call me, and I gave her the sat phone for my unit, but I didn't get the call.
I was a few days behind her, and I was worried because I kept calling my house and there was no answer, but I hadn't heard anything through the news channels or the military grapevine about anyone being caught at the airport here. I got off the plane, went through my debriefing ceremony at the base, and I was on the first cab here that I could find. I was scared she wouldn't be here, maybe she'd been kidnapped, or gotten lost, and I couldn't find her...
But I walk in the front door, and sure enough, there's Kila, in my living room, watching TV, wearing one of my old football jerseys and a bathing suit. She almost knocked me down the stairs with the hugging, but she'd made it fine. She'd just been... been afraid to answer the phone, can you believe it? If I'd had an answering machine, she'd have heard, but no."
Both Lunette and Connor were chuckling now, and both of their cheeks had tears on them. "She lived here for the next year. She didn't even go outside in the yard for a month. She was afraid people would laugh at her, and her body. She never wanted to wear those robes again, so we had to buy her new clothes, and I had to handle all the buying in town on my own, and she'd only wear them for me inside. I taught her English, and she picked it up real fast, especially from TV. She loved sitcoms, and ER, for some reason.
The first time she went outside wearing real clothes, I took her over to Newport for dinner, and she wore this completely naughty red sweater and a black skirt. She hid her, you know, endowment, but there was no way she could hide her chest, and everyone.... everyone in the restaraunt was staring. She was scared for a minute until she realized the women were mad and envious, and every man there was jealous of me. I thought she'd never stop smiling.
For the next year, we were never apart. We cooked together, watched TV together, even cleaned up together, and she learned to love her body, what the doctors had done against her will. I loved her, and she loved me, and it was almost Christmas when... when she got sick."
Connor's voice hitched, and Lunette was startled. He had never sounded like this before, not even during the most horrific parts of the story. He continued, tears coming more freely now. "Some of the procedures the doctors had done had side effects. She'd sleep a lot, more and more as time went on, and some of her rashes seemed to fluctate, but it was at Christmas that she started fainting. I took her to the doctor, a friend of mine in Newport, and.... and he told me that she had a tumor. Brain tumor. It was... it was already too big to even consider chemo. Heck, he said it was probably too big for that when I'd brought her back from Afghanistan.
I took her home, and we celebrated Christmas, together. I bought a tree, and she bought some presents online and wrapped them without me seeing, somehow. On Christmas morning, she asked me to marry her. I said yes.
She died on January 2nd. She just... never woke up. She..."
Connor stopped, and Lunette simply stared, mouth open. She could see in Connor's mind Kila, in bed, sheets draped across her spectacular body. She was serene, angelic. Her eyes were closed, her hands resting on her belly, which did not move. Her chest did not rise and fall. She simply lay there.
Connor's arms shook the table as he tried to get himself under control. His eyes were clenched shut, head bent forward, tears squeezing out and falling to the floor. Lunette stood up, and walked slowly, hesitantly around the table. She put her hands on his shoulders, kneeling at his side, holding him as a child might hold a grownup, such was their difference in size. For a long minute, and then two, Connor simply shook, and Lunette simply squeezed.
Eventually, Connor was still. He sniffled, and barked a short, rueful laugh. "Well, that's my tale of woe," he said. "That's why I am... the way I am."
Connor couldn't bring himself to look into Lunette's eyes. Too much, he saw Kila in her eyes, and now he knew why. Lunette's arms didn't even go all the way around Connor, sitting beside him as she was, but her fingers slipped under his arm and clasped together.
"You are the way you are because you're a good person, monsieur Connor," she said softly. "You're a good person who made a doomed woman happy, for the rest of her life. She lived without regret from the day you rescued her... as I will, from the day you rescued me."
At long last, Connor turned, and looked at Lunette directly for the first time since he began his story. There was Kila in her eyes, and Lunette saw a bit of herself in Connor's mind now. She was not supplanting Kila, but simply joining her.
Their breath slowed. Their eyes locked. Lunette had to scoot up , getting up on one knee and craning her neck, as Connor turned his body. Inch by inch, they moved closer.
They kissed.
No comments:
Post a Comment