Twenty Years Frozen and She Was Waiting for Me Awake

Record this, Mneme. Encrypt it in military quantum and store it where only I can find it. I want to leave a record of the night a man with twenty years of sleep in his bones let himself be dragged like a dog behind a smile. This is not a heroic story. It is a confession.

My name is Darién. I was a cargo captain on the Outer Rim route, the kind of run you make only once and never come back from. Between hibernation and the ship’s speed, while I was living my real thirty-something years, centuries were passing in the galaxy. I had no wife, no home, no one waiting for me at any port. I had a full hold, full pockets, and a body that no one had touched in two decades.

The last stop was Erebo-9, a mining shipyard the size of a city, hanging in orbit above a planet that would kill you if your suit failed. As soon as I docked, I went looking for the only contact I still had alive in that corner of space: Teobaldo, an old guild mate who had hung up the engines years earlier to stay planetside.

—Fuck me, you’re still alive? —he told me over the channel, looking like a man already gray at the temples—. If you made it this far, you deserve the best this shithole can offer. I’ll meet you at the Red Chalice, sector six, level minus nine.

***

The Red Chalice was a dump. Skull-splitting music, lights that blinded you in pulses, a sticky floor, and the smell of cheap disinfectant over something worse. All the staff were female, barely dressed, with an implant at the base of the spine that mimicked a tail and moved on its own. I just wanted to leave. Teobaldo read my face and took me upstairs, to a private room with sound insulation where I could finally hear my own thoughts.

We talked about the old days, about the drinking in Sirius, about the ones who had fallen by the wayside. He told me about his wife, his daughter, the life he had built while I slept. I felt envy, ugly envy, and I hid it behind a smile. Then he told me about the war brewing between corporations, about how that shipyard was too tempting a prize for anyone to leave alone. But that — I know it now — was smoke. The important thing was about to walk through the door.

***

She came in, a waitress unlike all the others downstairs. No tattoos, no piercings, none of the worn-out hardness of the rest. Just that artificial tail swaying like a happy puppy’s. She was beautiful in a way that did not belong in a place like that, and that should have set off alarms. It didn’t. I just stared at her like an idiot.

She exchanged a quick look with Teobaldo. He nodded, barely, a tiny gesture my brain registered and dismissed. Then she turned to me and her whole face lit up. She sat on my lap without asking, with eyes of impossible pink, probably contacts. As she settled, she dropped the weight of her ass right on top of my fly, and the artificial tail slid up and snaked around the back of my neck. I felt the heat of her thighs through the fabric, the soft pressure of her cunt brushing me just enough, with the ease of someone who had done it a thousand times.

—Well, hello there, fresh meat —she said, running a finger over my chest—. I don’t know you, handsome. And those muscles? Teobaldo, I didn’t know you had such cute friends.

—His name’s Darién, he’s a captain. Just docked —he replied, letting out a conspiratorial laugh I also couldn’t quite read—. What’s the complaint with this one?

—None —I said—. What’s your name, beautiful?

—We don’t give out real names here. But I’ll give you my work name: Dalila.

—Do you know where that name comes from? —I was pretending to be cultured, interesting, a worldly man who reads old things—. From an ancient book, from when humanity still hadn’t left Earth. A woman who seduced a very strong man just to betray him.

—Look at you —she replied, stroking my jaw with the back of her hand—. Solid, handsome, educated, and a captain. How are you holding up, stud?

—Better than ever —I lied, puffing out my chest—. I saved a fortune. Maybe it’s time I retire and find myself someone.

I winked at her. She laughed, delighted, and I felt like the king of the universe. Teobaldo ordered a whiskey; I got a beer, because my head was still spinning from hibernation. Dalila got up, and before she left she ran two fingers over the bulge in my pants, a quick brush, like signing a promise. She walked off swaying her hips and tail, and my friend looked at me like he’d just seen a trick land perfectly.

—If you don’t take her home tonight, I’ll beat your face in —he joked.

—I haven’t touched anyone in twenty years. No need to push me.

***

She came back with the drinks. When she set my beer down, her hand brushed mine and the tail caressed my neck, slow, as if it had a life of its own. A professional tease, I thought, amused. I drank. Teobaldo kept telling me stories, but after a few minutes the words started reaching me in tatters, one syllable on, one off.

The room softened around the edges. I felt heat climbing up from my belly, an animal urgency I didn’t remember ever feeling so strong. My cock got hard on its own, painfully hard, pulling at the fabric until the shape showed through entirely, as if my body had made a decision without consulting me. Dalila reappeared, though I hadn’t seen her leave, and leaned down until her mouth was an inch from my ear. Her tits brushed my shoulder and I could feel the tip of a hard nipple even through the thin blouse.

—You look rough, captain. Was the beer too strong? —Her voice was honey—. Come on, I’ll cool you off. Want me to take you to the bathroom?

—I don’t know this place —I mumbled—. It’s my first time here.

—Your first time? —She smiled sideways—. Don’t worry, I know how to handle rookies gently.

She took my hand and I followed her like a lapdog. The music slammed back into my skull as soon as we left the private room. We went into the men’s room, she got into a stall with me, and locked it.

—Sit down, Darién. Be a good boy and let yourself go.

She pushed me by the shoulders until I was seated on the toilet. I could barely think straight, my brain wrapped in cotton and a fire between my legs blinding me to everything else. She undid my belt with agile fingers, popped the button, and pulled the zipper down with a slow tug that made me moan in pure anticipation. She yanked my pants and briefs down to my knees, and my cock sprang out as hard as it had been years since I felt it, throbbing against my belly with a thick vein running from base to tip.

—And you’re well stocked too —she murmured, wrapping her hand around it and measuring it with her fingers—. Big, thick, hard. A shame.

I didn’t ask her what was a shame. She knelt between my legs, spread them with her palms, and took me in a firm grip at the base. She spat without ceremony on the tip and used her thumb to smear my glans with her own saliva, slowly, circling, until the head shone red and swollen under the filthy bathroom light. She licked her lips and went down.

Her tongue climbed slowly from the testicles to the tip, leaving a hot, wet stripe that arched my back against the cold cistern. She sucked one ball first and then the other, taking them into her mouth one by one with a gentle suction, while she worked my cock with a loose-fisted hand. When she came back up, she wrapped her lips around the glans and circled her tongue around the crown, prodding with the tip into the little hole until a rough gasp escaped me.

—Shhh, captain —she whispered with her mouth still on the tip—. Don’t make a scene for the manager. Let me work.

And work she did. She had a technique no amateur had: she knew where to squeeze, when to ease off, how to linger just at the edge and leave me panting. One hand worked the base with a slow twist, as if she were winding something up; the other stroked my balls with her fingertips, unhurried, measuring each reaction, tugging them just a little downward to hold off my climax. Her mouth moved up and down in a filthy, wet rhythm, leaving strings of spit running down her chin and painting my balls.

I closed my eyes and let myself sink into it. I’d lived two decades of emptiness, and that hot mouth felt like the most miraculous thing in the galaxy. I felt her open her throat wider and take me deeper, swallowing more than half of me in one motion, until the tip hit the back and she coughed a little without letting go. She did it again, deeper, and this time I felt her lips buried at the base of my cock, her nose pressed against my belly, her throat closing and opening around me as she swallowed. A hoarse groan slipped out of me and bounced off the tiles.

She came off with a wet sound, spat again, and went back down, now fucking my mouth with her mouth, letting me slowly push her hips upward. I grabbed the back of her neck without realizing it, burying my fingers in her hair, and she didn’t protest: she let me set the pace, faster, deeper, her pink eyes looking up at me, teary, her mouth open and full of my cock, her cheeks hollowing each time she sucked. A string of spit ran from the corner of her mouth and dropped between her tits.

My legs started to tremble. I felt the tingling rising from my balls, a deep pull behind my navel. I tried to warn her, to pull her away, to do something, but all that came out was a broken gasp. She understood and went even lower, swallowing me whole, pressing her tongue against the vein underneath. I couldn’t hold it. I came with a force that left me empty, gripping the edge of the toilet, breathing in tatters, blasting shot after shot into that mouth that didn’t move an inch. I felt her swallowing, her throat contracting around my glans, milking me to the last drop. When she finally let me go, my cock came out shining, still dripping one last thread of semen that hung from her lower lip.

***

And then I looked down, still panting, searching for her face to share the moment. What I found cut the pleasure off at the root. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, spat my load on the floor between her knees, and looked at me with a mixture of disgust and hatred that had nothing to do with the woman who had smiled at me in my lap. She stood without a word, opened the latch, and went into the next stall. I heard her vomit.

I stayed there sitting, pants around my ankles, my cock still half hard and wet, in the bathroom of a dive, understanding nothing. My head was drifting to one side. The fire in my body was no longer desire: it was poison dissolving in my blood. The beer. Her hand over mine. The tail on my neck. A shame, she had said. A shame. Every detail I had celebrated as a conquest was, in truth, a step in a trap set with patience.

The bathroom door opened and closed. Teobaldo appeared, leaning on the frame of my stall, with a smile that no longer seemed like a friend’s.

—My boy has triumphed —he said.

—Theo… I don’t feel well. Help me. —My voice barely worked.

—Look at how you’ve gotten, after all the drinking we used to handle. —He laughed, but the laugh didn’t reach his eyes—. Come on, pull up your pants and lean on me. I’ll take you to a bed.

He dragged me out of the Red Chalice. I could barely see, the floor moving under me like a ship’s deck during a hard maneuver. I didn’t register the street, or the elevator, or the hotel door where he let me fall onto a mattress. All I remember is that he didn’t ask for a room at reception: he went straight in, like someone who already knew where he was headed. He left a key on the nightstand and ruffled my hair.

—Sweet dreams, captain.

—Thanks, Theo. I’ll call you tomorrow.

There was no tomorrow, Mneme. Not as I understood it then. I fell asleep dressed, shoes on, sinking into a sleep full of twisted images and sounds stretching like hot metal. That was the last night my life belonged to me.

***

I’m writing this now with a clear head, which is its own kind of torture. Twenty years sleeping among the stars, and it took one woman, one fake smile, and one drink to hand me over completely. I thought I was a worldly man, untouchable, ready. And I fell for the oldest thing in existence: desire, vanity, the stupid need to believe someone had chosen me.

Dalila didn’t seduce me for pleasure. She was following orders, and she loathed doing it; I understood that in the last second, when it was already useless. Teobaldo didn’t gather me out of nostalgia. He marked me the way cattle are marked before they’re taken to the slaughterhouse. If you ever find this record, whoever you are, take only one thing from my confession: when you’re higher than ever, safer, most satisfied with yourself, look hard at the hand that’s stroking you. See whose smile it is. I didn’t. And because I didn’t, I lost everything.