Microfiction: Feeling Double, by Lucy Callaway
Feeling Double
by Lucy Callaway
Nikki is no innocent. She likes sex as much as the next girl, probably even more, and if she hasn’t yet seen it all, then it’s not for want of trying. She had her first threesome when she was seventeen, pressed naked between soft curves and hard angles that made her breath catch in her chest. She remembers crowded rooms and sweat-shiny skin, thighs and arms and faces that all look the same. She has stared into a camera’s eye, she has writhed within leather constraints and she has lain naked in the moonlight as dew fell from the midnight sky. But she has never known this. And nothing has burned within her like the touch of mirrored hands.
The first time she met Duo, Nikki clutched Jake’s hand and smiled with her teeth. He was a perfect imitation, more than a mere collection of spare parts and duplicated genes. They were the same; they were manufactured brothers; they were master and creation. She felt her heart splitting, but she laughed when Jake wrestled his clone to the ground, Duo’s tee shirt riding up to reveal smooth, untanned skin. Watching, a part of her wanted to peel the high-heels from her feet and join them on the floor, pressing her palms to the flesh of Duo’s stomach while stilling Jake’s laughter with her kiss. Perhaps she might have, if Jake hadn’t paused to draw a shaky and audible breath. Instead, she watched as Duo smiled and curved into his double’s hand, new and golden and utterly transparent. The first time she saw it, she felt like she might cry.
Nikki understands attraction and the seductive dance of need. The edges of her world compress when she looks into Jake’s eyes, rosy and mottled and shimmering just out of view. She twists beneath the scrape of too-short fingernails, willing her skin to become scarred and red, branding her as his possession as she, in turn, marks him. She loves the sensation of warmth and solidity within her arms. Jake’s thighs press against her own and she dives blindly, ever downwards, while Jake’s caresses knot her hair.
She watches as Jake and Duo fight over the remote control, the channels flickering and flirting with monochromatic fuzz. Her bare toes smooth the curves of Jake’s knee and he covers them with one hand, tickling Duo with the other. She understands that the divide between archetype and copy is treacherous. The knowledge wells within her, bright and dancing with possibilities that she dares not voice. There is magic in the air and she lifts her throat to breathe it in, stretching and reaching as she presses frantic fingertips into her own goose-bumped flesh. She could watch them forever, imperfect reflections that meld and seduce as she slides hands across her staring eyes. She wonders when it began and where she ends.
Duo kisses Jake’s forehead, a silent brush of pink lips and the clench of a hand within the folds of her boyfriend’s sweater. She thinks it is wrong to want him, to want them both. Not-innocent, just as Duo is Not-Jake, the same and yet beautifully different. She watches and, eventually, Jake includes her in his smile.
Nikki knows better than to ask questions. The answers are in the oxygen she breathes and in the cast of shadows beneath Duo’s lashes when Jake wraps an arm around his neck. She twists into the other arm, inches away from Duo’s lips, and they share breath while Jake watches cartoons with sleepy eyes. She wonders what it would be like to taste the brand on Duo’s wrist, as his fingers loop across Jake’s chest, bare inches from her own. She understands. She curls a leg around Jake’s leg and kisses his clone while he strokes her hair.
Duo is smooth where Jake is rough, a collection of echoed limbs that somehow finds purpose in the depths of a frantic kiss. He strokes Jake’s neck and Nikki’s arm and shudders when she presses him back against his double’s chest. Jake’s hand is a warm affirmation against the small of her back, and she reaches to cover his fingers with her own, even as Duo runs his hand along her leg. Sparking and spiralling, she gasps and draws breath. They kiss and Jake watches, touch and Jake circles them within his arms. And, as Nikki stretches out against the length of the couch, two mouths bruise her neck with burning kisses and four hands trace circles on her breasts.
They kiss above her, the lines of their faces blurring and becoming indistinct. Jake pushes her shirt higher and Duo dips slim fingers beneath the waistband of her skirt. She arches into man and mirror as they set fire to her skin, pushing them together with lust-moistened hands when they stray too far apart, twisting into the movement of Duo’s fingers as Jake bites the stretch of his clone’s neck. If she paused, she might wonder at the fact that three could fit together so well, but there is no time for thought when she is immersed in sensation, the slide of Jake and Duo above her and the sight of them tangled in each other’s embrace.
Nikki has never known this before and now she feels like she will never breathe again. She moans as Duo pushes inside her and digs painted fingernails into his neck. Jake presses into his clone’s hand, his mouth hot against Nikki’s breast, and melds them together, three into one, as the air shimmers with desperation and something she can’t quite catch. She can’t remember where the lines are and can’t stop shivering as she loses herself in their touch. Everything is shaded and yet translucent and Nikki can’t decide whether she is falling or whether this is the way it’s always been. And Duo loves her, and she loves Jake, and somehow it’s so incredible that she forgets how much it stings.
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Lucy Callaway is a writer, educator and wearer of masks. She lives in Australia with her dog and her imagination.
Mirrored from Circlet Press: Welcome to Circlet 2.0.