The Clone’s Mate by Susan Trombley
Four
My thoughts were nothing but blank panic as I raced down one tunnel after another, hearing the creature in the tunnel overhead growing closer, then falling back with an enraged shrieking sound when something blocked its path while my remained clear.
I didn’t have any doubt by this point that it was after me, and I also didn’t have any doubt that the ones controlling this maze would probably let it catch me eventually. For now, they seemed to want to see how it solved the obstacle problem. I couldn’t be certain, but I knew now that I wasn’t the subject of this experiment.
I was definitely the prize. I felt sick to my stomach as I tried not to think too hard about the sterile odor, much less the alien one that increased and then waned as the creature came after me and then got held up by walls. The worst part was that I knew I was in a losing scenario. There was no way these monsters controlling the maze would let me escape, and since I was completely nude, I had nothing on me to help me. If I’d had shoes on, I might have been able to toss one into a door before it fully closed and use that path instead of the one they intended me to follow.
Ultimately, I think something like that would have only given me false hope though, since they could just make it easier for the creature to catch up to me.
Why did I keep running, even though I knew it was futile?
I was asking myself that as my breath grew labored and my breasts ached from bouncing and my legs trembled from exhaustion. There was simply no escape, but sheer terror kept me on my feet.
That sound, that alien scent, that knowledge that it would most definitely eat me once it caught me, kept me wending my way blindly along the path the captors wanted me to travel. I guess I preferred to die of a heart attack or simple exhaustion from running far beyond my capability than to be ripped apart and consumed like some horror movie victim.
If anything, maybe I’d run until I passed out, and then I wouldn’t feel the agonizing pain of being captured and consumed.
Apparently, even an out of shape, forty-two-year-old can run for a considerable amount of time when something nightmarish was chasing them.
The enraged shrieks had stopped, but I could still hear the vibration of the grate over my head as the creature above remained in pursuit. Perhaps it realized that vocalizing got it nowhere with the controllers of the maze, just like I’d realized that. However, as terrifying as those shrieks were, the silence of the creature was even more so, since I had only the vibration of the grates to tell me it still pursued me, and that subtle sound and movement wasn’t enough to tell me how far away it was.
Occasionally, the intensity of the alien’s scent increased enough to tell me it was close, and my spine prickled like the creature’s undoubtedly horrifying clawed hand was already dragging down it. Then I’d hear the slight sound of a wall snick shut above me.
My luck, or my captor’s good will, ran out far too soon. Either that, or the creature outsmarted the maze controllers, because it somehow got ahead of me. As I ran down a tunnel, I saw it for the first time through the grate above, just in front of me, crouching and waiting for me to race beneath it.
I slid to a stop, my throbbing feet slipping a little on the slick tile, but I was too focused on what I could see of the nightmarish creature to care that I’d almost lost my balance.
The creature was some kind of insectoid, which might have explained the chittering sounds it had made initially. It had slick, huge insect-like eyes on front of its face and mandibles just beneath them. From its crouching position, it was difficult to make out much about its body, but I saw the hint of glasslike dragonfly wings flicking behind it with each terrifying staccato movement it made.
The creature appeared to be black as a beetle in the darkness of the above tunnel, but that could have been the lighting. Its carapace was so shiny that it glimmered in the light that escaped through the bottom of the grate to limn its horrific body, giving a suggestion of an oily purplish iridescence to its chitinous shell.
“Oh, hell no!” I shrieked and turned on my heel to race in the other direction. The hair on my entire body stood on end and goosebumps pebbled my flesh as I heard the bug monster’s pursuit.
“Help!” I screamed desperately, over and over, my throat growing sore and my voice hoarse.
The bastards watching the show didn’t do a damned thing to help me, and I didn’t get too far before I heard a metallic crash behind me. I screamed mindlessly as the grate from the floor above fell with a loud clatter to the white tile on my own level.
The creature, on the other hand, dropped down silently, a dark, inky nightmare surrounded by the blinding white of the tunnel.
It only took a horrified glance back to see that thing before I hauled ass again. I knew I didn’t have a chance in hell of escaping it now, but I couldn’t stop and let it get me. I had to keep trying. Perhaps, the maze watchers would open another escape route for me and cut off the creature’s route.
The monster pursued me on two legs, and another terrified glance over my shoulder showed that it had a humanoid form, though it also had four arms rather than two. The top set of arms had freaking pincers extended from them.
I was so dead.
Still, some part of my mind really thought I’d escape. Right up until the moment I felt a stinger impale the skin in the middle of my back, causing an agonized cry from me as I tried to speed up my steps. I realized that the creature had closed the distance enough to sting me, so I was probably already dead, and the venom just hadn’t stopped my heart yet.
I felt a wave of heat filling me as my knees grew too weak to support me and I dropped to them. Strange sensations washed over my body, my skin at first flushing it until it felt like it was on fire, then it was so sensitive that I thought I could detect each individual molecule of air that brushed past it.
Then I felt bizarrely aroused, moaning as my nipples tightened and my core heated until it grew almost uncomfortable. My clit swelled and I groaned, falling back on my haunches to stare up at the grating overhead as I took panting breaths.
Each one carried an intense odor that had altered from the original scent of the insect creature, but it was still coming from the monster.
I couldn’t think straight, and all my fear had dissipated until all I felt was lust. I collapsed onto my side, writhing on the floor as my hands slid down my body. I couldn’t remember any time in my life where I’d ever felt this aroused—this in need of sexual satisfaction.
I was so needy that I turned onto my belly and crawled towards the monster’s clawed, chitin covered feet, which had paused nearby. It did not move as I caught its ankles, pulling my way up its spiked calves, rubbing my naked skin against the cool surface of its leg plates.
I practically sighed in relief as I reached its groin, pulling my face level with the obvious erection that jutted from its body, poking out of an opening in the carapace at its groin. Unlike the rest of its body, this appendage appeared fleshy, with not a hint of chitin on it. Still, there was nothing human about that alien phallus. I only guessed what it was because it was long, thick, and phallic-shaped, but it had an oval tip instead of a mushroom head, and tiny hairs on the rounded end of it that glistened with fluid welling from a hole in the tip.
It reminded me a little of a phallic-shaped mushroom.
Not that I was spending much time ruminating on it. Instead, my mouth watered since the scent emanating from that fleshy appendage smelled heavenly and only seemed to increase my arousal. Nearly mindless with need and lust, I licked the swollen tip, and the fluid that welled from it made my tongue go numb.
Probably not the best idea, but I wanted more, and I went back for more.
The creature caught my shoulder in a lower hand to stop me, and with a hard grip, shoved me back onto my naked butt as it—I suppose “he”—crouched in front of me.
I lay back as he crawled over me, then writhed beneath him, spreading my thighs wide on either side of his so when he probed my soaking entrance with the head of that shaft, he had full access to settle his body between my legs and ram it home.
Which was what he did.
I cried out in pleasure, my thighs lifting to clamp around his waist. His lower hands grasped my legs just above my knees, holding them in place while his upper hands braced his weight on either side of my head. The pincers that had been extended when he’d dropped from the upper tunnel were now retracted, folded tight against his forearms, revealing that he had two functional hands on his upper arms as well.
My eyes widened as two stingers rose from his back and darted towards my naked body after he buried himself inside me.
Still, he felt so good filling me that I didn’t scream when they both struck my body, the dagger long tips just barely puncturing the skin of my belly instead of penetrating it deep enough that the stingers alone could have killed me. I felt the heat of his venom injecting into me and spreading, with more of that wild need following in its wake until I rocked desperately on his shaft, driving myself towards an orgasm as it began to vibrate inside me.
In fact, his whole body seemed to vibrate, though he made no move to thrust, allowing me to set the pace, his insectoid head cocked slightly as his bulbous eyes regarded me unblinkingly on either side of an odd seam in the chitin of his upper face. As I moved on his shaft, the mandibles that sat tight against the lower half of his face shifted, splitting just enough that I saw there was something hidden beneath them, too darkened by shadow for me to make out more details. I suspected it was his mouth, and I only vaguely concerned myself that he would eat me. I was too excited and too out of my head with lust to care at that point.
Whatever aphrodisiacal venom he’d pumped into me was working overtime. I didn’t give a damn about looks. All I needed was for him to fill me like he was doing, and the vibration of his body drove me to an orgasm. As my sheath convulsed around his length, his head tilted. He lifted his body slightly to look downwards at where our bodies were joined, almost as if he was surprised by the feeling of my inner muscles gripping his flesh.
I was moaned and writhed, clutching at his second set of arms, my thighs tightening on his waist as I begged for more in a raspy, desperate voice. I felt terrified that he would pull out of me and leave this horrible need to drive me mad without fulfilling it. His stingers remained extended from his body, hovering near my naked skin, but not puncturing it again. His wings spread fully behind him, their span large enough for the rounded tips to bend against both sides of the tunnel.
When he lowered his head towards mine, I thought he was going to kiss me, which made no sense since he had no lips, only that hard set of mandibles. Still, I was reacting more than thinking, so when they came close enough to me, I peppered kisses across their chitinous surfaces. He tilted his head, then rubbed his mandibles along my lips, then nudged my jaw with them, and finally pressed them against my neck. It felt almost like he was sniffing my naked skin, but he had no nose, so that didn’t make much sense either.
The whole time he did this, his shaft continued to vibrate inside me, and I had another orgasm, my body already primed from the first one. Again, this caused a reaction in him as he lifted his head and began to pull away from me.
I clung to his lower arms, the chitinous plates covering them slippery beneath my fingers, so when he pushed his body upwards, mine went with it.
“No!” I begged. “Don’t stop! Please, don’t stop now!”
His lower hands caught my waist and tugged my body away from his enough for him to look down again at where we were connected. His extended wings flicked in a way that would have freaked me out in any other situation, since it was so reminiscent of an insect and so clearly inhuman.
Of course, now I was probably the creepy one, sticking to him like a tick, afraid not of him, but that he would pull out of me and leave me aching and empty and suffering from an intense need I’d never experienced before.
“This is your fault,” I growled, then lifted my hands to his mandibles, tugging on his head until he raised it to regard me again with those blank, shiny black eyes. “You did this to me!” I said in a tone that I would normally have called whiny, but you could hardly blame me at that moment. “Don’t you dare stop!”
I don’t know what the aphrodisiac venom was that he’d injected me with, but it would make a fortune on Earth—or destroy mankind altogether if it wasn’t diluted.
A lot.
The chitin beneath my palms vibrated almost as much as his shaft, making a humming sound. The creature himself made a quick chittering sound, mandibles shifting against his mouth again. He lowered them to my lips and bumped my face, pausing with his mandibles pressed against my mouth as if he were waiting for me to kiss him.
It didn’t seem sexually motivated, but rather an act of curiosity, like nudging a lab rat that is lying still to see what it does next.
I didn’t care about his motives. I kissed him a bunch of times on those mandibles, breathing deeply through my nose, because he smelled so damned good that I couldn’t seem to get enough of his scent.
In fact, it only seemed to increase my desire, which wasn’t waning at all, despite the two orgasms and another approaching rapidly as he continued to vibrate.
I arched my back as I climaxed for the third time, my eyes rolling back into my head and my entire body shuddering with my release. My inner muscles ached from the force of that climax, convulsing so hard around him that I knew I would feel sore later.
This time, he pulled completely out of me, and I screamed at him in frustration as he sat up, regarding my lower body with a cocked head, wings flicking.
“Damn you!” I shouted, then kicked his leg, the slick surface of his chitin hard against the bare sole of my foot.
Almost casually, one of his stingers stabbed my upper thigh. Again, it didn’t penetrate deep enough to do much damage, but I felt the burn of his venom as the tip tore my flesh.
This time, it didn’t increase my arousal. This time, I felt unconsciousness stealing over me as it pumped through my blood.
Just as the darkness claimed me, I felt his clawed fingers probing my entrance, then delving inside, like he was examining it.
