S.O.S Jupiter

Stirred from an uneasy sleep filled with lots of dreams, she got out of bed before seven in the morning. Had she slept for four hours? Maybe. At least no more than that. Rubbing her dry, sore eyes, she stretched and let out a groan. Wednesday. Getting out of bed, she plodded out of her bedroom. The flat lay there bathed in the light of a sun just risen; she squinted at it with tired eyes. What was she going to do today? She was apparently a persona non grata at work for the time being, so that was out of the question. And the gym? Hah! A sardonic smile as she entered the bathroom. Bad idea. Her white nightgown ended up on the floor. Well, at least she would not have to put up with Drange's Double Hearing Disorder today.

The shower invigorated her, and now the claw marks on her back were not bothered by the water anymore. Casting a look at Helena's two bottles, her face hardened into a dark scowl. No reply at all. Was it so damn hard to reply to an SMS? She took one of her own shampoo bottles and soaped her hair in. Another bottle for her body. A bottle of intimate soap for her intimate parts. Her very hairy intimate parts. Maybe Denise was right. Maybe she should shave herself down there. It was a jungle. A rainforest. Would she need a hedge trimmer?

Okay. Deep breaths. She could do it. She shaved her legs. This was no different. With a slightly shivering hand she turned the water off. She needed her glasses, she was not shaving blind down there. Covered in a large, azur towel she exited the bathroom. Soon the bespectacled Amalie re-entered the bathroom, a pair of scissors in her hand. Her lady-shave kit was laid out by the sink. At first her hands trembled too much to even hold the scissors, but a couple of deep breaths and a tiny bout of crying calmed her nerves. Slowly and with surgical precision she started cutting off the blond, curly pubic hairs. It was a lot. The wet hair landed on the floor beneath her. Enough to give a bald man a full head of Art Garfunkel hair.

Then came the most nerve-wrecking part. Leaning back as far as her strong lower back allowed her, she spread her legs, looking at her now far more visible labia. No different from shaving her legs. She could do it. She put shaving foam on her groin, seized the razor and started shaving, trying with all her concentration not to accidentally cut her labia.

It was way easier than she thought. Soon there was not a single hair left on her mound. Neither around her labia. The feeling was very unusual. She felt so... cold. So naked. So exposed. It was mind-boggling. She re-entered the shower to wash off the remaining shaving foam.

"Ow..." she let out. Looking down, she realized that she had cut herself while shaving. Luckily it was only on her mound, just below her tummy. No big deal. She cut herself while shaving her legs too. Soon the water had washed away both the shampo and the little that was of blood.

With a smile of surprise on her face she looked at her completely hairless groin. A curious gaze. She actually had a little mole there, on the left side of it, next to her inner thigh. Putting on a pair of underpants, she let out a surprised squeal. The soft silk fabric tickled her! Aroused her. She barely dared to move. Her mouth slightly opened. Massive tingles. Could she get from the bathroom and into the kitchen without too much stimulation?

Walking in a careful, rather awkward gait, she left the bathroom, dressed in today's choice of clothing: A pair of zebra-colored tights under a dark-red denim skirt, a broad, black belt, a black turtleneck sweater and a white poncho. Even with all those clothes she felt as naked as she had been in the shower. She put on a pot of coffee and made herself a grilled toast with ham, cheese and red pesto.

A little while later she was sitting in the living room eating and drinking coffee while reading the newspaper. Another pig had been blown sky high. This time a local farmer named Greg Shayve had followed the advice of mister Cliff Taft, the man who wanted to put clothes on animals. The farmer posed next to four of his pigs, all of which had been dressed in clothes. More precisely gray jogging pants and red sweaters. The clothes had been donated from a local football team. As mister Shayve himself said: "Now we don't have to worry about the Pig Exploder Psycho again." The porcine serial killer seemed to have got his own name by the community now: PEP, just like the infamous American serial killer BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill). Amalie shook her head. At least she took comfort in knowing that there existed people out there who were more messed-up than she was.

Her blue eyes fell upon an ad for the local library. Maybe she should pay it a visit. She had not been there since she was in upper secondary, and then she virtually lived there. Now she had a plan. Today she was going to be Library Girl! Yeah! Getting up with determination, she put on a pair of black leather boots and a black winter jacket, before leaving the flat.

Soon there would be silence in the library.

***

The main library of Central Battersby was situated in immediate vicinity to the railway station and the bus terminal. It was inaugurated in 1887, the same year as the opening of the railway station. The library was opened on 3 May that year, by the mayor of the time, former admiral Hogtwat Aristoteles Cuntford (27 June 1831 - 4 February 1904). Mayor Cuntford actually read all 252 verses of Thunderknave's infamous poem "Flirting With a Curtain". There were 2,766 people present on the inauguration. 43,77 % fell asleep standing on their feet. The rest of them wanted to rip off their own ears. Even the mayor's personal assistant, Percival Pottytraining (13 April 1862 - 29 January 1919), got seized by severe ennui at the end. It took the mayor two hours and thirty-three minutes to recite the poem in its entirety, allegedly the first time since 1637 that it had been done publicly. A journalist from the Sersby-Battersby Gazette was there to document the opening of the library, Oliver Lowborough (18 December 1854 - 6 July 1906). Mister Lowborough wrote the following about the historic recital:

We can all agree whole-heartedly that "Flirting With a Curtain" is a piece of work that is highly demanding to performe by virtue of its sheer length. Mayor Cuntford excelled by not only reading the entire poem, but also by reading it with pathos. Not one eye was dry. At least no eye that was not shut due to somnolence.

The library had an entire shelf devoted to Thunderknave, and even an unofficial contest that was started in 1924 and that still went on: Anyone who read the "Curtain Poem" - as it is known as among Thunderknave connoisseurs (or Knavies as they call themselves) - aloud in a public gathering of at least 252 people, would get their name inscribed on the wall next to the Thunderknave shelf. Up until 1952 they would also get a set of curtains and, oddly, a potato. While the first gift made perfect sense, the second made no sense what-so-ever. Just like much of Thunderknave's canon.

Amalie thought nothing of the library's history as she entered the large, church-like doors of this old, venerable building. Unbottoning her black winter coat she politely greeted the two female, middle-aged librarians behind the dark oaken counter, before heading into the reading room section, where popular books and tables were to be found. She walked over to the science fiction section, her black leather boots thudding against the old wooden floor.

Her blue gaze fell on a rather inconspicuous book. It was called S.O.S Jupiter. She took it out of the shelf and opened it. It was a 1985 short story collection by a Norwegian professor in sociology, based in the Norwegian city of Trondheim. Amalie had never been in neither Norway nor Trondheim and did not know a word of Norwegian. For some reason this rather obscure book had been translated into English and somehow found its way to the main library of Central Battersby. She shrugged. At least now she had found a way to kill a couple of hours. Armed with a cup of caffè latte from the nearby coffee automat, she sat down by a long table by which five other people were seated. She started reading, immersing herself into the wonderful mind of another person.

I was 15 when they came and picked me up. I was with my sister in a corn field a couple of kilometers from home. There was a blinding light in the sky. Then they pulled me up. I saw my sister's horrified face. That was the last time I saw her. I can still remember her face.

Amalie read with her mouth slightly opened, her eyes darting back and forth across the cheap, yellowing paper. The protagonist of the story was deprived of his clothes and put in some kind of zoo where the aliens would look at him every day.

At first it was embarrassing being naked. I tried to hide, but there was no place to hide in there. They pointed at me. Many of them laughed, especially the females. But, as the months passed by, I grew accustomed to it. By my 16th birthday I was no longer embarrassed of being nude. Now I was just lonely and bored.

She flipped the pages, intrigued by this unusual story. She had never read anything quite like it. A quite extensive description of the aliens that captured him followed; how they looked, their language (which he soon acquired knowledge of through exposure), their customs, their country's relationship with other countries on the planet, their foreign-world policy. Everything. And in uncanny detail as well, like the author had been there himself.

When he was 17, something very interesting happened. His captors brought another human being into his cage. Amalie let out a deep gasp that made a few heads turn around her on the large table.

She was probably somewhere in her late 30's, her body lean and slim, her breasts big and still firm despite her age. She had long, blond hair, hazel eyes and a calm, dignified demeanor. We spoke together, despite the aliens watching us. She knew my Earth language, but since she had not practiced it in years, it sounded a bit odd, especially the sentence structure. She had been kidnapped from Planet Earth more than twenty years ago, when she was a teenager. I was the first human being she had met in all those years. The look on her face when I hugged her, was something I will remember to the day I die.

A tear ran down Amalie's face. Then she read a long passage about how they gave into each other's desires, with the aliens watching them from outside the cage, taking pictures of them, filming them - some of them even covering the eyes of their children. Amalie blushed. It was quite graphical. Then, the passage concluded:

The day after we got the best food we had ever tasted. The zookeepers hinted that such wonderful food would arrive if we continued to have intercourse. We did.

Amalie smiled. She continued reading the story. It turned out that the zookeepers wanted the two to have children. It did not work with the late 30's woman since her child-bearing years were apparently over. A sting in her heart as the aliens one day sedated them both. When the young man, now 20, woke up, she was gone. He spent the next months in increasing mental torment. He became restless. Aggressive. Horny as all f*****g Hell. Amalie shuddered in empathy. She knew the feeling so damn well. The ache. It had to be even worse in guys than in girls.

A year of torment and loneliness later the aliens brought another female human being to the cage. This time a lot younger one:

She was probably around 16 or 17. Chestnut-colored hair. Dark-brown eyes. She looked like an angel, tall and slender, and with small breasts. When first laying her eyes upon me, she got frightened, trying to get out. It was impossible, nobody could get out. Nobody had ever got out. I spoke to her. She was from another country back on The Blue Planet, but luckily I knew the language. We spent the next days bonding. The aliens watched our every movement. I knew their language, she did not. I explained her what they wanted from us. At first she became apalled. Then she accepted it.

Another long, graphical passage. This time Amalie had to take deep breaths to ease her deep, swollen ache and her unbearable, tantalizing desire. To be blunt, she wanted to rip her clothes off and spread out of the table, begging the males of the room to take her swiftly, brutally and without mercy. Her mouth was dry. Her cheeks boiling. Her body half-paralyzed by insane head tingles.

The man and the young brunette spent two weeks together where they did little else than making love like... well... wild animals. As he grew tired of her, the aliens came and took her away. He spent a couple of months alone in the cage. Then another woman was let into the cage, a plump, red-haired one. Another couple of weeks with copulation followed. Amalie know got the gist of this strange story: The man was being used as a live inseminator. The aliens wanted to breed human beings outside of Planet Earth, something that had not been done before. It was insinuated that the aliens were not aware of the humans' superior intelligence due to the language barrier, and that they were instead being used for manual labor like common cattle.

It was also very vaguely insinuated that the humans had become part of the cuisine of this alien world, and that the raising demand for human flesh had made the aliens start the breeding program in the first place.

What ever was the aliens' intention, the man could not care less. He was in Paradise! During the next decades he impregnated thousands of women, all of them young, fertile and physically attractive. However, as he grew old and lost his libido, the aliens stopped bringing women to him. The story ended with a paragraph that sent shivers down Amalie's spine:

One day the door to the cage opened. They came and brought me out. As I headed towards something that looked like an executioner, I caught a glimpse of a boy, possibly not older than 13 or 14. He was my successor. They put him in the cage.

Her heart was racing. She let out a whimper. Letting out a moan she noticed a very wet feeling in her underpants. The story had literally made her wet! Embarrassing as all Hell. Feeling her naked groin virtually radiate with ache, she got up and politely put the book back where she found it, in the section of science fiction. This short story was probably the best darn thing she had ever read in her life!

Upon exiting the library of Central Battersby, she did not know what to do. She wanted so badly to talk about what she had just read. Discuss it. What was the author's intention of writing it? What was the themes? The true idea behind it? Her mind was pacing. It was a gushing torrent of loose concepts, trying desperately to make sense of the chaos. The utter chaos.

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