GENEVIEVE WAITING
a sci-fi story about genetic engineering and the strange creature that came of it, with some very strange habits
GENEVIEVE WAITING ========= =======
Its mouth was disgusting. Rows upon rows of tiny, perfectly white teeth that would retract and shift, now canines, now molars, now incisors, now needle-sharp fangs, whilst its tongue coiled lasciviously around them, dripping saliva like a cartoon wolf approaching the three little pigs. It could rearrange its whole mouth in under a minute to suit any task, as if the enamel and dentine were plasticine. Some of the handlers said that when it retracted them all it could suck dick like a pro whore. I was happy not to know if that was learned from experience or not. I didn't come down here to fuck it, I came down here to stare into that awful, smiling mouth. My daily dose of horror
The head scientist, the brains behind the project and its father I guess, named it Genevieve after a dog he'd had as a child. Most of the handlers called it "Fido". Deep down I think they felt the same horror that I did. Fido and blowjob jokes took the edge off it where Genevieve seemed a dangerously dignified name. I didn't call it anything but it. Nor did I allow it a gender, though the handlers varied from "him" to "her" to improvised pronouns for hermaphrodites, and some switched day-to-day depending on whether they thought it was being more male or female at any given time. Certainly it had the equipment for both, sporting both cock and cunt as well as balls and breasts
Science Dept. were happy to keep us in the dark about just what the hell we were ferrying. They didn't tell us much at the best of times, but at least our work was usually comprehensible. In the past we'd shipped genetically tweaked dogs and cats that might grow transplantable kidneys or spleens inside their bodies. Functional medical projects like that. Genevieve was something else altogether, a distorted anthropomorphic creature patrolling its space with eerie patience. I'd almost call it art for art's sake
Its flesh was somewhere between leather and scales, sometimes wet and glistening, sometimes dry and cracked even if it showed no sign of being sore. It was hairless, changing in hue from earthy brown to slate grey to mossy green, always sombre colours, all apparently at its will. The rest of its anatomy seemed as much under its power as its teeth and colour, at least within reason. We watched it modify itself from day to day, shifting in height and build, today hardbodied, wiry and muscular, tomorrow sensuously curved with pendulous breasts, the day afterwards almost skeletally thin. At times it had three fingers or six, or it had five fingers but each was as long as its forearm. At times its tail dragged a good five feet behind it or its body bristled with trembling spines. On one occasion it seemed to delight itself by becoming nine feet tall on spindly digitigrade stilts with its back pressed against the ceiling. On another its torso was stretched out as it flexed and contorted like a serpent. Its face was a snout with an endless gleeful smile, at times hardening into a razor-sharp beak. I'm sure on those occasions none of the handlers joked about getting a blowjob from it. It had a crown of twisting horns, always black but always in new combinations, sometimes like a ram, sometimes bursting chaotically into antlers, sometimes wholly unlike anything I'd ever seen on an animal. It never stopped experimenting with its physique. I was reliably informed that its perpetually engorged cock shifted dramatically in form as well, sometimes sporting spines and ribs and ridges, sometimes quite smooth, sometimes frighteningly large. I could see the changes from those times when I looked at it, but mostly I didn't pay it any mind. I am a straight man, looking at penises isn't one of my hobbies. And anyway, I was too busy staring into its mouth
Aside from a generally humanoid body, its only constant qualities were its eyes, whose "whites" were almost luminous yellow fading softly into a mottled red iris, giving it a toxic appearance, and its wings. When they made its wings they obviously couldn't decide what kind to give it, so they gave it a little bit of everything. At the top its wings were feathered like the shoulders of a ceremonial cape, but the feathers gave way to the muscular spines of a bat's wing that in turn folded open to reveal the glass-like membranes of an insect with patterns of green and blue circles. From behind it was really quite impressive, and some of the top brass had already talked about using a stylised drawing of their full spread as a new company logo. Assuming the project paid off of course
We were taking it to Eclo, which meant three months in the freighter with it, to deliver it to a very important magister in the government of Pohrløsk. Head Office didn't tell us any more than that. All we knew about it was that the magister didn't commission Genevieve. Rumours had it that either he had found out and put in an offer to buy it early on, or that it was a gift from us to him, and that either way its "father" had been reluctant to give it up. This was why its wings had blue and green spots, because Pohrløsk is the most earth-coloured place on the whole of Eclo. Everything there is red and brown and golden and even what plants grow there are so dark in colour as to appear black. So cool and organic colours became symbols of status and opulence and became the colours of the national flag in turn, and so they were added to Genevieve's wings as a political appeasement. Because even though it was a private transaction he was still an important political figure and there was still a lot of discomfort about shipping it onto the planet. Eclo, like any other planet, had a lot of ongoing debates about the ethics of genetic engineering, and there was a popular belief that Genevieve, who they knew as Puppy from the project's official title, was a prototype for a genetically engineered killing squadron. For us on the freighter with it, believing it was a killing machine would have been a blessing. It had the clear potential to be a weapon or a work drone, but its extreme sexual characteristics left us permanently ill at ease
As per its constant priapic state, it was extraordinarily sexual in its behaviour. Every day and several times a day it could be found masturbating or otherwise showing off lewdly with its fingers and tail and sometimes its own mouth exploring its sexes, milking itself time and time again. The claim about it "sucking like a pro whore" was wholly believable after these uninhibited performances. The handlers loved to make jokes about it, about how "Fido" would hump your leg whilst rolling in its own shit. Except they weren't joking about the shit. Frequently it pissed over itself or all over the floor, smeared itself in shit, masturbated with it, ate it gleefully by the handful and without a note of revulsion. It loved to be disgusting and it made sure the room smelled disgusting
Maybe it was another coping mechanism, but the handlers used to assume it was as dumb as a dog. Especially when somebody had to go inside and scrub down the mess. But they were wrong. It was fiercely intelligent. It knew full well there were facilities in its containment to piss and shit into and could use them when it wanted to, but it knew as well exactly what would most horrify any viewer, either entrancing them or sending them running. For me, whenever it focused on me, it would show off its teeth, running its ever-stretching tongue around them for my benefit. For other crew members the masturbation and shit-play games were what did the most to get under their skin, driving dozens of them away to puke during its time on board. And believe me, when it got into daubing shit all over its body or the pristine white walls of its cell, it did so with an artist's zeal. Genevieve was nothing if not an artist. For still others it would leeringly dig its teeth into its arms or drag its sharp nails over its flesh, deliberately gouging and drawing blood with the same aesthetic intuition whilst they squirmed or squealed in fright. It invariably healed scarlessly soon enough, a new blank canvas to work on
It was smart but it didn't speak. Or it did speak after a while, but not in a way we could translate. After maybe ten days on the ship it became known that it had started singing. Wordlessly, but note-perfectly. Unsurprisingly for something with so much control over its anatomy its range seemed to stretch over the entirety of human hearing, and it could sing basic polytonal harmonies. I've been told there are kinds of singing in Tibet where you sing through your mouth and nose at once, and the nasal cavity changes the pitch of the note to create a harmonic. I couldn't tell you if it was doing that or if it just happened to have multiple vocal cords in its throat. Neither would surprise me. We all got excited when we realised that it would first mimic sounds and then start incorporating them into its singing. For a while people loved bringing different kinds of music to play to it, listening to it pick up new melodies and rhythms as it went. But it never developed into recognisable words. The handlers again assumed it was because it was a dumb animal, I think it just didn't want to talk. I think it liked being inscrutable, and I often found myself humming its melodies afterwards
We never told Head Office that it had begun to sing. In retrospect I don't think it ever occurred to us. We were used to ferrying animals where the only significant development was when some expensive pig full of heart valves occasionally keeled over dead mid-journey. Singing wasn't an eventuality we'd prepared for
I should describe Genevieve's containment unit if the next part of this story is to make sense. Not that it makes sense anyway, because it was another one of Head Office's puzzling decisions that they kept us out of the loop for. There should have been a standard containment with reinforced bullet-proof glass. That was standard procedure even for a dog, let alone a mansized beast with razor sharp horns. But instead they custom-built a room on the freighter with titanium prison bars across it. There was one set that kept it in place, with the bars drilled three feet either way into the floor and ceiling. We never said it but we all knew it was bullshit. If it never broke out of its containment it was because never in three months did it ever try. Even when the cleanup crews went in to mop up the mess it never attacked. If it had wanted to I wouldn't be surprised if it could've torn the bars out anyway. Even if it meant tearing up the floor and ceiling. Still, they used bars. There was an eight foot gap after the bars, then another row where you could stand and look at it, and only authorised personnel could open the doors to go through. Security cameras in all three parts of the room were fed back to their own independent monitoring station, independent of the ship's main security. Originally the sets of bars were six feet apart, because five feet was the longest Genevieve seemed able to comfortably stretch its limbs to. The journey had to be delayed by a week whilst the engineers bumped it back to eight feet though. Not long before our scheduled launch it casually strode up to its bars and demonstrated that it could piss much further than it could stretch
A month into the journey we had to hastily shift Genevieve to a standard containment unit, the ones with the bulletproof glass windows. A certain dignitary travelling with us as the company's guest, all in the name of good PR, decided suddenly that he wanted to see the damn thing. The company hadn't stopped anyone else from seeing it so they could hardly turn him down, and a formal visit was granted. I've heard a few versions of what happened next, but the gist of it is that it squatted and shat a massive load into its then-webbed hands, proceeding to smear it all over its terracotta-coloured breasts and cock as it masturbated and sang, wings outstretched. I'd be lying if I said the mental image of this straight-laced dignitary watching in horror as it pumped its oversized dick with a handful of excrement, moaning and serenading him lewdly, didn't amuse me. But that isn't the crown jewel. At the moment of its orgasm it swung its free arm, managing to hit the honoured guest in the face with shit despite two sets of bars in its way. I don't know why they didn't cut off the visit as soon as it shit into its hands. Perhaps they were just so used to it being confrontational that they never questioned the logic of letting it play its games in front of their hallowed guest. Perhaps they were just under its spell. The first time I was told something had happened all the handler said to me was, "Genevieve was acting up." It was the first time I ever heard him call it Genevieve and not Fido, maybe because he was secretly impressed. I know I was
So from then on it was taken out of its ridiculous custom-prison and into the relatively salubrious standard unit, whose cameras were redirected to the speciality security detail as with the original cell. The dignitary wanted to have it shot of course, which it would have probably shrugged off and gone back to pleasuring itself. In any case the company reminded him that technically it wasn't their property to shoot, and bought him off. As if he could have gone to the papers and told them he'd stood and watched a monster masturbating in feces. They would've been running exposés the next day about his tearful wife and the betrayal of learning of her husband attending tawdry alien sex shows
Perhaps it was looking for confirmation that its regular displays were having an impact. I don't know, but after the move it loved performing even more than ever, coming up to the viewer to flaunt itself. I'd never seen that mouth so close or so wide before or looked so deeply into the dark, fleshy crevice beyond, watching the pearl-white fangs shift and grow and shrink, sometimes so deliberately exaggerated that it couldn't even open or close its mouth properly. And then someone else would slip into the room, and its eyes would get that spark and it would pull its teeth back into order and go to torment them with displays of filth and gore. I got used to entering the room to find the other side of the glass with spunk or piss dripping down it, or shit-smeared palmprints. I should say it was never threatening as such, the dignitary aside Genevieve seemed more interested in appalling us than injuring anyone. Sometimes it would lick the messy windows and floor clean with the same wide grin as ever, as if to let us know it was doing us a favour by sparing the janitorial staff
I was supposed to be working in the offices on the upper decks, processing paperwork and applications and press releases and whatever else the company had that couldn't be more effectively managed with a tranquiliser gun. By the time three months had passed I was rarely "at work" though, my desk abandoned and my superiors blithely uninterested in my absence. I was usually with it, staring into its enclosure, watching it perform and try out new tricks on me or anyone else who stepped into the room. More and more I went to see it in the evenings and even in the middle of the night, sometimes passing guilty-looking crewmembers going the other way. I'd nod to it as I entered, my way of saying "I know what you were doing." So far as I could tell Genevieve never slept. Its singing was a blessing in the face of the constant soporific hum of the freighter, and once my stomach had learned to cope, the swirls of piss and shit and blood and cum and its ever-changing body gave me relief from the austere, clinical whiteness of the ship's endless corridors. I began to think of it as the most honest living creature on board, or perhaps the only one. Over time I began to believe it was psychic. I began to believe the entire company was under its instruction, that the disorganised culture on board the freighter and Head Office's baffling instructions for its containment were all its invention. The thought was oddly comforting somehow, and I wasn't really worried about it realising I was thinking about its slavering jaws
We arrived on Eclo, and Genevieve was made presentable with a pretty new gingham dress and a bow in its horns. Of course I'm lying. Actually they brought a firehose and blasted it with water to remove the mixed bodily fluids it was caked in, the facepack of greenish-brown excrement plastered over its obsidian body as it smiled with contrived innocence. I don't know if they were trying to provoke it or to pay it back for its actions or just saying "goodbye Fido". It didn't seem to mind, grinning as always and standing its ground through the entire procedure. Then they dried it off and stuck it in a new, smaller cage in the back of an armoured truck, and I was given the job of riding in the back with it
There were some good reasons why I was asked to accompany it. Management were no longer sure which of the handlers might actually have had sexual intercourse with it, having discovered that their special security feed had malfunctioned and recorded almost entirely gibberish for most of the journey. Nobody could prove anyone on the security detail had done it, so nobody could officially lose their job, but I'm assured the top brass found excuses to get rid of that entire team within the month. I did get to see some single frames that were painstakingly retrieved much later from the files to see if I recognised anyone. I didn't, not from the angles they were taken at anyway, but I can assure you Genevieve clearly enjoyed entertaining its guests. Myself I'd spent more time with it than possibly anyone, and it was no secret that I had become fixated on it, but it was no secret either that my whole concern was with its mouth and teeth and not the thought of putting my penis in there. I might have been the only person on board the ship of fools considered mad enough *not* to have gone in there with it
The inside of the truck was completely blacked out with artificial light instead, which meant I couldn't enjoy seeing Pohrløsk for the first time with its ludicrous cylindrical towers in the colour of blood, topped with glass sculptures of the tigers that were so important to Pohr culture. More importantly though Pohrløsk couldn't peek inside to see its newest inhabitant. That left no-one but myself and it, which was no problem. By now I was an old hand at keeping it solitary company
We had a long drive across city to the magister's residency, me sat on the bench whilst it crouched blithely in the four-foot-high cage, leaving me to take in its latest mutations at length. Genevieve's starless black body had faded into sleek gunmetal grey, highlighting the black cloven hooves it had given itself as well as the similarly bone-capped fingertips that replaced its usual talons. Several twisting and spiralling horns sprouted chaotically from its forehead, and its body was, truthfully, rubenesque. It seemed as surprised as me at the effect, hands exploring its breasts and belly happily
Its singing was getting huskier as we travelled, its glowing eyes rolling back from its cleavage to me as it lay back flirtatiously. There wasn't much it could do besides lay down in the cage anyway. I think it knew me better than to believe I'd actually open the cage to take it up on the offer, and besides I didn't have the key. For a while we stared each other down before it turned its attention away from me and back to its own body. Its hands were soon at its crotch, one beginning to stroke its cock whilst the other slid under its ballsack to its vagina, and its tail wrapped itself idly around the bars. I wasn't aroused by it but I watched anyway. I'd been around it for so long that I'd developed a strong sense of respect for it. I appreciated that it wanted an audience, and I was willing to honour its wishes
For all the time that I'd been around Genevieve when it was wanking or screwing itself with its tail, I'd never paid it real attention. Watching it now was fascinating, deliberately ignoring its mouth for once as its fingers tickled at its labia, parting folds and tracing along them whilst the other hand toyed with its glans. I settled back as I looked it over, the gently smiling lips and half-closed eyes, the hum of pleasure. I felt as if I was watching it simply enjoying the act of masturbating for once without making it into a work of art. Part of me wished it would repeat its torrents of shit and piss just to confirm for me that it did it out of genuine pleasure and not just to shock the others
It did exactly what it wanted to of course, audibly moaning as its hand began to stroke the full length of its cock, the other still sliding digits in and out of its vagina. I couldn't tell under its balls, but I imagined it was focusing on its clit. I watched as its body faded, turning from grey to an icy blue I'd never seen on it before, and its head rolled back with that satisfied smile and its jaws hung open as not one but three long, purplish tongues hung out to slaver over its own lips and teeth. Momentarily I was fixated on its mouth again, Genevieve was still happy to play this game. It wasn't until I heard the hard clang as it hitched up its hooves and planted them against the roof of the cage that I looked back at its crotch. Genevieve's fingers on its wanking hand were unravelling, the bone caps dissolving as the five digits split and stretched out into long, thin tendrils that wrapped tightly around its cock
I couldn't help feeling curious, sidling along the bench to get a look at its nether regions framed by its raised legs. I watched the tendrils slipping up and down its prick, and I watched as the hand in its vagina momentarily slipped free again. It began cupping and massaging its balls before succeeding, for the first time, in making me jump as it abruptly slapped itself. No matter how many times I'd seen it digging its claws into its belly or breasts or thighs, it never once occurred to me that Genevieve might be genuinely masochistic. It certainly seemed like it might be a useful trait in a fighting machine. For now its singing was punctuated with snarls and grunts as it repeated the slapping, faster and harder each time and drawing more and more noise out of itself. And then the five-fingered hand unravelled as well, its bony caps also dissolving into dozens of tendrils that filled its cunt and reached down into its asshole to fill itself. The obsidian hooves flexed unnaturally and grew into prehensile feet that wrapped their toes around the bars above, pulling its ass off the ground. Genevieve writhed and hissed and fucked and stroked itself with its coiling digits as its tongues lapped at its breasts, its wings spread theatrically against the hard iron floor
I left the bench and lay down on the floor beside it, watching the expression of joy on its face once more. It didn't take much longer before it lowered its head, planting its snout in its bosom, jaws wide open with a groan as its cock spurted, thick jets of cum landing in its mouth and splashing its face, breasts and belly. I'd seen it do the same trick with jets of piss, but I was still impressed at how damn hard it came. Its body shuddered with the orgasm, tendrils still milking its balls until the last drops were squeezed out onto its navel
Genevieve settled back, feet on the ground once more, sounding to all the world like it was purring as its sprawling tendrils slowly resolved back into the ten fingers it had had before. Its yellow eyes slid over to me again, filled with satisfaction, wiping some of the mess off of its belly and proffering the new fingers to me through the bars. "You're not my type, Gen," was all I said in reply. It smiled, and I didn't, and it began idly licking up its mess. "I'll say it's an honour working with such a consumate artist though," I added. Almost without realising I was doing it I reached through the bars and planted a hand on its shoulder. I might not have wanted to go to bed with it but I felt like I had to at least touch it once, feeling the tough, warm hide under my fingers for a moment. Genevieve grinned and trilled, a strange sort of birdcall as if it was thanking me. Those remain the only words we ever spoke to each other
We arrived with it cleaned up again, and I climbed out of the truck to meet our honoured buyer. I was greeted with a fat, short man in official blue robes and ill-fitting spectacles whom I quickly understood was the magister. I went through the motions of assuring him his purchase was here, and he grinned, or leered, like an excited weasel. "Is she obedient?" he asked in an oily voice, rubbing his hands together as if it were a nervous tic, and I felt myself bristling involuntarily. The idea that this idiot was going to own Genevieve like some sort of pet was ridiculous. I could see Genevieve taking ownership of the buffoon instead until he'd lost his novelty, then it would eat him alive and go on its way
"She's very docile," I replied deadpan, turning to watch the cage being wheeled out of the truck. I looked at Genevieve one last time, into the brilliant yellow and red that merged perfectly with its new homeland, and now we both smiled. We could both see the fat man. We both got the joke
I've remained on Eclo on behalf of the company for the past six months, taking care of other business interests of theirs in Pohrløsk and getting used to the infinite redness of everything, even the sky. I haven't had sex since I arrived here, or even felt any desire to look for it. Spending time with Genevieve seems to have destroyed my libido, but I don't have any grudge against it. It has the libido of half a dozen people after all, the universe has to balance it out somehow. I never hear of any followup on Project Puppy. I'm told there was trouble in the upper ranks over it after our delivery was made and that nobody knows where Genevieve's "father" has gotten to, and now they'd prefer to simply bury the whole story if possible. Safe to say our company logo has not changed to Genevieve's wings. As for the magister, I haven't heard of his untimely passing yet but it's only a matter of time. They say he's been looking sicker and sicker at official engagements lately. Soon enough I'm sure Genevieve will finish him off, and then she'll do whatever she wants. She's always been patient after all