This story, which I’ve forcefully refrained from editing for re-release, won Circlet Press’s Valentine’s Day Microfiction Contest in 2008. The idea was to write a story, 1000 words or less, which explored the future of Valentine’s Day. In an erotic manner, of course. This was the story which launched me into writing erotica, and I want to share it with you as my very first post on this new website.
Terran Export
by Victoria Pond, 2008
He could hear the chittering from the Ralakians who’d congregated on the upper left side of the arena, could make out the low hum of a language unintelligible to human ears from the Voksangs dead ahead. Excited energy bounced off every wall as his audience waited for him to enter the arena. Separated out by species, hundreds of thousands had turned up at Alpha Station for the performance.
No, not performance. For them, it was practically a religious ritual. A ritual no one else could perform. Only a human, and not just any human. Only Terrans could see the lines of love, the chords of compatibility. Only Terrans could visualize in this way and even then on only one day of the Terran calendar year.
Valentine’s Day. February 14th.
His assistant, Cindy, knew better, of course. Terran, human, and absolutely gorgeous, he’d contracted her to help with the show. Whoever had started this scam had set it in motion centuries ago, and while some of his planet-mates thought him worse than a charlatan for playing to the hysteria, Cindy was among those who shrugged and said, “Caveat alien.” The Romans would approve, even if Saint Valentine might not.
The humming grew to a feverish pitch, his cue to enter. He strode to the center of the arena. Slipping out of his red, floor-length vestments to stand naked before the lovelorn galaxy. He beckoned to Cindy. She knew her part. First she painted a large heart in edible chocolate paint onto his chest. Then she drew a long arrow through the heart in sandalwood oil, picked up a wickedly long pin, and pierced his skin at the pelvic bone hard enough to draw a river of blood which artfully streamed down the bone towards his cock. It didn’t hurt. The needle was very sharp, and he’d injected a local anesthetic before starting.
True showmanship between them, Cindy turned him in a wide circle, pointing out his physique and new embellishments like she was seeing them for the first time or maybe like she was selling a brand new airship, factory seal unbroken.
The crowd roared their approval and excitement as expected. After all, he was the galaxy-renowned Acting Valentine. He felt the heat increase in the room, the thermostat’s autotimer set in advance. He ran a finger down Cindy’s wrists, the signal that she should move on to the next phase.
Her hands settled on his shoulders and pushed him down to lay on the ground, packed with Terran dirt for the occasion. She walked around him, giving every audience section a good look. Then she knelt on top of him, leather-clad legs on either side of his hips, and proceeded to lick the chocolate from his chest enthusiastically.
Cindy, he thought, must really like chocolate.
The rasp of her tongue against his shaved chest pulled at the hairs that were growing in, pulled at the nerve endings he always forgot were there because no one touched him this way. No one touched him other than once a year. He couldn’t help the sounds that poured from his throat, his mouth, his nose. Panting, moaning, whining, he encouraged her to lick harder to get every molecule off his chest. But he didn’t move. He couldn’t move. Moving would invalidate the ritual for the Ralakians, and they were traditionally the best customers. If you could call this traditional.
He shrieked under Cindy’s mouth, when she broke with tradition and gnawed at him, gnawed at everything he was, trying to get more of the chocolate or of his sweat and desire and pent-up love connection. Finished with her task, she sat up, smirking, to the roaring approval of the crowd. He felt the humming from the Voksang section running through his bones, his veins, the part of him that Cindy was crushing painfully, wonderfully against her ritual vestments.
Smirk still firmly in place, she ran the fingers of both hands through the viscous oil of the painted arrow, swirling it with her nails, coating him in its sheen. She played his nerves with her art, and when he was sure he would have to move, have to push into her hands, into her legs, into anything to get relief from the internal pressure, to get external pressure, anything because he couldn’t take it anymore, Cindy’s hands moved downwards and between them. Her oil-slick fingers danced over his manhood, pushing and pulling as if testing the validity of it.
The sensation was at once both an improvement and a greater torture. He could barely hear the groans and pleas that escaped him. All he knew was that he needed more and that Cindy was the only one who could provide. The best he’d ever had. He needed, he wanted, if only she would, please, please, yes!
With a final strangled cry, he spilled his seed over her hands and her leather costume. She smiled at him fondly, indulgently, but made no sound. Her silence was a piece of her role. In sweat and semen and heart’s blood, they painted symbols upon the floor of the arena and upon his flesh. He was, after all, the conduit for the benevolent galaxy’s love matching.
Those in the audience who had the appropriate tickets matching the symbols would find their love, whoever had a matching ticket among their species. And those pairs (or quartets, in the case of the Shiiivtx) would then live happily ever after. Their love would be blessed and consecrated by the Terran Valentine ritual, Terrans being the only purveyors of true love matchmaking. It never failed. Never.
Even as he tallied up the number of offerings and the tickets sold this performance and the pre-sales, he couldn’t wait for next year.
The End… till next time