Driver

Driver Pt. 14 Sexual Healing

This is a work of fiction. All characters depicted are over the age of 18.

Travis Mack flickered awake like a worn-out fluorescent lamp struggling to light. For a moment he lay peering straight up into a blue, cloud tufted sky, unable to fathom where he was or how he'd got there. Almost unable to recall his own name, until a dark flood of memory poured into the pit of un-knowing. Heart racing, he raised his right arm to find in its place a hideous, swollen sausage, a hot-pink monstrosity bent 45 degrees where his elbow would have been. Working around the circumference, he pressed divots into the spongy tissue feeling nothing. His once beloved arm was now inert, numb, dead as a dodo, from just below the armpit to the knuckles of his blanched right hand.

From his vantage point in the middle of a great big bed, in what must have been a white-walled, open-air courtyard, Mack saw movement in a second space beyond and a figure loomed into his field of view- a willowy blonde female, hauntingly familiar, dressed in a Lil' Monster T and loose sage shorts tied at the front with a bow. "Wendy?" he croaked, trying to sit.

"Welcome back, Rip Van Winkle. Geez... I was beginning to wonder if you'd ever wake up."

"Wendy?" Mack panted, waving the alien appendage around as she sat beside him. "What the FUCK?"

"Calm down there partner, or you're gonna chuck a hearty."

"Calm DOWN? Have you seen this thing?"

"For crying out loud, Trav, i's just a sheath, like a cast, to support your arm and

keep the bugs out."

"Keep the bugs outa' what?" Mack huffed, palpating the pseudo-flesh.

"That big fuck-off hole in your arm. While it heals."

"The fuck? I mean, the FUCK?"

"Is that all you can say? Look, mate, your arm's doing fine. This should slough-off in a month or two once the nerves grow back."

"Well where the hell am I and how the fuck did I get here? And why did they put me outside? Am I infectious?"

"Outside?" Wendy looked around then raised her eyes to the cloudscape. "Oh. The sky. No, that's just a projection. Like a screensaver."

"So where am I? Is this a hospital?"

"Eww... I'd never send you to one of those disease-ridden joints. Even if you do deserve it. No. This is somewhere else altogether."

"For fuck's sake Wendy, where?"

"Where countless have yearned to go and none have been."

"Jesus, Wendy, don't make me come over there. Where?"

"Take a sniff." Mack dutifully wrinkled his nose and a smirk crept onto Wendy's face. "What does it smell like?"

"I don't know. A candy store?"

"The twin's bedroom. Spot on."

"The girls?" Mack asked, trying once more to sit. "Are they here?"

Arm around his shoulders, Wendy helped him up. "They're on the way."

"We're in The Big House?" Mack asked, clinging valiantly to his wits while confusion swirled around him.

Wendy shook her head. "We're on the island. Requiem."

Slowly taking in more and more of his surroundings, Mack fixated on a stainless-steel stand to his left, hung with an empty bag of intravenous fluid, clear plastic tubing looped over the top. Beside it a monitor, silently plotting a raft of vital signs- the green squiggle of an ECG and the figure '48', along with '98' in red for saturation, respiration '16' in yellow and, to the lower left, blood pressure in white; '120/80'. Checking each arm in turn, he looked at Wendy. "What's with the monitor?"

"Your vital signs?"

"Mine?" Mack asked, raising the hot pink arm again as pins and needles tingled in his hand. "But I'm not hooked up."

Wendy blew a raspberry. "Hooked up? That's so last week. No one bothers with leads anymore. The sensors in your sheath are all blue-toothed."

Mack heard a harsh 'meow' and a cinnamon-brown animal jumped onto bed, fixing him with golden, slit-pupilled eyes. "Your cat?"

"Have pussy will travel, you know me. Come to check on your old Unky Trav, Pest? He's been worried about you you know."

Tail up, shoulders undulating, Stewie the cat stalked across the mattress and Mack had the feeling he was smiling. He raised a fist and received a head-butt in reply before Stewie stood sniffing his hot-pink arm. "So, what am I doing here, in the girls' room? With my crewie and her handicap. Should I ask?"

"Why? Where would you rather be?"

"Somewhere that made sense. I mean, is this all real or am I just hallucinating?"

"Oh it's real, alright. And so are you. A real pain in the arse."

"Wow. Awesome bedside manner."

"Years of practice, sport."

Fingers pressed to his eyes, Mack fought to settle his gyros. "No. Really. You might be having fun but it's all a bit of a mind-fuck. With this disgusting arm and all."

Edging to his side, Wendy slung her arm around him. "Sorry, mate, I shouldn't take the piss. It's the drugs."

"Right. The drugs."

Stewie the cat settled to Mack's right, forming a perfect loaf, front paws tucked under his furry chest, tail curled neatly around. "The ones we used to keep you in a coma." Wendy went on.

"A coma. Uh huh."

"While your arm was being rebuilt."

"Rebuilt. Got it."

"In Zurich."

"Right, good. So this IS just a dream."

Wendy pinched Mack's left arm and he went. 'Ow!' "Listen," she asked, "what's the last thing you remember?"

"Errr..." Mack frowned, rifling his memory bank, "watching Bliss run up the road with Tony on her back?"

"Anything else?"

"Oh... some asshole smacking me in the elbow with a sledge hammer."

"And...?"

"Skip," Mack said wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose, "I know you think you're doing this for my own good, but why don't you just tell me?"

Tell him how he'd almost bled-out in the infirmary, while Sunrise Virtue's crew lined up outside to give blood? By direct transfusion, out of one arm into another. How Sally, falling back on her distant medical training, had to shoo the crying twins away so they wouldn't see him die? How the makeshift ED resembled an abattoir while they fought to save his arm, between packing Blaire's leg and Sardonic's shattered shoulder? "After reaching Sunrise we met up with the Lightwave, to drop off the gang... Carter, the girls and their little friend. Then while you three boys were away in La La Land, we transferred to the sub and went to Houston. Houston Zurich. Zurich Requiem. First class all the way."

"And why, pray tell, did we go all the way to Germany?"

"Germany?"

"You just said we went to Zurich. Unless that's a new US city I haven't heard of."

"Zurich's in Switzerland, dear."

"Same diff. So why?"

"Why Switzerland? The chocolate of course." Wendy blew a chef's kiss. "Swiss chocolate. Ooo la la!"

"Skip. I'm not in the mood."

"Crankypants. Look, we took you boys to a secret, billionaire's-only beauty parlour and day-spa."

"Skiiip!"

"True story. It's where the elites go for new livers and kidneys and stuff. And crisper ageria treatment and stem cell therapies."

"A-what treatment?"

"Geria. Immortality drugs."

"Yeah, nah, now I know you're making it up. There's no such thing."

"Mate..." Wendy sighed, "...if only you knew."

"What?"

"Look, it's a long story. Let's just say your arm was barely hanging on by a thread, which luckily happened to include an artery. But you would have lost in in the mainstream, which is why we had to go all the way to Zurich."

"For a shot-up arm?"

"It wasn't shot up, Trav, it was almost shot off. They had to grow you a new one. Like Tony's leg. And Phil's shoulder. You boys were a mess!"

"They okay?"

"Tony and Phil? They're doing fine. Back home in rehab."

Mack compressed his lips. "Did they both wind up with pretty pink casts?"

"No." Wendy replied, guiltily recalling she'd chosen the colour herself. As a joke. If by joke she meant passive-aggressive revenge. "Only you."

"Oh, excellent."

"Why? What's the matter?"

"Look at it. I won't be able to show my face in public."

"I think it suits you. Goes with your eyes. Anyway, that's a quasi-vivific matrix right there, worth a couple of mil."

"The FUCK? And who's gonna pay for that?"

"Settle, petal, Carter's picking up the tab. Nine or ten million when it's all said and done. Two-fifty K a day just for the bed. And the lab, where they de-boned your arm and kept it in a nutrient bath, another couple of mil. Then they 3-D printed new bones in titanium mesh, which they seeded with your own osteoblasts. Then re-implanted them, while I got to watch, which was cool. Man... the stuff I saw in that hospital... well... to be honest, I sort of wish I hadn't. If the herd beasts only knew what the elite were up to."

"Herd beasts?"

Wendy twirled a finger. "Us, darling. The livestock."

Raising his injured right arm, Mack flexed his fingers, clenching and unclenching his fist. "Awesome. Grip-strength of a baby."

"Actually babies have an unusually strong grip strength... it's called the palmar grasp reflex. You should be proud."

"Why does my arm feel so light?"

"Drug induced. You've got enough local on board to stun an ox. As your muscles regenerate it'll all start to feel normal."

"Will I be able to fly?"

"Mate. You'll be able to do anything."

"Play the piano?"

Wendy's brows shot up. "You play the piano?"

"No. But you just said I'd be able to do anything."

" 'Tells lame dad jokes'. Check. Congratulations, you're well on the road to recovery."

Mack peeked under the sheet to find himself naked. "Skip. Can you fetch me a towel?"

"Towel? What for?"

"I need to pee. Like. I really need to pee."

"Hang on," Wendy said, already on her feet, "I'll get you a bottle."

"The fuck... the hell you will." Mack rasped, slinging his legs out of bed.

"Trav, for Pete's sake. You've been in a freaking coma the last few weeks. You have to take it slowly."

"I AM taking it slowly, Skip. See? Towel?"

"What the flip do you need a towel for?"

"You know. So you don't see my..."

About to say, 'Your penis? The one I fitted with an indwelling catheter? And from which I only just removed same?' Wendy rolled her eyes. "I was a nurse, Trav. I've seen all sorts of terrible things."

"So you say." Mack grunted, pushing off the bed with one arm, getting halfway to his feet before slumping down again.

"Why do you have to be so pig-headed!" Wendy fumed, secretly brimming with admiration for her erstwhile partner. Arm around his shoulders, holding his left arm, she helped him straighten on his second attempt, bracing him as he stood, knees knocking, gyros threatening to topple.

Arms out, stretching his claws, Stewie the cat got up, arching his back in the shape of an inverted 'U', while Mack looked around, catching his breath. The twin's bedroom was the size of a decent apartment, with a spacious sitting room visible beyond. On the wall facing the foot of the bed, a huge flatscreen TV and, off to the left, a makeup table built for 2, its mirror ringed with lights, in front of which sat 2 pink, padded, velvet makeup chairs on wheeled bases of gold. The alabaster tabletop, inlaid with twisting vines of jade and lapis lazuli, was strewn with all manner of feminine paraphernalia, from lipsticks and eyeliners to brushes and combs and hair-ties, claw-clips in gold and onyx, the slender fingers of a disembodied ebony hand loaded with rings- bands of rose gold and sapphire, glittering with diamonds.

Abeam the bed, a walk-in closet the size of his bedroom back home, each side a mirror-image of the other, hung with identical outfits, shoe-racks below lined with an assortment of footwear, from utilitarian Converse to $20,000-a-pair pink stilettos. Hung on racks like Christmas decorations, Mack saw A-cup bras and skimpy lace panties, a mouthwatering treasure trove of intimate apparel. He looked down at the top of Wendy's head. "Point me at the can, waiter. And no looking at my ass."

"As if. I'd bother." Wendy breathed. "Here. This way."

"Hey! Woah. Where do you think you're going?"

"I told you!" Wendy glared, "That bloody thing's worth a couple of mil. You fall down and damage it, Carter's gonna have my arse. AND my ass!"

"Oh, right," Mack curled his lip, setting off, stark naked, in a shuffle, "so it's not about me."

"Never was, Trav. Tiles coming up, mind your step."

"I'm not an invalid, Skippy!"

"'Cile, Trav." Wendy said, "the term is imbecile."

Steering him towards the nearer of two black granite toilets, monogrammed in solid gold with the letter 'V', Wendy raised the lid. "This must be Vivi's." Mack observed, barely hanging on to the contents of his distended bladder. Clenching his pelvic floor, he jerked his head in the direction of the neighbouring can. "I want to use Echo's."

Wendy screwed her face up. "You what?"

"I want to use Echo's john. Echo's First. Vivi's next."

"Why? What's the bloody diff?"

Because Echo always liked him to pee on her in the shower and it only seemed fair. "Just work with me, Skip." he said, side-stepping to the objective, waiting while Wendy lifted the lid. Aiming his equipment he let go, his stream powering into the bowl as he stood, head back, eyes closed in blissful relief. Then his eyes flew open as a hand wrapped around his penis. "Holy shh... Skippy Stamp! What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"You just concentrate on staying on your feet, Captain. Let your old Aaaant Wendy do the rest."

"For god's sake, Skip, do you really have to?"

"Doctor's orders, Trav. You shouldn't even be out of bed. That wasn't scheduled for a couple of days."

"Fuck the bed! Jesus, Skip, now look what you've done."

Wendy palpated Mack's stiffening cock. "Well that's a bloody good sign."

"Good for who? I can't go getting a hard-on in front of you."

"Little fella here says you can. Woah! And he's not so little. I'll have you know, the drugs they were using to keep you asleep. They warned us a possible side effect was severe erectile dysfunction. Look at that! You just dodged a bullet."

"And you'll be dodging..." Mack gurgled, then let it ride. Looking up, he came face to face with a gaunt old man in the mirror in front of him, a month's growth on his jaw ticked with grey, sandy hair sticking out like a well-kicked hay bale. "Who's your friend?" Mack asked, gesturing with his chin at the reflection.

Wendy shrugged. "Who says he's my friend?"

"Well, is he?" Mack asked as his ardour began to soften.

"Jury's still out." Wendy replied, massaging the steel back into his member. By the time she shook the last drops off, it was hard as rock sticking straight out in front of him. "Reminds me of a Dalek." she breathed.

"A what?"

"Dalek. You know? Ex-ter-min-ate!"

"I'm beginning to wonder, just who out of the two of us is fucked in the head."

"It's you, Trav, trust me." Mack's penis laying across her palm, Wendy hefted its weight. "You know, this is actually fantastic."

"Glad someone's enjoying it."

"Really. You know, I had to warn the twins, they might have lost their little playmate. They put on a brave face, god bless 'em, but you could still see they were both devo. They're gonna be thrilled." Towing Mack by the cock to one of 2 monogrammed basins, she ran the water then washed her hands before soaping Mack's in turn. "You know what they say? You can't keep a good man down. In this case literally."

"For all the good it'll do." Mack muttered bleakly as Wendy dried him off. "Look at that. Those assholes hit my jerking arm."

Wendy arched her brows. "Really? Do you wanna...?"

"JOKING, Skip, joking! Sheesh, why do you have to be so literal?"

"Well, it's no problem if you do. In fact it would actually be beneficial. And your left hand's still perfectly good. You could just pretend it's a stranger. Unless you want me to... you know...?"

"What? NO!"

"Why not? It's just a medical procedure at the end of the day. Stimulates the release of endocannabinoids. It might help with your healing."

"I don't need help with my healing. By jerking off least of all."

"Okay, okay, just trying to help. Here, let's get you back into bed."

"I'm not going back to bed."

"What?"

"I said I've had enough of bed." Mack griped, trying to shake her off. "Where are my clothes? I wanna go for a walk to get rid of this thing."

"For fuck's sake! Travis! You CAN'T got for a walk! You've barely woken up! This time yesterday your GCS was about three! Please. You gotta ease into it."

"I AM easing into it! Look, this is me easing."

"Of all the pig-headed, stubborn..."

"Flattery will get you nowhere. Skip. Now. My clothes."

Wendy set off, muttering, and let herself out, returning a moment later with a bundle of clothes. "If they find out back in Zurich they're gonna go apeshit. You're gonna void your warranty, Mister."

"I won't tell if you don't. What's there to do in this joint, anyway? And where are the twins?"

"Get better." Wendy replied, on her knees at Mack's feet helping him into his boxers. "And the girls are on their way back on the Lightwave. With a little surprise."

"Surprise?" Mack piped. "What sort of surprise?"

"None." Wendy replied, hauling his shorts up. "If you don't behave."

*****************************************************************************************

The strict, post-op protocols, Wendy quickly realised, had been written with pampered old elites in mind, who liked their treatment painless and their stem cells spoon fed. Unlike a certain ornery ex-Marine with a mile-wide rebellious streak. Caving to his obstinance, she walked Mack through a vaguely Xibalban labyrinth, down hallways decorated with priceless works of art. And an in-house grand-cavern in the form of a glass-roofed, red-and-white granite-tiled atrium, strewn with dazzling antique silk carpets, dotted with sculptures from abstract to ancient, and stands of lush potted plants. Off to one side a huge, sumptuous open-plan dining room that had, over the years, catered to kings and presidents and sports-stars, celebrities, actors, activists and the world's richest men. "Where is everyone?" Mack asked, having laid eyes on not so much as another living soul.

"Hiding." Wendy replied. "After hearing you were up and about. Look out! Travis-the-shit-magnet's in town! Run awaaay!"

"Seriously." Mack asked, shoulders hunched under the weight of all-pervading opulence, from the floor to the ceilings and wall-to-wall, ostentatious wealth as garish as a neon sign blaring, 'I am rich!' "Are we all alone here?"

"Mmm hmm." Wendy nodded. "Apart from 8 or 9 staff, mostly gorgeous young chicks. Some celebrity chefs, pool cleaner, gardener, a couple of missile units. And a squad or 2 of security bots."

Mack turned on her. "Fucking bots? Seriously?"

"Mmm hmm. Carter just bought Tau Kinetics. So he could wipe out the bots in Xibalba. Then he went through the catalogue and thought, what the hey, they were cheaper than skin-jobs and less prone to selling out. Don't worry, you won't see even them. Unless we're in the shit."

"I hope not!" Mack exhaled. "I'll kill the motherfuckers if I do."

"Oh don't be so dramatic. Anyway, they're nothing like those wannabe Star Wars droids back in Xibalba. Ours look like little spiders," Wendy said, levelling a hand at the height of her knee, "about yay tall. They're actually kinda cute."

"I HATE Fuckin' bots." Mack said and threw off a shudder. "Give me a rag-head any old day."

"Yeah, yeah. Come on you old grouch, your preconceptions are showing."

Dressed in camo cargo shorts hewn from his own fatigues, a baseball cap and borrowed green T-shirt with sandals on his feet, Mack stood at last outside under the portico, gingerly supporting his pink-cast arm, blinking while his eyes adjusted.

"Who put that goddam light up there?"

"Hang oh a minute." Wendy said, then fetched a pair of Ray Bans from a golf cart nearby. "Here, you might have a touch of photophobia from the drugs."