Integration Rituals

Brain slugs do not have gods; they do not believe in spirits or supernatural entities in any conventional sense, but they are not without mythology or folktales. Most of their fears center around errors of integration with a host: the Mindless Ones, who fail to achieve sapience during integration; the Broken Ones, where the host's consciousness survives in some state after integration, trapped in the host body as the brain slug pilots it; the Soulless Ones, who lack the capability to communicate and participate with the hive mind or World Soul; and the Hungry Ones, who consume their host's body to fuel a monstrous growth. Brain slug integration rituals are designed to minimize the occurrence of these aberrations and are largely successful. It is rumored that some obscure brain slug lineages retain memories of rituals that can interfere with integration to specifically cause these conditions.
—Anastasia Massimi, Slugnomicon: A Guide To Brain Slug Spirituality (unpublished draft)

". . . Rachel has class tonight, so we'll have to wait until she gets home to show her the video," Mel said. "I hope Soong hasn't been too lonely by herself all day."

They were just entering the foyer of the apartment building when Jordan's hand squeezed his. Mel stopped talking and followed her gaze. Anastasia had a handful of mail, including a package that might have been a book. She smiled at the two.

"Mel. Jordan. I was wondering if the two of you would like to me for tea?" She said.

Today, she had a thin black leather jacket over a skull-print dress and what looked to Mel's eyes like old combat boots. Her nails had been touched up, solid black, and her frizzy hair tied back with a black scrunchie.

Mel looked at Jordan.

"Do you want some tea?"

The blonde seemed to measure the question, then her free hand came with a thumb's up.

"Excellent!" Anastasia said with a smile.

They sat at the table. 'stasia placed her jacket across a chair, then set the water to boil, spooned leaves directly into cups. She sat across from Mel and Jordan, back to the room, elbows on the clear glass tabletop. Her eyes seemed to read them both, and Mel squirmed a little under that gaze. He glanced at the altar. The book was open.

"What book is that?" he asked.

"Well, I should say that it's my grimoire, my book of journals, the diary of my magickal experiments," 'stasia said with a grin in her voice. "But in truth, it's a working draft of my thesis. Brain slug spirituality."

Jordan tilted her head the exact way Mel had seen a dog do once. As if she didn't quite believe what she had seen, and that a slightly different angle might make Anastasia come into different focus. Mel couldn't repress a smile.

"I didn't know brain slugs had any spirituality. We haven't really talked about it yet," he gestured to Jordan. "Rachel and I are going to go to classes, learn sign language—"

"Yes, she's told me," Anastasia said. "Quite exciting. I'd love to interview you sometime about your people's beliefs sometimes—but that isn't actually why I asked you here. So I understand that Soong is budding?"

Jordan very carefully didn't do anything. She seemed to cease to breathe. Her face placid, blue eyes locked on Anastasia. No sign of calculation or anything. Just that perfect poker face. Yet she was holding Mel's hand under the table, and she squeezed.

"I'd like to come to the integration ceremony," 'stasia said. "For my research."

She turned towards Mel.

"You're going, aren't you? Could you bring me? As your guest?"

Mel blinked.

"I don't know. If Jordan and Soong ask me to go, then yes I'll attend. But I don't—" he looked at Jordan, who hadn't moved. "I can't speak for her. It's their ceremony, their decision."

There were things unspoken there. Mel had been there when Antonio had attacked Soong. Maybe that made him partly responsible for his ****. Not intentionally, but . . . but 'stasia didn't say anything about that. The kettle whistled. Anastasia stood up in a sweep of skirts and returned with the kettle, poured steaming water into three cups, the water going from clear to amber.

"Thanks," Mel said as he took a cup. Jordan relaxed enough to take her own. They sipped. Thin, a bit astringent.

Jordan surprised them both by pointing at the book.

Anastasia raised an eyebrow, then got up, fetched the journal, and set it before her.

Jordan turned to the first page. She sipped tea and read. Mel sipped his tea too, but didn't want to crowd in on her. It felt like this was a decision that was Jordan's to make. Anastasia sat and drank her own tea, with that same nervousness that Mel had seen in this one teen in high school when he'd asked Mel to read his fanfiction for the first time. Mel had told him it was good, because he didn't have the words to properly assess something complicated that involved optimistic ideas of anatomy (the writer had not gotten good grades in Sex Ed.) and an anime that Mel hadn't watched.

Twelve pages were about the length of a cup of tea. Jordan looked up and gave a thumb's up. 'stasia beamed.

"Thank you. I'm sure there'll be more. I'll abide by whatever rules or customs there are. But—thank you."

Soong was in the kitchen when Mel and Jordan finally crossed the hall. She hadn't actually tried to cook anything, but she had put water in the pot, and laid out the package of dried ramen, the cutting board, and the knife. The naked Asian woman waited as Jordan peeled off her clothes. Then the two came together, both palms pressed together, chest to chest, head to head, their foreheads pressed together, even though Jordan had to bend down a little for that to work.

Mel gathered up the clothes and dumped them in their basket, then took off his own hoodie, socks, and shoes. He figured they had a lot to talk about.

As he went about making his own dinner, Mel watched them out of his peripheral vision. The two brain slug hosts didn't look at each other; it was more like they were looking over each other's shoulders. The only activity was the brain slugs themselves, the greenish-black semi-transparent bodies shifting and pulsing, growing still. The heads were extended—and Mel could see the budding tail of Soong's slug. It appeared to be a little longer, with nubs that might be developing sensory tentacles.

Not for the first time, Mel wondered what it was like when they connected like that. Were they actually talking, or did they become, in a sense, a single organism? The long conversation that Mel and Rachel had with Jordan and Soong had made them seem more like individuals who were part of a collective whole, capable of disagreement. This didn't look like an argument, however. Maybe a synchronization? The two brain slug hosts forming a mini-consensus?

More questions Mel didn't have answers to.

By the time the ramen was ready, Jordan and Soong had achieved whatever they had intended. The three of them sat on the couch, which Mel noticed didn't have the smell or stains he might have associated with the action it had seen lately.

"Did you clean the couch?" Mel asked.

Soong nodded.

"Thank you," he said.

No oral sex education tonight. Jordan selected another video from Soong's thumb drive. One of the video files with a random string of letters and numbers for a title.

ASIAN SLUG SLUTS VOL. 3

Mel frowned. He glanced at Soong, who held a bowl of raw eggs and was methodically poking a hole in them and sucking out the yolks. Jordan was nibbling a brick of soft tofu over one of the plates Rachel had brought over.

So he sat back and watched.

It was the video equivalent of Slug Fucker Monthly. The camera was an unblinking eye, focused voyeuristically on a blank-faced brain slug host. Young. Naked. Shaved, as Jordan and Soong were. And yes, Asian, her skin a dark tan, hair pulled up in a bun. The camera followed over her body as she sat on the edge of a couch

She spread her legs. A pumping, generic beat began to play through the speakers as her fingers found her slit. Mel could imagine her in a strange house, following the directions of a director, maybe her other brain slug hosts in the room with her watching, waiting.

A man showed up. Naked, hard. The naked host opened her mouth and—it wasn't even that she sucked him off. She just opened her mouth, and he grabbed her hair and thrust, slamming his balls into her chin. Mel winced as the normally placid face convulsed, the woman visibly **** as the glans hit too deep, too fast, triggering a gag reflex.

Mel finished his ramen, but it was a struggle. The man was borderline cruel, which seemed to be the only way to elicit something from the brain slug host. When at last he spewed, there were black tear-lines down her cheeks, the hair had been torn out of its bun, her lipstick a smeared mess. It was an exercise in objectification. The kind of thing that Antonio probably watched religiously.

She swallowed and resumed the same posture she had been in at the beginning. Naked. Placid, but not unperturbed. The eyes looked wet. There was tension in her body. Her small, conical nipples were stiff; the dark labia between her legs, slightly parted, looked wet too. Mel's head slipped up past his belt buckle, and for the first time, he felt truly dirty, almost ashamed of an erection.

Then a cut. A new scene. The music shifted to a new track, something in the pentatonic scale, pseudo-Oriental. Mel imagined that was the whole film: a series of scenes, more brain slug hosts, servicing different men like flipping through a random issue of Slug Fucker Monthly. No storyline, no plot, just a series of sex scenes—

Mel bolted forward as he saw Soong on the screen.

She didn't look much different. A little more tan. Hair a little shorter, but cut in the same fashion. Her face was painted up like a geisha, all pale powder and red dots on the cheeks and lips. Mel's face twisted in an expression not of physical pain, exactly, but of emotional discomfort. Sympathy.

"Why?" he asked.

In answer, Soong handed her bowl to Jordan, and got down on her knees in front of Mel. She looked up at him as she unbuckled his pants, and Mel stared up at the screen, slightly nauseous to see the made-up Soong doing something similar, crawling on all fours to a man whose head was cut off by the top edge of the screen. Mel's cheeks flushed hotly as he saw that painted mouth slide over the other man's glans. Just as Soong, right now, was running her tongue up from the base of his shaft.

It had been more than a day since his last ejaculation. Mel felt the pent-up sensation. The sick excitement in his stomach added to the weird tension in his body. He liked being with Soong, but this felt—wrong. Ugly.

Then Jordan leaned over behind him. Her hand slid down through the collar of his shirt, over his chest, and found a nipple. Her tongue found his right ear, and—and somehow that helped anchor Mel.

The screen continued to play, and he could see how mechanical and stiff the earlier Soong's motions were. She was taking the cock into her mouth, but that was all the younger woman was doing; the geisha-painted Soong had her hands folded in her lap, head bobbing up and down as though kneeling at prayer. The woman before him now had her hands on his legs, pulling his pants down. Her tongue tickled his glans, slid around the sensitive helmet, head and neck moving with animation and growing excitement or need.

Mel lasted longer than the man on the screen. Jordan had twisted his head around so that their lips could meet, her tofu kiss in his mouth as his hips bucked and heaved. His release, deep inside of Soong's mouth was accompanied by that little exercise he had seen last night, his testes tensed and squeezed, trying to empty everything her had into her—and her tongue licked at the super-sensitive slit, to catch and swallow every drop.

Rachel gave a little clap. Jordan pulled away so that Mel could see the tired-looking blonde, who wore black jeans and a pink Hello Cthuhu t-shirt.

"Nice performance. Care for dessert?" she said, in that half-playful, half-serious way that said she was okay with whatever the answer was, but really hoped—

"You need to see something first," Mel said, and he reached for the remote.

Once Rachel was seated, Mel played Jordan's video.