The Convulsion Factory by Brian Hodge

she met you. Someone open-minded … eager for new experiences … who wanted to break with his past.” Gabriel touched a quieting finger to Gary’s lips when he started to speak. “But let your conscience off the hook. She didn’t kill herself over you. She did it for us.”
    Once content to observe, the others now started forward.
    “It was the one sacrifice she wanted to make, to thank the rest of us for making her feel like she belonged somewhere. It didn’t take long to make up her mind once she decided you were the one. Your leaving just … accelerated the schedule.”
    Gabriel kissed him on the lips, then eased his weight back onto Gary’s hips again as the others closed in. Half-men, half-women, walking wonders of endocrines, scalpels, and implants, taking positions at the nipples, joining to him with suckling mouths. They were very gentle, did not bite.
    “Lana was carnal … and she was spiritual … and maternal. Like any goddess should be.” Again, Gabriel shushed him, still grinding with muscled hips. “Making children is more than functioning body parts. It’s a thing of the spirit, too. Lana understood that more than anyone I know. And now she’s closer to you than she could ever have gotten with her body. Can’t you feel her inside yet?”
    He searched hesitantly, tentatively. Thinking perhaps there was another light, another warmth, pulsing within.
    “No matter what, though,” whispered Gabriel, “don’t ever think she didn’t love you. She did. She does .”
    Of course she would. How could she ever have done this to someone she hated? What is love? Two souls and one flesh.
    Gary writhed, caught in a hurricane of tears and love, revulsion and desire. Fighting would accomplish nothing. And he was so needed.
    So he lay back in this roof-bound Eden, beneath the roiling sky, and let them nurse. Soon, more found their way to the roof to take their place in line. And within, and from within, the juices flowed — testosterone and estrogen, progesterone and androgen — a mother’s milk to nurture and nourish wonders greater still.
    Gabriel cupped his cheek. “You are truly honored. You’ll be the madonna of an entirely new gender.”
    Gary surrendered fully, pleasure and contentment swamping his last efforts at denial. He stretched his arms wide, satisfied that he and Lana would forever be as one, and reached to embrace their children.

In A Roadhouse Far, Past The Edge Of Town

    He stood back, grinning with arms crossed, to watch those hips of hers sway while she threw. Had a wind-up that drove him truly and deliciously insane. This, after she’d kissed the tip of each dart for luck. Oh, she was overflowing with promises of finer things to come later in the night.
    Sad about her aim, though. Darts all over the damn place.
    “I don’t think this is your game.”
    She turned chin over shoulder to stick out her tongue at him. “I got games you never even played.” She danced away to retrieve the darts, came dancing back with all six and handed him his three. Green ones, his lucky color.
    “The trick,” he said, “is breath control. You breathe out on the throw, nice smooth exhale. And never, ever , take your eyes off the spot you want to hit. Not even long enough to blink.”
    Down and dirty blues thumped from the jukebox while he sank all three darts in a tight cluster. He raised both arms to receive worldwide acclaim.
    “Am I the master, or am I the master?”
    “Careful you don’t stick yourself with one of those, or that shit you’re so full of is gonna run right out in the floor.”
    He pretended to bristle. “Sure is a lot of sass coming from someone hasn’t even hit herself a bull’s-eye yet.”
    “Keep making a big deal out of it” — she licked her finger and pretended to clean the zipper of her jeans — “and I know something you won’t be hitting again anytime soon.” A huff. “Anyway, I know what the problem is. I’m distracted.”
    “By what, that music?