“Found Among the Lost”—An Erotic Speculative Fiction Story

Now and again, finding yourself means losing who you were before

On a kaleidoscopically quilted, mountainous bed, painted dour red and soaring yellow from two of Asphodel’s three suns, the air redolent with simmering perrofish and fuming honeywine from the street below, Mia said, “You’re not Bojan.”

Head between their muscular thighs, their face glossed with moisture, lips tingling with their flavors, ears distantly aching from the strength of their spasmodic, clenching ecstasy, Bojan grinned up at them.

Meeting Mia’s puzzled, slightly alarmed expression with calm gentility laced with benign mischievousness, they answered, “What makes you think so?”

“Bojan, the real Bojan, was pleasant. Pleasant enough to be invited back into my bed after all these cycles, but they lived too much in their skull, barely peeking out at the rest of the world… least of all to me.”

The last few words were punctuated by a squeeze from their sculpted thighs. “You’re not Bojan.”

In response, they patiently forced their head between them, planting a tender kiss where they joined.

Mia sighed. “What did you do with them?” she half-said, half-whispered.

Tender became ardent, ardent became zealous, zealous became fervent—then the perrofish and honeywine sellers’ raucous ballyhoos vanished, overwhelmed by Mia’s keening moan of release.

Breath returning, Mia sweetly murmured, “Whatever it was… whoever you are… I don’t care.”

#

Like clockwork, the Falltown Station to Wasteaway Point late-afternoon Maglev express came between Hamistagan’s massive star and Daeva’s lifebox, its strobing light making the InfoArchivist think yet again of ancient, nearly forgotten cellulose nitrate Saturday matinees, title card expositions, and house organ accompaniments.

Rolling their head away from the flashing window and pushing it into a sofa cushion, Daeva mumbled, “I don’t miss them… I really don’t miss them.”

“Oh, and what makes you say that?”

Also muffled by fluff and stitching, Daeva said, “I shouldn’t say.”

“I don’t mind.” Hands tracing the lengths, cords, and periodic knots of Daeva’s muscles, teasing out the tightest of the latter with their palms and fingers, Bojan leaned down and kindly, sweetly kissed the hard rises of the InfoArchivist’s spine.

Twisting their head so they could look back as well as speak clearly, Daeva said, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“But you said I’m not them, so how could saying something hurt my feelings?” Same kisses to the same spine, each received with a subtle twitch of contented pleasure.

Straightening up, Bojan used their own muscles to pull Daeva up onto their knees, pressing against them with every tug.

Daeva hissed; silent movie memories supplanted by images of billowing steam locomotives entering tunnels. Their dark hands, fingers—sporting cosmically blue-sheened fingernails highlighted with neodiamond glitter—clawed between and into the couch’s sturdy fabric.

Hard, steady thrusts climbed up and over into vigorously pounding jolts, breaking Daeva’s words into jagged-edged fragments: “They… gave… they took… and never gave… back!”

Shudder ebbing, spasm fading, and—with a sweet, lip-curled grin on their face—Daeva drooled.

Retrieving the Van Gogh Starry Night holographically patterned blanket from where it had slid to the floor, Bojan tucked its bursting colors around Daeva’s deflated body, concluding with one more (but not last) kiss to the back of their neck.

#

A distant—very distant—descendant of what had been a Terran gecko skittered soundlessly up, across, and down the far wall before vanishing behind Roehel’s bioprinter.

“Are you trying to trick me?” they said, soft words edged with old wounds.

Stretched out next to them, close but not touching, Bojan shook their head. “May I touch your shoulder?”

“Please,” Roehel said, tilting their head, exposing more of it to them.

A finger to begin, a second to accompany it, concluding with four and a thumb: each delicately, sensually, appreciatively traced Roehel’s curves.

Dropping tenderly to a whimper, they cooed, “It felt like they didn’t… I mean, respect is so hard to come by; I shouldn’t have been disappointed they didn’t show me any.”

“Can I kiss the back of your neck?” Bojan asked reverently.

Roehel nodded, turning their body to reveal more of themselves. The kiss was hot, though not aggressive; sweet, yet not saccharine; affectionate, not cloying.

As Roehel’s voice descended to a throaty sigh, they said, “I almost blocked you, deleted you from my system entirely.”

“Would you like me to cup your left breast?” they said, feather-light words in Roehel’s ear.

A clearly confirming nod, preceded by a directly approving, “I’d like that.”

The same fingers, the same thumb went from appreciating the architecture of their shoulder to respectfully relishing the curve, weight, and heat of their breast—never grazing the faint scars running beneath them.

“I never knew if they were rude on purpose or didn’t care.” Roehel lifted a hand, fingers for fingers, thumb with thumb.

“Sorry,” Bojan purred into Roehel’s auburn curls. “I’m so sorry,” Bojan repeated, drawing them closer, melding their bodies together.

With a shake of their head, Roehel asked, “Whatever happened to him?”

#

Before reaching out to Mia, messaging Daeva, pinging Roehel, and the others (so many others), there had been that Jahannam winter: avenues slick with caustic ice, Servomats geysering plumes of brittle white while trying, and mostly failing, to keep the methane-laced crystals at bay.

Business over and done with sooner than expected, Bojan sat alone in an O’Malley’s—with all the fuzziness, indistinctness, and unremarkableness stemming from replicating the same Irish pub a billion times on a billion different worlds—before suddenly realizing they weren’t.

A cloud of dark hair overshadowing the plains and peaks of their face, wide glasses concealing the color of their eyes, Bojan had smiled that smile, employed their usual, crudely forged flirt, and purchased another of whatever they were drinking. After finishing it and two others, Bojan, while stroking the back of their hand, suggested they find somewhere more private.

Signaled by the closing door, it was they, not Bojan, who pounced. Eyes shut, ears deaf to everything they didn’t want to hear, they took, they used, and when they were finished with them, they threw Bojan away, leaving them as rough and cold as the bitter wind howling outside the hotel room’s window.

Lost, alone, abandoned, disposed of, Bojan had stood, staring at their mirrored self. Looking at first, but not seeing, then, as time unwound around and inside them, they saw what they had tried so long not to accept.

Collapsing into a jumbled pile of regret and shame, Bojan fell so low that the only place left was up.

#

After revisiting Mia, Raimond, Roehel, and the others (so many others), Bojan finally found what they had lost—themself.

Image Sources: M.Christian