Phoenix ch 10

“Now, Katie, this won’t hurt a bit,” Dr. McCarty promised cheerfully.

Fifteen-year-old Katie flinched back anyway as she glared at that wicked-looked ‘thing’ held delicately in the doctor’s white-gloved hand.

“Now, sweetie,” Tanya said in the sugary voice she often used on her youngest daughter. “Frankie had his last year; now it’s your turn. I have an implant, and it doesn’t bother me at all.”

“I don’t want it!” Katie insisted. “Don’t I have any rights? You can’t force me – it’s against the law.”

Tanya sighed. Katie was always the rebellious one. “Sweetie, in this day and age, I’d feel a lot better if you’re wearing a Body Monitor. It’s not a snoop like your friend Carrie says. It’s a tool, and it’s for your protection. If you come up missing, I want to know how to find you.”

“Mom,” Katie argued, “I’m not going to run away again! I promise!”

“Honey,” Tanya replied, her voice sounding a little more tired, “There’s somebody out there who is murdering your friends. This newly developed Body Monitor is the only defense we have until we catch him.”

“He hasn’t murdered anyone I know,” Katie sulked. “Besides, what makes you think I can be…”

Her mother’s sudden frown silenced the young girl. She was special, as were all the members of her family, and that ‘special-ness’ was a secret among them. Not even their family doctor knew.

Katie had been about to say, ‘What makes you think I can be killed, anyway?’ After all, neither her mother nor her older brother and sister knew what she did in private. In fact, the tiny incision in the side of her neck where the Body Monitor would be placed would be a minor trauma compared to some of the things she’d privately done to herself while exploring the capabilities and sensations of her sexually developing body.

“Alright, fine!” Katie said angrily, suddenly changing her mind. “Put it in!”

The doctor moved smoothly, but quickly, before the moody young teenager changed her mind again. A tiny sting, and it buried itself in the side of her neck. Dr. McCarty quickly put a bandage over the tiny hole to prevent any blood from leaking down the girl’s neck and upsetting her further.

“Now check the point of insertion tonight before she retires,” Dr. McCarty said to Tanya. “If there is any redness or swelling, call me and I’ll meet you here in my office.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Tanya said, smiling.

She knew, as well as Katie, that the wound was already healed under that bandage. That was their family secret.

“Alright, then,” the doctor replied, then to Katie, “Okay, sweetie, let’s see how it’s working, shall we?”

She handed Katie what appeared to be a purse. Katie opened it. On the inside was a surface that was camouflaged to look like a mirror.

“I can use this like a regular purse, right?” Katie asked, deciding to cooperate with the bullying grownups.

“Of course!” the doctor said cheerfully. “Now, you need to imprint your voice pattern. Press on the corner of the mirror… that’s right… Now, give your monitor a code name.”

“Hot Dog,” Katie replied, saying the first words that came into her mind. That was her nickname for her brother, Frank, when she was feeling friendly toward him. She had nicknames for everyone – usually more than one nickname per person depending on her mood at the moment.

“Good! Now, let go,” the doctor said. “Okay, let’s test it, shall we, sweetie?”

Katie grimaced at that old woman calling her ‘sweetie’, then nodded her head. “What do I do?”

“When you want to check your Body Monitor,” explained the doctor, “just open your purse, look into the mirror and say the code word.”

Katie sat down and reopened her new purse. “Hot dog.”

A display appeared, showing her heart rate, blood pressure and GPS coordinates.

“Where’s Mom?” she asked it.

Another line appeared, showing the same GPS coordinates.

“Where’s Dad?” Katie asked, knowing that her father didn’t have one of these devices implanted on him.

Nothing happened. She looked up at her mother.

“We’ll see that he gets one, Honey,” Tanya promised.

Katie smiled, realizing that she could keep track of everyone in her family with this little device. The downside of that, of course, was that anyone who had one of these could also keep track of her.

“Where’s Frankfurter?” she asked it.

Another line showing her brother’s coordinates replaced the line displaying her mother.

“How come it knew who to look for?” Katie asked, perplexed.

“This is connected to your home system,” the doctor explained. “Your Body Monitor probably asked your home system who ‘Frankfurter’ was, and got the information that way.”

“Hmm,” Katie replied, thinking. “Okay.”

She got up and walked toward the door. ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ were no longer part of the teenager’s vocabulary – not for the last year or so, anyway.

“Oh,” Katie said, suddenly remembering why her mother was insisting on this invasion of her privacy. “What happens if I get attacked or something and I’m not carrying this purse?”

“Your Body Monitor continually transmits your location and your vital signs to your home system,” the doctor explained. “The transmitter is in your purse. So long as that is within fifty feet of where you are, your location is known. That way, you don’t have to carry your purse around with you at home. An alarm will signal if your home system decides that you are in danger.”

“Wild,” the young teenager replied, bored again. Then she turned and left.

Tanya caught up with her at the elevator. “That wasn’t so bad, was it, sweetie?” she asked in her sugar voice.

Katie turned her head and looked up at her mom. “It feels funny.”

“I know,” Tanya admitted. “Mine does, too.”

“I don’t get it,” Katie said. “You’re always like – It’s us against the world don’t invade our privacy go way and leave us alone! Now, you’ve hooked us into the citywide system that monitors everybody’s locations! You can’t even drive your own car anymore! And I’ve always looked forward to that! They come up with these Monitor devices and suddenly you just lay down like a whipped dog and do what they say! That’s really disappointing, Mom.”

“Katherine,” Tanya replied quietly, using her daughter’s full name to let her know that she was being very serious. “This is the price we pay for living around other people. There has to be some control. The reason for that is there are people out there who aren’t as responsible as we are.

“People are not allowed to drive in the city anymore because there were too many independent acts of selfish behavior that were getting people injured and killed. Now, hardly anyone gets killed in a traffic accident, and traffic jams are a thing of the past.”

“But, Mom,” Katie said, trying not to sound like she was whining, “now anybody can just punch up your numbers and find out where you are! Isn’t that invasion of privacy?”

“Of course it is!” Tanya agreed. “But look at it this way – every time you use the phone or activate your personal system, your location becomes public knowledge anyway. The only advantage here is, your can always be found, no matter what kind of trouble you get into. You can be rescued without having to call 911.

“Please try to understand that this is an incredible load of worry off my mind, will you, Honey?”

The elevator arrived. Mother and Daughter were silent again until they were alone and walking out toward the car.

“I still don’t like it,” Katie murmured, almost to herself.

“Young lady,” Tanya said, stopping in the middle of the aisle. She smiled at her favorite daughter, then squatted down on her heels and looked up at her. “You know what I use mine for?”

Katie shook her head.

Tanya leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “It keeps me from getting pregnant!”

Katie’s eyes widened in shocked surprise. “It can do that?”

Tanya nodded, grateful that she had her daughter’s complete attention. “It’s more foolproof than a morning-after pill…”

“When we get home,” she said, rising back up, “punch up the instructions for your monitor. It can do a lot of things, including letting you know if someone is spying on you. That should take care of any concerns you have about your privacy. Okay?”

Tanya felt relieved and happy. She and her daughter were friends, again. They hadn’t been friends for the last year – ever since she walked in on her daughter during one of Katie’s self-exploration sessions.

It wasn’t just the fact that the child was masturbating – it was the two dozen safety pins carefully poked through her barely-developed breasts and nipples, traveling in a shiny line down the child’s stomach and decorating the soft tissue around her little labia.

The blowup between them had been so intense that it was months before either of them could even speak a civil word to the other without war breaking out all over again.

When they got home from getting her implant, Katie went directly to her room and sat down at her console. She punched up her privacy code, then read the instructions on her Body Monitor as the text and diagrams scrolled across the screen.

As she learned how to access the device’s features, she programmed them in. She set up a ‘safety zone’ outside her room. If anyone approached her bedroom door within five feet, her Body Monitor would go into ‘Alarm’ mode.

She tested it to see what the Alarm Mode felt like. It was a tiny, but very noticeable vibration in the side of her neck where the device was implanted. She had no doubt it could wake her up if she was asleep.

She also programmed it so that it wouldn’t alert other family members if her vital statistics changed suddenly unless she also spoke the word ‘help’. Now she could ‘experiment’ without alerting the entire family. She also set it so that if she sub-vocalized the word ‘help’ three times in a row, the alert would be sounded.

When she got to the question, ‘Do you wish to be included in the Citywide Grid?’, she entered, ‘No’. Then it asked if she wanted to be notified if someone nearby was in danger or was calling for help. She entered, ‘Yes’, figuring it was her civic duty to help someone if they were having a heart attack or something.

‘It is required that you be included in the Citywide Grid to be notified if someone nearby is in danger. Do you wish to be included in the Citywide Grid?’

Katie thought about it, feeling that she’d been tricked by the previous question, then gave in and entered, ‘Yes’.

She was finished. Her Body Monitor was programmed.

“Locate family members,” she said to the little mirror in her purse. A three dimensional diagram of her house appeared with different icons representing each person positioned somewhere in the diagram.

“When’s dinner?” she asked it. There was a delay of several seconds. Then it responded, ‘one half-hour from now’.

Katie wondered how it knew, then realized it must have accessed the home computer and calculated dinner by determining what devices were activated in the kitchen and for how long.

It was getting dark. Katie didn’t like showering then going to bed slightly damp, so she usually did it before dinner. The simple act of showering before dinner also put her in a better mood to tolerate Brother Brat-Worst and Sister Slut while she ate.

“Shower – one hundred degrees,” she said as she doffed her clothes and bounced through the door to her own private bathroom. The shower came on, controlled by the home computer, while she pulled off her socks and threw them into the hamper. When she climbed into the shower, the water temperature was perfect.

She’d hardly soaked down her hair when her Body Monitor Alarm tickled the side of her neck.

“Crap!” she exclaimed. “Shower off!”

As the shower trickled down to nothing, she wrapped a towel around her wet body and stepped out of the bathroom. Someone was knocking on her locked bedroom door.

“What!” she exclaimed angrily. “I’m in the shower!”

It was her favorite Brother Brat-Worst. “Mom sez not to get your implant wet!”

“Shit!” Katie exclaimed to herself, then stormed over to the door, unlocked it and pulled it open.

“Take a look!” she snarled, turning her head and displaying the skin where the Body Monitor was implanted. “Anything sticking out?”

“Nope,” Frank Junior said, too cheerfully. “Nice ’n smooth.”

“Good! Now drop dead!” Katie sneered, then turned to slam the door in her brother’s face. She shrieked as Frankie yanked the towel away and bolted down the hallway toward the stairs, cackling wildly.

“God-damn-you-Wienie-Brain!” Katie screamed at his departing backside. She wasn’t about to chase him downstairs naked just to retrieve her towel. It would be just her luck they would have company. Frankie was an expert at setting her up to display her absolute worst behavior whenever company showed up.

She slammed the door behind her.

“Privacy Mode!” The door locked.

“Shower on!” She heard the water start running in her bathroom.

“One hundred degrees!”

“Fuck Frankfurter!”

She snarled loudly to herself as she stomped stark naked back into the bathroom so she wouldn’t hear the home computer:

Unable to comply with ‘Fuck Frankfurter.’

Twenty minutes later, she stepped out of the dryer and pulled her still-damp hair into a high ponytail. Slipping on a simple smock, she headed out of her room and toward the stairs, determined to do her very best to have a civil meal with her uncivil siblings.

At least, Mom wasn’t picking quarrels with her now. Maybe she had an ally, but she wasn’t going to count on Mom to side with her. Mom bent over backward to prove to the rest of the family that she loved her children all the same. Katie smiled to herself, knowing the truth. She would always be Mom’s favorite, despite that horrible war they had. Maybe that was why they’d had it…

Halfway down the stairs, she stopped, frozen in position with her mouth hanging open. There was a really hot guy sitting on their couch! He was looking right at her! Then Katie realized why…

Holy fuck! I’m not wearing any underwear and he can right up this stupid smock!

She turned bright red from head to toe, then bolted back up the stairs, knowing full well that she was showing off her bare backside as she fled. The last thing she saw before she turned and ran was her Brother Brat-Worst’s smirking face. And Sister Slut was perched on that gorgeous guy’s lap!

“Katie, please unlock the door,” Tanya called out softly.

She could order the home computer to unlock the door, but that wasn’t how she wanted to handle her little girl.

“Go way!” Katie muttered, raising her head from her pillow to speak, then burying her face in it, again.

“Come on, Honey, let me in,” Tanya said, unwilling to break the now uneasy truce they still had between them.

After another moment, Katie got up and unlocked the door, evidently feeling the same way about her mother – their newly found truce was too fragile to throw away on some temper tantrum.

“Why did it have to be you?” Katie whined, flouncing back down on the bed as her mother entered the room.

“What do you mean?” Tanya asked, perplexed.

“Why couldn’t you send Wienie-Brain or Alice-the-Wonder-Slut up to get me?” Katie expounded. “Why did it have to be you?”

“Because I didn’t think you’d leave me standing in the hallway locked out of your room like you would them,” Tanya said softly.

“I would have, yesterday,” Katie admitted. “Sometimes I feel like locking the whole world out – even Carrie!”

Tanya sat down at Katie’s desk. The display on Katie’s console told her that Katie knew who was downstairs. Jake Pestova’s profile was displayed on the screen. She wasn’t about to discuss the settings her little girl had programmed into her new Body Monitor, though.

“It’s not easy keeping secrets from everyone, darling,” Tanya said, understanding the true root of Katie’s social problems. “But that’s why Uncle Jake is here.”

“ ‘Uncle’ Jake?” Katie asked, looking up at her mother with ‘that’ look.

“That’s what your brother and sister are calling him,” Tanya confessed, “now that they know who he is.”

“What secrets does he have?” Katie wanted to know.

“Well, Honey,” Tanya said, “He’s going to talk about Béla after dinner. That’s why we invited him to come. We need to know more about what she gave us all those years ago.”

Katie remembered the stories she’d heard as a child – about the vampire girl’s last night on earth. She also believed that her father privately resented this ‘Jake’ fellow. After all, Dad had known this Béla character for thirty years, but she only lived three more months after pairing off with Jake.

She also remembered her father visiting in the middle of the night after her big blowup with Mom about those damned safety pins. He told her about the weird cravings she could expect to have and that these were some of the side effects of being infected with vampire blood.

His explanation helped her to understand the need she felt to ‘play’ and with her understanding came some ability to control it better. Her mom thought that Katie was over that rather gruesome ‘phase’, but her father knew better.

His wife never got over that phase and he knew his daughter wouldn’t, either. He helped a lot by making sure Katie had enough privacy to experiment by adding this new section onto their house just for her. Then, much to Katie’s disappointment, he left her alone.

Katie’s curiosity about her vampire heritage barely outweighed her embarrassment at being caught on the stairs sans panties, so she allowed her mom to persuade her to come down to dinner.

Once downstairs and at the table, Katie didn’t taste any of the food she ate. Most of her attention was on ignoring her brother’s laughing stares and her slut sister’s breathy comments and those eyes that were just all over ‘Uncle’ Jake.

Katie couldn’t bring herself to look at Uncle Jake at all. Just thinking about him looking at her naked bottom made her blush bright red, and that’s how she spent most of dinner.

After dinner was ever worse for Katie. Her sister Alicia was almost twenty and looked full-grown. She had incredible hair, just like her mom, and a rack that was to die for. And she really poured on the charm for Uncle Jake, sitting on his lap and teasing him, blowing in his ear when she thought no one was looking. No one looking didn’t include Katie – Alicia always went out of her way to show off how much sexier she was than her bratty, flat-chested, kid sister.

The worst part was that her parents didn’t seem to mind – almost like they encouraged her sister to behave like the slut she was. Maybe they were tired of feeding her and were trying to get her married off. Katie didn’t know which one it was, but she uncharacteristically kept her mouth shut so she didn’t ruin the evening for everyone else.

Surprisingly enough, her brother Frankie, ratfink that he usually was, didn’t try to get her to blow her cool. He was actually nice. That screwed with Katie’s mind as much as everything else did.

Those two hours were really educational, though. She, along with her older siblings, was told she could expect to live several hundred years, and any children she might have would live nearly as long as she did.

Mathematically, she calculated that if she had children at a certain young age, then her children had children at that age, by the time they were back down in longevity to the single century life span, the entire family could die out in the same decade, except for the last generation, which would continue like normal people with average life spans.

Later that night, she was in her bedroom and almost asleep when her privacy alarm went off in the side of her neck. That was going to take some getting used to – but it beat the alternative of being caught with her pants down (or in her case, with her pins in). After checking her console and realizing it was her dad, she met him at the door in her nightgown.

“I just wanted to tell you how proud I was of you tonight, sweetheart,” Frank told her. “You and Frankie were both on your best behavior. I’m really pleased with both of you.”

Katie snorted derisively, then said, “Sorry, Daddy. I was thinking of Alicia.”

She didn’t call Alicia the ‘Wonder Slut’ to her father. He wouldn’t have it. But she really proved that was who she was tonight.

Frank smiled. “I know, darling. She laid it on pretty thick. But Jake’s smart. He can handle…”

“No, Dad!” Katie interrupted him. “He can’t! He’s just a man, and nobody can resist Alicia. Dad…”

She sighed, knowing that her father wasn’t going to want to hear what she had to say.

“Alicia…” she faltered for a moment. “My sister isn’t exactly a virgin, Dad. She hasn’t been for a long time.”

Surprisingly, her father didn’t get mad. “I know, Katie. She’s fought her own inner war just like you’re fighting yours. She has vampire blood in her veins, too. She’s more outgoing than you are, so she found other, less self-destructive outlets for her needs and desires.”

Katie smirked. “Dad, are you saying Alicia’s a slut?”

Frank chuckled quietly, enjoying the look of pure delight on his daughter’s face. They shared another secret, bringing them a little closer.

“Yeah, I guess I am. She certainly acted the part, tonight.”

“She sure did,” Katie agreed wholeheartedly. “If you don’t lock her into her room, she’ll be in Uncle Jake’s room before morning.”

“Check your monitor, sweetheart,” her father said. “Don’t be too upset at what you discover. She’s five years older than you, and Jake would be a good catch for her.”

“Sister Slut and ‘Uncle’ Jake?” Katie asked, a look of disgust on her face. “Ugh!”

“Sweetheart, I don’t think Alicia is his type,” her father assured her. “You’re right that he is just a man, and he probably can’t resist your sister’s considerable charms over the short term. But I don’t think he’ll marry her.”

“Good!” murmured Katie. “More meat for the rest of us… Girls, I mean.”

“Katie!” Frank jested, laughing with her and picking up the jest.

Then he hugged his daughter good night and left. She closed the door, once again alone, wanting her father and knowing she could never have him.

“Privacy Mode,” she instructed the console.

She took off her nightgown and draped it over the back of the chair. It was convenient for answering her door, so that was its permanent location between washings.

Pulling a box out from inside the headboard drawer, she picked out a wide stretch belt and draped it around her skinny waist, then fastened it, pulling the straps as tight as they’d go. Her body was starting to buzz already from her sexual anxiety and the squeezing sensation of the elastic belt. As aroused as she was, she wouldn’t need much stimulation, so she only put one pin through each hard little nipple, hissing with her pain and her pleasure as she did so.

Grabbing a handful of flesh around her belly button, she shoved a two-inch pin through, gasping at the fiery sensation of the cold pin puncturing through her soft, warm flesh, then fastened it.

She repositioned her stretch belt so that the buckle was right over the pin, pressing it even more tightly against her delicate skin. Another belt went around her ribcage, squeezing her already-pinned nipples beneath it, giving her even more sensation.

Lying down on the bed, she wrapped her legs around her body pillow – a long, thick pillow that was almost as long as the mattress was, and hugged it tightly, pretending that it was her personal lover. Reaching up with one hand, she set the bed to vibrate for its maximum time, which was only twenty minutes.

In only five minutes, she had her first orgasm for that night’s session, humping the body pillow and imagining that Uncle Jake was ravaging her.

Or her dad…

Yes! Her dad! That was her favorite fantasy.

“Fuck me, Daddy,” Katie whispered quietly in the imaginary ear of her body pillow as she humped away, feeling the emptiness of her young body needing the touch of a lover so badly.

“Fuck me… fuck me… fuck me…”

Then she was coming, squirming against the loving body of her pillow lover and pulling on her tight belts to move the pins around in her tender flesh, accepting that pain and the squeezing pressure of the belts in the place of a lover’s caress.

She fell asleep still wrapped around her body pillow. That was how she fell asleep most nights, but this night she still wore the pins and the belts, secure in the knowledge that her newly inserted Body Monitor would wake her if someone intruded into her fantasy world.

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