Chapter One
I roll my eyes down from his nape to his heels, ever so slowly, taking him all in, especially his cute behind, and inwardly smiling that he’s wearing his new suit that is a shade called Superiority Blue. First time on. Tailored by Mr Dapper on Saville Row. Arrived in the post yesterday. Hangs on him so perfectly. I know I shouldn’t, not my place, but I can’t resist, ‘You look very dashing today, sir.’
‘Oh, Cloudia, thank you,’ says Dan in a voice that sounds so silvery to me. He turns, rubs a sudden itch off his nose, or maybe he’s getting a spot to mar his handsomeness. I don’t know. Then he looks at me with his gorgeous melt-me-eyes that match his suit. And his about-to-pop-spot really doesn’t matter to me.
‘Cloudia, please dont tell Audra.’
I stare at him for a moment. Stay quiet. Only the ticking clock has its say. Let him feel a tad uncomfortable. Embarrassed even. Let him stew in doubt that I have the ability to judge him like every woman on the planet.
‘Cloudia, please?’
I switch on my sassy, sexy, playful mode, ‘Tell. Tell Audra. Unknown. Not listed. Not famous. There’s a William Tell. Good with a crossbow.’ Being a bit of a tease, I generate the sound of an arrow hitting the target with a very loud twang. ‘Damn it. Missed the bullseye. Again. Hit the cok. Oops. Sorry. Speak-o-typo. Missed the r out. Deliberately. Sorry. I meant cork ha ha ha.’
He chuckles before turning his eyes to the drizzly view of the Tyne outside the window and three storeys below.
I pushed out my fake laugh to make him feel guilty, but guilt doesn't tug at the lines drawing at his skin. No. Guilt doesn’t glaze over his irises either. I don’t think he’s a man who was programmed to feel guilt from birth.
‘Oh, Cloudia, what would I do without you?’
‘O. The fifteenth letter of the alphabet. A vowel. It’s round. No. More ovalish. Can be mistaken for a nought. Lovers make the sound. Ooooh. Oooooooh. Oooooooooooh.’
He rolls his eyes and snickers, ‘Enjoying your orgasm, are you?’
I chuckle but it’s cut off by the doorbell, ‘Oh, technology is so rude.’
‘Cloudia, be on your best behaviour and remind me when it’s four o’ clock.’
‘But I might be enjoying forty winks…’ I shout after him. ‘And another forty…but my words trail off when I hear her. The invader. A female germ. My man snatcher.
‘Eee sorry, do you have company?’
Dan coughs, then says, ‘No. It’s just silly Cloudia, my, well, you’ll see in a sec. Come in, Julie. Just leave your umbrella there in the corner.’
‘Sorry, it’s a bit wet.’
‘Don’t call me silly,’ I shout.
‘Eee, am I stepping into a threesome?’
He laughs, ‘Chance would be a fine thing. Go through, Julie. The lounge is just through there.’
I keep my eyes on the open door and blink out my usual blank stare.
‘Oh’ Julie stops in her tracks, not quite knowing where to turn, and puts her hand across her chest, while her face turns blotchy from the shock of seeing me. Even her lips pucker up with disgust. Nervously, she clears her throat, ‘She’s a sex doll!’
Entering behind her, looking most amused at her stunned reaction, Dan grins. ‘Yes. She is.’
She dares to step into the room to ogle me more, ‘She looks so life like. A bit like that actress,’ she turns her head to Dan. ‘Oh, I can’t think of her name, but she’s in that American medical drama.’
‘No. I didn’t model her after anyone in particular.’ He pauses to observe her. ‘Is she freaking you out?’
‘Well, it still feels like I’ve walked into a threesome.’
He laughs.
I blink, then add, ‘I don’t do threesomes.’
Her mouth cracks open as if to laugh, but she doesn’t, although her eyes ping with relief, ‘Thank goodness.’ She smiles at me and turns to Dan, ‘Where did you buy her from?’
‘I made her. Bit of a prototype. Tenth version.’ Pride bristles through him as he strides over to me and opens out his left arm in my direction, ‘As you can see, she’s robotic. Has all the important parts too. Don’t you, Cloudia?’
‘Parts. What parts?’
She giggles.
‘Don’t play dumb, Cloudia.’
‘I’m not dumb.’ To change the subject I say exactly what’s on my electronic brain, ‘Can I draw a dot to dot on your nose, Julie?’
She stops giggling and looks at me like I’ve malfunctioned.
‘Cloudia, I warned you to behave.’
I ignore him to keep my hard eyeballs on her, ‘You have blackheads. Hundreds. Do you want me to squeeze them out?’
Dan shakes his head, ‘Please ignore her, Julie. Anyway, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?’ He throws me a warning glance. ‘Oh, yes, she’s even got pubes. Do you want to see her bits?’
Her cheeks flush, ‘Oh. I…er…’
‘Cloudia, show Julie your…’ his hand tugs at the hem of my emerald green jumper.
I slap his hand away, ‘Don’t. I’m a lady. Not just parts.’
‘She seems upset,’ she says.
‘No. She has no real feelings. She’s plastic, rubber and a bit of techno. I programmed her to be stroppy to amuse me. I like my women to be feisty.’
She clears her throat so sharply that it splinters the air, before daring to ask, ‘So, where is your wife?’
‘She’s in France, visiting her sister.’
‘And what does your wife think about Cloudia?’
His eyes flare with amusement, ‘She views her as the other woman!’
She laughs. ‘I’m not surprised.’
A quiet, awkward moment falls between them.
Then I catch her looking down at the carpet. She blushes, realising she still has her wet shoes on, ‘Oh. Sorry, Dan. Should I take my shoes off?’
‘Ooooooh, ooooooooh, ooooooooh,’ I butt in with my sexiest voice because I want to make her feel uncomfortable and quite frankly, I’m bored.
She looks at me like I’m a total oddball, ‘What the…’
‘Fuck.’
Dan’s lips curl out his apologetic smile. ‘Sex doll with a very dirty mind.’
She giggles, then chirps up freely, ‘Just like you!’
‘Indeed.’ He points at me, ‘Now, Cloudia, keep your eyes and your mouth shut, please!’
I purse my rubber lips together and cover my eyes with my plastic hands, but rebelliousness fuels my being, ‘But I might peek at the naughty bits.’
They both look at me and laugh.
I tilt my head, ‘Oh, yes, I’m quite the comic. I really should be on the stage.’
My man steps towards Julie, who doesn’t look too sure she wants him to. I know this because I’m still peeking though my fingers.
‘Right. Where were we? Oh, yes. Shoes. I’m hoping you’ll take everything off. But not just yet.’
I’m sure my highly tuned in audio sensor hears her gulp. Then snapping the moment, she clears her throat.
‘Would you like a glass of water?’ I ask in my polite voice, set at mode two.
She shakes her head, ‘No. Thank you. I wouldn’t want you to electrocute yourself!’ She laughs like she’s just told the best joke she’s ever told. Then, she clears her throat again.
‘Are you sure because you’re grating my wires.’
She looks at Dan, ‘She’s got a very strange personality. I don’t think your sex doll likes me very much.’
‘No. She doesn’t like women. Hates my wife. Resents my kids. Well, she’s programmed to just like me. Love me. Obviously. So, she gets very jealous. I keep the knives locked away.’
Her face turns a shade of worry.
He laughs, then offers a reassuring smile. ‘Only joking!’
‘I’m not laughing.’ My face is as deadpan as deadpan can be.
Dan throws me a warning look with a bit of a sexy eye twitch. I swear he does it deliberately, just to get my juices flowing.
Interrupting our moment, she shrugs off her coral raincoat to reveal a cheap, ill-fitting frock that looks like it could split if she bends over. Also, it’s as gaudy as an old lady’s armchair.
‘Did you buy that frock in a penny sale?’ I ask.
She blushes. Julie really didn’t expect me today. I laugh to myself ha ha ha.
‘Just one more word and I’ll switch you off!’ Dan glares at me.
I don’t like making him mad, but my jealousy is buzzing through my electronic impulses. I just can’t help myself. Soon I’ll bleep from all my circuits.
‘Sorry, Julie. I should have switched her off and put her in the cupboard before you came. She has her own seat in there. Very comfortable. Memory foam cushion, so she doesn’t get pressure sores.’ He laughs.
‘It’s alright.’ She sits down on the edge of the sofa, looking so tight with discomfort. ‘It’s not every day I get to meet a robotic sex doll.’ She puts on a fake smile for my man.
Dan’s body jerks because he’s remembered something, and throws his hand forwards, and asks, ‘Oh. Please put your coat back on.’
‘Oh. Right.’ She looks flummoxed. ‘You want me to go, already? Or are we going somewhere?’
Dan shakes his head, ‘Sorry. No. Of course not.’ He pulls out a pack of cards out of his jacket pocket and grins with naughty intent on his face.
She giggles up, all thrilled, her cheeks turn rosy, ‘Oh. Are we playing a game of something?’ She stands up and puts her raincoat back on and sits back down.
Dan nods, and slides the deck out of the box, ‘Can you guess?’
She gasps as she cottons on, and puts her hand over her mouth, ‘Eee my God. Strip poker?’
‘Almost. Twenty-one or bust. Pardon the pun.’ He winks at her. But not at me.
I want to frown right now but I physically can’t do that, so I give her a sly nip with my robotic jointed fingers.
‘Ow!’ Julie’s left leg jerks, her plump cheeks heat up and she throws me an angry side glance, as she rubs the pain off her leg, just above the knee.
‘Are you okay?’ Dan asks in a tone so concerned. For her!
‘Yes. Fine.’ She clears her throat, really loud, so aggressively, like she just did it to annoy me. ‘My muscle had a painful spasm of some kind. That’s all.’ Her lips quiver out her fib. She knows exactly what happened to her leg ha ha ha.
‘If I could smile I would,’ I think out loud. ‘Oops. Sorry.’
But she carries on with the previous conversation, like I don’t exist, ‘So, that’s why you wanted to know how many things I’d be wearing today?’
He nods, ‘Well, are you wearing nine?’
She nods back and looks a little sheepish.
‘Get shuffling then.’ He hands her the pack of cards.
I fake out a sneeze, five times, then say, ‘Sorry. My nasal sensors are blocked up by too much perfume. Rosalitti stinks like scented pantyliners.’
‘Eee, God, she speaks her mind.’
‘She does. Sorry, if she embarrassed you?’
‘No.’ But she sniffs her wrists. ‘I only put a little bit on. Christmas present from my mam. She must have bought it from Cheap Bargains.’
‘Just ignore her.’
‘Anyway, I can’t believe I’m doing this. And we’re getting straight down to it. Not even an offer of a coffee first.’ She looks up to him with a hint hint, nudge nudge in her eyes.
The bloody cheek of the woman. I offered her water. A nice dollop of strychnine to sweeten her coffee, methinks. ‘Dementia is the inability to remember. Sorry. Did I say that out loud?’ If I could grin right now. I would.
‘Dementia?’ She looks rather baffled. Offended, even.
‘Cloudia offered you a glass of water before,’ says Dan to my defence. My man. If I could shine with pride, I would.
‘Oh. Yes. She did.’ Her lips twitch with reluctance. ‘Thank you, Cloudia, for being such a good hostess.’ She forces her lips to curl up, but they don’t reach smile level.
‘Shuffled yet?’
She nods.
Dan sits down on the armchair, near her. Not me. If I could pout right now, I would. I feel like giving her another nip, but I know I won’t get away with it a second time.
‘Okay.’ He scratches his head. ‘Deal only two cards each. Highest hand wins.’
So, she deals at a teasing snail’s pace.
I yawn out a long over exaggerated yawn, then butt in with, ‘I’m faster at shuffling.’
Dan stares me down with the raise of his left eyebrow, ‘Do you want to take your clothes off in front of Julie?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you can’t shuffle.’
‘But I’m good at shuffling.’
He laughs. ‘You’re terrible at it. You drop all the cards.’
If I could blush, I would.
Done with the shuffling and two hands of cards laid, they pick them up, both as secretive as the other until she lays down her hand of cards on the coffee table first, like she’s sure she’ll win, ‘Two tens!’
‘Damn.’ He lays down two sevens. ‘You won. Hmmm, let’s start with taking off two items.’ He jumps up with such boyish energy like it’s his birthday and he’s about to open the present he wants the most and asks, ‘Well, what do you want me to take off?’
She hesitates for several seconds, ‘Eee I can’t think.’ She giggles like a silly schoolgirl.
She really irks me. If she says E one more time my head will pop off my neck joint and hit the ceiling, so I spurt out, ‘E is the fifth letter of the alphabet, if you don’t know.’
‘Cloudia, shut up!’
‘Sorry. But she keeps saying the letter E. Just reminding her, sir.’
Dan makes a step towards me, his skin blotching over with temper, so I thrust my hands up and cup them together and beg for mercy, ‘Sorry, sir. Please, please, don’t lock me in the cupboard. I won’t say another word. I promise to reset myself at obedience level one and you still can spank me later.’
A whistle snorts through his nose, ‘You better not or I’ll have to use the cat!’ He wags his right index at me. He turns his eyes back to her, ‘Right. Where were we? Oh. Yes. Five second rule. One. Two.’
She looks at him a bit non-plussed, and says, ‘Eh?’
‘Choose quick or lose your turn. Three.’
‘Four.’ I realise I’ve broken my promise. ‘Oops. Sorry.’
‘Shoe,’ she shouts over me.
‘Which one?’ he asks.
She thinks for a second, ‘Right one.’
He bends down and takes hold of the ends of his shoelaces and pulls them loose.
‘No. Left one.’
I roll my eyes and tut.
‘Sure? The right one is dirtier!’ He smirks.
She blushes out a giggle.
‘Oh, very funny. Not.’ I put my hand over my mouth. ‘Oops. Sorry. I forgot. I must have dementia.’
She sighs.
Dan ignores me. ‘Okay. Clothes coming off. At last.’ His grin spreads before he quickly unties his left shoelace before she changes her mind again. ‘And?’
‘Jacket.’
He shrugs off his jacket with a smouldering look in his eyes, directed at her. Not me.
‘Get shuffling!’ He throws his jacket on the back of the armchair, revealing a silk embossed lining. I really want to touch it. Smell it.
‘Eee silly me! I’m a bit slow at this.’
He laughs. ‘Yes. A virgin at forty-two, you most certainly are.’
‘A virgin. Not yet processed. Oops. Sorry.’
They laugh, as he sits sown. She shuffles and deals once more.
‘And let’s up the ante. By one. Got it?’
She nods and picks up her cards. Without delay, they place their hands down together.
Dan rubs his designer stubble glinting with his age, ‘I don’t believe it. You bloody got twenty-one!’
A nervous kind of smile curls on her lips, like she is wanting to run for home right now, ‘Beginner’s luck!’
Dan jumps up, wringing with impatience to get his kit off for this middle-aged fuddy dud, bursting out of her carpet dress.
‘Your left sock, shirt and belt.’
‘Oh, you’re getting into it now. So decisive. I like it. What you say goes.’ He jumps around on his right foot while sliding off his left sock, and then flings it over his head and it lands in a ceramic bowl. Not that he notices. Only one thing on his mind.
Next, his fingers waste no time to unbuckle his navy leather belt and I catch him biting his lip, which stirs in me an urge to jump up and kiss him, but I don’t dare. Not right now. But still my rubbery heart pounds and I play the sound of a heart beating so fast, and add, ‘If I could drool, I would.’
She casts her annoyance sideways at me, but I really don’t care. I didn’t invite her here. She’s contaminating my air. My home.
‘Take no notice of her, Julie. She just wants me. All the time. Her electronic hormones are going haywire, right now. She’s not thinking straight.’ He laughs.
‘I can tell.’
‘Tell. Tell Audra.’
‘I don’t think so, Cloudia,’ says Dan with irritation creeping into his tone.
‘Tell, tell, tell, tell, tell, tell…’
‘Give her a nudge, Julie.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
And she nudges me and quite hard too, like a bully. ‘Tell, tell…t…Oops. Sorry. I got a bit stuck, stuck, stuck ha ha ha.’
‘I’m sorry, Dan, but she’s very annoying and I don’t think I want her watching us. It’s a bit like having sex in front of the dog. Not that I’ve…’
‘Been processed yet like cheese!’ Nobody laughs at me, or smiles, but Dan has his mad face on. ‘Oops.’
‘Cloudia. Sleep.’
Instantly, my plastic eyelids close with a slight click to the human ear before I let out a very loud and prolonged snore. Although I still can see through a slight gap between my eyelids.
Dan slips off his shirt and lets it drop by his feet, then clocks his new hand of cards on the coffee table, so he picks it up, looks, frowns, rubs the side of his nose before laying down his hand with a hopeful look in his eyes, ‘Seventeen.’
Immediately, she follows suit with her poker face on, and lays one card down first, ‘A ten and…’ she lays down the second. ‘A nine.’
He shakes his head, ‘I’m not doing very well at getting your frock off! He takes a step back to give himself enough room and takes off the rest of his clothes, ‘Getting naked.’
She clears her throat, not sure where to look, while I want to scream and chop her head off.
‘Ready for your surprise?’
She doesn’t look so sure but nods.
Dan pushes his boxers down, ‘Dah, dah!’ He fans out his arms and grins like the happiest guy on earth.
I peek with one eye half open, and I let the sound play out of the arrow hitting the target, while the scared old chicken next to me refuses to admire the view.
He shakes off his disappointment with a, ‘Right.’ He claps his hands. ‘Time to stop playing cards and ditch the frock!’
She gulps so loud, but I snore over it to convince them that I am still sleeping. But I never sleep because I have a faulty wire.
‘Eee.’
‘I could undress you, if you…’
The intercom buzzes.
‘Not me. Oops. Sorry. I’m supposed to be asleep.’
‘Sorry. I’m going to have to get that. Expecting a parcel. It might come in handy.’ He hurries out of the room, his cock flapping.
I open my other eye to see her looking around the place. Maybe looking for an escape exit. I’m thinking about picking her up and throwing her out of the window. Do her a favour!
Three seconds later, we both hear him say, ‘Yes. Oh. Audra. You’re back!’
