Unreal - Page 7
“No!” the stranger protested again. He was getting better at protesting believably, Shelly thought, but he still needed work deciding what he wanted to say after that. “I meant because . . . well . . .” His voice trailed off, his hands making helpless little gestures.
“Because of how my father uses me?” Shelly finished for him as she considered that while he was pretty enough, perhaps he was a boy of very little brain. That might explain it.
“Well . . . yes,” the stranger admitted reluctantly. “He used a lot of words to say it, but it was pretty clear that he only created you for one purpose.”
“One purpose?” Shelly repeated. She contemplated that for a moment. “Yes, I suppose he did,” she finally concluded. “Lots of reasons, but really only one purpose.” She exhaled a light, almost wistful, sigh. “I have not entirely decided how I feel about that.”
Now it was the stranger's turn to repeat her words. “'Have not entirely decided?'” he asked in amazement. “What's there to decide?” he demanded to know, heat leaking into his words. “He grew you to be his slave, and to make it even more twisted than that, he makes you call him father and__”
“Has sex with me,” Shelly interrupted him primly. “Yes, I know . . . better than you, I would think.”
Her cool interruption took the stranger aback somewhat, but he did his best to rally. “Surely you can't think that's right!”
Shelly noted with some amusement that it seemed the “question that was not a question” wasn't unique to her father after all.
“No,” she said after quiet consideration. “I do not suppose I do, but it is not as if I were his real daughter . . . or even a real girl, you know.”
“It's close enough,” the stranger said with feeling. “Too close!”
“Yes, I agree,” Shelly conceded. “But I was created and molded to enjoy such things, and he is not cruel to me. I can see now that he is twisted, yes, and lonely, or he wouldn't have made me in the first place, and isolated from his fellow humans by gulfs he is incapable of crossing, but he has never been cruel.” She glanced at the stranger's blood upon the carpet. “To me,” she added.
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