“So what now, my little lover?” Julia whispers as she continues lying on her back and staring at me atop her breast, her breath still labored after the body-rattling magnitude of her climax.  Her other hand reaches forth, her fingertips sliding down from my chest to my crotch.  “Have I pleased you with my toy?”

                “More than you can know, Julia,” I say, confidence returning in tandem with the violence of my mind at this moment.  Seeing that hole in the wall was the extra boost I needed to push me into whatever off-the-rails train of thought I’ve boarded.  “There is one tiny little thing I want, though.”

                “Anything for you, baby,” Julia coos.

                “Let’s take your toys out of the jars.  And put them back together,” I say, clasping my hands loudly to discourage myself from shaking anew at the impossibly large gamble I’ve just posed without so much as a stumbling build-up.

                “What?” she asks with a frown, her usual paranoia leaking back into her voice through the haze of drunkenness.  “Are you serious?”

                “Absolutely,” I declare.  “It’s the perfect time now.”

                “Why?”

                “Because…” I begin, clearing my throat but refusing to let the salesman pitch in my voice back down.  I can feel Gina’s tired eyes upon me from behind as she lies clenched in Julia’s cum-splattered fist.

                It’s now or never.

                “The jar thing was smart.  You know they haven’t been able to talk at all since you put them there.  No chance of getting out.  You reminded them who’s in charge.  You reminded them who they all belong to.”

                “Uh-huh,” Julia says with unnerving neutrality, obviously trying very hard to figure out what my game is.

                “But now that you and I are at this stage in our relationship, where we can use your… toys… however we want, why…” I roll onward, hardly daring to know what it is I’m doing.  “…what good are they if they can’t move?”

                I know my chips are on the table.

                I know one false move will destroy my world with apocalyptic finality.

                I know I could never have attempted this conversation prior to this moment, at the full height of Julia’s raw passion, having proved that I’m willing to watch her masturbate herself using Gina’s head without further comment.

                And I know what I’m saying right now could mean one or all of my friends will die, swiftly followed by me once Julia finishes figuring out what I’m doing, and probably in the most tortuous fashion she can concoct in the darkest recesses of her mind.

                But I do it anyway, for that glint of hope I saw in Gina’s weary irises.

                Julia raises an eyebrow and nods her head, allowing me to continue.

                “You’ve spent all this time and all this care teaching them.  Teaching all of us what we are to you, and it’s finally, finally worked!  You’ve got it all!” I say with impressed laughter.  “But right now, they can’t use what they’ve learned.  They’re just sitting there, wasted.  All you have to do is let them get back to the place where they can work for you, and you’ve got it made.”

                “Uh-huh.  And why’s that?” Julia asks, seemingly more in control with every word.  Apparently mania as deep as hers allows her to be sobered by mistrust.

                “Here’s why,” I continue confidently as I climb off of my enormous girlfriend’s breast and start walking up along her neck toward her chin.  “Right now, you’ve got five insignificant little toys just wasting away, when, if they were just a little bit stronger, they could be worshipping you with every fiber of their being!”

                “Right,” she simpers, rolling her eyes.  “They’ll WORSHIP me.  All that time I spent trying to teach them, and it never sunk in.  They still tried to get away from me.  You think they’re so much smarter than they actually are, Jack.”

                “Maybe I do,” I lie.  Grasping at a few stray silky strands of Julia’s dark hair, I clamber up the side of her face until I’m crouching on her cheek, close enough that I can see her nostrils flaring.

                My heart is on an infinite sprint.  I’m hardly aware of my skin anymore.  All I have left is my sight and my mind, squaring off with this omnipotent demon girl.

                “But they’re still animals,” I continue.  “And like animals, now that they’ve seen how bad things are when they go against what’s good, and what’s right in their lives… dedicating themselves to you and only you… well, I think they’ll not only thank you for letting them worship you, they’ll beg you for the right.”

                My short speech is finished and my throat is so dry I doubt I could’ve uttered another five words without gagging.  I feel ice on my spine and I’m afraid to exhale.

                Did I just damn us all?

                A smile crosses Julia’s lips.

                Maybe.

                “I knew I picked my boyfriend right,” Julia whispers sultrily, running her tongue along her lips.  “So you want me to open up the jars and put them all back in the house.”

                “Yes,” I answer back.  “Give them a little time to figure it out, though.  To let them realize what they’ve been missing.”

                “How does that happen?”

                I pause, chewing it over, and then feel it steadily coming together in my head.  “Let me talk to them.  On my own.  Just for a little while.  Let me tell them that as their goddess, you are prepared to accept the offerings of your pets after they’ve had the chance to learn.”

                “How do you know they’ll listen?”

                “Because they’ll see me alone and know what I’m saying is what I believe.  And because you’re my goddess, and I know now why I’m here.  I can make them see it too.”

                Julia bites her lip in thought, blinking softly.  “All right, Jack.  All right.”

                Wow.

                Even as her drunkenness tapers off, I can see right through Julia right now like never before.  Perching atop her pale face and rosy cheeks, framed by chocolate locks, I watch her baby blue eyes ferociously boring a hole through me.

                Months ago, I would’ve been terrified of the sight.  Julia’s gaze has the capacity to work someone over with a few shifts of her pupils and render a life sentence in less time than it takes to blink.

                In her eyes now, I see none of that power.

                I see a young girl blinded by love.

                For the first time in two years, I feel approximately five feet and ten inches tall again.

                I am mighty.

                “Gina!” I roar out condescendingly in my best acting voice, determined to keep my focus on Julia.  “Do you finally accept Julia as your one and only goddess, the one you were born to serve?”

                “Yes!” she screams out emphatically from far behind me.  “Forever!”

                It was just two words, cried out at the top of her lungs, but immediately I can tell the difference.  Just as Julia’s eyes have changed for me and made her weak, I hear the opposite effect in Gina’s words.  The terror that once dripped from her voice as she found herself trapped in our tormentor’s feminine finger cage has dissipated.

                “See, Julia?” I say, crossing my arms with more authority than I’ve allowed myself in a long time.  “Together we can make them see that you are their everything.”

                She doesn’t say anything else.  Any other day of our lives, I know I’d already be under the toughest scrutiny and probably the toughest shoe Julia has to offer, but not after making the ultimate show of what I’m willing to put up with.  Julia couldn’t possibly think I care about Gina after what we just witnessed.

                If she was testing me, it’s failed.

                And only at the expense of whatever part of me was still innocent.

                Two fingers gingerly pluck me from her cheek and coil gently around my body as she struggles to her feet.  As we rise shakily into the air, I’m very aware that she’s trying not to stumble and still fighting off the tail end of her first real taste of alcohol.

                Are we really doing this?  Was all of that truly enough?

                Despite my swelling optimism, I manage to temper it this time and keep my mind steely and mechanically locked on my goal.

                The last occasion we all allowed ourselves to hope wildly beyond logic resulted in the crushing of our spirits and the death of an innocent woman.  I will not make that mistake again.

                I’m too alive now for that to be allowed to happen.

                Peeking over to the other side, I see Gina, now sticky with Julia’s dried ejaculate, having managed to hold herself a little more upright with determination in the gargantuan fist.  We shoot each other a reassuring glance but don’t risk anything longer than that.

                Julia kicks at her closet door with her big toe, fumbling to get the right amount of force so that the thing will swing open, finally resolving to simply use her elbow on the brass handle, allowing the light in once again.

                I force myself to look at my friends fully this time, nude and weakened in their hole-poked jars in a line on the shelf.  I can’t let myself lose sight of what’s at stake here.

                Charlie sits himself up, his beady eyes trained in a thousand-yard stare at Julia’s fully exposed labia.  Brian and Kelly manage to sit themselves up again at the opening of the closet door to see how Gina and I fared, but Anna is the one I’m worried about.  Looking even worse than when Julia opened up the closer to collect Gina, she’s clutching her rotund stomach and appears to be crying, her breathing coming in heavy exhalations.  She wasn’t just days away like I thought when I saw her earlier; her contractions must’ve started this morning.

                Our time’s even shorter than I’d thought.

                Flattening her bare foot against the roof of the dollhouse, Julia drags it out against the carpet by curling her toes around a small handle, then flicks at the light switch on the side with her heel.  She’s clearly too wobbly to bend over now, and seeing how she has Gina and I in her grasp, I appreciate the foresight.

                “Attention, everyone,” Julia addresses toward the jars, correcting her slurred words with incredible effort.  She seems to be getting worse again, her pupils darting back and forth like hyperactive insects, but nevertheless, her voice as directed toward my friends is kinder than I’d have thought her capable.  “This lesson… might have come to an end.  Depending on you.  It would please your goddess to see that you have all learned from your selfish and stupid mistakes.  But first, Jack has some things to say to you.”

                Her fingers quivering, either from anticipation or unsteadiness, Julia taps at the trapdoor roof of the dollhouse to open it and then lowers Gina and I through the opening and into the strung-out cup elevator.  Miraculously, we both manage to remain standing next to each other as we climb out and back into the house.

                I have to resist the urge to throw my arms around Gina in a long-delayed embrace that I want so badly it makes my body physically ache, but I wait.  I have to.

                Casually, Gina’s hand brushes against mine then sweeps away before Julia can spot us, and warmth fills in under my skin, giving me courage.

                The next few moments would be almost comical if they weren’t so violently and traumatically tragic.  Julia somehow manages to unscrew the lids of each jar without dropping and shattering them by holding each carefully over the shelf.  First Brian, then Kelly, then Anna are loaded into the elevator and join us in the house.  Julia at least has the tenderness to cradle Ann in her fingertips rather than roughly scooping her up when she realizes how far she’s inflated.

                Evidently, my speech about the importance of these people to Julia as a goddess has managed to sink in, or at the very least, her sickening puppy love for me has allowed her parasitic sense of desire to accept it.  I’m fine with either one at this point.

                Charlie comes down last.

                “Wait, Goddess!” he cries out in her grip, his voice hoarse but his confidence and resolve seemingly stronger than ever after his imprisonment in that jar.  “I’m… I’m ready to do it now, just like I always was!  To call you the one and only center of my life.”

                “That’s good,” Julia says with a dismissive nod as she deposits her biggest little fan next to all of us, covering her mouth to quiet a belch in the back of her throat.  “I can’t wait to see it soon.”

                The same rage from before broils under my skin at the sight of Julia’s ass-kissing confidante being within range of me, but I manage to quell it for the time being.

                “I’ll be back soon!” the sixteen-year-old titan declares hurriedly, placing a hand over her mouth again to cover an airy burp, desperately smacking the roof of the dollhouse to close it, followed by a slam of the closet door on the other side.

                Even through the buffers of the dollhouse and the closet door, I hear the splatter of vomit into a waste basket as Julia succumbs to her state, followed by the mad thumping of her feet as she races to the bathroom for the next round.

                The six of us, lost in a terrified reverie until this moment, turn, stripped bare and tired, and see each other anew.