The Flesh Vending Machine and Forced Refueling

The sounds that drifted through the darkness were too wet to be the whir of any ordinary motor. They were the gurgling of some vast beast chewing through its own viscera — a vibration thick with mucus, low and glutinous, pulsing in the black.

Na-bi stared ahead through a haze of failing vision. It was a vending machine. But this was no relic of steel and plastic, no leftover convenience of a dead civilization. Its outer shell was not painted metal. Raw red muscle fiber, the skin stripped away, tangled and writhed across its surface in place of a chassis. The transparent display window, where drinks ought to have been lined in neat rows, was filled to the brim with yellow amniotic fluid. Inside that cloudy liquid, cans of every color floated like fetuses.

"Water... it's water..."

Na-bi's lips were cracked like a drought-stricken field, scabbed over with dried blood. The last thread of her reason was a fraying hair from snapping. Before a thirst that was burning her throat to ash, fear was a luxury she could no longer afford. She staggered toward the Flesh Vending Machine.

There was no coin slot. In its place, at the center of the machine where a bill acceptor should have been, a sunken red hole puckered and gasped — like lips begging for a kiss, or a starving anus.

A chime rang out, bright and utterly wrong in the wet dark.

Letters the color of diluted blood crawled down the machine's display. This was not a transaction of currency. It was a transaction of flesh.

"Please... I'll do anything... just give me something to drink..."

Na-bi's trembling fingers found a button and pressed it. The blue electrolyte drink. The mere thought of that cold liquid sliding down her throat made her tongue curl back against her palate.

A whir. A clack. The product chute at the base of the machine did not open. Instead the flesh of the vending machine's flank tore apart, and something punched through the wound. A thick nozzle, cold with a metallic sheen. Behind it, a translucent silicone tube twisted and flexed like a snake.

The mechanical voice rang through her skull. Na-bi's hips flinched inward on instinct. The rear was already occupied. The Living Key had coiled itself inside her rectum and sealed the entrance completely. Her mouth? No. If she gagged and vomited it back up, she would lose every precious drop of moisture.

Only one option remained.

"Down below... the front... I'll do it there..."

Na-bi turned her back to the vending machine. Shame had long since evaporated in the heat of her thirst. She hiked the skirt of her hospital gown to her waist. She wasn't even wearing underwear. Her pale buttocks and the insides of her thighs, trembling with terror, were laid bare.

A whir. A snap. The machine gave her no time to hesitate. Steel pincers shot from either flank of the vending machine, seized her by her narrow waist, and slammed her against the outer wall — against that writhing muscle.

"Nngh!"

Hot, sodden flesh pressed into her back. At the same instant, cold metal restraints bit into both thighs. Her legs were forced open into an M.

A slow, wet slither. Between her spread thighs, the snakelike tube lifted its head. The metal nozzle at its tip nosed along her sex like a biometric sensor, mapping her. Cold steel kissed burning mucous membrane, and gooseflesh raced across her skin.

A wet grind. A deep, unstoppable shove.

"Hhhk...!"

There was no mercy in it. Lubricating gel jetted from the nozzle, slicking her entrance for a heartbeat — and then the thick metal nozzle and its silicone hose forced the flesh apart and drove in. It was nothing like a plastic dildo. An alien sensation: cold, slick metal and silicone hose scraping every fold of her inner walls, boring in until it sat at the very threshold of her cervix.

A massive rumble shook the machine from within as a pump the size of an engine turned over. Then violent pressure came surging down the tube.

A hissing roar. A gush, thick and endless.

Na-bi's head snapped back, and a strangled scream tore out of her. The world strobed white.

"Aaaagh!?! Ah! Mmph — hhhk!"

It was not water. It was not a drink. What erupted from the end of the tube was a mucus of swamp-mud viscosity, heavy and glutinous, an overwhelming mass that allowed no gap, no give. It forced her vaginal folds flat and stormed through her cervix into the womb itself.

"No... nngh! Too... too much...!"

Na-bi twisted her hips on instinct, trying to flee. The steel pincers only crushed her waist tighter. She could not move. Her uterus inflated past its limit in seconds. Inner walls that had been contracted ballooned thin ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as a membrane, stretched so far the blood vessels showed through like a map drawn on wet paper.

Worse than the filling was the collision. A single thin wall of tissue was all that stood between her uterus and her rectum — and her belly was already at capacity. The Living Key, a full thirty centimeters of it, occupied her rectum, squirming in its claim. Now the womb in front of it swelled with brutal speed, and a territorial war erupted inside her abdomen.

A gurgle. A grinding creak. Thud. Thud.

The expanding uterus crushed the rectal wall, and the rectal wall screamed. The shock woke the Living Key as if from sleep. It thrashed, twisting its body in violent protest. Two enormous masses inside her, shoving, grinding, bearing down on each other. Her organs were caught between them like meat in a press. The pressure bleached her mind white.

"Hhk! Aaaahn! The back... it's moving in the back too...!"

Na-bi's legs convulsed, kicking at empty air. In front, scalding mucus packed her womb to the point of tearing. Behind, the Key stabbed and raged against her sigmoid colon. Pain like a blender churning her insides crashed together with a heavy, nerve-scraping urge to void. The swollen vagina and rectum stimulated each other, dragging across every sensitive spot they shared, and saliva spilled from her mouth while slick ran down the insides of her thighs. Tears of pain and pleasure and shame tracked her cheeks in a single indistinguishable stream.

"Hhhk... my belly... it's going to split... stop... please stop..."

Her lower abdomen rose in a grotesque dome, not merely pregnant but full-term, a belly that belonged on a woman about to give birth. The skin pulled taut to its limit. Her navel inverted, straining outward as if it would pop. The machine did not stop. The transaction would not end until the prescribed volume — the price of a single can — had been paid in full.

The pressure in her belly crossed a threshold. Her cervix began to give, spreading against its will.

The dry mechanical voice had barely faded when her entrance reached its limit. The sphincter that had been clenched shut could no longer hold the pressure. It opened.

A trickle. Then a splatter.

"Ah — no...!"

Na-bi bore down with everything she had in her thighs. It was not enough. Foaming white mucus leaked through the gaps around the tube, ran down her legs, and hit the floor.

The vending machine's judgment was instantaneous.

A heavy thud. A devastating impact.

"Ghhk!?!?"

A panel at the machine's base slammed open and a striking piston drove into her swollen lower belly dead-on. This was not a simple beating. It was a body blow of crushing, investigative weight, as if the machine meant to confirm the contents by force. Her breath locked. Her diaphragm seized. The spike in abdominal pressure punched through the entrance she had been holding shut, and it gave way like paper.

A heave. A violent, arcing spray.

"Ghh... nngh..."

The mucus that had filled her came surging back out in a waterfall of white, driven by the agony of the blow. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠floor became a milky pool in seconds. Na-bi's eyes rolled. Her body went slack. Shock. Even as consciousness sheared away, the machine's restraints did not release her.

Unconscious, her head lolling, Na-bi's body shook like a doll on strings. The mechanical arms wrenched her slack legs wider still, spreading her until her pelvis threatened to tear, and locked her there.

The pump turned over again. A hissing roar. A wet, rhythmic squelch. An unconscious body offered no resistance at all. Twice what she had expelled — no, three times — was forced into her defenseless womb. Her belly stretched to its absolute limit, taut and translucent, the web of vessels beneath the skin visible as if drawn in ink.

Then a clunk, and a single fat blue can dropped from the product chute. The electrolyte drink. The very thing she had wanted so desperately. The mechanical arm did not open it.

The cold aluminum base of the can aligned with her entrance, which glistened, overfull, on the verge of spilling.

A grinding crunch. A can over seven centimeters in diameter — a girth no human body was built to take — forced itself into an entrance already slick with mucus.

A tearing stretch. A deep, relentless shove. A wet grind of flesh against metal.

"Nn... nngh..."

A sound of suffering leaked from unconscious lips. The machine hammered the can home with brute, industrial strength. Cold metal scraped her burning inner walls as more than half of it — nearly to the base — was buried inside her. Her entrance stretched white around the can's circumference, pulled so taut it looked ready to split.

A perfect plug. The pressure in her belly tried to spit the can back out. The machine began its final procedure.

From the vending machine's flank, a roll of silver industrial duct tape unspooled with the serrated rasp of teeth.

A long rip. A slap of adhesive.

The mechanical arm taped over the protruding top of the can and her perineum in a single covering stroke. Once horizontally. Once vertically. Once in an X. The adhesive was strong enough to tear tender pubic hair and skin with it.

Rip. Press. Press.

The can would not come out now. Na-bi had been left with an enormous volume of unidentified fluid packed inside her, the entrance stoppered by a cold beverage can, and the whole arrangement sealed under duct tape.

In her rectum, the writhing Living Key. In her vagina, a cold drink can. Both of Na-bi's openings had been packed, without a gap, with things that did not belong in a human body.

A click. A heavy, boneless collapse. The restraints released, and Na-bi's body was dumped onto the floor like trash.

"......."

She did not move. Inside her grotesquely swollen belly, the slosh of liquid and the dull knock of a can striking an inner wall echoed down the empty corridor, and then there was nothing else.