Double Twist
Chapter 181
“I really can’t think about kissing when I’ve got a rebellion to incite.”
—Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire
DONNA COULDN’T TRAVEL on Tuesday because she was still grading papers and had to get everything in by the end of the day. She arrived about noon on Wednesday while we were still in our first run-through. We kept stopping, working with Sophie and Brittany on the dance sequences, and dodging around the guys who were setting up the band shell.
Soon after she arrived, the tech crew for the video showed up. These guys were setting up a whole different level of equipment than we’d used before. We’d seen a sample when we did our last stage performance here in DC but the level was much higher for this performance. There were four cameras, including one that was located just to the side of the bandshell and one at the downstage corner on the same side. Two cameras were stationed in the aisles on dollies.
“Geez! All this camera stuff for our stream?” I said as I saw them setting up. Donna went straight to meet with the camera director. I recognized him from our last DC performance.
“They’ll be recording and broadcasting all three acts,” Remas said. “Remember, the New Year’s Eve performance will be broadcast live on cable.”
“Will we have a chance to see the other acts?” I asked.
“We have a full dress rehearsal that is supposed to run exactly as the show does tomorrow afternoon. I think the jazz ensemble is slated to start playing at three o’clock, which should put us on stage at five-thirty. There are two fifteen-minute intermissions and all the equipment from one act has to be removed from the stage so all the crap from the next act can be set. These guys…” she pointed to the backstage crew, who were still adjusting curtains and lights, “know what they’re doing. It’s a whole field of expertise trained at the school.”
“Do the other acts need rehearsal time here other than the dress tomorrow? Are we hogging the space?”
“No. Even the camera work is easier. They are music groups and there are only so many directions you can shoot them. They can practice anywhere. Our group, with Sophie and Brittany dancing and with the electronic titles that will be displayed and superimposed on the scene, is the most complicated of the lot. That’s why we go last,” Remas said.
I let the tech take care of itself and we started from the top to rehearse our program again.
“I need you, Jacob,” Cindy said. “I can’t believe how uptight I am about this tour. It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done. I need you to fuck me.”
“Cindy, honey, come to bed and I’ll make love with you. It’s a big deal for me, too. You have a lot more performance hours in front of audiences than I have,” I said.
“No, Jacob. You don’t understand,” she said. “I love to make love with you. I love feeling so connected when you are sliding in my vagina. I love looking in your eyes when we make love. But right now, I need you to fuck my ass. I need you to tower over me and dominate me. I need you to own me so I know you’ll protect me and take care of me on stage. Fuck me, Jacob.”
It was a little disturbing for me to hear words like ‘own me’ and ‘dominate me.’ At the same time, having her ask me to fuck her ass was having a decidedly positive impact on my cock. We hadn’t done that since we started vaginal sex after the winter dance. And, honestly, sinking into Cindy’s ass was awesome. I wanted it. I guess that’s what made me decide to give her all she wanted.
“Come here, my Piper,” I commanded. We were still in the living room of the two-bedroom suite—same apartment we’d occupied in September. In order to accommodate all seven of us, we’d pulled the sofa bed in the living room out. It was made up but we hadn’t determined who was sleeping where yet. Everyone paused to look at me, unaccustomed to my tone of voice. Cindy stood in front of me, ramrod straight. I wasn’t going to tear any clothes, but I wasn’t being particularly gentle about removing them from her either. She started to help. I pushed her hands away.
“I’ll undress you,” I said. “I want to see your body revealed at my own pace. Just stand there while I look at the slope of your shoulders and the hollow of your neck. I want to trace the curve of your breasts. I want to pinch your nipples until they are so hard you ache for release. And look at your back. Turn around. I want all your pod mates to see you. I want them to worship your perfection.” I traced her spine down to her panties, the last article of clothing she was wearing. She’d begun to pant and had a rosy flush growing all up her torso and face.
“What are you doing, Jacob?” Donna whispered in my ear.
“Cindy, my little Piper girl, wants to be dominated and fucked in the ass,” I said. “I think our whole pod should see what kind of girl she really is. I think they should all pet her tiddies and suck her nipples while she stands motionless in front of them. You should run your fingers through her slit and feel how wet she is, just thinking about being on display in front of her pod mates. You should watch as I lube up her asshole and fuck it with my cock.”
The rest of the pod started moving closer to Cindy and stroking her. They sucked her nipples. Sophie crawled between her legs, nudging them farther apart as she raised her face and licked Cindy’s crotch. Cindy shook, moving to hold Sophie’s head. I gently removed her hands from Sophie and placed them back at her side, smoothing down her arms.
“I will take care of you, Piper. All you have to do is stand here quietly. I’ll make sure all your needs are met.” Desi moved behind me and got my trousers pulled down, freeing my cock. Cindy jumped when she felt me rub it in her crack. Brittany stopped sucking on a nipple, letting Donna take over as she ran to the bedroom to get lube for me. I dropped to my knees behind Cindy and drew my tongue up her crease, tickling her asshole as I went and pausing at the bottom to touch tongues with Sophie. Remas moved in close to kiss Cindy. I kept her hands held at her sides.
I moved Cindy to the sofa bed and pushed her forward until she knelt at the edge. Desi had her mouth over my cock, making sure I was good and wet as I squirted a bit of lube directly into Cindy’s ass. Remas moved in front of Cindy and pushed the girl’s head down between her spread legs. This caused Cindy’s ass to be thrust even more up in the air. I stepped forward and simply shoved my cock into Cindy’s ass all in one movement. She whined into Remas’s pussy with increasing volume as I sank into her.
“I will take care of you,” I said as I pulled back and slammed into her. “Your pod mates will take care of you. We will all protect you. We will give you what you need. You are ours… and… no one… can take… you away.” I slammed deep into her ass as I let go a fountain of come. With the volume Cindy screamed as she came, I figure Remas’s pussy is now officially deaf.
And Cindy fell forward off my cock as she passed out.
Since we were the most complicated act in the show, we spent Thursday morning going cue by cue through the program, feeling like we were slabs of meat being pushed around on the stage. But when it came time for the dress rehearsal, everything went like clockwork. I was still surprised, though, that neither Dr. Donahue nor anyone else from the commission showed up to preview our performance. It looked like they were really leaving it all to our discretion. That kept me hyper alert for anything that would mess up our chances of getting assigned here.
At the same time, I wasn’t going to water the program down. They declined the opportunity to preview it, so they could live with what we produced. I could tell Donna was a little nervous, as well, when she met with the recording director. Still, they went through the cue book and the crew functioned flawlessly. Members of the orchestra, chorale, and jazz band watched our performance and cheered. I guessed we were doing something right.
At the crew’s request, we did another run-through Friday morning. Everyone else had already left for their Christmas celebrations and we ran the program twice. By that time, Livy and Rachel showed up. Our school-provided bus showed up and we all packed our suitcases and instruments for the trip home.
Em and I sat with our parents at the midnight service at church that night. Yeah, it was a beautiful service, I suppose. We sang the right hymns. We listened to the right scriptures. I held Em’s hand and she held Mom’s. On the far side, I could see that Dad simply had his head bowed with tears dripping from his eyes.
Christmas without Peyton. It just didn’t seem right.
I remembered her words a year and a half ago at her birthday. “I’m going to change the world so people don’t have to be separated from the ones they love.”
Oh, little angel. How much I feel the separation between us now.
I realized I didn’t believe in God anymore. If he was there, he was irrelevant. I promised my little angel that I would fulfill her vow.
After Christmas morning with Mom and Dad, Em and I returned silently to the farm. They had been invited to have Christmas dinner with Rachel’s family. During the day, we all gathered together. It seemed like everyone was a little subdued. Yeah, we were all there. Joan had come in Christmas morning. We all ate our Christmas dinner together and there were a few little presents exchanged. None of us were into exchanging gifts, but we’d supplied money for a gift exchange from our joint funds. We had money in the bank.
That gave me an idea that I decided to run past Rachel and Beca that evening as we lay together in bed.
“What would you think about us all having rings when we go through our ceremony in Boston?” I asked.
“You’ve decided we’ll have the ceremony?” Beca asked.
“If everyone is willing. I don’t want to do anything unless everyone is in. We can just continue the way we are,” I said.
“I’m in,” Rachel said. “I always figured I’d marry you someday. Having all our pod mates just makes it that much better.”
“Me, too,” Beca said. “I think the rings are a great idea. I’ll collect everyone’s ring sizes. You still need to convince Brittany’s parents.”
“I think when they see us all together in California, they’ll understand,” I said. “I’m sorry you and Livy and Joan have to take vacation time to join us out there, Rachel.”
“Oh, we’re not,” she said. “I talked to Joan. We were all assigned temporary duty with the pod between Christmas and New Year’s. We don’t have to report back to our stations until Tuesday January 4th. The third is an official holiday since New Year’s Day is on Saturday.”
“They really want us, don’t they?” I said. “I hope we don’t screw everything up with this performance.”
“If they thought there was a chance of that, they would have intervened before the live stream Monday,” Beca said. “Not one commissioner has inquired about the program. I’m sure they have something planned, but I have no idea what.”
“What’s the congressional calendar like?” I asked.
“They’ll reconvene on Tuesday, as well,” Rachel said. “Then they’ll recess until the following Monday, calling the rest of the first week of January study days for the next session. I’d guess more than half of them won’t show up for rollcall on Tuesday. Bunch of lazy slugs, if you ask me.”
“We need to change that,” I mused. “I don’t know how, but we need to get congress on the side of reform.”
“As long as Jeffries controls the senate, we don’t stand a chance,” Rachel said.
“Then that’s where we’ll have to start.”
We flew to Sacramento on Sunday, getting in late in the day with the two plane changes we had. We were staying in a Hyatt Regency on this trip and had six rooms for our pod. I was a little surprised at the luxury, but was told to enjoy it while we could. After the show Monday night, we’d board our bus and move to San Francisco. Only we wouldn’t go to San Francisco. All the technical equipment would move to the city while we went south and got a room halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. We’d be stacked up a little tighter in that hotel for two nights. Then we’d be on our bus all night Wednesday for the move to Los Angeles. After the show in LA, we’d move to San Diego and have two nights in a hotel there. Sleep was going to be caught as we could in order to meet the aggressive concert schedule.
Remas was assigned a room with an orchestra person she’d roomed with before. I don’t think she ever used that room. Monday morning, we boarded our bus with all our luggage and went to the casino in Sacramento. If we’d been intimidated by the stage in DC, this was much worse. We got a run-through as soon as we got there, but it was more to get the feel for the space. It was sheltered, but technically out of doors. There was seating for 5,000 people. Huge monitors were located next to the stage that would show the set like our audience online would see it. We were rock stars!
Our bus was our refuge. Only our pod and the second driver were in it. It was good that Emily didn’t have to do all the driving. She’d switch on and off with the other driver. The seats leaned back, so we caught what extra sleep we could between meals and the performance.
The show started at eight o’clock, which meant our act was scheduled at ten-thirty. That was California time, so it would be even worse for our patrons, most of whom were still in the east and three hours ahead of us. Nonetheless, Joan said we had over two thousand signed up for the stream. Still, being fresh for a show that late at night meant we were catching up on as much sleep as we could. We finally went to the venue a little before eight o’clock to watch and listen to the first two acts. It was better than just waiting in our bus.
They were kind of predictable. The jazz ensemble included a vocal quartet and they played and sang nearly all the winter holiday songs you could imagine, including both secular and religious songs from both Christian and Jewish backgrounds. I was really amused when they sang Steve Martin’s “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs.”
Wouldn’t you know the chamber orchestra and chorale did portions of the songs from the lyrics. The orchestra was really good and I wondered how on earth we six people were going to fill this massive space with our instruments and voices. Yes, every instrument had pickups, so we’d be amplified, but the space was so damned big. The sound they got when they did the Hallelujah Chorus was incredible.
We moved onto the stage with our instruments, our crew scrambling to remove all the chairs and music stands during the fifteen-minute intermission. We were running like clockwork and I glanced nervously at my watch for the time. Offstage, Joan and Beca were monitoring the sign-in of as many patrons as there were live audience members.
We were ready right on time and Joan signaled the start of our feed. Donna walked out on stage in a black gown that made her golden hair shine.
“National Service Corps members, ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “We are pleased to introduce this final act of the National Service winter holiday special, featuring Marvel and Hopkins and Company. This final act is being simultaneously streamed to 5,231 patrons of Marvel and Hopkins online. We welcome you all to an unconventional holiday program featuring the music of Ennio Morricone, titled ‘Dreamer of Dreams.’ You might find this music unusual for a winter holiday, but those of you in our audience who have come from the fields for this evening of entertainment will find the story familiar. Ladies and gentlemen, Marvel and Hopkins and Company.” She glanced back at us and whispered, “I love you,” then left the stage. We looked at each other. Cindy gave us our count and we were off.
Each of the segments we played was accompanied by a title projected over our images on the big screens. There was no dance to accompany the first piece, our prologue. “We all had dreams,” was the title and the projections included images of children playing. The prologue included snippets of the themes of all the pieces we’d play and evoked a sense of awakening, discovery, and hope for the future.
The next scene featured Sophie and Brittany in a pas de deux in which they were lovers, discovering each other, becoming friends, and becoming lovers. It was titled, “We all had family and friends and lovers.”
In the third movement, “We answered the call to service,” Britt and Sophie were in an embrace and were apparently tugged apart. They moved to opposite sides of the stage, frequently looking back at each other as they danced separate dances in which they studied, trained, and prepared for the future, but always kept their eyes cast back on the other. They just moved farther and farther apart until both girls had slipped offstage. I couldn’t believe how well Sophie had interpreted the music and the theme in a dance without acting out or miming things. That was one of the issues we had discussed ad infinitum. This was a musical performance and people needed to draw their own conclusions from the music, the dance, and the title.
The sixth movement was our rendition of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. We titled it “Mexican Standoff.” As soon as it started, there was applause and we heard people whistling the theme along with Cindy’s instruments. Having Andy’s rich baritone added to Desi’s soprano just multiplied the effect. Having the rest of my pod mates join Sophie and Brittany for the dance they’d done in our school hall was amazing.
Not that I could watch them, but the hush on the crowd as they fell back and away from each other was indication they were caught up in the story. But in the next number, titled “National Emergency,” the girls all stopped in mid stride and tools were handed down the line. They carried hoes, shovels, and cultivators and fell into a line dance. The surprise was the overwhelming ‘Boo!’ that came from our audience. We understood, though, that the audience reaction was not for the performance, but for the content. If never before, they realized at this point we were telling their story. And they were upset.
We continued through the sections on despair and rebellion. Then Desi lit up the night with her slightly modified rendition of Run, Man, Run. People in the audience were stamping their feet in rhythm with the music and it sounded like the entire audience was running for freedom.
Remas had created a fantastic epilogue in her arrangement. I don’t know what we’d have done without her. Certainly not this epic hour of music and dance. We titled the epilogue, “We have not forgotten the dream!” It included Sophie and Britt coming back to each other and being lifted by our other pod mates as they were pulled apart and brought back together.
The applause was thunderous to my ears. I couldn’t hear myself think. They kept stomping their feet and dancing. Then Donna was back in her black dress in the spotlight. When the hell did she have time to change clothes?
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention and kind response to this presentation by Marvel and Hopkins and Company. If you would indulge me for a few more minutes, please.” The crowd settled down, assuming, I suppose, we were going to do an encore. “Marvel and Hopkins have invited you as a live audience to witness what comes after they perform for their patrons. We typically have a question and answer period after a performance and our backstage team has been collecting questions from the online viewers. We have selected a few of these questions for Jacob and Cindy to answer and invite you to listen in.”
What the fuck? I didn’t recall agreeing to answer questions in front of the audience. I looked at Cindy and her brow was creased with a pleading look in her eyes. Donna handed me her microphone and I heard a voice from offstage ask the first question. It was flashed up on the screens. It was pretty innocuous.
“Why did you choose spaghetti western music for a Christmas program?” We stumbled through an answer about wanting to offer something new and not necessarily tied to the holiday since we had both the jazz ensemble and orchestra to cover more traditional music. I managed to get Cindy to answer a question about whether it was true we were a couple.
“What do you call it when there are twelve in the couple?” she asked. “I think there’s a mathematical construct called a dodecahedron. I think that describes us better.”
“You’ve been becoming more political with each of your performances this year. Are you being used by the government?” asked the next question. I took the mike back. We all knew this would be a question and I’d worked a lot on how I would answer it.
“Humanitarianism is inherently political. It—and we—opposes any political expediency that fails to take into consideration the conditions it forces upon people. Look at these images.” We had my slides of the agricultural work camp ready to project as I continued talking. “The National Service is broken. Through the negligence of our congress, it has continued to be dysfunctional. We turned it into a slave labor force without a thought for the people we enslaved and a year after the national emergency was revoked, still have people enslaved in the fields—many of whom are here tonight. This cannot go on. Conditions continue to be appalling in our camps. No parent who voted for the twenty-eighth amendment imagined they were voting to enslave their children. Yet, we are told the senate leader has declared no National Service Reform bill will come before the senate. He will block them all. Well, I have something to say to Senator Jeffries and all our elected representatives. There are currently over thirty-five million registered voters between eighteen and twenty-seven years of age who have served, are serving, or soon will serve in the National Service. I call on those thirty-five million voters to vote out of office any representative or senator who opposes the National Service Reform Bill. And for all other Americans who give a fuck about their country and the people enslaved by it: join the voices of those thirty-five million voices and demand the removal of any senator or congressman who opposes service reform. We will recover the dream.”
I intended to continue, but the uproar in the audience, clapping, stomping of feet, and cheering went on so long and loud that we signaled an end to the questions. Not knowing what else to do, I looked at Cindy and said, “Mozart on Fire.” We counted down the beats and launched into this signature piece. We’d long-since integrated Desi and Remas into it. I was happy to see Andy and David jump into the jam. It went longer than usual and I finally counted down a last chord and we shut down. We all stood and bowed with our instruments in hand and then walked offstage as the audience continued to applaud.
Backstage, we found the jazz ensemble, orchestra, and chorale waiting for us and applauding. It was overwhelming. Among them was Dr. Donahue. We hadn’t seen her before the performance.
“Well, Jacob,” she said. “You’ve either become a national hero or public enemy number one. Good luck.”
Fuck!
End Part XIV
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
