Uprising

(After Timing)

Annie was in a bit of a bind when Ray finally came home.

Master thought he was oh, so sneaky when he mounted the webcams through the house. He'd picked times when Annie was sleeping at the 'rents or helping one of his girlfriends shop for birthday gifts, or maybe when she was passed out drunk because everyone at a party thought it was funny to force liquor on a defenseless sylph.

But what he hadn't realized was that sylphs could hear just about anything electronic. There was a sort of a tone when she was in the vicinity, almost like tinnitus.

So she'd found most of the ones hidden in the living room. The one under the television. One on either side of the drapes for the dining room window. One in the bookshelf, cleverly disguised in a hollowed-out book. The spine said it was recipes for diabetic vegans, so Ray had known Annie would never ask anyone to get it down and open it.

The sylph had snuck up to each and estimated their field of view. Now she was mapping routes around the room that avoided them. With the areas sketched in, the map had a glaring hole. There was no camera spying on any Annie activity on his computer desk.

There's no way Ray would leave something that close to his heart without surveillance. So where would he have put the camera?

She put herself in his mind, walked in his shoes and meditated on the sound of a webcam… And by meditation, she ate half of the chips of a tollhouse cookie and tried to listen with super-sugar-hearing.

All she picked up was her frantic heartbeat.

She knew he wouldn't have poked a hole in the Foglio print. Nor the animated waterfall clock. He might have poked a hole in the black-light poster of a large-breasted mermaid teasing a starfish. But Mom and Annie both suspected he'd only hung that up to see how long it took Annie to destroy it.

So all in all, she was left with the ceiling fan. She had plenty of dental floss to reach it, but her launcher wouldn't get the GI Joe grappling hook that far up.

She had to climb up the drapes, lift the launcher, then fire the hook over the fan. She didn't quite get sea-sick from the swinging, but the climb was exhausting. Still, she felt the victory of reaching the blade. There was the steady tone of an electronic device somewhere in the fan's housing.

A victory fist-bump was more than justified, though her footing on the angled blade may have contra-indicated sudden movement. She watched the grappling hook roll off the blade and fall to the floor.

"Well, shit," she muttered, then automatically looked around to see if Master had heard her swear.

-------

Ray swung through the garage door and the kitchen, calling his sylph's name. As luck would have it, he made it right underneath the fan before he came to a stop.

"Master!" Annie said cheerfully. Ray was spooked. From her position, the sylph's voice reached both of his ears at the exact same time. His brain couldn't tell where she was.

He had no clues to determine her direction. And no matter how he turned his head, she didn't sound any different.

"You're just in time, Master. I need a hand. Just a little one, if you don't mind. What's wrong, Ray?"

"Where are you, Annie?"

"Like you don't know."

"I DON'T know!" he insisted. He was frozen in place. He'd nearly stepped on her once, shortly after he trusted her enough to let her run around outside of the cage.

For the twelve years since, he'd been paralyzed if he thought he might crush her little skull with a careless step.

"Yeah, right," she sneered. "You walked RIGHT UP to me." He crouched, looking at the carpet closely. He found the grappling launcher and tipped it carefully to one side and looked beneath it.

She suspected he'd watched the entire operation from his work computer, somehow, and was now playing the fool.

He WAS good at it, she had to admit.

"You'll do anything to avoid looking up to me, won't you, Master?"

He took the clue and looked up. She waved. "Can you get me down, please?"

"Quickly and easily," he said, his hand reaching towards the switch for the fan.

"Can you get me down," she said quickly, "withouthavingtoexplainmylimptoMom?"

"Oh, very well," he said. He tossed the grappling hook over one blade, not the one she was on, and let it hang about three inches over the side.

Annie felt disgust at the ease with which the overmassed ass did that so casually, but she slipped over to the blade and tried to set the hook.

"Just step in it," Ray said.

"Oh. Elevator ride?" she asked. He nodded. She sat and placed a foot carefully in the hook, then slowly slid over the side. Ray paid out the line to drop her to his reach.

But he didn't reach. She was well within his grasp and still dangling. "Help?" she asked. He was silent until she was lowered all the way to his face. "What?" she asked.

"I think that after rescuing fair maiden, I deserve her favor, don't you?" he asked. And pursed his lips for a kiss.

"I'm not rescued yet," she snapped. "I could still fall to my-"

"Pshaw," he said. The sylph looked down. One hand held the floss, one was right beneath her. As she watched, it came up and gently accepted her weight. She stood easily on the moving hand as it lifted her across to his face.

"La, sir," she said with a tiny curtsy. "You do honor me with your great strength and engineering prowess." She kissed him on the lips.

"And you," he said, releasing the floss and wrapping his fingers around her, "do me honor by keeping a straight face." He kissed the top of her head, then lowered her to the computer desk while he extracted the grapple from the fan.

"What were you doing up there, anyway?" he asked.

"As Sir Hillary said, 'Because it's there.'"

"George Mallory said it," Ray said absently. Annie counted that as a win, for after correcting her answer, he lost interest in the question.

He broiled some burgers for dinner. While they were eating, he asked, "What's sylph-friendly food?"

"More of it," she said around a mouthful of beef.

"No, no," he protested. "There's a pot luck at work. The IT department and the software writers are getting together. And they're encouraging people to bring in their sylphs. They asked me to bring sylph-friendly food. For all the sylphs."

"You got volunteered?" she asked. Ray nodded with a shrug.

Annie glanced out the kitchen window. Rain made the trees shiny under the streetlights. "Not really rib weather," she said.

"Ribs?"

"Oh, yes," she gushed. "That time you cooked a rack of ribs and gave me an entire rib all to myself? That was frieeeeeeeeeeendly, Master."

"I give you a rib every time," he pointed out.

"And I love you for it!" she squealed. "Do that and the other sylphs will… Wait. Wait, I'm the only sylph at your company. I mean, you're the only sylph owner at your company."

"Apparently not," he said. "But most owners don't let people know they own a sylph. They get teased."

"Really?"

"Really."

"That's, like, the opposite of high school. And college. And being a rock star. And… and… And of LIFE!" she observed.

"Well, you can HAVE a sylph, but the first time you say you need a day or an afternoon off 'because of my sylph,' they all say you're whipped and 'who owns who?' and such like that there."

"Do…." She paused for a long moment. "Do they tease you, Ray? About me?"

"They tried. I told them all to fuck off because I have the best sylph in the world and they're just jealous."

The sylph popped to her feet and ran to wrap herself around his wrist. "Now THAT'S sylph friendly!" she purred.

"It's also why I was volunteered," he said. "Everyone associates me with sylphs. I bring you to work, I talk about you all the time. They figure I must know what I'm doing."

She stroked his skin and nuzzled against him. "You do okay," she said. It sounded dismissive, but an 'okay' from Annie sounded like a standing ovation in Ray's ears.

He smiled and stroked her back. "So what would you like to serve at a party?"

"Not a Passion Cake," she said instantly.

"No!" Ray replied. Annie purred at his firm refusal to have her strip and sex up a strange sylph in front of his coworkers. Ray shook his head. ""It's pot luck. Cakes are no good for pot lucks. Greedy people take too-big slices. For pot lucks, you gotta bring in Passion Cupcakes."

"Dick," she muttered.

"Not necessarily," he said. "If you don't want dick, I hear that Chrissy's sylph, Cherry, was in Playboy before The Day. The Bunnies of 1974." She threw herself away from him, wiping at her arms and shirt as if removing his slime, and stomped back to her seat. But all was forgiven with his next two words.

---------

"Chocolate Fondue," Ray told his supervisor.

"Really?" Andy asked.

"Oh, yeah. It's sylph friendly AND people friendly."

"Excuse me?" Annie shouted.

"Sorry," Ray said with apparent sincerity. "It's friendly for big AND little people." Andy shook his head. Ray clearly owned his little pet, and was in charge most of the time. Andy had been serious about the man's 'quelling look.' But Ray also seemed to live in fear of Annie's ire. Andy wasn't sure he'd ever want a pet that had that much clout in the relationship.

He watched Ray and Annie set up the fondue pot between the crock pots and the chafing dish. A platform was raised around one side, looking kind of like a game of skill at a state fair. Annie set out what appeared to be fishing poles here and there, but instead of hooks they had little plastic arrows from an Adventure Man Indian set.

Chocolate chips were poured in and started to melt. The smell of the chocolate and the various items for dipping wafted over the table. Annie started to ease towards the tray of cut fruit. Ray gently brushed her back towards the platform…away from the tempting treats. "And now we wait," he ordered.

"Dick," Annie muttered. She turned quickly to apologize. Master had indulged her as far as clothes for the party. She was wearing one of her nicest dresses. He never made her appear nude before his coworkers, but he also made sure she didn't overdress. He didn't want anyone to think that he was playing dress-up with his pet, so she was usually limited to t-shirts and shorts. Today he'd allowed her to pick out her entire ensemble. Best dress, nicest shoes, a comfortable bandeau and even panties! He accepted her apology without making her feel like a heel for needing to make one.

-----------

The first sylph placed down on the buffet was a beautiful blonde woman. She wore a lovely peasant blouse and coordinated skirt. There were even earrings, and neither one was an identification tag! Annie thought she looked close to her own age. Annie smiled and offered her hand. "I'm Annie! You must be Cherry!"

Cherry had been returning a smile. That soured. "I must be?" She took the hand into a short shake. "You master has that issue?"

"I, uh, don't know," Annie said, lowering her hand. She did know, though. Ray would have definitely found that issue if he owned it, if only to be able to compliment her on how well she was aging.

"Sorry," Cherry said, wiping her brow. "It's just that Chrissy always brags and men always assume they can see how well my boobs have withstood the march of time."

"Men," Annie spat.

Cherry flashed her a smile. "So, where's the sylph food? They told me you were the hostess."

"Yep." Annie gestured. Trays between them and the pot held slices of banana, melon, strawberries, and pineapple, cubes of angel food cake, whole marshmallows and grapes.

"Nice. Where's ours?"

"It's all ours," Annie insisted.

"They didn't cut everything down to appropriate sized portions?" Cherry asked dubiously.

"They told Ray 'sylph friendly,' en voila," Annie said.

"Will we be punished for taking more than we can eat?"

"Of course," a man's voice sounded. They turned to see another sylph walking towards them. "That's how the system works."

"What system?" Annie asked. The man seemed oddly familiar as he stalked across the table, veering around a pie plate with several ladles in it.

He wore clothes, too, but not formal. Nor even clothes, really, in Annie's estimation. He had on a pet-store coverall, a baby-shit-green one. Either he or his owner was making some sort of statement. And he looked to be about Ray's age.

"The only system that matters," he replied. "Class."

"Are you going to talk about the violence inherent in the system?" Cherry asked.

Annie spun to face her. "I just KNEW I'd love to get to know you!"

"Python fan?" Cherry asked with a smile.

"Python fanatic!" Annie admitted. Cherry offered her hand for a much more convivial handshake. Annie took it happily.

"Anyway," the male asked, tired of being ignored, "the whole point of the system is to subjugate the sylphs. So of course we'll be punished for wasting food."

"What if we don't waste food?" Annie asked.

"Then we'll be punished as poor guests," he said. Annie and Cherry shared a look and shrugged.

"I'm Annie," she said, offering her hand. Cherry introduced herself as well.

"Are those your slave names?" he asked, not taking their hands.

"BRENT!" Annie called, figuring out who he reminded her off. The angry stalking, the untrustworthy giants. "Are we within ten minutes of a sylph uprising?"

"My SLAVE name is Lucifer," he said. "Before the enslavement, real people referred to me as…Clint."

Annie couldn’t help herself. He delivered the name as if it should be recognized. Like Batman, Sinatra, Jesus. So serious, and such an anticlimax, she burst out laughing.

Cherry managed to confine herself to a smile, punching Annie on the shoulder.

"What's so funny?" the famous…. Clint… asked.

"Nothing," Annie said. "Let's go get some chocolate…. Clint."

Ray had covered small containers with felt bottoms, so they slid easily between the food trays and the back of the platform.

Sylphs then stabbed the arrows in place and climbed up. From there they could lift the food into the chocolate, then heft it back to the container.

By the time they stowed the fishing rods and got down to the food, the chocolate had cooled enough to touch.

Clint suggested that the sylphs share one banana slice so they could not be punished for wastage.

Cherry insisted that bananas made her barf and Annie pointed out that Ray had intended for everyone to sample whatever they wanted, as long as the supplies and the chocolate lasted. She started with the angel food cake. Cherry had a grape.

Clint… had a strawberry, after making sure Cherry wouldn't be offended. That endeared him to both women.

Shards of a broken plastic fork had been wrapped in tape to provide safe grips. The sylphs were sharing slices of their treats when two more sylphs showed up.

"Is the serving line still open?" Brad and Ellen introduced themselves. They were both deeply tanned and nearly naked. They had identical diaper/loin cloths and that was it.

"Your owner's a Blue Lagoon fan," Cherry said. It wasn't a question. Ellen nodded happily. Brad rolled his eyes.

"Every night we act out a scene."

"Which one?" Annie asked.

"Owner's choice!" Ellen said with a big smile.

"But never the one where we just lay down in the boat and sleep," Brad said.

Annie tried to keep a straight face. If their owner was that much of a fan, there's no way the sylphs weren't named after the characters they were dressed as. But if they wanted to be Brad and Ellen, here, instead of Richard and Emmeline, she was okay with it.

Now, how to quickly get Famous Clint not to challenge their slave names?

"Well, Brad, Ellen," Clint said at just that moment, "the line is open. Dig in."

"I'll show you what we do!" Cherry said, hopping to her feet. As they climbed up to take poles, Annie leaned over to place a hand on Clint's knee. He looked up, surprised.

"Thanks, Clint," she said. He nodded and leaned closer to whisper.

"Anyone dressed more embarrassingly than me, I have to take pity on them."

Annie smiled and kissed his cheek.

That, of course, was the moment Glorious Master came to the table. "Hey!" he protested. "I brought sylph friendly food, not a sylph friendly sylph!"

"Sorry, sir!" Clint shouted, scooting away from Annie. She grabbed his thigh to hold him in place.

"Don't let him spoil the moment, Clint," she said, loud enough for human ears. "Clint's a nice guy! I like Clint! You could do a lot worse than be friendly to Clint!"

"Sorry," he said with a smile. "Don't take me seriously, Clint. Lord knows, Annie never does."

"And there's a reason for that!" Annie replied.

"Who's Clint?" A woman walked up behind Ray, looking over the assorted sylphs. They all froze under her scrutiny.

"That's Clint," Ray said, pointing. "Beside my Annie."

"That's my Lucifer!" the woman said. She reached down to pat her sylph on the head. He looked down at the table. "Are you having fun, Lucifer?"

"Yes, mistress," he sullened back at her.

"Good and… Good heavens! Are you going to eat ALL of that?"

"I'll try," Lucifer replied.

"And we're helping!" Annie added. The woman still looked disappointed. Ray spoke up.

"Margaret, it's okay. It's a party. I don't care if they don't eat every scrap. They should just have fun and gorge themselves on the treats."

"Well," she said, lingering on the L's. "You're encouraging them in unfitting behavior."

"Hey, it's my food, my chocolate, and Clint's welcome to try anything he wants."

"Lucifer," Margaret corrected him.

"Sorry. Annie introduced him as Clint, so that's lodged in my brain. It's like my aunt Noel. Seven kids. If she wanted the sixth one to come downstairs she had to work her way through the first five names before she could reach his."

"My grandma did that, too," Margaret said with a smile. "If I was jumping on the bed, she'd shout for Uncle Adam and then Uncle Michael, then Aunt Ester, then Mom…"

Ray managed to ease her away from the table as she told her anecdote. Annie beamed at the back of his head. Master WAS being friendly to Clint.

Clint pat her on the knee and smiled in silent thanks. She'd be sure to pass that on later.

The other three came back with their food. Clint's smile faded a bit. The new sylphs knew his name was really Lucifer. He looked to be prepared for some teasing.

Brad sat down and pointed to his tray. "I noticed no one tried the melon, so that's what I got." He looked the other male in the eye with a wide smile. "Would you like a slice of melon, Clint?"

Ellen wasn't quite as subtle. "Yes, CLINT, I don't believe no one tried the marshmallow, CLINT. CLINT, do you want some of my marshmallow?" She gave a little hiccup and looked around. "And of course, Annette, you too!"

"We got it, Ellen," Cherry said, kneeling to put her arms around the couple's shoulders. "You guys are great."

"Why don't we just sit here," Annie said, "quietly gorging ourselves stupid, until Clint can talk without breaking into tears?"

"I'm fine," Clint said hoarsely. Annie didn't look at him, not at all. She just passed a slice of the marshmallow over then concentrated on her cake.

A few humans wandered by, dipped some food, waved to the sylphs or said 'how cute' or something, then moved on.

"Our owners aren't here," Cherry said. Her voice had the tone of one facing some sort of realization.

"Well, they're HERE," Clint said.

"But… But they're not RIGHT HERE," Cherry said. "So no one can ask 'can you make her dance?' It's…"

"Great," Annie suggested. Cherry nodded. They all nodded. They passed the time with 'my owner made me' stories for a bit.

Annie told about being used as bait for possible girlfriends. Cherry described the average encounter between her owner and any male who'd ever seen the inside of a Playboy.

Clint's owner would always repeat the full story of his capture about a year after The Day. "She never mentions that I was a plumber. Just that she caught me behind a toilet in the ladies room."

Brad and Ellen held hands and described being purchased from the pet store exactly because they resembled other people.

"And I made both of their costumes myself," a human male was saying somewhere close. Ellen smiled. Brad looked stricken. Obviously it was time for THEIR owner to approach and embarrass them. Cherry gave them each a shoulder squeeze in support. Annie and Clint nodded. No one was going to be teased or judged, not today, not at this feast.

"I can't wait to see them," a woman replied. Cherry's eyes bugged out, just a bit.

A man and a woman approached. Sure enough, the man called for Richard and Emmeline to come show themselves to Chrissy.

Chrissy made appropriate sounds of appreciation, then introduced Cherry to her coworker, Melvin. Another couple of humans came by just then and cooed. Predictably, one woman asked, "Can you make them dance?"

"Oh, they have a whole routine," Melvin said. Ellen smiled while Brad glanced guiltily over at the others.

Annie stood and lifted her dress up, over her head and off. Clint nodded and started to strip off his overall. Cherry goggled at the two, then glanced up at her owner.

The humans were all staring at the Tan Twins as they made their way to a clear spot on the table.

Annie laid her dress carefully across a bench and lowered her bandeau. Cherry looked from her to a now-naked Clint then nodded in sudden understanding.

"ANNIE!" she shouted, "CLINT! What are you guys doing?" Her voice drew the humans' attention.

"If my friends are going to be humiliated at a party, I don't want them to be the only ones," Annie replied, loud enough for the humans to hear.

"Dancing's not humiliating," Ellen and Brad's owner said. "Is it?"

"I like it!" Ellen said quickly. She glanced an apology at Brad. "But," she continued, "you do know I'm an absolute attention whore. Brad would rather poke his eyes out with a toothpick."

"It's not THAT bad, surely," said the woman who'd asked for the dance.

"Oh, God," Chrissy said. "Now I remember… My 4th grade recital. I had to do 'I'm a little teapot' for every relative we met for the next four years."

"Welcome to my world, Chrissy!" Cherry said as she lifted her own blouse up. Chrissy's jaw dropped, knowing how sensitive her sylph was to displaying her breasts to giants.

Ellen's owner reached over to brush her hair with one fingertip. "Show them what you learned, Melvin," he said.

"What?" Brad asked.

"I took tap. Anywhere we went, Mom commanded her money's worth." His eyes were on the sylphs but his vision was years away. "Show 'em, Melvin."

"Surely you're not going to let THEM decide if they're going to dance or not?" the frustrated woman complained.

Chrissy reached down with one fingernail and eased her pet's blouse back down.

"Of course not," Clint shouted. "It'd be like letting Rosa Parks decide where she wanted to sit."

Ray and Margaret had noticed the group collecting around the fondue pot and walked over. Margaret's eyes widened. "Are you seriously comparing the civil rights movement to whether or not an owner can make their pets perform?"

"Yes," he said, his voice even.

"I think maybe you've had too much sugar!" Margaret said.

"No," Ray said, "he's still discernible to the naked eye. When Annie's had too much, she vibrates out of phase with the visible light spectrum."

Owners collected their pets and repaired as a group to Margaret's office for privacy. "Now," Ray asked Annie, "why did you take off your pretty dress and why did your friend compare my coworkers to racists?"

Everything was explained in a rush: the camaraderie, the names, the shared experience of being humiliated in the past, the unspoken agreement to be nonjudgmental… And each sylph tried to take the bulk of the blame for the resulting insurrection.

"You know me, Master," Annie said. "Never a compliant moment. I guess I talked the others into-"

"No, no," Cherry said. "It was me, and always being reminded of the June 1974 issue, page 83."

"It was me," Emmeline said. "I crave attention and telling off Master gets lots of attention."

"I know," Richard said. "I was the one. It was me. I was hoping rebellion attention would mean an end to movie recitals."

"Hey," Lucifer said, "if ANYONE deserves blame for inspiring a rebellion…"

All the owners seemed touched by the solid friendship they were displaying. At the end there was a long, ominous silence.

The little people slowly moved into a circle on the desk, holding hands and staring back up at the giants.

Finally, Ray asked, "Annie, were you the ringleader on this sylph uprising?"

"No, sir," she said. "I WOULD have been, but there wasn't time to schedule a room, my manifesto is only half-done, and Clint never finished writing the protest song."

"I have the melody," he said. "But not all the lyrics."

"It's not his fault!" Richard shouted.

"Yeah," Emmeline agreed, "it's just hard to rhyme 'sylph uprising' in a catchy way."

"And all the good symbols have been taken," Cherry finished. "The clenched fist, the peace sign, the Victory V…"

"Oh, I don't know," Chrissy said. "The sight of you baring your breasts certainly made an impact."

"Well," Margaret said, reaching out to stroke her sylph's thigh. "I guess this was kind of an abortive uprising. But it's your first try, Clint."

"Incomplete," Melvin agreed.

"But maybe they'll get better with practice?" Ray said.

"Practice?" Annie asked.

Chrissy picked up Cherry. "Yeah, we were thinking about doing this again for sylphmas, but knowing how you feel about The Day-"

"Icanputupwithit!" Cherry shouted.

"Metoometoometoo!" Annie agreed.

"But there have to be some punishments for raising your boobs against the rightful overlords," Chrissy said.

"Next time," Melvin suggested, "they have to cut up the fruit." He made a sawing motion.

"And their clothes will be sewn on so they can't go naked," Chrissy said.

"And Clint will have actual clothes," Margaret said.

"And we'll use a block of chocolate, not chips," Ray said.

"Why?" Margaret asked.

"The rebels will have to stand there, waiting for the block to melt. Delayed gratification may keep them in line."

"A fate," Annie started to say.

"Worse than death," the other sylphs said in chorus. Ray grinned and stroked Annie's hair.

"Somehow, I think you'll pull through with the help of your friends," he said. Everyone in the room smiled.





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