Lightning Strikes

The Four Beauties (#consort)

Four fifty-year-old women sat in a booth in a dark corner of an intergalactic bar. The bartender propelled himself across the floor on two squid-like tentacles and deposited four Manhattan's with four arms. 

"Thank's Sid," said Xi, stubbing out a cigarette and lifting a glass to toast their favorite bartender. "You know how to treat the girls right."

"Careful," said Sid, "or I'll forget how to swim," he said. 

Xi, Wang, Di, and Yang burst into laughter. Nobody swooned for women in their 50's, but the four friends didn't care. Their former beauty had been a liability and it was not lost on them that the universe hadn't intended for them to reach middle age.

"How are the hot flashes?" Di asked Wang who was fanning herself with a menu and sweating profusely.

"As sticky as that tape you use to hold your tits up in that dress," she shot back.

"Touche," said Yang, taking a slug of her dark brown beverage. 

"Drink up ladies," said Xi, raising her glass now to her comrades, "tomorrow we plot our next scheme."

All four had lived their youth as a great beauty of history. And all of them would have died early deaths, were it not for a narcissistic time traveler named Wade who in 3057 decided to go back in time to collect the four great beauties of China, hoping naively to bed them all.

Wade saved Di in the moment before her decapitation. Sure it took some CGI holograms, but he pulled it off flawlessly. However, it was not so wise of Wade to think he could contain a ancient Chinese femme fatale in modern times. She immediately began plotting his death which he foolishly found erotic.

Wade found Xi on a fishing boat condemned to Thaihu Lake at the old age of 27. Left there to roam the misty wilderness, she'd already been lost to society. But her legacy of loyalty, selflessness, and courage went on for milenia. After bunking up for a few weeks however, Di, Wang and Yang would vouch that she was a selfish bitch.

But who wouldn't be looking out for number one after being offered up for marriage against their will. They had all been consorts to various emperors, heads of state or warlords. Wang had been given away three times. But none of them stuck. She had been happy to fake her own death and get in a time machine with Wade until she realized he was no better than the rest of them.

Yang was the hot-headed one of the group. Having been condemned a few times by an emperor who always took her back, she spoke her mind and was rash and impulsive. Wade had helped her fake he own forced suicide. Stupidly Wade had thought she didn't have the courage to kill. 

But Yang drove a knife into Wade's chest out of the blue one day, and the other three jumped into action to help her without skipping a beat. Di was a little jealous having wanted to kill Wade herself. But the time had come for him to go. 

"What kind of pretentious asshole thinks he could control the most beautiful women in history?" Yang had complained bitterly, unfazed by the spray of Wade's blood across her face.

Since the last flicker of light had gone out of Wade's eyes, the Four Great Beauties had taken control of the time machine and had wreaked havoc on the male-dominated history of the universe and every shithead in its record.

And they always celebrated a victory with a round of Manhattan's.

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