Consciousness flooded back as the dark circles receded from my vision and I blinked my eyes rapidly in an attempt to focus. My mind vaguely registered that I was on my knees, doubled over with my arms wrapped tightly around my middle. The floor was hard and I immediately noticed that my legs were bare. Trailing my eyes further up, I confirmed that my jeans had somehow vanished from my body. I carefully unwrapped my arms from my torso and placed the palms of my hands on the floor, pushing myself up on my haunches, preparing to stand. A wave of nausea washed over me suddenly with a force so strong that my mouth began to water in anticipation of retching. I craned my neck upward to try to get some idea of where I was when I noticed a pile of fresh vomit on the floor directly in front of me. It was tinged green and smelled horrid. I moaned as another wave hit me and I began to dry heave.

"Shit, shit, shit" I heard someone whisper close by.

I attempted to stand again and flinched when I felt a hand grip my upper arm and forcefully yank me upward. The hand was gone as soon as I was steady on my feet and I felt my head swivel in the direction of the whispering voice.

"Rick?" My voice was raspy and my throat raw. I coughed violently and the saliva that had pooled in my mouth flew outward and I dry heaved again.

"What -" I began before I felt the hands gripping my upper arms, twisting me and pushing me back down to my knees in front of something that resembled a toilet. The hands were then on each side of my head, aiming my face toward the bowl right before the vomit that had been threatening since I regained consciousness finally made an appearance.

It kept coming and coming. For hours it seemed. Retch, cough, heave, breathe. Retch, cough, heave, breathe. Over and over.

I heard water running nearby and then saw something thrust toward my face in my peripheral vision.

"Drink it" I heard the same voice demand. It was Rick, I was now sure. Without turning my head, I reached my hand toward what I assumed was a glass. Once it was securely in my hand, I plopped back on to my ass and gulped down the contents faster than I intended.

"Slow down or it'll – you – you'll puke again."

I did as instructed and sipped the remainder. When the glass was empty, I screwed my eyes shut and panted as the adrenaline coursed through my body, making me tremble from head to toe. After a few moments, I finally felt lucid enough to take in my surroundings.

Rick was crouched next to me, his unibrow set in a V and a hard frown on his face. He was dressed in his usual outfit, lab coat and all, which made me remember that my jeans were gone. I scanned the rest of my body and found that none of the clothes that I had dressed in that morning were currently on my body. A thong, a push-up bra and an extremely tiny silk robe were the only things covering me, all of which I didn't recognize as my own. I glanced toward Rick again and gasped, attempting to cover myself by pulling the front of the tiny robe shut around my torso. Rick rolled his eyes and raked his long fingers through is spiky hair.

"Where the fuck are we?" I hissed at him. I looked around the room, recognizing it as a bathroom. "Why am I nearly nude?!"

Rick stood and pulled the flask from the inner pocket of his lab coat. "What – what's the l-last thing you remember?" he asked before unscrewing the cap and taking a generous swig. I realized I was still sitting on my ass in front of the toilet looking contraption containing my puke and rubbed the back of my hand across my sweaty forehead. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them in another attempt to shield my body from his gaze.

"Umm…" I attempted before screwing my eyes shut again with a groan. My head felt like it was in a vice and the pain pulsed behind eyeballs. "I was with Summer and Morty… Oh fuck, where are Summer and Morty?!" I felt panic rise in my chest as I hauled my ass up from the floor faster than was wise. I swayed on my feet and instinctively reached for Rick to steady myself. I clutched the lapels of his lab coat, twisting the fabric in my fists. He grabbed one of my forearms to help steady me, his other still holding the flask.

"They're fine. I sent them – they're home" Rick answered, taking another swig from the flask. "Anything else? I need you t-to think."

Visions flashed in my head as the haze cleared in my mind. "I was with Summer and Morty. We were watching all those people - Unity, I mean - carving out a mountain side to look like their faces. It was amazing. So fast and coordinated…"

"Uh huh" Rick replied, raising one side of his unibrow with an expression implying that I should go on.

"Summer was crowing on about how it wasn't right or something. Ugh, it's hard to remember exactly. Wait, are we still on that planet? Unity's planet?"

He didn't reply which I took as a 'yes'.

"Uh. Then I remember walking with one of the… people? One of the bodies that Unity assimilated. I was asking him – It? Unity – how assimilation worked. I think that's it. That's the last thing I remember before this."

I was still clutching Rick's lapels and I was suddenly hyper aware of his large hand wrapped around my forearm.

"Yeah. Okay. Th-that's what I thought" Rick said with a sigh before releasing his grip on my forearm and using his hand to pry my fingers from his coat. Once free of my vice grip, he shrugged out of the lab coat and thrust it toward me, averting his eyes to the side in an attempt at chivalry. Taking the obvious hint, I slid the coat onto my body and wrapped it securely around me. It was warm with his body heat and smelled like booze. The arms were much too long and hung well past my hands but the length was enough to cover below my knees, which I was grateful for.

Then, realization dawned on me like a slap in the face. "I was assimilated" I stated matter-of-factly, clutching the coat tighter around my body. I felt violated and another wave of nausea washed over me. "What happened, Rick?" I asked while casting an accusatory glance his way, sweeping a hand down my body to gesture at my lack of clothing.

Rick's face was pained and he heaved another exasperated sign. "Look, I-I…" He stopped, sighed again and pinched the bridge of his nose with this forefinger and thumb. "I didn't know."

I was speechless. He didn't know. He didn't KNOW?!

I stood there, looking at him dumbfounded. Every possible scenario of how I ended up dressed like a stripper ran through my mind. I began to recall that, while I was with Summer and Morty watching Unity coordinate the carving of a mountain side, Rick was off having sex with god only knew how many of the planet's native inhabitants. What exactly happened while I was on that walk? Did the male alien I was with puke into my mouth, absorbing me into the collective that is Unity? Did Unity then manipulate my body the way it manipulated the rest? Did it dress me in these undergarments and parade me around? Did Summer and Morty witness any of it? Did I join the massive orgy that I had tried so hard not to acknowledge while exploring the planet? Did I… did Unity use my body to have sex with Rick?!

As all these thoughts ran though my head, I began to focus on my body - on the way it felt. I lifted my arms and pulled the long sleeves of the lab coat back to inspect the skin. There were a few scratch marks, pink in color, already fading. There was dirt caked under my nails and around my cuticles. I pulled the bottom of the coat from around my legs and noticed several bruises beginning to form on my inner thighs. I craned my chin down to inspect my chest and saw the faint outline of teeth marks on my upper breasts. I focused on the feeling between my legs - on how my cunt had the familiar throbbing ache of 'freshly fucked' and how my anus felt hot and raw.

I began to hyperventilate. The vision around the edges of my eyes began to creep to black and I felt woozy. I bent at the waist and braced my hands on my knees, letting my head hang low as I gulped as much air into my lungs as possible.

"God damn it, you're gonna – gonna make y-yourself sick again!" Rick shouted from what seemed like far away.

"Did you fuck me?!" I yelled back at him, my head still hanging low. "You piece of shit! DID YOU FUCK ME?!"

"What - NO!"

I refused to look at him. I moved as far from him as possible inside the tiny bathroom, wedging myself into a corner. I couldn't hold back the sobs that began to wrack my body as I came to terms with the undeniable fact that I'd been raped.

I heard Rick's footsteps as he slowly approached me, like I were a frightened feral cat that could attack in a tornado of claws at any second. I raised my eyes to look at him and saw his right hand extended toward me. I flinched away before he could touch me and he reeled back with a look of utter horror on his face.

"I – I didn't…" he began. I shook my head in disbelief as I stared at the man I had idolized since I was 14 years old. I suddenly noticed that the lab coat was gaping open in the front, exposing most of my body to him again. I felt my neck and face flush with embarrassment as I quickly buttoned the front the coat all the way from the bottom to the top before pressing my palms to my face to hide the tears leaking from my eyes.

"No" he said again while reaching out to me once more. I felt defeated and allowed him to curl his right hand around my shoulder and tug me toward him. My legs moved of their own accord, taking me from the corner straight into his chest. "Come – come on. Let's go home" he said as he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and led me toward the door.

When we exited the small bathroom, we emerged into a larger room that was completely trashed. There were empty red solo cups everywhere along with various junk food wrappers and empty bottles of booze. There was a keg in the far corner with a sombrero draped over the top. There were also several items of clothing littering the floor and furniture, including items that looked like they belonged in a cheap costume store. It appeared that the party of the century had just ended and everyone left Rick and I clean up the mess.

"Where is everyone?" I asked, assuming before we exited the bathroom that Unity's many bodies would be waiting for us to reemerge.

Rick didn't look surprised that the place was empty, only forlorn as he removed a note that was tacked to the bathroom door. Several other identical notes where strewn and tacked all over the room. Rick stepped away from me and sat on the couch in the middle of the room while he read the contents of the note. I remained in place and watched him as he read, already guessing it was a 'Dear John' letter based on the look on his face. I shifted from foot to foot anxiously as I waited for him to finish. When he stood and began to walk toward what I assumed was the exit, I followed suit. Once we stepped outside, I gasped at the sight of even more notes littering the streets, tacked to buildings and trees and cars and mailboxes. Letters written directly on the sidewalks with chalk, on the sides of houses, spelled out in rocks on the ground, even written in the sky - all identical. I couldn't help myself from focusing on the last line of sky writing as it faded into the clouds.

"Yours and no one else's. -Unity"

My heart ached for Rick. I'd never seen him so distressed as we walked the empty streets of the completely deserted planet. The quiet was deafening and I casted my eyes downward until we finally reached the ship that would take us back to the larger ship we had initially docked with the intention of looting. Once we were on our journey back to earth, I allowed myself to look at him. He was staring straight ahead with a white knuckle grip on the steering wheel. He hadn't spoken a word since exiting the bathroom and I didn't push him. I believed him when he said he hadn't fucked me. Rick could be a bastard but I felt in my bones that he wouldn't lie about this. However, someone had. Of that, I was certain. As far as I knew, the only un-assimilated lifeforms on the planet were Rick, Summer, Morty and myself. I wasn't certain when Rick had sent Summer and Morty home but I hoped like hell that they hadn't witnessed anything.

The only thing that made sense in my mind is that Rick wasn't the only 'fucker' among the many bodies Unity had assimilated. In fact, it made perfect sense that Unity would engage in sexual intercourse with itself to continue to procreate the planet(s) it inhabited. So, perhaps Unity had fucked itself using my body and the bodies of the other assimilated during that massive orgy. Yes, that was possible. That is the story I would tell myself in the attempt to push the entire ordeal out of my head so that I could go on. So that I could go back to my normal life. So that I could look Rick in the eye again. So that I could look Beth in the eye again.

I was still staring at Rick as I comforted myself when his earlier words echoed in my head once more.

"I didn't know."

He didn't know.

So, why? Why did Unity assimilate me? Why did it force my body to participate in an orgy starring Rick Sanchez? How did it do this without Rick being none the wiser? Did he think I was myself? Did he think I was a willing participant? If so, would he have tried to fuck me? DID he try to fuck me? Why wasn't he successful?

The familiar feeling of panic began to rise in my chest again and I dug my fingernails into my palms to keep from screaming. I turned my gaze from Rick to the front of the ship, focusing my eyes on a tiny chip in the windshield in an effort to ground myself. The fleeting thought of how disastrous it would be if that chip where to branch further across the windshield causing it to completely shatter and suck us out into the vacuum of space made me giggle. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rick turn his head to look at me. I began to laugh. I laughed so hard, tears leaked from my eyes and I couldn't catch a proper breath and my stomach muscles ached.

Rick didn't say a word. He just looked at me, his expression unreadable, as he waited for my manic episode to pass. When I finally tired myself out, he turned back to look through windshield once more.

"You should really get that chip fixed" I said while wiping the tears and drool from my face.

"You're a fuck – a fuckin' looney toon, you know that?"

The next thing I knew, the heavy feeling of exhaustion was pressing me into the bucket seat and my head was drooping to the side. I watched as Rick rose up and forward so that he could reach his hand into his back pants pocket and pull the flask he tucked there in the absence of his lab coat. I watched further as the long elegant fingers of his right hand unscrew the cap and then as his left hand raised the flask to his lips. I closed my eyes and watched the scenes of an imagined orgy play out on the inside of my eyelids. I dreamed.

To be continued…