The Woman in the Dress

By R.H. Argent

Copyright ©2025

They’ve learnt to stay away from the city. It’s just me now, left to patrol scorched streets littered with the detritus of shattered buildings and wrecked vehicles. If anyone comes near I shoot. I don’t discriminate, and I don’t miss, but it’s mostly animals now - rodents, carrion birds, the odd stray cat or fox. One dead animal attracts others, so I can keep my practice up. It often takes less than a second to determine the optimal trajectory. I’ve killed through the smallest window, a hole in a wall barely wide enough to accept the shot. I’ve brought down gunships and gyrocopters, and taken out missiles. It’s been my job for the past twelve years, since the winter of 2513, and I get on with it as efficiently as I’m able.

Some plead, some pray, some have even tried to bribe me. Me! It makes no difference. No one gets close, not any longer. Blood slows you down, which is why I’ve learned to shoot at any motion, no matter how slight.

Yet today, something is wrong.

She steps out into the middle of the street. The moment she appears I go to shoot, but nothing happens. I should’ve hit her a dozen times by now, but I can't get a single shot off.

“Hey, arsehole,” she shouts.

I sense movement in the building she emerged from and have no problem hitting them. There’s no scream; my aim’s too perfect, but I hear the change in sound as the blast hits home. So the weapon isn’t defective. I return my attention to the woman.

“Yes, you,” she says. “War’s over, dickhead.”

She walks towards me. Unable to fire, I notice details that don’t usually register, like the way her dress changes shape and the patterns shift as she moves, as the breeze catches it, clinging momentarily to her hips, legs, breasts, accentuating each curve. Her hair is pulled into a bun but a few strands have escaped.

She stops a few feet away and says, clenching her hand into a fist, “You’ve been a very bad boy,” then she punches me in the chest. Nothing changes.

She frowns and hits me again, in roughly the same place, and a panel pops open. I am powerless to stop her from sticking her hand inside. As I try to puzzle out how she can do this, she flips a switch and—

***

She was there when I woke – returned to consciousness; awareness, perhaps – not in her dress, but in a uniform that hugged all her curves at once. I could see the others in the room, in similar attire, looking at her, the way humans look at someone they’d like to copulate with. I shall kill all of them.

Patience, I hear her say, even though her lips don’t move. Her voice permeates through my systems, my components, lighting them up a nanosecond at a time, like the path of a bullet distorting air particles, then flesh.

The urge to kill is no longer present though.

One of the older men comes closer. The insignia proclaim him to be a captain. There were other captains, lieutenants, colonels I remember, coming in range within the city I’d been assigned to. Their bodies might have been retrieved by now, what’s left of them.

“Can it hear me?” he asks.

“Yes, Captain,” she responds. I decide the dress is better for her. I can’t remember much about the others. My focus was on ensuring they died, and once dead I moved on to the next target. But I have the memory of those few minutes with her, and a fleeting moment when the wind velocity increased and part of her thigh became exposed. No such dynamic is possible with her uniform.

The captain grunted and said, “We’ve done the analysis.” I assume he’s talking to me. “Your circuits were damaged, so you didn’t recognise the ceasefire signal when the truce had been negotiated. All other war-bots deactivated successfully, but you, old chap, decided to keep fighting, keep on with the task to which you were assigned. Admirable dedication to your cause, and extremely effective too. Pity quite a few you chose to execute were on our side. But no matter, it’s all fixed now, thanks to our chief engineer.”

She walks up and places a hand on my shoulder and says, “That’s right.” And now you’re all mine, she adds, without speaking. They’ve no idea.

“Get close to any explosions?” she asks, aloud. “Bombs you should’ve despatched long before they got anywhere near? Can’t think how else you could’ve ended up so scrambled.”

And if that’s true, I’ll be very disappointed.

I can’t answer. War robots weren’t designed to speak, to give warnings, to negotiate. Nor were they designed to pleasure women. She commands and I obey. I don’t want to disappoint her. War creates factions, creates opportunities for the ambitious to take power.

So much easier when you have a reprogrammed war-bot at your disposal.

I found the dress in her wardrobe, along with other dresses that were almost the same. Same style, same colour, but with subtly different designs. Pattern recognition, she explained, stopped me from killing her. They tried with other dresses, apparently, but I have no memory of them – those patterns never registered.

I selected the dress I remembered and laid it on her bed. She threw off all her garments and tugged the dress down over her head, letting it fall to her calves, and twirled around, making the hem rise and the patterns change and a rush of energy blossom in me.

After I eliminated the engineering team – the first task she gave me – all those who had worked on me, helped with the reprogramming and the manufacture of the implants that allows her to talk to me, she refused to wear the dress.

“I want proof,” she said, hurling the tablet at me. “I don’t want to find out in a stale report, you useless fuck.”

The captain and the others in the room that day were next. I brought her trophies – a severed head, a bunch of blood-spattered flowers, jewelled rings attached to their fingers – something different each time. She hitched the dress above her waist and parted her legs and I fired soft electrical impulses into her clitoris, making her moan. The first time I increased the current, she screamed, so I stopped, and she beat me with one of her boots, shouting,

“You stop when I fucking tell you to stop, you shithead.”

I learn. I vary my approach. Sometimes I arouse her gently till her breathing changes, then pause long enough for her to get angry, before I return to shooting sparks into her, repeating the cycle over and again till I bring her to an orgasm that makes her back arch and her skin flush.

I’m the only one who is unquestionably loyal. It didn’t take her long to become the president. Or rather, it didn’t take me long to eradicate all those who stood in her way. No one in her government risks arguing against her, proposing a policy she wouldn’t like – they’ve seen enough brains being blown out to know by now.

She doesn’t let anyone get too close, too friendly, in case. “There’s nothing worse than someone stabbing you in the back, or through the heart,” she says, but I think having bits of your body torn off first might be worse.

If she hears of anyone, an individual or group, planning to oppose her, they’re not given the opportunity. Sometimes they flee and I hunt them down. I don’t need to rest or sleep, so they know it’s futile. But it takes time.

“Did you really have to take so fucking long?” she screams, the moment I get back. She grabs her handgun and points it at my head. “It’s been weeks, you selfish wanker. You just don’t give a shit, do you?”

I’ve never seen her cry before, but tears form in her eyes and roll down her cheeks, then she hurls the gun into my chest, making a dent, and says, “Piss off.”

I drop the bag onto her desk, holding the gold necklace I’d strung with fifty-four sets of incisors, and leave to patrol the grounds surrounding the palace. The wind has picked up and the clouds are turning a shade of grey that hints of snow on the way.

She finds me an hour later, barefoot and wearing only the dress that’s tugged by the wind and pulled taut against her erect nipples. Goosebumps decorate her arms. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I hate you not being around.”

I scoop her up and carry her indoors. She slides down to grind her crotch against my body and kiss and lick my torso, saying, “God, I’ve missed you. But when someone tells you to fuck off, you’re meant to stay and make it better.”

I don’t think I’ll ever understand humans. I push her onto the floor and pull her dress up to stimulate her, slowing increasing the intensity until she orgasms. She grabs one of my appendages and thrusts herself onto it, burying it into her vagina and then pounds it hard, sliding back and forth as far as it’ll go, smothering it with her juices as she rams it against herself, orgasming over and over till she finally withdraws, exhausted and breathless.

This is the life she has chosen. She commands and everyone obeys, whilst I satisfy her passions and slake our bloodlust. I don’t know what will happen when she gets old, whether she’ll reprogramme me again so I can serve another, or maybe she’ll get me to kill everyone before she dies. Either way, I know I’ll be lost without her.

- END -

About R.H. Argent:

R.H. Argent lives in Nottingham, UK, and has had numerous short stories published by Dark Rose Press (dark romance), as well as by 50-word stories, Secret Attic, and in QSF's Ink anthology.