BlueLyric's "Back in Black...and Orange" Event - The Stories...

[BlueLyric]

Contest starts officially in less than an hour -- here's the story thread; comments to be posted in the other thread,  BlueLyric's "Back in Black...and Orange" Event - The Comments... -- rules...so to speak...are reposted below:





Here's the scoop:


This event is to take place officially beginning Thursday, October 28th -- that's tomorrow night at midnight -- and run through Thursday, November 18th, ending, too, at midnight...


I call this "event" because I want to be open-ended for the most part about this, but also will do some semi-judging -- I'll explain in a minute...

First flexible rule:  No word limit (although a four-word story would be kind of ludicrous, natch ).  If you feel inspired to write an epic, write that epic...spank that epic...spank it!!   If a flash tale comes to mind -- by all means, writhe it...oops...typo...write it...


Now, the meat:  As you could probably well tell, being right on top of Halloween, and named "black & orange", this event will be comprised of your efforts to serve up a tale of the supernatural.  Most of our venerable writers here have had at least some experience with it, as the supernatural is often a major component in MC, and vice-versa.  Let this be a challenge to those who haven't written it to reach down and pull out...their hottest, wettest, tale of wickedness...


For those who have an inclination against darker, more menacing type tales -- not a problem, whatsoever; who says a story of the supernatural can't have a rich, light froth to it??  Write a pink tale, and I'm sure you'll be more than fine...


I will state that for me, and for this event, supernatural does not extend to alien stories and such; this will be about the ghost, goblin, demon, succubus, witch, werewolf, vampire, etc. portion of the program (one-winged flying monkey elves are also acceptable...so are midget hell-mice)...


One other addition I'd like to see, since the stories are to be posted here at the forum by the author (with name attatched, unless you'd really like to remain anonymous), is for you to post a link to a picture that inspires or kind of captures the mood/feel of your story.  Again, this is only a request, not an edict -- I'm very aware many are in the dark on just how to post a pic link, or any type link.  (Just copy an address an paste it in this tag:  , and place a title of some sort in between, like:  hot pic, so you get this here:

hot pic

...nice, huh?? )



BTW:  You, of course, can pen more that one story, as always...



As far as judging...well,  I'll have all of us looking at who we each thought did a good job -- that's what it's here for, both to entertain and to be commented on, in the comment thread I'll set.  I'm gonna weigh who I think the best 4 or 5 tales (if we get that many ) belong to, but not as a competition -- there are writers whose works I favor a lot, and I don't want the stench of favoritism on my event.  But we can all ponder our own choices for the best tale(s)...


And my hope for a while has been to fire up the once dormant Critic's Corner.  Now that it's getting going again, more than ever, I hope that whether you're a first-timer...a tale virgin ...or a regular (story sluts, anyone?? ), you feel emboldened enough to consider offerering your work up for review in the corner, where stories are broken down and looked at, good points and bad -- a chance to see what you can change to create a more vivid likeness of erotica...or what you're doing right to push the buttons that all great stories push...


Now, if I didn't forget anything -- other than good luck to all, and all are welcome...

Oh, wait, one thing:  I happened to mention that I'd be looking at top stories and saying who I believed them to be.  I've also mentioned in the past that m/m stories were a turn-off for me, as well as a couple others.  This in no way means don't post m/m or others -- 'cause this is open-ended, and commented on by all...and it's not a contest...so I have no intention on restricting the type of story done, only to say it should follow EMCA guidelines, of course (other than word count), and I hope to see everyone's stories on EMCA in the very near future...




Lots of luck to you and yours...

[BlueLyric]

Ahhh, yes...

GAME ON

[/size][/glow]

[Ms Myrrh]

Living a few hours behind the rest of you gives me an advantage with the contests that start at midnight.  :-)

Here's my contribution.

-M

PS:  Apologies in advance for spelling errors, if any.  I wrote tis in about an hour, including the time it took me to reboot a crashed computer.

---

My Hallowed Eve

I hit the alarm and growled my way out of bed.  Early mornings aren’t my usual thing.  A quick hot shower, a quick hot breakfast, and coffee in a travel mug and I was on my way.  List of things to get: flowers, gardening gloves, wine and plastic cups.  That was the list every year for the past five.  That would probably be my list for the next five, as well.

I wasn’t feeling particularly well.  Not just because I’m not a morning person, but because I don’t look forward to this day of the year.  Grief had kept me faithful, grief still does.

The florist gave me a sympathetic look.  I wasn’t the only one using Halloween as a day of remembrance.  Her store’s decorations, however, were far from tasteful.  Gaudy orange and black crepe and smiling pumpkins and all that shit.  I could barely mumble thanks as I headed back to car with the bouquet.

It’s understandable that I’d have to purchase cut flowers every time, but not that I’d have to get myself another pair of gardening gloves.  It’s like I can’t admit to myself what I do on this day so I immediately lose the pair and have to buy another the next year.  Same with the bag of plastic cups.  It’s only the top three that I use, then the other twelve disappear between the graveyard and home.

I was shaking by the time I hauled my traditional items with me to their gravestones.

“Hi mom, hi dad,” I said.  I still sounded like a gloomy teenager even though I’d grown up quite a bit since they died.  Suppose I shouldn’t expect myself to sound chirpy.  I sighed and sat down between them.  First, the weeding.  I put on my gloves and got to work.  It didn’t take too long, the cemetery people did a pretty good job of keeping weeds under control.  But I felt better taking care of them in some small way.  Then I divided the bunch of flowers – daisies, irises, roses, anything that had caught my eye, but no baby’s breath – in two and put them in the urns.

Finally I made myself look directly at their headstones:

Miriam Mayflower, 1945 – 1999, beloved mother and wife

Henry Mayflower, 1940 – 1999, beloved father and husband

It was all James and I could think of at the time and they hadn’t left instructions in their will.  Now that I was slightly less sad, something I recognised with both relief and horror, I still couldn’t think of anything to add.  What do you say when your parents die before you do?

On to the next part of the ceremony: the wine.  I opened the bottle and poured a glass for each of us.

“To people in love, in death and in life,” I said, pouring their shares over their grass then taking a sip of my own.  It was a good shiraz, a nice year, a Californian, just like me.  I closed my eyes and let the morning sunlight warm my face as the wine warmed my body.  I started crying, like I do every year, and stretched out on my back between them, pretending they were there to comfort me.  The tears rolled down my face but I didn’t make a sound.  Why fight them?  Why not just relax into them?

I fell asleep and awoke to the sounds of other visitors talking among themselves.  My face felt hot.  I’d probably gotten a sunburn.  Opening my eyes I saw a Mexican family chattering away at a picnic.  Wrong time of year for Hispanics, I thought.  Dios de los Muertes.  When was that?  Spring or something.  I shook my head to clear the haze.  Hadn’t even drank the whole glass of wine and I felt lightheaded.  Off, somehow.

The whole point of getting up early was to have the place to myself.  Now there were other guests of the dead.  Time for me to leave.  I gathered up my stuff and headed to my car.  Kept thinking someone was behind me.  I glanced around a few times but saw no one.

Once at home I fixed myself some lunch and sat on the back porch to eat it.  The neighborhood finches, sparrows, and pigeons flew in to argue over the crumbs I tossed out.  Usually I felt better after visiting mom and dad, but today I just felt tired and out of sorts.  It was the nap in the sun, I told myself, but I still felt creeped out.  I didn’t believe in life after death.  No spirit world, no spirits, just reverential things we the living do in honor of people who were once alive.  But if I did believe in something like that, I’d say there was a ghost hanging out with me while I ate my veggie sandwich.

Still feeling tired I decided to take another nap on the old rattan couch on the porch.  It used to be my parents’.  Despite how worn-out it was I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it.

I dreamed.  There I was, back at the graveyard.  Standing at my parent’s graves.  Crying again.  Looking down I saw another pair of shoes next to mine.  I looked up to see a young man, also standing at the graves and crying.  It wasn’t my brother.

“Who are you?”  I asked.

“Cade.  Who are you?”  he replied, snuffling a little bit.

“I’m Miriam.  I was named after my mother.  These are my parents,” I said, starting to feel a little defensive.  His face looked shocked, then even more sad.

“I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry I killed them.”

I stood there in disbelief.  It couldn’t be him.  He’d died in the crash, as well.  I thought about being angry but I was too tired to work that much emotion.

“What are you doing above ground?” I asked.

“I had to tell you I was sorry,” he said.

“Okay, now you’ve told me.  Now you can go away,” I said, trying not to notice just how cute he was.  He’d been my age when the accident happened but he went to a different high school so I never knew him.  All I knew was that he’d been drunk and driving a friend’s car home from a party.  Everyone in both cars died instantly, he’d been driving so fast.

He didn’t move but just kept looking at me.  It made me nervous.  Finally he said, “Do you forgive me?”

I finally started to get angry.  Before I could say anything, though, I woke up.  My chest felt tight, like it does when I get my panic attacks.  I couldn’t see and at first thought it was because I wasn’t getting enough oxygen.  But then I saw the stars and the lights on in the house across the alley from me.  It was night.

Sitting up, drawing my knees up under my chin and clasping my hands around me, I tried to settle down, rocking myself.  It was just a dream, I told myself.  But I still felt odd.  I still felt like Cade was near me.  I glanced around and couldn’t see anyone, much less a ghost.  Get over it, I told myself, Get up and get yourself some dinner.  Call Keith or your brother or something.  Just move.  I couldn’t move.

“Miriam.”

I started and looked around again, starting to hyperventilate.

“Miriam.”

“Who’s there?” I called.

“Miriam, I’m at the gate.  Let me in.”

“Who are you?”

“Cade.  Please, let me in.”

“I don’t believe you.  I can’t even see you.” I whispered.

He whispered back and it sounded like he was right next to my ear, “Miriam, please let me in.  I wasn’t done.  You have to forgive me.”

I bit my lip and shook my head, trying to think of a rational, non-spiritual explanation for all of this.  My head felt too wooly to think straight.  I rose, felt my way down the steps, and walked to the gate.  There was no one there.  I opened the gate and felt a breeze brush past me, then, in my ear again, “Tell me you forgive me.”

“I – I forgive you,” I said, almost mechanically.  I felt like just giving up and following his direction.

“Tell me again,” he whispered.  I felt a hand brush my hair behind my ears and trace down my neck to my shoulder.

“I forgive you,” I said, louder this time.  More sure of myself.  It had been five years.  Long enough to grow up and forgive children their terrible mistakes.  Long enough to forgive Cade.

“Thank you,” he sighed and the invisible hand held my upper arm gently.

“Will you go now?” I asked, half wishing he would and half wishing he’d stay.  The moon was starting to rise above the townhouses around us and the yard was taking on that silver lining it gets under a full moon.

“Please let me stay a little while longer.  Tell me I can stay.”

“You can stay,” I said automatically.  I wanted Cade to stay a little while longer.  It was a closer link to my parents, in a way.  And, in another way, it would let me let them go.

“You need to let your parents go,” he said, as if reading my mind.

“I do.  It’s true,” I agreed and felt a weight lift off me.  Even if I only expressed it outwardly once a year, I had lived every day in the shadow of my parents’ death.  It was time to live in the sun again.

“I wish I could see you,” I said, as another invisible hand caressed my face.  I closed my eyes and leaned into the caress.

“You can feel me and hear me,” he said.

“Yes, I can feel you.  Your hands feel so nice.  And your voice is so nice.”

“You want us to go inside.  Tell me I can come inside with you,” he said.

“I’m getting a little cold out here.  Would you like to come inside with me?” I asked.  I suddenly didn’t want him to leave.  Ever.  I wanted Cade by my side for the rest of my life.  I was afraid he’d refuse and would leave me.  I wanted more than anything to listen to his voice.

“I’d love to be with you in your home,” he said and, with the hand that was around my forearm, he guided me back up the path and the steps and into my house.  His hand felt so strong, so welcome.  The guidance I’d been missing since my parent’s had died.

I moved to turn on the lights but Cade said, “Candles would be nice, don’t you think?”

I nodded and his grip released me as I went to the kitchen to dig up the candles and matches.  I brought them back into the living room and started lighting them, distributing them on the coffee table and sofa end-tables.  They filled the room with a nice soft glow.  Why had I never done this before?  I felt cozy and relaxed.

“Tell me to sit down on the couch with you,” he said in his soft voice.

“Won’t you sit down with me?” I asked him as I sat, patting the couch.  I saw an indentation next to me and I wasn’t surprised at all.  Only surprised by the lack of surprise, maybe.  I put a hand to my head.  It felt… fuller, somehow, like my brain was pushing against my skull.

“Tell me to touch you,” he said.

“Please.  I – your hands felt so good on me.  Will you touch me again?”

I immediately felt his hands on me again.  One stroking my arm and the other my hair.  I closed my eyes and relaxed even further.

“You’re parents worry about you,” he said quietly.

“Oh?” I asked, eyes still closed.  He could tell me anything and it wouldn’t be more than objective information.

“Yes.  They sent me to talk to you.  I’ve become close with them, you see.”

“What did they tell you to say?”

“That I was sorry.  That they were sorry.  That they love you and your brother.  That it’s time to live life for yourself.”

I nodded my head, “Sounds like what they would say.”

“I wish we’d met when I was alive, Miriam,” he said.  He sounded so sincere.  I would do anything just to hear him talk to me.  His hands had moved to my shoulders and he turned me a bit so I was leaning against him.  He started to give me a shoulder rub.  It was Heavenly.

“M-hm,” I agreed.  I was wishing we’d met, too.  In my dream he was so handsome.  So vibrant, as though he were among the living, not the dead.

“I would have asked you out on dates, brought you flowers and chocolate, complimented you on your hair and eyes…”  I shivered in arousal as his hands worked their way down my back and his words worked their way into my mind.  I felt high, like that one time I’d smoked weed with my cousins.  Everything felt right, peaceful, graceful.

“I would have kissed you like this,” he said, and he turned my face toward him.  I shifted my body so my lips were offered to him and felt his meet mine.  They were soft, tender, like silk.  I felt myself melt against him, into him.  I couldn’t think of anything other than the kiss.

After an eternity he broke off the kiss and I could breath again.  One of his hands pressed itself against my breast, palm securely against nipple.  I moaned.

“I would have treated you with respect.  I would have done so many things.  Things I’d like to do now.  Tell me you want me to.”

“I want you to,” I breathed out.  He kissed me again and I nearly swooned.  His hands were roaming all over my body, pausing to press into my flesh or to gently rake his nails over my ribs.  I moaned into the kisses and tried to raise my own hands to explore his body.

“No, Miriam, let me feel you.  Let me do this for you,” he whispered huskily.  I felt his hands take mine by the wrists and raise them over my head.  I held them there when he let go and his hands returned to my torso.  He raised my shirt over my head and arms and then removed my bra and I felt the skin of his fingertips trace around my areolas.

“Tell me you want to feel my mouth on your breasts,” he said.

“Please, I want to feel your mouth on my breasts,” I whimpered.  And immediately his tongue was on my left nipple, pressing it in then letting it out into his mouth.  His lips closed around it and I felt his teeth hold my nipple still while he lapped at it with the tip of his tongue.  My back arched reflexively, hands still in the air.  I felt myself dampen between my legs and I almost asked him to just take me then and there.  But somehow I fell asleep again.

It was early morning when I woke up again.  I was in bed, nude, tired.  I struggled to remember last night.  My ghostly visitor, parent-killer.  I tried to work up my anger but I felt only grateful.  It was the beginning of a new day and something wonderful was going to happen.  I started to scoot out of bed but hit something solid.  Something solid and invisible.

[Dreamfire]

First story expo entry, be gentle.

Disclaim disclaim, blah blah, no this can't happen, la la, if you can't distinguish between reality and fantasy do research and get therapy, etc. etc...


The MUNI bus drove through the foggy San Francisco night. Its engine rumbled.

Wildoak looked out the window and into the night. A bus is an unlikely broom for a pair of witches on the way to a coven meeting, she thought. Then again, I don't know that many other black witches, so I suppose it fits in a really weird way. She grinned to herself and glanced at the other woman. "So, what's the topic for Learning Circle tonight?" she asked Brigit. "Are we going to be assigning roles for the next ritual?"

Brigit shrugged. "The coven web page didn't have an agenda for tonight. Originally, last week, we were going to be discussing a fundraiser for the local women's shelter, but when I checked last night that was gone. Your guess is as good as mine."

Wildoak smiled and leaned back in her seat. It's hard to find a good Dianic group outside the Bay area, she thought. I'm glad I live here now. There are so many different traditions, even I could find one that's right for me.

As if she could read Wildoak's thoughts, Brigit glanced over.  "You've been with us for six months now," she said. "What do you think of the coven?"

The MUNI bus stopped and some of the other passengers left, which gave Wildoak time to ponder her answer. "I know it's better for me than anything I've found elsewhere," she said. "I don't always like the emphasis on spirits and forces of nature, as opposed to Goddess. But the trancework and group bonding is fantastic."

Brigit nodded in sympathy. "Melissa has definite ideas of the way things should be,  and she comes from a more shamanic background," she said. "When you work with it a bit longer, it might start to gel for you. Spirits are powerful forces for change. Then again, it also takes a while to get into trance deep enough to really interact with spirits in such a way that you know you're doing it, rather than hearing your own Younger Self... er, your subconscious, talking."

Wildoak grinned. "I actually knew what you meant that time. I'm picking up some of the jargon now. Younger self for unconscious, talking self for waking consciousness, learning the difference between totems and power animals and all. I am getting better in my trance practice, though. It's becoming a regular part of my life now."

Brigit grinned. "That's good. You should start to see some real results soon. Maybe it'll be as soon as our next trancework session."

Wildoak looked out the window at the steep San Francisco street. "I hope so," she murmured. "I really want to be a part of you all."

Brigit laid a hand on Wildoak's arm. Her soft grey eyes sparkled. "Don't worry, sister. Melissa has nothing but good things to say about you, and the rest of us like you too. You deal with your issues as they come up, you work hard, you live your life proudly and with integrity...I have no doubts that within your year and a day, you'll either join us or decide that we're not for you and take what you've learned as it's intended."

Wildoak smiled and covered Brigit's Irish-pale hand with her own brown fingers. "It's good to hear you say it." Her already-buoyant heart lifted further as the bus pulled up to their stop.

The two women got off and took the short walk down the hill to the tract house where the coven met for its rituals. Wildoak could see Melissa through the window. The priestess had let her long, soft hair down from its usual braid. Brigit noticed that too, and as the couple climbed the steps commented "Looks like another trancework night for us! Hope you don't mind."

Wildoak shook her head. "Not at all. I want to see how the coven being around impacts what I do... whether it helps or hurts it. It's been a couple of months since we did group trancework, and I wasn't as good at it then."

Rose opened the door and gave each of them a hug. "Blessed be! How are you both tonight, doing OK?" The tiny, frail older woman always greeted Wildoak before anyone else could. Now she gave them each searching glances. "Do you need to go take time to cleanse? We're doing trancework tonight, and I know as well as anyone how frustrating going through the streets can be so close to rush hour."

Brigit shook her head. "I just need a minute to relax, then I'll be fine. Wildoak..."

The dark-skinned woman laughed. "I know, I was already going to go. Where is it set up?"

Rose pointed toward the back porch. "The water, salt, and oil are back there. The candles are already lit. Take your time, Parvati and Melusine aren't here yet."

Wildoak nodded her thanks and made her way to the back porch. The air bore the perfume of lavender, a scent she particularly loved. She knelt down on the meditation chair and stirred salt into a waiting bowl of water.

"O  salty spirit, o cleansing waters, o flickering fires, o sweet scents, banish from me all impurities, all darkness, all doubt. Let me be as a child again,, open and wondering, free from the burdens of the life in the world without. Make me free and fit to learn this night."

She gazed into the flame, holding the water against her breast. She drew in a deep breath and felt the power move through her. After a moment, feeling refreshed and whole, she carefully poured the suddenly-murky water into a bucket waiting next to the altar. She bowed her head.

"Thank you, spirits. I honor your presences. So be it now and ever." Wildoak rose from the bench, bowed again, and went back into the living room.

The rest of the coven had arrived. After a warm greeting, Melissa stood in the center of the room. "We're going up into the meditation room now, so if anyone needs to do anything, contacts, personal needs..." She glanced meaningfully at the bathroom, but no one spoke up. "All right then. This week, I encountered a new spirit in my meditations. It's friendly so I asked it to stay. If any of you see a large, black butterfly in your visions, don't be alarmed. It's probably just my friend."

Wildoak tilted her head. I know I read something about insects and visions once, but I can't remember... Melissa gestured upstairs, and Wildoak's train of thought ended. She followed the others up into the meditation room. Where most people would have chosen the smallest room in the house for their rituals, Melissa had marked the master bedroom as her sacred space. It, too, smelled of lavender. Wildoak drew in an appreciative breath as she settled onto one of the many futons on the floor. They were soft and covered with flannel. She ran her hand over the surface. For the first time, she felt a surge of real confidence. Brigit is right, she thought. This is my night. I can feel it.

She closed her eyes and chanted with the others, feeling her consciousness move from everyday thoughts into the ritual mindset. By the time Melissa rang the chime, Wildoak felt disconnected and dreamy. She gazed across the circle at Melusine, whose blonde hair was falling into her eyes. Melusine brushed it out of her face and leaned on one hand. Wildoak smiled to herself. She's so pretty, she thought. She's adorable, really. I'd like to know her outside of the coven...

Melissa gathered up the chalice of tea. "May our divinations within be strong, O Spirits, and may the honey let us taste the sweetness of trust in ourselves and one another." She handed the tea to Melusine, who drank, passed the chalice, and leaned on her hand again.

Wildoak watched as the chalice of tea passed from one coven member to another. When it was her turn, she wiped the rim with the silk cloth and took a sip. The honeyed tea was still warm. It slid down her throat with the slightest of tingles. She hadn't eaten dinner, so in only a moment she felt the effects of the mugwort opening her third eye. She let her physical eyes close halfway.

"And now, you feel the earth pulling you downward. In just a moment, or perhaps in a few minutes, you will feel that pull. When you do, sink back down to the floor on the beds. rest comfortably, part of the beckoning earth."

Wildoak felt her eyes closing. Melissa's soft, droning voice went on in the background, but Wildoak could already feel her body growing heavy and limp. Through drooping eyelids, she saw Melusine's supporting hand slide out from under her. The blonde flopped down on the futon and went totally limp. As if at some sort of signal, Wildoak's own deep brown eyes slammed shut. She felt herself falling for a moment, but the soft cotton of the bed bore her up. Her limbs turned to water, flowing and heavy and motionless all at the same time.

She felt herself rushing down a tunnel at high rates of speed. She fell and fell through the starry heavens. Melissa's voice seemed so far away.

"Deeper, dreaming, dreaming the spirits, finding that place within yourself, within the core of the earth... into the Underworld, where the spirits dwell...deeper down, more relaxed, more open..."

Wildoak laughed within herself as she slid down another tunnel and through space. She was naked, and her skin was outlined with a brilliant glow in a perfectly black night sky. There were no stars except for her. She soared and swooped ever downward, knowing the Underworld would welcome her.

Then she felt ground under her feet. Melissa's voice had disappeared. She stretched and laughed, her toes digging into the good earth below her. The air was alive with the sound of insects trilling and the clean, green scents of trees and herbs. As she looked upward, Wildoak saw millions of stars flare into life. She hugged herself in bliss.

"I'm really here," she said aloud. "I'm in the Underworld for the very first time. The spirits have accepted me." She opened her arms and called "I am here, the woman known as Wildoak, seeking guidance and help from the spirits!"

For a moment, nothing happened. She held her arms extended, waiting, before lowering them and sitting down on the ground. The stars gleamed in the heavens and she sat and gazed up at them. They might not show up tonight, she thought. It might be enough that I got here.

"Or it might be tonight after all," a soft male voice murmured from behind her. "You certainly have earned it." She felt a breath of air on the back of her neck. Something told her not to turn around, so she remained still as a warm finger ran down the back of her neck. "Mmmm, and brave as well. Would you like to see me now, little human? I promise to appear in a form pleasing to you." Now the speaker rested his hand on the back of her neck, gently caressing the skin under the fall of her braids.

Wildoak took a deep breath. This is it, she thought. She slowly turned her head and looked around.

A tall, slender Native American crouched next to her. His eyes sparkled in the starlight. She could see the form of a tattoo on his chest: a black butterfly. "You know who I am. You were told of me. I came to see you," he said. He stroked the back of her neck. "You are called Wildoak. What is your name?"

Wildoak hesitated for a moment. She knew that she shouldn't tell him, but something in his eyes made that hard to remember. "Maybe later," she hedged. "What am I here to learn from you?"

He chuckled softly and gathered her braids into his hand. "Not from me, perhaps, so much as the spirits here. There is much to learn. Or perhaps I will take you on as my special human girl." He paused to consider. "Perhaps. You are young and new, and you have few silly ideas about the right and wrong way to deal with a spirit. So many times, new ones come here with those silly ideas and alienate us."

She felt a surge of heat at his casual caresses, but stifled it for the moment. "What should I do, then?" she asked.

He cupped her chin with his free hand. "Look up, little one. Look up at the stars. Do you see them?"

She let him guide her motions. The stars still glowed just as brightly. "I see them," she said. "There are so many."

He slid behind her, still holding her hair and her chin. She could feel the soft heat of his skin against hers. It was distracting and very pleasant. "You see them, but you do not really see them. Few humans do. I wonder if you could be the one who can take their lessons into her soul? I wonder if you will see the patterns of truth they form? Can you follow their orders, little human girl? Are you brave enough?"

She gazed upward, enjoying his touch on the back of her neck and her shoulders. "I just see stars..." she said. "They're not doing anything..."

"Mmmm..." He leaned over and slid his arms around her, under her breasts, and whispered low and soft in her ear. "But that is because you do not know how to look. Look harder, little one, but with eyes that see blankness. Do not try. Simply open up and let their lessons pour into you."

Wildoak shivered at the warmth of his breath on the tender skin of her neck. She looked up and tried to let herself relax. "That's it...let go, little one. Let them fill you with their light," he encouraged. His hands massaged her belly. "Lean back against me, do not fight anything. Just let yourself be. You are safe here with my protection."

At that reassurance, she let her eyes unfocus and relaxed against him. His strong body supported her weight easily. "Shhh...yes, little human woman. Find the guidance of the stars of the spirits and the spirits of the stars. You are open, you are waiting, you are an empty vessel, a hollow reed..."

The words seemed vaguely familiar. Wildoak gazed upward, rapt and waiting. He whispered "Tell them your name, little one. Tell them who you really are."

All of her previous reserve vanished. She whispered a word that had come to her in her first meditations, a word she knew meant the essence of her true self. "Kulari...I am Kulari." She gasped as the stars blzed even brighter.

His arms tightened around her and he purred "Kulari...brave, wise Kulari." When he said her truest name, she felt a shiver rising within her. "Little Kulari, who gives to me from her essence, from who she is. Kulari, who the stars will tell their secrets. Look up at them, Kulari. What do they tell you?"

She watched as the stars seemed to dim and brighten. It was hard to think with his whisper in her ear. "They don't..."

"They will," he told her. "Blank, open, hollow, empty...let them fill you, Kulari."

The stars began to flash and move in pretty patterns. She stared at them, mouth slightly open, entranced. They danced into a word, a word she knew. "They say...Sleep."

"Sleep," he told her. "Sleep. Sleep. Sleep."

The fog overtook her mind. She felt her spirit-body go limp again, as boneless as the body far away in the ritual room. His hands massaged her breasts, thumbs brushing over the nipples in a way that normally would have made her arch with desire. "Yes...good little human. Sleep, little human. The stars have told you to, and you have opened themselves to them and to me. Haven't you, Kulari?"

His voice caressed her name just as he caressed her body. She moaned softly, the words pulled from her almost unaware. "Yes...I have opened to you. I have opened to you."

He slid one hand down her body and between her thighs. "Good. Good, little Kulari. And having opened to me, you will let me into your spirit, where I can guide you from within. And you sleep now...you sleep and you dream of making me happy in your spirit, in your home, in your body. Isn't that so?"

The stars flashed and danced overhead, keeping her sleepy mind occupied. "Yesss..." she breathed. Her body undulated to the motion of his fingers.

"And..." Suddenly the form and voice changed. She felt breasts, nipples as hard as her own rubbing against her back. "Would you like me as another form in your spirit, little Kulari? I can be a woman just as easily." She knew the voice. It was Melusine's.

She whimpered at the ache the talented fingers brought within her. The stars flickered and she knew what she had to say. "Your will..." she sobbed. "Your will...Kulari is open...Kulari sleeps..."

The spirit quickened her...its...pace. "Kulari...must...obey..."

She responded instantly, writhing. "Kulari must obey!"

Suddenly she felt a tug against her spirit. The intense, demanding sound of a drumbeat called her back, away from the realm of the spirits. She reached up and clung to the spirit.

"Shhh...open up to me. Look up at the stars again, and feel my wings. They will keep you safe..."

She opened up her arms and gave herself to the spirit. The orgasm ripped through her body. She felt her body merging with her spirit lover's, screamed as wings sprouted from her back. Then she was flying upward, outracing the insistant drumbeat. The spirit's voice whispered to her, male and female, giving her commands and orders. And she knew Kulari would obey. Her mind went blank...

Then her eyes were opening and she was stretching. The other coveners were sitting up, eyes still half-closed. She sighed and rubbed blood back into her hand. It had fallen asleep where she rested.

"Well, Wildoak? How did it go?" Rose asked.

Wildoak smiled wryly at the old woman. "I got down there, but nothing happened. Maybe I'm not ready to see the spirits yet. Maybe next time." She sighed, remembering her lonely and fruitless vigil on the hill.

"But you got down there!" Brigit put in. "That's better than you've ever done. Maybe next time is right. I'm so proud of you!" The Irish woman hugged Wildoak tightly. Others murmured their agreement and added their hugs.

"I'm really proud of you, too," Melissa said with a smile. "You may not have seen anything, but your energy was fantastic. I could tell you were really happy to be there. Keep up the good work, all right?"

Wildoak nodded and yawned. "I need to get back home. I'm OK to get the bus, so I'm going to go on. It was an early day today, I'm surprised I didn't nod off while I was so relaxed."

Melissa studied her for a moment, then nodded. "You look OK. Call me tomorrow, all right? We'll discuss some things then about you and spirit journeying. It's worth going over some of the rules... like what you do and don't do."

Wildoak grinned. "I'll call. Night, folks!"

She caught the bus after only a few minutes at the stop. A guy sitting behind her leaned forward and said "Hey, where'd you get that tattoo?"

She turned and blinked at him. "Tattoo?"

He nodded. "The one on the back of your neck...that black butterfly. Where did you get it? It's so detailed, it looks almost real."

For a moment, she was about to say she didn't have any tattoos at all. She'd never gotten any kind of body art. Then she realized that it had always been there. Of course. "Not from around here," she said. "Sorry."

He shrugged. "Ah well. Thanks."

"No problem!" she said before turning back around. She shivered at the pulse of pleasure between her legs and gazed out the bus window, her eyes blank, seeing stars.

[Richard Gently]

Like most of my stories the idea came very quickly after reading the comp rules. I seemed to have told it from a couple of views and as an onlooker as well. I'm not sure if it works but no doubt I'll get told if it does not.

I'm say nothing about what category (MD etc) this comes under. You can tell me what you think after you read it.

{I rushed it off and posted it at 1AM and have now gone back and added a few bits. My spelling is still poor I'm afraid}

He who laughs last

By Richard Gently

I woke up to the sound of a whip. At least that is what I thought for a moment. I was stiff and could feel wooden boards pushing against my side. I opened my eyes and realised it was dark. It was not the darkness of night but of storm clouds gathering.

I pushed myself up from the bench and my head started to swim. The hill on which the bench was placed seemed to lurch dangerously from side to side. I felt nauseous. I lent back down cupping my head in my hands and waited for the earth to stop spinning around me.

I could hear the whip crack again and felt a gentle tug at my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see the world was at last still but when I looked over behind me it started slipping away again. I put my head back in my hands and waited again. Before the world had jumped on to that last merry go round I had seen that there had been no one behind me but I could still hear the crack and feel something touching my shoulder.

After what seemed an age of sickness and dizziness I finally got to the stage where I could stand up with my eyes open. The crack came even louder and repeated over and over and a chord was chaffing my neck. I was still groggy and it took me a little while to appreciate that I was wearing a long black cloak with a high collar and a delicate red silk lining. The cloak snapping against the ever-growing wind caused the cracking and the chaffing was the red cord that attached the cap around my neck.

How or why I was wearing this get up I had no idea. All I remembered, and very vaguely, was being at a party. I recalled my girlfriend Jenny had been there and there had been plenty of alcohol. After that I could think of nothing except the painful headache, perhaps even a migraine judging by how sick I felt.

At least I recognised the park where I had recovered. Small mercy. The other thing was that it had not started raining. Even in my confused state I knew I needed help and so I shambled off in the direction of Jenny’s house. The first rain drops feel before I had stumbled three paces.

***

I was worried and getting more so with every hour. It was not like Jake to be so thoughtless. Even when we had rowed before he had always called me once he sobered up later. He had never failed to call me within 12 hours and it had been 2 days now. At first I had refused to call him, as I wanted the arsehole to stew. Had he finally chased me away this time? At least that’s what I wanted him to think. After about 18 hours I had started to wonder if perhaps it was me who had chased him away. I had called his cell but just got the answer phone. I had called his landline and got a different answer but still from a machine. I had left messages but he had not replied to either. This morning I had gone around to his house. The dark green curtains that I had been going on about to try and get him to change were drawn. I had rung the bell and could hear the fanfare that the chime played echo around the entrance hall behind the blue door. Even though I love Jake I could not argue with anyone who said he had no colour co-ordination.

I waited straining to hear if someone was moving inside but after a short while I went round to the side of the house. The recently refurbished wooden gate was closed but was never locked and so I flipped the latch and went into the garden. Looking at the house from the outside all the curtains remained drawn as if some one was in but had not got up yet. The spare key was hidden in its usual place. In fact it had been left in exactly the same place I had put it when we had left together for the party. That worried me as I let myself in.

There was no sign that anything had been moved since we had left together. The answer phone was flashing and I triggered the button to play the stored messages. There were only two, one from Tim asking if we were on the way and the other from me. Jake was unable to leave the phone flashing. He had a curiosity that meant he just had to find out who had called. It was clear he had not been here since I last saw him.

Returning home, I had just pulled up outside my house when the skies opened and the deluge hit. I waited for a while but it seemed clear that the rain was set for a grandstand performance. Finally I decided I was going to have to run through the downpour from my car to the front door. I was going to get in and call the police. I was really worried about Jake.

I got under the cover of my porch and fumbled for my keys in my handbag cursing myself for not having thought to get them out in the car. I managed to find then nestling in the very bottom of the bag and pulled them out. As I lifted them towards the lock a cold wet hand clamped down on my shoulder.

I almost screamed out loud with the fright of the sudden contact but my reflexes caused me to spin around to face my attacker.

I almost screamed again. A flash of lightening showed me it was Jake but he was wearing a Halloween costume and makeup. The make up made him look thin and drawn. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin was pale. Even as I prepared to tell him a few home truths my subconscious was thinking it was one of the best fancy dress outfits I had ever seen. My mouth opened to make the first pithy retort that came into my mind but instead my voice died on me as Jake’s eyes closed and he collapsed onto the ground.

***

Tim’s phone had rung a couple of times during the days since the party and his call minder had told him that it was Jenny’s number. He knew that Jake often stayed there and He had decided to let him stew. It was a bit of payback for the way he had treated Jenny and a bit of the joy of a job well done. He knew Jake would be mad when he worked out what had happened but he thought it would be fun to let him wait a while before being able to vent his spleen. However, enough was enough and it had been two days now so he decided that he would see what Jake wanted.

‘Hello’ he answered and was surprised to find it was Jenny on the other end. He had just assumed that it would have been Jake and as Jenny began to talk to him he realised he had made a big mistake in not answering before. He thought about coming clean and telling Jenny what had happened but decided to wait for a while. It might all be nothing.

That did not stop him remembering what had happened. The party was moving along nicely and the drinks were flowing. A by-product of this was, not unusually, that Jake had got himself shit face within 45 minutes of arriving. He and Jenny had had a stand up row and an instant sweepstake had produced a list of times within which she would dump him. Tim knew how strongly they felt about each other, when sober, and would have taken odds against them splitting at all but the germ of a plan was forming and he was busy working out the details.

After a while Jenny had stormed off and Jake had muttered some drunken abusive phrases that no one understood and slumped down into a chair. He spilt the contents of his glass in his lap but he did not seem to mind, as he was asleep within 30 seconds.

Jenny had always been around to look after Jake before and so to Tim this was a chance of a lifetime, or at least of the evening. Tim was one of those people who lover terrorising the unsuspecting and torturing the unfortunate. In two words Tim was a Practical Joker.

He soon got a group of the other partygoers to help out and he arranged for a friend to deliver a fancy dress vampire outfit to the house. Once delivered Jake’s drunken form was stuffed into it and he was bundled into a car. Jake was to drunk to do anything but look around with a glazed expression. The car trip lasted about 5 minutes before ending outside a local brothel. Tim and two others pulled Jake from the car and hustled him inside the door. The red decor inside had seen better days but the place was clean and three pretty young women sat to one side talking quietly.

‘Draculagram’ said Tim and let Jake’s paralytic body lean against the wall. Making sure Jake could support his own weight Tim and his accomplices made a hasty retreat.

The sight of Jake sliding slowly down the wall was the last he had seen as the car pulled quickly away from the roadside and flew into the night.

His mind came back to the telephone call.

‘Tim, he is so pale and white. I’m not sure if he is breathing. Sometimes I can hardly see his chest rise and fall. I think I need to get him to hospital but I’m scared of what will happen if the doctors get there hands on him. Please help me. I know Jake trusts you. Can you come over, Please.’

‘OK wait for me I’ll be there in a few minutes’ he replied thinking that he might be in shit city if something bad had happened to Jake.

He wondered if Jenny and Jake were getting there own back but dismissed that thought after only a moment’s consideration. Jake was not that way inclined and Jenny was not an actress of the calibre that could have made that call without being really worried.

He could make it inside five minutes if traffic allowed. He grabbed a coat to protect him from the sheets of rain and ran for his car.

***

The world was still and it seemed brighter now. I was comfortable on something soft. I could smell Jenny nearby and I could make out her gentle sobs. Were they for me? I hoped not as I would never want to hurt her. I never wanted to lose my Jenny. I wanted to tell her I was going to be OK. I wanted to say something, anything but I found myself unable to speak.

I tried to move but everything hurt and nothing would move in the way I wanted it. I was starting to fell hungry but the smell of toasting bread did nothing for me. My neck was on fire itching, probably where the collar had been rubbing. It took all my will power but I managed to move one hand and scratch. It was not the collar rubbing that was causing me discomfort. I found two small punctures that trailed blood when I pulled my hand away.

My attention was drawn to the smell of raw meat coming from the kitchen. Juicy and particularly bloody it smelt and my mouth began to water.

***

Tim pulled up and his clothes took a second soaking as he ran to Jenny’s door.

The PVC was white and sturdy and it was closed but a set of keys hung from the lock. He used them to let himself in.

He opened the living room door and saw the familiar gold and brown lined wallpaper. A collection of plates showing different scenes of teddy bears at play hung on the wall behind the beige couch. It was the same couch that Jake was sitting up on and eating a meal. Jenny was sitting in a chair across the room from him.

Tim started to feel a mixture of relief and anger. Relief that Jake was OK but anger that he had been ‘stitched up like a kipper’. That feeling lasted only until he realised that Jake was eating a slab of raw steak and that Jenny was shivering where she sat.

Some sixth sense told Tim he was in danger and he needed to get out but before he could move Jake looked at him and smiled showing two long incisor teeth. Jake’s eyes flashed and Tim was transfixed.

***

I remembered it all now. I had slid down the wall at the brothel and ended up as a heap on the floor. Having some drunken guy in a vampire outfit in the house would not be good for business and so I had been dragged to the backdoor of the establishment and pushed into the alleyway outside. There I had lain in the gutter with rubbish and decaying food all around me. I was to drunk to move and I was unable to fight back when the monster found me. I remembered the teeth at my throat and the twin stabs of pain as I was bitten. I knew that I was about to die when something had startled my attacker and the once human thing had vanished into the night like a ghost.

I had finally found the strength to drag myself into the park and to get to the higher ground where the bench had offered me somewhere to rest and regain some strength. Once my eyes closed, for a moment only I planned, before I moved on they did not open again until I had awoken to the snapping of my cloak.  I knew I had begun to change while sleeping on the top of the hill in the park and in the process was nearly complete now. There were two more thing I needed the blood of a virgin and a full moon. I glanced at Jenny and saw her sitting, shivering, unable to move, like a rabbit in the headlights. She had always said she was saving herself for marriage and with my new talents I knew she had been telling me the truth. I had to be careful though. Until the change was complete I would have only a part of my full powers. I needed to use a degree of cunning, as I could not rely on power alone.

Tim stood transfixed just inside the door. I walked over to him. The bloody steak had helped but the hunger was still on me. I ran my long fingers across Tim’s neck and then pulled down his shirt collar. A small crucifix sat on a chain against his chest. I could sense hope start to build in Tim. I stepped away holding my arm up as if to shield myself from the pendant. There was a feeling of elation that radiated from Tim. How little he knew.

Stepping forward, the pretence over, I reached in and carefully undid the chain and then put it around my own neck. Tim could only stare in horror at what must have been an evil smile on my face. My new teeth showed through again. I knew I should not be playing with my food but I had never felt like this before and there was a pleasure in getting my revenge. I knew I was still me. I still had the same desires and intentions as before, but now they were being corrupted as I metamorphosed into something not completely human.

Then I heard the back door shut with a bang. I looked around and Jenny was gone. My planned revenge on Tim was of minor consequence compared with Jenny. I needed Jenny now more than ever. I would never lose my Jenny.

I found a growl of rage coming into my throat and I slapped Tim across the face. With my now superhuman strength he was carried across the room and knocked unconscious in the process. I could just make out Jenny’s perfume and gave chase.

***

I had known something was wrong when he crawled into the kitchen. He had dragged himself towards the fridge and his big blue eyes held a look of pleading. I opened the fridge door and he reached in and pulled out the sirloin steak I had been saving for out next meal together. I tried to take it from him so that I could cook it and he bared two long teeth at me. Watching me he backed into the living room and once he reached his bed on the couch he began ripping the meat and swallowing it raw. I was terrified and found myself sitting across from him wondering what was going through his mind. For no reason I could explain I began to shiver.

I had not heard the front door open. I did not expect anyone to get in as I had locked the door, or at least I thought I had. I was surprised when Jake smiled at someone standing just out of my line of sight. It was a smile showing those massive teeth again and I looked around to see Tim. He seemed transfixed, unable to move and his body remained rigid even as Jake approached him. A voice in my head was screaming that I had to get out and with Jake distracted I found I had a chance to do so.

The back door had opened without a creak and I had begun to close it carefully when a sharp gust of wind had pulled it from my hand and slammed it shut. I did not wait to see if that had alerted Jake I just ran.

I knew where I would be safe. I knew about Vampires. I had done a thesis about there existence in college. It had been about folk law and how stories had affected European culture but it had lead me to examine the vampire myths from around most of continental Europe. In many of the legends vampires had different weaknesses but there were three things all the stories said they could not stand. Holy Water, Holy Ground and sunlight. At 6pm the sunlight was a long way off. That left Holy Land and Water. St James Church was on the corner of my road. If I could get inside I would be safe. I could also collect some holy water from the font and use that if he came back later.

Even as I thought this another part of me wondered why I had suddenly decided my boyfriend was now become a monster. I wanted to laugh at myself. There were no such things as vampires. I had not even seen Jake do anything that could confirm he was a creature of the night and sensible Jenny wanted me to stop and go back. She wanted to confront Jake and prove he was sick or something. It was scared Jenny that was controlling the body now though and she was not going back to that house while Jake was there.

I heard the fall off feet behind me but I was not going to look back. I put my head down and sprinted. I was at the church gates and pushed one back as I passed. It clanged as it hit something behind me and I prayed that it would give me the time I needed to get into the church itself.

The door to the vestibule was in front of me and I grabbed the handle and turned it. It was locked. I banged my palms onto it making a noise between a slap and a thud. The door was thick and I was not sure if the noise could be heard inside.

I panted, drained of energy and turned to see if Jake was closing in for the kill. He was standing by the gate, outside of the graveyard. I realised then that the whole of the churchyard was Holy Ground and I sighed with relief.

I swear I never took my eyes off of him but there was a flash of lightening and suddenly he was gone.

I looked around feeling very frightened but then steeled myself. As I was on Holy Ground and he could not get at me. All I needed to do was wait for sunlight and then I could go home and plan on how to defend myself. Of course I would have to suffer a cold wet night in this churchyard but it was better that the alternative.

I heard a creak and the carved oak door behind me was opening on hinges that needed oiling. I guessed that someone must have heard my attempts to enter and come to see what was going on. It looked as if I would not have a cold, wet night as long as I could convince this person to let me stay in the church overnight. I froze as I saw Jake’s smiling face looking out from inside the church.

‘Ok; he said ‘a jokes a joke and this one has gone on to long. I think it is time for me to apologise.’

Sensible Jenny wanted to believe it was all a big prank, a stunt to pay me back for being a bitch and letting him rot for a couple of days. I could see how he and Tim had got together and set it up even the pretending to be transfixed. Perhaps they would have laughed at me if I had not run away earlier and told me all about the joke before I got soaked running for the church. I wanted to believe but frightened Jenny told me not to.

Jake must have sensed my thoughts, ‘Maybe we went to far’ he said. ‘I guess you think I’m a vampire’

I nodded.

‘Well that was the plan of course. I’m thinking that perhaps we were to convincing for our own good’

He seemed to be lost in thought for a minute. Then he smiled. It was the natural smile I always remembered him for. No long teeth just a straight row of pearly whites. There was a flash of something in those deep blue eyes of his and I felt momentarily disorientated as another flash of lightning crackled out of the firmament.

‘Let me prove I am not a Vampire’, he suggested. ‘ And we can get you out of the rain at the same time. If I’m a vampire I cannot enter Holy Land, correct?’

I found myself nodding in agreement.

‘So how can I stand in a church?’ and I realised that was a good question.

‘Come inside’ he said holding out his hand and I stepped past him without thinking.

‘Can vampires use the lord’s name? Can they swear on the bible?’

My voice returned ‘I don’t think so’

He picked up a bible and threw it to me. I wondered why until he said, ‘Check that it’s a proper Bible.’

It looked like one to me. It had Genesis at the front, Revelations at the back and a lot of pages in between. I handed it back.

‘I swear in the name of Jesus that I am not a vampire’ he said loudly and clearly.

I waited for something to happen but he just stood there smiling.

I started to believe he was telling the truth. Of course that meant I would have to be mad with him for playing such a nasty joke on me.

‘Please don’t get angry with me.’ He said and I found his winning smile and twinkling eyes working their magic on me. He looked so sexy in the cape and the silk ruffles of the shirt suited him perfectly.

Whilst the candles did little to dispel the deep shadows around the edges of the pews they formed a clear path along the central aisle. The way that passing car headlights and the occasional bust of lightening caused colours to flare across the scene as they lit up the stain glass window provided a delightful counterpoint to the darkness at the foot of the organ at the very front of the church.

He was looking up the path of light when he suddenly said ‘Holy Water’.

‘What?’ he had caught my mind wandering.

‘Vampires cannot stand Holy Water’ He reminded me. He beckoned me to follow as he walked down to the font. It had a wooden lid over it that was inlaid with a crucifix. He lifted the cover without hesitation. I saw no smoke come from his hands where they touched the cross.

‘Splash me’ he said.

It took me a moment to realise he wanted me to shower him with the water in the font. My body was quicker than my brain though as I found my hands gathering a mass of water and hurling it in to his face. He just stood and smiled.

‘You don’t think I’m a vampire now.’ He said and I realised I had been foolish before. It was obviously a mean joke by Tim and Jake. Well not mean he had already told me I was not upset and so I could not really blame him. It was all Tim’s fault. I would give him a real tongue lashing when I saw him next.

‘We’re both wet now’ Jake noted ‘we should undress and go and look for some dry cloths. I think I saw some cassocks out back.’ He began undressing and I followed suit. It seemed so natural as I was soaking wet.

A crucifix hung from his neck and I realised that even if I had harboured any last doubts about him they would have vanished. Of course I had no such doubts as Jake had calmed them completely.

As we began walking back down the aisle I found that the church was not heated and felt the Goosebumps start to rise on my arms and in other places.

Jake must have noticed. ‘Come here’ he said and gave me a warming hug. It made me feel safe and secure. The question about how he had entered the locked church that was starting to form in my mind vanished. Jake was such a hunk I realised. I turned to tell him and my nose brushed against his bare chest. I breathed in I could smell the musk from Jake and I felt my legs go weak. I thought I might orgasm from the scent alone. He helped me down the aisle as my legs failed me under that powerful aroma. In fact it was not just my legs but my pussy as well. It seemed to throb with every breath I took.

‘Is walking you up the aisle that much of a turn on?’ Jake asked me and it took all my strength to nod yes. ‘Maybe we should have done it before’

I felt my love for him well up like a spring from somewhere inside of me.

‘Lets make love’ he decided and I knew it was what I needed more than anything else in the world right then. My love Jake was going to be the first. I had never been so wet before and without any physical stimulation whatsoever.

He stopped supporting me and I rolled onto the floor in front of the altar but he turned me over and whispered ‘doggy style’. As I got into position I smelt his body again and a jet of fluid ran from my sopping pussy down my left leg. This was what I had been saving myself for. We might not actually be married but at least I had reached the altar before my first sexual congress. A distant memory told me I wanted to be married before I lost my virginity but it was silenced by that wonderful, raw, animalistic odour.

I felt him enter me and make a few gentle moves. My whole body tingled with the feeling of desire that was on me. He bent forwards and licked my ear with his long rough tongue and the body warmed crucifix brushed down my back. A shaft of moonlight from the full moon burst through a side window of the chapel and illuminating us as we knelt before the altar.

My whole being was transfixed by the smell and the feel of Jake in me and behind me. He pulled all the way back and then pushed in again. I felt my hymen break and I felt him stiffen for a moment as my virgin blood contacted his dick. I felt it actually grow inside of me and then he began to thrust again picking up an animals rhythm that took me along with it. I could feel the hardness of his cock inside me and the beautiful fur of his legs rubbing my hind legs and arse cheeks from behind. His paws were resting on my shoulders as a mighty howl left his muzzle.

I looked back between my legs and sighed as the pounding and the musk smell of the werewolf brought me towards my first penetrative orgasm. A small bite drew blood from my neck and ensured that I both screamed loudly as I peaked and that I would be his bitch very soon.

[flibinite]

Hi all -

Thought I would take a small break in the party (am not sober, sorry) to get this posted just in time for Halloween.  I wasn't sure that I could write anything for this expo/contest, but I woke up yesterday morning thinking about it, and some things that a friend had said to me, and about Halloween in general, and this story came to me.  I sent it to Simon earlier, hoping to catch the Halloween update, but even if I didn't, I wanted to post it here... for Blue, and for you.

Note:  Any of you with this particular squick will be able to spot your problem area a mile away with my story.  I won't ask you to read this in spite of your "preferred non-preference", but it is probably more mellow than most of what you are used to, or turned off by.  Definitely your choice, though.

Given the rather wonderful nature of some of the stories submitted already, most notably Dreamfire's, I did what I generally tend to do... I tried to bring the heat.  My hope is that I didn't just bring the noiz.

I'm vain enough to let you decide...

      Love,  Jo

****************


Seeing the Light    -   by  flibinite[/b]

Catherine walked slowly through the house, looking for her mother.  The place looked great, with lighted candles and Halloween decorations set up in practically every room.  She had come home from college last night and spent the day with her mom cleaning and preparing food, the two of them getting everything ready for tonight's party.

It would be a small, intimate affair... just Catherine, her mom, and her three aunts.  It had the makings of a really swell time, though. 

Catherine loved her mother and her aunts, and loved to hang around with them, to have a few drinks and get loose and happy and hear them dish on the other family members and the people they worked with. 

And if the party went like it normally did when the five of them got together, eventually someone would suggest a game, and they'd end up playing Pictionary or charades or something.  It never mattered what game they chose, however, as it always ended up with them getting lewd, loud, and silly.

“Yes... this will be fun,” Catherine thought, happy and excited. 

She was enjoying being at the nearby college, living away from home for the first time, and she had already started to learn a lot more about herself there.  But there were traces of homesickness still, and she was glad to be back, if only for just a couple of days.

But where was her mother right now?

She hadn't been upstairs anywhere, and not in the living room, either.  Catherine was just about to call out for her, when she got an idea.  She walked over to the French door that led out to their large deck, opened it, and looked.  She saw she was right, as her mother was out there, sitting on the glider, rocking slowly, seemingly lost in thought.

"There you are!" Catherine said, taking the two steps down to the deck and closing the door behind her.  She saw her mother start, then turn to look at her.  "Everyone will be here in an hour and half, and you're out here daydreaming, Mom.  What gives?"

Her mother smiled at her, almost dreamily, Catherine thought.  "Nothing, Cath.  I was just enjoying the evening, taking a break, and thinking about... things.  It's a beautiful night."

"Yeah, it is," Catherine replied, walking over to the glider, taking in a big breath of the early evening air. 

And it was a beautiful night.  Although it was totally dark already, what with the daylight savings time switch the night before, it still felt to be over 60 degrees, the lightest of breezes blowing, still quite balmy for the last day in October.  It was quiet and peaceful, too.  Their house was the last one on a dead-end country road, and that usually left them with just the sounds of nature, not of man.

Catherine was debating whether to sit down next to her, to risk interrupting her mother’s quiet time, when the other suddenly slapped her own thighs and stood up next to her.

"But enough of that.  I have things to do before my sisters get here, hon.”

Catherine was a bit surprised then, when her mother grabbed her arm, and started to guide her down onto the glider.  "But here… you take my spot.  Enjoy some daydreaming of your own."

Catherine did sit, thinking “why not,” as she had some time to kill, and sitting out here alone at night was something she'd always liked to do.  An only child, she had often come out here to be in the quiet, to just relax and think.

She looked up at her mother to see her with that same dreamy smile, and wondered for a moment if she had already gotten into the pitcher of stingers sitting in the fridge.  But so what if she has.  It's a party night, a fun night, so why not?

She saw and felt her mother pat her on the knee, then turn and walk off.  Catherine called after her, "I thought we were all ready, Mom.  What else is left to do?"

Her mother turned the latch on the door, opened it, and looked back at her.  "Nothing really," she said, still smiling softly.  "But I need to take a shower."

And with that, she was through the door and gone.

Catherine sighed, snuggled back into the glider, and began to rock it back and forth.  She noticed that while the rest of the glider seat seemed cool to the touch, where she was sitting was still warm from the body heat of her mother.  It felt good, and she let herself start to relax as she rocked slowly in the fragrant autumn air.

It took her a little while to notice it, but as she continued to rock and stare off across the deck, Catherine noticed that the light seemed to change slightly with each motion, getting darker as she moved forward, lighter as she pushed back.  Once she recognized this was happening, it took her only a second to figure out why.

It was the pumpkins.

The jack-o'-lanterns, to be more specific.  There were two of them on the deck railing opposite her, on either side of her, and about eight feet apart.  She and her mom had each carved one of them.  They hadn’t watched each other as they did it, but they had both turned out roughly the same anyway... both of them had goofy smiles and small, scary eyes. 

Apparently, her mother had lighted the candles inside them, and that's what was causing the light shifts in Catherine’s eyes as she moved forward and back.

Each time she moved forward, she changed the angle just enough so that each candle's flame was hidden from her view.  And when she pushed back, she could just see each flame again, see them flickering softly out here in the dark… one pumpkin's left eye glowing; the other, the right.

No big.  Kinda pleasant, actually. 

Light, dark... light, dark... She settled back and relaxed, rocking slowly, letting her mind drift, staring between the pumpkins out into the night, but still “seeing” them both. 

They didn’t seem quite so menacing now, almost as if they were keeping her company.

Light, dark... light, dark... light, dark...

While it wasn't exactly cold outside, it wasn't that warm either, and after a few minutes of just sitting there, of just sort of floating and not really focusing on anything, Catherine felt a slight chill.  She squirmed her way a bit tighter into the glider's padding, even more thankful now that her mother had warmed it with her body.

And why not, actually, as her mom's body was really hot.

Catherine shook her head, wondering where that thought had come from?

It was true enough, though.  Even at 43 years old, her mom was still in great shape—buxom and curvy, yet not overweight at all.  Her parents certainly hadn't broken up two years ago because she was no longer sexually attractive.  But Catherine did wonder why she was suddenly thinking about that.

Maybe she had been unconsciously thinking about some of the things she had "learned" while being away at school.  On the few occasions there when she had physically examined her "bi" side, she had found there were many aspects of female-to-female sex that she really enjoyed... the tastes, the scents, some of the “techniques”, and, well... the breasts.

Mom has great tits...

“Lord!  Where are these thoughts coming from, and why are they so strong?” Catherine wondered.  She was not only starting to think such things, but she was also starting to feel them deep inside herself.

She unknowingly began to rock just a bit faster, the pumpkins seeming to leer at her now, almost as if they were making fun of her mental indiscretions.

She's naked in the shower now, lathering and rubbing those wonderful breasts...

The shiver Catherine felt at this thought had nothing to do with the cold.  She could picture her mother so clearly now, standing in the pulsing water, steam rising around her, her body all wet and hot and sudsy.  She could easily see her mom using her hands to work the lather into her soft skin.

She's probably masturbating in the shower while thinking about you...

“About you?  Noo... About me,” Catherine whispered.  She felt very confused now, until she suddenly realized what she was doing. 

What she was doing was starting to lose it here, to somehow imagine the pumpkins were speaking to her, were telling her these things.  That had to be a stupid thought, though.  All this was just some silly, Halloween childishness on her part.

But maybe, just maybe, her mom was masturbating in the shower right now.  Maybe she did have a hand buried deep between her hot thighs, stroking and teasing her wet pussy, all the while moaning, "Ohh, Cathy!"

Light, dark, light, dark, light, dark...

She masturbates to thoughts of you (me!) all the time.  She needs someone...

Now questions started flashing through Catherine's mind. What had Mom been doing for sexual gratification since she and Dad had split up?  Could it be true?  Was it possible that her mother masturbated to thoughts of her?

Lightdarklightdarklightdarklightdark...

She needs someone to fuck her.  She needs someone she loves to give her pleasure.  She's hot and wet and slick with soap, with need, with desire.  She needs someone to help her cum.

"Yess…," Catherine thought wildly.  "She needs me!"  It was only then that she noticed how fast she was rocking, how hard she was rubbing her own wet pussy through her soaked panties.  She couldn’t even remember sliding her hand underneath her skirt. 

Catherine realized that she wasn't staring off into space anymore, and that she wasn't even cold anymore.  In fact, she was warm and sweaty and all “smelly” now.

I could really use a shower, too.

She moaned as she stopped rubbing herself and stood up, her legs shaking, knowing what she had to do.  Her mother needed her! 

"I'm coming to help you, Mom," she thought, hustling through the French door, through the living room and up the stairs toward the master bath.  She tugged at her clothes as she went, knowing she had to hurry.

She reached the bathroom door, her short-sleeve blouse already off, fumbling behind her back for the clasp to her bra.  She managed to release it, shrugging her bra off and letting it drop to the floor, her nipples stiff and achy.  Opening the door as quietly as she could, Catherine stepped inside the humid bathroom.

She could hear the water running, thinking the shower massage must be set to faucet flow, the sound of it hitting the floor of the tub heavy and resonant.  In counterpoint to that, she could hear her mother moaning softly, and going "Noo...noo, I can't." 

It sounded as if she was in pain, and right then Catherine realized that every thought she had been having was correct.  Her mother did need her now!

"And I need you, too," she whispered, almost overcome by the suddenness and strength of her own admission.

She stepped out of her sandals, loosened her skirt, and pushed that and her clingy, wet panties down her legs and onto the floor, calling out, "Mom? Are you okay?"

Catherine could hear her mother grunt, certain she had startled her, now wishing she had knocked first before she entered.

"Yes, I'm fine."  Her mother's voice sounded ragged and harsh.  "I... I'll be done in a few minutes, Cath."

But Catherine knew better, and was already pushing the shower curtain aside, stepping into the tub.  Her mother stood there and stared at her with stricken eyes, her body covered with lather, one arm under and lifting her soapy breasts, one hand between her thighs, now just appearing to try to cover herself.

She looked exactly as Catherine had pictured her while rocking on the glider.

But as Catherine took a small step toward her, her mother turned away, partially hunched over, and half-whispered, “Noo… this is wrong.”

“No it isn’t, Mom,” Catherine said, moving closer, pressing herself into her mother’s back, reaching around her with her left hand to stroke and fondle a slick, swollen nipple.  “We need each other.”

Her mother shivered, whispering “noo” again, but did nothing to restrain her daughter’s teasing fingers.  Her only resistance was verbal.

“We can’t do this, Cath.  We don’t want to do this.  It isn’t us.  It’s the pumpkins.  Somehow they’re making us act this way.”  Her voice was plaintive now, almost as if she were trying to convince herself.

“But that’s just silly, Mom.  They’re just pumpkins.”  Catherine reached around with her other hand, both her mother’s nipples now feeling her tender assault.

But as she rubbed and massaged them, heard her mother’s soft moans, Catherine began to wonder.  Fifteen minutes before I hadn’t been having any thoughts like this at all… none… and now look at me!  Could the same thing have happened to her mom?  After all, they had both done the same things—rocking in the glider, relaxing in the crisp night air, thinking and staring off beyond the lighted pumpkins.

She was just about to stop her sensuous teasing, and to give them both some time to reconsider where this intense arousal and need were actually coming from, when her mother straightened up with a thick moan and pressed back into her.

Catherine was not prepared, and had no defenses whatsoever, for the wave of desire that coursed through her as her mother did that.  And when she leaned her head back on Catherine’s shoulder and began to kiss her cheek, and when she began to grind her back into Catherine’s aroused breasts, her ass into Catherine’s aching mound, any resistance she felt to doing this evaporated like a snowflake in July.

With a groan of her own, she spun her mother around until they were face to face.  Holding her at arm’s length, Catherine stared at her, at her mother’s glazed eyes and open, needy mouth.  She knew for certain that she looked exactly the same way, and with a helpless gasp, pulled her mother into her arms.

For a single second, they paused.  Then lips sought out lips, and they kissed. 

With no hesitation and no reservations at all now, they kissed.  Clutching and grabbing at each other, their fingers and nails leaving trails all down the other’s back and ass, they kissed… hot, passionate kisses; tongue-filled, sloppy-wet kisses, driven by their insistent need and desire for each other.

They snorted and gasped as the kisses went on and on, the two of them afraid to stop, lest the passion of the moment fade.  Writhing and twisting against each other like two soapy snakes, they let their breasts and nipples clash and slide, Catherine’s shaved mound grinding against the wet, silky pubis of her mother again and again.

So tight to one another, it was as if they were both trying to push inside each other’s bodies. It was very physical, almost violent, and if it weren’t for the rubberized strips glued to the bottom of the tub, they would have slipped and fallen into a painful pile.

Catherine had never felt anything like this in her young life…this driving need, the gut-wrenching arousal of it all.
 
And when her mother finally moved to the side and thrust her thigh hard and tight between Catherine’s thighs and against her throbbing pussy, she lost all control.  Going “oh fuck, oh god,” she humped her mother’s leg desperately, wantonly, the slight sting of the soap only adding to her arousal.

Within seconds, the pressure was too much for her to withstand, and Catherine came, her back arching, hips jerking.  Her mother helped hold her up as Catherine shuddered and spasmed her release onto her thigh, her head back as she grunted and filled the bathroom with her moans of pleasure.

When her heavy orgasm finally ended, Catherine slowly sank to her knees, panting and momentarily spent.  But she knew there was something she needed to do now, something that she wanted to do more than anything. 

Her mother, sensing that, and needing that too, gasped out a “wait!” and turned to grab the shower massage, to fan out the flow and play it over her belly and loins to remove the remaining traces of soap there.

Before she could hook it back to the showerhead though, Catherine was upon her, sliding her arms between her spread legs, cupping her ass and pulling her dripping sex tight to her mouth.  Helpless to resist, her mother simply dropped the hose and grabbed at her daughter’s hair, hanging on for dear life.

Catherine began to eat her, sucking hard at her seam, and driving her long tongue deep within its puffy folds.  She licked and lapped and nursed on her mother’s swollen clit until it was the older woman’s moans that filled the air, along with her cries, of “please eat me”, “that’s it, baby”,  and “oh my godd”.

It didn’t take her long to reach orgasm either, exploding against Catherine’s mouth and tongue as she bucked and ground her cumming cunt against them, her fingers buried in her daughter’s long, sweaty hair. 

When she was finally spent, she sank onto her knees, too, and the two of them hugged.  Cheek-to-cheek, they whispered soft endearments to each other as their pounding hearts finally began to slow.

Then they kissed again; not with the desperate passion of before, surely, but with tenderness and love, and as a way of saying thanks, and as a way of cementing the bond they had just formed between them.

Finally, her mother leaned back and said, “I hate to break this up, baby, but we have guests arriving shortly, and I don’t think they would quite understand if they found as like this.  Do you?”

Catherine laughed and nodded, still unable to resist reaching out and fondling her mother’s breasts.  “Yes.  We’d better get ready for them.  Besides, we have time for more of this after they leave.  Right?”  As she asked her question, she let her thumbs slide back and forth over her mother’s wet, stiff nipples.

“Oh yes,” her mother replied, licking her lips and tasting her own juices there.  “We’ll have plenty of time after they’re gone.”

So, knowing they had to move quickly, they stood and cleaned up, soaping and rinsing themselves, knowing what might happen if they attempted to wash each other.  As it was, the inadvertent touches and bumps between them as they moved about the tub were almost enough to set them off again. 

Somehow, they managed to get through it though, and climbed out.

As they stood there drying themselves off, Catherine was struck by a sudden thought, and said, “Mom?  Do you think it might be a good idea if we take our drinks out on the deck when they get here?  It’s such a wonderful night, and there’s plenty of room on the glider for them to sit.”

Her mother just stared at Catherine for a moment, then gave her a wink and a knowing smile.  “Yess… and perhaps a new game later tonight, as well.”   

“Brilliant!” Catherine cried, and they both laughed as they left the bathroom together, hand in hand.

***************


     Yours,  Jo  (forgive me... I like to sign off)

[Michelle]

I just want to point out that I AM working on something. It just does not look like it. It is all "up here" :::Taps forehead::: Well, the beginning is written and I know most of what will happen, and I actually think it is a pretty cool story.

[Born Blitzed]

Well, here it is, at last.  This is a just-completed, very rough first draft; any and all suggestions and comments--not just positive ones (if any )--would be most appreciated:

Prelude

by Born Blitzed

No one knows for certain exactly how the seven Races came to be.  Some say the legendary High Elves were ultimately responsible: first, by creating the Elves in their own image; then, molding the Orcs to be their servants, and the Dragons, their pets.  The Small Men were their farmers; the Drow, their miners; the Dwarves, their builders.

As for the Tall Men?  According to those myths, they alone were not of the High Elves' creation; instead, they had been invited from afar.  For only a Race that wasn't of Their own bloodline could offer up new ideas: growth, conflict, change.

And change the Races did, though in ways the High Elves had not foreseen.  The ebon-skinned Drow retreated to the deepest mountain caverns, never to willingly brave the Sun, or their fellows, again.  The Dwarves, forced to assume the dual mantle of miner and builder, became surly and withdrawn as well.  The Dragons and Orcs took note, and one day simply abandoned their erstwhile masters, living however and wherever they chose.  The Small Men, cheerful by nature, found new joy in their position as ambassadors; they were the only Race that all the others trusted.  And the restless Tall Men, filled with the urgency of the shortest-lived, became merchants and explorers, hunters and scientists, conquerors and kings.

The Elves saw this, and took note.  For to them, and them alone, fell the talent of the Song.  To them, the world is Song, and the Song is the world.  No wild beast, no angry storm cloud, not even the thick curtains of the future could catch them unawares; for the Song was carried on the drifting wind, to any ear sensitive enough to Hear.

This was not magic; there is no such thing.  Are the Dwarves performing magic when they pull precious metal from unforgiving stone?  Do the Tall Men make magic when they breathe?

However, while it was true that the Tall Men were making no magic, it was even more so that--as they became more numerous and less restrained--their actions were bringing disharmony to the Song.  Nature can forgive some discord; but the Tall Men's deeds were threatening the very health of the world--and therefore, the interwoven threads of the seven Races themselves.

And while all the Elves could Hear (in fact, could not ignore) the ever-louder jangle of the coming-to-be, only one in particular could Hear, through the noise, the faint but sure thread of the might-become.  Her name, in Elvish, was a short--yet achingly lovely--Song that described both her physical attributes and inner nature; in the common tongue, out of courtesy, she shared only the first three Notes: Aiyiah.

She was, of course, beautiful; no Elf is not.  Reed-slender, with alabaster skin, and platinum hair to her waist.  Gigantic eyes (only the Dragons have larger), with leaf-green irises.  Delicate windswept ears, of course.  And, typical for her Race, she was a full head taller than a Small Man, which still left her rather more than a head shorter than most Tall Men.

It must be said that the lovely Aiyiah, barely two centuries old, had no especial talent above all others to perceive this single hopeful thread.  Rather, from the start, she knew she was Hearing the march of her own destiny.  From her elaborate lair, deep within the immense forest known only as the Elfhome, she set out unerringly--and with no trace of hesitation--on a journey to intercept the one man who might prove to be the savior of the seven Races.

Following the thread of her Song, it took her three arduous weeks to come upon the mortally wounded Tall Man, alone and barely an hour from death, in a deeply shaded meadow on the fringes of the Elfhome.  No one knows (save perhaps Aiyiah herself) his name, much less what had led him to his miserable fate; in the end, it does not really matter.

Having found her target in his hour of need, she wasted neither time nor unnecessary movement.  First, she weaved pieces of the Song into an area of protection, that she should be able to work undisturbed.  Then, once more bending the Song to her will, she tended to his wounds: applying its threads to the work of healing with all the speed and skill of a master chirurgeon--moreso, for she could Hear the distress within the anonymous Tall Man's body, and Sing as necessary to repair the damage.

Even so, it was long work; and at the end of it, they both slept.

No matter how short the night, all Elves awaken at sunrise, and Aiyiah was no exception.  The glory of the Song burst forth with the first warm caress of the sun's rays, with the drowsy awareness of the creatures of the forest: and she drew much-needed strength from that.  For, having satisfied the Tall Man's greatest need, it was now the time for him to repay the favor--perhaps the greatest favor an Elf has ever asked from one of his kin.

She wasted no time, calling upon the Song to ease the stranger to wakefulness.  Weak but whole, he could do little but watch and listen, though he could not of course comprehend the significance of what it was he heard.

First, at Aiyiah's insistence, the Song unwove the very threads of his garment, draping themselves beneath him to protect him from the cold, hard ground.  Then, with but a few more notes, she unwove the fabric of her own outfit, exposing her pale skin to the new day--and his befuddled gaze.

Through the Song, she knew what it was that he saw.  She was indeed the very picture of loveliness, a rare flower even among her own kind.  But while she could easily lay claim to tenfold the length of his mortal coil, her very slenderness, short stature, featureless chest, and perfectly smooth cleft, caused him to perceive her in like manner to a child.  A Tall Man's child.

Fortunately, this had been anticipated.  Seizing once again upon the relevant parts of the Song, Aiyiah wove the threads as necessary.  First, she caused his perceptions to change; no longer did he see her as a child, but as an older--and highly desirable--woman.  Then, she manipulated the Song to insert lustful desire deep within his chaotic mind.

She was rewarded by watching his slumbering manhood unfurl itself to full tumescence.  His eyes fairly glowed, as he listened to her Singing with what amounted to rapture.  Only his weakened physical condition prevented him from reaching for her yet, as she prepared the final stages.

Once more she Sang, effecting changes gross and subtle within both their forms.  Two soft globes appeared upon her chest; not large, but definitely feminine.  Her mating channel altered its shape, becoming both longer and broader, in anticipation of their imminent conjoining.  A sweet-smelling dew formed at the entrance, ready to ease the first penetration.  Similarly, the Tall Man's life-giving fluid  had filled to almost overflowing, just before a surge of energy gave him the stamina to do what he now knew must be done.

Filled with the flames of passion that Aiyiah had carefully fanned, the nameless stranger reached up, pulling his Elven mistress down into an embrace.  His mind entrapped by necessity in the Song of passion, he rolled over upon her, thrusting his manhood to the very root.  It did not occur to him to wonder at the strangeness of the situation, or at her ability to accommodate him at all; his mind was beyond (or, perhaps, below) those thoughts.

Caught up fully within the Song, Aiyiah had no choice but to give her own self over to the sensations of ecstasy.  Her passion rose with his, and while the forest around them crescendoed with the morning's activity, the two lovers urged each other on to the mutual climax that the Song itself had dictated.

Despite their deepest wishes to extend their pleasure at this single coupling, completion would not be forestalled for long.  His thrusts grew quicker more insistent, as she Sang the final Notes--or, as many have debated since: at that penultimate moment, was it the Song that was Singing her?

Explosion.  Bliss.  The perfect Note, which could not--could never--last long enough.

At last, their duet complete, they separated.  Aiyiah wove the Notes once more, and their clothes reformed as new.  Only she knows what he said to her before they parted, if anything at all.  For she had what she had come for: his seed, and with it, the fulfillment of her destiny.

A seed which she would nurture within herself, for the better part of two years, in the manner of her kind.  One which would be made welcome, in the conflicting worlds of Elf and Tall Man.  The joyful news spread rapidly upon the wind; through the roiling chaos, every Elf in the world could at last Hear the soft counterpoint that had caused Aiyiah to set herself upon her chosen path: the music of salvation; the music of hope.

And thus, did I come to be born.

[Telomere]

This is a bit of a cheat, since I wrote most of this story well before this exhibition, and I'm also not posting the entire story (I figured 3000-or-so words was enough, the full story is well over 10000 words).  Never the less, the story fits the theme.

There's no particular picture which inspired things, but if you want something that sort of fits the story, have a look at this picture.

The full version should appear on EMCSA soon.

This is a lot darker than my previous stories.


Darkzone
Telomere

  Dark zone: The part of a cave in perpetual darkness, that lies beyond the twilight zone.

Even so deep within the Earth, I feel the seasons ebb and flow.  It has been hundreds of years since humans last came down to my domain.  It has been even longer since they brought light to these dark places.  It has been an age since I last fed.

I am hungry.

I have known things have been changing, felt the weakening ties to the others like me, both light and dark.  I have felt distant yet massive shocks to the very crust of the Earth, not earthquakes, but blows nearly as mighty.  And now I see these humans, I know that much is different now.

There are four of them, one male and three females.  Instead of the spells and wards that my previous visitors have surrounded themselves with, they are bare, unprotected.  Their clothing is strange, a single close-fitting garment covers their bodies from ankle to neck, with long sleeves.  The fastenings are of steel, but do not look to be buttons or clasps.  The men and women dress similarly.  They have finely-made boots on their feet, and wear helmets to which their lights are affixed.  The helmets are not made of metal, and are held in place by an ingenious harness.  Their lights gleam brightly, and do not flicker.

This last is perhaps strangest of all.  In the past those who came here crawled through the darkness holding lamps of oil, or candles of wax or tallow.  It was easy for a well-directed gust of wind or a fortuitous drop of water to extinguish the flame, leaving the humans at my mercy.  These new lights resist my efforts.

The language here has changed.  I do not understand what the humans say as they move through the passages and crawlways of my domain, although from the way they speak to each other I can tell that the name of the male is John, and the females are Beth, Karen and Mary.

John is tall and lanky, with a boyish cast to his face.  Beth is short and compact, while Karen is taller and more muscular.  The two look fit, as though they might be farmers or labourers of some kind, but their faces are not weather-beaten and their hands, although dirty from the mud and dust they have travelled through, look supple and well-manicured.  Mary is perhaps a kept woman, for she is softer than either Beth or Karen and has fine make-up on her face.  She is having more difficulty than the others in traversing the obstacles I place before them, and she relies on John for assistance.

I have no idea what this unlikely group is doing encroaching on my realm.  In the past, those who have come here have been those who have guessed of the power here and have come to seek it, or those who have entered these caverns and become lost, stumbling inevitably into my lair.  These look like neither.  They stride with purpose and enthusiasm, not with the trepidation of supplicants or the fear of the lost.

They are a puzzle I will have to solve before I feed.

I bend my will to draw them into my centre.


These humans are puzzling indeed.  When they first entered my heart, their reaction was not awe or fear, but rather delight.  They ran their lights over the vast gardens of crystal I have carefully cultivated over the millennia, setting it ashimmer with reflections in the many facets.  They will pay for illuminating my secret heart so, stealing away the sacred darkness.

They seemed to become excited, looking at a large piece of paper which may have been some kind of map.  They rested awhile.  And then they left through a different route than they had come in.  They clearly did not know the significance of what they had stumbled across.  In years gone by, even the lost had known when they came to the core of my domain that there was great power here and that they had no hope.

Again, I bent my will, steering them back to the centre.  Again, they displayed no fear, nor even concern.  It dawned on me then that they were *exploring*.  Unaware of the danger, the power arrayed against them, like a child playing in the rain in a dry creek bed.

They will be easy prey.


They have returned to my heart for the sixth time.  The tone of their voices indicates that they are starting to be a little concerned that they are so disoriented, but they have not yet attempted to leave the way they came.

My heart is a large chamber, and I have arranged it very deliberately.  A deep, dark, still pool of water separates the entrances from my crystal garden.  A moat of sorts, to keep the unwanted and uninvited out of my most precious sanctum.  The side of the entrance has a shore of deep, wet, black mud, while the side of the crystal garden has a steep bank rising out of the water.  Those who come to seek my power should know that they are like mud before my cathedral of splendour.

These humans seem to be considering my moat some sort of challenge.  Karen is talking to John, pointing at the map and pointing toward the far shore.  I cannot believe my good fortune when they stop their discussion, and Karen walks down to the edge of my pool, shining her light around as if looking for a way across.

She says something to John, and then to the others.  They turn around, and Karen begins to remove her clothes.  Her boots come off first, revealing feet which look as pampered as her hands, then her strange one-piece suit which turns out to be covering more usual sorts of clothes: a vest or shirt of some sort of elastic material, and short pants.  These she removes too, revealing a third layer consisting of two pieces covering her bottom and breasts.  Only the most wealthy of those who had come to me before could afford such finery.  Perhaps these humans are minor nobles, come to seek their fame?

Finally her clothes are removed, and she stands, naked but for her helmet and light, in my heart.  She does not appear self-conscious about her state, nor does she try to cover her sex with her hands as I have seen others do.  Rather, she gingerly steps into my dark mud, and walks toward my pool.  She has no fear.

I cannot believe my fortune.  In ages past, a cult of humans worshipped me for my dark power.  To show their true faith, they would baptise themselves, naked, in my dark pool.  They knew that to willingly bathe in my waters was to surrender their souls to me, and I would reward them with power for their sacrifice before, inevitably, making them wholly mine.  This human female appears, unknowingly, to be emulating that dark rite.  But the primaeval laws are clear, it is not one's intent that matters, only the action itself, performed willingly.  A few more steps, and she will have given her soul to me.

She steps into my water.  The pool is cool, but warmer than the air, the bottom covered in silty black mud.  My water is dark, her light does not penetrate into it, and she cannot see where to place her feet.  Carefully, she wades deeper, the water above her knees, then within a few steps it is up to her thighs.

Her soul is mine now, and I could take it and feast on it, but that would kill her body and mind, and I am greedy.  I want to gorge on her body and mind, too.  I need to take everything that is hers.  It will take longer, but I know that she is too innocent to resist me for long.

My water is temptingly close to her sex.  She takes one more step, ending up on tip-toes to keep my cool water from surrounding her, her arms outstretched for balance, fingers just touching my water.  Then she settles down, lowering her hips into my water.

She clearly does not know it, but she is giving herself to me.  I bend my will to the water, and it moves subtly around her sex.  I push my water between her outer lips, gently opening them.  I push deeper, exposing her sensitive nodule to my water, and finding my way to the entrance of her deep shaft.

She gasps quietly, but her companions assume it is merely the cold shock of entering my water.

The contact between my water and the chakras on her lower spine allows me to make contact with her mind and body.  It is far from the control I will have, but at last I can glimpse within her.  Her mind is strange: soft, filled with child-like curiosity and play.  Unlike those who have come here before, she has endured few hardships in her life, she has never had to overcome the challenges of starvation, injustice and cruelty that make a mind hard and sharp.  She has no defences.

Taking her will be like eating a sweet dessert.

Using the small amount of control I have, together with the water touching her most sensitive parts, I begin to arouse her.  I feel wet warmth seep from her sex, mingling with my water.

She steps forward again, deeper into my water.  As her body moves down, I harden the water at the deep entrance of her sex, so that her weight forces a shaft of my dark water inside her.  It is softer than any man's member, but it fills her insistently.

She gasps again.

She is waist deep in my pool now, my darkness gently lapping over the top of her hips.  I deepen her arousal, pulsing the darkness inside her tunnel, and swirling around her nub of pleasure outside.  I feel her concern at the sexual feelings she is experiencing, and the emotion adds a delightful piquancy to her taste.  My dark water starts to bind with her exposed flesh: a seeping blackness that flows into her skin, corrupting it and making it mine.  I worm my way deeper into her mind.

I ensure that her next step takes her much deeper.  My darkness flows up her body, around her waist and stomach, into her sensitive navel, up the graceful curves of her midsection and over her breasts.  My water caresses her body, hardening and softening at a thousand places where it touches her, like a thousand kisses.  Her nipples are hard, and I cover them with my darkness.

She gasps a third time.

Her companion, John, speaks.  My bond with her mind is strong enough, and at last I am able to understand their new language.  He wants to know if she is safe.  I am ready to stifle her response if she says anything about what I am doing to her.  I decide that what she will say is innocent enough.

"I'm fine," she replies, "the water is making me shiver."

She feels ahead with her foot for the next step, but it is too deep for her.  She knows that she will have to start swimming.  Again, she has no fear of the water, even though it is too deep for her to stand.  It is clear that she has been trained to swim.  She crouches down in the water slightly, bringing her arms and shoulders into the water.  Only her head remains clear of my darkness.

I change my pattern of stimulation on her body, sending traceries of pressure radiating out from her sex and nipples, like hundreds of tiny fingertips.  Her hands, unseen to her companions on the shore, move down to her sex, opening herself wider for me.  I can feel her fingers move through her slit, pleasuring herself as I pleasure her.  I can control most of her body now, but I permit her to move freely.

She sighs gently as we bring her body to a small climax.

She pushes herself off, starting to swim.  She swims with a graceful stroke, keeping her head and helmet above the water.  She is a strong swimmer.  She kicks her legs like a frog.  Each time she opens her legs, I spread her sex wide, licking cool darkness over her.  Each time she closes her legs to kick, my water pulses within her shaft.  By the time she has reached the far shore, she is panting.

She is close to my most sacred places now, and she is almost wholly mine.  Her body, betrayed by its arousal, will do what I command.  Her mind, unaware of the danger it is in, fogged by the haze of passion, is now completely surrounded by darkness, a candle waiting to be extinguished.  And her soul was mine the moment she willingly entered my pool of darkness.

The edge of the pool she has reached is almost vertical, sinking to untold depths.  She clings to the rocks on the edge, finding purchase with her feet underneath my water.  Resting, she presses herself up against the silty wall, then pushes herself up, so she is standing, her torso out of the water, leaning her front firmly against the steep muddy rocks at the water's edge.

I reward her by ensuring that her breasts are cupped naturally by the rocks, resting in soft mud, which I move, teasing her sensitive nipples.  I reward her by ensuring that her hips rest against a small, silty outcrop under the waterline.  She gently wiggles her hips against the outcrop, working her open sex against the soft silt.  I let the dark silt flow into her sex.

Remembering the reason she entered the pool in the first place, she starts looking about, fixed in position.  I let her speak freely, not wanting to alert her companions.

"Wow!" she says, wonder filling her voice. "The decoration here is simply amazing."

"Do you see any passages going out?" John calls from behind her.

I have hundreds of secret little ways and passages leading through my dark garden, but I do not want them to enter it.  Not until they are all mine.

"No it doesn't look like it," I make her say, with a tone of disappointment.

I sense her confusion and fear.  She does not know why she just said that.  Why would she lie to her friends?  Her mind begins to sense the darkness that surrounds it, and at last sweet fear becomes part of her taste.

She looks around, and I slowly let her become aware of the deep, fertile bed I have let my dark garden grow upon.  She sees, under the sparkling crystal growths, that what she had thought were rocks are actually bones.  Human bones.  A gypsum flower blossoms within a pelvis.  A sheet of flowstone encases a spine and ribs.  From underneath the bases of my beautiful stalagmites, vacant eye sockets stare from skulls.  A calcified skeleton is wrapped around a column of crystal, as if lewdly humping it.

Terror and horror blossom in her mind, and I intensify her arousal.  She looks down, and realises that the wall she is clinging to is also filled with bones, covered by my soft, black mud.  She pulls back slightly, looking down at her chest.  She sees that what she had thought were shallow depressions where her breasts rested are actually the mouths of of two skulls, leering at her.  A tendril of soft black mud oozes from each of them like long, grotesque tongues, licking at her breasts.

She tries to scream, but I do not permit her to.  Instead, I insert the thought into her mind that what the skulls are doing turns her on.  They are as deeply erotic as any other thing she can think of.  Fear and arousal war in her mind creating a deliciously dark, sweet taste.  I permit her to moan very softly, and press herself forward, letting my skulls work their dark magic.

I find that she is giving in to the arousal too quickly, however, getting lost in the sensations.  I let her think about the feelings in and around her sex, and what could possibly be causing them.  Her mind runs through all the possibilities of the things that she might be grinding her hips against.  Her terror surges back, but I have coupled it to her arousal and the sharp jab of horror nearly brings her to climax.

At last her mind begins to comprehend that she is truly lost in the dark.

It is time to bring this game to an end, to make her mine.  I bend my will to the wall of skulls and bones that she is half-standing, half-lying on, and cleave off the outer layer, creating a small avalanche splashing into my pool.  She slides in with it, my darkness swallowing her whole.  Her friends are shouting and yelling on the far side of the lake, but they are too far away to do anything.

She is dragged deeper and deeper down, until she is drifting far beneath the surface.  I deliberately calm her body, so that she can truly appreciate what is happening to her.  The light on her helmet still shines, although it cannot cut far through the black water.  I move her hand up and deftly twist it off, so that she is drifting alone, deep underwater.  Inside she is more frightened and more aroused than she has ever been before.

I cause her openings to relax, letting my dark water flow in.  First, the dark pucker of her rear, then her mouth and nose.  I do not want her to drown, so rather I force her to drink me in deeply.  My water tastes sweet and dark on her tongue, like coffee and cinnamon and the salty tang of dark blood.  And then I push up into her womb.

Her body is mine, now.  There is no crevice that I cannot control, no nerve, no organ, no muscle that I cannot bend to my will.  Her mind knows this, but I demonstrate my power by causing her body to come more massively than it ever has before.

I then show her mind that her soul is now mine, is now part of me, because she entered my sacred waters, naked and willing.  How she has unwittingly enacted an ancient rite of allegiance.  She does not truly understand, but she knows now that she has no hope.

I offer my dark salvation to her, and she accepts, surrendering.  It has been so long since I have eaten I can barely contain my hunger.  I devour her, making everything that was her mine.

Soul.  Body.  Mind.




Edit: fixed image URL link.

[Richard Gently]

A little background (but not to much)

I was having lunch with a friend and I told him about this exhibition. We got into a discussion about what story he could write and we came up with a frankenstein idea. He began to write a story and told me he would post it soon. Anyway I sat down tonight and did my own spin on the idea (It was half mine after all). You may find he does a story in a similar vein but this way you get at least one whatever happens.


Bride of Frankenstein

By Richard Gently

If you visited the building that housed The Project you would have noticed that the lab walls were white and sterile. The equipment was clean and well maintained as befits an operation where so many people walked around in military uniform.

Of course officially this project did not exist, never had existed and would never exist. Notwithstanding that people had been wondering about it since the days of World War 2. It had been the basis for Captain America or perhaps it was the other way around. No one working for the project now had been born when it had started and, although they had access to all the records and research that had gone before, no one knew the real names of the founding fathers or any of the people who had worked here in the past. In fact all the current staff used codenames to prevent anyone knowing their real identities. It was fair to say that the Super Soldier programme was the most well guarded secret in US Military, or indeed just plain US, History.

Despite the longevity of the project little real success could be attributed to it, even if people knew it existed. The original idea of chemically induced prowess had seen hundreds of service men die, either quickly or painfully and sometimes both. By the end of WW2 the phenomenon of radiation had been adopted to try and create the most powerful soldiers. Again this had resulted in the loss of the lives of hundreds of men. As computer science had progressed the idea of combining man and machine had been tried. The result had been more deaths and a scandal when the partially dissected body of a serviceman who was listed as missing in action washed up on a beach in the Central Caribbean. Because the tides that carried the body had originated in the gulf the Pentagon had blamed Central American States for torturing US soldiers and had kept the project secret.

It was after that, what top officials referred to as an unfortunate incident that, the orders not to use live soldiers had been given. All test procedures now had to be undertaken on corpses until sufficient understanding had been gained to use live guinea pigs with special clearance from the very top. It was for this reason the team had taken to calling itself the Frankenstein project.

That was a bit of a misnomer as the intention was to test on the dead before applying to the living. Everyone on board knew that but there is always someone who takes things a step further.

Kate Mulligan (not her real name, of course) had joined the project about a year ago. As a certified genius, the CIA, from an early stage, had picked her out for recruitment from college. The fact that someone had picked up her tab for education had meant that Kate did not have to impose any financial burden on her parents who were trying to get her two twin brothers into University the year after she started. She was patriotic and happy to get help from Uncle Sam although she had not expected to find herself in the project. Of course as she knew nothing about the project she would not have been expecting it.

The day she had been shipped in she had turned up wearing a Lieutenant’s bars and a tight hugging uniform that set of her womanly curves. The Cap was green and highlighted her gold blonde hair perfectly. Her breasts were firm and the supporting bra pushed against the white shirt of her uniform accentuating more than hiding them. Not that she noticed as she lived only for her career. She had always planned to get on and somehow having a boyfriend was not high on her list of priorities. She had been called frigid at school but in truth she just had a low sex drive which she found easy to suppress. As she had been given the tour of the base the eyes of many of the men already stationed there had followed her cute arse as it swayed majestically around from lab to lab and from room to room. Of course it only took a few of them to be told in no uncertain terms by Kate that she was to busy to waste time on mere men for the word frigid to begin circulating around the project as well.

Having no outside interference Kate sat down and began a systematic reading of all the projects and experiments that had gone before. Most of them were just primitive and naïve attempts to reach The Goal and with the hindsight of 50 years she grimaced at some of the brutality that had been inflicted on the earlier volunteers. She could see why the use of live people had been outlawed except with a priority one authorisation. She also saw a possible avenue of research that others had missed. It was only later when she heard the unofficial name of the project that she saw a certain degree of irony.

All the research so far had been developed towards making a living man into a super solider. The idea was, of course, to keep him alive and fighting at the maximum achievable levels for as long as possible. Why though did he have to be kept alive as long as he could fight? In fact why did he have to be alive at all? As long as the soldier could fight why did he need to do anything else?

With this idea Kate began making her plans. Her genius meant that she could see ways of putting things together that passed most of her colleagues by. Some could follow bits of her thinking but none could follow it all. All in all most of the others left her to her own work. She became known as Cadaver Kate both because of her cold loftiness and because of the amount of time she spent in the morgue and the number of bodies she got through in her experiment.

From her point of view the less interference the better she liked it. She spent a great deal of her efforts finding the best bits that could be harvested from the bodies. She would spend days checking records of the bodies brought in trying to find evidence of a superior quality. She found the brain in the body of a former professor in law at Harvard who had died of a kidney infection. Even when she had completed the surgery to add an organ or a limb if a better one came along she would happily upgrade ‘Rocky’. She often had the soundtrack to the Rocky Horror Picture Show playing while she worked and again it tickled her sense of humour to play the musical while working on her creation.

While she had no sex drive herself the story of Frankenfurter meant that when she found a corpse with the largest penis she had ever seen she took it. From another body she got a set of testicles that some one joked were the size of tennis balls and they were only half joking.

After a year of work she had built the most perfect cadaver that she could from the parts available. Unlike the monster in Mary Shelly’s book there were no scars or areas where stitching held the body together. The corpse was an Adonis, not come to life, but an Adonis none the less. The only thing she needed know was the power to kick-start the body.

She had spent a long time working on the maths of this and concluded that a bolt of lightening hitting a rod would never, on its own, produce the required energy to bring Rocky to life. She knew what would, however, and because of the security level she worked at she knew when she could get it as well.

It was an agonising wait of six weeks before a transport plane came and carried the body to the test site. Nuclear testing was banned, of course, but that did not stop the occasional test being run anyway. No one wanted to think that they were being left behind and so the body surrounded by life giving nutrients and packed into a concrete coffin was left at the edge of the test zone. Cables and tubes were attached to allow energy and radiation from the blast to be siphoned into the crypt and to bring the mix to the stage where a blast of electricity would active the organs and muscle and brain that made up Rocky. After the atomic explosion time would be of the essence. The coffin would be moved to a decontamination chamber on a nearby island and the concrete shell cut away. A team of three technicians would then prepare the body for the final phase of recreation. Blood would be reintroduced into the arteries and a jolt about three times the ferocity of that described in the 19th century fiction would be pulsed into the body. If Kate had calculated correctly then the long sought after Super Soldier would arise from the remains of the dead.

Kate sat just outside the decontamination chamber as the concrete block was rushed in. After what seemed an age but what the clock said was less than five minutes the casing was cracked and removed by the use of laser beams and vacuum tubes. The body was pushed out from the chamber into a second more sanitary area and after checking the radiation levels were acceptable the technicians moved in. They had practised on a dummy for a month before hand and with only one minor slip had the body filled with blood in a record time. The super defibrillator was pulled from a corner and the pads attached.

Kate sat pensively outside the room watching through a plate glass screen. Beside her sat the project team leader and the project’s official archiver. She had a camera in her hand and was studiously recording everything going on behind the window. There was no other sole on the island. Maximum security was in force and only those that needed to see the experiment through were allowed to remain. A radio set sat at the back of the room to call in the pickup team when it was required.

‘This is it’ said her boss and she jumped, so deep had she been in her own thoughts. The three technicians exited by a side door and took up seats along side Kate. The male team leader looked at Kate and held out a box with a small red button. Kate took it almost reverently and held it to her breast as she stared at Rocky so still on the slab behind the glass.

One of the two female technicians whispered something and the other giggled like a little girl. She glanced at them and could see one of them was pointing at the massive erection that Rocky sported.

The lead technician glared at them but confusion was on his face as well. He had never seen these two act in such a childish way. They were two of his most dependable staff. They had done the job in there well enough but he had had to correct them twice towards the end. They had seemed to be more worried about the massive phallus than about getting the job finished quickly. Personally he had found himself despising the body as he completed the work but his professional attitude had seen him through.

His face turned to Kate just in time to see her push down on the button and behind the glass the creature bounced up off of the table and was restrained by leather straps. It came back down and remained motionless on the cot but static whizzed around the room causing the hair on the creature to rise. In fact that was not the only thing rising. It seemed to him that the penis had grown even longer and had gained about an inch in girth.

He looked at the screen in front of him and the heart monitor continued along a flat line. Then there was a brief flick as it went up and down once before returning to a straight path across the screen. He realised he had been holding his breath.

Drawing in some more air and without looking up he said ‘Again’

Kate thumbed the button a second time. She really pushed down hard not that it made a difference, as the charge released at the other end was exactly the same as before. He heard a thud as the body again arched off the cot and slumped down. He heard a sharp gasp behind him but his eyes were locked on his monitor. The line was gone and in its place was the regular wave of a beating heart.

He turned to tell everyone but found them all staring into the room next door. Rocky was trying to sit up. The bounds around him allowed for some movement as they had calculated the shock would cause him to move a little but he was straining against them trying to actually get upright.

‘Keep the film running’ said someone.

He stood in unison with his two-team mates and moved down to the door. Opening it quickly they passed through back into the medical chamber. A faint pungent smell wafted through the doorway in the second it took for them to clear it.

Kate was lost in a world of excitement and relief and wonder. She had recreated life. She Kate Mulligan stood next to god. She would be remembered like Einstein and Newton as one of the great figures of science. She wanted to stand and punch the air and was almost on the verge of doing so when she noticed something was wrong.

The team were meant to run some checks on Rocky. A lot depended on if he could communicate but the first few tests were the same whether he could or could not. However instead of checking his pulse rate one of the women on the team was holding his erection. In fact she was, and Kate could not believe her eyes, putting it in her mouth. She was giving Rocky a blowjob.

She flipped the communication switch. ‘What the hell is happening in there?’ She demanded.

‘Damned if I know’ reported the lead technician’s voice. ‘I’m on it’ and he started to pull the woman free. Rocky had been still while the woman was performing on him but as she was forcibly pulled off he began to struggle again.

‘Let me go you bastard’ shouted the woman as she was wrestled backwards to the door into the observation room. The Project Leader moved across to the door and opened it to pull the struggling woman through. The smell was stronger this time and the door was open for a longer time as the fighting woman grabbed hold of the frame and refused to budge until both men combined their strength to overcome her.

‘What in the world is wrong with you’ asked the team leader. In reply she tried to knee him in his privates. They managed to wrestle her down onto the floor and the Project Leader sat across her chest and pinned her arms down. She continued to struggle.

Kate tried to comprehend what was happening. She knew something was very wrong but had no idea what. Had the woman lost her mind? Why had she tried to give a blowjob to ‘her’ Rocky?

‘God that’s so hot’ said the archiver as she sat with the camera still filming the medical chamber. Holding down one button ran the camera, which was just as well because her other hand was under her skirt moving frantically.

Following the lens Kate found she was looking at the other trauma team member naked and trying to mount Rocky’s huge erection. There was no way that hussy was going to steal ‘her’ Rocky from her she decided as she leaped to the door and flung it open.

‘You bitch’ she cried not even bothering to pull the door too behind her. It took three steps for her to cross to the bed and grabbing her rivals hair. She yanked hard causing her to scream and topple from her lofty perch.

Rocky did not object to the woman’s removal like before. He had both eyes open and simply watched as the catfight broke out. Kate had her clothes on and so gave her opponent better handholds but being naked there was no protection when Kate landed a slap or a punch.

The struggle was making Kate hot and she panted. Each breath of the sweet smelling air made her feel more and more turned on. She was determined she was going to beat down this tramp though.

And then Rocky spoke. A sound like dry leaves being crushed underfoot. ‘Ladies you can both serve Me.’ was all he said and at once Kate realised there was enough of Rocky for both of them. The other woman had the same realisation and they moved together back to Rocky.

Taking up station on either side of the bed they lent in and in unison began to lick and rub Rocky’s monster. It tasted so good that Kate could have stood there licking for eternity. She had never felt so hot before and her low sex drive was gone replaced by an almost feral need for sexual gratification. She put her lips over the top of the massive cock and a small amount of precum seeped into her mouth. It was the sexiest thing she had ever tasted and she found her knees buckle under her as a might orgasm ripped through her.

From the floor and in a state of near nirvana she could see through into the other room. The first technician was still pinned by the Project Director but her hands were free and they had pulled his cock out from his trousers. She was rubbing it vigorously and he was not trying to stop her. The other two present would have been hidden from sight except for a mirror on the wall, which showed them near the back of the room. It looked as if the male technician had been going for the radio before the archiver had got to him. She had managed to tie the camera cable around his hands and had him pinned between a row of benches. She still had her bra on but other than that she was naked. She was rubbing her hips over his face and from the noises that she was making it was likely that she was getting a response from him.

As she watched this she heard a scream and her former rival joined her on the floor with a happy grin on her face.  ‘Fuck what a rush’ she panted.

Kate’s strength had returned and she stood again ready to resume her oral ministrations.

The rustling voice spoke again, ’remove your clothing.’ She had never tried to do anything so fast in her life. In a flash she was naked and realised it was quite a relief to remove her knickers which stuck to her legs as she pulled them down, so wet were they.  She was vaguely aware that the instructions were being followed next door as well. Then in almost a whisper she heard him tell her to untie him.

He stretched as he rose from the cot. The meatloaf lyrics ‘Like an angle raising out of the tomb’ passed through her mind but he was more than an angle. More than any man she had ever imagined. He was her God. She knew she would do anything he asked of her.

‘Take my place’ he told her and she almost banged her knee in her haste to get on the bed. She so wanted to please him. He bent down and gently pulled her knees apart. She felt his breath on her pussy and then a sinuous tongue darted along her sopping cleft. She wondered where that had come from and then she remembered, a French soldier renowned for a party trick of getting whelks from their shells without a fork. Another lick and conscious thought left her as she rode on a wave of pleasure that rose and rose until she felt she must drown if she did not come up for breath. Then finally another orgasm wracked her body and she felt her own juices gush out for what seemed ages.

She must have passed out for when she opened her eyes he was using that massive cock of his to stretch wide the pussy of the other girl. He was behind her and she was pushing back as hard as she could. Incoherent babble came out of her mouth except for the occasional word, harder and faster. So obsessed was she with watching the giant dick hammer into the woman that she did not see the male technician enter the room. He had a spanner in his hand and was creeping up on Rocky from behind. His face was contorted with rage and his eyes shone with intent. He raised the tool over his head and brought it crashing down onto the back of Rocky’s neck.

There was a dull cracking noise and Rocky stopped moving. The woman wailed and the male technician lifted the spanner for a second blow.
It never came. Even though she was watching Kate could not tell how Rocky moved. He must have withdrawn from his sexual partner and stood and turned because he lifted the spanner and the man holding it and they were dangling in mid-air by the time Kate’s brain registered what had happened.

The technician looked stunned both because of the speed and the fact that Rocky had a gash in the back of his head through which his brain could be seen. Still holding the man aloft he reached behind himself and pushed together the sides of the hole. Even as she watched Kate could see the skin knit back together again. In a distant part of her she recognised she had indeed created a Super Soldier.

The dead leaves moved again, ‘I am the ultimate Alpha male. Follow my instructions or die.’ For a moment there seemed to be a glimmer of fight in the man’s eyes and then they glazed over.

Rocky nodded as if this was what he had expected and pointing to the girl from whom he had withdrawn he said. ‘I have stretched her cunt know you must stretch her arse’

Kate noticed that the technician’s penis had been flaccid but as he received the instructions it began to rise and by the time he was positioned behind the still kneeling other it was fully erect. For her part the girl lowered her head and waited for the intrusion in her arse. She seemed so high on Rocky’s smell she would have floated from the room if she had not been skewered on the man’s dick.

A glance outside showed the camera was still running but now it filmed the Project Leader and the other technician as they pounded away like two rabbits in heat. Both made wild grunting noises and there was a counterpoint from the camerawoman moaning as she sat on the other woman’s face. She was rewarded by an occasional lick on her breasts by the man as he pummelled into the pussy below.

Kate was lost in a haze of lust. She could see five people fucking. There was no other description for it. They were not making love or being romantic they were just fucking like wild animals. She felt like she could orgasm again at any moment and realised that this was in part because she was playing with herself. She heard the screams and moans as the others succumbed to massive orgasms and passed out in puddles of male and female cum. The camera shut down as the archiver tumbled forward in ecstasy.

The scent was strong in her nostrils and it took away any control she had of herself. She realised the scent was so powerful because Rocky’s dick was standing in front of her face. She licked her lips and moved her head forward to take it in her mouth. Perhaps she would suck on those massive balls as well. And then the arousal was gone. No gentle ebbing just a gut wrenching return to normality and the realisation that she was naked in a room where others had fucked themselves senseless a moment before and she would have joined in without hesitation.

‘Mother’ Rocky spoke, ‘I must thank you for creating me’

Her calm analytical mind was working again. ‘What have I done?’ she wondered out loud.

‘Why,’ he smiled ‘You have succeeded. You have created the Super Soldier. You have brought what was dead to life. You wanted me to be the best and I am. In fact, as you and these others have discovered I am more than you imagined.’

‘What are you going to do?’ she managed to stammer as cold shivers ran down her back.

‘Why I am going to do what you wanted of me’ He continued to smile but the crookedness made her wonder if she could have got better lips. ‘I am going to conquer and survive. I am going to fight and protect those things of value. I am going to rule the world. The nutrients have given me even more powers than you thought possible. I can create hormone fields to arouse or scare away anyone that thinks to threaten me but I still need to be careful. Even with my abilities I could be compromised and that is why I am talking to you Mother. I want you to understand the honour I am paying you.’

‘You gifted me with these,’ and he cupped his balls and penis ‘and I have the sex drive to match. I intend to sire a brood to ensure I have a legacy but for now this must be done in secret. You mother will be my brood mare. You will keep my children safe and to make sure you do you will birth the first.’

She came up against a wall and that was when she realised she had been backing away as he had been speaking. What had she created? What had she done? She had to stop him. She knew that if he came inside her she would get pregnant. It was instinctive. She had to get away somehow. She knew he would make them get him off the island and he had to be stopped somehow. She knew he was the sexiest thing alive. She knew she had to serve him. She knew she was to be his brood mare and that she had to be ready for him. She knew that opening her legs like this would make his entrance easy. She thought she had been thinking something else but with that scent and that cock all she could do was enjoy the pleasure of her special super soldier fucking her brains out.

 






 

[Telomere]

Since my submission to EMCSA didn't reach Simon for this week's update, I thought I would post the rest of Darkzone as part of the event.

This is part 2.  I'll post part 3 shortly.

Warning: once again this is very dark and nasty.

Darkzone, part 2
Telomere

I kick strongly, swimming my new body to the surface.  I probe my new mind, trying to find the best way to make the other humans mine.  They are innocents who have no idea what they are facing, so the task will be easy.  Rather, it is a question of what will give me the most pleasure.

I think about how these other humans have interacted, and I realise that John, Mary and Karen form a triangle.  From the way that John has acted towards Karen, I know that he wants her.  And from the way Mary is acting towards John, I know that she wants him.  John is a typical human male, and he will have either, given the chance, but he has not accepted Mary's advanced for fear of driving Karen away.

To take possession of these humans in the most delicious ways, I will need to split them up, divide them.  This attraction and tension between John, Mary and Karen will provide the perfect opportunity.

I break the surface, and pretend to gasp and choke for air.  The others have rushed to the water's edge, and are frantically looking for me.  I can hear their voices, full of concern asking if I am all right.  I sputter for a bit, and then tell them that I am OK, that I got dragged under and disoriented, but I found my way up.

I swim to shore, wading out of the water.  I do my best to act shocked and scared, accepting the offered hands and support.  I pretend not to notice the way that John's gaze lingers on my nakedness, and I lean more closely on him as he helps me walk to the where the backpacks were left.

I sit on the ground, head resting between my legs.  Beth gets a towel from my pack, and drapes it over my shoulders.

"I'm all right," I say, "I just need a moment to catch my breath."

"OK," says Beth, "why don't we take a break, maybe have a snack.  We can probably fit in a bit more exploration before we should start heading out."

"Sure," says John, "although I guess we should be careful, it seems like some of this area is unstable."

The others rummage through their packs for water and food.  Beth brings my pack over to me, and then goes to get my clothes from down by my water's edge.  I let my breathing gradually reduce, pretending to calm down.

"I should get dressed, before I get hypothermia," I say, and start rubbing myself dry with the towel.

I stay seated for a while, drying my back, arms and legs.  It is a shame to remove the sweet dark water from my body, but some of the darkness does rub in, leave a slight stain on the skin of my new form.  Eventually, I stand, and start drying my legs.  Beth and Mary have averted their eyes, but I see that John is staring straight at me.  I pretend not to notice, but Mary is watching John closely.

"Give her some privacy, John," she hisses, and John turns away, hanging his head.

I guess that his apparent remorse is from being caught, not for looking.

Once I am dry, I start putting on my clothes.  I would prefer to remain naked, but that would raise suspicions that I am not ready to raise yet.  I decide against wearing my bra or pants, as no-one will be able to tell under my overalls, and there may be advantage to being able to expose myself swiftly.  I have to wear the shirt, however, as it will be obvious if the collar cannot be seen at my neck.  I bundle the undergarments and pants up in my towel, and put them in my bag.

I pull on the shirt, and then pull on the overalls, fastening the snaps.

"I'm decent," I say, as I finish the last snap.

While I put on my socks and boots, the others start to discuss what to try next.

"Just before I fell, I think I saw an opening about 5 metres up that wall over there," I pitch in, shining my torch an a patch of wall to my left.  "It shouldn't be too hard to free-climb, and it looks like it could be fun to see what its like up there.  A different level may mean a whole new section of cave."

John appraises the wall.  "Yeah, that looks climbable."

Mary shakes her head.  "I'm not climbing that if I don't have to.  You know I'm not as strong a free-climber as you, John."

"How about John and I try it, and we'll see if it goes anywhere.  If it does, we can lower a handline for you," I say, in a reasonable tone.

"That sounds reasonable," says John, with a hint too much eagerness in his voice, but Beth and Mary nod their agreement.


The climb is fairly simple, and as I knew their would be, a passage leads back.  However after a short distance it ends, and the only way on is a shaft leading up.  It is narrow enough that it will be easy to climb by wedging our bodies against the walls so that we cannot fall.

John and I relay this information back down to Beth and Mary, and hey decide to stay put until we find where the chimney-like passage goes.  I climb above John, and although I cannot see him, I can feel his eyes watching my rear and legs as I climb.

John and I reach the top of the narrow shaft, and we find a place where we can rest and catch our breath.  My plan is to seduce John, and make him mine, and then use him to seduce Mary, and this is a perfect place to start.  We are out of earshot of the others, and we are sitting in a low passage, our legs stretched out on the ground, our backs against the cold stone wall.  We are facing one another, John on one side of the passage, I on the other.

"So, did you like what you saw earlier?" I ask in a sultry whisper.

John sputters, unable to form an answer to my direct question.

"Oh, I saw you looking," I say.  "Do you want to see some more?"

His eyes wide, but he does not trust himself to respond.  I slowly pop the press-studs of by overalls, pulling the fabric aside.  He sees that I am wearing a T-shirt, but it is clear that I am not wearing my bra underneath.  His eyes widen even further as I reach the last snap and he realises that I am not wearing any pants.  Or panties.

I raise my hands, pushing the shirt up over my breasts, then cupping them.  The beam of his light is striking my chest squarely.

"You do like them, don't you?"

John nods, slack-jawed.  I am beginning to see just how weak he is when it comes to relating to people.  He may not be as useful as I had first thought.

After a moment, it seems like he is not going to take the initiative, so I prompt him.

"Would you like to see more?"

He nods again.  Internally I sigh, I am going to have to prompt him all through this, but at least that will make him more pliable.  I sit forward, and pull my arms from the top of the overalls, letting them fall behind me.  Then I gracefully lift my rear and push the overalls clear of my hips and down to my ankles.  I am exposed now, from my chest down to the pool of cloth around my boots.

I lift my knees up, and then spread them apart, so that John can clearly see my pubic hair and my sex.  I cup my breasts again.

"Why don't you come over here?" I tease.

John gets up and crawls over until he is kneeling beside me.  I reach for his hands, and bring them up to my breasts.

"You like their feel, don't you," I purr.

He squeezes my breasts inexpertly, completely failing to touch them in an arousing way.  I pretend to enjoy it, moaning lightly in what he will take to be an erotic way.

"Why don't you suck on them, lick them," I whisper.

And he does, latching his moth on the nipple of the nearest breast, and suckling, moving his tongue over it.  It is far from the best attention I have ever received, but it is starting to arouse me.  Just when it is starting to get good, however, he switches to the other breast.  He switches back and forth several times, but his technique is sorely lacking.

Eventually I tire of his efforts on my breasts.  It is time to see if he can do better if he is given a more direct opportunity.  I place my hand on the back of his head, and gently press it downwards.  He looks up at me questioningly.

"You want me to, you know... lick you?" he asks.

"That's the idea."

"But my neck doesn't bend that way."

I resist the urge to snap it right then and there.  He is useless.

"Then you'll have to scoot around so you're in front of me," I say trying to keep the exasperation from my voice.

He does not notice, because he willingly moves himself so that he is kneeling between my legs.  It is clear that he will need some instruction if I am to get anything from this.

"Lick the little bump in the centre, near the top of the slit," I say.  "You can put your fingers up inside me once you get going, if you like."

He doesn't answer, but he starts to lick, and like instructed, he concentrates his attention on my clit.  Eventually he puts a finger inside my, and wiggles it ineffectually.  This is OK, but I need more than that to get off.  I put my hands on the back of his head, and lift my hips, so that I am grinding myself into his face as he licks.  This is better, and after a few minutes of this I reach a small climax.

I relax my grip on his head, and he pulls back, smiling a stupid grin.  He starts undoing the buttons of his overalls.  He clearly thinks that he is going to fuck me now, but I need him horny and frustrated for what I have planned.

It is clear to me now that John will be a pathetic agent.  If the need were extreme enough, I could teach his body and mind to act with the confidence, drive and skill that would be needed.  But that would take time.  But I can still use him, even if I do not make him mine.  Mary seems to desire him, and I may be able to use him to distract Mary while I take control of Beth.

"Not now," I say.  "We can't spend too long sitting here or the others will start to get worried."

He appears to be starting to object, but I kneel up, and kiss him passionately on the mouth, stifling what he has to say.  I taste myself on his mouth.  I drive my tongue into his mouth, and find his hand, bringing it up to feel my wet slit.

"Later," I say, firmly.


We continue down the passageways, and as I well know, it is soon clear that they are leading back to my central chamber.  John is trying to hide his disappointment.

"Let's go back to the others," I say.  "There were a few side passages back there, but it looks like we don't need to do much climbing to get to them."

John just nods.

As we are almost back in my heart, I pause at a point where I know that Mary can see us, but Beth cannot.  I push John back against the wall and kiss him hard.  He tries to match my passion, but he is a poor kisser.

As we enter the cavern, Mary is looking daggers at us.  I act innocently, but John is guiltily avoiding Mary's gaze.

I report what we have found, and suggest that some of us should continue to wait here, while the others explore the side passages we found.

Mary leaps on this idea, suggesting that perhaps she and John should do the exploring, while Beth and I wait.

I surprise her by acquiescing.  Beth just shrugs.  Forestalling further discussion Mary doesn't even bother to grab her pack, and leads John back into my maze of tunnels.

I know that John and Mary while be awhile.  Mary knows that if John is to be her man then she must have him now, or he will be mine.  And John is too weak-willed to resist her advances.  He will let her have him, and if he had the chance he would let me have him, too.

I sit and wait by the backpacks.  Beth is down by my pool, but I know she will not go in.  She does reach down and touch my mud, squeezing a lump between thumb and forefinger.  It is smooth and dark, and smears onto her skin.  She turns to me.

"Karen, this mud is amazing!" she says, with enthusiasm. "Feel how smooth it is."

My body's mind remembers playful episodes with Beth and others in the past.  I stand, and move down by the pool, picking up a handful of my mud, holding it in my hand.  I squeeze, letting it flow slowly between the fingers of my clenched fist.

"Oooh, yes!" I say, feigning surprise, "It's almost creamy.  And so black, too."

Beth has picked up a handful now, and is rolling it between her hands.  I form my face into a mischievous grin, and look pointedly at the mud in my hand, and then at Beth.

Beth looks at me. "Oh no you don't!" she half-squeals, and then, seeking to get the first shot off, she flings the handful of my mud at me.  I half-heartedly dodge, letting it hit my overalls.

I fling what I have in my hands at her, hitting her back as she turns and ducks.  We exchange several more handfuls until our hands are covered in my mud, and our faces and hair are spattered with darkness.  My mud is powerful, but there is not enough on her to have an effect yet.

I scoop yet another handful, but rather than throwing it I move towards Beth.  She hits me squarely in the chest as I run to her, but too late she realises my intention. She turns to run, but my hand has her collar, and I force the handful of my mud down the back of her shirt.  Beth squirms as my mud flows down her back.  She turns back to me, determination in her eyes.

"I'm gonna get you for that, Karen."

She quickly scoops some more of my mud up, and I do what she expects, fleeing from her.  As I dodge out of her way, I can sense that my mud is starting to work as it flows down Beth's back, reaching the chakras along her spine.  I direct my mud to seek and bind closely with the skin over the chakras.  It flows at my command, and soon I can feel my control start to seep into Beth's body and mind.  I start to arouse her, turning what had been play for her into something more.

Finally, I let her catch up with me, pausing, kneeling in the mud, facing her, as if I am out of breath and surrendering.  She reaches me, bending over to put my mud down my back, and I let her.  But as she does so, I pretend to flinch, and with one hand I pull upon the front of her shirt, while I grab some more mud with the other, stuffing it down the front of her shirt.  It is an awkward shot, but I get enough of it in.

Beth, overbalanced and surprised, collapses forward into my arms.  I ratchet up the heat in Beth's loins, and suddenly we are kissing, kneeling, and she is leaning her weight on me.  Our tongues tangle, and I direct the mud in the front of Beth's chest to flow over her breasts and nipples.  Beth gasps at the sensations she is feeling.  The sensations I am causing in her.

We do not speak, but I firmly push her back so that she is kneeling upright, resting on her folded legs.  I lean in and kiss her again, as I open the studs of her overalls.  She trembles as each of them pop open, from her chest down to her crotch.  She has light clothes underneath, an old T-shirt now covered in mud and, below, shorts.

I am entering the endgame now.  I know that I have no need for the shirt, so I apply my full strength, sundering it down the front.  The bra she wears underneath is similarly dealt with.

I pull back from Beth, looking at my handiwork.  She is exposed, panting, her chest and breasts covered in my mud. I watch it slowly, slickly spreading.  I lock eyes with her, then slowly, deliberately, I grab a handful of mud in each of my hands and bring them up to her breasts, smearing them with thick, smooth darkness.

I can feel Beth's confusion and conflict, and it is sweet to me.  She does not understand what is happening to her, but she is helpless to stop it.  She enjoys the heat and the passion of the moment, but rightly fears the strangeness of it.

I continue to spread my mud over Beth, covering her stomach, reaching around her sides, then reaching for her shoulders, pushing the overall, and the remains of her shirt and bra off to lie loosely behind her back.  I find my face close to hers, so I lean in a little and we kiss some more.  My hands roam over her back.

"You are mine now, delicious Beth," I whisper, letting some of the true darkness of my true voice filter out.  "A sweet morsel for me."

I feel her shiver, taste the fear in her mind that my statement causes.  But she has lost far too much control to do anything about it.  I finish working on her arms, and her body is now darkness from her waist up to her neck.  In the dim light of my headlamp, I can see my mud flowing in fractal waves across her skin, sending shockwaves of feeling deep inside her.

I stand, pulling her up by the hands.  She cannot resist me at this point. We kiss once again, and then I crouch down in front of her, my hands sliding down her sides, pulling her shorts and overalls down to her ankles.  I pull on her boot laces, and brace her shoes as she steps, one foot at a time out of her shoes and socks.  My mud oozes up between her toes and runs over the tops of her feet.

I lean forward, finding her salty slit with my tongue, tasting the sweet nectar from within mingled with the clean sweat of exertion.

"Oh yes," I say, again with a hint of my darkness, "very sweet indeed."

The spike of her fear is like a pungent spice, adding to the delightful mix.  I lick and tease her as my hands spread darkness over her legs down the sides, and up the insides.  Down the sides, and up the insides.

She comes.

There is not much of her left that is not mine now.  I step up and back, and her legs are unable to hold her upright.  I let her fall forward to her knees, looking blankly forward.  The force of her fall pushes her knees deeply into the soft mud.  She is covered in blackness now, except for her head and a band around her hips, rear and sex.

I leave her kneeling there as I gracefully remove my clothes, showing my body off to her, savouring the way she longs to touch and taste me.  And savouring her frustration at being unable to move to fulfil her desires.  I tease her, stepping forward, and holding her head to my sex, so that she can smell it.  I grind on her so that she feels my lower lips spread over her mouth and nose.

Finally, I let her pleasure me.  I hold myself open with my mud covered hands and carefully direct her actions so that she licks me just so.  The darkness on my hands drips into my pussy, adding to my pleasure.  I smile as some of my mud gets on her tongue, with its taste of coffee and chocolate and cinnamon and blood.  She longs to spit it out, but she cannot.  I smear more over my sex, feeling it spread deep inside me, feeling her licking it and tasting it, taking delight in her terror as my mud runs down her throat.

I let my body come.

Shaking, I  kneel down in my mud, facing what is left of Beth, my legs spread slightly so that my knees press against the side of her legs.  My breasts and stomach press up against her as I kiss her.  I feel my mud on her transferring itself to me.  I permit her to answer my kiss, moving her tongue and lips.

My hands move over her rear, spreading my delicious blackness over her.  Filling her rear crack, I move my hands over her rear hole, and permit her to tremble at my touch.  I open her slightly with my fingers, and my darkness flows insider her.  Inside her head, she screams at the invasion, but her mouth is mine now, and it is far too busy kissing me to obey her.

I break the kiss, and look at her, taking pleasure in the feral panic deep within her eyes.  Still looking at her, I bring my hands around to her front, working down from her waist in broad strokes, spreading my mud through her fine pubic hair and around the outside of her sex.  I pause, my hands covered in sweet darkness, just above her pink slit.  She knows she is mine now.  I smile and permit her to close her eyes when she truly accepts defeat.

As her lids flutter closed, I stroke my fingers down her wet gash, filling it with my dark matter.  She orgasms as it flows around her most sensitive areas, and I push my fingers deep inside her, bringing it to her deepest corners.  It flows deeper and deeper into her, and the orgasm continues.

Defeated, crushed by a body that has betrayed her, a mind overcome by orgasm and fear, and a soul lost in darkness, she is mine.  I stand up and out of the way, letting her fall forward.  My sweet black mud is deep, and it swallows her whole so that I may finish taking control of my new possession.

[Telomere]

And here is the 3rd and final part of Darkzone.  This is a tale with enough open ends that I may someday write a sequel or prequel.

Warning: it just gets nastier from here, folks.

Darkzone, part 3
Telomere

I pull my new body out of my mud.  Standing, I embrace my other body, and we kiss.  John and Mary will still be a little while before they return from their tryst, so I take the time to joyfully spread black mud all over the body that was Karen.  I bring pleasure to myself as I let the darkness flow all over, and deep inside.

In the distance, I sense that John and Mary are done.  I must make my bodies presentable.  My bodies put on their overalls and boots, but I have no use for their other clothes now.  I let the clothes sink deep into my mud.  I cause the mud to flow away from my bodies' heads, necks and hands, making it look like we had a mud-fight, but not revealing the thick, dark, creamy layer that covers my bodies underneath the overalls.

It is time to gather in the remaining humans.  I quickly find the water bottles in Mary's pack, and pour out their contents on the ground.  The bottles are strange, made of some light-weight metal.  Moving down to my lake, I fill them with my darkest water, and return them to Mary's bag.  I fill the water bottles from my packs as well.

I seat my bodies down, and have them sip from the dark water in their flasks while I wait.

John and Mary finally enter my cavern.  Mary is walking purposefully, and she looks at the body that was Karen with a triumphant smile.  She thinks she has won John from me.  John cannot look at me, he is the picture of guilt and indecision.  I pretend not to notice this body language with either body.

"It looks like all those passages loop around as well," Mary says.

She rummages around her pack until she finds a water bottle.  Opening it, she takes a sip.  She pulls a face, her triumph momentarily forgotten.

"This tastes funny," she says, "there must be some mud or metal or something in it."

Nevertheless, she drinks again, a larger gulp this time.  She sighs in satisfaction after drinking, a distinctly un-Mary-like reaction.  John looks at her strangely.  She raises the flask to her lips again, this time drinking deeply, my sweet dark water spilling out the sides of her mouth and down her neck.  She continues to drink, gulping the water down, until the bottle is empty.

I make the water that has escaped her mouth flow down her neck and under her clothes, rivulets splitting and twisting, soaking the front of her shirt and bra, and unerringly finding her nipples.  I can feel that I am beginning to gain some influence over her body and mind, so I start to tease her breasts and neck with a hundred tingling kisses everywhere the water has run.

She does not know why the water tastes so good, feels so good, but she casts aside the bottle, grabs her pack, and extracts her other flask.

"Are you feeling OK, Mary?" asks John.

She ignores him as she brings the second bottle to her lips, sucking the water down greedily.  Her other hand drops her bag, and then moves up to caress her breast through her overalls.  She can barely feel it through the thick fabric, and with a few deft twists she opens enough studs to let her hand inside.

She is spilling almost as much as she is drinking at this point, and my water is flowing down over her stomach and into her sex.  I gather the myriad streams into one at the top of her slit, and let it flow through, using my will to make it rub hard against her sensitive areas.

She lets the second bottle fall, spent, from her hand, then rips open the snaps so she can get better access to her breasts.  Her mind is fogged with arousal, and I plant the idea that she finds my bodies attractive, that she wants to have sex with them.  She turns slightly, and locks eyes with the body that was Karen, holding her breasts out and smiling.  She thumbs her nipples, clearly erect, through the glistening wet fabric of her shirt and bra.

"Mary, what on earth are you doing?" John cries.  "What's gotten into you?"

I have full control of her mouth and throat now, so I make her speak.

"You're pathetic John.  I faked it with you just now.  I'm getting more pleasure from my left thumb now than you gave to me the whole time you were supposedly making love to me.  It's no wonder that was your first time.

"And I bet Karen or Beth could do a better job at licking me than you did.  They at least know where to put it!"

John stares open-mouthed at Mary.  Mary is more than a little surprised to be saying these things, but the sex she had with him earlier left her unsatisfied.  I worm a thought into her mind that she finds putting John in his place a turn on, and I sense wetness between her thighs.

I decide it is time to ratchet things up a little.  I move the my body that was Beth up behind my body that was Karen, putting my arm around my neck, my hand resting lightly on my breast.

"Oh, I'm sure of that," I say through Beth's mouth, letting my darkness seep through into my voice.  "When you two were gone, Karen made me come harder than I ever have before, with just her tongue and mouth."

"But it wouldn't be hard to be better than John," I say through Karen's mouth, as I stand.  "I get more stimulation from my vibrator than I did from him earlier."

"He's also tiny," I make Mary say.  "His cock couldn't even stay in me while we were doing it."

John is shocked, speechless, his eyes betraying fear, shame and hate.  I look directly at John through Karen and Beth's eyes.

"Mary will be mine, now John." I say, filling my voice with darkness, and thrilling at the fear and desire it incites in Mary.  "Just like Beth is mine."

On cue, I use Beth's hands to open the overalls on the body that used to be Beth's, revealing the dark mud covering her.  It glistens and oozes over the skin.  I let the overalls fall off the body's shoulders onto the ground, and kick off the boots, stepping the body away from the clothes, naked except for my mud.

"Don't you like seeing her naked, John?" I say through Karen's mouth.  "You were always looking, hoping to catch a glimpses of all of us."

I remove the overalls from the body that was Karen's as it continues to speak, words weighty with darkness.

"You liked my body earlier," I say, roaming my hands over my breasts.  "Don't you want show that we're wrong, that you are a man."

I move the mud so that it forms a thick, dark phallus, sprouting from deep within my sex.

"Do you think you can compete with this, John?" I ask, as the black shaft throbs and glistens.  "Or perhaps you'd rather feel it as it enters you from behind."

It is too much for John.  Overcome with fear, he flees, running down the tunnel he thinks is the way out.  I will deal with him at my leisure.

Mary is transfixed.  At this point she can probably run if she wants to, although there will be no escape.  But instead, she is caught like a rabbit in a snare.  I saunter over to her, and embrace her, kissing her.

"Now I have you all to myself," I say.

I make her mouth kiss me back, raising the arousal in her loins.  While we are locked in the kiss, I bring my other body over.  As she stands still, I strip her, one body working from the front, the other from behind.  Her overalls pool around her feet, her soaked shorts and underpants on top of them.  I turn off her helmet light, and remove her helmet.  Her shirt I pull over her head from behind, and then unsnap her bra, letting it fall forward.  I kneel down in front of her, and untie her shoes, gently lifting each foot and removing it from the shoes and clothes.

Then I take off the helmets my bodies are wearing, and switch off the lights, plunging Mary into darkness.  There is no rush.  John will not interfere with us.  Mary will become mine, but I can take my time with her.

With her standing in the darkness, I ravish her, my tongues licking her, my mouths kissing her, my hands caressing her, feeling her, making her come again and again.  I lead her down to the edge of the pool, and lie in the mud while she kisses and licks my mud-covered bodies, tasting the chocolate-cinnamon-blood-earth that covers me.  She willing finds my slits with her hands and tongue.  She joyfully accepts my dark phallus inside her.

Her body is lost to lust and ecstasy.  Her mind is lost in the deliciousness of carnal acts she would have found perverted so recently.  Her soul has lost its purity.  She has surrendered to me, but I have not shown her what she is truly surrendering to.  She is merely giving it to the pleasure and desire I have inspired in her, not to terror, to fear, to the loss of hope. 

I bend my will to the mud, and force up the bones of the legions of dead that lie beneath it.  As she kneels like a dog in the mud, I raise a skeleton up underneath her.  She cannot see it in the dark, but she can feel the cold, wet bones emerge between her legs, underneath her stomach, between her arms.  I let her sense in her mind what she cannot see.

The skull which is nestled between her legs, mouth open in an obscene grin as a tongues of my mud emerge from its vacant mouth, nose and eyes, to lick her inner thighs.

The arms and legs, powered by rippling dark muscles and sinews of mud, which wrap around her body and pull her down into an unholy embrace.

The ribs, which yawn wide, opening like the maw of some malevolent creature, swallowing her torso and trapping her inside the skeleton's chest.  Forcing her dark, wet slit onto the waiting skull and its tongues of darkness.  Forcing her breasts into the black mud which swirls around and over them.

The pelvis, and the shaft of darkness which emerges from it, seek and find her mouth.  Branching and enveloping her head, a blossoming of tendrils pulls her head down over the central shaft, invading her.

A field of bones has risen from the mud like flowers.   The bodies of her friends, my bodies now, perform lewdly with the bones.

Inside her head, what is left of Mary is consumed with terror.  What had been a sweet surrender to dark carnal desires had become a grotesque dance with death.  She realises just how deep she is, how far she is from light.  She is delicious, filled with sweet horror, desire, hopelessness.

I move Karen's body to lie atop Mary's back, the black mud phallus extending from Karen's slit slipping slowly between her rear cheeks, finding the opening that lies between them and forcing it open.  I let it extend and flow deep within her.

As she feels it moving through her, I make her body begin to massively orgasm, linking her aroused state with the foul embrace of the dead.  With my mouth near her ear, I speak, letting my full force flow through the voice.

"You are mine Mary.  Surrender yourself to my corruption.  Run to my embrace.  Become like Karen and Beth."

I let her sense how happy, satisfied, powerful Karen and Beth's minds have become now they are mine.  I show her their souls, prized parts of me, joined more closely to me and to each other than the deepest mortal lovers.  I give her a taste of John's distant fear as he runs and stumbles, lost in the darkness.  I make her understand that if she becomes mine she will sample his sweet fear completely, that she will help bring John to me as well.

Her body has been at the peak of orgasm for longer than she can remember now, and as the tendril of blackness that invaded her rear finally bursts forth from her mouth.  She gives herself to me completely, and the mud swallows her, captured by the skeleton's embrace, pinned from above by my body.

I am in no rush, so I take my time as I consume her.


Silently I move through the darkness, my three bodies moving swiftly and unerringly.  I know where John is cowering in the dark, his light spent.  He has few uses, but he will be mine.

I lose myself briefly in the poetry of my bodies motion, three female forms running naked, sure-footed, in darkness.  Ducking just so to avoid a low-hanging roof.  Placing a foot inches from a deep hole in the floor, never slowing.

I arrive at where he lies, and speak, my voice issuing from all three mouths in unison.

"You will come with me now, John.  Stand!"

His fear is like a beacon as he stumbles to his feet.  I surround him and strip him naked, three pairs of hands working together to remove his clothes.  As I do so, I let fingers and palms linger in intimate places: brushing his nipples, running down his inner thigh, cupping his sack, gently spreading his rear cheeks.  He shudders at my touch, but does not move.

"Very good, John.  Would you like a reward?" I ask, mockingly.

I don't expect an answer, and I don't wait for one.  I press up against him, trapping him between my three bodies.  I ensure that he feels my breasts and crotches pressing up against him, moving ever so slightly to give myself gentle stimulation.  The mud from my bodies transfers onto him.  The body which was Karen's is in front of him, and I hold his head in place while I kiss him, hard on the mouth.  He does not respond to the kiss, but I linger in it.

As I break off, he makes a single fear-filled sob.  I laugh darkly, and push him downwards, forcing him into a crouch, his head level with my sex.

"Pleasure me!" I say as I part my lips with my hands.  "Lick me until I come!"

He starts licking me, hesitantly.  It is clear that he does not relish the taste of the black mud that covers me.  As before, he is inexpert and clumsy.  As before, I push myself onto his face, grinding myself on him to make me come.  What he is unable to give me, I take for myself.

Having humiliated him once more, and demonstrated how weak he is, I force him to his feet again, and lead him through the darkness back to my core.


We arrive at my heart, and my first action is to lead John to the water of my dark pool.  Naked, the body which was Karen enters, and he follows, led by her hand.  He flinches slightly at his first step in the water, and after that he moves hesitantly, blindly feeling his footing in the water.

"Duck your head under," I instruct as he finally reaches a point where the water is up to his armpits.

He dunks himself, and in so doing his soul is mine.  Although cowed, he has bathed in my pool of his own free will.  He could have refused, could have forced me to impose my will on him, but his mind is so weak that he surrendered himself without complaint.

Now that his soul is mine, I violate his body, sending me dark waters deep inside his mouth, stomach, and rear.  I bind myself with his skin, and send my will deeper yet within him.  Swiftly I bring his body under my power, but I leave his mind untouched.  His soul is mine, his body is mine, but I have no use for his pathetic mind.

I move his body out of the water, letting it breathe again.  I let his mind sense the death and corruption that surrounds him.  His fear leaves him unreasoning, and I find it delicious.

Moving as one, my three bodies smear mud all over his skin, covering his body with darkness.  His shaft, now slick with mud, swells as I let his body become aroused.  I taste the bittersweet taste of the mud as I make each of my bodies suck and lick his phallus, and it swiftly becomes thicker, harder and longer than it has ever been before.

Then I lie his body down in the mud, face upwards.  I move the body that was Karen's over him, and impale myself on his centre.  Lubricated by the mud, he slides deeply inside me and, after a moment's pause at the sensations, I start moving on him, grinding my hips down on him.  Grinding my clit on him.

I kneel my other bodies on either side of him, knees apart, and move his hands so that they are playing with my dark moist slits.  The pleasure is intense, and builds quickly, my bodies moving in a united rhythm.  I can sense that his body will climax soon, and all three of my own are very close as well.

Once more I bend my will towards the mud, and as each of my bodies reaches a hand down into it, they each draw forth a shard of black crystal.  Each shard is the length of a forearm, razor sharp, tapering to a wicked point.

My three throats scream the unholy words of power.  As we all come, I gently but inexorably drive the blades of crystal into his body.  One slashes his throat.  One I draw across his abdomen.  And the third I sink into his heart.

All four bodies continue to come as a darkness spreads from the wounds, welling up and consuming his body, seeping like fiery black blood, turning his flesh to dark shadow and smoke.  As his body is dying, converting itself to dark energy for my bodies to use, I gather John's soul to me.  And then I slowly dismember his mind, taking each piece and eating it, savouring the terror and arousal and pain that only these death throes can bring.  The dark shadow melts off his bones, and flows up through the dark centres of my bodies.  The black torrent touches the chackras of my bodies as it is absorbed, heightening the intensity of the orgasms.

And then it is done.

His blackened bones rest in the mud.  They will be a fine addition to my crystal garden.

My bodies radiate their new-found dark sorcerous powers.  They are ready now to go out into the world and turn people to my worship.

I raise the body which was Karen, and draw forth the only remaining piece of his flesh.  His phallus, transformed by the energies which flowed through it into an artifact of power, is now a shaft of black crystal.  I hold it aloft as I scream my triumph, letting it ring throughout all my dark passageways.

My hunger is satiated.

But I will soon need to feed again.


End Notes

This story clearly owes a lot to Tabico's "Wrach", in particular, and in general to the larger body of her work and that of Trilby Else, Thrall and others I've probably omitted unjustly.  There are some similarities with "A Tale of Mice and Men" by Son of Sandman, although I hadn't read that particular story until after I'd written the bulk of this one.

[softi]

An idea like this has been floating around in my head for a while.  A few days ago, it finally solidified, just when my life got really busy.  I figured it was perfect for this contest, so I rushed.  I found myself wandering as I wrote though, thinking, "Hey, let's do that!  That'd be cool!"  This version still feels like a draft to me, but deadlines are deadlines.   

- softi


Read All Instructions Before Use

   Cheryl checked the markings on her basement floor against the sketch on the parchment one last time.  The creep that sold her the statue and its instructions was very adamant about having each symbol perfectly drawn and carefully following all the instructions or she would be in for a nasty surprise.  She shivered, remembering the contortions his wretched face went through to smile when he said that.

   Creep.

   It'd been bad enough going down into hoodsville to find the nasty little shop.  She didn't normally go into the bad parts of town.  There wasn't any point. They couldn't afford her, she hated the cat calls, and she didn't like how ugly and dirty it was anyways.

   But here she was, trying to decipher these instructions.  The goat's blood reeked and all the things she had to do were just plain weird.  Cheryl shook her head, feeling silly about even attempting such a foolish thing.  Witches, spells and demons?  What was she smoking?

   Cheryl sighed and swirled the brush in the blood again.  Her knees ached from the pressure while she drew the pentagram on the cement.  Maybe her PJs weren't the best choice.  She wasn't looking forward to kneeling again, but there wasn't any way around it.  The bristles dripped the dark red fluid on the floor as she tied the brush to a string anchored in the middle of her drawing.  She pulled tight and started tracing a circle.

   Damn agent, she thought as she shifted over.  Her knees were raw from the bumps in the concrete.  If he wasn't such a prick I wouldn't have to do this.  She shifted again.  Ouch!  Fuck!  Fucker!  I hate him!  Another shift.  I'm no porno slut!  He should be getting me real roles!  Last shift.  Ouch!  I am going to be famous, dammit!  The circle enclosed the pentagram.  He's going to pay, just like all those damn directors!

   Cheryl untied the brush and leaned back to check her handiwork.  God, I can't believe I'm trying this.  She laughed at herself.  Well, not exactly God.  She grabbed the four candles and placed them around the circle, marking the cardinal directions.  Her watch said it was 11:45pm.  She still had a little time left.  She picked up her glass of wine from the corner and sipped.

   I bet nothing's going to happen.

   She walked over to the statue and hefted it off the floor.  It felt like the Ricker pewter statues one of her sugar daddy's had, but this one was a grossly misshapen combination of... well, maybe an ass, a goat and a man.  The twisted forms seemed to be writhing either in torment or orgy; she couldn't decide which.  Just like a man to stick it up an ass, though.

   She sipped her wine again and checked her watch.  It was getting close now.  I need to light the candles.  She grabbed the matchbook and looked at the little female devil on the cover.  A tail won't suit me.  She laughed again at herself, feeling foolish stinking up her basement with goat's blood.  She lit the candles and flicked off the lights.  But the horns might be cute.  The statue went into the middle of the pattern.

   Her watch counted down the seconds until midnight.  She checked the parchment one last time.  Standing in the right position, got the candles, got the drawing, statue's in the middle... Her watch clicked over to midnight.  Time to recite.

   "Oh Great and Mighty Asmodai, Lord of Lust, Adversary of St. John, I command you to appear before me now!"  Cheryl yelled, raising her arms.  Her voice echoed faintly in the bare, unfinished basement.

   Nothing happened.

   She looked down at the parchment on the floor and checked what she said.  No, it was right.  She looked up at the statue.  The candlelight played across the twisted form, throwing shadows everywhere.  Is it moving?  She leaned closer.

   The statue abruptly grew, writhing about as though the creatures were trying to tear away.  Guttural cries echoed off the bare walls and gusts of violent wind whipped past Cheryl.  She screamed in shock and fell backwards, landing hard on her butt.  The demon in the pentagram stretched upwards to the ceiling, curving its three heads in the low clearance.

   "Who dare summon me from the depths of Hell?"  All three heads, man, ram and bull, turned to face Cheryl.  She whimpered and scooted back against the wall as the creature tried to reach out, but banged against an invisible barrier.  It shifted it's focus back to the floor.  It studied the sigils on the ground, experimentally poking and prodding, trying to find a way out.  Cheryl carefully pushed herself up the wall, trying not to draw attention to herself.  She shrieked as the man head swung back to face her.

   "Did you summon me only to imprison me here?  Speak!"  It gestured at Cheryl.  "What great need do you have that you endanger your immortal soul, witch?  Speak!"  It impatiently swished it's great serpent tail, banging against the limits of its transparent cage.

   "I... uh, I..."  Cheryl stammered.

   "SPEAK WITCH!"  All three heads trumpeted at once.  Cheryl thought her skull was going to implode from the cacophony.

   Oh my god it worked what do I do now what do I say oh my god this is so fucked up!  She frantically looked around for a way out.  The way her basement was laid out placed her on the far side of the stairs, so she would have to round the demon to get out.  Her glance fell upon the parchment at her feet.

   What did it say again?  She ducked closer.

   "You try my patience."  The lowered voice frightened Cheryl more than the shouting.  The demon moved frenetically in its symbol cage.  Cheryl read furiously. 

   There it is, there it is!

   "Art thou Asmodai?" she yelled, mustering as much confidence as she could.

   "Aye, I am that which you seek."  The motion stopped.  Each head now concentrated fully on Cheryl.  She took a deep breath to gather herself under the fierce gaze.

    "Verily I have displayed my power over you, Lord Asmodai, summoning you with your true name, and require now that you grant me a boon!"  When Cheryl had first read these lines she felt like it was part of some bad B movie with crappy writers.  She delivered them as such, but at least this movie seemed to have pretty damn good special effects.  The only thing that kept her from cracking up in hysterical laughter was the terrible visage before her.

   "Your boon shall be granted at your immortal soul's peril, witch.  Ask for what you desire."

   Cheryl trembled as she pulled out her prepared speech.  Her mind was blanketed in dread and loathing facing this hideous being but she held fast. 

   They will all pay dearly now.

   "Lord Asmodai, I ask that you grant me power over all other's minds that I might control their actions, thoughts, feelings and desires."

   "Controlling minds, witch?  Surely you have not forgotten my Enemy's rules?"

   "It is the boon I ask, Asmodai.  Grant it."

   "I will offer you a compromise then, witch.  I can grant you the power to drive furious lust into the hearts of men through which they can easily be manipulated..."

   "No.  I want complete control."

   The demon paused briefly.  It looked at her curiously.  "Tell me, witch, from what book did you learn the incantation to bring me hence?"

   Is this a test?  She decided she should go with the truth.  "From this parchment." She held it up.

   "And, from which great scholar's work was this page rended?  Johann Wier perhaps?  Or my good friend Mathers?  Maybe Mr. Crowley?"

   "I.. uh, I..." Cheryl stammered.

   Asmodai looked askance at Cheryl.  "It's of no matter, witch."  The great maw of the ram chuckled as the human head continued speaking.  "I will grant you your boon as best I can, with but a small condition attached."

   "Con - condition?"  She didn't think the parchment hadn't mentioned conditions, but then she really had read all of it that carefully.

   Asmodai shifted inside the pentagram.  He smiled crookedly.  "Yes, witch.  Since controlling minds and not just swaying them is such a tax on my power, you must show yourself free of petty temptation and lasciviousness and capable of grandiose and supreme acts!  You must prove yourself worthy of such awesome power, to be revered and reviled for ages to come!  For what I grant you will make you great and mighty beyond your dreams!"

   "Really?"  Cheryl leaned in closer.  "What must I do?"  Little electric beads of excitement fluttered in her chest.  They'll all see just how important I am!

   "Simply this."  Asmodai leaned in closer to Cheryl and spoke softly.  "A trivial task for someone as ... superlative and upstanding as yourself, witch."

   "Yes, yes, tell me..."

   "First let me know your name, that my minions can spread the word of your eminent dominion throughout the earth and verily unto heaven!"

   Cheryl stopped for a second.  Something tickled the back of her mind, telling her this might not be such a great idea.  She couldn't come up with any reason not to, though.  And she wanted to be great.  And famous.  And very important.  With an entourage.

   "Cheryl."

   "Full given name?  The worshippers at your feet should know the full name of their new goddess."

   "Cheryl Anne Dodson."

   "Cheryl Anne Dodson, hereafter Cheryl the Great, the Feared, the Powerful... you must simply survive the night without giving in to lustful temptation."

   "Lustful temptation?"

   The other two heads visibly sighed as the human head pressed on.  "Orgasm.  Each time you succumb to the sweet, sinful pleasure of the body, a quarter part of your will and your soul will leak out and fall to my tender ownership.  If the sun breaks the horizon and you find yourself in possession of any part of your soul, I will grant you your boon as best I can and watch delightedly as your magnificent, and illustrious intentions are made plain to the world.  Do you agree, Cheryl Anne Dodson?"

   "I do!  I do!"

   "Then, Cheryl Anne Dodson, release me that I may fulfill our contract!"

   Cheryl felt the words of release yanked from her lips.  The three heads chuckled as the demon's form wreathed and slithered back upon itself, gradually shrinking back into the pewter statue.  The horrible screams and torrential blowing decreased gradually as the creature shrank into stillness.

   Cheryl collapsed on the ground, shaking, suddenly worn out.




   
   Cheryl's head started to ache almost immediately after the demon left and she had barely enough energy to crawl up the stairs.  The tiles in her kitchen were warm compared to the cement downstairs.  She pushed up towards the sink and flicked it on.  The cool stream of tap water stung her lips.

   Did that just happen?

   She leaned against the counter and rested her forehead on the edge of the steel basin.

   That didn't just happen.  No way.

   She felt the little excited shivers again.

   Yes.  Yes it did.

   In her mind she did her happy dance.  Her body didn't have the energy.  It took a few minutes to slip to the floor and crawl up to her bed.

   So now I'll just sleep the night away... and in the morning, I'll get to play...

   A little grin played across her face.  She didn't bother taking her clothes off.




   "Cheryl Anne Dodson, lay still."

   In her distorted sleep perception, Cheryl felt like the dream started right away.  A very handsome, naked man walked into her room.  Greek god was more like it.  Her weakness passed over into the dream as well, keeping her head still as her eyes followed the intruder.  A little voice in her mind insisted she was in trouble and should be screaming like crazy and going for the phone.   The stranger sat on the edge of the bed.

   "Hi, Cheryl Anne Dodson."  He smiled at her.  It's very perfection caught her breath and sent excited shivers through her chest.  This was obviously one of those dreams.  "A friend sent me to check on you tonight.  Let's get you out of these clothes."  He pulled the flannel PJ bottoms down her legs slowly, caressing as he went.  "You have wonderful legs."  He slid them past her feet and reached up for her shirt.  "Lift your hands above your head."  Cheryl was a little surprised that her body, so unwilling to follow her own commands, easily complied with this stranger's wishes.  He drew the top over her head and threw it off the side of the bed.  "You are quite sensitive.  This will feel exquisite."

   That little voice persisted, prattling on about how wrong this was and how she needed to be worried about such an overtly sexual dream with the conditions of her new found power.  The rest of her tired mind found it easier to concentrate on the expanding vibration in her loins as the stranger gently ran his fingers over her exposed skin and up to her stiff nipples.  She gasped as he pinched delicately and fondled her breasts. 

   This won't count, will it?  It's a dream.

   Cheryl closed her eyes and thrummed with his touches.  The wonderful hands gently played her increasing desire while his lips kissed languorous notes on her neck.

   "Spread your legs, Cheryl Anne Dodson."

   Again her body responded to his directions.  The mattress squeaked as he slid between her legs.  He tenderly kissed her lips as he positioned himself before her dripping pussy.  His first strong thrust forced a moan from her.  Her body responded with a rapid crescendo to his powerful beat.  She quickly found herself singing this stranger's praises.  The climax burst upon her suddenly, deafening her thoughts in a tumultuous uproar of symphonic bliss.  The will and soul spilling from her clenched sex each added their own beautifully bittersweet overtones that resonated inside the whole.

   Her consciousness slipped away as the furor faded.




   Awareness came back slowly.  Her thoughts were quiet next to the pleasant buzzing still in her mind.  She stretched luxuriously in place and turned onto her side.

   He was still there.

   She blinked.  Still there.  Blinked again.

   What just happened?  Am I still dreaming?

   The hum threatened to keep her torpid, but the little voice grew more insistent.  It nagged about having only three left now.  That sparked a little flame of thought that burned through the fog enough to focus on.

   I need to do something here.

   She shifted and swung a leg off the bed.

   Call the cops.

   She rolled and got the other leg over the edge.

   Leave.  Now.

   As she pushed her torso up, strong hands caught her shoulders.  "Now then. Cheryl Anne Dodson, you are not leaving yet.  I'm not done with you."

   Cheryl found her body stopped responding.  As she stayed still, the flame switched to icy panic and dropped through her stomach to settle tingling in her crotch.

   What's happening to me?

   "Lie back down."  Cheryl did.  The frigid tingles ran up her back and tickled the base of her neck.  "Spread your legs."  One leg went off the bed this time as her body again granted this man access to its most intimate parts.  "You are still very sensitive.  Stay motionless and feel the heat of my breath."  The panic melted quickly as he blew on her clit.  "Feel the heat of my tongue."  The licks made her pussy gush molten lava up through her chest, melting her mind.

   It's never been so good...

   Her eyes rolled back as a finger slid in her sweltering sex and crooked upwards.  The pressure built slowly inside her from his sensuous pace.  Each languorous lick and swirl of his finger sent more lava from her pussy, straining her already weakened consciousness.  It finally erupted in torrid pleasure that scorched her mind, burning passionately as more of her will and soul gushed out.

   Her body sagged on the bed as her mind slipped into blackness.




   Cheryl felt herself falling.  She instinctively reached out and jammed her wrist against the floor.  The pain jarred her awake as she rolled onto her side.  Memories flooded in, crowding each other in the faint warm glow still left after...

   Well, after the best sex she'd ever had.  She'd never been that sensitive before or come that quickly.  Or had it feel so damn good.  Then realization set in.

   Oh God, only two left.  What's happening here?

   Her mind spun as she sorted through the events of the evening.  Two fragmented recollections started pushing past the others.  One sang exquisitely and the other burned blissfully, each as part of her leaked onto her bed.  She wanted that again, now.  The voice called out weakly to warn again that only two were left.

   But now, part of her was working for that goal.  It wanted to succumb and feel the rapture as quickly as possible.

   Am I a junky?  That quickly?

   She looked up on the bed and saw a form resting there.  Little tingly waves swept up from her crotch.  She reached up to pull herself onto the bed.

   Shit.

   Forcing her hand back, she rolled onto her other side and pushed herself up.  The willpower remaining in her was embattled at every step towards the bathroom, but she made it.  A raging inferno of desire sang of delicious temptation as she turned on the shower.  Cold.  The freezing water calmed her down, quenching the fires and drowning the sound in an icy torrent.  Her concentration revolved around not getting out and not turning on the hot water.

   After a few minutes, she leaned against the rear wall, palms flat and arms stiff to hold her in the spray.  The desire washed off her back and down the drain, unable to bear the dousing cold.

   What do I do now?  Leave, I guess?  The window?

   She turned her head to look through the shower curtain.

   Can't.  That pervert Harold is over there.  He'd probably have a heart attack if he saw me.

   She smiled.  The thought of screwing his old, frail body to death leapt to her mind and lead her back to her predicament.

   Shit.  I guess I'll have to go back through the bedroom.

   She sighed.

   In a few minutes.  I need to be ready when I face... him...

   Her pussy twitched, remembering.  She squeezed her thighs together.  Panic welled again, drawing strength from the chilly shower.  Thoughts of soothing that terror came unbidden, thoughts of using it as fuel for a tongue that would lap the cold water up and warm her soul.  She shut her eyes, playing the scene in her mind.  The frosty blast felt a little warmer. 

   And those hands...  Exploring... Deep inside... 
   
   A lot warmer.

   The voice yelled again about something half gone.  The chill started to creep back in.  The voice nattered on about hell and pain and losing her immortal soul.  Something about losing, though, had lost its sting.  Her pussy had a taste of losing and it liked it.  A lot.

   The water wasn't cold anymore.  In fact, she could've sworn someone had turned the handle towards hot.  She looked over her shoulder.

   He was there, reaching past the curtain to the control.

   "Hi, Cheryl Anne Dodson.  Leave your hands against the wall.  Spread your legs a little more.  Keep your ass up.  Arch your back."  Her body moved again with a will of its own.  Her crotch tingled with anticipation that fed on her fear.  The voice in her mind was silent.

   "Stay still."  She wasn't sure he had to say it this time.  He climbed in behind her.  "Look at the wall."  She faced forward.  His hands gripped her hips and he slid his erect member easily into her wet snatch.  She moaned loudly as tides of pleasure swept through her and lapped at the edges of her mind.  Each eroded her psyche further as they crept higher and higher.  An inexorable tidal wave built in her crotch and swept up to engulf her in a torrent of ecstasy.

   She drowned in the sweet intoxication of will and soul washing away in the flood. 




   The hard tub was uncomfortable.  Fear, horror and panic were as well.  The voice screamed at her to wake up but her waterlogged mind sloshed around slowly.  One hand made it out of the tub, and then the other.  She leaned over the edge for a bit with a silly smile on her face.

   Too good for words.

   Trepidation won out.  She flopped out of the tub and onto her knees.  She was alone in the bathroom.

   Now what?

   The same choices presented themselves.  Out the window or through the bedroom.

   Maybe I could lock myself in here?

   She looked at the door and gave that up.  It was flimsy.

   Hell, I'd probably screw the knob off for him.

   That made her laugh.  Then go cold.

   I better get out of here.  Now.

   She quietly stood up and snuck to the door.  Cracking it a bit, she could just make out the stranger lying on his side, facing away.

   Is he asleep?

   She heard gentle snoring.  Crouching, she pulled out into the bedroom and crept to the dresser.  Briefly, she thought about going commando, but something nagged at her not to.  Carefully she slid open her underwear drawer.  The dim light in the room was barely enough for her to see.  Her fingers felt satin with lace at the edges.  She pulled the garment out, glanced quickly and then silently put the panties on.  She reached back in and felt around until she found a lacy cup.  It came out and the bra quickly covered her chest.  A little naughty tingle sent her hand back in.

   Hose.  Stockings.  A garter.

   He rolled over.

   She froze.

   "Don't stop on my account, Cheryl Anne Dodson.  Please, continue.  Put on those stockings and garters."

   There they were, lying in her open palms.  Each matched the bra and panties she already had on.  Her cunt flared and the voice wailed as she slipped the silk up her legs and clipped everything in place.

   How did this happen to me?

   She looked at him, fear, panic and desire in her eyes.

   "All consuming lust."  He stood up facing her.  "Look at the object of your desire, witch."  Her eyes riveted to his rock hard penis.  "I will let you go if you can resist playing with yourself, Cheryl Anne Dodson."  Hysteria, lust, dread and desire all raged inside her, fighting for control.  He stepped towards her.  "A simple matter of not giving in."  Her loins sang a dark song of tempting submission while the voice scolded her for even thinking of anything but running out of the room right now.  He came another step closer.  "What you should do is will your hands not to rub any sensitive spots on your body, keep from masturbating yourself to willess, soulless, eternal servitude."  Heat from her crotch warmed the icy panic in her stomach.  He stepped next to her.  "Imagine your longing, your passion, your very own hands being the source of your doom."  A wave of desire crashed over her mind, sending one hand towards her panties and the other inside her bra.  He ran his hands around her body, not quite touching.  "Try not to think how sinfully delicious and intoxicating it was feeling your immortal soul leak out of your pussy tonight."  She circled her clit and pinched a nipple, her body trembling and almost collapsing.  He smirked down at her.  "You can choose, Cheryl Anne Dodson.  Do you have enough will left to fight this?  Or will you let your desire for such wicked euphoria be your undoing?"  Gasping, she sped her hand up.  It listened only to her clit's craving for her decadent ruination.

   She crumpled to the ground as she sang in the culminating flood of fiery lava.  The euphoria of the last of her will and soul leaking out, of breaking the condition and losing her bargain, made her complete submission exquisite.

   Any torment is worth this!  Oh God!

   The incubus laughed at the stupid, weak human as he watched the last of the immortal soul leak out and drip down to hell and it's Master.  A leash and collar poofed into his hands.  "Come on, doggie.  I have tricks for you to perform."




   Cheryl hiked her ass up higher for the camera.  "Oh, baby, I want it so bad."  Her latest role suited her perfectly.  "Harder, harder!  Oooh oooh!"  Lots of sex, then fucking, then more sex to top it off!  "I love your big, thick cock in me!"  She bucked as she came, not having to fake it for the camera.  She never did.  The thought of all those people that would be watching her leak out as they whacked off always did it for her.  A little bit of their will, a little bit of their soul...  It all felt so good. 

[Darkmind]

I hope I'm not too late...  (Oh, I threw in the constraint from Blankpage's contest too.  After all, I missed that one...)

Andy and Michele; Chapter 6

Andy was ready to open the store at noon. After all the fuss, not even a late opening. 'Tabby' (she still needed a name. No one had been able to come up with one just yet.), was in her human form, dressed much like Michele in a bodysuit with corset. Sara had turned down a human form; she was a cat-girl. For today Andy had dressed her in a skirt and loose top, both with a bit of a torn look. Basically, cloth to cover her, and nothing more.

He was looking forward to a mostly normal day, where he and Michele could teach their new wards their new trade. Andy only hoped that the presence of so many salespeople wouldn't scare anyone away.

He knew he would not get his normal day when he opened the door. The two foxes sitting on the doorstep walked in.

Andy called out, turning around: "Honey, you have visitors!"

Michele was explaining something at the cash register in the back. She looked up, saying: "Who?", puzzled, until she spotted the foxes trotting along the floor.

"Oh." Her voice went flat.

Tabby spotted the animals, and instantly switched to full cat-girl mode (straining her clothes on the way), her hair standing on end. Barely, she was able to keep herself from hissing.

Sara just looked puzzled, but got behind her lover when Tabby indicated.

The foxes walked up to Michele, then blurred into two human forms. Or, nearly-human forms. The eyes matched Sara's new eyes for style, though the girl was exceeded for color. The ears...

Spock would have been jealous.

The leader of the two looked around at the stern faces and smiled. "What a warm welcome!"

Michele rolled her eyes. "What do you want, Todd?" She said to the first.

"Can't I just come to visit?"

"No. Elves never just come to visit. Or Kitsune. Or whatever you call yourselves these days."

"Actually, we normally go by this form today." The other being said, switching forms to a five-foot spindly thing, with a huge head and eyes.

"Aliens. I should have guessed." Andy snorted.

"Regardless, I am not interested in another 'dance'. I had enough the first time."

The two (the second had switched back to elfin form) found themselves unaccountably unable to look her in the eye for a moment, with disastrous effects on their calm look of superiority. "Erm, yes. We remember. You will not be invited to anymore 'dances', though Argante says you are welcome in her hall, as an honored guest, at any time." This last was said quite precisely.

Michele smiled, a grim smile. "I'll bet. Still, that leaves the question of why you are here, in my home?"

Todd recovered part of his stature, though he was still unable to look Michele in the eye for the moment. "Actually, m'lady, we have a problem we were hoping you could help with."

Michele waited.

"You see, we have, for want of a better word, a criminal. He is to be banished, with no memory of his former life, and no access to our powers. It is a... Suitable... punishment. However, the Queen gave it in a moment of emotion, forgetting the difficulties involved."

"Which are?"

He was starting to get on a roll now. Obviously this was something Todd had gone over. "He is one of us, not a human. The sentence would be simplicity itself to implement in a human, but on our own... Our powers are built into us. If the Queen were to attempt to block them off, he would die. She could change his form, but he would still be what he is, and would eventually wear down the blocks." He risked a glance directly at his questioner. "We hoped you might be able to apply some powers we lack..."

"You think I might be able to change him a little more fundamentally?" Michele asked, pointedly.

In answer, the elves looked at the cat-girls.

Andy and Michele followed their glances. Michele answered: "No, we did not create them. We could have uncreated them however; you are correct there. But it is not easy, especially without the consent of the one to be changed."

"We would be forever in your debt."

"You already are."

The visiting pair looked more uncomfortable.

"So, what, exactly are you asking of us?"

"The Queen would be extremely grateful if you could take up the execution of her sentence: to turn the criminal into a human, with no memory of his former life, and place him into mundane society so that he never realizes what has been done to him."

"Just take up the whole thing. What do I get in return?"

"I can offer the riches of..." Michele cut him off.

"I have seen your riches, tasted your wines, lived your 'eternal' life. Do not insult me with offers I have turned down already."

The pair looked for a moment at Andy. "Am I to take it all our rewards are worthless?" Todd asked, a hint of a grin in his voice.

Michele returned the smile. "Of course not. But make an offer worth my time."

"Very well... "If She shall take up this task, she may have access to the power she sunders from the condemned. She may redirect the flows of his to herself, or to any in her household, and bind them there for as long as she shall live." Is that acceptable?"

Michele, finally, looked stunned.

"I should mention, m'lady, that the condemned was one of our best sorcerers, else he would not have been able to get into this... Mess."

Michele took a deep breath. "Just a moment; I would like to discuss this offer."

"Of course." He bowed.

Michele, Andy, and the girls withdrew to the far side of the shop, outside of immediate hearing range. 'Tabby' spoke first.

"Do not trust them! They play tricks!"

Michele looked at her. "I know, I lived with them for a while. They taught me much about... But that was a while ago. They finally played one to many tricks on me; I taught them I can play my own tricks. We have a... truce. Of sorts. I can handle them."

Tabby wasn't reassured, but Andy's nod told her they believed it. She settled, a little.

Sara had a question, though. "Who are these people, anyway? Why is everyone so worried about them?"

Andy answered. "They are the Tricksters. They were the Elves, the Kitsune, the Coyote, Loki. Any trickster spirit you've ever heard of, it was them, or no one. Sometimes their games are nice, but often... Well, let's just say their interpretation of 'nice' and ours don't always coincide."

"Oh." Sara sorted tail fur for a moment. "So... If Michele has stopped them once, without their power, and has access to their power, she could definitely stop them again, right?"

"Yes! Take the gift, and they will not be able to face you! They will trick us no more!"

Michele looked at Andy. "They have a point, dear. With the power they offer, I could overpower even Argante, no one would be able to stand up to me."

Andy answered, in a voice as soft as velvet. "You stood up to her once without this power. We can do it again, if we needed to. What do you need this 'gift' for? What do you need to do that you cannot now? What do you want to do that we cannot now?" He spread his hands.

There was silence in the little family. After a long moment, Michele responded. "You are right. There is no purpose in this gift. But... Shall we help them?"

Again, it was Tabby who answered first: "Why? Let them clean up their own mess."

Sara shrugged. She had no opinion.

Andy answered: "Why not? They will owe us one more, and we get to stop someone who played one to many tricks. Besides," he grinned, "It'll be fun."

Michele laughed. "Yes, it will be. What do you say girls, shall we trick a trickster?"

It took a moment, then the girls grinned like a cat about to catch a canary.

They went back to the waiting delegation. "We reject your offer. You offer nothing we need or want." Michele stated.

Todd started, "Please..." Michele cut him off.

"However, we will take care of your problem for you. Leave the offender with us. We will take care of it."

Todd started to say something, then changed his mind and nodded. "As you wish, Lady. When we leave, we will leave the condemned with you, to cary out his sentence."

"Good. You may leave now."

Todd closed his eyes, drew his hand down his body, and vanished. In his place appeared an elvin high-noble, in full dress gear, the no-weapons version.

Andy knew what to do; he had moved behind the new arrivial already, and was sneaking up on him. Michele, on the other hand...

Well, she wasn't sneaking.

She approached with all the subtlety of a steam locomotive, and all the heat of a blast furnace. Even a confirmed extremist homophile would have had trouble keeping his eyes off her.

This Elf was no homophile.

Andy's hands started to tease the Elf's skin, his shirt, his trousers. Whether the Elf noticed they existed or not is a debatable point.

The girls finally started to get the idea, and joined the fun. They split up, coming in from the sides. They didn't quite have the technique down as Michele did, but the liquid grace their half-cat bodies possessed nearly made up for it.

Michele started below the knees; the Elf's pants were around his ankles. She ran her hands, the tip of her tongue, up his perfect Elfin form, barely stopping for more than a moment at any one point to caress, or kiss, some point of interest.

The girls knelt by his sides, running their hands up and down whatever they could reach, occasionally leaving tiny marks with sharp fingernails.

Andy proceeded with the undressing of their 'guest', and made sure his back got equal attention to his front.

Michele reached his face, and ran one nail down the jawbone, then leaned in for a kiss to shut down the rest of the blood-flow to their guest's brain.

Coming out of it, she whispered in his ear: "Look at me." His slitted eyes opened, and looked into her normal ones.

Michele pushed, and felt the initial snap of resistance break.

She whispered once more, still pushing at his mind as hard as she could: "Cum."

It made quite mess. But no one paid any attention.

As her subject's body spasmed in uncontrollable orgasm, and his mind in unfathomable pleasure, Michele wormed her way through the last defenses of the condemned man's mind, reaching further, until she found his core, his center.

What made him him.

She reached out, slid in, and started by severing that connection to the world's magic that was the essential fixture of any Trickster. It came off cleanly in her mental hand, without withdrawing. The Elvin Queen had apparently not withdrawn her offer.

For a moment Michele was tempted. It would make things so much easier...

Then she capped it, and let it fade away from her.

His center was in turmoil; it could not survive as it was without that immediate access to Power. Michele steadied it, before the effect could unsettle his mind. She couldn't hold it for long like this though.

Not that she had too; his sentence was to be a human. She went to work; changing his concept of self, so that he was a human, so that he always had been, so that magic was no part of him, had never had been.

From there she worked out, changing memory and thought layer by layer. His mind knew something was wrong; either he wasn't what he thought he was, or his memories were wrong. They fought to correct themselves, to find their old pattern.

Michele fought to impose a new pattern.

For a long moment, it was a stalemate, every change she made making others necessary, and unmaking previous changes. Michele's battle looked neverending.

Then, finally, came the point where one change created a reenforcement pattern, new thoughts in the new patterns. They faded quickly, but Michele followed up on them, and not longer later his mind was rejecting ideas of magic, of fantasy, of a world beyond the mundane, on it's own. Like any mortal man's.

Michele worked to put in the pattern she had chosen, giving the mind before her the basics it would need to create the memories of the life it had lived.

Finally, she withdrew.

She was still standing, looking directly into those Elven eyes. Eyes that now housed a human mind.

Tabby held her up. Andy and Sara had her subject.

As she watched, his eyes closed in a hypnotically induced sleep.

Michele looked at her subject, and got to work on creating him a body to match his mind.


"That'll be $375.29." Andy rang up the cash register for the customer. Sara had the items he had selected in a bag for him; he wouldn't get it until he had paid.

"Here you go." 'Shah' rolled out four hundred dollar bills. He had come into the shop, partly on a dare, partly to find something to spice up his lonely evenings. They went a little over the top (the anthromorph costume was amazing, but... Why?), but he had found some interesting items. He'd spent more than he actually intended, but he could spare it.

He thanked the store owners, and left. He'd have something to prove to those guys at the frat house he'd gone through with it all right...

Andy watched him go out the door, then spoke to Sara. "You think your parents will like having a son?"

She watched him go, partly with sadness, and partly with a sense of freedom. She thought it over for a moment. Her answer, when it came, was quiet, almost inaudible.

"My family is here."

[BlueLyric]

A fitting end to the tales of whoa -- 13 selections, the last by a poster named Darkmind -- couldn't have plotted that any better myself...


I'll now lock this thread, I guess, to signify the event's end (unless I get special request...please...no eyelash battting 8) 8)...)


I'll be making comments on these around Monday.  Congratulations, all -- and give yourselves a pat..or a neckslap...



...Caveat:  Please don't slap your neck...it hurts...

[Born Blitzed]

Oh, I almost forgot: now that the event is officially over, I do have one more story submission.

Because I just can't resist a challenge, intentional or no: 

First flexible rule:  No word limit (although a four-word story would be kind of ludicrous, natch ).

Flash Story

"Abracadabra!"

*Flash*

"Yes, mistress?"




Tell me what you think.

--Mike

[BlueLyric]

  ...*Sigh*...


See what happens when you forget to lock something?? ...



So, then maybe we keep it open??...

[softi]

Lock it!

Otherwise I'm going to have to...

< sarcasm >

Neckslap

The ghost slapped my neck.

"Yes, mistress?"

"That's better."

< /sarcasm >

I had a friend who used to shoot up in his neck.  Said it went to his brain faster.

< really /sarcasm>

[Bobwhite]

Had things in my real life been different, I would have put something up here.  I actually had a great story idea.  I'll write it out later, I suppose.  Who knows... maybe I'll read the stories here.  Expo stories are wonderful fun.

[Michelle]

I am sorry I never finished my story.  Not only did I go back on a promise but I kinda chickened out from a writing standpoint. There were things in the story that were too close to home and I could not see it through.