Mile 69

This is (and isn’t) a fetish story, depending on how you look at it, so I have it listed in various categories in the sidebar that don’t fully apply, but enough so that I figured, “What the hell, right?”

Mile 69

By Smokedawg

“OK, let’s recap: You want us to do each other orally in the back seat at mile marker 69 on the highway?”

“Sure ‘nuff, babe.”

“Public sex on a highway. All righty,” Coop said. “Is there an exit at mile 69 I don’t know about?”

“No,” Paula answered.

“A rest stop of some sort?”

“Nope.”

“A small path leading to somewhere just beyond the treeline?”

“I don’t think so.”

“An area off the road we can park that isn’t totally visible from the highway?” he asked.

“Doubt it. Pretty sure not,” she responded, taking a sip from her bottle of Miller Genuine Draft.

Coop sighed, and realized he was slowly becoming erect at the direction of this conversation, despite his growing sense of doom. In the year-and-a-half he’d been with Paula, she’d opened his eyes to a lot of things. He’d never considered taking it up the ass before, and would have punched any guy in the eye who’d suggested he might, but for nearly a year, Paula had been pegging him once a week or more, and had him acclimated to a thick 10-inch long dildo now. She was also the first woman he’d ever been with who’d let him inside her ass—and she did it gleefully. She’d also created a sloppy little mud pit one weekend when he was tearing up the yard to put in a concrete porch and some other additions, and he found out just how nice a warm night, thick mud and two naked bodies could be in combination. And then there was the time in the bathroom when she had…

“Coop?” Paula snapped. “You with me?”

“Yeah, drifted off a bit. Sorry,” he said, reaching for his own beer, and taking a quick puff off his Marlboro.

She smiled crookedly, and winked as she took another sip of her beer. “I’ll bet you did.”

“OK, I get it. Doing a 69 at mile 69. I really do. But, um, I’m not so sure I want to get busted for public exposure. Or indecency. Or whatever. How are we going go at it on the shoulder of the road near the mile marker without getting caught? I mean, even if the state police don’t happen by, some numbnut will probably catch shots or video of us to slap up on YouTube.”

“Fuck, Coop, we’ll do it at like one or two in the morning. You’ve been down the highway plenty of times that late. How heavy is the traffic?”

“Not much.”

“And how many times have you caught sight of a trooper at that kind of time?”

“Don’t think I have.”

“Exactly,” Paula said. “We keep the lights off, so no one thinks we’re in the car and need help, and we suck each other silly. I mean, what’s the longest amount of time we’ve lasted in a 69?”

“Thirty minutes? Forty maybe?” Coop answered.

“Yeah. I think once I lasted an hour with you licking me out, Cooper Thomas Moore…just because I was being a stubborn bitch and wanted to make you work. But we’ll be so hot doing it on the side of the road that we’ll be lucky to last 20 minutes. I give us 10 to 15.”

“So, with getting our clothes off, getting each off, and getting dressed and off the shoulder, we’re looking at 30 minutes max,” Cooper said, realizing his cock was rock-hard now.

“I love a man who knows his numbers,” Paula said teasingly.

“All right. I’m in. When?”

“Tonight, of course, you idiot,” she said, slapping his thigh and then giving him a brief kiss with just a hint of tongue. “I don’t make long-term plans with anything but my fucking IRA account.”

* * *

At least it was  pretty wide shoulder at mile 69, Coop thought, and he parked as far into it as he could, and then they maneuvered their way into the back seat of his 2008 Toyota Camry—a vehicle is just something you don’t buy American these days, he lamented, unless it’s a damn pickup truck.

Coop took one of Paula’s elbows in a jarring shot to his head, but otherwise, they stripped with minimal fuss and few mishaps, and he stretched out on his back—more or less—thankful for once that he didn’t get the “tall genes” in the family. Paula smiled down at him, and then straddled his face and swiveled her hips a few times to make sure he got her scent good—it wasn’t likely he was going to get a clear view of how wet and puffy her labia were, but he’d know soon enough. Then she pounced on his cock with her mouth, slathering the shaft with her tongue, like he was freshly unwrapped popsicle, and settled her pussy onto his face.

Coop responded to the stimulus of warm flesh, moist pussy lips and short, curly hairs against his face with the usual gusto, licking her fiercely and dipping deep inside her before he calmed down and settled into something more disciplined, as he licked either side of her labia over and over, slipping from one to the other, and occasionally sliding up to the hood of her clitoris, to lick and press there, indirectly stimulating her love button. Then he flattened his tongue against her outer sex, and lapped at her like a cat might groom its fur. Slowly, surely and firmly he prepared her, as he readied himself to begin licking deeper and deeper inside her, before he attacked her clit in earnest.

While he attended to that moist and musky pleasure, Paula moved from licking his shaft to toying with his cockhead with the tip of her tongue, running it under the edge of his circumcised crown and then teasing his urethra, before she swallowed him whole. A big cock was nice for fucking, but Coop’s average endowments made oral a lot more enjoyable—anal too—and any willing man could be taught to fuck well with even a small package, Paula firmly believed. She slid up and down, slurping loudly and letting her saliva flow. He wouldn’t be able to see much of anything in the darkness, but she intended to make sure he could feel and hear plenty, even as her pussy engaged his senses of taste and smell.

Just under ten minutes into things, both of them were getting very close to coming.

It just figures that would be the time to hear the soft crunch of tires on asphalt and then see the glow of red and blue lights flooding the car through the rear window, Coop thought.

* * *

There was warning, of course. Enough time to start putting their clothes back on. But not enough to finish. Not nearly enough. Coop was more than a little pissed that Paula wasn’t putting a bit more pep in her step, but if he could distract the police officer a bit while mostly clothed, they could probably avoid a public indecency charge.

And then the back door was flung open, and a commanding female voice said, “Out, both of you. Now! Hands flat on the trunk and if you pull anything it won’t go well.”

Coop and Paula both complied, at least after Paula finished pulling up her jeans. But the trooper had seen enough, and Paula’s shirt was lost somewhere on the floor of the car, and her smeared lipstick—plus the sticky wetness and deep, fertile scent of woman on his face—were dead giveaways. She knew full well what they had been up to.

Without preamble, and with one hand on the butt of her pistol, the police officer cuffed each lovers’ hands behind their backs once they were at the rear of the car.

“Is this completely necessary, officer?” Paula asked with a tone both plaintive and slightly obnoxious, and Coop shushed her sharply.

“You both stay right there while I check on you,” the officer said, pulling Coop’s wallet out. “We’ll start with you, stud.”

“Please don’t piss her off,” Coop said quietly to Paula as the officer retreated back to her vehicle.

Paula simply smiled, which infuriated him. Doesn’t she realize how serious this is? On the other hand, the sight of her in jeans pulled up but still unzipped and unbuttoned, as well as her nipples straining against her silky bra in the cool night air, was quite invigorating.

When the officer returned, she said, “Well, Mr. Moore, you seem to have a few priors.”

“Yes, officer,” he answered as politely as he could, though he was a bit irritated. “I had a DUI about 10 years ago, and a couple bar fights around the same time, but I haven’t had a run-in with the law for at least eight years now. I’m no trouble at all.”

“No, you won’t be,” the officer said bluntly and coldly. “Any trouble to me, that is. But this looks like trouble. Sex in public.”

“Officer, we were just getting a bit frisky, but it’s not like anyone was going to see,” Coop said. “We’re really sorry. We didn’t mean anything. It’s late, and…”

“Dangerous shit, too, by the side of the road. Accident waiting to happen if a trucker was half asleep at the wheel,” the police officer scolded Coop sharply.

“Officer, is there any chance we could work something out?” Paula asked. “Pay a…I don’t know…a fine or something like that in cash…so that you can just clear everything up right now.”

Paula smiled sweetly and winked, and Coop swore softly.

“That sounds like a bribe attempt,” the officer snarled. “Well, I guess you two lovebirds are going for a ride.”

* * *

Coop didn’t like being in the back of a police cruiser. He especially didn’t like being there with Paula and the thought that she might end up in lockup. He didn’t like the police officer’s attitude over what should have been a relatively simple matter.

But what he really, really didn’t like was the fact that the cruiser was now speeding right past the exit on the highway that led to the nearest trooper station.

What the fuck? he thought, and wrestled with whether he should ask the officer why, and decided silence was golden right now—and that Paula didn’t need to be freaked out.

Ten minutes later, the cruiser left the highway, and a few minutes after that pulled into the parking lot of the Moonlite Motor Hotel.

“Ummmm,” Coop began.

“I’m going to uncuff you, bright boy,” the officer said, “and you’re going to rent a room for the night. You two wanted to put on a risky—and risqué—little show for the good citizens who use the public right of way? Well, you can put on a show for me, then. It’s been a boring night, and I’m due for my meal break. Except I won’t be doing the munching, I think.”

* * *

“This is freaky,” Coop said to Paula quietly as she rubbed at her recently freed wrists, “I don’t think I can do this. Performance anxiety to the max, babe.”

The police officer was watching them from the other side of the room; she’d given them their instructions, and Paula stroked the side of his face, as the fingers of her other hand tickled his balls, and she said, “Shhhhhh. Baby, don’t worry. It’s not like we haven’t done stuff in front of someone before. Twice, in fact.”

“Virginia didn’t have a gun. Or a nightstick. Or mace.”

“Actually, Ginny does carry mace, or maybe it’s pepper spray, but let’s forget about the gun and the cop’s baton and worry about your baton, OK?” Paula leaned in, and slowly licked his throat in that maddening way she did. His eyes fluttered, and her fingers reached farther back between his legs, ticking the back of his scrotum as her palm cupped his family jewels. His body responded as his mind was pulled away from fear and into the realm of desire, and she kissed him intensely, her lips pressing against his and gently prying them open, owning the entrance to his mouth.

After a bit of tongue-wrangling, as Paula coaxed deeper and deeper moans from her lover, they maneuvered each other to the bed, half-stumbling in the process. Once they tumbled to the mattress, though, Paula took over the maneuvering, saying, “I get the pillows, Coop,” and then she got him oriented with his head at the foot of the bed. This time, though, unlike in the car, she had him on top in their 69.

Paula took note of the faint but appreciative sigh from the trooper—she was always happy for a grateful audience—and then focused her attention on Coop, making sure to slide up and down on his penis with firm, wet, intense strokes, making use of her lips and tongue—even her teeth, just a little. Anything to keep him focused on her and not on the trooper—anything to keep him aroused and in the game.

My neck is going to hurt something fierce tomorrow with all this bobbing up and down from the bottom position, she thought, but that’s why God created Aleve and booze.

As she worked his shaft, Coop drew a trail of wet licks from Paula’s clitoris down to her thighs, and he made sure to kiss her on the smooth flesh of her inner thighs over and over, making her shiver and moan, before returning to her clit. After repeating that cycle about a dozen times, he stuck to her clit, and felt his moans develop into a low growl as she worshipped his cock.

He heard the trooper approach the foot of the bed, and tried his best to ignore her presence, losing himself as much as possible in the slippery sensations and rich scent of Paula’s pussy. After a couple minutes, something slid in between her sex and his face, and he realized it was a police baton.

“That’s very nice, Cooper,” the officer said. Although he had been separated from his half of the 69 action, Paula wasn’t letting up on his cock from her end. “You’re doing a very nice job on your girlfriend’s cunt. I’m rather surprised at how attentive and sweet you are. Those priors on you didn’t suggest a gentle lover.”

Coop swallowed hard, trying not to lose his erection—and the ominous authority figure currently addressing him was making it hard to enjoy the slick, hot mouth working his manhood. “I’ve never raised my hand to a woman in anger, officer,” he said softly. “I did some stupid stuff, but never mean shit. I was just young, dumb and full of cum when I did those other things.”

“You’re not exactly old, Cooper. What, 27 or 28? I can’t speak to whether your intelligence has improved since then. But I’m sure you’re still full of cum.”

The state trooper smiled, and Coop thought it was a strange smile, as if she had some secret plan or hidden agenda, but also as if she was softening a bit in her regard of him. He let his eyes stray away from her face, and realized that her uniform shirt was wide open, revealing a satiny green bra that held a healthy pair of tits with large nipples that currently pressed and strained against the material confining them. Her belt was on the dresser, and her pants were unzipped and unbuttoned, clinging precariously to her hips and ready to fall to the floor in a pool of blue polyester at any moment.

Coop groaned softly and closed his eyes as Paula swallowed him deep several times. He imagined that her spit must be running down his shaft by now, sliding in tiny, sloppy traces from the corners of her mouth. He opened his eyes again as he heard the trooper give an appreciative, “Mmmmmmm” and looked her over a bit more while she seemed fixated on Paula’s actions. The baton still lay across Paula’s nether lips, and Coop took that to mean he wasn’t intended to be there right now.

So he considered their captor a bit more. She wasn’t a pretty woman, but she also wasn’t unattractive. She wasn’t even average or plain. Coop was tempted to think “handsome,” but that wasn’t right, either. Striking, though. Her eyes were a rich, piercing blue with traces of hazel. Her lips was full and shapely. Her nose wasn’t delicate by any means, and it was a little crooked, but somehow, it seemed endearing on her. Her body was fit and tight. It was womanly, but also solid, without being bulky. No petite woman here, but also no bull-dyke type. Her dark blonde hair was short in the back and on the sides, but covered her forehead with bangs, and had a fullness and body up top. It was too severe a hairdo to be called feminine, but too shaped and styled to be called manly.

“Like what you see, Cooper?” she asked. There wasn’t threat in the tone. There wasn’t anger. Genuine curiosity, though.

“You’re good looking, officer,” Coop said sincerely, “though I think you might be more so if I wasn’t afraid you were going to pistol-whip me.”

“Pistol is back there, Cooper,” she said. “But let me give you another weapon to think about.”

With that, she pressed the tip of the baton slightly against the wet and sticky folds of Paula’s vulva, then dipped up and in slightly to tease at the clit. Paula moaned appreciatively.

“Lucky for you, girlie girl, that this is a new baton. Hardly used yet. Nice and smooth. No splinters. But before I give you much more of a taste, let me tend to someone else, too. Cooper, get back to loving your girl’s cunt.”

Coop didn’t hesitate. Talking to the trooper and being distracted had made him grow slightly softer, though he hadn’t lost his erection, and he knew tasting and smelling Paula would get him back into the right frame of mind and arousal.

He buried his face in her sex, and licked and kissed and slurped loudly, making her squirm and moan. As he bathed his face in her slick and sticky juices, her scent filling his nostrils and coating his tongue, he felt something cool and a little wet slide between his ass cheeks and move up and down across the cleft of his ass. His sphincter clenched a little, but more in desire than fear, he thought.

Why am I hoping that she might do something more wicked with that nightstick, he thought, realizing the slickness was probably a combination of the trooper’s spit and Paula’s juices, and would I like the idea as much if it became reality?

He realized he was moaning loudly into Paula’s pussy, and the trooper laughed.

“Why, Cooper, Cooper, Cooper…have you had the pleasure of being violated back there? Does that mean I wouldn’t be your first? Pity. But as much as your ass may be hungry for my tool, I have to think of hygiene, and I have someplace else in mind for this. Get your face out of her pussy and tend to mine.”

She spoke the words with quiet authority; there was no malice or threat. But even without such elements, her tone invited nothing but obedience.

And so Coop craned his face up to press between the splayed legs of the trooper in front of him, as she slid the baton into his girlfriend’s pussy. The trooper gave him encouraging moans and grunts, and pressed her sex into his face. Coop hadn’t spent nearly enough time with woman’s pussies before Paula—nor appreciated their assets enough—and he was struck now by the differences in the perfume of the officer’s pussy, and the taste of the soft flesh and the juices they were producing, compared to Paula. Those new flavors and smells mingled with those of Paula already all over his face, and Coop pressed his tongue deep between these strange lips and up to the unfamiliar clit, and he worshipped at this new altar as devotedly as he would have at Paula’s.

He realized, as he listened to the soft, moist sliding noises below his chin—and as he heard Paula’s pussy suck greedily at the baton, literally slurping at it—that Paula could have finished him off long ago. She was milking him, keeping him aroused but refusing to push him over the edge. So he let her do that, and he let the music of her panting and moaning and soft cursing, along with the damp melody of her pussy, drive him forward into the world of sex. He let the sounds and smells and textures consume him, and he could feel the trooper’s thighs tremble, translating into vibrations through her pussy and into the puffiness of her labia. Then her vulva nearly slammed into him, consuming his nose and mouth as the trooper rode his face to orgasm.

The tempo of the baton reached a fever pitch, and Paula screamed moments later, her fingers digging into his ass cheeks as she came hard against the nightstick and abandoned his cock to bite softly against the flesh of his thigh while she came down from her orgasm.

When the moaning had subsided, the trooper said, “We’re not done yet. Girly girl, on your back with your head at the foot of the bed. Cooper, on your hands and knees with your face between her thighs. Your girlfriend is going to lick me to a good cum too—good thing for her I’m so hot, because it probably won’t take more than 10 minutes to get me off again. You’re going to jack your boyfriend off and give him what he needs while you suck my cunt.”

Neither Paula nor Coop delayed in repositioning themselves, and Coop heard Paula spit softly, then felt warm, wet hands slickly stroking him as his girlfriend craned her head up to service the trooper.

Coop wasn’t surprised to hear both women begin moaning deeply and passionately. He wasn’t surprised to feel himself respond and notice that he was making plenty of guttural noises himself.

But the touch of the baton against his upturned ass was a surprise, as it pressed insistently and slowly against his asshole. His own arousal, and Paula’s regular pegging—along with the lubrication of his girlfriend’s juices and whatever else—allowed the baton to gain entry easily.

It never went deep, but he felt it stretch him, and massage him in that place he would have declared off-limits in his youth. Then a thumb pressed against his perineum, massaging him intently there. Coop’s head was spinning, and everything between his belly and his thighs was singing with pleasure. Every nerve was alight as hands jacked him fiercely and a black baton entered him and fingers pressed against the area in-between. His groans became feral growls and then he screamed as his semen splashed against Paula’s breasts and belly. But she didn’t stop jacking him, even after he came, and neither did the trooper cease stimulating him.

It was almost agony in the wake of his orgasm, but a delicious kind of agony. Pain that was pleasure; torture that was sweeter than candy. They kept at him for at least five minutes, Paula never allowing him to truly become flaccid, until the trooper cried out softly in release.

Then the women released Coop, and he plunged to the mattress, not sure whether he could get up even if the trooper were to order him to do so at gunpoint.

* * *

When Coop regained his senses, he realized he was sporting handcuffs once more, and he frowned. He opened his eyes and saw the state trooper dressed again, and smiling at him.

He didn’t even get the chance to ask “Why am I cuffed?” before he saw Paula’s own wicked grin, as she took a quick drag from a smoldering Marlboro Light. The trooper tossed a key to Paula, and said, “Have the key and the cuffs back to me by the time I see you at dinner on Sunday. In the meantime, have fun. You have until noon to check out, after all.”

“Dinner?” Cooper managed weakly. “What…”

“Diane here is my cousin, Coop. You’re the only one who’s surprised we got apprehended and violated,” Paula said.

“Cousin?” Coop asked, his mouth a grimace.

“Oh, stop being so uptight, Coop,” Diane said. “First cousins are perfectly legal. But anyway, we’re not blood relations. Step-cousins, really. The best kind of kissing cousin, in my opinion.”

“Mmmm, you’ve got my agreement there, Di,” Paula said. “Thanks for everything. And thanks for giving up your dinner break for me.”

“Any time, Paula. I need to lose a couple pounds anyway,” Diane said, and then turned her gaze to Cooper. “Coop, my dear man, I don’t poach men from family members, but Paula’s given me a little carte blanche to sample the goods occasionally. I think you’d be well advised to speed past Exit 42 anytime between 11 p.m. and 11:30 on Saturday. Make sure you’re going at least 90 miles an hour so that I notice you.”

Coop paused a moment, hovering between confusion and irritation, before he admitted to himself that there really was nothing to complain about in this deception that had been visited upon him.

“Yes, officer,” Coop said solemnly, then chuckled. “I’ll be sure to be a menace to society that night.”

“Good boy, Coop,” Paula said. “Now let me work on your punishment and rehabilitation while Diane gets back to work.”

Tags: erotica, sex, sex in public

Love in Shades of White and Black

Love in Shades of White and Black

By Smokedawg

“Are you out of your mind?” my wife asked me, eyes wide. “It’s freezing out there.”

I knew it was, but I couldn’t shake the idea from my mind. This was the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. The precipice between light and dark, death and life. Starting tomorrow, the days would begin getting longer, tiny bit by tiny bit, as we marked off the progress for the return of spring and then summer. I was not a wiccan or any kind of follower of more pagan spiritual pursuits but still, this seemed like something more than spiritual. It was elemental.

“It’s the solstice,” I said. “We should do something special. Celebrate the icy grip of winter, even as we celebrate our own heat. Embrace the symbolism of death, even as we revel in the passions of our life.”

She looked at the back door of our house, leading out to the modest but fresh mounds of snow; the white stuff had taken its sweet time arriving, but finally had, just a couple days before the solstice. “It’s cold.”

“And it’s warm in here. Hot, even,” I answered. “And if those crazy Polar Bear Club folks can go naked into the freezing cold ocean, with shoreline winds ripping at them, we can handle a few moments out there. We’re not rushing back to just some mere dry towel on the beach like they do. We’ll be rushing to a warm house and heading straight for the fireplace. Let’s go celebrate the black of the longest night. And the white of the first fresh, blanketing snow.”

I fixed my gaze on hers, and let my longing linger there, hot and insistent. Not pleading. No puppy eyes. Lust and love entwined though; plenty of that.

“Oh shit, fine,” she said, and the curiosity and desire were there in her voice, creeping up to overcome the hesitation and irritation there. “Anything once, right?”

The decision made, she wasted no time, and shed her clothes quickly. I kept pace, and then we stood naked at the door. We rushed out into the cold, naked against the elements, both my tiny nipples and her more substantial feminine ones becoming hard and erect with the chill. My balls began to shrink back against my body, and my cock lay halfway between flaccid and erect, caught between natural responses to cold and desire, which were so clearly at odds with one another.

There in our backyard, largely but not completely hidden from the prying eyes of neighbors, we tumbled nude into a snowbank, embracing each other, rolling as one and pressing hot flesh against hot flesh as freezing snow touched those parts we couldn’t press together.

It was shocking, and made us both gasp; knocked the wind out of us. But as our tumble came to a stop, and my wife looked up from beneath me, I saw something in her eyes, and could feel it mirrored in my own. Her pupils widened, and not just in response to the darkness. Her eyes darkened, and her lips curled just a little with something erotically feral.

To a large extent, both of us were eager to rush back inside to dry and warm our bodies. But for this fleeting moment, that desire was cast aside. We were animals in this moment; creatures of nature. We might be hairless apes, but at that moment we felt like wolves. My wife caught me tight, pulled me close, and my erection was full now, rejecting winter’s hold, and slipping inside her.

For a minute, maybe two, we were one, hardly moving, but laying there as passionate heat in the icy drifts.

I swear my wife growled before she said, “Inside. Now.”

We rushed back to the heat, and tumbled to the floor in front of the fireplace. Wet and cold and shivering, the sudden heat stung our skin, but it also enflamed that primal spark we had started. Dripping and shaking, we pressed hard against each other and inside each other. We bit and sucked each other’s mouths. Our hands, chilled but warming now, gripped cold flesh in the heat of the room.

We writhed. We snarled. We moaned. We gasped.

Memories of our touch with winter. Our communion with the solstice. And now our union of flesh. Our renewal of love. Our kindling of passion into a bonfire to melt away the hold of winter and light the dark of the longest night.

We rutted there on the carpet and it was the fiercest affirmation of our oneness. We kissed and sucked, fondled and pinched, gripped and slid until the cold was driven away and the heat was well-nigh unbearable.

It wasn’t a cliché as we came together. It was, indeed, inevitable.

One in celebration of solstice. One in greeting the slow return of the light. One in passion.

Tags: erotica, sex, solstice, winter solstice

Longest Night; Darkest Fortnight

Longest Night; Darkest Fortnight

By Smokedawg

It insulted both Ghaolit’s senses and his sensibilities to see two ogres outside the Fertile Queen’s chambers, one of them carrying the ritual Awakening Gown and the other with a large tray full of a range of victuals, a goblet of blossom wine and a carafe of rose-and-lavender flavored water.

He had come to the Demesne of the Fertile Queen—the Lady of Spring, the Mistress of Summer, the Dominese Courtesai, and so many other titles besides—several moon-passings earlier. Ghaolit had been born to a far lesser manor that this, but his grandsire had acquitted himself well in some campaign on behalf of the Fertile Queen and the Sylvan Duke recently. And so his gran had taken the opportunity to see Ghaolit off to a brighter future. Servant to the Fertile Queen was a substantially more enviable position than heir to a tiny manor in the Fey Realms.

Ghaolit was, of course, familiar with the generalities of what tonight was, and it was in part the reason he had been loitering so much near the grandest bedchamber of this palace. Sadly, the fortunes and the environment of the Fey Lands was tied strongly to the world of the mortals, that finite ball of earth and sea known as Arkhyn Seriphyn. And that meant that tonight, as in the mortal realm, was the longest night of the year. Even with the manner in which time passed differently and at varying paces compared to the mortals’ world, some things did not change.

The sun might rise to its highest point in the sky thrice in one day at times, but there was only one year, and as many moon-passings in it as in the mortal realm.

A day might sometimes last a score-fold as long the time it took a single day to pass in Arkhyn Seriphyn, but there was still only one longest night each year.

Some called it Solstice. Others called it Hahrmgyn or Pilj or Wrumwyre. Or perhaps Longnight, Far Dark or Winter-Break, which were all three used as here more often than in the mortal realm.

When Autumn ruled on Arkhyn Seriphyn, the leaves changed in the Fey Lands, too. Well, most of them, anyway. The weather cooled. And the Fertile Queen began to sleep longer, and become more sluggish. Still not a Fey Lady to cross or challenge; still not weak. But more lethargic.

And then, in the moon-passing immediately before the Longnight, the Fey Lady who ruled the blossoming of the flowers, the beginning of the plantings, the rutting of the animals and the passions of thinking creatures—well, she slept. She fell into the most profound slumber, from which she could not be awakened.

Until tonight. The moment that dawn broke the Longnight and the worlds—mortal and fey alike—looked forward to shorter nights, longer days and eventually Spring. That was the moment she was awakened, as the longest night of the year came to a close.

Everyone knew that, but few had ever witnessed the event, and Ghaolit wanted to see as much as he could of it, even though he knew he would not be allowed inside the bedchamber.

But this? This was intolerable. Ogres were base, crass and ugly. Not fit beings to awaken a queen from her long slumber. And servant though Ghaolit might be, he was high-born enough to speak to such as these with stone in his voice, regardless of whether he wielded actual authority over them.

“Ho, there, fangteeth! Bristleworms! What brings you to the queen’s door and not more cultured servants? Who dares send such insult to the queen’s rooms?”

They stopped their grumbling, and Ghaolit saw that one held lots in one hand. They were going to cast lots to see which of them would touch the queen to wake her. Brutes! Callous grunt-fumblers!

“I see that you are not a sort that I can break without suffering pain, but I also see that you have no whip over me, brashling,” said the more grizzled and scar-ridden of the pair. “What concern is it of…”

His companion laid a calloused, hairy, dirty-clawed hand on the other’s arm and looked at Ghaolit appraisingly.

“You seek to favor the queen, young lord?” the other said. “Forgive my fellow here. It is a hard duty we are given here, told to greet the Lady’s awakening with our hideous forms. We do not greet it well, or happily. Yet you are young and comely. Do you hover here seeking to gain our queen’s eye?”

Ghaolit hesitated. It was good to see that they chose ogres of decent breeding here, or at least educated them well once they arrived. But he was caught off-guard. Not so much because of the solicitous tone of the one ogre but the notion that he, Ghaolit, might seek the favor of the Fertile Queen. Did he? Is that why he was here?

“Such was not my aim, though I cannot say such a task would be burdensome to me,” Ghaolit said. “Though I am certain there are more fair servants than even I to do the task.”

“But none so close by, and if I or my fellow here were to return with this duty un-performed, we would suffer. We have been sent. It is either one of us, or ye.”

Ghaolit considered. The ogres had no fear that Ghaolit would mean their lady harm, as the many and deeply layered wards of her bedchambers would keep him at bay if malice was in his heart. They were offering him a chance he might never see again even if he served here for six centuries.

“I apologize for my earlier rudeness,” Ghaolit said. “I had misjudged you both. If this is a duty you believe I can do without offense to our queen, and you wish to pass it to me, you needs but tell me what to do.”

The ogre with the food and drink said simply, “I will bring this inside, and you come with me. I leave, and you kiss the queen on the brow. That is the way of things. Nothing else need be done. She will open her eyes a more fair face than I or my fellow here, and life will move on for all of us.”

“Then I accept the duty.”

It is possible that Ghaolit might have spoken coherent words at some point thereafter, though none can bear witness to such a thing until he finally asked for a damp towel three moon-passings later.

For Ghaolit discovered something as dawn broke and he kissed the brow of the queen—and it was a something that made him gaze darkly at that pair of ogres for decades to come. Only the most hideous servants were picked for this duty. And for good reason.

For the Fertile Queen is a being of passions. Of love and lust. Of pleasures that sometimes border on pain. She spends not a single night without having release at least once, and usually multiple times. Unless it was a night where she had never been awake to begin with.

And she had been slumbering for weeks.

Weeks of boiling passions unspent. Caught in dreams, helpless to achieve the heights she craved.

At first, once the kiss was delivered their queen awoke, the ogres could hear moans of passion. Cries of pleasure. And they suffered through that for several hours, until they heard Ghaolit begin to cry for mercy. For release from the chambers. For succor. Certainly, he cried out in passion, too, from time to time, but the pain gained steady increase. Those were the sounds they were waiting to hear from the idiot brashling who had insulted them.

It was a fortnight later before anyone dared to enter the bedchamber and pull Ghaolit free of the exquisite and mind-rending effect of unrelenting sexual assault upon his person. For one does not refuse the queen. Had she been met with an ugly servant, her awakening would have been without much incident. An hour, two at most, before the warty, misshapen servant began to disgust her, and cause her passions to drain away without harm.

But presented with such a prize as Ghaolit? Young and fresh and comely? She expressed herself fully, and it was the most joyous awakening she had experienced in centuries.

For Ghaolit, it was something more dark, and flavored with passions, but followed by many moon-passings of night terrors. It was a season full before he could stand again. Weeks more after that before he could walk. Nearly a year with the healers before he could function in the household again as a useful servant.

And whenever he passed by the bedchambers of the queen, or caught her gaze around the palace, it was never without an overwhelming series of shivers and quaking on his part.

And even now, many of those were from remembered passion, even if most struck his heart timid and quivering with terror.

Tags: erotica, fantasy sex, sex

Freeze Frame

Freeze Frame

By Smokedawg

Click, Tap. Click, Tap. Click, Tap.

It seemed to Jenna that this was a pretty fair summary of her job. Click buttons, and tap out a report on the keyboard of her computer.

In some respects, she realized, it was an oversimplification, and simply her way of further diminishing the inherently lacking “fulfillment value” of a job she had come to hate with a passion after nearly five years of doing it.

Technology market research, reviews and consulting. Those were the things her boss trafficked in. Those were the things that generated the paychecks that covered her bills and debts. Those were the things that were, right now, simply draining her soul dry.

And, joy of joys, my task today is to test out six damned universal remote controls and write detailed comparative reviews of them by 5 p.m. tomorrow, she moaned inwardly.

No one had the big conference room reserved, and it had the best television and a full set of other electronics, too, so Jenna figured she might as well camp out there with the remotes and her laptop and get the job started.

She grabbed the box of remote controls and instruction manuals, slid her computer under one arm, grabbed her bottle of Diet Pepsi, and headed into the room. Andy was there, and that was unexpected, but he was probably just hiding out from the boss, trying to look busy and really doing nothing.

That, in Jenna’s opinion, was entirely commendable around here.

“Gotta test some remotes, Andy,” she said. “Am I gonna disrupt your work?”

He smiled at her, knowing full well she had figured out he wasn’t doing anything productive, and said, “Won’t bother me, as long as you don’t ask me to help out. I just finished a compare/contrast report on six particularly soul-numbing social networking games, and if that hasn’t started a case of early-onset Alzheimer’s, I don’t know what will.”

Jenna let him return to the magazine he was reading, hidden neatly inside a technical manual, and set out her six remotes.

Six? No, seven, she realized. She looked at the printout of her assignment, and it said six. The seventh remote didn’t even have a brand name that she recognized. Mystere? What kind of company or brand is that?

She fished through the box the remotes had been in, and couldn’t find a manual for mystery item number seven.

The boss is probably fucking with me, Jenna thought. Maybe he wants to reduce headcount and thinks he can weed people out by tripping them up. Well, nice try. I’m going to add this remote into my work, and the lack of a manual isn’t going to trip me up one bit. I’m too good for that, asshole. I may hate my job, but there aren’t many around here as good as me, much less better, and I’m not about to lose my income.

She only wanted to do a quick run through the remotes for now, and try out more advanced functions later. For the initial data, it would be enough just seeing how they felt, how responsive their buttons were, and how well organized and marked the control were. Later today and early tomorrow she could fiddle with the higher-level stuff. So, she slipped a DVD into the video player, a tape in the VHS player, and a CD into the stereo system, and sat down.

Jenna worked her way through the six that were on her official list before picking up the surprise remote control. It felt good. Solid, but lightweight. Very ergonomic. In fact, it almost felt like it had been custom-molded to her hand.

It turned all the equipment on and off just fine, which surprised Jenna. She’d had to program the others with the codes in the manuals so that they’d communicate properly with the various name-brand devices here in the room.

Does this remote have some sort of auto-sensing/auto-programming function? she wondered. If so, that’s going to put it ahead of the other ones right there.

But when she keyed up the menu function, things got strange. On the television in front of her, she was suddenly presented with three menus: Television, Video/Audio Systems, and World.

The last choice was strange, so she selected it out of curiosity.

The World menu displayed two things: “Room” and “Andrew Wilkinson”

“OK, what’s the joke, Andy?” Jenna asked. “Are you the one who slipped this weird remote in the box?”

He glanced up, saw his name on the television screen, and shrugged. “Looks like you’re trying to pull some joke on me, Jenna, but you need to work on your delivery, buddy. Going back to my reading now.”

She frowned, certain that he was just playing dumb about the situation, and turned off the menu. The video she had running in the DVD was still going, and she hit the “pause” button, figuring she’d run back to her desk with the remote, make use of her Internet connection there, and find out if she could locate some information on the device before she continued.

If anyone’s going to try to punk me, I want to know how to punk them back if I can, she thought.

“Well, keep playing dumb, Andy—shouldn’t be too hard,” she said with an amiable chuckle. “I’ll be back.”

He didn’t answer her, and she looked over at him. He was sitting entirely still. His eyes weren’t moving, he wasn’t turning any pages, and he wasn’t acknowledging her.

“Nice mime act. Why don’t you drop it?” she said. He still didn’t move or respond, and she added, “Suit yourself” as she left the room with the remote.

One of their co-workers, Sally, was heading toward her, and asked, “You doing anything major in the conference room, Jenna? I just wanted to go in and grab one of the spec binders.”

“No problem. Just testing some remotes. You can head in.”

As Sally entered the room, Jenna added, “Andy’s being a prankster for some reason, so don’t mind him if he continues to do the statue act.”

“Okaaaay,” Sally said, confused at what Jenna might mean.

Jenna turned around, simply curious to see if Andy was going to drop the frozen-guy routine, and she realized that Sally’s movements were slowing drastically the further she got into the room. Before she was halfway to her destination, she simply stopped in midstep.

You guys are really trying to screw with me today, aren’t you. Is this Pull-a-prank-on-Jenna Day?

She realized, though, that Sally was in a position that no one but a highly trained acrobat or performer could possibly hold without wavering even a little. Jenna watched another minute or two, and still Sally hadn’t moved.

She looked down at the remote control in her hands, thinking of the fact that the last thing she had done was use the Pause button. She looked down the hall, where the receptionist was going about her duties, moving at normal speed. She looked the other direction, and saw someone walk into an office. She looked back to the conference room, where two people seemed frozen in time.

It seemed to Jenna that now would be a good time to freak out, but she didn’t. It was all too…interesting. She aimed the remote at Sally, and pressed Pause again. Suddenly, she was walking again, and Andy dropped his magazine with a startled jerk, as he realized that someone was suddenly and unexpectedly walking right by him.

Jenna stepped back into the conference room, and said, “Hi guys.”

They both turned toward her, about to respond, and Jenna pressed Pause again. They were once again frozen in mid-motion.

Jenna slide aside the panel on the door that revealed the “Room in Use” sign, and she shut the door. She locked it, and she pulled the blinds down on all the windows. Had she stopped time? And why just in this room and not everywhere? She looked up at the clock on the wall. It continued to tick a second at a time. She stepped close to the DVD player, and could still hear the soft whirring of the paused video.

She stepped over to Sally, and raised one of her arms slightly. It gave her some slight resistance, but nothing serious, and it remained where it was—in its new position—when Jenna let it go. She pressed her ear to Sally’s chest, and heard the heart beating more or less normally. She could hear the woman breathing—maybe just a tiny bit slower than normal. She snapped her fingers next to Sally’s ear, and got no response. She stepped over to Andy, pulled out the little flashlight keychain she had, and turned it on, pointing the light at one of his wide open eyes.

The pupil contracted, though it seemed to do so more slowly than she would have expected. She put her fingers to his ribs, and tickled him, and his body shook just a tiny bit, but not as much as she would have expected, knowing how ticklish he was.

One of the reasons Jenna hated her job so much was because she was too intelligent to be holding it. She’d done well in elementary school, junior high and high school—and even better in college. So, she put the pieces together quickly enough. The remote’s Pause button didn’t actually stop time, but it could stop all conscious activity. The more autonomic a bodily function was, like breathing, the more normally it would continue. Semi-autonomic functions like the tickle response would be more sluggish than normal. Conscious awareness and actions were stopped cold.

She stepped back from them just a little, and decided to press Play this time to see if that would end the paused tableau in the same way that hitting Pause again had. It was the way most remotes worked.

“Jesus fuck, Jenna!” Andy exclaimed. “How the hell did you get back in here so fast? What are you, half ninja?”

For a split second, Jenna considered telling him what had happened, but decided that if she did, he’d just call her “half baked” instead of “half ninja.”

Besides, there are some things you just don’t want to share with people, and a remote control that can sort of stop time is one of them, she thought. She stuffed the Mystere remote into her back pocket, loaded up the box with the other remotes and manuals, and hurried back to her desk.

Right before she left, she pulled out the remote and, on a whim, pointed it at the conference room and pressed Stop instead of Pause.

Nothing happened at all. Time marched on, and Andy and Sally continued on their merry ways.

Weird, Jenna thought, and then realized how much of an understatement that thought was, given how weird everything had turned out already.

* * *

Back at her desk, Jenna examined the remote more closely. Like the other universal remotes she had, this one had buttons to shift from television to video player to music system functions—but it also had one that said “Data” right next to them. She pressed it, and she was startled to see her computer monitor switch on from its hibernation. She pressed “Menu” and a menu appeared on her computer monitor similar to the one on the television before. She chose the “World” function and got new choices this time.

At the top of the list was “Jenna Kirkus’ cubicle.” Also on the list were the six closest cubicles around her, all listed by the first and last names of the people who spent their workdays in them.

She selected her cubicle and got another menu listing: Inanimate Objects and Living Things.

She selected Living Things and got a menu listed that read: Jenna Kirkus, Potted Cactus, Vase of Flowers and Spider.

She selected the flowers, and got the options: Life, Appearance, Fragrance.

When she selected Fragrance, she quickly realized that most of the buttons didn’t do anything. But she found out they stopped smelling like anything when she pressed Stop, then the smells returned from them when she pressed Play. She could make them smell more or less intense with the volume control button. But nothing else that she could discern.

The Appearance menu allowed her to change the color balance and contrast of the flowers. She decided that she liked the pale shade of purple that they were now, and left them that way.

Then she chose the Life menu, and pressed the Forward button. Nothing happened at first, and she pressed it again, thinking that perhaps—like a DVD—things would move faster the more times she pressed the button. She thought she saw something happening, then pressed again, and realized the flowers were quickly aging and wilting. She hurriedly pressed Reverse, and watched them return to their previous state, and she continued a while longer until the blossoms began to retreat to a pre-bloomed state.

Then she pressed Stop, and suddenly the vase was filled with dead flowers.

Shit! she thought. Oh my God. The Life menu, and I pressed stop, and their life ended.

No amount of fiddling with Reverse or Forward or Play changed their state, and it slowly dawned on Jenna that once she had the flowers where she wanted them in their lifecycle, she should have pressed Play instead of Stop.

It occurred to Jenna that this might not be the safest item to own.

On the other hand, she didn’t like the idea of someone else having it and accidentally pressing “stop” on her life.

Besides, she realized, never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Before she decided to leave work  with the excuse that she felt sick—which wasn’t entirely untrue, as she felt quite out of sorts and just a little queasy—Jenna called up the Life menu for the Spider that was apparently hiding in her cubicle somewhere, and pressed Stop.

I may never need a boyfriend to kill a bug for me ever again.

* * *

Jenna was not the slightest bit surprised to get home, take the back plate off the remote, and see that it had no batteries.

It certainly wasn’t any stranger than anything else that had happened. She put the remote back together, and started fiddling around.

A little experimenting at home showed Jenna that the only buttons that seemed to do anything without access to a television screen or some kind of monitor were Pause and Play.

But with some kind of screen she could use to call up a menu and use the other buttons, it looked like she could do a whole lot. She didn’t have absolute control over reality—far from it. But she had enough to scare her and thrill her in equal proportions.

Of course she thought about ways in which she could enrich her life and get a better job, or better pay, or eliminate the need to work entirely and do something more deeply fulfilling.

Of course she thought about ways in which she could fix problems in her life with the remote.

Of course she thought of selfish things. She was only human.

But in the end, there was one thing on her mind more than any other. A nagging desire she’d had for over a year to get Andy together with her roommate. Jenna had been trying to play matchmaker with no success for so long now.

That losing record was about to end.

* * *

Jenna liked her co-worker, Andy. Not enough to want to date him, but she liked him. She also liked her roommate, Jessica, and was tired of her string of horrible dates and more horrible relationships.

For her own part, Jenna was happy being alone for the present time. She’d find some guy some other time, but her vibrator and her fingers were sufficient for now. But it irked her that Andy and Jenna wouldn’t take her hints that one should ask out the other.

Andy was too shy.

Jessica was too stubborn.

Well, Jenna knew they’d be great for each other, and now it was time to force the issue.

My two friends are going to find out just how much of a control freak I can be—now that I have this control.

* * *

“What is that shit-eating, cat-got-the-canary grin on your face tonight?” Jessica asked when she came home. “You were home early from work tonight, and you’re acting so weird. What’s up?”

“Nothing that you need to worry about, Jess,” Jenna said. “Just relax. I’ll get some kind of light dinner going while I do some work on my laptop in the kitchen.”

Jenna realized that as much as the remote looked like it could do, particularly to people, it seemed to have very limited control over inanimate objects. Also, it wasn’t the kind of item she could just use on a whim. She had to have a computer or television on, and she had to make sure no one saw the screen or they would know something weird was going on when they saw the menus.

Well, they would if they weren’t paused, at least—but she didn’t figure she always wanted to pause people. It would probably take a bit of time to tweak a person’s settings if she really wanted to do something special, and they might start to notice the lost time if they looked at their watches and wondered where the past 20 minutes, or 40 minutes, or hour or so had gone. Too much chance of freaking people out if she wasn’t careful.

Too much chance of being caught.

So while Jessica had a glass of wine, Jenna turned on the laptop with the remote control, trying to keep her magical device out of sight as much as possible, since it was going to seem very odd to Jess if she was using a remote on a computer.

Jenna was really craving a cigarette at this point, but Jess hated the things and made Jenna smoke outside, and leaving the computer with the menu on wasn’t an option—but she was so eager to get started.

And then she had an idea to solve her nicotine craving and get started on the experiment right away.

Pulling up the menu for Jessica, there were so many submenus available, including Phenotypic Traits, Emotional Status, Psychological Traits, Metabolic Status and more besides. Not only could she change these traits, she noticed, but she could put them on a start/stop timer if she wanted to run them for only a limited period of time of minutes, hours, days or weeks.

She wasn’t looking to earn an amateur degree in biochemistry or physiology any time soon, so she skipped the more complex-looking menus and picked Emotional Status first. She saw a lot of things that could be useful later, but nothing that met her current personal and experimental needs. She did dial the volume up slightly on Calmness and Happiness, though. No need to time-limit those—Jessica could use a little more of both on a constant basis.

Then she pulled up Psychological Traits, and after a little searching, found the perfect setting.

Suggestibility.

Jenna realized that she was breathing heavier now. She was excited. This was so wrong on many levels, but the anticipation was immense. She liked this feeling of control. She was, in fact, becoming a bit aroused, she realized. She wanted to be careful though, so she jotted down the level at which Jessica’s suggestibility was naturally set, which was pretty low, then she put it up the maximum.

Then she licked her lips, sucked and bit on her lower lip a little, feeling her nipples press against her bra, and she hit Pause.

Jessica sat there, music playing in the background, glass of wine in hand, utterly still.

Jenna fetched her cigarettes, lighter and ashtray, and sat down next to her roommate on the couch.

She sat close to her, and felt a nervous and delicious anticipation. It felt like the moment before a first kiss. She leaned in close to Jessica’s ear, and whispered softly, “I want you to listen to me carefully. Hear my words and trust me. I know best for you, Jessica, and I have a suggestion to make life so much better around here. You’re going to like it. I’m going to like it. And you’re going to like it even more because it makes me happy.”

Jenna squirmed a little, and readjusted her position. She was hot, she realized.

She was wet.

And throbbing.

All from knowing she had control.

She needed to be careful about her wording, though. Jenna remembered a somewhat kinky boyfriend once who had been entirely too aroused about her smoking and not enough about her. She didn’t want to tweak Jess the wrong way and give her some heavy weirdness with smoking, and she didn’t want to turn the woman into a smoker either.

“Jess, I like to smoke, and I want to be able to smoke in the apartment. You want that, too, because it will make things less tense around here,” she whispered softly into the woman’s ear, her lips just brushing the skin there. “In fact, you’ll want to let me smoke anywhere I want to, even if you’re around.”

Jenna paused, and touched herself between her thighs, and stifled a moan. God this was good!

“Jess, I know you haven’t liked smoking before, but you’re having a sudden change of heart about it. It doesn’t really bother you anymore. You’re not sure if you actually like it, but you realize now that you don’t hate it. It’s OK, and it doesn’t smell bad to you or make you cough or irritate you when I smoke.”

Jenna pulled out one of her cigarettes, and lit it up.

“Jess,” she said after her first exhale. “You won’t worry about warning me about the health effects of smoking. You’ve lost the desire to lecture me about smoking. You’re happy to just let me do it when I want, and let me be a smoker. You don’t have to like anyone else’s smoking if you don’t want to, Jess, if I’m not around. But you realize now that if I’m around you, and I’m smoking, then it’s OK to be around smoke, and you can be as happy as you would be even if no one was smoking.”

Jenna fed her roommate similar suggestions in between drags, and when she finished her cigarette, she stubbed it out, emptied the ashtray, and put it away.

She returned to the couch, and added, “I’m going to invite Andy over sometime soon, Jess, and you won’t mind a bit. In fact, you’ll be cool with the idea. You’ll want to stick around while he’s here.”

Jenna started to get up, and then hesitated. “Oh, and Jess, you really like vacuuming and dusting the place two or three times a week just to keep things fairly tidy. You’re not a neat freak, of course, but you like to do those two chores every few days.”

Might as well unload my two most hated chores while I’m at it, Jenna thought.

She returned to the kitchen, turned the stove back on to continue simmering the chicken breasts and veggies, and then pressed Pause.

Jessica took a sip of her wine, looked over toward Jenna, and smiled warmly.

She didn’t complain about the unmistakable scent of cigarette smoke in the air, but she did note, “Wow! Didn’t realize you had managed to sneak a smoke over there, Jenna. No reason to be secretive about it. I’m having second thoughts on that issue. You pay half the rent here, and I don’t see any problem with you smoking.”

Jessica then ran her finger across the edge of the lamp on the side table, and frowned. “I think I should do some dusting tomorrow.”

Jenna smiled, pressed Play with the menu still up, just to be sure the changes kept running—realizing she’d need to test things in the future to figure out if that part was necessary, then she put Jessica’s suggestibility settings back to normal, closed the menu, and turned off the computer with the remote. Then she turned the laptop back on manually to use it the way the manufacturer intended.

She crossed her fingers, took out the ashtray and cigarettes again, and lit up.

Jessica didn’t complain.

“Hey, Jess, when you dust tomorrow, would you mind vacuuming, too?” Jenna asked as a cloud of smoke drifted in the air between them, heading slowly toward her much more amenable roommate.

“No problem, Jenna,” she answered sweetly. “I was planning to anyway.”

* * *

It occurred to Jenna that she could just mess with Jessica’s suggestibility some more and get her to think of Andy in a more attractive light.

She realized she could do the same to Andy to overcome his reluctance to take the hints and ask Jessica out.

But that didn’t seem like near as much fun as the scenario she had come up with instead, and the virtue of the more drawn-out plan—in which Jenna would have to do a bit more detailed work and exert some personal effort—was that it might bring them together more naturally, and let their real personalities mesh in a more organic fashion.

Besides, it was going to a be a lot more deliciously dirty fun to do it this way, Jenna realized, especially since she hadn’t really gotten around to working off the arousal over the tinkering she did with Jessica’s mind last night.

“Hey, Andy, you doing anything tonight?” she asked at work.

“Nah,” he said.

“Come on over, then. I’ve got beers, Chinese food delivery and movies on the agenda. It was going to just be me and my roommate, but I thought I might invite a couple other folks over.”

“Sure,” Andy said. “What time?”

“Be there at 7,” Jenna answered, but didn’t tell him that he would, in fact, be the only guest there.

* * *

Beer. Wine. Chips. Dip. Cheese. Fruit.

Everything bought fresh today.

Including the shiny new vibrator, currently hidden in one of the drawers in the kitchen.

I could have used my own, I suppose, but that just seems a bit too dirty, Jenna thought. I really shouldn’t share that with anyone but a boyfriend.

“So, when is your buddy from work arriving?” Jessica asked.

“Soon.”

“And why are you inviting him over again? Is this another one of your attempted match-ups?”

“Figured it would be nice to have some company. You’ve never hung out with him. He’s cool. You’ll like him. Why? Are you bothered he’s coming over?” Jenna asked, worried that perhaps her earlier suggestions to Jessica were wearing off or something. That wouldn’t be cool. She had hoped they’d be permanent.

“No, not bothered at all. I’m cool with him being over. Kind of like the idea of maybe having another bud if he’s as cool as you say,” Jessica said. “Just don’t want you to play matchmaker.”

Jenna smiled, happy to see that nothing had changed from the original suggestions she had made when Jessica was compliant and paused. “Oh, I won’t be trying to get you two together,” Jenna said.

I’ll be succeeding.

* * *

As Jenna expected, they all got along quite well, and Jessica and Andy had plenty to talk about. They both liked a lot of the same bands and the same movies and had most of the same social and political leanings. They had different taste in food and outdoor activities, but shit, that just gave them some places to teach each other new things.

Of course, Jess will never make a move on him, and if Andy makes a move on her, she’ll just stubbornly reject him for the next toxic guy on her list, Jenna realized with absolutely no surprise. Oh, if I keep them hanging out, they might get together months or years down the line, but I’ve already been too many months patient as it is. Time to get busy.

They had already finished the first movie and the second one was starting. If Jenna had her way, it wouldn’t get watched, and she had both the normal DVD remote and her special new one ready for action.

Casually, almost distractedly, she pressed Pause on the Mystere remote and then looked up to see her two friends frozen in place. Then she paused the movie with the normal remote control, and turned on her laptop with the Mystere remote.

Let’s see, we’ll ratchet up the suggestibility on both of you a little bit, though I don’t need it too high, I think, with the other things on the agenda, Jenna considered. Ah, there…a menu for Sensory Input. Let’s make tactile inputs more intense. Smell needs to be boosted quite a bit more. Taste, too.

And now we’re ready.

Jenna reached into the drawer, pulled out the vibrator, and sauntered over to Jessica first of all. The whole idea of what she planned to do was so naughty. So wrong. And yet it felt so right—or at least it felt good, and that was enough for Jenna.

“Jessss-iii-caaa,” Jenna said softly, turning on the vibrator, and touching it to one of Jess’ nipples. With the senses turned up on her body, even with the Pause function working, her body responded quickly to the stimulation. “Jessie, Jessie, Jessie…you really should pay more attention to that nice mouth on Andy. Not just the cool words that come out of it, but those lips. Those would be great lips to kiss. Give it some thought,” she finished, as she ran the vibrator between her roommate’s breasts, down over her belly, and let it linger just a little while on Jessica’s sex, with only the material of her thin jeans and panties in the way.

I should feel really weird about this, Jenna considered, because I don’t have a thing for girls at all. But it feels so good to play her body like an instrument in my little concert here.

She almost skipped over to where Andy was sitting, and let the vibrator buzz along his neck, then let it settle on the inner edge of one thigh, not touching his cock or balls—but oh so close.

“Andy, take some interest in Jess. Maybe nothing too obvious, but stay aware. Realize how sexy she is. Make sure you understand that she might not be interested at first. But she will be. Just give it time.”

She wandered back to the kitchen, turned the movie back on, and un-paused Andy and Jessica.

They continued talking where they had left off, though both of them seemed distracted and just a tiny bit confused at first. They continued in the same amiable vein they had been, but she could sense something a little different now, couldn’t she?

The way that Jessica touched her neck a little here and there as she talked. The way she tilted her head. The way that Andy seemed to be leaning toward her a bit more.

She let it continue for a while. They didn’t seem too bothered by her absence from the room. She let them talk and joke and bond a little.

Then she paused them again, and walked over to return to the project, with the vibrator as her tool.

She opened Jessica’s blouse, and let the vibrator stimulate her with only the bra in the way now. Jess’ breathing was heavier now. Jenna could smell the first faint stirrings of true arousal from between her roommate’s legs. Now, Jenna really did feel a bit weird, but it still felt good. It was like she was slowly cooking a feast for Andy as she toyed with Jess. And this was a meal who was going to enjoy being cooked up.

A drop of sweat formed at the top of Jessica’s chest, and then another, and a third—then it was a tiny rivulet of liquid flowing down into the front clasp of the bra. Jenna made slow circles of one areola with the buzzing tip of the vibrator, then let it linger for a while on the nipple itself, which swelled and pressed outward against the thin material of the bra—a tiny nubbin of flesh becoming hard and thick and hungry for someone’s lips, tongue or teeth.

Jenna moved over to the other breast, and repeated the process. After a while, she could clearly smell the musk of Jessica’s sex, and that reminded her where she really wanted Jess’ mind now. She slid the vibrator against the jean-covered pussy of her friend, pressed the legs together to hold it in place, and let it gently and loudly oscillate against her.

“Andy makes you kind of hot, you’re starting to realize. You’re wondering if he might just possibly be good for your mind and your heart and your cunt,” Jenna whispered, then moved over to Andy.

It was naughty, she knew, but she only had bought one vibrator, and still really didn’t want to use her own on either of her friends—and for now, she wanted it right where it was, against Jessica’s pussy, as thoughts of Andy ricocheted through her mind softly and quietly.

So naughty what I’m going to do, and I will probably never do it again since I just don’t see him that way, but it’s for a good cause.

She went behind the chair on which Andy was seated, and licked him behind one ear. Then she nibbled on one earlobe, and sucked on it softly. Slowly. Wetly. Gently. “Hear that buzzing? It’s a vibrator between Jessica’s legs, and she’s thinking of you. Soon, you’ll be wanting to kiss her and make love to her. Not yet. But soon. You’ll know when. I’ll help you.”

Jenna let her hand slide down inside Andy’s shirt to toy with the hair of his chest. To pinch his nipples slightly as she licked the side of his neck, then ran her tongue back up to his earlobe. “And you want her so badly, don’t you? You don’t just want her body. You want her. You want to make her happy. In so many ways.”

Slowly, Jenna disengaged, and went back to Jessica. She slid the vibrator out from its perch at the entrance to Jessica’s sex, turned it off, and buttoned her roommate’s blouse back up again. She returned to the kitchen and realized she had forgotten to pause the movie.

“Not that I expect either one of them will notice, but I’ll remember that next time,” Jenna said to herself. Then she un-paused them and let them talk, more distracted now than before. Their words seemed to be distracted, at least—as far as attention, they seemed increasingly riveted on one another.

Jenna did the apply-lather-rinse-repeat process with their libidos and desires a few more times, loving the way their demeanors changed and heated up each time, before she prepared for the final act.

* * *

Jessica was hot. She could feel a blazing inferno between her legs. She was trying to talk sensibly, and Andy seemed engaged with what she was saying, but it didn’t seem like she could possibly be making any sense.

Why am I feeling this way? It can’t be Andy. I mean, he’s cool, but he’s not my type. Then again, when was the last time my “type” lasted?

It felt nice. It felt right. She almost touched her clit through her jeans, and barely stopped her traitorous fingers.

* * *

Andy wasn’t surprised that he found Jessica attractive; he was a man. He wasn’t surprised that he found her engaging; she was charming and intelligent.

But the intensity of his feelings for her was surprising.

It seemed to be coming upon him in furious waves. It was a tidal force. Her presence consumed him.

And it was increasingly difficult to keep his erection hidden.

* * *

Jenna had them so worked up now after a few more sessions of teasing that when she paused them this last time and turned on the vibrator, Jessica’s hips slowly gyrated and her hips thrust ever so softly and slowly moments later as she heard the sound—while Andy cock began to slowly rise in a similar Pavlovian reaction.

Last time, my friends, Jenna thought, and then it’s all up to you.

This last part of the process, though, was so much more involved. After all, it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to divest a woman of her pants when her body is more or less frozen in space. Dead weight was dead weight, and it took a bit of wrangling to get those jeans down past Jessica’s ankles without knocking the woman totally out of position. The panties were easier, and Jenna couldn’t help but notice how wet they were.

Not simply damp, but soaking. They almost glistened in the dim light of the room, and they smelled musky and sweaty—but in a very good way. Jenna felt her own labia tingle at the thought of how sexual all this was. How much arousal was in this room. Her nostrils flared at the perfume of sex around her and couldn’t resist slipping her fingers into her own sex. Just briefly. Just a minute or two of…

Ohhhhh. Godddd. That feels good. That feels niiiice.

As tempting as it was, she refrained from getting caught up and finishing herself off. She withdrew her damp fingers, licked them clean, and returned her attention to the pussy to which she was supposed to be attending: Jessica’s.

Jenna finished pulling off her roommate’s underwear and then draped the sticky, slippery cotton panties over one of Jess’ naked thighs. She admired the woman’s mostly shaved vagina, with the lips so clearly delineated. So creamy and shining. So moist and fragrant. So full and…

How hot were they?

Jenna felt a little flutter in her belly as she gave into temptation, and ran her finger along Jessica’s labia, then sniffed at her moist digit.

Very warm indeed, she noted, then did it again, letting her finger dip inside what she soon discovered was a searing and slippery furnace of desire. She shook her head, pulled out her finger, and wiped it off on one of Jenna’s thighs. She wasn’t disgusted; in fact, she was almost embarrassed and certainly flustered about her own heady response to another woman’s body.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to check out another woman sometime in between boyfriends.

Pulling herself together, Jenna slipped the still-buzzing vibrator slowly into Jess’ vagina, feeling very pleased at the tiny, almost inaudible moan this generated from the paused woman. She rotated it a few times, then moved it in and out in languid spiral, twisting her roommate to greater peaks of pleasure.

Then she slid it in as far as it could go, leaned over, and whispered, “Jessica, think of how much better things like this will feel when you have a boyfriend who doesn’t piss you off. When you date a guy that you know I already like. When there is something between the guy’s head and not just between his legs.”

Slide. Slip. Twirl.

Moist. Hot. Redolent.

“You should really consider being done with guys who are no good for you. You should trust my judgment on matters of the heart. You should take some good advice from your roommate on picking a man.”

The vibrator buzzed between soft, smooth, barely gyrating thighs. The air filled with desire and anticipation and things that made passions rise.

“It’s up to you from here on out. Make a good choice,” Jenna said, and pulled the vibrator out so slowly that she had two more minutes to whisper encouragements into Jessica’s open mind. She pulled the panties back on and the jeans back up, and patted the jean-clad pussy of her roommate as she softly and warmly told her, “Remember now…”

Then a few steps over to where Andy was. Jenna considered pulling his penis out of his pants, but worried about making him come. She didn’t want him spent. And even though she had whispered plenty of encouragements to him earlier about lasting long and being in control of his cock—if not his passions—she didn’t want to take chances.

She turned off the vibrator, then touched the wet tip of it just above Andy’s mouth.

“That’s the smell of your next lover’s pussy, Andy. Maybe your last lover ever if the two of you play your cards right. That’s the smell of heaven.”

Jenna turned the vibrator around a bit and ran the length of it under Andy’s nose, just barely letting it touch his skin. Just barely letting it mark him with a musky and slippery trail that would leave Jessica’s scent burned into his memory as events continued to unfold.

“Don’t come on too strong, Andy, but do know what you want. And seize it. Just seize it slowly…unless she seizes you first, in which case let the river of desire sweep you away.”

Oh, fuck it. Why not? she thought, and undid the front of his pants, pulled out his cock, and put her mouth around it. She licked him for a minute or so, then massaged it gently and firmly with her fingers, and gave the head of it a quick peck with her lips before she slipped it back inside its home.

“Your new lover’s mouth will feel even better than mine, Andy. My mouth isn’t yours. Hers is. And your cock isn’t mine. It belongs to her.”

* * *

When she began the movie again, and un-paused them, Jenna felt like she was caught at the edge of some kind of sexual whirlpool. It was time to go. It was time to let nature take its course, now that she had jumpstarted things.

Jenna said, “Shit. I’m out of cigarettes.”

Both her roommate and her co-worker looked toward her, but their eyes seemed reluctant to be there. They seemed hungry to be somewhere else.

Hopefully on each other’s eyes—and other parts of your bodies, Jenna wished silently.

“This late, I only know of one place open that I know for sure has my brand, dammit,” Jenna said with feigned irritation—after all, she really still had two packs unopened. “It’s gonna take me 15 or 20 minutes just to get there. Oh, well, I’m not feeling the movie that much anyway. Will you guys be OK while I’m gone?”

Though they didn’t use the same words, Jenna was so pleased to hear them both give—in unison—their eager confirmation that they would be more than OK.

Jenna shut her laptop computer down after resetting her two friends’ senses and suggestibility back to normal—more or less—then put the remote control into her purse and quietly slipped out the door, noting as she left that Jessica had slid closer to where Andy was sitting, and Andy was leaning toward her more than ever before.

* * *

Jenna stayed gone for nearly an hour, sitting in a bar nursing a drink and getting more aroused the more she thought about what she had done—and what her two friends might be doing right now.

I should feel guilty, shouldn’t I? So why do I feel empowered instead? Why do I feel so good?

She looked at the remote control in her purse, and smiled.

And why am I pretty sure I’ll be getting a lot of use out of you in the years to come?

When Jenna got back to her car, she lighted up a cigarette, and smoked it leisurely, wondering what other lives she might tinker with in the weeks to come. What ways she might enrich her own life.

She began to touch herself through her jeans, and then slipped her fingers inside them and rode herself hard and fast, her fingers pushing deep past the light bush of her pubic hair and into her hot, sticky center. She put out the cigarette after one last inhale, and groaned in pent-up arousal and the promise of a quick release.

Quicker and dirtier than I like normally, but I have to relieve this pressure. I have to make the dam break soon.

A minute or two later, she came hard against her fingers, squirting just a little, and crying out like she hadn’t in a long time.

Then she had a post-orgasm smoke to bring her back down to Earth, and returned home.

* * *

Jenna slipped back into the apartment quietly. The lights were still on, but the television was off, and no one was in the living room. She could hear sounds from Jess’ bedroom, though, and she slipped stealthily in that direction. When she got to her roommate’s door, she thought about continuing past it but paused, and then pushed it open, holding the remote and pressing Pause.

Inside, she saw Jessica and Andy frozen in the act of mutual oral sex, and Jenna thought that the number 69 had never been as beautiful as it was right now.

The sheets were a tangled mess, half on the bed and half on the floor. Jessica’s hair was in a sexily tangled disarray, and Andy’s chest glistened with a light sheen of perspiration. His cock was halfway in Jessica’s mouth, and a little bit of spittle was now running down his shaft, and his tongue was deep inside Jess’ puffy and sticky labia, and his nose nestled in the base of her ass.

Jenna breathed deep, and realized she was horny again. That she needed to give herself a slower and more intense self-fucking than she had in the car.

She looked down at the remote control in her hand, and saw something in the semi-darkness that she hadn’t noticed in her earlier experimentation with pausing someone. The frame-by-frame button was glowing faintly, and blinking slowly and softly.

Without hesitation, not sure what she would say if they noticed her, she decided to try it out. She couldn’t resist. Curiosity was as strong as her sexual desire right now.

She pressed the button.

Jessica and Andy were moving and pleasuring one another, but in a sort of slow-motion manner. It was a little jumpy and choppy, but still so hot to watch. So beautiful. So sexy.

Jenna stood there, enraptured, unable to tear her eyes from this gorgeous and arousing culmination of her efforts tonight. When Jessica’s head came up, and her eyes turned briefly toward her, Jenna froze in a panic.

But Jessica said nothing.

Jessica hadn’t seen her.

Emboldened, Jenna walked right up next to them, and let her hand hover just over Jessica’s ass. Then she leaned in to peer at what Andy was doing to her dripping sex with his mouth.

They couldn’t see her. Jenna was getting the slow-motion X-rated show of her life, and they had no awareness of her. She even cleared her throat at one point, and neither noticed. She touched Andy’s warm thigh, and he didn’t react.

So Jenna stayed, and watched them do what she had wanted them to do for ages. She couldn’t bring herself to leave, and so she pulled out the vibrator from her purse—the one she had used on them, and sighed, turning it on, and slipping its already sullied wonderfulness into her eager pussy. She made love to herself softly, slowly and intently while her friends finished their oral exams, Andy turned Jessica around and began to slide up and down the cleft of her pussy with his rampant cock—and they moved on the finals.

And Jenna loudly, wetly and happily finished up with them before she returned herself to her room and them to normal speed and full awareness, and to presumably to find more things to do to each other perhaps—even if it was just to cuddle. But she suspected they’d have other ideas for a while yet.

She found more uses for her own vibrator before she went to sleep, and conjured more ideas of how to be closer to her two friends. Often.

With Jenna in control.

—————————————–

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

Just a bit of backstory for this tale, if anyone is interested. Mostly, I write smoking fetish erotica, whether at my own blog (http://betterwithsmoke.wordpress.com) or occasionally at the discussion board Smoking Fetish Kingdom (http://smokingfetishkingdom.com/). Some of my all-time best stories I owe to plot suggestions from a former smoking fetish author who goes by the name Blackbladder online.

In fact, one of his story suggestions, for a piece called “Picture Perfect,” ended up being so good once I ran with it that readers asked for a sequel or two, and when I realized that even a trilogy wasn’t enough, it grew well beyond the original concept to become an kind of epic which, as of June, 8, 2010 (which is the date I am writing these words) was already up to part 14 and on track to likely exceed 20 chapters ultimately. At between 4,000 and 7,000 words per chapter, I seem to have a fetish erotica novel on my hands, really, LOL.

I mention this in part out of respect for Blackbladder and some key inspirations he has provided for me, but also because the “Picture Perfect” series inspired me to want to set other stories in the same “Modern Gods” milieu (to find out more about my various “worlds” in which my fiction takes place, including the Modern Gods setting, you can go to the page http://betterwithsmoke.wordpress.com/my-fictional-worlds/ on my blog)

The story you just read above, “Freeze Frame,” takes place in the same Modern Gods universe as “Picture Perfect.” Moreover, this was another example of a story idea that came to me from Blackbladder. Except that in this case, I decided to pass on the smoking fetish angles he suggested (even though smoking does play a strong role in a couple scenes in the story) because I didn’t want it to become “Picture Perfect” with a remote control instead of a digital camera. And I modified some other things slightly.

If you’re curious, this is the original idea Blackbladder e-mailed me:

FREEZE FRAME

Jenna works for a market research company, and often has to try out products before writing reports to her boss. Hating her job, she is constantly on the lookout for a new career path. During a project in which she tests the best TV controllers, she comes across one controller which seems to stop time around her – including others. As she discovers the advantages of stopping time via the controller, she also learns that she can manipulate others who are ‘frozen’ until she presses ‘play’. Being a passionate smoker, she wastes no time in using this controller to ‘reset’ her work colleagues, family and friends to her advantage.

Tags: erotica, mind control fetish, sex

Waiting for Her

There are horrific “sensual” aspects to this story that some might find titillating, but I wouldn’t really classify it as erotica. Also, while this story is very much in the same vibe as “zombie” style stories, particularly “zombie apocalypse” style ones, it’s not precisely in that genre, though I tagged it as such anyway.

Waiting for Her

By Smokedawg

Father and son stood atop the hill. It was a commanding position, had they been in any position to defend their position against an attack.

But as it was—armed with a half-loaded 9mm pistol, a nicked machete, a surgically sharp meat cleaver, a club wrapped in barbed wire and a sawed-off shotgun with just one shell remaining—they weren’t in a position to defend much more than their honor.

No, their position now was just to have a commanding view. The valley before them, stretching for miles. The sea at their back, and Renaldo’s freighter waiting just off the coast for them.

“She’ll come,” the father said.

“What if…” the son began.

“She’ll come,” he repeated.

They stood in silence a while longer, and the son recalled the throngs of the Changed. Their eyes moist and black and soulless…

No, not soulless, the young man realized. But filled with something alien. A hunger and drive and compulsion beyond hunger. Something almost mesmerizing in its depth and intensity. Abyssal depths into which one’s will might pour, like a bucket of water down a bottomless pit.

“They’re out there. In the trees and mists, Dad. What if she…”

“She’ll come,” he said again. “I promised her we would meet her. Wait for her. She’s your mother, goddammit! We wait.”

“I’m scared!” the son snapped, the realization dawning on him with a tsunami’s ferocity that he would never go to a homecoming dance. Likely never attend a college. Possibly never marry. Never have a child. Maybe never grow old.

At least not as a human.

“We’ve been scared a long time,” the father said. His tone held love, but also a rebuff. “Embrace the fear. Or just get used to it. You should have done one or the other by now.”

“I haven’t had time to think about it. We’ve been running hard since we got the transmission from that Renaldo guy,” the son responded, knowing that this wasn’t the time to seek sympathy or emotional support from his father. “I haven’t had time to think of anything since…”

“She’s gone. We can’t change that.”

“She was my sister!”

“She was my daughter,” the father said, and tears shined briefly in his eyes before he clamped them down. The son knew that holding fast was all his father had left. He’d failed one child; he was determined not to fail another. Or his wife, for that matter.

The young man recalled, against his will, his last view of his sister, less than a week ago. At least four sets of arms, and at least three slick tendrils as well, pulling her through the previously barricaded window, the splinters of the broken wood scratching at her skin. But she didn’t scream. Their touch had already reached her mind, dulled it. Glass fragments from what little remained of the panes drew out little lines of blood, but she didn’t cry. Her consciousness was now in thrall.

Their fluids were all over her skin by then, tendrils and fingers in her mouth. Touching at her eyes. Perhaps dipping into other places more intimate where the contagion would be quickly absorbed into the blood.

It was a trick of his fears, he knew at the time, when he thought he saw her eyes darken to black. Just the shadows, he realized now. The change doesn’t happen that fast.

Not quite that fast, anyhow. A day or two. Quick enough.

“Stop thinking about it,” the father chided gently. Or as gently as he could, anyway, as his voice still held a metallic rasp as he said the words.

“If I don’t think about it now, I’ll just dream about it later,” the son countered. What little sleep he had gotten for the past several days was filled with things that, as bad as they were, still weren’t as bad as what was happening to this country and the people in it. However many were still people, anyway. “Any idea if it’s spread?” the young man asked, grasping for a topic that might take his mind off his sister’s eyes turned black and her skin glistening and gray-sheened.

“Renaldo said there were bunches of reports in Central America. A few in Canada. He thinks it probably hasn’t gotten to Europe yet. Or Asia. They act like animals. Smart animals, but still animals. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough that they won’t know how to fly planes or navigate ships. Then we only lose the Americas.”

Below them, the son saw a lone figure emerge in the late afternoon sun.

“There,” he told his father.

The older man—not old yet, but his eyes were ancient now—put the binoculars to his eyes, lingered on the view for a long time. He put them down again, and sighed. He said nothing.

“Mom?”

“It’s her, son,” the father said, nodding. His voice was so calm, and all at once, the tension seemed to flow out of the older man. He handed his son the binoculars, and turned to walk down the hill toward his wife. “Go to the ship and head out with Renaldo, son.”

“Dad?”

His father turned back to him, his eyes firm. “Go now.”

“You and mom are going to meet…”

“Go. Now.”

His father handed over his pack and his weapons to his son, and then headed down the hill, slowly.

Heart hammering and fingers twitching, the son raised the binoculars up to look at his mother. When he did, it was as if she knew he was watching, as she seemed to stare right at him.

Eyes black as Hell. Blouse torn half off and a breast mostly exposed to view. Skin gray as a stormy twilight. Glistening and wet. Inviting in some obscene, succulent way.

“Dad! No! She one of them!”

His father stopped, looked at his son. “Changed. One of the Changed.”

“Yes!” the son said, then suddenly realized his father hadn’t asked a question. He knew. He was making a statement. “Dad?”

“I promised I wouldn’t leave her behind, son,” he said. “I won’t.”

The man continued down the hill. The son stood there, transfixed by the terrible motif. Watched as his father approached his mother. No, the Changed woman. As her arms spread wide, offering an embrace. As his father stepped into that embrace and kissed his once-wife deeply, re-consummating their marriage anew in a hellish bond. Her glistening fingers of her hands reached up to touch the corners of his eyes almost tenderly. Then the fingers of both hands dipped into his pants to touch the tip of his cock, no doubt; to delve into his anus as well.

The Changed were nothing if not thorough, the son considered.

The son watched with sick fascination as his father gave himself to the beginnings of the change, knowing that his will was soft now, and he would go where they went, and the son wondered if they were still husband and wife; father and mother. Or if they were simply one in the hoard and one on the way to joining it.

The son hovered on the edge of a decision.

Wondered if the world Renaldo was headed for was even his anymore.

Or if his world should be with his family. Here.

“Brother,” came the soft, damp whisper of a voice from off to his right. Black eyes of his sister. Slick, wet skin hovering between the shades of amber and gray.

He hovered, too. And wondered if he should run.

Or embrace his sister.

Tags: horror, zombie apocalypse, zombies

The Fair Folk

The Fair Folk

By Smokedawg

“Once more, Evin. Repeat it back to me,” Haladrin said.

“Maestro Haladrin, I am an adept. I’ve not been an apprentice for many moons. I know the litany.”

“Adept,” Haladrin said with affectionate contempt. “That’s the stage when a young man is most like to start making the stupidest mistakes. Recite it.”

Evin shrugged and sighed. “In the lands of the Fey, when they offer, drink naught or be caught. When they offer, eat naught or be caught. And accept not gift or service either, unless you offer something finer. To fail at these is to invite shame, around one’s neck a silver chain.”

“Remember that well, Adept Evin, in your first journey to the Fey Lands,” the master of the Luministrum told him. “Only one at a time of the Luministrum may walk the Russet Road, and the task falls to you to make the journey this time. Deliver my boon to the Sylvan Duke and return with the scroll he will give you. Tarry not, and return to us whole.”

Evin nodded respectfully, then made a formal half-bow to his maestro, and slipped into the crack the cellar wall—that crack being one of the thin places between the Realms. No one got fat or remained so in the Luministrum if they wanted to become an adept or rise even higher. Because one of the requirements of being an adept was running errands in the Fey Realms at times, and Maestro Haladrin insisted that to make that crack in the wall larger would be to risk the integrity of the magic that allowed them to pass back and forth between the two worlds.

Within moments, Evin was through it, and stepping out of an almost identical crack in a huge, gnarled tree in the Fey Realms. He had expected to feel something, passing between worlds, but there was no sensation—neither physical nor mental nor magical. He might as well have walked through the door of his tiny bedchamber.

The sight that greeted him confirmed that he was in the Fey Realms, though. All the colors were brighter, almost painful to the human eye, and the scents and smells around him almost seemed to be living things themselves.

“Hexen. Hexus. Ignis. Diumarthe,” he intoned, so that he might pass by the Wards that guarded their passage here to and from the Fey Lands. And then he stepped onto the rust-colored, smooth cobbles of the Russet Road and began his long journey.

As he walked, he spied a few worn little tents and hippogriff-drawn wagons along the way. The Fair Folk in them wearily plied their trade, trying to entice him over. Nothing they offered was tempting, neither food nor drink nor baubles. Capturing a mortal would have been great victory for any of them and elevated them to a much higher standard of living, but how many mortals walked this way who were so foolish as that? Instead, Evin realized, they would be forced to eke out a living trading with other Fair Folk who traveled the road.

An hour later, he saw many fewer sellers, until finally there were none at all, and he walked that solitary, lonely part of the Fey landscape for easily three hours, perhaps more. Hard to tell in this Realm, where the passage of the sun and the moon were almost random, and telling the time as a non-native was nearly impossible.

Then, finally, he reached the Glorious Rise, where he could look down into the Silver Valley and see the Demesne of the Sylvan Duke far in the distance. Grander pavilions and wagons could be seen below—the places of buying and selling of the more prosperous sylphs, elves, dryads, fauns and other Fair Folk of the Realm.

Now was the time to eat the food he had brought. He was tired and hungry after so much journeying, and some of the foods and drinks down the road might tempt him if he were too hungry. A famished man in the Fey Lands could easily be ensorcelled by the scent of some sweet cake or bubble bread or something elsewise if he were hungry enough. Even with knowledge of the risks, it could tempt.

He slipped the small cloth-wrapped bundle from inside his tunic, and opened it to pull out a couple biscuits and a piece of hard cheese. Without warning, something sped by him, and the entire bundle of food was yanked from his grasp. He barely saw the creature, but was certain it was a boggart. Before it could get out of sight and hearing range, Evin called out, “I adjure thee, boggart! Halt and approach!”

The creature skidded to a halt and half-sneered, half-smiled at the adept. “Not as fleet as I once was, I suppose, or your tongue and eyes are very quick among men,” it said. “Never before has a traveler stopped me afore I was well away.”

Ignoring the attempt at conversation, which was probably just a ploy to waste Evin’s time long enough that the boggart could then ignore the adjuration, the adept told the creature, “You have taken what is mine, and were too slow to make away with it. So you have initiated a trade. Give me something of equal or greater value to my bundle and all that is in it, or return it to me as you took it and leave me to harass my journey no more.”

“Do I appear to have pockets or adornment, save a loincloth that still smells of the faun whom I took it from?” the boggart asked snidely. “Take the bundle, and be done with me.”

With that, the creature tossed it back to Evin, and the now loosely tied bundle spilled open. A dozen Fell Crows swooped down from the trees and began to squabble over the food before Evin could shoo them away. All he managed to salvage was three-quarters of a biscuit and some dried apples, and he wolfed them down quickly as he heard the boggart’s fading cackle as it ran away.

“You were following me for some time waiting for your chance to take something from me, weren’t you boggart?” Evin muttered to himself. “Be thankful I don’t have the luxury, energy or time to hunt you down for that.”

Evin would have to hope that the food was enough for now. He took a long pull on one of his watersacks, more than he needed to quench his thirst, in order to help fill his belly. On the way back home, when there was time to use scrying spells, he would locate mundane food that he could safely eat, either from the land itself or a vendor, before he passed by these tents and wagons a second time.

For now, he simply had to trust that he could safely navigate his first pass through them.

Within an hour, Evin had lost count of the number of times that he had been offered food and drink. Some of the Fair Folk were bold, almost pushing plates and tins and baskets into his face to tempt him with the alluring scents. Or bottles redolent with elven wines or gnomish ales.

His stomach cramped and twisted in complaint whenever he refused, but to take such food or drink would earn him slavery here, and a mortal could live for centuries in the Fey Lands. Evin had no desire for such a life.

“Free poppy cookies for the weary traveler, smeared with honeyed cream and topped with a sour berry.”

“Taste my amber stew, full of willyweeds and lotus blossoms. It melts upon the tongue, sings as it goes down your gullet, and dances seductively in your belly.”

“Grape cake with molasses-and-elderberry frosting. Filled with a rum-and-raisin ripple.”

“Cherry wine with sour blossoms, or chocolate-tinged beer with honey dumplings, if you prefer.”

On and on, an endless litany of delights that assailed not only his ears but his nose, filling his lungs with the most tantalizing scents that he could almost taste on his tongue.

And then the other hawkers, offering him magical trinkets or ancient runestones or faerie dragon eggs or whatnot. Those things were easy for him to resist, but all of their noise and pitches muddled his head and made it harder to ward off the vendors of food and drink. He suspected they knew that, and worked together unofficially to wear out the travelers down this road.

Finally, he was through them, and no silver chain around his neck. Closer to the Sylvan Duke’s actual demesne, the merchants were bound by stricter codes and Evin could find a way to eat and restock safely before he made the trek back. A belly just a little too full of mundane food would be his best defense.

As he neared the final few minutes of his journey to the duke’s gate, Evin heard singing. He immediately threw up his fingers in a warding gesture, but realized as he did so that the song held no malicious magic—it didn’t seek to change him or turn his mind. He looked about, and saw a lithe magenta-haired Fair Folk lady a little ahead of him, a tiny tent set up to shade her from the sun as she sang and wove tiny baskets by the  side of the road. The baskets were mostly of rainbow reeds, so their colors were vibrant and pulsing, but not one of the baskets was big enough to hold anything larger than a single chicken egg.

“Good day, Lady,” Evin said courteously, as anyone this close to the demesne might be kin to the Sylvan Duke, and he could scarcely risk giving offense. “Your baskets are beautiful. Mayhap what are they meant to carry?”

“You like them?” she said. “They are meant for pixies to use to harvest  moon nettles, but I could gift you one for your mantle.”

There was a playful, almost mocking look in her eyes. She knew that he was well aware of the risks in taking a gift, Evin realized, and was gently teasing him.

“ Dear Lady, I have naught that I could give you in return, and I look poorly in silver trappings.”

She laughed lightly and musically. “Well said, Evin of the Luministrum.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, and the Fey woman patted the ground next to her. It would have been discourteous to refuse, so he sat, but he asked, “How come you by my name?”

“I am Jehylile, a sister to the Sylvan Duke, and he has been called away for a time to deal with affairs of the demesne that none other can address,” she responded, “and I am to keep you company and give you shade from the coming hard-sun while you wait. You cannot be admitted past the gates until the duke returns, of course.”

Fair Folk could deceive, but not outright lie, so Evin was content that she was who she claimed, and here for the reasons she maintained.

“I also have food and drink for you, Evin of the Luministrum,” Jehylile said. “It is mundane fare, and it is offered by the duke as deposit against the boon you bring. It is neither trap nor gift, and it is offered as payment for your troubles, and so nothing is expected in return, and no silver chain shall encircle your neck should you eat and drink of it.”

Her words rang true and Evin could sense no place in them where trick or falsehood might be hidden, but he let his hand make several passes behind his back as he continued to make small talk with Jehylile and ask her about what foods and drink she had brought.

The process of creating the scrying spell took some five minutes, and Evin was fully aware that Jehylile knew what he was doing. But to do it out in the open in front of her would be an insult. To pretend he was simply talking and do it behind his back was honorable.

When the spell was done, his eyes could look upon the food and drink she offered and see that it was, indeed, entirely mundane mortal fare, and he ate it while she took Fey food and drink for herself out of a basket woven of brass strips.

They spoke amiably for some time and Jehylile not only showed him her work after a while but illustrated how she wove the baskets, giving him an impromptu lesson. She had a sweetness in her eyes and her smile, and her skin smelled sweeter still, and Evin found himself wishing that any of the town girls in his own world could be so much as a hundredth as desirable as one such as Jehylile.

As the hard-sun arrived, the Fey version of noon, which might come once a day or sometimes thrice or sometimes only once a month, the heat became unbearable, and they retreated to Jehylile’s small tent and the cool shade it offered.

The closeness made him all too aware of how her hair smelled of honeysuckle and her breath of ginger and vanilla. Even her sweat smelled of jasmine, and it made him self-conscious about his own mortal scents and how they must offend Jehylile’s pert and pale nose.

“Evin, you do not smell poorly,” she said, and he wondered at how he must have somehow spoken his concerns out loud without realizing it.

“Apologies, my Lady. I shouldn’t have voiced my…”

“No sorries are needed, Evin,” she told him, laying one hand upon his forearm. “Nothing you have done has offended. Quite the contrary, in fact.”

She leaned over to kiss him, and he almost pulled back. To refuse her would be an insult to her person, but to kiss her might be insult to her brother the Sylvan Duke.

“What my brother cannot see he cannot be offended by,” Jehylile noted, drawing the tent closed, “and I can sense him from afar, so he will not come upon us unaware.”

Her lips touched his, and they were as smooth as warm honey and sweeter by far, but not in a cloying way. They seemed to suck at his own lips and pull his mouth closer to her, making their kiss deep, although neither’s tongue passed the portal of their teeth.

In the close quarters of the now-sealed silken canopy, her scents were magnified. To Evin, it was like he had been placed in a garden of lust, and he cleared his throat. “I am not worthy of such things,” he said as their kiss broke, though his manhood was straining at his breaches, protesting such words.

“No, you are not worthy, but I am quite willing. And I offer you no gift that I do not expect you to give in return. Equal measure. My body for yours, and yours for mine. We shall share our flesh, and touch each other without fear of obligation to either party.”

Even if she hadn’t spoken such words of safety and protection for them both, Evin wasn’t sure his libido could have held out anyway. But it didn’t matter now. She was not giving a gift but making a trade, and that was safe for him.

They embraced and kissed in that cramped space, somehow managing not to uproot the small and fragile-looking tent, and when his naked manhood pressed against the mossy rise of her sex, it was as warm and soft as fresh pudding, and far more inviting. He entered her, and they danced sideway, as some of the boys and young men called it, as man and woman, in the most carnal sense, until both of them had had their release.

Then she gently guided his head to the same place he had entered with his flesh, and set his tongue to work there. Her musk was even more enticing this close, and the feel and taste of it upon his tongue was amazing. He lapped at her and licked, and he heard her say, “Have you had your fill?”

“Not yet,” he mumbled against her fragrant sex. “I could taste you and dine between your thighs forever.”

“As if I would tolerate such a thing,” she said, and for a moment, Evin was confused. They were her words in her voice, but the venom and anger in them seemed like something he would have heard from her brother the Sylvan Duke instead, had he caught them like this. She pulled his face from her sex roughly and stood quickly, knocking aside her small tent.

Evin felt a tickle at his throat and look down to see a fine silver chain around his neck, held by Jehylile’s left hand—the sign that she claimed ownership of him. He didn’t bother trying to break it. Thin though it was, it was stronger than steel by far, he knew. He looked into her eyes and saw only cruelty now where once he saw kindness. Derisiveness now. Disdain.

Somehow, he found his voice, “Our liaison was a matter of trade, my Lady, there can be no binding of me for such a thing.”

“If only you had stopped when we both found release, you with your unworthy spear and me at your disgusting tumblings. My brother will be very happy indeed to hear of this when he returns. To know of my success. He can keep your maestro’s boon and also keep the scroll you were to convey back to your world. And I have a mortal slave.”

“But I don’t understand,” Evin moaned. “I followed the rules and the ways.”

“All the way to my cunnie, mortal,” Jehylile hissed. “We traded our flesh, but then you freely took taste of my cunnie. Accept nothing to eat or drink from the Fair Folk, mortal, unless you wish to be chained.”

Tags: erotica, fantasy sex, sex

Tales of the Poisoned World #3: Between Demons and Angels

Although this isn’t an all-out erotica story, there is some seriously sexually explicit content, so I’ve decided to throw it in the erotica category and non-erotic categories both.

Tales of the Poisoned World #3:
Between Demons and Angels

By Smokedawg

Night in the city was never safe, not even behind the walls of a church—in fact, maybe less so some nights.

Having been born and raised in New Philadelphia, Reverend Jason Nguyen-Williams had seen a lot in his 27 years of life—hell, he had experienced his first encounter with a thrill-killer at the age of 6 when he and his mother were caught out on the street later than was wise. His mother had gotten him away from that intact, and the man had been captured soon thereafter, though Jason still had a little silver scar on his left thigh to remind him of the incident.

It still squidged him inside out that when he had gone to see that thrill-killer in prison several years ago as part of his forgiveness colloquium in seminary, the man looked into Jason’s eyes for all of three seconds, smiled, and asked, “So, can you still see your scar? Does it bring you back to your childhood, boy?” Just from looking into his eyes, the thrill-killer had remembered. Chilling, but good preparation for his current duties, which were dangerous simply due to his proximity to the Sprawls, and the hours that he was called upon to work.

Still, when straightening up the sanctuary after dark—alone—right on the border between the Gray Zion sprawlhood and the mid-strata neighborhood of Goldborough, there were some things a man of God just didn’t have preparation for. Things one just didn’t know how to react to.

A tall, nearly naked woman with ruddy reptilian wings and bright red eyes was one of those things.

Once Jason knew that someone had entered the room, his hand had immediately shot to the pocket of his long black preacher’s coat, where he kept a very expensive flechette pistol. A religious man who relied only on God to protect him in this city was a religious man who would be visiting Heaven long before he had earned any gray hairs. Or, in the case of most of the religious men in this particular church, they’d probably end up in Hell, but that was a whole other matter.

When he had turned around, he had guessed the unexpected visitor would be either a SilverScream addict on a rage-frenzy, a rape or robbery victim seeking sanctuary, a pimp looking for a wayward pedwhore, or a police officer asking questions. Those were the top four night-time patrons around here.

But a succubus?

That was something well outside the normal scheme of things.

Jason removed his hand from the grip of the flechette pistol. He supposed part of that response might have been from the pheromones wafting from this vision of decadent and dangerous loveliness before him, but it was also the very conscious decision that if a top-tier Outlier was paying a visit from the Sprawls, you didn’t want to shoot that individual.

Outliers had a way of carrying out vengeance that could make the Spanish Inquisition look like a mere carnival sideshow.

More to the point, if he was being visited by such an esteemed Outlier, either he had been targeted for abduction—a prospect that held no small amount of attraction along with the headier and more insistent rush of terror and anxiety—or he was in some way useful to them for some task.

In any case, Jason was quite happy for the fact he wore an athletic cup at all times to protect his private parts in the random scuffles that could easily break out even during evening church services—because it was the only thing that might allow him to act like he wasn’t painfully aroused. Not that his visitor would probably have any confusion on that score, though. Succubi and incubi loved knowing they had you by the balls—literally and figuratively—and they could sense arousal pretty accurately. He supposed that if supernatural demons walked the Earth, and not simply genetically modified mortals like these, the paradigm might have been much the same.

But here, at least, with a “demon” of flesh and blood, only my body and mind are in peril, not my soul, Jason mused. I think.

“We may retire to your office, yes?” the succubus said in a voice that sounded to Jason like silk being pulled along a woman’s supple, warm thigh.

Jason’s first attempt to speak was a croak, but he found his voice after a moment and said, “I wouldn’t want us to spend too much time in such an enclosed space,” he said. “I would be concerned that your pheromones might overwhelm my senses and make me a poor conversationalist.”

In a moment, so quick that it should have started him—but didn’t because the movement was so graceful—she was in directly front of him, one hand stroking the side of his face. Jason realized he was leaning in her palm and moaning softly, then shook himself back to his senses. Almost. Mostly. He wasn’t sure anymore, but he was saying a great many silent prayers.

“What if I don’t want the conversation? What if I simply desire corrupting a man of God?” she asked huskily.

“Then I’d have to question your taste in men, madame,” Jason managed, with a tiny trace of steel in his voice, thank God. “I’m on the short end of average, both in height and penile length. And no one has ever seemed to believe that my African, Vietnamese and Caucasian genes ever really meshed right in my facial appearance, which I’m sure hurts your eyes to look upon. My face offends most women.”

The succubus smiled, and there was something faintly malicious under the seeming friendliness and flirtatiousness. “I am named Astarte sin-Lux, and I need to speak with you. I must determine if I shall burn this church down around you, while you lay in the middle of the sanctuary and your flesh sizzles, and the flames slowly burn away all delicious memory of my parting kiss to you.”

Astarte sin-Lux.

As close an individual to being ruler of the Vamp Outliers in New Philly as anyone could be. It was rumored that her control of Vamp clans extended far beyond the city limits, too.

This was going to be an interesting night.

* * *

And so they sat in the pews, the reverend at the end of one row and the succubus at the end of the row immediately across the center aisle from him.

“Might I ask why you think you may need to immolate me?” Jason asked evenly. Bad enough to have his desire known—he was going to do his damnedest to show little or no fear.

“Mayor Oswald Drummond.”

“Wrong church,” Jason said with an equal mix of politeness and abruptness. “He’s upper strata and even though his denomination worships here, his social class doesn’t. The other Holy Word Baptist church is Evangelion Christ Congregation in City Center. It’s been nice meeting you, Madame Astarte; I will return to my duties now.”

“You are both Holy Word Baptist, no?” she asked. There was a playful look in her eyes, but Jason thought it looked a lot like the demeanor of a cat playing with a mouse.

“He is. This church is. But I don’t know him. I wouldn’t want to. And I am not Holy Word Baptist myself. But I need internship hours as a practicing preacher to complete my certifications for my theology degree program. This was the only church with an opening for me. Frankly, the pastor here despises me. I have quaint notions of a merciful God who loves all people and a Jesus who preached tolerance and equality. I imagine the officials at the church in City Center would hate me even more. That is why I get the night shift, with my life in peril, being visited by demon-women in the wee small hours.”

“This is most disconcerting.”

“That I don’t agree with the Holy Word Baptist precepts, which are probably diametrically opposed to your own views?” Jason asked. “I would like to think that would make you nicer toward me.”

“No. It is not that. Disconcerting is that you have been talking to me this long and are not curled at my feet, hugging and stroking my legs and giving adoring gazes as you answer my questions.”

“While nothing would probably give me greater carnal pleasure, and while I don’t have a shock-baton up my ass like some preachers, I do like to maintain some decorum,” Jason said.

“My pheromones overcome decorum.”

“I’m saying a lot Our Fathers and repeating Psalm 23 in my head over and over,” Jason said, as deadpan as he could, wanting quite desperately to touch himself right now in front of Astarte—and more besides. So he fiddled with the fabric of his pant legs and coat instead.

“You have I hope not taken the chastity vow like those silly Catholic priests. Such would be waste.”

“No, I haven’t,” Jason said. “But after my wayward youth, I’m looking to save myself for marriage from this point out.”

“There are few virgins in this city you realize?”

“I don’t need a virgin, Madame—”

“Astarte is sufficient. Your respect is evident without need of honorifics.”

“Astarte, I won’t need a virgin. It will be quite enough to find a woman who has some basic decency and isn’t addicted to something like SilverScream. I’ve never had much trouble getting dates. But this isn’t getting us any closer to why you’ve threatened to burn me alive.”

“I won’t incinerate you. Even though you lied to me. You told me you were not handsome and that women do not desire you. Yet you have just contradicted that.”

“I was being sarcastic before, and you knew that. It seemed better than prostrating myself at the juncture of your thighs.”

“Why? That seems a most appropriate place for you.”

Jason realized he was sweating a little now, and that Astarte had unfurled her wings just  a little. He could smell something in the air like honeysuckle—sweet and musky both—and he suspected she had increased her pheromone output. Or added a new one to the air around them.

“I’m still curious…why you threatened me…before,” he stammered. “Why you seek Mayor…Drummond…I…whoa…”

Jason swooned and fell face-first toward the aisle and the floor.

“You have over-much self-control,” Astarte said, as she caught him in her arms, and he found his face between her breasts. Then he realized he was kissing and licking her flesh. “Such things are not good for a man’s health, no? Resisting a succubus’ pheromones. Tsk tsk.”

She said a lot of other things after that, but he couldn’t make out very much, with her thighs clamped against his ears while he worshipped at the altar of her cunt in the house of God.

* * *

Jason wasn’t at all sure how long had passed before he regained his senses—only that his face was sticky and wet and his clothes covered in all manner of fluids that gave him far too much delight to behold than he found comfortable. The succubus was sitting calmly in the pew again, smiling wantonly.

Jason picked himself back up off the floor, and sat back in his own pew.

“As nice as that must have been, judging by the pool of fluids swirling around in my athletic cup—”

“You will remember things in bits. Beginning later tonight or tomorrow I should think—”

“Be that as it may, please have some respect for this church, even if it is run by the Holy Word Motherfuckers.”

“Most men of the cloth are not so stalwart as you. I must put more of my pheromones out?”

“No, damn it!” Jason exclaimed, and fished into one of his pockets, withdrawing a pack of CrimsonCloves, then pulling one of the dark, brick-red cigarettes out and lighting it.

“Oh!” Astarte said. “I have a pheromone that is so nicely synergistic with clove/tobacco blends. Allow me to—”

“No!” Jason barked. “No,” he said again more calmly, taking a deep inhalation and blowing smoke, not caring how much of a faux pas it was to smoke in the sanctuary. “Would you explain why you are here already? Or are you going to leave now that you’ve proved you’re irresistible and that I cannot help you with whatever grudge-roll you have with the executive mayor?”

“Of course you can help. And you will. Because you will not like if I resume thinking thoughts of burning you.”

“I told you that I’m not one of the Holy Word—”

“I know,” she interrupted him. “I know about you fully. I knew before I left the Sprawls. It is why I come to you. You know, there are delicious things I could do to your genes and endocrine system. You should visit me one day in my labs.”

“How can I help you? And can we please get it over with so I can start working on forgetting all about you.”

“You will never forget I think. Not even if you suffer dementia in old age,” she said with absolute conviction, and a salacious sneer.

Jason sucked on the filter of his cigarette, exhaled a thick cloud of sweet smoke, and sighed. “All right, you’ve marked me forever. You’ve proved whatever point you want to prove. What the hell is it that you’re here for?”

“Forces allied with your Holy Word Baptist order and with the mayor are implicit in one of my kin going missing in past days.”

“Since when does a top-tier Outlier go out personally looking for a clan member?”

“Huang is not simply clan. Not just thin-family. Not simply imbued with genes of our clan. He is true blood to me. A cousin, in your circles. He had been a champion of City Administrator Danica Peters. He is insistent we must support her to unseat the Drummond pig.”

“And this has gotten him abducted.”

“He was sloppy. Unusual for Huang, but even Vamps make mistakes…sometimes.”

“What am I supposed to do? Remember, I’m not actually Holy Word Baptist. I’m actually Reform Congregational. They don’t like me. I’m their scut-boy for as long as my internship lasts, and they give me one service to lead every two weeks—the least-attended one, I might add.”

“But you are in their employ in manner of speaking,” Astarte pointed out. “You can get into the church in City Center?”

“I can make some excuse or reason. But if I bring an Outlier with me, I’ll be a smear on a morgue-table somewhere by the next day.”

“I do not need you to escort. Simply to carry this,” she said, handing him a small device. “So that their security codes will prove less a problem, yes?”

“And if I don’t?”

“Sweet, soul-searing kiss to make you forget all other kisses that you have known, and then you will be a part of blazing inferno.”

“My, but you have such a way with your negotiation skills,” Jason said tartly.

“That is assent, no?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

* * *

It was hard for Huang to wrap his mind around how Drummond’s people were able to apprehend him. But what was harder to process was why they had spirited him to this place, and why they had done nothing to him. No charges. No physical harm. No interrogation. Simply brought here, to a very well-appointed safe house of some sort. He had wine, food, plenty of fresh inserts for his belt hookah, music—even a computer. Granted, it had no connections that would allow him to communicate with his kin, but still, it was rather generous treatment from a man who hated Huang so much.

After all, I was instrumental in stealing two of his children away, and I’ve been backing his chief adversary, Danica—with the election now a mere three months away, Huang considered. They have not harmed me, but clearly they mean some harm, somehow. So how is it that will achieve harm and achieve their ends by kidnapping me and leaving me in comfort?

* * *

Jason and Astarte had agreed that the following afternoon would be soon enough to safely make their move. She seemed uncertain as to whether Huang still lived, but she seemed absolutely convinced of his location, which was somewhere underneath the Evangelion Christ Congregation church in City Center.

That gave Jason enough time to do some poking and prodding for personal reasons, before he walked into the church in City Center. He didn’t have deep access to the church’s computer files—officially at least—but he was privy to the passcodes of one of the church’s more trusted prefects, someone who shouldn’t be trusted with much of anything, since he sucked down tri-X and Rapture as if they were water. That bit of access to the church’s inner workings was something Astarte didn’t know about.

If she had, she would have expected even more of me in this endeavor.

It was dangerous to use the passcodes now. Not to him personally—they wouldn’t be traced back to him. But if their inappropriate use was pinpointed, and they likely would be within the next week or two, they would be cancelled and that would royally screw up his plans to leech a few K of funds from the church at the end of his internship to establish his own small congregation.

Jason had considered that plan less embezzlement than he considered it taking from the raving hypocritical bastards to support the humane spiritually faithful.

But it’s a moot point now, though, he thought. Having funding would have been nice, but it would be nicer still to know what I’m getting into now.

What he discovered didn’t make a whole lot of sense at the time. It did make sense well after the point that Huang was located—and after Jason had used his pistol for the first time in anger—though by then it was too late to act on the realization.

* * *

Huang was not terribly surprised to see his kinsman Jano burst through the door, a man’s severed arm still in his grasp. Of all the Vamps Astarte would have sent for him, the clan’s most martially skilled and physically most intimidating ghoul would be the best choice. Still, one had to maintain appearances.

“What took you so long?” Huang asked him irritably.

Jano simply grunted. He could speak eloquently when occasions demanded, but he didn’t like words as a general rule.

“Well, I suppose it’s only fair that my sloppiness be rewarded with a tardy rescue.”

Jano frowned as he looked at the room in which Huang had been held, then shot his kinsman a questioning look.

“I don’t know why they treated me this well, either. Astarte is going to be very upset, I imagine, to see that I haven’t been beaten or tortured.”

As Jano and Huang worked their way toward the exit, and met up with a pair of wights and another ghoul from their clan, Huang had to admire the artful carnage his kinspeople had left in their wake. It was troubling though, how ill-equipped and poorly prepared the dead normals seemed to have been.

And how few of them there seemed to be, if one was holding an Outlier of no small repute and one anticipated that there might be repercussions.

* * *

Jason didn’t like getting involved in shit.

Not shit like this, anyway.

Helping a street mongrel who was running from a pimp, against his pastor’s policies. Great.

Handing out food or a small amount of money from petty cash to someone in need and covering it up so that the church accountant wouldn’t implode? He was fine with that.

Secretly finding a way to get some poor girl in the congregation who’d been knocked up by some preening sociopathic golden son to a social worker who could keep her from a forced marriage? Fantastic.

But helping one unsavory group—the Outliers—against another unsavory group—the upper strata zealots—well, that was something else entirely.

Then again, even with the threats of burning him alive if he didn’t help, Jason had to say that Astarte was far more civil than anyone in the Holy Word Baptist movement had ever been to him.

Also, shit like ambushes just didn’t sit well with him, which was part of why he was still involving himself in this, after having already completed his assigned task. He still wasn’t sure what was up after his research, but this was clearly a trap, and if it in any way impinged on the ability of Danica Peters or  someone else to unseat Drummond in the upcoming election, it was a trap that needed to be unearthed and dismantled before it could trip.

Besides, it would get him out of that stuffy-ass church for a while. Perhaps forever if he got himself killed tonight.

Jason was amazed at both how quickly his military training came back to him, and also at how woefully inadequate he suddenly found it to be in terms of quelling his mounting fear. Perhaps if he had been special forces, or even in the general infantry, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But he had served as a triage attendant and later a supply officer.

Still, there was something to be said for all those hours of crawling through mud and under razorwire while lugging a duty-pack and tac-rifle in training sessions, years before seminary beckoned. Apparently, as with swimming and riding a bicycle, you just don’t forget some things.

Of course, the problem was that Jason didn’t know how well-trained Drummond’s people were —or perhaps they were the Holy Word Baptist church’s people. If they were seasoned mercs, he might be doomed. In fact, they might already know he was here and be circling around behind him. If they were thugs, he might just have the upper hand entirely.

Regardless, though, the one advantage I have, no matter who they are,  is that they’re watching for Huang and whomever came to rescue him, Jason considered. They’re not expecting someone to know about them. Or care.

Jason was very quiet as he approached, and the communications he had read while using the prefect’s passcodes were very detailed. He found the ambushers where he expected them to be. They were at the only logical place one would leave the church from, if one wanted to remain undetected and spirit away a captured kinsman—in the rear, at the top of a large hillock at the edge of a park.

He thought about doing something now, but too early would be worse than doing nothing at all. As he waited, though, he became increasingly aware how much more wise it would be to just leave now, and go back to the church to which he was supposed to be attending.

God, I need a fucking cigarette, but all I have at the moment are Bible verses in my head. Great for the spirit, but pitiful for the desires of the body.

Jason was mere minutes away from panicked flight away from the scene when he saw the Vamp Outliers approach, and saw the hired guns shift and tense. Then he was committed.

He didn’t think any more after that. He saw men rising with weapons to perform a cowardly act as part of some deviant plan that would likely mean nothing but woe for the already downtrodden of the city. He saw wicked beings trying to escape wicked men. There were no angels here around him. Only demons.

He chose which demons to side with, stood up himself, and fired the flechette pistol twice at the back of one man, earning a dark spray of blood against the moonlit night, and then swiveled to take aim at another. As he fired that third shot and watched that man go down, he heard men off to his side. The flechette pistol was about as quiet a firearm as one could have, but it wasn’t entirely silent, and certainly, his movements weren’t.

Jason had felled two men, and now the Vamps were alert and aware of the trap. They moved and fired and slashed. Jason turned toward the nearest sound of adversaries, saw a man facing him—saw a weapon trained on him.

Though I travel through the shadow of the Valley of Death, I will fear no evil…

The other gun fired before Jason could swing his flechette pistol into anything approaching a good shot.

He decided to hold onto the memories of Astarte’s juices on his face and the memory of her kisses upon his lips as death approached him. He figured God would understand. Certainly, Jesus would, and probably could put in a good word for him…

He felt a wicked impact, and then awareness fled.

* * *

“I am going to assume that you are not simply a man with bad aim who was shooting at me and hit his comrades instead,” said a calm male voice.

Jason felt strong arms lifting him from the ground. His ribs hurt. It had taken a while to realize he had been hit, but not by the gunfire intended for him. Someone had tackled him to the ground.

“This is the god-man Astarte recruited to help us penetrate security,” said the Vamp who had done the tackling—and the subsequent lifting. He was a wight, Jason was pretty sure—pale, tall and thin, but quick and strong. His amber eyes regarded the preacher closely. “But I was not aware she had hired him as a watcher for us.”

“That was a special added service,” Jason croaked. “You can feel free to owe me one.”

The wight laughed and slapped Jason on the shoulder. “Astarte certainly knows how to pick the unlikelies.”

Huang looked Jason up and down with his golden eyes. “Well,” he said, “my thanks. You really should get going. I know we will be.”

As he heard sirens in the distance, Jason saw the wisdom of that plan.

* * *

The next day, it was reported that an attempt had been made on Mayor Drummond’s life. Miraculously, the news reports noted, he hadn’t even been wounded, but his personal security detail was dead to the last man.

Shortly thereafter, video was released showing Huang’s movements at some remote location where he had been plotting the attack—or so the reports said—after dropping out of sight days before.

There were the expected threats of reprisals against the Outliers, and the promise that FedCops and military would be invited to join in the fray. Hints that Danica Peters’ campaign would be investigated, given her financial support from the Outliers. And more depressing things.

Jason got a sinking feeling as he put the pieces together. Huang had been abducted only to create the illusion now, in retrospect, that he had planned a terrorist action on behalf of the Outliers.

Drummond couldn’t make any headway against the Outliers with just his police. He needed to brand them terrorists, so that the federal authorities would lend their might. He had done just that with this ruse.

And what a joy that I’m assigned to a church right between the Sprawls and so-called civilized society, Jason lamented.

* * *

Some official-looking people came to visit Jason at his apartment a few days later, and strongly suggested that he would like to take a ride with them.

There didn’t seem to be much value in trying to run, so as they ushered him to the vehicle, Jason kept his mouth shut and tried to figure out a good story that would keep him out of prison and prevent him from incurring the wrath of the Outliers.

What he hadn’t expected—and why was it that he was getting so many surprises involving women these days?—was to see City Administrator Danica Peters, mayoral candidate and thorn in Drummond’s side, in the back seat.

She didn’t have binders on her wrists, so Jason was guessing she was his host, not his fellow prisoner.

“Hello, reverend,” she said pleasantly. “I hope your evenings have been more peaceful as of late.”

“You’ve known about all this?”

“Only recently, and I wanted to make your acquaintance after hearing about it from Astarte—and God, it’s going to be hell having to meet with her more often now, thanks to Huang’s situation. I don’t like spending extended time around such powerful predators, no matter how rich or attractive they may be. It upsets the delicate balances of autonomy and heterosexuality that I try to maintain.”

“Sorry about your campaign,” Jason said.

“What? Why?”

“You must be cycler-shred by now, thanks to none of us figuring out what Drummond was up to—and I should have been able to figure it out sooner,” Jason said. “Now you’ve got no chance in hell of winning.”

“Preacher,” Danica said with a chuckle, “you clearly don’t understand politics much, and haven’t been watching the news.”

Jason looked at her quizzically.

“Look,” Danica said. “first of all, plenty of people hate Drummond by now after years of making a mess of the city and relations between Norms, Fringies and Wyldthings. So, plenty of folks who think I was involved in the so-called attempt on his life are secretly cheering for me and plan to vote for me because of that. Plenty of others simply will vote for anyone who isn’t Drummond, even someone with such heavy funding from the Sprawls. My lead over Drummond has narrowed, yes, but not enough to matter. Chances are that I will win, unless he has a better and more dastardly plot in the works before election.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Clearly not. You also don’t apparently realize how happy the Vamps are with you or that you single-handedly saved the fucking day,” she said, pulling out a Femmeboro Citron and lighting it up, filling the back of the groundcar with citrusy smoke.

“Do you mind the smell of cloves?” Jason asked. “I think I may need a cigarette for this.”

Danica smiled, motioned for him to go ahead, and he took out one of his Marlston CrimsonCloves to smoke. He found that the smoke of her Citron and his CC mixed quite well in the air.

“What Drummond planned was good,” Danica admitted. “Huang was kept in a healthy and unthreatened condition for days, after disappearing, so that they could capture time-stamped video of him going about activities that looked totally natural and claim it was random feed-catches or confiscated security vids. All they had to do was fake the attempt on Drummond’s life and then shortly thereafter capture Huang and the other Vamps, and kill them in a scuffle. A scuffle that would have been made to look like it had happened elsewhere at a supposed secret Vamp lair, which coincidentally looked exactly like the place under the church where they had kept Huang.”

“So why won’t that work now?”

“Because Astarte immediately repudiated the attempt on Drummond’s life and expelled Huang from the clan. Without Huang, and most importantly without any other Vamps having been caught to show that there was some organized effort, it’s just one lone gunman: Huang. I’ve repudiated him publicly as well and vowed to begin hunting him down even before I’m executive mayor. I already have half the investigative corps on the task.”

“And how does Huang feel about all of this?”

“Fantastic. It’s the most fun he’s had in ages since maneuvering me into bed against my better judgment. He’ll get to run the most shady of the Vamps’ operations and be as devil-may-care as he likes. Drummond’s request for federal forces to invade the Sprawls has already been denied, and now he looks foolish instead of like a victim.”

“All because I was foolhardy enough to go help a bunch of genetic criminals.”

“When you don’t have the luxury of a choice between angels and devils, preacher, always go with the lesser of two evils. Now, let me buy you lunch. I have an offer for you. I had been hoping to have my pastor be my spiritual advisor when I take office, but it might create problems for him with the Archbishop if he did. How would you feel advising a Catholic when your internship with those Holy Word Bastards…oops, I mean, Baptists…is done?”

* * *

Three weeks later, Jason was presiding over the evening service. As he handed out communion bread to the handful of congregants, one of them lowered a pair of sunglasses slightly as she took the blessed bit of stale honey wheat. Amber eyes. The kind you tended to see on Vamps. Then the gorgeous young lady smiled briefly, just for him, and he saw the flash of twin fangs amongst her other teeth.

Jason shivered, and finished the service on a rather unsteady note.

* * *

He wasn’t surprised that the strange woman lingered long after everyone else had gone. He supposed he wasn’t even surprised when she walked up close to him. Or when he felt his erection grow and realized that she smelled almost—though not quite—like Astarte.

“My name is Melody,” the woman said, and Jason realized her voice was as musical as her name. “Astarte sent me to show her appreciation.”

“I don’t need a gift like that,” Jason said, wanting her more than he could admit. Her pheromones awoke memories of Astarte that he was struggling to submerge these days. “No offense. It just wouldn’t be seemly in my position.”

“Oh, but you won’t be in this position forever,” Melody said, running the back of her hand across his cheek. He smelled the perfume of her even more intently, and groaned softly. “We understand you lost a funding source helping us, and Astarte would like you to know that we can help with that. And I can help ease your loneliness.”

“I’m too busy to be lonely,” Jason stammered.

“Sweet liar,” she said, wandering away from him a little. “You likely will be busy when you start your new church in several months after you have all your hours in. We have a wonderful spot picked out a couple kilometers or so inside the Gray Zion border, with easy access to Goldborough. I have visions of a mixed congregation of Norms, Fringies and Wyldthings. The Fringies and the Wyldthings and the Outliers are the heirs to this poisoned world, aren’t we? And we’d rather like to think God will appreciate our future stewardship when your Norm descendants have all died off. Besides, you’d be surprised how many in the Sprawls, even Outliers, find comfort  in ritual and prayer.”

She was fondling the edge of a bible behind one of the pews as she said this, and Jason felt very guilty at how aroused that made him.

“I haven’t really given much thought to what kind of congregation—”

“Oh, don’t worry. I can do that kind of thinking for you.”

“I suspect you have other—”

“—things to do? No. Being a true-niece of Astarte’s gives me much too much leisure time. I could spend it in luscious pursuits with clan members and Norms in our harems, but I’m a bit of a deviant among my kind. I’m a serial monogamist.”

“I’ll be happy to preside over your wedding should you find a beau to settle with,” Jason said dryly, hoping to usher her out before he lost his mind. His brain was swimming and his cock was throbbing.

“Oh, I think I might have a candidate, preacher,” Melody said, licking her lips, and showing her fangs. “I have a thing for uniforms. And the color black. And Astarte spoke so highly of your oratory skills. Imagine, a church with a Norm pastor and an Outlier first lady. Wouldn’t that be something to incite the media for months and months?”

“I’m not really in the market for—”

“Shhhh,” Melody said, approaching him again, with her hips sashaying softly. “In my experience, few Norm men can resist being actively wooed by a woman. Fewer still a feratu Vamp. And I’m in line to become a succubus. Someday. But I suspect I will have won you over long before then.”

She smiled and brushed her cheek against Jason’s throat. Her hair smelled like maple, wine, smoke and incense.

“Well, I’ll leave you with your desires, preacher-man,” Melody said with a wicked glint in her eyes as she pulled away. “And I’ll be back often to plant more of them. You’ll come around eventually. I’m very persistent. And Astarte hasn’t really given me failure as an option.”

The Lord’s Prayer flashed through Jason’s mind as he watched her ass during her exit, and he thought, Father, aren’t you supposed to deliver me from evil…rather than into it?

After a few minutes, he stepped out onto the front stairs of the church, smelled the chemical tang of a recent light rainfall, and looked at the dirty sky. And off in the distance, the Vamp femme who had visited him, crossing back into the Sprawls. He thought about her words and how her kind likely would supplant “normal” humanity one day. Evolution wasn’t always gentle.

Perhaps I simply need to update my notion of what evil is, he thought, and wandered back into the church, already fearing he would come to look forward to Melody’s attentions.

Tags: tales of the poisoned world

Tales of the Poisoned World #2: Balance of Power

Tales of the Poisoned World #2:
Balance of Power

By Smokedawg

It was an long-held axiom that the City Administrator always worked hours later than the Executive Mayor did. That axiom was taken to an extreme in Danica’s case; she was forever at the mayoral offices cleaning up some political mess that Oswald K. Drummond IV had left, or dealing with some inane duty that he had foisted on her.

Almost all of it was petty vengeance in the end—for Danica being a woman and thus inferior by the standards of Oswald’s circle of wealthy and highly religious peers; for having been indirectly involved in his failure to bring the Sprawls to heel two years earlier; and for the fact she was gearing up to unseat him in the next set of mayoral elections in another couple years.

She was patient, though. It was a trait that had gotten her on the fast track to her current position; it was one that would carry her into the Executive Mayor position either this election cycle or next—depending on how quickly voters realized what a huge mistake it was to elect someone from the upper stratas instead of the mid-level ones—especially an upper-strata religious zealot. Her skill at patience and handling challenges would likely be enough to keep her in the office for two or three terms at least once she secured it.

That was the theory, at least.

Huang dusk-Chi’s theory. And her own assessment of the city and her capabilities. Also the theory of several artificial intelligence computer models paid for at great expense to Huang’s family.

But theories are just theories until proved to be fact, even ones from cutting-edge AI computers, she reminded herself.

Tired but satisfied that tomorrow would at least begin on the right notes thanks to her efforts tonight, Danica Peters headed for the foyer of the GovSec building on her way to a dinner meeting with Huang about upcoming campaign-related machinations.

She nodded to the security team at the front desk, then paused, looked around briefly, and held out her hands in a gesture of expectation and befuddlement.

“There’s a series of bugs in the Guardian system again, Admin Peters,” the lead guard told her, an expression of apology in his eyes. “Worse than the other week. You’ll have to head out to your car without a gearhead, I’m afraid. Do you need one of us to head out with you instead?”

Leaving this late, a city officer of her stature—or even slightly below it—was pretty much expected to walk out with an automaton companion to guard her at least until she was off premises entirely, so there was no weakness in that. But taking away a human guard from his duties to do the same would look soft, so she shook her head as she extracted one of her Femmeboro Citrons and ignited it with her hotpen, enjoying the flood of citrusy smoke into her lungs. As she pulled the long cigarette from her lips and exhaled, she said, lightly, “It’ll be a nice change of pace not to hear the soft whir of servos next to me for once.”

It was true enough. Going out onto the street alone at night to leave the complex was something she hadn’t done in several years now, so it would be a novel experience.

The air was chill, but fresher than normal. A hard rain had fallen earlier in the day, followed by some firm winds, and so for one of those rare nights, a few stars were hazily visible in the night sky, and the moon was more than just an amorphous, blurry light behind muddy clouds. You could actually make out its craters and basins tonight, even if they seemed slightly out of focus.

She was 100 meters out from the foyer, and almost half again that distance away from the drop-gate for her vehicle, when the elaborate clasp-and-brooch assembly for her cloak suddenly came apart, reconfigured as a tiny hawk on her shoulder, and let out a warble-and-whistle cry.

Danica had trained with the cloak often enough and with its PI system—the pseudo-intelligence computer built into it—to understand the notes. Danger behind. Duck to right and run.

Only twice before had her defcloak warned her of impending attack from behind. Once she had ignored it, and turned to face her potential assailant, because the danger whistle was minor—and that woman had earned a nasty faceful of stunspray, while Danica strode away calmly. The second time, the danger message had only been slightly more intense, and Danica had simply fled to safety.

This time, the danger whistle was very nearly a shriek, and she didn’t hesitate. Because aside from the intensity of the warning—and thus the PI’s appraisal of the threat—she realized that an attack like this, right when the Guardian system was down and she was unescorted, seemed way too coincidental.

So, she not only ducked and ran, but said, softly and firmly, as she flicked away her cigarette: “Bloodhunt.”

The activation word spoken, the cloak disengaged from her throat, and dropped to the ground. Danica felt and heard something whiz past her, just to the side and roughly where her shoulders had been mere moments ago, and she dashed briefly into the street, then back to the sidewalk, and toward her drop-gate, pressing the button on her pocket-fob so that her car would begin its descent and startup immediately.

She didn’t need to look back to know what her defcloak was doing; she’d seen a couple demonstrations at the armory-shop years ago. Before it hit the ground, molecular seams had come undone, polymer fibers had reconfigured, and carbon-strands had stiffened and reshaped themselves. Her sienna cloak with its subtle and beautiful Hopi-inspired designs in shades of umber, cyan, red and purple had become something that looked a lot more like the skeleton of a dog-sized spider, with each leg ending in a razor-sharp tip.

Danica didn’t need to look back to see that, but she did want to make sure there weren’t multiple pursuers, since a defcloak tended to have problems with more than one or two opponents at a time.

What she could see, in the shadowy scuffle near a streetlamp, was that she had been stalked by only one person. Judging by the dark, liquid sprays arcing into the diffuse light, he or she wasn’t wearing body armor, and Danica hoped that whatever god the potential attacker worshipped—if any—was ready for a new soul.

On the way to her car, still running, she saw on the ground the squirming tendrils of the tangler that had been fired at her, and she cursed Oswald’s name several times until she was in her car, several blocks away, and able to breathe normally again. She lit a fresh Citron, and drove toward the Gray Zion sprawlhood.

* * *

Meeting Huang in the Sprawls was a necessity, though it made her uncomfortable, even this close to the border. As an Outlier, he was sporting a multitude of illegal genetic modifications, and outside of a sprawlhood, all it would take for him to be arrested would be one smile showing the twin fangs that were typical of a feratu, or someone noticing the amber eyes so common to Vamp Outliers in general.

So far, five minutes into their meeting, they had only traded general pleasantries, and Danica was kind of enjoying the notion that, for once, she might have Huang in a position of awkwardness, and not the other way around. Usually, by now, she would be squirming and sweating a little—and showing other signs of arousal, just the way he liked things. Not so tonight.

She smiled vaguely in Huang’s direction, and put on a pair of glasses as she perused the menu that had so recently been delivered to her. That broke the silence, as Huang asked, “You have developed vision problems, my dear Danica, since last we met?”

Danica waited almost 10 seconds to answer, then looked at him from over the top of her menu with a bored expression. “No, and I’m sure your family and its allies have razored deeply enough into my private records to know at least that much about my medical history. Just a nice, new pair of spectors.”

“I can assure you I haven’t asked the waiter to slip anything into your appetizer,” he said with a blazingly white grin. Huang was handsome, but the fangs reminded Danica that his genetic mods made him scarcely human anymore. Or at least not homo sapien.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I’m reminded of the bitter taste—oh so faint—in my drink not so long ago, that I’m sure was erosinol,” she responded sweetly, “forcing me to have to go order a replacement from the automated bartender, which of course couldn’t be bribed by you. I’m still not interested in fucking you, willingly or under chemical influence.”

“Oh, that was months ago, Danica,” he said.

“Yes, it was,” she said, adjusting the settings on her spectors to filter out her own cigarette smoke, filling the air between them, and added, after looking at him for several moments, “I’m sure you won’t have my drink spiked. Now, how about you turn off the narcodisiac feed into your belt hookah, since I don’t want your smoke dulling my senses, either.”

“You are so suspicious of motives,” Huang responded. “You will do so well as an elected official. Those must be very expensive spectors to have detected such trace fumes in my smoke.”

“Yes, purchased thanks to the large and ever-growing campaign fund you and other supporters have been feeding me.”

“Those funds are, you realize, intended for campaign-related activities,” he noted.

“And I consider my personal safety and security a very important campaign activity, which is why I purchased two backup pairs of spectors, too,” Danica said sweetly. “Light body armor, too, to wear under my clothes, which will be delivered next week.”

“I cannot help but notice that the spectors and forthcoming undergarments are not your only fashion change,” Huang noted dryly. “Where is your ever-present cloak? You weren’t wearing it when you entered the restaurant.”

“It would have been rude to wear a blood-stained garment, even in the most rot-gut Sprawl establishment,” she answered mildly, and smiled. “I think I might try the fried synthfish with shallots tonight.”

“Blood?” Huang asked, intrigued, licking his lips at the thought. “I did not know that you found interest in such activities. Or was it homicidal rather than recreational?”

“Well, I didn’t commit the homicide; my cloak did.”

It was Danica’s happiest moment of the past year or two to leave Huang temporarily at a loss for words. When he recovered, he said, “That was a defcloak? Did you buy that with campaign funds as well? With this kind of spending, you’ll never win the election.”

“No, I didn’t buy it, but when I decided to run for office, at your not-so-subtle urgings and very subtle threats, my parents and extended family took up a huge collection from all the relatives and bought it for me a year-and-a-half ago. I’ll owe a lot of cousins and such a lot of good jobs when I’m elected. Good thing, too, for them getting me the cloak, since I suspect my assailant tonight was up for a robbery-murder. Maybe rape for good measure. Tangler aimed at my head and neck.”

“Good for your defcloak, then. How did you manage to deal with the police questioning and still make it here on time?”

“The defcloak will have run to the nearest precinct station to be debriefed by a law enforcement AI. The police can wait to talk to me tomorrow. They’ll see the cloak belongs to me when they run the registration. Shit, if DeiboCorp wants me to sign off on the contract for them to handle the civic sector police work again for the next five years, they won’t hassle me. I’ve already messaged them that I’ll give them a statement tomorrow afternoon.”

“You are very calm for someone who almost didn’t live to try the synthfish,” Huang noted.

“I’m learning to deal with adversity these past couple years, since you entered my life,” she answered. “Plus, a pack of anxiolytic gum from a corner pharmastore helped. Even the over-the-counter stuff takes the edge off quite nicely. Chewed up half the sticks on the way over.”

The waiter came, and Danica changed her mind at the last minute, ordering a cream-and-shrimp fettuccini. She munched on a slice of focaccia from the small bread basket, and looked Huang pointedly in the eyes.

After a few moments, he caught her cue, and chuckled, then touched her wrist lightly. “And, aside from all these new fashion statements, what else have you done, my dear, since I see that your pupils are not overly dilated, and your pulse rate is quite normal. I suppose your panties don’t have a whiff of cream in them, either?”

“No, they don’t. I’ve rather tired of having to deal with the distractions of your damned pheromones, and had a sexually agreeable medtech give me a nice prescription to deal with them.”

“Danica, those kinds of meds are highly regulated. Tsk tsk tsk.”

“Are you going to tell on me, Huang? Scuttle your best chance at unseating Oswald next term?”

“No, of course not. But I am disappointed. I do so want to bed you. I haven’t had a woman play so hard-to-get since I was a lad and barely had any pheromones to employ in my seductions. But it does perhaps mean that next time, I’ll have to invite Astarte to our dinner meeting. I have yet to meet any med that can counter an incubus or succubus’ pheromones, especially hers.”

“If I ever see Astarte or any other member of your family that’s that highly placed and that dangerous to my autonomy—at any meal you or I share between now and the day I die—I’ll pull out my stunspray baton, empty it in your face, and slit your throat with the closest knife on the table.”

“Please, Danica, your spunkiness is positively arousing. You’re going to make me have an accident in my pants.”

“Save your expressions of affection for helping me out with my problem.”

“Which problem? It sounds as if your problem tonight is dead.”

“Yes, but I was only attacked because the Guardian system was down and I wasn’t accompanied by an automaton. Kind of suspicious timing. I suspect Oswald hired someone to kill me and make me look like the victim of a random violent crime.”

“Given that you’re not only still alive but completely uninjured, it is more likely he hired someone to kill you, and that person wisely outsourced the task to some street-rag to test your mettle, since the original assassin likely knew how risky it would be to strike a political candidate.”

“Either way, the solution is to deal with Oswald.”

“I told you before, many times, that there is too much risk to the Sprawls and the Outlier families to assassinate a political figure. If it were ever traced to us, we’d be branded terrorists and the Sprawls would be overrun with FedCops and military. We can hold local law enforcement out, but not a full invasion.”

“I don’t want him dead, Huang. I prefer that he simply wish he were, and I know just how to do that. But it’s expensive.”

“And not something you can purchase with campaign funds?”

“As you said, I can’t keep spending on accessories if I want win.”

* * *

“Why is my thorn not removed from my side, and why did you purchase such a useless pair of tweezers?” the Executive Mayor of New Philadelphia asked, voice level, but laced with layers upon layers of malice, disappointment and threat.

“Sir, he…I mean, the tweezers…” began Jervis Waters, Oswald Drummond’s personal aide.

“Oh, speak plainly, Jervis, and quickly. This office is shielded against eavesdroppers and I just swept the room for devices,” Oswald growled. “I don’t actually want you speaking in code. I’m not that patient.”

“The dead man isn’t the person whom I hired, sir,” Jervis said.

“You’re saying that she was attacked randomly by an idiot armed with a tangler gun before the assassin could do her in?”

“No sir,” Jervis answered. “In fact, the original contractor called me not very long ago and berated me for giving him poor intelligence about Danica. He was quite angry that we didn’t tell him she had a high-grade defcloak, which would have put him in a great deal of peril had he been the one to attack her trying to make it look like some common street crime.”

“Our lack of information in the dossier aside, why did he give the task to some thieving, raping SilverScream addict?” Oswald pressed.

“Because he says he doubted the completeness of our intelligence to begin with, and wasn’t about to risk himself for a fee only slightly above his nominal rate. He told me that if we want the job done, he’s clearly going to have to do his own intelligence. He also says that Danica is clearly smarter and more well-connected than we have let on. And he notes that he will have to go to rather extreme extra expense to end her life in a manner that doesn’t look like an assassination, now that there has already been an attempt on her life.”

“So, he didn’t trust us, hired someone else to do the wetwork, we end up with a botched job, and he’s going to hold us over a barrel to pay more so that the murder he semi-intentionally botched can go right the second time?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How much is he asking more?” Oswald asked.

Jervis told him, and earned a sharp and long whistle from the mayor.

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t have you fired, and perhaps maimed beforehand, for hiring such a man?” Oswald asked.

“Because he is highly recommended; he was good enough to realize we weren’t telling him enough about Danica even without doing his own intelligence work; and because if Danica puts the numbers together and we don’t secure him first with more money, her Outlier friends might hire him to kill you for trying to kill her.”

“The third possibility is slim to the vanishing point, Jervis, but I give you credit for trying to use my instinct for self-preservation to save your own ass,” Oswald said. “Tell him I am very disappointed that he chose to play my hand early—on his own initiative—just to prove a point and drive up his price, and tell him I am weighing my options for a more competent contractor. Chances are that he will ignore us for several days, and then come back with a less predatory fee. I’m almost willing to pay what he’s asking, but I didn’t become as rich as I did by  being a sloppy businessman. Besides, we’ll need a few weeks for things to cool down before anything can be done against her again anyway.”

Shortly thereafter, Oswald dismissed Jervis, and returned to his datapad, surprised to see that he had an appointment scheduled with Danica in less than 20 minutes. He hadn’t made any such appointment, and his secretary wouldn’t have either, not without telling him.

He never got the chance to inquire with his secretary or Danica as to why the appointment was in his calendar, as the tiny passenger that had rode in on Jervis’ trouser leg leapt into Oswald’s lap, then to his shoulder. He had just enough time to be startled and gasp, before the sting to his thigh and the second one to his neck sent him spiraling into the abyss.

* * *

When he awoke, he found himself naked, and strapped to the couch in his office with soft bindercord. Nothing that he could break, and nothing that would leave a single mark on him. Out of instinct, he glanced at the wall chrono, and realized he had been out only 30 or 40 minutes.

“Our meeting has been very productive so far, Oswald,” Danica said, then plopped herself down onto a chair in front of him, and lit one of her Citrons. Knowing how much he hated just about any factory produced cigarettes—especially anything from the big tobacco companies like Reynolds-Lorillard, Djarum/Liggett/Myers and PacificSpirit—she blew the smoke right into his face. “Now, let’s talk about why you’re going to stop hiring people to kill me, or otherwise do harm to my person.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, you insane bitch, but I’m certainly tempted to kill you myself right now,” he shouted. Or tried to. His voice came out as a strong croak instead.

Danica reached down, and then held up a small robot that looked all the world like a scorpion, except for having an extra set of legs. “When Skippy here gave you your nap, he also temporarily fucked up your vocal cords. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to bark orders to me fine tomorrow.”

“You’re not going to…”

“…get away with this? Please, Hollywood still won’t stop using that line in movies. Of course I will, just like you’re going to get away with hiring someone to kill me. This isn’t about blame, Oswald. Or revenge. It’s about nipping things before they get out of hand.”

“What are you on about?”

“In addition to knocking you out, and mostly shutting you up, Skippy also injected you with some very exotic baseline DNA rescripters of Outlier make. Before you have a fit, they aren’t programmed to do anything to you. However, if I should be harmed in any significant way, the individuals I am reluctantly associated with in the Sprawls will release the information that you have so successfully kept hushed up: That you lost two of your children to life among the Outliers.”

“You bitch. It won’t work…”

“Of course it will. That news alone won’t do anything to your reputation, but it will likely force you to answer some tough questions among your peers, and it will be revealed that you have Outlier rescripters in your body, which would almost certainly be seen as the foundation for having illegal forms of genetic reprogramming performed on you. Your business associates, backers, friends and family will have to assume that you condoned your children being among Outliers—rather than the truth that they were abducted to spite you—and that you craved that life yourself, and you will be ruined.”

“You think I’m going to leave something like that in my…”

“You can have a medtech neutralize the rescripters to make them unusable, but it will still take your body at least three years to actually flush them out to undetectable levels,” Danica said.

“No one will believe it. I made life hell for the Sprawls, all to get at the Outliers and have them rounded up,” Oswald pointed out.

“An effort that failed, and that in hindsight anyone could have seen would fail—except a zealot like you—and everyone will assume it was an elaborate cover for your Outlier sympathies,” Danica said. “The several deaths of police officers you ordered into the Sprawls during that attempt will be qualified as negligent homicide on your part. So will the deaths of the Fringies and Wyldthings in those skirmishes, though no one will care about them as much. It’ll still tack a few years onto your sentence, though.”

Danica smoked her Citron down to the filter, and then started smoking a second one. She wondered how long she’d have to sit there while Oswald sorted through his options, but she didn’t even get halfway through her follow-up smoke before he said, “So, now I have to make sure you stay healthy and safe, for the next three years at least.”

“More than that, sir. Much longer than that. Because now that you and I are going to have a fair competition with no assassins, I will almost certainly unseat you in the next elections, and as Executive Mayor, I will have the best people keeping a very close eye on you and your businesses.”

“What do you think is going to happen to you if you don’t win?” Oswald asked with a sinister leer. “And if you do, what about when you’re no longer in office? I have a long memory.”

As Danica began to sever the bindings that held him to the couch, she said to him, “You should get dressed, sir. Before someone comes in here and gets the wrong idea about our private meeting. And you shouldn’t worry so much about me, anyway. I’ve survived New Philly politics since years before you even got it into your head to run for office to conduct your private crusades. Once you’re back in your moneyed city-sector for a few years assessing all your flexaccounts and figuring out new ways to spend your wealth, you’ll forget about little ole me.”

The glaring look he gave her suggested otherwise, and she shrugged.

“Well, maybe you won’t. But if not, I can always vanish into the Sprawls, right? Or maybe, just maybe, another one of your sons will instead, so that I won’t have to.” Danica paused for effect before she added: “You’re a good businessman, Oswald, even if you are terrible at being a man. I know you’ll get the cost-benefit analysis right in the end, now that you know all the variables.”

She patted him on the thigh, smiled and left the room on steady legs, silently thanking all the powers of the pharmaceutical R&D world for the prescription anti-anxiety meds that were currently making that possible.

It still took her an hour to work up the nerve to call Huang, even with the anxiolytics bolstering her. And it still galled her that he was going to make her pay personally for this special bit of help.

“Huang?” she said when he answered the call, “Skippy did great. You can collect your payment at my apartment. You’ve got two hours once you step inside, there will be no biting, and I categorically refuse to scream your name even if your performance deserves it. Oh, and bring a damned bouquet. I’m a mayoral candidate, for God’s sake.”

She hung up, and sighed. As much as she hated to admit it, she was starting to look forward to doing battle with Oswald in the polls, and with Huang under the sheets. Both of them one-time affairs, and she wondered which would be more memorable.

Tags: tales of the poisoned world

Tales of the Poisoned World #1: Expressions of Power

Tales of the Poisoned World #1:
Expressions of Power

By Smokedawg

Noon came dimly in New Philadelphia, as was usually the case—the sun a sepia globe, its golden light filtered through the constant dun haze in the sky. Except when it rained hard with droplets that stung the skin, and cleared the air enough for people to remember the sky was supposed to be blue.

Or at least bluish.

Noon on this day was darker than usual, at least in the office of the city’s Executive Mayor, thanks to the mood of the man who had three months earlier won 60% of the vote to claim this office. Oswald K. Drummond IV. The third-richest man in the city and someone who was accustomed to being farther in-city, surrounded by only the rich. Cocooned from the dregs.

The central government buildings were in a clean part of the city. A safe place. A moneyed city-sector. But still, not the gem that City Center was. Where the upper stratas lived.

But this is where I need to be, to serve God and my fellow leaders of society, Oswald groaned inwardly. I’ll give up a few comforts to do what needs doing.

“Abominations and dangerous criminals,” he muttered.

“Pardon, sir?” asked Danica Peters, the City Administrator. Hers was a position of employment, not of election, and she carried out most of the real work of the executive mayoral office. And yet in the few months that Oswald Drummond had been in office, this was the first time he had summoned her to his office.

He’s tossed duties and orders at me from afar until now, just like most of the pompous upper strata who do the old-worlder religious thing, she considered. To them, women aren’t important except for bearing genetically healthy heirs—and yet he can’t just fire me outright. Which must be hell, especially for a Holy Word Baptist like himself.

The irony of his religious preconceptions was that she herself was one of the relatively few people anymore who went to a traditional old-worlder kind of church. They were both, technically speaking, Christian. She was Catholic, but the pastor at her church didn’t feel beholden to Vatican bullshit—unlike the other two Catholic churches in the city that hung on the Pope’s every edict—and he preached more about matters of the spirit than piddling little rules and social distinctions that God couldn’t possibly care about.

If the Eastern Regional Diocese wasn’t so worried about losing more faithful to the looser and more carnal religions, they would have defrocked Pastor Ortega long ago, she realized.

Finally, the mayor seemed to register her query, or at least decided that he’d kept her waiting an appropriate amount of time for someone of her “weaker feminine status.”

“Pardon?” he repeated back to her. “You do not know what I speak of? I speak of the Sprawls, Miss Peters.”

She hated the way he emphasized that old-world “miss” to remind her that women in his strata were married or kept, not employed.

“What about the sprawlhoods, sir?” she asked, keeping her voice neutral, and wondering what had possessed the voters to pick a man such as this for a change from the previous, incompetent mayor. Why replace incompetence with zealotry? “It is true that much crime occurs there, but they haven’t posed any particular threat or problem in years.”

“The problem is their very existence, woman,” he snarled, dropping pretense of civility with her. “The Sprawls hide a multitude of not just sinners but criminals. People—no, most of them aren’t even people anymore—creatures who flout the genome laws and alter their bodies in ways that are not simply illegal but repellant, and possibly dangerous to the genetic health of those who still call themselves proud to be unaltered humans.”

“Yes, but they are contained, sir,” she reminded them. “They have their sprawlhoods, and they rarely venture into the mid-strata neighborhoods and almost never into upper-strata city-sectors.”

“But they exist. And they breed. And they continue to alter themselves and pursue dangerous technologies,” he snapped. “And they offer nothing back to the city at all.”

“Not true, sir,” Danica interjected. “While there is a lower percentage of citizens there who actually pay taxes, the sprawlhoods do have a net-positive effect on the economy of the city and do contribute heavily to business throughout the…”

“So, are you counting criminal activities—the illicit drugs and the forbidden forms of prostitution and all the rest, Miss Peters?” he growled.

“Actually, sir, while those things do actually add to the city’s budget in various indirect ways, even when you factor out those trades, the Sprawls are still important. The other businesses and activities that are totally legit or that avoid skirting the edge of illegal ones—and that we simply see as dirty or unpleasant—are still important. Fringies and Wyldthings may scoff at a lot of the laws and ignore them in the sprawlhoods, but many of them actually work for people like you who own companies. Well, the Fringies, at least.”

Oswald had a look on his face that suggested he was annoyed at being unable to ruffle her, but then he put on a more contemplative face on and reached into his humidor to pull out a cigar, and light it slowly, meditatively.

Danica took this as a cue that she could relax a bit, and pulled out one of her Femmeboro Citrons, a lemony-scented cigarette that she had been smoking since high school. Oswald looked up through the smoke of his cigar and shook his head.

“No, you will not smoke one of those in my office, Miss Peters. Many like me who attend churches and temples eschew smoking entirely, but while I respect a cigar, with nothing but tobacco in it, I will not tolerate one of those chem-filled abominations sullying my lungs.”

She slid her cigarette back into the pack, and looked him in the eyes. He might want to fire her, but he’d have to get the Legislative Mayor or the Judicial Mayor on his side to do that, and both of them were secular, and hated everything Oswald stood for. “Then if you are going to keep me here for whatever speech you have, give me one of those,” Danica said, pointing to his humidor. “I’m not going to suffer this without some nicotine.”

He made a grumbling noise deep in his throat, but then opened the humidor and tossed a cigar to her. It was rude, but Danica said nothing, and simply snatched it out of the air, then lit it with her hotpen. “So,” she continued as she blew out a thick stream of acrid smoke, “what is it that’s bothering you, sir?”

“Why don’t the police go into the Sprawls and arrest the overt criminals at least,” he said. “It vexes me that there are Outliers in there—beings who’ve made themselves almost wholly inhuman—who not only flout genetic laws but also deal in very illegal activities that leak out into the neighborhoods.”

“I wouldn’t think you would care what happens in the neighborhoods, until closer to re-election time,” Danica drawled though a mouthful of smoke. “As long as it doesn’t creep into the city-sectors where you and yours live.”

“But it has, Miss Peters. One of my long-standing business allies, a very competent and traditional Hebrew gentleman, has had to disown his only son for taking up with Wyldthings and has had to make his eldest daughter his defined heir.”

“Among your religious circles, a female heir is frowned upon,” Danica said, “but there are plenty of secular upper-stratas who couldn’t care less. Why take one lost Jewish boy so personally? Particularly when he’s not your son?”

“It’s a symptom, Miss Peters,” Oswald responded. “Why do we let such actions continue in our city? Why don’t we arrest the criminals?”

“Because the average citizen cares more about the police keeping murder, kidnapping, property destruction and robbery rates down than they do about violations of body purity laws or the occasional luring of a mid-strata or upper-strata citizen to the dark side,” Danica said. “Plus, many citizens like their drugs, and the best ones come from the Sprawls.”

“I’ll tell you why the Sprawls go untended and unpunished,” Oswald countered. “Because the sprawlhood denizens kill the police when they go in, unless they go in full-force with tanks and armor. And the police will only do that if they are forced to hunt truly high-profile game, like a terrorist or a thrill-killer.”

“The sprawlhoods do a good job keeping things in line within their borders,” Danica responded. “They hire vigilantes and form them up in teams, and they have hired militias. There’s even some coordination of activities from time to time. So they don’t need police, because they provide their own.”

“And yet they let city services in unmolested,” Oswald said, seeming to ignore her—she realized, though, that he was doing anything but. “Street repair crews can get in. They will let people in to fix power conduits. Fire safety and ambulance services are allowed in. But not the police.”

“Small price for us to pay for keeping the peace and keeping the budgets intact,” Danica answered. “Better than going in with cannons blazing.”

“Not in my view,” Oswald snapped.

“I suspect I might know what you’re planning, sir, and I wouldn’t recommend it. You should consult with the Legislative Mayor once the City Council goes into session again in six weeks before you mobilize the police in some kind of provocative action.”

“I don’t care what you recommend, woman,” Oswald said. “I may have to suffer you, but you can’t simply ignore my orders. And I’m not planning to simply send our police into a bloodbath to round up the abominations. I have something much more effective in mind.”

Danica was glad to have the cigar in hand, as she listened in horrified patience at Oswald’s intentions. Because there was no way she could have remained as calm as she did without something to smoke.

But, she thought as she went back to her office two hours later, wondering how she would survive this plan, it would have been so much better if I could have smoked down half a pack of Citrons instead.

* * *

The first few days of Oswald’s machinations saw Danica ordering all garbage collection and waste processing crews to stand down from any activities in New Philadelphia’s five sprawlhoods.

She was very careful in the webnet and comm transmissions announcing cessation of waste-handling services to note that this was a mayoral edict, in the hopes that she could keep any kind of retribution aimed away from her and at the top office instead.

But two days later, not feeling terribly confident that such subtle distinctions would be appreciated, she contacted Pastor Ortega and told him that she needed to get a message to the top Outlier clans. These weren’t people Danica desired to become involved with directly. But her pastor’s activities brought him in into contact with Fringies. Fringies interacted with Wyldthing populations. Wyldthings ultimately answered—well, most of them anyway—to the Outlier families who were the “upper strata” of what society considered the lowest of the low.

Low, but not without power, Danica thought. Low, but not without wealth.

After another two days, Pastor Ortega told her that he was 90% certain the message had gotten to where it needed to go, and handed her a printsheet he had received with an image of the mayor on one side and her on the other. But between them had been drawn a stark black line.

It didn’t make her sleep with total ease, but at least it allowed her to sleep at night fitfully.

In the end, though, the cessation of waste services went off with no repercussions. The Sprawls had always been good about making use of things that others cast away. Aside from a smattering of vocal complaints, no one rioted over the lack of services. Though Danica was fairly certain that much of the waste would be reused in consumer products, drinks, food, drugs and clothing that were produced in the Sprawls. Meaning that one or two mayoral administrations from now, the office-holder was going to have to deal with issues around all the toxic backlash to the mid-strata citizens that might arise from those tainted products.

That lack of angry response, though, also meant that the Sprawls weren’t cowed, and when Oswald attempted to get some police into one of the sprawlhoods, they were repelled, with one death and two injuries.

The next week, Oswald had her shut down roadway and walkway maintenance in the Sprawls. This time, the response was more noticeable, as Fringies and Wyldthings tore up pieces of the streets and walks in low-strata neighborhoods just outside the Sprawls. When that didn’t get the city to relent, they started tearing up pieces of some mid-strata neighborhoods. Oswald simply had Danica redeploy the crews that weren’t going into the sprawlhoods, and told her to send in the police after some genetic criminals on his personal hit list.

The police were repelled again, with three deaths among them, and one among the Fringies.

Then Oswald told her to begin rolling brownouts in the power grids of the Sprawls.

Not only did this not gain the police freedom of movement in the Sprawls, but it gained Danica an unwanted visitor instead.

* * *

She smelled the smoke in her apartment the moment she opened the door, and she paused; got ready to close the door again and flee.

“I am not here to hurt you. Yet,” said a voice from inside. “Please enter. If not, if you run, an associate will tackle you at the end of the hall and drag you back. I am Huang.”

Danica swallowed hard, entered her home, and turned on the light.

The man on her sofa smiled to show her his twin fangs amongst his teeth. To let her know he was a Vamp Outlier. To let her know she was dealing with a feratu specifically, one of the more genetically altered groups among the Vamps. He then put his lips around the end of a tube, sucked deep, and exhaled a stream of sweet smoke. Danica saw the belt-hookah at his side. She sat down, and waited.

“Why are you doing this to us, Administrator Peters?” Huang asked.

“My hands are tied,” she answered.

“No, they are not, but I could correct that if you desire some recreation before we continue this talk,” Huang said. Danica was uncomfortably aware of his lean and well-muscled body. The sleek line of his jaw and the almond-shaped eyes.

Also very aware of the wetness growing between her own thighs. No doubt the pheromones wafting from him. She was grateful they had sent a feratu rather than an incubus or succubus, or she’d be doomed. She might be able to hold out against a feratu’s biochemical aura.

“No, I have far too many responsibilities and discussions to have with colleagues tonight to spend time on recreation,” Danica lied, hoping to worry him with the prospect that someone might make note if she went missing tonight. “But you know what I mean. I cannot countermand the mayor’s edicts and there is no way I can sneak city services into the Sprawls.”

“How have we come to this point, Administrator Peters?” Huang asked. “For years, there has been détente. We are patient, and we know that in 50 to 100 years, unaltered humans like you will be few in number. Servants or slaves. Fringies and Wyldthings will inherit the Earth, at least in the Americas, Asia and Europe. And Outliers will rule above them. But perhaps we should not be so patient as to let the rich and foolish collapse under their own bloat?”

“We have come to this point because voters were foolish enough to elect a man who was not only upper-strata but a zealot,” Danica said, her chest feeling sluggish and thick, and her tongue salivating at thoughts of what Huang’s sweat might taste like, much less other and more intimate fluids. “Upper strata powerbrokers rarely run for office. They prefer profits to politics. Usually, mid-strata men and women become politicians. They are closer to the Sprawls and understand the need not to upset the balance unless necessary. Oswald Drummond feels he is doing God’s will.”

“Voters are foolish.”

“Perhaps next time the Outliers will pay attention and pour money into the campaign coffers of someone more secular and farther down the strata,” Danica shot back, hoping that a little tension might take her mind off fucking this feratu and asking to be taken back to the Vamp compound from which he had been dispatched.

Huang laughed, and the sound was grating, which was good. It snapped Danica a bit out of thoughts of sex and submission.

“So what do we do?” Huang said. “To correct this. Before things turn…messy.”

“You kill the mayor,” she said simply. She owed the man no loyalty and assumed he’d done plenty of evil in life to deserve death. It would be better for everyone.

“Not possible,” Huang said. “It would be all too clear the assassination came from the Sprawls. Then we would be terrorists. Mayor Drummond might receive aid from the FedCops and military, and might invade the Sprawls in truth and cleanse us. Or try to. It would be inconvenient.”

“Well, then, learn to make water out of nothing then, because the mayor’s next move will be to disrupt your water supply I’m sure,” Danica noted. “And I will resign and leave this city before you decide to take me down as a warning to the mayor. Not that he would be angry if you killed me. He would likely send you a gift.”

“This will not be necessary. You want an end to this madness, true?” Huang asked, and Danica nodded. He continued then: “We require some things from you. You will give them, and we will handle from there. If not, the black line between you and the mayor will be erased, and you will share his fate.”

Danica listened, and then she gave him everything he asked, and was relieved when he left without ever having touched her.

Though a tiny little treacherous part of her was disappointed that he hadn’t.

* * *

In the end, very little that Danica had to do to save herself was illegal, aside from sharing some personal information on the mayor that she had no business sharing. The most instrumental and direct thing she did, though, was to arrange a meeting between the Outliers and Oswald, and to that end, she was now, three days after the meeting with Huang, ushering a well-dressed man into the mayor’s office.

Then she withdrew, and left them to each other. Oswald turned to the man and studied him. “You do not look like a Fringie. You are probably not Wyldthing. You are certainly not an Outlier. I wish to speak with the leaders in the Sprawls, not some underling that lurks among us real humans.”

“My name is Wallace Petrovic, and I am a duly certified medion,” the man said, sliding a datacard to the mayor, along with a thin strip of printsheet. “I have been employed to channel an Outlier named Huang dusk-Chi. The Sprawls have designated him their representative in this negotiation.”

“There will be no negotiation. There will be obedience,” Oswald said.

“Mayor Drummond, I am a medion. I have no affiliation with the parties you oppose, except as a means for them to avoid coming here and for you to avoid entering the Sprawls. There will be nothing unless you provide me with a secure data line to the addy on that printstrip, so that you can talk to them.”

It took ten minutes to arrange the data line, as Wallace pulled a datacable from his briefcase, plugged it into a port at the back of his neck, hidden in a dynamic tattoo of a yellow sun that swelled to redness, exploded into a nova, and contracted to become a white dwarf, repeating the cycle every 30 seconds—then plugged that cable into a terminal. Five minutes after that he was synched, and his posture and inflections changed as Huang took temporary control of his body remotely.

“Mayor,” Huang said tartly via the medion’s mouth. “You will restore city services to the Sprawls.”

“Allow police unchallenged access to the sprawlhoods, and I shall,” Oswald said.

“They are not welcome in our home,” Huang said. “The other city servants, however, are very welcome. I would offer you a bribe, but I already know that you will not deign to take money from Outliers, much less Vamps.”

“So why are we conducting this meeting if you know that I won’t budge and you don’t plan to either?”

“I wished to express my condolences that your eldest daughter has so suddenly elected to give up her successful career as a neurosurgeon, abandon her faculty post at the Philadelplex University Medical School, and join my family’s compound as a fucktoy,” Huang said, smiling with the medion’s mouth. “Though it is our gain, of course, for she is a very healthy and entertaining specimen. Why, I myself tasted her just last evening.”

Oswald was silent for a moment. “She would, of course, never do such a thing…”

“Let us not waste time, Mayor. Certainly, the mechanism by which she left the campus hospital and came to us may not have been, strictly speaking, by her own will. But she is enjoying herself immensely now despite herself, and in a few days, she will be quite convinced that life with us is all she has ever wanted.”

“And I suppose if I reinstate city services to the Sprawls, you will return her,” Oswald responded, trying to ascertain how best to punish these abominations. He didn’t want his daughter back, frankly, if they had put their filthy fingers on her and filthier things inside her, but she could at least be avenged.

“No,” Huang said. “We do not return things that rightfully belong to us. She is partial payment against your insult to us. She could be full payment if you cease your madness now.”

“And if I don’t comply, you will start to take my other children, and then work your way to second-degree relatives, and so on,” Oswald said, trying to appear bored and impassive, but wondering what might become of his three sons; whether he could get guards around them soon enough to protect them.

“No, the next person we bring to the Sprawls will be your wife, but we won’t keep her. You will not, however, like the way she returns to you, I am guessing,” Huang said. “Then, if you are still not swayed, we will move on to your other children. And then to your avowed mistress. And the third-mate whom the church has sanctioned for you. All of them will become ours, one by one, until only you and your wife remain, alone and disgraced.”

“Get out of my office,” Oswald said, and severed the data connection. A few moments later, Wallace blinked, stretched, and got accustomed to having his body back.

“Has the meeting concluded?” the medion asked, unaware of the content of the proceedings.

“It has,” Oswald responded. “Get out of my office before I find an excuse to make you culpable as an accessory.”

“No need to bring the wrath of the Union of Medions and Arbitrators onto your head as well as the Outliers, Mayor,” Wallace said, turning and sauntering out of the office. “We have worse weapons than they do. We have an army of attorneys.”

* * *

Oswald ignored Huang’s threats, doubled security around his family—and tripled it around his sons—and then sent seven riot teams into the sprawlhood from which Huang was thought to originate. They did not penetrate far into the Sprawls before they were repelled, many Fringies and Wyldthings left dead in their wake.

Three days later, the Sprawls were still without most basic services, mid-strata neighborhoods were beginning to complain about backlash, and Danica locked herself in her office every day and refused all calls from the mayor, lest he order her to cut off more services. She also blocked his webaccount.

Then the next morning, Oswald woke to find his wife missing.

He didn’t fret about it overly much. Huang had said she would be returned in a manner he would not like. Probably with body mods or disfiguring injuries or tainted in some other way. The church leaders would grant him a quiet divorce from her under such circumstances.

Life would continue.

And at least his sons were safe.

* * *

By evening, his wife was back in their home, and Oswald entered, smiling for her benefit. She looked normal, and he wondered what changes they had wrought that he couldn’t see.

She launched herself at him immediately, spitting and cursing. She rained blow after blow against his face and chest before he got her in a bear hug.

It took ten minutes of struggling before she was spent enough to begin making sense.

Before she was exhausted enough that coherent information began to filter through her swearing.

Before Oswald discovered that his wife had been taken to the Vamp compound to see their daughter. To watch her rut with two Outliers at once. To watch one of them violate her vagina and the other one violate a second vagina that had been installed on her body—a fully functional one at that. To watch her daughter’s pleasure and glee at the invasions. To see what other things had been altered on her body. To hear her daughter beg her mother to join in the unholy escapades.

When his wife got her wind back, and her anger flared at her freshly shared revelations, she began hitting him again.

Oswald called in a physician to have his wife sedated.

He added more security around his sons.

He did not, however, restore city services to the sprawlhoods.

Two days later, Oswald discovered the four bodyguards assigned to his youngest son were missing, and their families were demanding to know what had happened to them. His son, meanwhile, was babbling something about his “red winged goddess.” This worried Oswald, but he was happy his son had somehow avoided abduction.

By morning, though, the young man had slipped out of the home and vanished into the Sprawls, his last known location having been a vehicle owned by someone named Astarte sin-Lux. Oswald issued a news release that his son had decided to travel abroad for an indeterminate period of time.

Oswald pounded on Danica’s office door for two hours before she relented and let him in. He told her what he wanted her to do, and for once, she was happy to hear his orders. By the afternoon, the brownouts had ended. By the end of day, waste handling was back online in the Sprawl. Two days later, road and walkway repairs were being handled again.

The police, however, politely refused Oswald’s order that they investigate some disappearances into the Sprawls of several individuals of “personal interest” to him.

Danica delivered that message personally, the first time she had visited Oswald’s office since the debacle began. Ignoring his irritation, she pulled a Citron cigarette from her pack, lit it with her hotpen, and savored the lemony flavor with its hints of orange and lime.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be seeking re-election,” Danica noted acidly, blowing smoke directly across his desk, then leaning forward to stare into his eyes.

Oswald said nothing. Instead, he turned his chair to face the window of his office, and watched the dark ochre hue of the sunset over one of the sprawlhoods.

Where two of my children now cavort with freaks.

Danica stood there watching him the entire time, until her long cigarette was spent, flicking ashes on his floor and savoring his pain the entire time. When she took her last puff, she ground the butt out on his desk.

“Are you happy woman?” he asked, voice full of hatred, but with so little actual energy behind it. When she didn’t respond, he added, “I know that you have the beginnings of a campaign fund. Started up by Fringie and Wyldthing coalitions several days ago.”

“It’s not a secret. Huang is confident he can put me in your position four years from now. He also tells me that I had better have as much confidence when repairing the damage that you’ve done, and no doubt will continue to do, to relations between the Sprawls and the rest of the city.”

“So they are your new friends now? You are as unfaithful and weak a woman as any I have met,” he hissed at her.

“They aren’t my friends, but I’d rather be fucked two ways by them than suffer your insanity.”

“Fucked two ways,” Oswald muttered. “My daughter would know a thing or two about that.”

“I know,” Danica said mildly but with a trace of venom toward him in her tone.

Oswald winced at the knowledge that the City Administrator was aware of his daughter’s fate; wondered what else she was privy to.

“She was quite verbose about it when Huang brought her with him during a dinner meeting with me about my future campaign,” Danica said. “He encouraged her to go on and on about her body mods. Frankly, I’m not sure if it was meant to be a warning to me…or an enticement.”

With that, Danica turned and walked toward the door.

“I hope you live long enough to see them take control of society one day, and serve under them,” he said quietly.

Danica paused, considered his words. She knew they were meant to be a curse, but she answered, “I hope you’re right.”

Tags: tales of the poisoned world

Kneeling to the Fallen

Kneeling to the Fallen

By Smokedawg

Calamity.

Nothing but calamity on this expedition. Illness, injury, loss of supplies, loss of transportation and repeated desertions. And two deaths. And now, Andrea Cochrane realized, she was the last one left. The one who led the team to find the cavern, and the only one who made it all the way. She had no way of knowing whether the ill and injured had made their way back to civilization or not.

And I have no idea if I can find my way back now, she admitted to herself.

It occurred to her that the entire trip had begun to feel cursed early on. That she, as the organizer and mastermind of it, would be the only one to gaze upon this crack in the cliff face spoke to her of influences beyond those of humans.

Given what she was seeking, that wasn’t such a superstitious notion anymore.

What few clues there were in the ancient texts and carvings matched up with the features around her. And most especially the narrow passage through the mountain in front of her. She had no idea why she had continued after Walter was carried away by the river current, over the falls and into the jagged rocks below—with Hannah subsequently leaving her in disgust.

But not without hurling curses and accusations at me, Andrea recalled. Not without telling me I was stupid to continue, and much worse things besides. And, in the end, why am I still walking toward my goal instead of running away from it? No one remains to witness this. No one is here to help me bring back proof if I survive. I’m like Walter now, being carried by a current I cannot resist.

And so she marched toward the tall crack in the mountain, managed to slip through it into the passage beyond, and turned on her lantern to chase away some of the murky darkness. And once she no longer had to crawl and scuff her hands and knees, she stood and walked.

Toward her goal.

Toward whatever might live there, if it existed—and if what it was could even be called a living thing.

* * *

She wandered for hours, alternately crawling and walking, depending on the tunnel she was in, operating on instinct alone. She was tired, hungry, and raw all over her body by the time she found the little pool of water in a natural alcove in one of the larger tunnels, a rivulet of water running down the wall to feed it, and the overflow running along the wall’s edge, off into the darkness beyond.

Parched, Andrea knelt down and cupped her hands in the little basin of water. She ached all over from bruises, cuts and scratches, and Lord only knew what microbes might be breeding in the little pool, but she was about to pass out, and she could only hope that the constant flow kept that water from breeding too much of anything.

It was perhaps the sweetest water she had ever tasted, cool and refreshing—though that probably had more to do with how dehydrated she was than any inherent quality.

Still, she thought as she got back up a few minutes later and began to walk, she didn’t hurt as much anymore. Though she still wondered why she wouldn’t stop walking into the unknown, all alone.

* * *

It was less than an hour later when Andrea found it.

The grotto, and the fallen one that inhabited it.

She felt a pang of regret as she approached and saw the immobile angelic shape in the center of the grotto, on a small hummock of stones and soil.

Of course it would be a statue, you dolt, she chided herself. Did you really expect to see a fallen angel here?

But it was exquisite in its detail; that she could she even from afar. And the grotto itself was amazing. Cracks in the ceiling let in stray spears of light from the sunlight above, which reflected off crystal-encrusted stalactites and stalagmites and scattered outcroppings of larger crystals. Some of the mosses on the wall actually seemed to produce illumination naturally. And the statue of the fallen angel itself reflected and amplified this ambient light, making her lantern almost—but not quite—unnecessary.

As she reached out to touch the statue, she heard the voice, as much in her mind as in her ears.

“I had wondered if I could guide you all the way here,” said the voice, as the form before her moved, revealing itself to be anything but a statue, and glowing with a faint but firm light of its own. “I can only guide those who actually seek me. And it took so much of my attention to rid you of the extraneous humanity in your company that I wasn’t sure you would hear me. So long since a woman has sought me. And in the end, it is only the women I want to find me.”

“Dear Lord,” Andrea gasped as she gazed upon the being before her.

“If you are calling me ‘Lord,’ that bodes well for our continued relationship,” he answered in a voice that was both deep and piercing, with lyrical undertones and shadowy whispers that flitted in and out between every word. “If you are calling upon Jesus, I can tell you that this is one of the few places in creation where you are highly unlikely to find him.”

* * *

Andrea had been staring at the angel’s face for quite some time. She knew that with a certainty, and he examined her face with his own eyes even more deeply. Whether they stayed that way for minutes or hours or days was a mystery to her. But she wasn’t complaining. His features were, for lack of a more fitting word, divine. His hair was short, except for one long braided lock that hugged the left-hand side of his face and tumbled down in front of his torso at the moment. His eyes were hard yet inviting, a mix of orange and green and violet in his irises that could best—but still inadequately—be described as iridescent. His mouth combined cruelty with sensuality, and far more of the latter, Andrea realized. His nose was smoother than a human’s with nothing bulbous about it but rather a thin sleekness that was appealing but clearly inhuman.

When he stood up, her neck craned upward, her own eyes unable to break free of his. She tried to stand but realized she simply couldn’t remember how to do so.

He was tall, easily seven feet of lean, rippling, naked glory, though she was only getting the tiniest sense of his overall body from her peripheral vision.

“You are beautiful,” he said simply. But there was nothing simple in his tones, which mixed admiration, desire, ownership and imperiousness all at once.

And into Andrea’s mind suddenly leapt one of the passages she had most studied from the Bible as part of her studies of the fallen ones: Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

And just as clearly, Andrea thought to herself, No one has ever called me beautiful. I’ve had lovers in my 36 years of life, but never been called anything but striking or handsome. I’m not an ugly woman, but I’m not beautiful.

“But you are,” the figure before her said, answering her thoughts. “We angels, fallen or otherwise, do not see you with frail mortal eyes. We see mortal women in the flesh but mostly in the spirit. All women on Earth are a beauty for us to look upon. And your seeking spirit even more so to me. And all of you women bear the signs and marks of Eve and of Lilith, and there is true beauty indeed.”

Then he bent down again, and touched his hand to her belly, sending a thrilling shiver throughout her body. “And only women can carry a life inside them, something no man may claim,” he continued. “Is it any wonder we have eyes for mortal females alone, and no regard for the men? Except to destroy them.”

The fallen angel leaned back and sat, cross-legged before her, his penis now capturing her attention with even more force than his gaze had before.

“I am Hrezual,” he said. “Come to me, on your hands and knees, and make proper introduction to my body.”

And so she crawled toward his lap, slowly, her aching flesh complaining all the more as it dragged across the rough earth beneath her. Hrezual’s hand shot out, touching her head first, and as she drew closer to him, his hand ran down her, her clothing falling away in shreds and every wound on her flesh vanishing in a tingling, delightful rush of heat.

When his hand passed over her buttocks and the wounds of her feet were healed, he said, “Stop.”

And she did, her face now almost touching his beautiful cock.

“Look at me.”

Andrea realized her didn’t mean his sexual organs, nor his eyes, but all of him. She raised herself up  to a sitting position, and looked at him, letting her gaze sweep across him and see as much of him as possible. She took in the coppery tones of his skin, the utter hairlessness of him aside from his head. The sinewy might evident in him. The graceful curves of his body.

And then he unfurled his wings, and Andrea choked back a sob. No, not a single sob, but rather a multitude of sobs. She wanted to sob in pleasure. To sob in dismay. To sob in fear. To sob in devotion. But all of it caught in her throat.

The wings were neither avian nor reptilian but a little of both, and added to that the essence of things that had never walked the Earth at all at any point in the evolutionary cycle. The best her mind could do to make sense of it was that his wings were covered in blade-shaped scales with feathery tips, each one of them with an eye. Not like the eye of a peacock’s feather, but golden orbs that throbbed and pulsed with life. They saw her, she knew that. Saw her better than any camera or medical instrument or mortal eyes could ever see.

She was trapped beneath their gaze; held in place by them. Those hundreds of eyes stripped her naked. They saw past her flesh and down to every microbe in her body. They pierced her soul. They uncovered every light and dark part of her, and she felt them settle on the most prurient parts of her mind and spirit now. She felt them pull up her passions, from the simplest to the most complex and the most innocent to the most salacious.

When Hrezual’s voice rose again, it was soft, but commanding, as it said, “Dine at my lap. Make feast of my staff.”

As she looked upon his cock, Andrea couldn’t imagine doing anything else. It was familiar, yet strange, but it filled her mind. She leaned forward, and visually took in all that she could as she drew closer. It was long, perhaps 10 or 11 inches, but it was smooth and it tapered to a rounded point, much like a vibrator. And then she noticed that it wasn’t altogether smooth but rather covered in fine scales that seemed to ripple with all the colors of the spectrum. She blew upon it and the scales fluttered away from the shaft a little, like hundreds of tiny wings, then settled down again.

She rubbed one cheek against the flesh of his penis and marveled at how soft and silky it felt, and how it thrummed gently. It was warm, but not as hot as a human’s enflamed manhood. And then she saw his testicles—or rather his version of them. His scrotum was as unlike a human male’s as his cock had been. Three small sacs were behind the base of his cock, resting on the ground and beckoning her. One russet colored, one a deep golden amber color, and the third a pale violet hue. They weren’t the wrinkled balls of a man but more like three tulip buds that had not yet opened.

With that thought, as she leaning in closer and licked one of them, and it did open like a flower, just a little, and gave a little puff. Some fine gray powder like pollen filled the air in front of her face and she breathed it all in, and felt every inhibition she had ever felt wash away from her in the wake of a scent like a garden full of sweet and musky herbs. She buried her face in Hrezual’s lap and nuzzled his cock and sacs. Kissed them. Licked their honey-salty flesh and nipped at them with her teeth.

She felt him respond with pleasure. He made no sounds of satisfaction, but she felt his flesh respond to her, even her bites. Then her tongue found his shaft and marveled at the taste of wine and sweat as her nose registered notes of  honeysuckle and cocoa and vanilla. Andrea’s mouth engulfed as much of his cock as she could manage, and she sucked at it ravenously as his hands ran across her scalp and over her shoulders.

She could feel the tiny scales of his penis flutter against her mouth, tongue and throat. Something oily and sweet began to seep from his flesh into her mouth and she swallowed it, feeling warmth rush through her muscles and skin. Her whole body suddenly throbbed with need. Pleasure pulsed through her veins until her mind could register nothing but his cock in her mouth and his hands and the pounding, incessant moist inferno of her cunt.

When he exploded in her mouth silently, it was if a mellow liqueur was sliding over her tongue and down her throat. Waves of it came, with a pleasant little spicy burn and an aftermath of mind-searing fireworks that drove all other cares from her mind but pleasuring him.

Her mouth still impaled by his cock, she slumped into his lap and felt darkness claim her mind even as an orgasm continued to rock her body.

* * *

As Andrea came slowly back to her senses, she realized that two strong hands were supporting her in the air from her armpits, as two thumbs rubbed at her nipples roughly.

She wished at that moment that he would be even rougher, and marveled at how her nipples were easily twice as big as normal, and throbbing with need, sending shivering signals of lust straight to her pussy. Andrea realized that Hrezual was supporting her in mid-air, effortlessly, with her toes a foot off the ground.

As she turned her bleary, half-lidded eyes to his own, Hrezual smiled and lifted her up higher, probed the entrance to her sex with the tip of his penis. He ran it up and down her labia, thrilling her flesh and leaving a trail of something sticky and slippery  that she suddenly wished she could taste and rub all over herself.

“In due time, beautiful one,” Hrezual said. “In due time.”

Her gaze wandered down the base of his cock, where the three flower-like sacs undulated and then suddenly spread open, spraying something powdery yet slick across her thighs and pubes. She rubbed her legs together and it felt like oil-dipped silk on her skin. Fragrant fumes wafted up in the wake of the spray, and sent her mind in a tizzy for a few moments as colors and spots danced across her vision.

And then he entered her. It was without resistance, she realized. Her sex was wet and welcoming, and although her entered her with inexorable determination, he did it slowly and sensuously. He filled her. She could feel his penis actually thicken as he pumped into her pussy. She was limp in his arms. She was dead weight but he held her aloft with ease, and slid into her deeper and deeper until he could go no farther. And then he pumped her slowly, the trio of sacs at his crotch tickling her in that delicate place between her cunt and her ass.

Her cunt gripped him like a vice. Every one of her muscles was locked into service to him down there, massaging and milking his cock, eagerly sucking at it like her mouth had before. It almost felt like the tip of his penis was in direct contact with her spine, tingling her there with electric sparks. His pace increased slowly, but relentlessly, until he was fucking her at a savage speed. And yet she could only feel ecstatic joy. There was no pain; only undeniable joy. Joy to be his toy. Joy to be his lover. Joy to be desired and found beautiful by him.

When he came, she screamed. Andrea had experienced many orgasms in life, but this was something different. His come sprayed inside her, and spread over every part of her sex. She felt coated inside, deep into her being, and his seed dripped out of her as well, covering her thighs and sliding down the sides and backs of her legs until her feet and toes were dripping with it as well.

His cock pumped and spurted for ten minutes inside her. She couldn’t imagine where so much of that come could have been held in his body. But she knew that everywhere it touched her, inside and out, her flesh rippled with ecstasy. Her very skin orgasmed where his cum touched it, and her actual sex even more so, to the point she feared she might lose her mind. He continued to pump her, even after he stopped coming, and she realized he never became limp.

When he pulled out of her 20 minutes later and laid her down on the ground, she felt used, but in a way that was so utterly satisfying. She ached, but in a way that felt so good. She was weak, but suddenly so alert.

“Our son will be strong,” Hrezual said.

“Son? But…”

“I am only allowed to sire a child once every 120 years, and it has been far longer than that since I last had a chance. You will bear me a son 40 weeks hence. You are with child even as we speak.”

A nephilim, Andrea thought with pride and dread. A child of an angel.

“You will stay here,” Hrezual said. “It is always required that the mother stay. You must be a part of raising him. Such is the law. I will teach him to subvert humanity; you must provide the counterpoint to that so that he might choose the opposite path against my wishes. It would be easier to raise him alone without such confusions, but I am bound as I am bound.”

Inexplicably, she accepted the irrefutable logic of his words. She couldn’t imagine leaving, but worries still nagged at her. “How will I survive here?” she asked weakly.

The fallen angel chuckled. “Do you hunger? I think not. For you have dined on me. You will find that my seed is as nourishing as mana from Heaven, and I have more than enough to feed you. And feed you I shall. Often and eagerly. As I shall taste you, too, though not for sustenance.

Hrezual ran his fingers across her flesh, and Andrea shuddered all over, feeling a tiny orgasm hit her.

“Companionship is good as well after so long alone. I have had to keep the boredom away by devising the most exotic pleasures and most exquisite agonies in my mind for untold centuries now, so I will need you to put them to the test. The pleasures at least. You are safe from harm by me, except what pain you might request of me from time to time.”

Andrea shivered, but not with dread.

“For sometimes, pain is a fine companion to pleasure,” Hrezual added, “as salt is to meat.”

Andrea looked up into his outstretched wings and those all-seeing eyes, and gazed upon his naked body, and felt renewed desire. A nigh unquenchable passion.

And she wondered if, by the time their child was born, she would have enough loyalty to humankind left not to let Hrezual raise their child to visit darkness and doom upon men. And ecstasy to the women.

Tags: demon sex, erotica, fantasy sex