The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Ed

An Exploration of Dreaming

by William Pratt

Chapter 11

In the past few days, Ed had seen some pretty strange things, but nothing nearly as surreal as a girl talking like she was planning to kill him one moment and then screaming his name as her vaginal walls seized his cock and began to pulse rhythmically.

Needless to say, with all this attention, he ejaculated. He didn’t orgasm, that was denied him, but once a guy reaches a certain point, not much can stop the eruption. Sadly the thought of the dick-stimulating girl wanting him removed, or some other euphemism, took no small amount of the pleasurable edge off.

“Eddieeeeeeeee! Eeeeiiiiii! Oh, yesssss! Yesssssss. Wuh-what? Get that thing hard again Ed,” she commanded, making small circles with her hips. “What are you doing? You can’t possibly be done already! Oh no. You came in me, didn’t you? Fuck! I didn’t want you to do that. Fuck! fuck fuck fuck!”

“I didn’t have much choice. With you sitting on me, I couldn’t have pulled out if I’d wanted to. Why do you have to remove me?”

“What?” she barked, stiffening.

“At the end you were really babbling. I’m fucking up everything and I need to be removed.”

“You bastard!” She sat up and lifted off of him, shuddering softly under the influence of the momentary friction.

“You recognized Pinky when Tanya brought her to the lab, didn’t you?”

“Pinky?”

“The pink teddy bear.”

“Kelli.”

“Kelly?”

“Kelli.” Melissa slipped her legs off the table and dropped onto the floor. “Short for Kellimarona—her name. She’s the daughter of Thlammon, one of the lords of the Sprites.”

Trying to keep his partner in sight, Ed rolled over. His back went pop.

“Ow.”

“Not so much fun being on the bottom, huh?”

* * *

The old man didn’t even stop screaming when the orderlies chased Audrey out of his room.

Now that was a reason for the doddering old fool to fill his pantaloons, said the rebellious new side of her personality. It probably came with the body; it felt weird to Audrey to still be studying to be a nurse when she had a body made for an extremely dirty sort of sin. You actually want to do this for a living? There is reward enough in the universe for this sort of humiliation?

Someone has to do it, she thought back.Might as well be me. I’m good at it.

Bully for you, the rebel said, sulking. You are far to beautiful to be put to work, and I’m not putting up with this any longer than I have to. Coddling the weak, and here I thought you were the product of millions of years of evolution. No wonder the species is failing.

More than mildly disgusted with herself, Audrey stopped listening to the self absorbed inner bitch she’d picked up along with the huge tits.

Actually, they aren’t that bad looking, she thought, looking down at the way she filled out her uniform now. Paul is soooo fucking mine!

At last something we agree on, said the bitch. Find us a male. I hunger for some sport.

Audrey’s heart quickened and her head spun. The whole earth caught on fire. For no reason at all she had just gotten intensely turned on. Like enormously and stupidly aroused. Like horny enough to grab the next guy she saw, throw him on the ground, and fuck and fuck and fuck. She looked, smiled, and got ready.

Oh, not him! You stupid girl!

Old Edgar Garvey hadn’t had a girl look at him like that in about eighty years and was actually quite relieved when she turned around and walked away. Too much looking at a lady built like that could kill a man his age. If she’d actually tried what it looked like she was about to try, Edgar knew she’d have been disappointed. And he’d be dead.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure which would have been worse.

* * *

In a comic book, Ed said to himself, we’d be fighting right now. She’d turn out to be a sorceress, or something worse, and we’d level half the school. Let’s hear it for real life.

They sat in the same coffee shop that Ed and Holly had talked for hours in earlier in the week—mostly because it was the only one that Ed knew—but this time buried in a corner, out of the way. Anyone listening to this would think we were both mental. That or playing way too much D&D. I suck at D&D.

Melissa put her empty glass of fruit juice back on the table. “They can’t stay here long—strong electrical fields make them ill—so they need someone to look after things for them, and I’ve been helping out. They just want to be themselves again. No more Care Bears. No more—”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because I want to get this all straightened out. If we can talk this through like intelligent people, maybe we can sort it out. I want to get things back to normal.” She dropped to an even lower whisper. “Well, not completely normal. God help me, I’m still horny! You turned me upside-down. I never knew what I was missing. I mean, I fooled around with guys before, but never like this. Sex was just so stupid. I wanted more! I still want more, but … you know.”

“Uh … no I don’t.”

“You are such an idiot, Ed. Look at me. I’ve got the body of a sex toy. Even before you dreamed my boobs into standing up on their own, I looked like a sex toy. I’ve looked like a sex toy since I was twelve.”

“I’ve had people staring at me everywhere I went since before I was even a teenager. I could have posed for Playboy when I was fifteen and no one would have questioned me if I’d claimed to be legal. I never really had any friends; just guys who wanted to get in my pants and girls who wanted to be popular like me—or wanted to get into my pants. It fucking sucks, Ed. I have a brain, but no one ever wanted that. I’m smarter than just about everybody, but no one ever cares.”

“It’s not about who’s smarter, Melissa.”

Everything is about who’s smarter, Eddie! Smarter, stronger, richer, or just more powerful. I could play the giggly bimbo, but there isn’t any real power in that—you’re always stuck behind the guy and no one respects you. If you’re a woman, ultimately it all comes back to being smarter.

“Do you have any idea how hard I have to work to be taken seriously? For a while I dressed like a nun and hacked my hair off, then I punked out, makeup, no makeup, I’ve tried everything, but it only gets worse.”

“Try being a nerd for a while,” said Ed.

Melissa glared and continued. “Once, I was in full-on Goth mode and this guy at a party tells me that I’d make a fucking amazing Vampirella. He thought the whole Goth thing was a put on to look sophisticated. It was a put on, but it wasn’t so I’d look smart. It was so people would know I was smart! Nerds have it lucky, but even girl-nerds are expected to look hot when you take their glasses off. That’s why I wear contacts.

“No one cares unless you’re beautiful and then that’s all they care about. At least I got something from being beautiful: The Professor hired me because I’m hot, but now he trusts me … or he did until you screwed me up and we started fucking in the lab. Now I’m probably back at square one.

“You saw the looks I got coming in here. I walk into just about anywhere and guys start hitting on me. Girls start hitting on me. Now you’ve got me perverted enough to do something about it, so at least I get something out of all the come-ons, but nobody really gives a shit about Mel. To them I’m just her tits and ass. That’s why I have to get my PhD. Mel’s just another bimbo, but Doctor Melissa … that means something!”

“About as much as Doctor Boll.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I never hit on you.”

“Jesus, Ed, you’re the worst! You’re always trying to help me even when you know I don’t need it. You always stare at my tits.”

“I’m not right now.”

“Not now you aren’t, but that’s because as soon as someone starts to snooze, you can make a bigger set.” She leaned forward, not to emphasize her curvature but to look him right in the eye. “You never hit on me because you never got up the balls to. You just stared when you thought I wasn’t looking.”

“You could have said something, Melissa. Asked me not to stare.”

“And would you have?”

Ed thought about it for a moment and decided on honesty. “Probably not.”

“Precisely! You’re smart, but you’re still ruled by your dick. I’ve been getting an education in that the last couple days so now I’m getting a better understanding, but … come on! Me and you would have been hopeless. I was looking for something completely different.”

“Now that is a double standard! I think you’re hot, and I know you’re smarter than me, but I’m not good enough for you until I’ve got a huge cock and muscles? What about my brain?”

“You never use your brain until you’re forced to. You’re lazy, Ed. I hate that. If you weren’t lazy, maybe you would have tried to make a pass or something. You kept waiting until you were on top of me like it was some sort of race. Take no risk until it’s a sure thing. I want more than that. I’m not going to be a toy for anyone. Equals or nothing!”

* * *

“So I’m still confused,” said Ed.

“Who cares?” whined Melissa, dumping her shirt on the lab floor again. Her eyes closed as she fondled a breast.

“Why didn’t you say anything about the bears before?”

“Ed, mmmm. Ed, if you’re over the age of ten and you start talking about magic teddy bears somebody has you locked up.”

“Nobody locked me up.”

“Nobody’s had a chance yet.” She slipped a hand under the waistband of her pants and squirmed. “These are too tight.” Buttons popped and Melissa’s face brightened. “The only people you’ve told so far—that I know about—are the girls from last night and they’ve all seen what you can do. Talking teddy bears aren’t much of a shock when your boobs just doubled in size.”

“I didn’t make your boobs bigger.”

“Well, you sure did something.” Squeeze and moan. “These babies don’t need the kind of support they used to—and it’s a good thing, too. Come on, Ed. You know you want these. Let’s talk later.”

“And get caught by your buddies with my pants down? No way. Back to the Care Bears and why they want me gone.”

“Kelli’s always disliked you because you were a loser. Now she hates your guts and doesn’t need you anymore. I don’t think she means to kill you, though.” She began to lick around a swollen nipple. “Sure you don’t want any?”

“No. Yes. You know what I mean. Why? Why does she hate me?”

She dropped the boob and despite his attempts to keep his eyes on Melissa’s face, Ed followed the bounce. “Why? You fucked up my life! First you turned me into my roommate’s sex slave and now you’ve made me addicted to sex in general! Then, when she tried to do something about it, you beat the shit out of her.”

“She didn’t even mention you; she just tried to kill me! First time I met her, she wanted to know what Stormy was doing with us, but all he did was tell me to watch out for The Professor. She thought he’d given me something. Maybe for the scanner.”

“It’s not about the scanner!” Melissa yelled, her hand making slow circles beneath her jeans and scandalous panties. “She can’t use it. They want my research—my mind! They want to know how people think. If I can figure that out, they won’t have to keep changing. They don’t want to enslave us; they want to defend themselves from us.”

“That’s not what the other bears think.”

“How do you know they aren’t lying?” She traced Ed’s wandering eyes to the motions at her crotch and smiled. “Like what you see? It’s more fun if you participate ….”

His head shot up and fixed itself on her face. “I don’t. But I do know who knifed Holly and tried to kill me twice: Pinky.”

Pouting sexily and trying to tease his eyes back down, Melissa wet her lips and said, “Kelli wouldn’t—”

“Kelli’s fucking nuts, Melissa!”

Her free hand groped a breast and a soft, rippling moan preceded, “Well if she is, it’s our fault. She’s shaped by our dreams.”

“So why haven’t the rest of them gone mental then? This is like debating the root causes of terrorism back in Philosophy 2210. Look at the methods they use: One side is subtly manipulating cartoons and stuff like Sesame Street so that kids might grow up with some sense of wonder and responsibility. The other side—Kelli’s side—is ‘removing’ people and conducting research into brute-force mind control.”

The dreamy look in her eyes faded slightly as Melissa looked up from the bulge in Ed’s pants. “You took philosophy?”

“I was in the psych department until I met The Professor. He needed someone to invigilate some of those stupid telepathic card experiments. He talked me into switching to hard science.”

His partner stopped masturbating for a moment and looked at him seriously. “You let him talk you into everything, Ed.”

“Yeah. I noticed.

“Holly and I were talking last night—”

“Ooooh sure you were …,” she oozed sarcastically.

Ed ignored her. “This is about the bears. Holly and I were talking last night and she agrees that a bit of romance and fantasy’s a good thing. If people were more, I dunno, nice to each other … dreamed better stuff, the Wee Folk—bears, sprites, whatever—wouldn’t have a problem. You can’t force people—”

“You’re one to talk.”

“Melissa …. If Pin … Kelli got what she wanted, people wouldn’t change. We’d just go on and on and eventually just use everything up and die out. Holly thought—”

“My god. The blonde babbler can actually think?”

“Do you mind? Holly’s not stupid, Melissa. She’s just not a scientist.”

“And she has the cutest little tits.” The grad student fondled herself suggestively. “I thought you liked girls with a bit more, mmmmm, meat on them.”

“We talked.”

“Was this before or after you screwed her senseless?”

“Neither! We just talked.”

“Bullshit!”

“OK. So we went a bit further than just talking.”

“What base?” she asked, her face pressed in close, glassy eyes staring right into his. Her inviting lips pursed.

“How the hell should I know? I’m new at this.”

“Well,” said Melissa, pausing as her tongue traced a slow, hungry oval. “First base is just kissing. Allow me to demonstrate—”

“Later, Melissa,” Ed said, raising his hands to ward her off. “I need to cut a deal.”

“Oh, you’ll find that I’m amenable to just about anything, so long as it comes thick and hard and fast. Except anal. I’m just not going there.”

“Melissa, I just want to talk to Pinky.”

“Kelli”

“Whatever.”

“Just get it right, Eddie. And how come you never call me Mel?”

“Kelli then,” Ed sighed. “I just want to get things straightened out before anyone else gets hurt. Me included.

“Seriously, what are you really working on for Kelli and what do you want in return? The other bears are scared shitless. Mind you, they seem to think it’s The Professor that’s the problem.”

“It’s just research. Kelli’s been my friend—the only one I could really trust—since I was a teenager. She looked out for me and I owe her, big time.”

“OK. So how can I help?”

Melissa smiled and it wasn’t the hungry, “fuck me” smile. “What I want you to do is strap me into the scanner and short it out again. Then we’ll be equal. Maybe then we’d be a good match.”

“What?” Ed knew he looked like an idiot, but that demand just came out of left field. “Are you nuts? How do we know it’s reproducible? You and I both think differently so our brains are different. Besides, you didn’t see me after it happened. I was a wreck. For all I know I could have been a few milliamps from being dead. Or a vegetable. Kind of a waste, right Melissa?”

“You’ll kiss me, and I’ll be all better, right?”

“I’m not Jesus. I can’t raise the dead.”

“Have you tried?”

“No. And I’m not going to. I’m drawing the line at Superman.”

“And Superman needs a Lois Lane, huh? A cute victim who can never compete with him. I told you already: I’m not going to be your Lois. I’ll consider Wonder Woman, though.”

“I need to think about that for a while.”

“Don’t think too long, or I’ll try it out myself,” she said smirking. Melissa lay back on the table and asked, “What have you got in mind until then?”

Ed’s eyes swept up and down her body, lingering on the beautiful breasts that Melissa painted as the bane of her existence. They proudly defied gravity.

“Stop staring at my tits and do something with them, you idiot! No wonder I’m the one with all the degrees. And lock the fucking door this time!”

* * *

“Hi Pinky, Kelly, whatever. Let’s take this outside.” For the first time, Ed really noticed the transition. Melissa’s take on the lab was very, very different from the way he saw it.

* * *

In the dream world Melissa sat propped up in her chair, much the same as in real life. Her face a picture of bliss and contentment as Ed stood up from the scanner and closed the power panel. The difference was, in the dream, Melissa was awake.

“You seem to have confused me with my daughter,” said a deep voice as Ed turned around to see a bright red, but oft repaired, teddy bear. While its own appearance was shabby, its attire was not. “She couldn’t come out to play today, or for the next little while.”

“Your daughter?” said Ed, surprised a little because he’d never seen one of the bears actually dressed before.

“Lord Thlammon?” mumbled Melissa, coming part of the way out of her sexual exhaustion-induced haze.

“You have power, Ed. Youth and power mix poorly.”

“You’re right, they don’t work well together, but I have a lot of power. And imagination—that counts for a lot in a dream, too. You can’t beat me here.”

“A possibility, but then I hardly need to. While your species was still in the cradle, the last of the Elven Emperors made a similar boast. I am still here. He is not. With a command, I can order the death of your dreaming proxy. You would live, but like the Elf, you would be trapped forever as a living, bodiless dream.”

“He sounds pissed,” said Melissa, tugging her shirt back on.

She doesn’t believe he’d do it, thought Ed. I don’t know what to believe.

“Of course I’m pissed! What father wants to see his daughter nearly decapitated by a steel fire door?”

“Ed?” snapped Melissa.

“That was right after she slashed Holly. We were just fighting back.”

“It wouldn’t have been a problem if you had simply given her what she wanted.”

“I didn’t know what she wanted! I still don’t. Stormy didn’t give me anything; he just wanted to warn me about The Professor.” Ed glared at Melissa. “Man, he sure got that wrong. What was your daughter after? The fucking Maltese Falcon? I don’t know and whatever it was, I don’t have it.

“And I’ve got another question for you: If the Elves had this great empire thousands of years ago, where is the record? People keep telling me that they ruled the world, but there’s no proof!”

“Eh?”

“I did a bunch of anthropology before psychology. Where are the ruined cities? Their writings? Their mounds of garbage? Everybody has garbage.”

“When the time of the Elves ended, all traces of their passing were eradicated to prevent their return.”

“Convenient,” said Ed, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow. Being neither a Vulcan nor The Rock, both brows went up.

“Deliberate. The gods would not allow anything to interfere with the new order.”

“This would be Zeus and his bunch?”

“Zeus? Haw! Zeus is a weak-willed degenerate! Jehovah now … in your vernacular, he was a bad ass. Back in the day no one tossed fire and lightning like he did. He flooded out the entire world once, just to prove a point!”

“Well, he’s mellowed a lot since then.”

“To which you owe us thanks. Us and the Greeks. Greece enculturated Rome. The Romans evolved into Christians, and the Christians spread like a plague, crushing all before them. We had a period of golden prosperity during your dark ages and we would see it come again.”

“That’s nuts.”

“That’s planning. Ten thousand years of hard work. And now we are here … today. Much like our long-lost Elven masters, your dreams carry weight in the real world. You can lift our curse. You can free us, Ed. I demand that for my daughter’s suffering.”

“Oh screw that. There’s no way you could have planned what happened to me. It’s complete fluke.”

“There is no such thing as coincidence, Ed. I may not have planned this—no, my investment was in Melissa here—but someone did. And I plan to capitalize on it. A hasty plan, but he who hesitates is lost.”

“Undue haste makes waste,” Ed retorted. “You know what I can do in dreams; you can’t demand anything here.”

“Certainly I can.” The bear spread his arms wide to gesture around him. “I’ve done this before, but I believe that you will be less selfish than his imperious majesty, the lord of all the damnable Elves. You will do what I want or you will meet his fate: I bested him by severing his connection with reality and casting him adrift in the world of dreams. You try anything here and I have people there … to remove the girl’s head.”

* * *

Ed’s eyes snapped open. A lime-green bear scowled at him and waved but didn’t take his wickedly serrated blade from Melissa’s throat.

* * *

“What?” shrieked Melissa.

“That’s not exactly fair,” said Ed, trying and failing to pull the assassin into the dream.

“Fair is what you get when you have more power than your enemies. If you have less, the intelligent choice is to do what they want and bide your time until a new opportunity comes.”

“You’re missing the point. I’d love to help you guys, but you have to understand that humans change. We can’t help it. I could slap a Band-Aid on your little problem, maybe, but then what? In another hundred years you’d have a whole new crop of people dreaming weird shit. Seriously, bury the hatchet with Jackie. His people have this all worked out, and you’re setting yourself up for a serious ass-kicking.”

“The filthy rabbit’s numbers are too few to threaten me, even with his frenzy for illicit breeding. You play with the girl’s life. Horace, bleed her a bit.”

“No!” screamed a hoarse voice. Pinky looked no better than she had the day before despite the stitching holding her together. “Father, you can’t! She’s the only friend I’ve got left. Everyone else hates me! She understands!”

“Kellimarona … How?”

“He brought me. How could you, Father? Threaten to kill my friend and hide an Elf?”

Thlammon’s round head snapped up and around to the tall, androgynous being with Pinky. Teeth bared as the Red Duke’s muzzle twisted into a sneer. “Your time is done, master.”

“Thlammon. Thlammon. Thlammon,” said the Elf. “Playing all the sides against each other … again. How unimaginative. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this how you got into trouble last time? Isn’t this how you wound up torn, rent, and indebted to me?”

“I have my reasons, my lord. I don’t need you anymore.”

“You err greatly, as always. You spend thousands of years scheming and then you rush one small detail and screw it all up. I told you I wanted to meet with young Ed, and here you are trying to bargain and bluster your way around our agreement. You see, Kellimarona, power corrupts. And a little power can make a smart person … very stupid. Pay attention Ed, if you wish to avoid my fate.”

The red bear Thlammon made a sound that was cut off before it became intelligible.

“I don’t have time for pathetic explanations and justifications, Thlammon. You’ve sealed your mind from the human, but not from me. I wanted to meet with young Ed and now I see that my suspicions are correct. We have indeed met and you have been amusing me greatly of late, Ed. Your golden-haired courtesan with the dancer’s body and the whore’s mind is … inspiring. The Nubian—the dark skinned girl you remade tall and proud—is very much to my tastes. And yours, obviously.

“I think your sibling and my former servant’s daughter, Kellimarona, are the only two women you have encountered this week that you have not had sexual relations with.”

“No.” Ed shook his head. “Actually there was this girl who frowned at me in lab on Wednesday and the girl on the bus last Saturday morning.”

“The model? Ah yes. I must remember look in on her again, later. She will make an excellent addition to our Harem. As for the sour, frowning wench, the entire point of power is that you can take what you want. She will learn to smile in our presence.”

“Our?”

“I can no longer wield power over your world, yet by right of birth, I am still its ruler. We may as well complete the set and do all four. I hate unfinished business.”

“I take it you are the imperious majesty and lord of all Elves, then.”

“I am. And you are Ed, future lord of all humans. We will have to work on that appellation. It lacks … grandeur.”

“I don’t like Edward.”

“Pick a new one. Most names are cheap, and those that are not, you don’t want to be made public.

“But first, to seal our pact, I offer the delectable … Pinky!”

“What pact?” asked Ed before picking up on the second thread. “Excuse me, she’s a teddy bear. Yeah, I like plush girls, but she’s not my type.”

“She doesn’t have to be. You can manipulate dreams, Ed. You can free her of her curse. You can do better. You can repair her mind. You can make her yours. Tell me, have you ever made love to a nymph? It is truly mind-blowing. Even for an Elf.”

“Master!” Tlammon choked out.

Pinky looked about as stunned as a stuffed animal could “Father?”

“Be silent Thlammon lest I throw you back to the dogs.”

“No! Ed—”

“Silence!” Thlammon clutched at his throat and his legs, no longer seeming to be needed to support his body, kicked in the air. The Elf spun on Pinky as she turned to run. “He calls you Pinky, my dear. I find that cute.”

“Please no. You said …”

“And I told the truth; just not all of it. Your mortal friend is saved, foolish one, and I am about to bring your troubles with Ed to an end.”

“What?” blurted Melissa. “He was serious?”

“Go back to enjoying yourself and let your masters dicker, woman.”

Melissa was already to unleash feminist hellfire on the Emperor when her eyes crossed, rolled white and closed. She shuddered once, twice and then gave up resisting. Where the huge rubber dick in her hand had come from, Ed didn’t know, but he suspected that it was a gift from the Elf King. A gift that Melissa didn’t waste any time using.

“Once upon a time,” the Elf said over Melissa’s moans and guttural cries of lust, “Pinky was a creature of such supernatural beauty that little, mortal or immortal, could resist her charms, and her father, the noble Thlammon, used her for all she was worth.

“He offered you to me far more than once,” the Elf explained, turning to face Pinky. She froze and rose off the ground. “But his price was always too high and simply taking you would have ruined the game. The game is done now, however, and I win. I always win.”

There was no incantation or gesticulation and very little theatrics. What the Elf did was, on the surface, no different than what Ed did when he wanted something to happen in a dream. Pinky simply changed as though a god declared, “Let there be tits and ass.”

So it was, and it was good. And abundant. And, possibly because the Elf had a sense of humour, clad in a pink teddy.

A single look grabbed Ed’s eyes. Her beauty seized his cock, pulled it into instantaneous erection, and refused to let go. She radiated a promise of unmatchable sensual pleasure in spite of the look of horror in her irresistible, forest-green eyes. Pinky was beautiful, but even without whatever magical force she exuded, she was still awesomely hot. Her eyes were to die for. Slightly conical, inviting breasts pressed into a garment that was more gift wrapping than attire. Guided by feminine curvature, the pink satin shone as it caught and redirected the light. Lace trimming offered haunting glimpses of what lay beneath.

Legs, sculpted by a grand master craftsman and deceptively long on a body no taller than five feet, scissorred as she floated above the floor. Child-like in size, but certainly not in form, her body wriggled to fight free of the Elf’s mystic grip.

For a moment, Ed would have done anything for her.

So he did and the feeling passed. He kept staring, though, because consumed with worshipful desire or not, there was literally nothing better to look at. All in all, it was hard to remember the psychotic little bear from moments ago.

Perhaps because Ed still wore a slack-jawed expression of stunned lust, the Elf didn’t seem to notice the sudden departure of Ed’s driving need. Instead it smiled, nodded, and turned back to Thlammon. “There. You see, my servant? I have made your daughter whole again. I have kept my promise. No longer must you debase yourself before me in hope that one day I would clean up your mistakes. You should not have assisted the extermination of my race by the gods. As you’ve seen, the humans, for all their ignorance, are no better as masters of your fate.”

The teddy bear’s snout moved wordlessly. To Ed he looked about to scream. Risking a quick look around, Ed saw that the Elf was grinning smugly and had returned to ogling his creation. Melissa was lost in a masturbatory frenzy as the hypersexual aura of her friend surrounded Melissa and combusted her recently acquired bisexuality. Not that it needed much help; whatever the Elf had done had primed Melissa to go off like an atomic bomb and now she writhed and screamed silently, cumming continuously from simply looking at her pink laced friend.

“Something is missing,” said the Elf, pausing to chew on his upper lip. “Fear, Ed, is like wine. It needs to be carefully matched to the meal.” Still frozen in place, Pinky shuddered, her eyes dimming as an insatiable hunger took over. Her lips parted in a soundless moan.

The terror was still there, but somehow worse, barely visible behind Pinky’s very visible growing lust. Her body trembled, the lace over her bosom barely contained her breasts as she gasped for air, and the pink silk between her legs darkened, soaked with the fluids tricking down her perfect legs. “You may take her now, Ed. She is ready for you.”

“No,” said Ed.

“No? How can you refuse? She is perfect! The ultimate fantasy made warm, wet, and wanting. She cannot resist her desires. She will never tire of your touch. She will always crave the quenching of the burning within, and all you must do to claim her is—”

“No. She may need it, but she’ll always hate it. Even I can see that.”

“Says the young man well on his way to building a harem made up of formerly disinterested women. Here she is: the ultimate in disinterested women. The ultimate teasing, unavailable bitch. She would literally rather kill you than fuck you. You’ve used your powers to take what you wanted in the past; there is little difference now.”

“There’s a big difference. This is torture, not pleasure. What did she ever do to you?”

“Nothing, but offer and deny over and over for centuries.”

“You said it yourself. That was her dad.”

“The sins of the father—”

“‘—are to be laid upon the children.’ The Merchant of Venice. Act III, scene V. Eng-Lit 1104.”

“And a concept far, far older than Shakespeare. She simply pays a debt of Thlammon’s. I always meant to claim her once and for all when I was finished with him. He had me assassinated, once, but as you can see, I am still here. He killed my most favoured concubine and mother of my daughter. You should join me in my vengeance, for you and your pet were to be his next victims.”

“Thanks, but no. Too many girls already. I’m wiped.”

“You are whipped, boy. The blonde business ethicist of yours would drain the joy from your soul. Women are meant to be enjoyed, not consulted.”

“Who, Holly? Nah.” Ed snorted. “Besides, I think Pinky’s Stormy’s girl or something.”

“Who?”

“The blue bear with the storm cloud on his chest. You gotta be really low to steal a friend’s girl.”

“You can return her when you tire of the girl. You do find her attractive.”

“Who wouldn’t? But she hates my guts. A guy has to draw the line somewhere. Everybody in my harem wanted something. Sure, it wasn’t exactly me, but they’re taller, focus better in school.” He pointed at Melissa, reclining in her chair as she came down from a self-powered orgasm. “Know how to have fun.”

“You!” screamed Thlammon flying through the air, having somehow fought himself free of his master’s mystic grip. His little right arm slashed at the Elf even as a sabre conjured from nothingness cut through the bear and tore him away. “You’ve killed her!”

“Assassin!” screamed the emperor of the Elves, his face bleeding from the blackened iron claws that dropped at Kelli’s feet. “Have you no honour at all?”

“Honour?” the impaled teddy bear shouted back from the ground. His face contorted with rage, Thlammon looked as though he wanted to run up the blade and keep fighting. “Fighting with honour is the fastest way to lose.”

“No. This is!” The elf’s eyes slitted and he scowled. The red bear erupted in flames.

The Emperor turned to Ed, rubbing the gashes on his cheek, as the teddy bear burned. “That I should have done while your race was still mastering fire.”

“What did he mean, ‘You’ve killed her?’”

“She is now one of the unchanging, like you,” the Elf spat. “The human race changes, that is your gift, but seldom does a human. Instead, humans die and are replaced. That is your curse. And now it is hers.”

“Kelli’s human?”

“Near enough. She no longer has to fear waking up something new when her form-host dies.”

“Form … she’s tied to Melissa, isn’t she. That’s why she’s a Care Bear.”

“That’s why many of her brethren are ‘Care Bears’. To be like her. Perhaps to win her love and admiration. For a time in the eighties it was hip to be bear.”

Ed winced as the Elf guffawed at its wit.

“Enough. This play has stretched on too long and now it is finished. With my experience and understanding alongside your youth and power, we would quickly rule the world, Ed.”

“Why? You didn’t do such a good job with it last time if everybody ganged up on you, and I’d just get bored. Frankly, you’re no better a deal than he is.” Ed pointed at the smouldering pile of ash that was Thlammon. “Was.”

“So mote it be,” said the Emperor of the Elves. “We fight then. How droll.”

Lightening flashed, and the Elf held up its gleaming sword, crackling with a soft blue light.