The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Road Trip

Disclaimer: This story contains scene of a graphic nature, despite the fact that there are no pictures. (Although there is a lot of discussion about art. A clever person can guess which museums I used to visit.) Also, my main character sometimes forgets to brush his teeth. This is behaviour NOT TO BE COPIED! (Apart from the going to museums bit.) You do not have super secret powers, and the laws of physics and disease transmission apply to you. Yes, you! If you are reading this because you feel powerless, go do something nice for someone. It really does work.

I do need to appologise for the poor editting so far. i’m trying to get better at its!

And I keep forgetting: if you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to contact me at

Chapter Four: A Study in Wishful Thinking, and a Violation of Trust

We headed north, through the rain and fog and forests of the upper states in order to meet a woman I had not contacted for years. When looking back over the course of my life, I can see many mistakes and many glories that have gone into defining my character. The stupid things I’ve said to people I wanted to impress, and the mot juste that trips off the lips without thinking. Our lives are built out of those little moments of interaction with each other. A series of right words will build a successful career, while a series of gaffes leaves you stumbling behind. For most of us we have our hits and our misses, little bricks which alter the edifice of our character.

There are certainly those who bull through the walls of their mistakes, who find the confidence in themselves to take by will the approval society won’t give, and many of those people find success. (Many of course, are just bullies.) Other people choose to let their good deeds and actions take the place of public discourse. Is it better to labor within the system, and work towards your goals by convincing others to join in? Or is it enough to be an example of dedication and steadfastness in silence? I suppose it doesn’t matter so much as it is to actually act, and then be reflective in your actions.

Yet even today I am forced by the realities of society to work in relative silence, and act as an example only to those I work with. It would be too upsetting, I think, to take up my causes by prancing about in front of cameras, pretending to be something I am not—that is, a god.

This chapter begins many years ago, before I became a man whose words and wishes were greeted with universal accord and acclaim by those around me.

This chapter begins with me telling a tall young woman how much I am in love with her. We are sitting at a park-side bistro with the rest of the lunch crowd. The moment as clear as a painting. The sky is blue, the pasta is al dente, the ice in the tea is tinkling just below a slice of lemon, and I am trying to put into words how the purity of my love for her transcends any need for morals or boundaries. I am more than willing to share her with her husband, and I would never want him to be hurt by the connection she and I share. I really like him as a friend, and respect him.

The more I speak, the more pronounced her grimace becomes, and the more I spill out some part of the speech I had been working on for the past several weeks. After a dozen minutes she has enough. “Just shut up, okay?” She clenches her fork tightly with her long white fingers, and her plate of fusili primavera sits, uneaten. Her skin, so clear and pale, has a rising undercurrent of red that sets off her spiky, pale hair and green eyes.

“Helen, I—I know I’m saying it badly. It’s not, like, I’m asking you to leave Greg, or run away with me. I just want to be closer to you. To explore what we have.”

For the past three years we had all been friends together in a hiking club, first at college, and then after graduation. Helen and her boyfriend, Greg, had been an item before we met, but I got along very well with both of them. We’d hiked together, laughed at movies together, explored the mysteries of various animal and plant life, and marveled at the beauty of the world from snowy mountain peaks. It was a great friendship, and Helen and I both felt we could talk about the deeper mysteries of life with each other in a special and unique way. Our personalities complemented each other, as we were both people who needed extra approval and praise. We both increasingly found art to be a special refuge from the uncertainties of life looming outside of college. The campus gallery became a refuge from the stresses of class, a place of pure passion for the strong vision of the heart.

And it wasn’t as if I was just a third wheel in their relationship. I had started dating Wendy, an art major and docent, the semester before graduation, and the four of us had done well enough despite Wendy’s emotional distance. Wendy and Greg even considered Helen and I the flighty ones in each relationship, while they congratulated each other for their solidity.

But just as Wendy and I drifted apart, (our characters and tastes were too dissimilar—she loved Roy Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns. Urggh.) Helen and Greg sanctified their closeness. I found myself watching her on her wedding day, tall, slim, and elegant, an ethereal vision in white tulle and silk. Her strong, bare shoulders and alabaster arms were the lovely base for the delicate skin of her swan neck, her beaming face, her short, barely butter-yellow hair moussed upwards into a crown of hair more precious and pale than diamonds. On this day she was a fantasy princess stepped into our lumpen world of clay. And I found that my heart was breaking. Here was a woman like no other, my perfect fit, marrying a man who was an even better fit for her.

Our friendship muddled through the next year or so as best as married/single friendships do. It was really by special effort on Helen’s part that I saw as much of her as I did, meeting for lunches, for the occasional museum trip and hike. All through it I continued to hint of my growing love for her, and she continued to hint at gentle rebuffs. Somewhere along the line, some sweating night when her imagined arms held me, and her lips pressed against my neck, as I unleashed my seed into the bed sheets, I came to the conclusion that we would both be best served if I just laid out my feelings directly, so we could discuss them. Surely that would be much better than continually dancing around the elephant in the room.

In my bed, riding the bus, washing the sheets, my obsession stumbled me face first into the fantasy that we should have both met in high school or as college freshmen, had our relationship, and then let it settle down into a life-long friendship complemented by an easy physicality of hugs and cuddles. We could live in the same town, raise our families together. . . . Well, if I couldn’t have had the love affair before the marriage, and it would be unlikely that we would have one now, at least I could tell her my feelings. Talking about it would be the best for all of us.

And so, here we are at lunch, with her flaming in silent fury at my audacity, my stupidity, my downright treachery: “Helen?” I asked, “Don’t you want to know how I feel about you?”

“Look, let’s just change the subject. This. Minute. OK?”

“OK. Sure. Um. Hey, I saw this new painting at the museum the other day. I must have missed it before, or they just rotated it in. ‘Midas and his Daughters,’ by Matthews. We should go check it out. You know his decorative work and his paintings with Lucia—this has all the clarity of Pre-Raphaelite work, but it’s definitely still his style. The question is did he muddy up later, or was his transition to more of a sforza technique a sign of complexity?” I continued on a mile-a-minute, running my mouth as the ground crumbled away beneath my feet. If she wanted to change the subject, I would definitely change it for her. We could talk more about my feelings later, when she had time to think about what I said. I congratulated myself after lunch for having made the first move of a dance that would bring us spiraling closer towards—what?

Helen and Greg moved out of state later that year. He found a job with a natural foods company, and she was going to be near her parents’ farm, where she could spend the days painting. But eventually they had children and she put the paints away. We swapped Christmas cards for a few years, a couple of calls, but then—How time has changed me I know too well, but what about them? I still find a hole in my heart when I think about her on her wedding day.

Now I’m on my way north to see them.

* * *

There came a time in my life when I decided my youth was done. I had put enough time between my childhood traumas and my adult days to declare myself a different person, who at best had the memories of the boy I used to be. Of course the next day I spoke with my mother and had to promise her that I was eating properly.

When I called Helen & Greg’s house in the middle of the afternoon I expected to reach either Helen being domestic, or perhaps their answering machine. “Daddy!” Their son Aidan shouted next to the phone. “It’s some strange man!”

“Holy Cats!” Greg enthused. “I was just thinking about you the other day. Helen got your card saying you’d be in town on business. You can come by, right?”

The teenager I had buried in my past wrapped his skeletal hands around my throat, and my mouth went dry. “Ab-absolutely, That’s what I was most looking forward to on this trip. But you don’t mind, do you?”

“Heck, no! Why should I? Jeez, I missed our talks and walks. That’s one of the things I regret most of us moving up here. Losing all our friends.”

The rain, which had been intermittent during our trip began to fall in earnest. Kara maneuvered the Maybach into the driveway of the bed-and-breakfast we were going to be staying at. The wet gravel crunched under our wheels.

“Uh, my...secretary came up with me. Do you mind if she comes along?”

“No, bring her by. You never did marry did you? Still playing the field? Ah, well, let’s go over our lives when we see you.”

Kara turned off the engine and turned towards me as we set up our timing and directions.

“That’s odd.” I told her.

“Hmm?” she breathed heavily to relax from the length of the trip.

“Oh, nothing. He’s as friendly as ever. But I’m sure she told him at some point....The man I was just talking to? I tried to steal his wife from him when I was a kid. Well, perhaps steal is the wrong word. I think,” it now just dawning on me so many years later, “that I wanted them to invite me into their relationship, into a threeway with her. You know, two good friends both sharing the woman they love.”

“Mmm. Sick man. You have always been a pervert. Go get the keys.” She leaned forward over the seat. “Kiss,” she ordered, and gave me a quick smack on the lips. I unfurled the umbrella as I opened the door.

We spent the afternoon like a young romantic couple. The refrigerator was stocked with cold food and champagne, and we lay on the bed watching the rain patter on the windows. I never tire of stroking a beautiful woman’s body, and Kara was lovely in the dim gray cloudlight. Her green eyes were filled with light desire under her folded lids. I kissed her soft lips and held her close as we lay on the bed facing each other.

Her muscles were tight, and I pressed my fingers into her creamy skin, kneading her strong shoulders, and working my fingers down her vertebrae. I was also feeling beneath her skin, looking for tiny defects in her cells, repairing genetic drift. She had a small lipoma developing inside her bottom, which I broke up, and some small cysts in her liver. Turning her face down, I began stroking down her spine and refilled all the intervertebral pads with fluid.

“Ohh, bozhe mui that feels good,” she purred softly. Her face was turned sideways on her pillow, and her long golden hair flowed off to the side. I kissed my way down her neck down her back, stroking as I went, sweeping little warm and cool paths on her skin.

I spread her long, luscious legs at her sweet ass and worked my way down to her feet. I took a moment to gently tongue her asshole and stroke her swelling pussy before kneading her thighs and legs. I love the way she always moans when I rub her feet. I worked her back for a good twenty minutes, only occasionally stopping to slide a finger or two between her legs. Her pussy was soft and full, parting just slightly at my touch, the barest hint of moistness at her lips.

Rolling her over, her mighty white breasts heaved over the top like waves of desire. Her nipples were a soft pink-brown on a creamy sea. She opened her mouth for a kiss, and I dipped my lips and tongue onto hers. My hands held her face, kissing and kissing her, as I warmed her body with mine.

I would have liked to push her breasts together and gently stroke my cock between them, letting her open-O mouth receive me, but that was just a passing fancy to massaging her lovely body inside and out. But I did stroke her wonderful breasts, pulling the skin little by little between my fingers. I mounded her in little inches, pinching softly at her nipples softly as I massaged them. I worked my way further down, stroking out all of her skin, until I came to the folds in her V.

She lifted her knees and spread her legs, allowing me access to her. Her wisps of hair glittered above her soft, split pad. Thunder began to rumble in the forest behind us, and I went onto all fours, an elbow tight between moist folds, and bottom towards the upper part of the bed. I continued stroking and massaging her thighs and shins and calves.

WIth one hand she stroked down the length of my hanging cock, gently fingering it like rain running down glass. Her touch was one moment cupping my testicles, and the next cupping the head. I was solid and firm, a long heavy weight that would soon be fitted inside of her.

I shifted a bit, so my fingers were at her entrance, the penultimate point of the massage. She was breathing softly, but deeply, on the verge of sighing, as I my fingers played deeper by strokes into her slowly opening folds. With the slow speed of rising dampness my fingers softly twirled into her. And with a wet, warm press they were inside.

As she gently held onto my meat, I crooked my fingers forward, softly sliding them under her pubic bone. My palm pressed against her lips, and the ball of my hand massaged the slowly growing bud at the top of her hooded folds. She was beginning to leak from the bottom of her pussy, and her juices ran down between the hard globes of her cheeks.

Her breathing was deepening as my hand moved with ever more gentle force up against her, inside of her. My middle and ring fingers curled up into the corduroy-rough inner patch of her sacred space. She tilted her hips up, allowing me to press and stroke into her with more deliberate motion. She was trying to keep up by softly cupping with strokes the swollen head of my penis. And there was, I could feel, a little liquid oozing along her fingers.

With her hips grinding into my hand, her asshole was right at the limit of my little finger. She was leaking down here into her clenching star, and I used the moisture to rub my pinky into her little opening. The tip of it slipped along her tight hole, which gasped open when she realized where it was rubbing. She began groaning more openly, grinding more thoroughly. My hand was pushed right up against her, and she was pressing and rubbing up against me with all her strength. I was pushing into her and holding her tight, lifting her by her cunt with each grind.

Her thighs were coming up as she lifted her hips off the bed. I extended my little finger by an inch or so, and thickened it while pressing it into the ring of her sphincter. She shook on my hand, her hips totally off the bed, coming, her moans trapped by her spasming body. I glanced up at her face, watching a thousand fragments of desire and fulfilment wash across her face. And slowly, slowly, I withdrew my fingers, and rotated around to hold the length and firmness of her body to me.

I held her close, my arm cradling her breasts as she lay breathing and glowing.

Eventually, as slowly as rain down a window, I covered her damp body with a sheet, slid on and covered her with my body, and fitted myself into her. She purred as I slowly stroked her hair, slowly stroked her inside. And she held me close as I relaxed myself into her, rejoining again, her body to mine.

I was tempted to tell her I loved her, but it would have made her sad. Instead we held each other close.

* * *

The next evening saw us well dressed and scrubbed, standing on the back porch of the rented cottage looking out at the thick dark clouds roiling in over the sea. Kara was lovely in my arms, in a tight dress of wide, black and white horizontal stripes, with a soft, off-the-shoulder, thick banded collar. I was in a Prussian blue sport coat, a long-sleeved pastel green t-shirt, and dark slacks. I was slim, wearing a runner’s body, and had greyed the hair at my temples to approximate my chronological age, and tanned my skin. Age looked good on me.

I had contemplated growing a trim goatee, and even adding an earring, both to add that shock of a completely different look, and for the vague piracy of the style. Considering the treasure I sought to steal. . . . Many years ago, hearing that Captain Kirk is based vaguely on the sea captain character Horatio Hornblower, I read C. S. Forester’s adventure stories. Hornblower, despite being married to a convenient, but dull woman, is in love with Lady Barbara Wellesley, tall, slim, pale, and graceful. She is the youngest sister of the Duke of Wellington, well above his station, and she too is married. On each page Lady Barbara came to me in the form of my fair Helen, out of reach, but gracefully beckoning. The parallel was brought to mind again, looking out over the tragic gray sea. But I stayed clean-shaven and un-pierced.

Kara leaned into my arms, warm and comfortable. My left arm lay across the front of her shoulders, protecting her skin from the cool kiss of ocean spray in the air. My right hand rested along the top of her large breast, She leaned back further and we shared a comforting kiss. There is a Japanese term for the emotion we shared: mono no aware. It is a delight taken in the melancholic poignancy of a moment. A reveling in sadness and lost opportunity. I’ve felt this emotion many times in my life. Like the gray sea there’s something about the tragedy of life that sings to me. Yet there is an observational distance from the genuine sadness. I find it when I’m feeling deja vu, or an echo of despair, from a situation long past and unable to hurt me now. There’s a joy in connection to that long-ago hurt, and simultaneously a distance that makes it safe to observe.

“You are spilling over into me,” she said resting her head back onto me. “I’m nervous, anxious, and happy all at once.”

“I’m sorry, lover.” She was so beautiful at that moment. The light was catching through the gray enough to lighten everything, but not enough to break through. Her skin was cream, with her twinkling emerald eyes showing her emotions. Her luxurious blonde hair framed her in white gold, and my heart was melted by love as we kissed in the wind.

“Why put these people through it?” she asked gently. “Don’t you have enough to do?”

“I’ve carried the scars of my stupidity around for so long, that they’ve become dead flesh over me. I have to see if I’m still alive under them.”

“Mmm.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head onto my shoulder. “I can’t imagine what good will come of this.”

“Kara, at the end of this week we’ll both have had something we never could otherwise. It’s just a week. If no one likes it, I can erase it all.”

“I agreed to help you. I will help you. I would like to try it, certainly, but I still have large doubts.”

“That’s my mayenki Russki medved!” I kissed her again, stroking her left nipple to firmness under her bra, and we were off.

We had toys for the children, [(Aidan, five, and Siobahn, three) (When will the horror of pointlessly Celtic names end? When, I say?) (Probably when they’re buried next to the Lesters and Ethels of the world)] flowers for the table, and wine for the glasses. My heart beat as if I had run a race, but I kept my palms dry.

“Ohmigosh! There you are. Lookit you, gosh, this is great, c’mon in!” Greg was effusive in way I never remembered. He was still tall, a bit stockier, and definitely balder, as his forehead was making a run to join with a blank patch in the back. But not bad. His eyes widened when he saw Kara. “Hello! Welcome to our house. May I take your coat?” It was obvious that his mouth dried at the sight of her, but that he would be swallowing his drool as soon as his brain caught up with him.

“Greg, may I present my secretary Kara Vladimirovna Yulianov? Kara, this is my old friend Gregory Hindemith”

“I am honored,” he replied with a mock floridity, accepting her wrap, which went into the front closet, along with my jacket. We looked at each other, I ready to shake hands. “Oh don’t think you’re getting off that easy,” he said grabbing me in an enthusiastic hug, which I returned, slapping his back.

Their house was a 1970s design, open spaces at the entrance with the stairs and balcony of the second floor readily seen. It was all light wood, honey oak, maple, all to evoke the northern woods. There was very little art on the fine-grained walls. but there were two medium size portraits, each of a child about 3 years old, a boy and a girl. The hand was Helen’s, elegant, realistic, honest. My heart shattered into pieces looking at those paintings. Each child was set beside a window. The morning light was illuminating their translucent skin. The boy had Helen’s eyes, the girl her cheekbones, chin and hair. The light shining through the edges of their eyes brought out the mischief and love in each of them.

Ohmigod. I was in love again.

Two small faces peered between the wooden bars of the balcony down at us. “Hey, you monkeys,” Greg called to them. “Come down and meet our guests.”

“We brought toys,” Kara lifted a plastic bag with dolls—excuse me, action figures—and rattled it. They came running down the stairs, and Kara went to her knees to dispense the dolls. Greg watched his children and Kara’s tits with equal interest. He saw me looking at him, glanced down to her, and pursed his lips into a silent whistle, raising his eyebrows. He makes the “OK” sign with his fingers, and he’s saying “You dog!” with his face.

(Does it matter that the local staff had these toys delivered to our house this morning, along with the other items in our care basket—that our pretense of having picked these items out ourselves was a sham? Would it matter more or less if I said that in the time I would have spent shopping, I was doing the good deed of getting a developer to allow us to put in a free clinic in a struggling mall he was going to raze entirely? Motive is a sword that cuts many ways.)

“Say thank you to Miss Kara, kids,” he tells them, and they do.

“Thank you Miss Kara.” Their voices are high, fluting, and their attention is totally on the toys—Wonder Woman, Superman, Green Lantern, Batman—They’re all ready to start dumping the dolls and their action gear in the middle of the obviously cleaned room.

“Kids. Don’t you dare. Take those back upstairs.” It’s Helen. She’s wiping her hands on an apron decorated with fat cats in attitudes of disdain. Her pale blonde hair is streaked charmingly with silver in a shortish triangular haircut. She’s wearing oval glasses partway down her nose, and has developed, of all things, a bit of a wattle under her chin. The monster in me, the re-designer of a thousand women unconsciously marks it as an item to remove. I catch myself mentally pulling out the wrinkles around her eyes, seeing her as she was. No, this how she is. This is who she is.

She has her apron off. She’s stepping towards me. I’m stepping towards her. I hold her to me, and my eyes are closed. She kisses my cheek, and the smells of dinner come to me. I hold her shoulders and there is roast beef, garlic, carrots, honey. Her hair is against my cheek, and I feel the steam of boiling pots and of the pine woods outside covering my face. How long have we been holding each other?

“Hey, you two. Break it up,” Greg called out jovially. Helen and I look at each other. I guess those are tears. Oh, we’re both sniffling. She gives me another quick kiss on the cheek, and we stare at each other. The laugh bubbles out of her throat and I catch it.

* * *

The children are asleep. We have about a bottle of wine each inside of us. There’s a fire crackling, and I’m stroking Kara’s silky, white hair. Her head fits comfortably in my lap, with our bodies lounging along the floor. My back is well supported by the base of the green leather chair. Greg has his arm around Helen, and she’s holding her knees up to her chest.

“I’ve often thought of how nice it would be to do philanthropy,” she says.

I nod, knowing it’s best not to jump up to offer friends jobs. “I’ve been lucky,” I say. “My first medical devices paid enough for me to buy my freedom, to have the time to work up other things as I like. When you get to a certain point, financially, it’s a matter of hiring people to find you money, and hiring other people to give it away wisely.”

“Wisdom,” Greg says. “Wisdom. You can’t buy that.”

“No,” Kara agrees. “But if you look, you can find people who have it.”

“Or plant people in places where they can bloom into who they should be,” I add.

“You must be a very good judge of character to know who those people are,” says Helen.

Is there a double meaning there? Or an acknowledgment that I’m a different man?

“He knows people,” Kara acknowledges. Are there vocal italics on the way she says “knows”?

Greg shifts. “I’ve always wondered how you get people where they belong in an organization of a certain size. In my experience there isn’t an HR department on this planet that isn’t completely devoted to keeping smart, qualified people away from the jobs they would do best in.”

I nod. “I’ve tried to have each of my local managers do their own hiring. I only let them delegate it one level down, if they’re busy. The hire is usually done with the approval of each member of the group. After a certain level I do all my own interviewing. If I find a manager’s bringing me bad hires, we discuss it.”

“And then people do things his way,” Kara says, cryptically. She scratches the fire-warmed, exposed skin on her uppermost breast, then places my hand on the spot. I slip the tips of my fingers under her top, and scratch her scalp with my other hand.

“What do you mean?” Greg asks.

“Helen, could I please trouble you for some ice water?” I crack my neck.

“Sure,” she unfolds her long legs and heads toward the kitchen. “Anyone want a refill?” There’s a chorus of negatives. She clinks around a bit by the sink. She will be in there a bit longer than she thought.

“Greg, how’s the marriage going? Tell me honestly.”

“I love her. God knows I do. She’s the woman I want to spend my life with. But...you must see this more than most. You have success most of us normal shlubs dream of. You look like you must run 15 miles before breakfast. You’ve seen more of the world than I ever will. And Kara—No offense, dear, but if you two are together and yet not married—I presume you each have freedom—”

He continued. “I mean what drives you? What drives people like you. I want to change the world, too. Why don’t I? I wanted to be great, to come up with the method to clean up PCBs once and for all. I’m a normal guy. That’s all I am. I’m married to a woman who could be a great painter. She spends the day picking up toys and organizing school rummage sales.

“We’re aging. You’ve become.” He was staring into the fire, hypnotized into honesty.

I hate myself. “I hate myself,” I whisper. “I’ve looked everywhere for answers.” I say, audibly now. “And I still haven’t found any except the beauty of the world. It is beautiful. A gift to all of us.” I rest my hand further down on Kara’s breast, finding the soft spot where her nipple goes in, and then stroking it until it starts to rise. “And other people. Helping people be free.”

I sighed deeply. “But every so often I have to explore myself some more. I need to know things that really should be undisturbed.

“Greg, I’m going to make you a swap. You will get to have Kara for a week. I’m going to borrow Helen. Kara would like the chance to have a married life for a while, and—No, that’s not entirely true. I need Helen’s help to explore myself, and Kara has agreed to help me out.”

I spoke softly, just loud enough to for my words to drift over to him. “But in any case, I’d feel much better if this was something we could all gain something from. You could enjoy a week with an amazing—another—woman, risk free. Kara would have a family to dote on. I would have had the experience of Helen. And, for her, I have a special surprise present. Something only I could offer. I guarantee that it will end well for the three of you. That’s it.”

“I’m so tired of my life,” he said, holding his cheeks with his thumbs, fingers pressing into his brow. “But it’s my life, and you, for whatever money or influence can’t help me not be me.” He looked at me, and I felt his weariness seep across the room. “There are days I would give anything to fall asleep and never wake up until I’ve slept months, years, whatever it would take to not be tired anymore. But that never happens. I’m always yanked awake, so thoroughly tired.”

I shifted Kara out of my lap, and she looked sideways at me. The last moment on the edge of the cliff. I can hear the dog barking, but I step off, damn fool.

“Greg, go to sleep. Hear my words.” His eyes fluttered shut. His breathing slowed. I don’t think he was ever that far from sleep anyway.

“For the next week you will be on vacation from your worries. Kara is joining you on this vacation, a fellow traveler and your play-mate. Don’t worry about the details. The details have all been taken care of. Your children will be happy to be spending the week playing with their Daddy and Aunt Kara while Mommy is away. Everything will work out, and there will be no missed schedules, no overbooked rooms, no experiences closed to you. And when it is all over, and your life goes back to normal, you’ll be amazed at how easy it is. You’ll have time for exercise, you’ll have no problem eating well....” I continued on in this vein, telling him that he will become the man he always wanted to be. Sometimes all we ever need is for someone we to tell us that we will do it. Whether it sticks or not, only time will tell.

Kara and I roused him enough to walk him upstairs and have him put himself to bed. I walked into the children’s rooms and whispered drops of sweet poison into their ears. They wouldn’t miss their Mommy. What does that mean to a child to take their mother from them? Looking back would they gloss it over, or recount under hypnosis to some therapist, long after I’m dead, about the two strangers who pried their lives apart for a week.

As I closed Siobahn’s door, Kara emerged from the master bedroom, wearing only her sleeping bra. I held her close by her firm bottom, and we touched lips. My traitorous snake leapt in my pants. She held my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “Be good to her.”

“By tomorrow morning it won’t be me,” I replied. “But that long-ago boy will treasure her. She will be his reason for living.”

“It is you, it will be you, no matter how many times you protest this. You make us all puppets to your desires. Now you will fuck your own childhood. I ask you one promise to this, please. When this is done, remember what you do to yourself. Do not hide it from yourself.”

“I promise, on my friendship, on my love. I promise.”

She kissed me.

“Kara...”

“Shh.”

“It will all work out. I know this.”

“If you knew it, then there would be no point to it. Don’t lie to yourself. It is unknown. Go into the unknown. Go!” She stepped into the master bedroom, and closed the door. The children were snorking from their beds, the sleep of the innocents.

Back downstairs, in the kitchen, Helen turned to me. It came back to me, the awareness of how she was just a touch taller than my normal height. I licked my dry lips.

“I—was getting you ice water. Here it is. The ice cubes have mostly melted. Hmm. What was taking me so long?”

I sipped at the glass she offered me. There was a deep layer of condensation on it. If this was a story, something telling and melodramatic might happen here. The wet glass would slip through my fingers, shattering all over her floor, spreading water everywhere. It might even fall in slow-motion.

I placed the glass down on the counter, and with my damp fingerpads stroked Helen’s pale cheek. There seems to be something in pale, thin skin where it can get cloudy with age. There was a touch of grayness, paper dryness to her. Her cheek was soft, just that softness that age brings to skin, as its elasticity slowly fades over the years. Not much, just a touch.

Her lips were drier than I remembered, too. I stroked her hair back from the side of her face, and gently drew her towards me, towards the inevitable kiss that I had waited more than twenty years for.

She was confused, but as always graceful. “What’s happening?”

“Something that should have happened long ago.” I led her back into the living room, to the sofa in front of the smouldering logs. I threw another small one on, and the fire glowed underneath the new wood.

“Helen, a couple of years after you and Greg moved away I underwent a transformation. I gained some, special powers. In retrospect I’m glad you went away. I would have done something evil to you, as I did to some others. But don’t be afraid. I would never hurt you. Please, let me show you. Put your arms up.”

She did so. “Where are Kara and Greg?”

“In bed, asleep. Why did you put your arms up?”

“You told me to.”

“Yes. Now you’re muzzy with the wine. I’d like you to work on clearing it out of your system. You can put your arms down. I don’t want to frighten you, so I’m sending out a—well, a field of sorts, so you won’t be scared. But you and I are going away for a week. On a vacation from ourselves, as it were. It’s all settled with Greg and the children, and Kara will be here to help them. How are you feeling?”

“A bit more alert. You know, this is not a good thing to be doing to us?”

“It will be, I promise. It will all become clear in a few minutes. Now, the next thing will be for me to ejaculate inside of you. It’s easiest just for me to say it, and for us to do it. This is—well, this really is sort of procedural. It’s something I need to do to access physical systems in your body—your cellular structure.

“Please take off your clothes. You can turn around if you like. But don’t feel ashamed.”

She did turn away from me as she began to unbutton her shirt. I began to unbutton, folding my shirt as it came off, and bent to remove my shoes.

She was calm as she spoke. “Is this—I was so excited to see you earlier—Is this some sort of revenge? Are you getting back at me somehow? You know, I never told him. It hurt me, back then, not to, but I didn’t.” She undid her bra, and I looked up at her long, naked back, at the bumps and muscles of her long spine. “Over the years I buried our conversation. I let it be dead. It came back to me when I knew you were coming, but I knew I was an adult now. I could put things like that behind me. And I thought by now it was too small and foolish a thing to worry Greg with.”

As she bent to undo her skirt I caught a glimpse of her nipple in profile on her smallish breast, shadowed black in the firelight.

The new log flared to life at one end. I tried to convey my love for her as I spoke. “I thought that might be the case as we all talked. No, this isn’t any sort of revenge, just—an attempt for us to have a moment that we couldn’t have had otherwise. I would say ‘believe me,’ but then you would. Just as now I tell you that you are moistening inside, between your legs, and you are. Do you feel it? When I enter you, you will be completely wet. But that is your body. I hope you will understand me simply as we speak.”

She twitched uncomfortably, and removed her underwear. I could smell her moistness. As she turned towards me, I could see that her lips was full and pouting. her breasts hard. She was obviously embarrassed and ashamed that her body would betray her at my command.

“Would you like me to help you enjoy this?” I asked. “Would you like me to make myself desirable?”

“No. Do what you’re going to do.” She turned to face me directly, and we were both unclothed. I was full, but not hard. There was no reason to humiliate her in any way. She was proud, and looked me in the eye.

I sat on the sofa and held out my arms. “Please, come sit next to me.”

“You don’t have to say please. In fact, it’s probably better if you command me.”

“I understand.” She knew she had no choice but to obey me. Until she understood, this was better. I made my cock hard and upright. “You will straddle my lap, and insert me into yourself.”

She smiled wryly to herself as she stepped forward. “Insert wand into cup,” she muttered. A good artist knows her symbols.

She bent one leg and placed her knee against my hip. And reaching between her legs, she took my hard penis in her hand and placed it to her lower lips. She had moistened completely, and stroked the head of my cock back and forth along herself, moistening my flesh, spreading her liquids. As she bent her other leg down she settled herself down onto me. She was as silkily wet as any of the other thousands of women I had been in, and the feeling was good, but distant. We sat face to face, and I held her muscular back for her support.

“What next?” she asked. “Do I grind into you. Do I tell you how big you are, or that you’re tearing me apart?”

“No, just relax. Settle here against me. Quiet, please.” I held her close to me for the second time in one night, held her body against mine. I breathed in the perfume of her skin. Gradually her head sank against mine as we sat together.

The log had caught properly now, and was radiating heat against our naked bodies. I could smell the odd bits of smoke as they curled before going up the flue. I could feel her body from inside, and let myself drift into her. “Don’t worry about this, but I’m going to ejaculate inside of you, now. This will complete our link.”

Our minds were swirling against each other now, bumping against the limits of our skulls. I let all of the liquids inside my testicles spray out of me, up into her, and we connected gradually on a cellular level.

There are times when I make this connection when I join my mind to my partner’s. I imagine this is what the mind-meld must be like on Star Trek. A woman’s entire life is there for me to examine, to run my fingers through, like a curtain of jewels. There are times when I do it that I feel like some sort of psychic vampire. I use this process to perform an interview on staff members.

But for Helen I disturbed nothing. I left all of her seals intact and in place. I came to the space that I needed to access the mutability of the body, and made my connection. We stood watching each other, like two images in a mirror, separated by the thinnest sheet of glass. I presented myself to her, and pressed through the barrier and into her.

She Was in me, too. I let her examine my heart, my motivations, and my love for her. She understood what I hoped to do. She didn’t have the skill or knowledge to deter me, and I don’t know that I would have let her. But what she wanted to see, I let her. My motivation. My plan. I guided her to it. I gave it to her. In exchange, I held control over her cells.

We came up to the surface together. She breathed quietly for a few minutes. “You could have truly raped me. You didn’t. You didn’t want to.” She was not absolving me, simply acknowledging what I had done.

“No,” I agreed. “But you understand, I had to enter you?”

She nodded silently.

“Will you trust me? I have no right to ask this, and you know I could make it so that you believed it was entirely your idea. But I never would. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

“I believe you. You said you could judge people. I know why now. OK. I’ll do this. For one week. But my reasons are entirely my own! Never for you to examine or question.”

“Thank you.” I held her close again, my fingers along her spine, and began our physical and mental transformation. She pressed her damp self down onto my pubic bone and began to change.