The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Mab About the Boy

By Captain Eazy

I have a venturous fairy that shall . . . fetch thee new nuts.

—William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act IV, scene 1

14

Deena transformed was insatiable . . . and gorgeous. Her firm, shapely breasts had now swollen to a size even larger than Nancy’s, with lewdly jutting dark nipples that just begged to be sucked. And after her visit to the Fairy Queen and her own nuzzling, nibbling, and suckling of Mab’s bounteous breasts, Deena produced the same enchanting milk as her two friends. Her eyes, once a dull brown, now gleamed and danced with mysterious, mesmerizing flecks of green and silver; she no longer needed or wore glasses for reading; her formerly mousy hair tumbled down her swan-graceful neck in a new, wanton riot of soft, tousled curls; and her bare pussy constantly demanded attention. All the time. Maeve was only grateful that Nancy was there to help keep the perpetually horny Deena busy.

The evening of Deena’s sexy transformation, the three of them waylaid—so to speak—Phil Harvis, Deena’s shy jock boyfriend, who was at first astonished, then ecstatic, and finally mesmerized by all the changes that had taken place in his girlfriend. She started out by blowing him, then invited him to join a couple of friends of hers for a little party. His eyes almost bugged out when a naked Maeve and Nancy strolled in, arm in arm. They oohed and ahhed over his equipment (though in Maeve’s opinion it was only standard), they rubbed their bare breasts over his chest and arms and face, and unsuspectingly he sucked all their tits, swallowed their sorcerously intoxicating milk. Afterward, very complacently, he agreed it would be a great idea to introduce the rest of the baseball team to Deena and her friends. In the showers. After practice.

“And you won’t be one bit jealous,” Maeve whispered in his ear. “In fact, you’ll be turned on when you see Deena fucking and sucking other guys. It’ll make you feel great!”

“Yeah,” he agreed happily. “It will.” Of course, the source of his happiness just at that very moment could have been that as he lay back in Maeve’s arms, his head cushioned between her lovely big breasts, Deena was on her knees sucking his balls, while Nancy rode his cock for the third time that night. But there didn’t seem to be any doubt in his mind: he’d love to see his newly stunning girlfriend making it with other guys. To give him a little preview of what to expect, Deena and Nancy even made it with each other while Maeve and Phil looked on, Phil groaning with voyeuristic pleasure as Maeve gently stroked his throbbing, erect cock. When Deena and Nancy sixty-nined each other to a screaming orgasm, Phil came as well, jetting machine-gun spurts of jism across the room as though he hadn’t cum in fifteen weeks instead of in fifteen minutes. They almost had to pour the boy back into his car at the end of that memorable evening.

* * *

“Doing this for the team really shows our school spirit,” Maeve remarked to the other two as they sat close together in the bleachers the following Friday afternoon in the hot Florida sun, watching the team practice and prepare for tomorrow’s big game against the Gentry Jets, the team to beat in their division. “The Jets are number one. Haven’t lost a single game all season, and we’re only six for eight. With the Jets’ pitching and batting lineup, Phil says our Pirates don’t have a chance without some inspiration.” She had one arm around Nancy, one around Deena, and she gave each of them a friendly tit squeeze. “And if we can’t provide the right kind of inspiration, who can?”

They all wore big wraparound sunglasses along with tight tees and miniskirts in gold and blue, the team colors. They also had cute matching gold sneakers. However, none of them wore a bra or panties. Deena snuggled closer to Maeve as her nipple throbbed encouragingly from Maeve’s loving strokes and pinches—and then Maeve could smell the intoxicating aroma of her friend’s pussy and realized that Deena was already hot, wet, and ready.

“That feels good,” murmured Deena, nibbling Maeve’s right ear, and she hummed to herself as she held up a copy of the team roster for both of them to study. Altogether, counting the first, second, and third strings, there were twenty-four athletes on the team: the pitching battery accounted for six, beginning with Ted Alcock, whose name seemed very promising, and then there were two catchers (Phil was first-string, Max Ternwell was second-string), eight basemen, two shortstops, and six outfielders. Eventually, Maeve planned, they’d get around to doing the whole team, but for this afternoon . . . well, the first string certainly deserved first crack. As it were.

Maeve had visited the coaching staff already that day, and genial, middle-aged Coach Carson smilingly told the second- and third-stringers to shower up and take off for the afternoon, but he asked the first string to hang around for a few minutes. The guys rolled their eyes but didn’t bitch about the request, probably thinking the coach was going to talk strategy. They tossed a ball around the diamond for a few minutes before walking off to the gym. Then Coach Carson, responding to a command from Maeve, simply wandered away, an absent smile on his face.

“Showtime,” said Maeve, rising and joining hands with her two friends. The nice thing about the college baseball field was that the home-team dugout connected directly to the gym by means of a dim cool tunnel a couple of hundred feet long. It offered privacy even during the game if you walked back a few feet, and it also offered a handy direct, but hidden, way from the field to the showers for the players. And for the players’ admirers. The three girls ventured down the tunnel and into the gym, and then wandered into the forbidden territory of the guys’ shower room. Maeve wrinkled her nose. “Smells like feet and Lysol,” she muttered in tones of disgust.

Well, that was easily remedied. She let go of Nancy’s hand, drew her wand from its little sheath—she had conjured something to hang from her belt some days earlier, a very sensible combination of a cell phone holder and a wand scabbard—and waved the magical baton. Instantly the air became denser, muskier, with overtones of exotic, fleshy, tropical flowers and something else, something deeply arousing, much like the scent of excited pussy. Maeve drew in a deep breath and smiled. “That’s better.”

Another wave and the girls’ clothing vanished. “Stripped for action,” announced Maeve jauntily, and she safely stowed her wand atop a nearby locker. “Let’s go meet the players, ladies.” Naked, their big boobies jiggling merrily, they strolled into the steamy showers. Nine strapping guys, including Phil, were standing gleaming wet beneath the water, many of them soaped up and enticingly slippery. “Hi, fellas,” said Maeve cheerfully, standing on display, shoulders back to show off her enticing tits, one knee coyly bent to partly hide her sex, and with one hand on Deena’s ass and the other on Nancy’s. “How are they hanging?”

Ted Alcock, the pitcher, jumped a foot at the sound of a girl’s voice and spun around toward them. “Aw,” Maeve said in mild disappointment. He didn’t live up to the promise of his name.

“Damn! What’re you doing—?” Alcock asked, belatedly covering what he had with his sudsy hands.

“This is my girlfriend,” Phil said, reaching out to pull a giggling Deena beneath the warm spray of the showers. As the water poured over them, she kissed him deeply, giving him lots of tongue, and she stood on one foot as she wrapped the other leg around behind him, hooking her heel behind his knee. She slipped her foot up and down his soapy thigh, grinding her shaved pubis hard against his throbbing erection, her arms wrapped around his neck, her big tits flattening against his chest.

“God damn!” exclaimed Alvin Schraeder, the first baseman. He looked like a country boy, with wide blue eyes, a big shock of pale blond hair, a strong freckle-sprayed nose, great pecs and . . . oh, yeah, a dangling meaty cock that promised to twitch to a very impressive hardness! “Harvis, you sumbitch!” he said with a rueful laugh. “How’d you land a girl with titties like that?”

“Hey,” said Nancy in lascivious challenge, holding her shoulders back and thrusting out her own boobs. “What are these?”

“They’re gorgeous!” raved Bob Hawkings, the left fielder, whose cock was already bobbing up at the sight of these three stunning nude girls.

“Oh, man,” groaned Pete Prentiss, shortstop, who, much to Maeve’s approval, looked to be quite a bit, well, longer than you’d expect a shortstop to be. “I’ve never seen tits like those outside of a porn movie!”

“Wanna suck ‘em?” teased Nancy, cupping her hands beneath her spectacular tits and teasing her coral-colored nipples to full, impressive erection. She strolled with a sinuous hip-swaying motion into the shower. The water caressed her, making her breasts shiny and sleek; water dripped from the jutting tips of her pink nipples. “C’mon,” she said, rolling her nips between her thumbs and forefingers. “Somebody must want a little suck of these babies.”

They all did, of course, and within ten minutes every guy in the room had swallowed some magic milk and no longer much noticed or cared what Maeve did with them or to them. The first order of business was to enlarge their penises—well, all but Schraeder’s, because he already had a nice, springy nine inches of an impressive girth. Maeve waved her wand, and the others soon measured up, their cocks standing at attention and their balls growing visibly larger and fuller. The girls picked and chose and each one gleefully wound up with a trio of eager-to-please jocks.

Deena immediately took Phil in her tight hot ass—something that he’d diffidently asked her about once or twice, but that she’d never allowed before her transformation—and he lay back on the flowing tile floor gripping her hips, with her riding high. Will Walters, the dusky brown right fielder, sat on the tile straddling his buddy’s thighs, bent Deena back, and impaled her pink and pulsing pussy on his taut cock, while she turned her head to the left so third-baseman Mike Macory could fuck her delectable mouth as she lovingly fondled his balls.

Meanwhile, Nancy had pushed Ted Alcock to the floor and she threw her left thigh over him and hunkered, taking her weight on the balls of her feet, using the power of her knees to pump her beautifully formed ass up and down, smiling down all the while at Alcock’s dazzled, ecstatic expression. “How does this make your bat feel?” she teased, and as her flat belly fluttered, Maeve knew that Nancy was using her talented pussy to ripple up and down his cock, sucking Ted off with her nether lips. Meanwhile Nancy stroked a nine-inch-long cock in each hand and constantly turned her head, first sipping lasciviously at one swollen purple-headed dick, then the other. Both cocks glistened and strained as she steadily and enthusiastically fucked Alcock, making her shiny swollen boobs jiggle hypnotically.

As for Maeve, she was on her knees, bent over a bench which supported her tummy but let her big breasts hang free, while Schraeder took her doggy-style, ramming that long hard cock slowly and deeply into her hot tight pussy, fucking her expertly, his swinging balls slapping her thighs delightfully at each stroke. Two of his teammates lay on the floor, sucking at Maeve’s tits as they beat themselves off. She quivered with one orgasm after another, and when the guys came, she wordlessly gave them more stamina to cum again and then again. Before long, the girls were merrily leaking copious streams of white semen from every orifice, and their skin gleamed with a frosty coating of hot jism, while it streaked and glazed their faces and hair. That called for a long, soapy, hot shower, a cluster-fuck shower.

Everyone was squirming and groaning and cumming over and over. Maeve gasped in sheer bawdy abandonment—it was so fucking hot to reach in any direction she pleased and grab a bobbing, stiff, willing cock, to coax a spurt of cum from it, and then to take another great big dick in her ass or in her pussy, and then to stand with legs spread wide and have a worshipful Deena kneel and greedily drink flowing cum from her tingling slit, or to kneel herself in order to suck Phil’s now spectacular cock, accompanied by Deena’s cooing encouragement and delight as she played with his dangling balls.

But even in the orgiastic heat of the moment, she didn’t forget the spell to boost the guys’ performance the next day on the baseball field. They would outdo Ruth and Mantle, they would be better than pros. And then . . . .

“Remember,” she murmured into Schraeder’s ear as she lay atop him, his dick stuffing her pussy, someone else’s cock pounding into her ass, a spurt of someone else’s hot sperm splattering over her bare back, “remember . . . if you guys pull off . . . ahhh god! Pull off a big—yeah, yeah, fuck my ass harder! A big win, we’re gonna do the whole team!”

Deena, gulping cum from her own boyfriend’s cock, turned, trailing a long streamer of sperm from her grinning lips. “Including the batboy!”

In the corner Nancy had completely disappeared in a heap of heaving male bodies. Maeve could hear her moaning, “Fuck me, fuck me, harder, stick it in, oh baby mmm, let me suck them both at once!”

Nancy was quite obviously having the time of her life. It was as if she and Deena had decided to compete for the title of Slut Queen of the Universe.

Maeve squirmed through yet another mind-shattering orgasm and felt happy that she had been the instrument of releasing Nancy’s lust and helping her find her true calling in the world. This was a day to remember.

But not the last one. Maeve grinned as she imagined the after-the-game party. She just knew that her best friends would be up for an even bigger orgy. That made her horny. Mm. Lucky there were so many cocks so close to hand to take care of that.

Oh, yes. Yes. Yess!

* * *

Incredibly, after the three horny girls sent the happy but spent boys on their way, they still hadn’t had enough. Once more they cleaned each other up in the shower, then daisy-chained, Maeve eating out Deena’s delectable hot, fragrant pussy while Deena sucked and nibbled at Nancy’s irresistible slit, and as she did, Nancy thrust her own firmly pointed, slippery tongue deep into Maeve’s excited pussy, or nibbled on Maeve’s tender, sensitive labia, and occasionally pulling it out and teasing her puckered asshole. They came a dozen times or more each, and only late in the night did they at last feel sated enough for Maeve to conjure some clothing so they could head for home . . . and maybe just a bit more lady-licking. Once the very prospect would have dismayed Maeve—not so much from a moralistic standpoint as from a practical one: A girl needed some rest now and then! However, thanks to Mab’s enchantments, and especially now that all three of them were free of the necessity of attending classes, they also seemed to require far less sleep. Their time could be better spent in other more pleasurable ways.

After retrieving her wand, Maeve re-dressed them all, and they set out for home. Maeve drove, while the other two got naked again and got each other off in the back seat. “You fucking perverts,” she teased. They arrived at the Fairy Mound, as they had rechristened the apartment house. The landlord should have been astonished at the total transformation of his valuable college-town rental property. However, Maeve had taken care of that with one little old charity fuck. Now that the gentleman had nursed at her nipples, he not only happily acquiesced in all the weird changes that had occurred to the house, but also had decided not to charge the three girls any further rent.

The whole interior of the house now resembled Mab’s fairy grotto: green grass underfoot, soft sleeping (or fucking!) mounds thick with violets, a gentle, soothing light throughout. Only the exterior remained unchanged. And somehow the interior of the house was larger than the exterior! There was now a sizable enchanted lake, its calm surface drifting with water lilies, its depths leading to another pool in Mab’s realm. Maeve suspected the three of them would take a dip tonight, perhaps visit Mab, suck at her tits, receive her praise for all the orgasmic energy they had channeled her way. It would be so good to hear their mistress’ praise, to know that she had served Mab well. Perhaps she could even suck at the Fairy Queen’s delectable toes once more, so delicate, so tasty.

The girls twirled in, their clothing vanishing as they stepped through the door. “I want to fuck you,” Deena said, grabbing Maeve from behind. “Let me do you with the strap-on, please!”

“Okay, okay,” laughed Maeve, enjoying the sheer wantonness with which Deena stroked her breasts. “Let me feed Tybalt first.”

She kept the pouches of food outside, on the back step, since anything inside the apartment soon began to sprout roots and leaves. She retrieved one, tore it open, and sprinkled it onto a flat stone that once had been Tybalt’s dinner dish. “Come and get it, cat!” she called.

Usually Tybalt came galloping at the promise of food, but he did not appear. “That’s funny,” Maeve said, squirming in pleasure as the insistent Deena sucked her left tit. “I know he was inside when we left.”

Deena looked up adoringly, a little trickle of the thick white fairy-milk escaping from the corner of her mouth and leaking from her lips, like a small rivulet of cum. She scooped it with her talented tongue, swallowed, and said, “He’s just hiding. You know cats.” She softly began to rub Maeve’s already wit slit, and with dreamy, begging eyes and an urgent tone in her voice, she said, “Please, may I fuck you?”

Maeve stroked her hair, so soft, so full, so bouncy now. “Of course,” she said. “And while you do, Nancy shall eat your pussy.”

“Oh, thank you!” cried a pleased Nancy.

“My pleasure,” Maeve assured her.

Not then, but later, when at last they had sated each other—at least temporarily—and when they lay curled all together in a tangled, warm ball of girlflesh, skin hot against skin, lips and fingers relaxed but ready to stir each other up again on the slightest provocation, Maeve idly wondered just where the hell Tybalt could have gone. The house no longer had anything like a cat door for him, no windows (at least not from the inside; from outside the windows looked normal). There was absolutely no passageway to the outside world through which he could have escaped. Of course, the grotto was full of odd little nooks and niches. Stupid cat didn’t approve of their doing the team, like a typical selfish male, and he was probably just off sulking somewhere. He’d come out when he got hungry. Maeve yawned, idly hoped that Mab was pleased with all the cum and all the sexual energy they’d coaxed from the lads that evening, and nuzzling Deena’s boobs, she fell asleep.

15

“It’s a great day for a ballgame,” the college radio announcer said Saturday afternoon, his voice echoing over the PA system. “The cold front rolled through last night, bringing us a few sprinkles, and now it’s a balmy seventy-six degrees with a cool northeasterly breeze, bright sunshine, and just a few drifting clouds. We’ve got a nice crowd in the stands this afternoon hoping for a miracle. The Jets are coming into this game undefeated, while our own Pirates are fighting to claw their way back into the standings. Let’s hope that the boys have it in them.”

His color man added, “Well, Jeff, we have to hope. They haven’t had a spectacular season so far, but you have to admit they’re full of spunk!”

“I’ll say,” said Deena, chuckling. The girls had made a cozy little nest way at the back of the dugout, just out of sight of the bleachers. Cushions padded the concrete floor, and the three naughty girls lounged there naked, idly keeping each other revved up. They had showed up early enough to offer their breasts to the second and third stringers, and now the whole team was firmly under their spell. They had promised the whole team—even the batboy—the greatest victory celebration they could possibly imagine if the Pirates could manage to pull off a win. And to clinch the possibility, Maeve used her wand to make sure that each member of the team (so to speak) stayed encouraged.

The National Anthem played, the teams trotted out to the field, and the game began. Maeve, Nancy, and Deena, temporarily again clothed in the team colors, took an inconspicuous seat in the corner of the dugout. If anyone asked—they were mascots!

“Batting first for the Jets is Mason Wilder of St. Petersburg,” the announcer said.

His partner put in, “Wilder is looking awfully good this season, with a .384 batting average. He’s at the plate, taking a couple of practice swings. Facing off against him is Pirates pitcher Ted Alcock, who has struggled with some control issues lately. Let’s see how he does against Wilder.”

The announcer took up the thread: “Alcock is leaning in, looking to catcher Phil Harvis for the signals . . . that’s a kind of peculiar signal, a pumping motion with the right hand, then he yanked his thumb over his shoulder to the dugout . . . Alcock nods, and here’s the windup and the pitch . . . a sizzling fastball that caught Wilder looking! Strike one. Wilder settles in . . . Alcock into the windup again . . . another fastball, swing and a miss, and Wilder’s in the hole, two strikes and no balls!”

“Eww,” murmured Nancy, gently dipping a finger into Maeve’s spread and slippery slit. “What kind of guy has no balls?”

Maeve wriggled but did not reply. The announcer was saying, “Here’s the third pitch. Let’s see if it’s a changeup. Here’s the windup . . . beautiful curve ball, and Wilder takes a hack at it but misses, and that’s one down!”

With an excited chortle, his sidekick added, “If Ted Alcock can only keep this level of pitching up, the Pirates may just have a hope of winning this game!”

The right fielder of the Jets went down swinging, and then the Jet’s third man to bat, the first baseman, popped a looping fly to left field, where Bob Hawkings scooped it in easily for the third out. The Pirates trotted in, crowding into the dugout. “Who’s batting first?” Maeve asked, laughing.

Hawkings was, and just for luck, Deena and Nancy both kissed his balls. He chose his bat and approached the plate. The color man said, “The Pirates are batting big Bob Hawkings of Miami first. Bob’s old man is a famous charter fishing guide down in the Keys. Bob had a good year last time around, but he’s not doing too well at the plate this season, with a batting average of .280. The Jets’ pitcher, Simon Wheeler, is the powerhouse of the league this year, with two no-hitters to his credit out of the last four games.”

Then it was the announcer’s turn again: “Hawkings is ready, he’s in his stance. Here comes the pitch, a—wow! Hawkings clips a sizzling line drive that streaks through the hole between shortstop and second, here’s left fielder Jimmy Wainwright charging it, and whoa, it takes a hop right over his glove, he’s chasing it, got it . . . but there’s Hawkings safe on first, a base hit!”

Maeve patted Mike Macory, the next batter, on his firm ass. “Get a double, and I’ll suck you off,” she promised.

“Okay,” he said, hustling to the plate.

With Hawkings taking a daring lead off first, the flustered Jets pitcher whipped in a fast ball—which Mike Macory promptly blasted into deep right. It rebounded from the fence before the Jets fielder could get to it, and by the time he had recovered and thrown the ball in, Macory was safe on second and Hawkings stood on third base.

Deena had been encouraging Phil, who batted third, to suckle and nuzzle her gorgeous nipples, and he stepped to the plate with a cocky grin on his face. The announcer noted that Phil didn’t have a very hot RBI stat, though he was batting .300, but before he could say another word, Phil slammed a curve ball into a screaming high arc that took it hurtling just inside the left foul line and high into the stands for a three-run homer. The Jets’ pitcher’s face was scarlet.

The bottom of the first lasted a long time, and when it finally ended, the Pirates led 13 to nothing. Deena lay back on her mound of cushions, and every one of the first-string team gave her a few licks for luck before they took the field again, and once more the Pirate batters went down one after the other.

The game turned into a rout. The Jets couldn’t get a thing going, as the announcer noted in the seventh inning (by that time most of the Pirates team consisted of second and third stringers, though Ted was still hot and still pitching, hanging on to his no-hitter). The lowly third-string guys seemed grateful for a chance to show what they could do, and they performed better than anyone—including themselves—ever dared dream they could. The score stood at 22-0, Pirates. “This is a massacre!” crowed the announcer.

As the innings went on, Maeve, Deena, and Nancy discreetly encouraged the boys, who probably could have won the World Series at that point. However, the girls decided they shouldn’t make it look too good, so they saw to it that the Pirates slacked off just a bit for the final two innings. When the Jets took their last turn at bat in the top of the ninth, they struck out one right after the other, leaving the final score 28-0. The announcer was going nuts: “It’s like magic! Ted Alcock pitches his first no-hitter, and the Pirates win! The Pirates win!”

And his delirious partner added in a madly excited voice, “Great God in heaven, the Pirates win big!”

* * *

And if they had won big on the field, they all thought that the subsequent party put the icing on the cake. And on the three carousing girls. A dazedly smiling Phil Harvis kept tapping his naked teammates on the shoulder when they fucked Deena, telling them happily, “That’s my girl you’re screwin’! Man, don’t she have a fantastic cunt!” The gym shower room smelled so strongly of cum and pussy that Maeve doubted even her magic powers could erase the aroma. Not that she exactly wanted to; she found it delicious, intoxicating. She took each man on the team (yes, including the batboy) at least once that evening, and some three or more times; she sucked off Ted Alcock magnificently, then let him fuck her in her pussy and later in her ass. At the end of the revelry, the three laughing girls knelt in a triangular formation, ass cheek to ass cheek to ass cheek, fingering their own pussies and massaging their own glorious breasts, while twenty-four enormously well-endowed guys and one batboy whose own bat had unaccountably grown in length and girth stood in a circle around them jerking off. The steaming jets of jism flew like skyrockets, hitting hot on Maeve’s bare flesh, spattering her tits and face and even occasionally hitting the happy target of her mouth. Again the girls sent the guys on their way, spent but spectacularly satiated, and again they showered and then nibbled, prodded, stroked, and sucked at each others’ succulent bits until they came again and again.

“God,” Deena sighed as Nancy went down on her. “I should be sore all over, but I feel great!”

Maeve was fingering herself off as she watched Nancy both licking and pumping Deena, two fingers sunk deep in the other girl’s pussy. She lasciviously cupped her breast with her free hand and sucked a drop or two of her own magic milk. Mmm! She tasted so good! It was all good. The only cloud on Maeve’s horizon was small and cat-shaped: Tybalt was still among the missing, the little smart-ass. But unnhhh. . . right . . . ahhh! . . . now she didn’t have time to worry too much about the independent little cat. Oh, god, she was cumming!

“What next?” Nancy asked, happily settling back so that her round and perfect ass cheeks rested on her heels when Deena had cum with a wild shriek. Her whole face glistened with Deena’s tasty pussy juice. Maeve licked it clean.

“Mm,” she said. “I’ve been thinking: the big end-of-school prom’s coming up. We should make it a party to remember!”

“More guys!” squealed Deena.

“More girls,” sighed Nancy, licking her lips.

“More cum,” laughed Maeve. “Come on, I’m horny here. Eat me out!”

She couldn’t stop laughing as both of her friends complied, one sometimes at her pussy, the other at her ass, switching places until she thrashed and yelped and moaned and came.

It was getting better each time.

And it had been so great to begin with!

Maeve subsided at last, gasping for air. The big prom. Maybe a thousand guys and girls.

This was going to be the big one, she told herself.

And nothing could stand in her way. No one could stop it.

No one.

TO BE CONTINUED . . . .