Susan Doesn’t Live Here Any More
—Blackie
The restaurant wasn’t full, but was evidently busy. Susan looked for a table while she waited on the maître d to find her a place. She looked around for a guy alone waiting for her but only saw one single guy at a table, and that wasn’t her editor. The rest of the tables had couples or groups. No children, just the usual active night for a popular inn.
Susan Williams had been invited to meet her editor here by email last week to go over her latest draft. The document, a rather thick set of over four hundred pages was in the package she carried. It was in dense brown paper wrapped with thick twine to hold it all together. She had it on her computer at home and the editor had a copy, yet it seemed appropriate to bring a printed copy to discuss the book even if it was at a table over dinner.
Finally she was led to a table for two by the wall. The gentleman who was seating people drew back her chair for her to sit. She put the thick bundle of paper on the spot she expected her editor to sit at.
The waiter came by and took her drink order. Iced tea of course. She was not going to be letting herself drink when talking business.
Looking around she once again noticed the single guy by himself only two tables over. He was sitting quite still with his hand holding a utensil between his plate and? where ever it was he intended to use it. It was peculiar he wasn’t moving the arm, but clearly he was making enough other motions that indicated he wasn’t a clever realistic statue. She wondered what the unmoving arm was about.
The waiter came back with the ice tea, asking if she was going to order. She explained she was waiting for someone and shot a glance towards the door. There was no indication her editor was coming in yet.
As the waiter walked away, her cell phone gave off the odd little sound indicating a message had arrived. The text was simple and very disappointing. “Running late. Car issue. Eat without me. Be there soon as I can.” Irritated now, she waved to the waiter who indicated he’d be back to her after dealing with the current customer.
Once again she looked over at the single guy. He was still holding his arm where it had been. Her curiosity was piqued. What was that all about?
The waiter came over, taking her thoughts back to what to eat. She chose to order the chef’s salad with a balsamic vinegar dressing. While she was eating she noticed the man had finally put down the utensil but was sitting quietly at his table with his hands in his lap. She started to wonder if something was wrong with him.
“Hey,” Susan flagged down one of the passing staff, “is he,” with her hand she indicated the guy by himself, “okay? He hasn’t been moving almost the entire time I’ve been here.”
The buss boy looked over to see who she had indicated then turned back to her.
“Don’t bother about him, trust me. He’s just fine and probably concentrating just now. We usually are just told not to bother him.”
With that the bus boy went back to clearing tables where people had left. Susan watched the man thinking how odd it was the bus boy would warn her to stay away from him. She did a minor appraisal of what she could see.
He had dark but not black hair cut into what might be described as acceptable business like coiffing. Though from where she sat he did not look muscularly buff, he certainly appeared to be fit. He had on a set of khaki slacks, walking shoes, and a deep navy blue shirt with buttoned up cuffs. From what she could see of his face he was clean shaven. Without getting closer she couldn’t tell if his hands were calloused from work, though she doubted they were. His mouth seemed to have a narrow serious look with smile creases at either end though. Evidence of smiling was thing she found attractive.
She realized he turned to look at her. She wouldn’t have seen his mouth otherwise and now she could tell the shape of his face was a strong chiseled shape. His cheekbones gave the firm appearance of solidity and his eyes were set under brows set only a little forward. Not a neanderthal look to be sure.
Since he’d noticed her anyway, acknowledging her gaze with a brief nod, she decided to go introduce herself. She told herself she was satisfying her need to be reassured he was not being ill or something.
So she picked up her things, having also determined she couldn’t leave the manuscript here for just anyone to take, and walked over to his table.
“Hi there,” she said, “My name is Susan.”
“Hello Susan,” his voice had a certain melodic tone, “please, feel free to join me.”
“I was waiting for someone, but he’s been delayed.”
“When he shows up, he can join us here,” he gave a meaningful look at the bundle with her manuscript, “I’m sure he is looking forward to reading your work.”
She blushed, of course it was obvious the bundle she carried was filled with something bendable probably indicating its contents to be paper. A little deduction without a huge amount of speculation would indicate it was her writing.
“I ought to?.”
“Maybe, but why don’t you join me until he shows up anyway.”
She didn’t know if she should but she put the bundle down and took her place in the other seat at the table. She looked closer now since his face was closer, easier to see. His nose straight, a few creases in his forehead, he still looked to be only in his late twenties.
“I am Connor,” he offered his hand to shake, which after a brief hesitation she did. His hand felt firm, only slightly calloused.
“He’s my editor. He texted there was some car trouble. I’m sure he’ll get here soon.”
“When he shows up, I’m certain he will find you easily enough. You stand out in this place.”
“Oh no, do I look a mess or something?”
“Hell no. You look positively stunning. I meant you’re not a regular so you’re a bit more noticeable than others.”
She turned pink again, not intending to elicit a complement. For some reason she was pleased he found her attractive.
“So how is it you’re all by yourself?”
“Me? I’m not alone. Most of these people know me, and I could get company from any of them if I want it.”
“You’re just meditating over your meal then?”
“You mean,” he looked at her eyes as his brow knitted as he rooted out what she had been thinking, “oh, you saw me sitting still for a bit.”
Shivering but not cold, Susan felt as though the veil of her thoughts had been pulled back. It was a unique sensation.
“You weren’t moving for a while, I thought you might be having some kind of epileptic episode.”
“No, I was checking on my holdings.”
“Checking on your holdings? By staring off into space?”
He gave a wry chuckle and shook his head.
“My holdings are not here, they are within a couple hundred miles though. I’m telepathic so I was just scanning my network of connections.”
Susan jolted a moment. Awkward instant. This had just gotten weird on her. Maybe he was indeed just crazy. She wasn’t sure how to get herself out of sitting with a nut who thought he was a telepath though.
“Don’t sweat it, there’s no reason to leave the table just now.”
Her jaw slid down just a fraction as she realized he figured out what she’d been thinking, though honestly, what would anyone be thinking if they were around someone who just revealed they were crazy.
“I’m not crazy.”
Nervously, she scanned for a waiter or for her editor. Roger ought to be here by now, he could rescue her.
“You don’t need rescuing. Roger, Roger Banning I assume? I’m pretty sure he’ll be happy to buy your manuscript and even pay more than he did last time.”
“How can you know that? Are you?,” she couldn’t entirely believe Roger’s name had come so trippingly easy for a stranger she had just met, “really telepathic? Do you know him? How can you?”
“Do that? No, I don’t know him. It’s a long story. In the mood for a tale of woe?”
She wanted to leave but couldn’t bring herself to get up or even just dismiss him to let herself depart. Whether it was curiosity or some perverse need to know what this story he had was, she wasn’t sure. Being frozen by an unexpected turn to the loony bin did bother her though.
“I suppose you want to know about telepathy after all?”
“Yes,” if he kept talking, maybe someone would come over to make this less awkward for her.
“No one else will disturb us. Don’t be anxious about it. You’re fine.”
Now she frowned. She was feeling a little trapped after his comment. She ought to just be rude and leave but for some reason she found herself staying anyway.
“Shall I start explaining?”
“You may as well,” she responded, “Though why I don’t just leave is something I haven’t figured out yet.”
“Ah. When I was younger, not a lot younger, maybe about five years ago now, I was pretty normal,” he pulled the glass of whatever he was drinking closer, “pretty much as normal as you are.”
“Did something specific happen to change that?”
“Kind of. Maybe it was always there and had to wake up. Maybe I did something that woke it up. I prefer to go with the former. I think the ability was inside the entire time but didn’t show up because nothing had occurred I needed it for. Then one day I needed to protect myself.”
“What happened you needed protection?”
“That kind of takes this to before I had telepathic powers. Back when I was single, working as a designer,” he looked over the direction of the kitchen. “I had women problems, like all single scrawny guys without grand social aptitude...”
“You certainly aren’t scrawny now. You don’t look like a muscle man, but you sure look as fit as any guy your age would want to be.”
“My,” he seemed taken aback, “Not expected but thank you. Believe me, after college I looked like the typical nobody attached to a game console. Not quite as bad as that, maybe. But believe me, even the women I got to date me then tended to dump me after a few weeks. If I wasn’t constantly pushing to get together, they didn’t seem to care. None of them made any effort to reach out to me. And some just vanished, not responding to calls or texts. It was, an experience I think a lot of less popular guys go through.”
“Some never get past it,” she replied wryly. “I’ve had to fend off unpleasant dorks. Oh, sorry, not saying you’re a dork.”
“It’s okay. I suppose at the time I was.”
“So you were saying about women problems?”
“Yes, the woman I’d been dating wasn’t calling me. Not matter what, she didn’t respond when I tried to reach her. Her life, it seemed she decided, did not need me in it. I took it as I usually did.” He sounded pretty disgusted. “After a while, being the only one making an effort to make it work, I gave up. I picked out a book from my shelves, grabbed my laundry, and went to the laundromat.”
“Okay.”
“That Friday night, I met a woman. Oddly, she’s the one who decided to approach me. A unique experience for me. She was very pretty. Still is actually. We got along, though I was totally unsure where it was going. She slipped her phone number into the book I was reading. She had written it on a piece of cardboard, probably from a box of soap by the way, and I found the number later that night. I called, she agreed to a date, we went out. You’d think, maybe that would be all the story would need. But it was actually where this stuff started.
“So, after a while,” he paused, “her name by the way was August. She was very attractive, did I mention that? At the laundromat, it was hard to tell how sexy she really was. She’d had on a baggy sweatshirt that only hinted at her development, and a pair of somewhat ratty jeans which were not on her tightly, you know, loose fitting. Her hair was wound up in a bun at the time, one of those darker varieties of blond. Beyond a doubt she was about comfort. But she had the most attractive mouth and eyes. Her complexion seemed supernaturally clear.”
He closed his eyes a moment as though breathing in a memory.
“Yes, that night her lips looked like candy. I wanted to devour her.”
“You’re starting to freak me a bit.”
“Well, certainly as a guy I’m likely to be interested in a woman’s sensual attraction. I’m sure you are aware of that.”
“Yes, I know. But you don’t have to turn the conversation into porno either.”
“I will not be apologetic over finding a woman appealing to me. In that sense, I am all too human and have no intention of changing. Besides, I was not talking about you, and yet you certainly do look quite good in a similar sense.”
She was quiet this time. The compliment felt a bit uncomfortable coming from him at the moment. Mostly she supposed because she didn’t know him. It was a wee bit creepy she thought, but given the topic, she supposed it was to be expected.
“As I said,” he started up again, “We started dating. Around the third date we were humping each other madly, she was more than sensual I might add. She was decidedly into the bedroom Olympics.”
“That sort of explains why you ended up talking about her in context of sex, but please, can we not dwell on it?”
“For now I can agree and manage that.”
“Good enough, go on. You were saying you started to date.”
“Yes. After about three months, she moved in with me. Life was good. I was stinkin’ head over heals in love. Being in lust also applies, I admit. She seemed very much to have the same feelings. A match that worked well. I felt less like a dork and more like I was having a better life.”
“So something big happened then?”
“Around eight months in, yes.”
“Is that when you discovered you were telepathic?”
“Oh, not yet, no. That was to come soon though.” He flagged down a waiter.
She looked at the waiter and seemed to want to ask him to help her leave but then realized she wanted to hear more of the story.
“How may I help, sir?”
“It turns out I may be here a while longer. I’d like a dish of the lasagna please, and another drink. Maybe the lady would?,” he looked at her expectantly.
“I’ll have a glass of wine, can’t I have the wine list?”
“Certainly ma’am,” The waiter jotted a note and walked off. A moment later he was back with the card listing the wines they carried. It was a long list and she finally picked out a Merlot which seemed within reason.
“Where was I?”
“Eight months of living with August.”
“Yes, we started to have a bit of trouble. It started on a weekend actually. We had been out shopping together. And, I assure you. I am not one of those men who enjoys shopping. So this was an expedition for her purposes. She was dressed fit to kill too. She had on a short skirt that exposed much of her legs and a pair of black pumps with three inch heels. The blouse she had on was tight enough to make out her bra lines, accenting how nicely endowed she was, giving just enough of a cleavage to see the smooth curves of flesh there.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“It relates your honor, I assure you. I will get there. It’s important you remember this first event, she looked too hot to just glance past. Even the other women were giving envious looks about how very attractive she was.”
“Okay, okay.”
“As you can imagine, I was the envy of guys where ever we went. We spent time at some eatery or another and there were a large number of men who had problems taking their eyes off her. I was grinning like a fool knowing they were jealous. I was comfortable about being with her. She really didn’t care about anyone there but me. I’d gotten used to her steady attention matching my own for her.
“When we’d met, she had told me how she disliked the egotistical men who tended to approach her because of her beauty, and she’d told me she loathed the ones who insisted on trying to come on to her without knowing her at all. More importantly, at the laundromat, she’d approached me. I hadn’t even noticed her being there until she sat next to me and started talking to me. So I had lots of reasons to feel safe as to where she’d be spending the night.”
“Ah, true love then, was it? Something went wrong, right?”
“Yes. But not the way you might expect.”
“I’m still listening,” she added, “do go on.”
“I had to hit the men’s room. So, I left her at the table while I dashed to do nature’s bidding. I told her I’d be right back.”
“Let me guess, she wasn’t there when you got back?”
“Not her, not her purchases, not her purse and even the setting for her having a meal with me was gone.”
The waiter came back and placed the stemware with Susan’s wine before her. “Your dish will be out shortly, sir.”
“Thank you,” replied Connor, turning to Susan he spoke again, “So I thought, someone would have seen which way she went. I started to ask the people at the tables nearby. Funny thing that.”
“She was hot so all the men had to have noticed which way she went?” Susan was smug about figuring the obvious out.
“One would think so.”
“No?”
“Not only did no one nearby remember her, but several of them told me I’d been sitting there alone the entire time. Every one who remembered me being there told me that ‘you were alone.’”
“Oh. How could that be?”
“We’re back to telepathy again. But I think that can wait a little bit yet. It got weird. I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t report her as missing. Yet. So I ended up with a sleepless night worried as fuck. Because I’m possessive as hell.”
“Possessive as hell?”
“Oh hell yes, you’ll figure that out I’m sure. You’re pretty smart, seems to me.”
She dipped her head in acknowledgment, smiling. “Yes, a truly amazing GPA.”
He let out a chuckle.
“She showed up Sunday evening,” he paused as for effect, “She asked why I bailed on her at the eatery ‘today’ as if I’d walked off on her.”
“You’d walked off on her?”
“She didn’t understand how it was Sunday and not Saturday evening. She was as confused as I was.”
“She lost a whole day? Yet all she was? was confused?”
“Well when she figured out it was true she freaked a bit. But we got past it. We talked about sleep walking, only she’d been awake. I didn’t learn more until much later. We went together to a doctor to have her checked out. She was fine near as we found out.
“The next couple weeks I watched over here carefully. Nothing unusual occurred I could notice. She went to her job as she usually did. Oh, did I mention she worked for a restaurant holding company? The parent company for a number of chain franchise places. Something named?,” he closed his eyes a moment as though struggling for the name, “Darden. So, she had to leave town periodically to visit their operations in various places.”
“So you couldn’t really know where she was sleeping every night.”
“No, I couldn’t. But work never seemed like a problem to me, call it a stupid blind spot. We all get stupid sometimes. Usually her trips were once every couple weeks. She’d go away for a day, or two, so two or three nights. I was used to that. She was used to that. She was in public places pretty much all the time for those things. She even had a woman who was a co-worker who made the trips with her. They had a buddy system to prevent certain corrupting influences. They had the same policy for guys too. It seems at some point a little bribery had resulted in the loss of a quarter million bucks before they caught it. So, they wanted everyone in the field to have a partner who would also have to be influenced to cause the same problem. For some reason they claimed it made the statistical chance of catching things sooner much higher.
“A few weeks later, she told me she had an overnight trip with Becky to, oh, I don’t remember where. When she came back she was all smiles and gleeful about a good business trip. I think I tracked it back to about then as the time things started to change. We still were heavily intimate but...” Connor looked down at the table with a bit of contemplation.
“Was something wrong then?,” Susan asked. “She start having headaches or something?”
“Oh, no. She was still very sexual and sensual woman. If nothing else, even more so. But.”
“More? She got more active on the mattress?”
“We did things in other places than the mattress even before that.”
“Okay, so she wanted a lot more. There’s nothing wrong with that. Women can like sex too. Go on.”
“Ever see Annie Hall?”
“Yes. Why?”
“There’s a scene where Diane Keaton and Woody Allen are supposed to be making love. Only they usually got stoned before hand and this time he’d talked her into screwing without smoking pot first.”
“Not something I remember. What happens?”
“Well, her spirit slips off the bed, her body still on the bed and not particularly responsive to him. She’s sitting on the chair off to the side and he’s trying to talk her into being present during the sex. She tries to talk him into letting her smoke, and they go back and forth for a bit about her not being there.
“So sex with August was like having her float out of the bed and sit watching me having sex with her rather hollow body. Fucking happened often, but she wasn’t really in the bed with me it seemed.”
“I get it. So though you,” Susan had a problem with her inner prude showing up, “were bopping more often, she wasn’t connecting emotionally?”
“Not noticeably. If there was any connection I just wasn’t feeling it. I thought it was just my imagination at first. Yet when it kept happening, I figured out it wasn’t me. So, I knew something was wrong after a couple weeks. It bothered me a lot. I realized the only time I wasn’t keeping an eye on her was on the trips she went on. It wasn’t something I could do with her.
“I put together a small overnight bag so I could follow her at an instant’s notice. The next time she had a mid-week trip, I grabbed it after she walked out the door,” he shook his head as though it was hard for him to believe too, “I gave her a few moments so she wouldn’t see me following. It was not nearly so easy to do, following someone. I’d have thought it would be. One of those, if you’ve no reason to do it, it’s not really that hard, right? Wrong.”
“But you kept up, didn’t you,” she took a sip of the wine. She hadn’t realized but while he was talking she’d almost finished it. She didn’t want to be buzzed while sitting with Connor, but if she had too much she would be.
“I kept up. She went to a building on the east side of town and was buzzed right in while I stood outside on the street wondering how I would get in. It looked pretty solid on the security side. I saw cameras and there was a gate with a very short few steps to the building. The wall around the building wasn’t far from the building. It would have been a jump from the top of the wall to the building side, easily. I debated it. How to get in, I mean. Or whether I should try to get in at all. The address was connected to a John Chambers, not someone I’d ever heard her mention.”
“So what did you figure, she was seeing this guy on the side? She was related to him? What?”
“August’s last name was Queen. Near as I could tell there was no relation, and yes, you’re right. I tried to convince myself it was maybe an uncle she didn’t want to own up to having or something.”
“The next day when she showed up, I asked her about John Chambers and what she was doing there. I could tell she was going to deny going there, but somehow she turned on it and said they had a seminar there before they went to see the customer. It was total bullshit but I couldn’t shake her from her explanation. We went the rounds for a while about it. It wasn’t our first ‘fight’ but it certainly was not in the same pattern. You know, the ‘stop lying to me’ and ‘I’m not lying to you’ and a bit of huffing before you both retire to other sides of the room. Next morning she woke me up with a blow job. It was a nice way to wake up but not the solution to what was going on.”
“Did you just say ‘blow job’? I thought you were going to try to rein in those kinds of statements.”
“I am keeping it to a minimum. There was a lot of fluids being exchanged in our relationship, even when it started souring oddly.”
“So, she told you a yarn and stuck to it, and you? What did you do?”
“I was going to follow her again, but she had figured out I might so she found ways to ditch me before going anywhere specific. I would lose her in a crowded store or mall, or somewhere, and by the time I tried going to this Chambers guy’s house, I couldn’t be sure if she was in there or not. I had to resort to other means of catching her out.”
“So why didn’t you just dump her and move on if she was doing this act?”
“Oh, well. That.” He tapped fingers on the table as if trying to find patience.
“Yes, that, why not?”
“Let’s start out with the ‘possessive’ thing. If she wasn’t mine anymore I wanted to know why she tried to convince me she was while scooting off to do something with someone else. If you want, we can call that the ‘obsessive’ stage,” he paused because the waiter had returned with his food. He made a motion to the waiter to bring her a refill. She was going to shake him off but didn’t. So another glass of wine was going to show up. After thanking the man, he went on, “Anger and jealous rage can make a few odd decisions for you, even if you know that’s what’s going on. But. It was a pattern I had been through in the past that didn’t fit. I was accustomed to being ditched by taking themselves out of my reach for good. Coming back and trying to give great sexual experiences was a twist I couldn’t understand. That was unreal.
“A few weeks later, after souring things a bit myself in the bedroom because I couldn’t prove anything but I knew something was going on, something new happened.”
“Didn’t like feeling lied to?,” said Susan.
“I’d been lied to before, been lied to since. I may be cynical but I expect human beings to lie even if they have no intention of doing so.”
“I always tell the truth.”
“I’m sure you think that.”
“I think you’re insulting me.”
“Not at all. I’m just commenting on what people do.”
She took a sip of her drink. “So what was the new thing that happened?”
“New? Oh right.”
He fussed a moment over his food.
“I don’t entirely know how to explain this to someone. She came out admitting she was seeing this John guy. Right out.”
“What? She said she was screwing John the whole time?”
“What she actually said was stranger than that.”
“Really? She didn’t just pack up and leave?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, my interest is piqued. Spill.”
“Yeah. She said, and? pretty much literally, John didn’t mind if she stayed with me between her visits to him. He was sending her home to me when he wasn’t fucking her. With instructions to be sure I got a lot of sex from her, telling her to go full on slut with me. He wanted to hear all about what she did with me.”
“I...” Susan tilted her head. “I have no idea what to say to that. So you kicked her to the curb, right?”
“Yes and no. It didn’t work out quite the way you might think. You know how macho guys get over the woman they are in lov? obsessed with?”
“Ooooooohhhh, yeah. What did you do!? Did you go try to beat the guy up?”
“I. ah, I, er, I may have gone to the house and kicked on the door.”
“Just kicked on the door?” She realized she was feeling a bit sympathetic to Connor.
“Kicked on the door. It was a tough door. I didn’t see it coming when it hit me.”
“What hit you?”
“John did actually, but the door didn’t budge an inch.”
“He was outside behind you?”
“No. Not that. The door was very solid. He did hear me. He struck me as hard as he could with a bolt of mental energy.”
“So now we’re finally coming to the telepathy thing, aren’t we.”
“Yes. It’s time for that. My machismo act just got him to notice me. He then decided I was more than an ineffectual dork. Which is what he’d decided I was after talking to August about me.”
“Just what did he do?”
He took a deep sigh. “I’ve tried to explain this before, but never really made as much sense as it warrants. I know what he was trying to do. He was trying to cause my brain to overload, to cause a severe aneurysm. Severe enough it should kill anyone. He was throwing his entire weight, mental weight, into trying to blast my mind to pieces. It hit like being hit? I suppose the way a rubber bullet might hit. Not fatal but one hell of a blow. Not being a physical assault, what happened was I staggered and dropped to one knee. I tried to clear my head.”
“So he failed. Did that make your telepathy wake up?”
“Probably, possibly. There’s no telling exactly how it woke so much as I had an innate built in shield that blunted his stroke. The fact I wasn’t dead seemed to shock him by the way. His shock gave away he’d done this before to other people. Meaning, he was a killer already.”
“On one knee in front of his door, you figured that out? How did you figure that out by the way? That he was shocked and had done this before?”
“I never claimed to be omniscient.”
“Not the question I asked,” Susan said, feeling more confident around Connor now. Somehow the creep factor was fading for her. “How did you know he was shocked? Telepathy?”
“Heck no. He opened the door,” he shook his head, “I don’t believe he gave it much thought other than, hey, why aren’t you dead like the others I’ve done that to?”
“I see. So he just stood there while you were on the ground.”
“On one knee, there is a difference.”
“Right. So go on, what happened then?”
“I got up, my head ringing like a ? I heard that funky tone thing they tell you goes with tinnitus. But I did get up, and punched him.”
“And he didn’t see a punch coming? I find it hard to fathom. He’d just hit you hard you said.”
“For whatever reason, he was in shock. Without meaning to, he did explain his shock a few minutes later why, but before we go there, he fell over backwards having been punched. It wasn’t quite the blow I wanted to deliver either. Punching other people hurts by the way. Not just them. My knuckles were not happy with me.”
“He fell over. Let’s not dwell on your fist. No matter how hard he struck it with his face.”
“Cute, wench.”
“Hey, none of that now.”
“Right. So immediately two bruisers. Thugs if you prefer. Goons. Minions. Came to the front door as well, piled out on me and beat me soundly. Before I passed out from being punched and kicked,” he felt his right side where his ribs are, “John boy got up and told me. ‘You should have died from that; I’ve decided instead of killing you though, I’m going to punish you and you will truly suffer.’ I know, I know, it sounds like villain gloating stuff but he really said this crap.”
“When I didn’t respond right away he said, ‘I don’t know why you didn’t die; I’ll tell you what’s going to happen to your girlfriend though; I control her mind totally; I’m going to use her like a dishrag until she’s so wrung out tossing her in the trash would seem kind; after just using her a while I will be turning her out to other men as a slut will be fun; especially since you’ll know I’m doing that to her and can’t do a bloody thing about it.’ Then he kicked me once in the nuts and I’m pretty sure that’s when I passed out.”
Susan’s thoughts were spinning. If this John guy could do that to the August girl, what could Connor do to her? She wondered if he had made her stay or taken control of her already. Was it real? She had yet to convince herself.
“Wait.” She looked at him and the fear must have been evident. He was lost in the memory at that instant though, “if you’re a telepath, then am I being?? Like, are you...”
“When you walked in, I thought you were interesting. I saw you carrying your little parcel there. I wondered about it. So you know, yes, the telepathy is how I know your editor’s name, and how much he paid for your previous manuscript.”
“Are you doing something to me now?”
“As you sat down, I planted the idea to find an excuse to come over to talk to me. We’re doing that now, aren’t we? So yes, I did something to you. You seemed really nice when I did a little peek and I did want to talk to someone tonight. Do you want to know how the rest of things with John and August played out?”
She thought a moment, her teeth tugging at her lower lip. She couldn’t tell if she was being compelled or not. Okay, he admitted planting a suggestion she should come meet him. A little bit of an ethics issue and decidedly a little creepy. He did come across a though he was decent in the time they’d been talking. No one else in here seemed to notice anything unusual. Could she trust him? Even if she couldn’t trust him, could she leave safely? It seemed more likely if they kept talking he’d wind down eventually so she could go.
“Okay, what happened next?”
“I woke up in a hospital a couple days later. When I did, I had a hard time clearing my head because I heard things.”
“Like voices? People’s thoughts?”
“You do realize most people don’t think clearly in a voice but more in a conscious haze that comes out as words when they speak, right? It was more like having a lot of imagery, pictures and words together swamp in over my ability to assert my own personality. I could see how a lot of other telepaths would seem to be schizoid or maybe unable to assemble a coherent idea. It was like being drown in a blur of color, sound, physical sensation, a few other things. It took me a bit to sort it out. They gave me really good drugs for a while too.”
“How long were you there? How long did it take for you to, I guess the phrase would be to ‘become yourself’ again?”
“A little over a week and a half. The doctor wanted to hold me for observation for a month or so. I was able to sustain a coherent level of interaction by then though. Plus by that point I was realizing I could make suggestions without speaking and the staff seemed to act on them. So I was getting the hang of how to hear but also how to speak through my telepathy.”
“Can you actually send thoughts? I mean, like sentences?”
“Yes, you want me to send you something to show you what it’s like?”
“Not really I think. Would it hurt? Would it be like John hit you?”
“To be sure, not at all like a bolt. It would be more like an unexpected whisper when you think you imagined someone was speaking without them being there.”
“I guess it might be an interesting experience to feel another mind touch mine.”
He gave her a smile at that.
“First, tell ya what. I’ll just touch you a little bit so what you will feel is like there’s another presence beside you, how does that sound?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
She was afraid it was going to be like worms eating their way into her brain but it wasn’t. There was a soft warm presence that felt almost as gentle as having a cat walk through the room while her thoughts were elsewhere.
“Was that it? That light furry thing?”
“Light furry? Huh. Yes. That was it.”
“Try the voice then. I think I can handle it.”
His eyes met her’s and she felt as much as heard it.
»This comes with a picture, see?« The voice was gentle, not angelic but peaceful in nature. He was right, she could not tell the direction it came from the way she would with someone who said it aloud.
She also saw an oval image with edges that seemed to be bubbling away, and a woman’s face in the center of it. It only took her a moment to realize it was how he was seeing her face at the moment. His vision of her was resplendent . Yet, she saw the expression she had through him. There was both concern and a measure of excitement in her expression as she saw herself through his eyes for that instant. Then it went away.
“Wow. That’s kind of amazing. I mean, it’s scary too but amazing.”
He nodded an acknowledgment to her and pushed his empty plate to the side. She’d barely noticed he’d been eating while narrating his story.
“So, you got your act back together, left the hospital and then?”
“Then I went home and found not only every trace of August gone, but the place had been thoroughly tossed by someone. Valuables weren’t taken so much as just damaged. It was a clear physical message to go with the one about August being gone. He was telling me he owned her now and would do anything he wanted. I expected him to let me know where I could see her being used by his lackeys.”
“Did he?”
“That didn’t entirely happen before I went after him again. Before I did though, I found out as much as I could about the mental ability I somehow had developed. He hadn’t really registered I might be a telepath too. He didn’t get that when he had me beat up or he probably would have simply had the thugs cut my throat. Being beaten is pretty rough too.”
“You look as though you recovered.”
“Another side benefit of having mind powers like mine. I can do things to manipulate the nervous system inside myself to heal better, and cause the scar tissue to fade away, being replaced by healthy tissue. It lets me do a few other things with muscles and of course to some degree vision, hearing, sense of touch. To me, it was clear he’d never figured that out. John blundered into his ability, having no idea how to manage fine narrow skills. He couldn’t do things subtly.”
“You seem awfully certain of that.”
“I spent a couple weeks working on honing the telepathy. At a minimum I didn’t want to face the brutes and heavy lifters on his security. I watched his house. I waited. I didn’t see August come or go, but he did. Every time he did, he left in his limo and came back with someone he’d managed to slut up for his entertainment. He had a thing for blonds if you ask me. Which brings us back to the thing at the mall where August had first disappeared. If you recall I told you she was an utter bombshell for that outing.
“His track record indicated he was bringing women he’d found particularly hot, blonds dressed in heels, short enough skirts to show leg, sometimes prodigiously endowed. He didn’t seem to care about faces one way or the other, he was an equal opportunity slaver. Over the course of the next two months I never saw him enter or leave with August.
“I just kept looking for an opportunity of my own to get to him. I believed I figured out his big punch with the mental lashing. I worked out all I really needed to do was deflect it instead of taking it head on. I was fairly certain using my own forceful mental push could parry the blast, redirecting it away. Fencing, I never learned to fence but the point of doing a parry is not to take the blow on your own weapon but to guide the force where it’s harmless.”
“You watched him two months and no sign of August? For all you knew she could have been dead.”
“I was pretty sure he was doing something to her to show me later and humiliate me because I had been unable to stop him, unable to protect her. It did cross my thoughts it sucked she couldn’t protect herself from this,” Connor shrugged a bit. “I was goal oriented, freeing her, getting revenge.”
“Revenge? Not the best plan to prepare to redress the issue.”
“Revenge was a hefty motivator. I’m a pig I guess. Tough. I hated him and whatever it was he was doing to August. There had to be a reckoning.”
“Sure, a reckoning. But what happened?”
“I managed to get in while he wasn’t home. He’d trashed my place. I didn’t feel bad at all about violating his sanctity. It also seemed likely he felt damn secure since having me beaten. Among the things my ability gave me was a uniquely focused sense of where objects are. Discovering the ability helped paint a mental image of one’s surroundings to ridiculous accuracy even if the objects were not physically in sight allowed me to do something new. I was able to figure out exactly where the pins in his lock were. So a simple couple paper clips and a screwdriver got me through the locks.”
She held up her hand for him to pause again, thinking about what he was explaining.
“I thought telepathy was just the ability to read minds. Now you’re telling me you could mentally get to the deepest hidden objects in your surrounding and move them?”
“Not move them. No telekinesis. I can’t say if telekinesis is or isn’t real. What I could do is locate precisely without seeing and then with my hands manipulate them as though I could see them. Sort of a three-Dee imaging mechanism, like the MRI the medical folk use only without a machine. Probably without the magnetic field too.”
“Thus you were able to see if you pushed the right things out of sight allowing the lock to be opened?”
“I’m not giving lessons tonight on how the mechanical part of a modern door lock works. Just understand, it was not a barrier.”
“Once in, then what?”
“I explored. I was looking for bedrooms, dungeons, any place he might have stowed away a girl or two, hopefully August, to hold for when the mood struck.”
“Did you find any?”
“Not at all. Not a one, even his bedroom. He had plenty of bondage toys. And a set of nasty whips. One of which I swear was designed to cut the target to ribbons as they were flogged with it. That aside, I waited for him inside his house. I figured it was the only way to get to him while the entourage wasn’t there to guard him.
“I was right. I did something I figured out while spying on him from the outside. I hid my mental presence with a kind of shield. It’s an ‘I’m not here’ thing only more general and what it really does is if someone looks my way they’ll find their eyes wandering away, but more importantly it leaves the appearance of empty space for the mind. So he didn’t notice I was in his bedroom beyond the desk he had there. Given his specific depravity for varying sex on a frequent basis, I did find it weird the desk was in there. So I watched his happy-go-lucky self absorbed sex.
“Mostly he just got his rocks off. Because he was controlling the women, they were there to receive his action, let him cum in them anywhere, piss on them, even beat them if he pleased. The mental leash he kept them on was such they never complained. There was nothing there in the bed with him other than shells of what had been women. Ever it turns out. Again, I’m getting ahead of myself.”
“I don’t need all the most sordid detail you know.”
“Don’t be so prudish. It’s not like I’m describing a huge penis being shoved in the women so it comes out their mouths or something obnoxious.”
“I’m no prude.”
“Like it or not, there is a lot of sex involved in the telepathy thing. People tend to use telepathy to control someone they want to fuck, to steal money without anyone knowing, to go places they would be prevented, cheat at poker, to screw up someone they hate? It’s not about sex or even being able to manipulate others but about power. It isn’t just men either. Abuse of power is a gender neutral hunger it appears. There seem to be just as many women with the power to mentally affect others. It gives them a power they didn’t have as normals so they act on that, taking what they want, laughing at the efforts to puzzle out what they did. The telepaths in general are interested in achieving significant control.”
“Which of those is what you do?”
He snorted. “I’ve done a little of all of those. Not being unique, it is hard to be original. None of it bothered me but there are trade offs for everything.”
“So you spied on him in his own home.”
“I spied on him in his home waiting for him to be alone so I’d have more time to pick the locks on his brain. It seemed to me if people could be controlled then telepaths were susceptible as well. If I was right, he would happily tell me where August was and turn her over to me.
“I was being naive.”
“How so?”
“If I’d really been thinking about what I was doing, I would have realized I myself had stopped a direct attack he made against me. Now that I was aware of my telepathic ability, it would be hard for anyone to touch my mind without me knowing. Probably not impossible, but for all intents and purposes, it should have struck me his own skills would react to such a touch.
“Since I needed to get him alone, the bedroom didn’t seem like a good option at first. My options all changed when he did show up again. I was just outside of the bedroom when I heard movement at the front door. I dodged back in to wait. He’d have to come to me some time.
“He had set up a security detail for himself since I’d visited before. I guess being punched disagreed with him. On the plus side, his security detail was just as affected by my ‘I’m not here’ trick as anyone else. I had one guy look around the room I was in, acting for all the world like he’d seen something. He declared everything secure though. So as I had before, I hid.
“He had brought two women in with him. I didn’t look closely but they both were wearing hot to trot, absolutely deadly come fuck me outfits. Watching him get his jollies was not why I was there but it was almost a deja vu moment to how August had been dressed on the fateful day at the mall.
“They both had short skirts, thin blouses that gave away a lot of detail about their tits, and high heel pumps. Their hair was down, both of them had hair that spilled down their backs half way to their hips and it was like August’s had been, a darker blond shade. John had a decided ‘type’ he apparently. He’d find them and bring them back. He kept touching them but they were both acting as though mesmerized, not as though he meant for them to do anything on their own at all.
“Now I ask you, where’s the thrill in an intimate moment if your partner isn’t responsive to your actions? No, it’s okay,” he shook his head, “It was just an odd kink he seemed to have and I honestly don’t care. Even under control it seems to me a little warmth of pleasure is necessary. I digress though.”
“Yes, you stepped back towards the ?,” Susan paused, “Just go on about confronting him.”
“I tried to sink some of the little controls into him I had used on others elsewhere to learn how to do things. I grabbed hold of his somatic controls, the voluntary control part of the nervous system in your body. I wanted to question him and did not want him dashing out of the room. Naturally he figured out quickly he was frozen in place. As expected, he threw one of those energetic mental bolts at me again.”
“So you froze him in place and he could still do things?”
“All I did was freeze his muscular control. His brain and the part that is consciousness along with the telepathy was still in his control.”
“I see. I wasn’t thinking of it as a partial thing. I should have though, shouldn’t I, since all you did with me was suggest I find an excuse to meet you.”
“hmm. Yeah, it was partial,” he blew right past the implications of her statement, “I was able to brush aside the mind bolt with enough ease he thought he targeted incorrectly and tried it again. After that missed, I started a little conversation with him. Though, remember, he couldn’t actually talk. He’d have to think at me and me, at him.”
“Like what you did with me.”
“More like a shouting grating version of what I did with you. Something you’d have a brutal headache from afterwards.”
“Oh.”
“All I demanded to know where August was. It was a shock to me he didn’t even know who I meant at first. When he did realize, he gave me the tirade about not killing me so I should be grateful. It took him a couple minutes of tirade before it registered on him what kind of trouble he was in.”
“My god, immobilized and he still thought he was controlling everything?”
“Indeed he did. When it got through to him, he still didn’t let go of his idea of punishing me through August. His mind started running through ideas he had not yet done, like making her perform bestiality for one. When he started to respond about her specifically he kept sending images of what he’d forced her to do. He’d made her subject to a gang bang with all his hired thugs for instance. Made her do some high end call girl tricks, then put her out to the street as well, only garishly made up for the kind of guys who drive around during the night to find hookers. I’d go on, none of it really bothered me as sexual acts. What had me angry was he had taken my girl and made her do them. He was going out of his way to try to tell me she wasn’t mine anymore, which did hurt. I said I was possessive didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Susan watched his eyes, there seemed to be a bit of watering up there as he talked about the way his August had simply ceased to be his August.
“I did find out he’d left her in a cat-house downtown. It was the last of where he’d seen her and for all his bluster, he was unsure he could find her again to make her do more things to upset me. But he wasn’t done with his own efforts at managing his situation. Unable to seize control of his body back, he decided to try to get hold of mine. He might not have been overly bright, but he was smart enough to fight back. He made a couple other attempts to slam me, yet I noticed each time, he was trying to insinuate some kind of requirements into my own nervous system.
“I’m not sure when it occurred to him but he tried to direct the women to attack me physically around that point. When they started moving independently without him talking to them, I knew something was going on. I didn’t want to hurt them, so I hit the spot in their brain that just put them to sleep. They collapsed to the floor, out cold. He was livid of course. It was obvious he’d never encountered another telepath before, or, much more likely if he had, he’d simply hit them with the mental bolt. The later is what it turned out to be. Anyone he couldn’t control, me included, was treated to a blast meant to kill.
“How do I know this? I could get through to his memories. He’d let me in there so he could show me all the awful things he’d made August do. He didn’t realize it opened the door to other things I could find. Okay, doors isn’t the right metaphor, more like water rides where you wildly go through a variety of pools as you find a bit of control over when you take the next spill.”
“Did you kill him once you knew where August was?”
“I hadn’t planned to before that night.”
“Why not? It sounds like he needed to be put down as a wild animal.”
“That makes it sound as though I am better than he was. But what I wanted to do was get in to control him in deeper ways; to alter his ability to function as a telepath. Take his thought control tricks away and give him a bit of programming to act like a normal harmless person.”
“I gather that didn’t work.”
“No, it didn’t work at all. Those parts of his mind he had completely under control. I couldn’t weasel out any way in there. He’d locked down the mental control, just not the bodily control. I realized the autonomic nervous system could be grabbed and give him a heart attack, but I wasn’t interested at first in such a thing. Not until he revealed his intentions when he got free of me. And I knew that my stamina for this couldn’t last forever.”
“So what were his intentions?”
“Do similar things to everyone I knew, killing them or forcing them into servitude in the most unpleasant circumstances he could find for them. He really was a nasty piece of work, the version of Mr. Chambers. He was a Mr. Hyde without a Doctor Jekyll.”
“So he really did deserve to die?”
“He deserved to be dis-minded, which to me would be worse than death.”
“Meaning what?”
“Erasing his entire personality and all his memories so his skull was as empty as a baby in the womb.”
“Oh...” Susan considered that. Losing that didn’t seem so awful if he was still alive, maybe. “Why is that worse than death?”
“Not having any personality or any experience, no knowledge at all? He’d just sit there drooling, a kind of zombie. Not the brain eating kind either. Someone would have to look after him to get him through to the mental stage of a two year old. Even that wasn’t assured since his body was already aged to somewhere in his thirties or early forties.”
“So he would become someone else’s punishment, whoever had to take care of him.” She phrased it as a statement but meant it as a question. She figured this was going to end with John’s demise. Connor simply hadn’t said how.
“Right. Also something against my personal desires. I did eventually choose the fate for him you mentioned. He didn’t die quietly though. Even as his brain passed away he kept trying to strike out at me with whatever energy he could muster. I’d eventually decided on the heart attack and he was gone.”
“What about the women?”
“The women? Oh, right, the one’s I’d put to sleep.”
“Yes, them.”
“I sent them home with a blank spot in their memories, just like he had with August the first time he pulled her in. He had not yet wiped their personalities. Only. I didn’t leave them instructions to come back to me at my whim. I was looking for August, after all.”
“Did you find her?”
“She was at a different whore house, but yes, I found her. Apparently the place he’d settled her at had been busted by the cops at some point and she had found a new place to work on her own. He’d programmed her so hooking was the only way she knew to get by.”
“That’s just awful. My gawd. Were you able to restore her?”
“I thought I would be able to. I really did. I spent a couple weeks taking apart the whore mental state as well as the personality implanted to go with it. I dug out and first isolated then wiped anything having to do with John. It took some time. But it turned out that he had wiped out anything other than what he wanted her to be for him. Everything that was actually August was gone. I could plant a new personality in her but I could not bring back the woman she was. It was impossible.”
“So what happened to her?”
“I named her Mona, gave her a new last name, a place to work in the field she had liked before, and she lives with me still. She’s not my girlfriend August anymore though.”
“What? Really??”
He turned to look towards the kitchen and she turned to look too. The slightly built busty dark blond by the door there waved to the two of them and smiled. Susan looked surprised for a moment but realized this was where the new ‘Mona’ was working. Mona strolled over to the table and looked at Susan, offering a neatly kept hand.
“Hi there! I’m Mona. How was your meal?,” she said as if to say she had been the cook. Maybe she was for most of the menu.
“I didn’t eat anything but the chef’s salad,” replied Susan in a soft curious voice. How do you talk to a walking zombie-ish person, after all? Mona looked hot and sensual, recovered from whatever ordeal she’d had. “Have you worked here long?”
“Oh, I own this place,” she beamed, showing a bit of pride in that, “I’ve run this place for about five years, since Connor found me and helped me recover from amnesia.”
“You had amnesia?”
“Since I can’t remember a thing from before then, yes, amnesia. The doctor told me it is very unusual for it to last as long as it has. At this point it’s not likely to change,” She bent over, exposing her cleavage as she kissed Connor with tenderness. “I never can thank him enough.”
“Good girl, now get back to the kitchen.”
“Yes sir,” she did a mild curtsy. Then she strolled away with her tight ass wiggling just enough to give the visual impression of a voluptuous nature.
“You kept her as a sex slave after all, didn’t you?,” came the accusation easily.
“So? Why not? We were lovers before she lost her inner self to oblivion. Why shouldn’t I now?”
“WHA?!,” Susan gave him a dark glare.
“Let me explain something to you. I started the explanation when you came over to say hello. I’m a telepath. Actually I am the telepath in charge. I’ve found a number of others as well.”
“There’s more of you?!”
“Within a few hundred miles, there are at least about five hundred, give or take. They used to be scattered around the world, but now they’re closer to me.”
“To you? I don’t understand.”
“After I got Mona back, pretty thing, isn’t she?”
She just lowered the temperature with her eyes but he ignored it.
“Yes, I started to look more into the telepath thing. If there’d been two of us, there’d be more, you know? So looking around with my ability I found a couple nearby. Both of the first two were women I will have you know. One of them a plump little prig who hated men with an intensity that bordered on utterly insane. Her idea of fun was rendering guys who offended her impotent. Not that I cared but she did try to do that to me when I first contacted her.”
Susan tried again to figure out if he was keeping her there or if it really was her own curiosity keeping here there. Of course, if there were other telepaths, maybe one of them would help her get away from Connor, not that Connor seemed to be doing a thing to keep her there.
“I found, you see, there were little strings, something like a hidden set of network wiring, that were present. Obviously, they’re not visible. They’re not particularly noticeable. Perceptible to me, but John never saw them. Nor did it seem, the two telepaths I’d found. Pulling on those strings a little bit, in my interest to find out what they were, caused something to happen. The telepaths they were connected to felt a geas like compulsion to come to me. A few days after I’d tugged on the string, the first one showed up. Her first act was to lash out at me with her own powers.
“I was surprised. My initial reaction was to wonder if John had a relative with telepathy who was mad I’d killed him. But then, how on Earth would they know? She wasn’t his relative. The first one was the somewhat Rubenesque young girl named Judy. Her idea of dealing with me was to seize control and turn off my nervous system to the family jewels. She eventually found I controlled her though and had no ulterior motives towards her. I did a slight adjustment on her, relieving her of the deep seated hatred of men, but nothing else. She knows I did it too. She may be somewhere around here tonight, but I don’t see her. We aren’t exactly friends but we do get along reasonably well.”
“Wow. Thats,” She shook her head at him, “What have you done then, pulled together a team of telepaths to take over the world?,” Susan was starting to get the idea this was a lot worse than making Mona his sex slave, which she admitted to herself was only creepy if you completely ignored the role of the other telepath. “What are you doing with her?”
“Me? Nothing at the moment. The other woman showed up two days later with a curious streak, thinking me a guru who would open her eyes to this entire telepathy thing in a way she could reach nirvana or some other higher plane. She pretty much immediately offered to be my pet and personal slave in every sense of the word. Those two strings are very solid now by the way, between me and those two. They were the first. As the connection to them grew stronger, more telepaths from around the globe started coming in. The young men were combative as hell when they showed up, they really were trying to grab up women as slaves. Not that I objected but I forced them to tone it down a lot.”
“You mean you condoned them keeping sex slaves they’d turned against their will?,” she tried to make it a biting question but she was now a little more afraid again.
His head tilted as he looked at her like she’d said something incomprehensible.
“Of course I condone it. The alternatives are far worse,” he sipped his drink.
“Wait,” her thoughts ran through early parts of their conversation, “are these telepaths the ‘holdings’ you have you were talking about earlier?”
“It is true, that’s what I was talking about. I have to play arbiter for them sometimes. Or Judge. When they encroach on each other then complain to me I usually have to explain we’re not a democracy.”
“Not a,” Susan took a deep breath, “just what are you and they?”
“I’m the center of their universe, I can control any and all of them at any time. I’m the dictator. We are a giant step on the evolutionary ladder and I’m protecting my species.”
“Your species? You say that as though you are somehow superior to other humans.”
“We are superior. You are inferior. I can control you and do anything I want with you. You’re mute, and I’m not. You can’t stop me. Though I may have to take back the thing about being the next evolutionary step, I know the telepathy is a change putting us up the ladder from the mute.”
A deep chill cut through her to the bone. Suddenly the entire conversation seemed a lot less innocent and more like an orientation spiel. She was shaking, she realized.
“You have been controlling me all along, haven’t you?”
She found her hands moving to her chest. Her head titled down on her own volition but her fingers with the pinkish flesh color nails started pulling through her bra and blouse at her nipples. She felt them firming up, hardening, aroused. Without her willing it, she uncrossed her legs and opened them wide as she could while playing with her breasts, kneading them a bit, pulling at the nubbins through all the fabric.
“You can’t be doing this to me. I don’t want this. Please stop.”
“That’s not going to happen. Oh, I’ll let you keep writing by the way. But you’re not going anywhere.”
He smiled. He reached out to her blouse and undid the top three buttons. She couldn’t move to stop him. Pulling the blouse open to expose her bra, he ran a hand over her boobs.
“STOP THAT! I AM NOT YOURS,” she shouted, hoping maybe someone would come to aid her. A few people near her chuckled openly.
One nice looking young woman at a table next to theirs spoke in response to the shout, “Get over it girl, you’ll know your place soon.”
The look on her face must have been utter shock and terror. She found her hands gripping the table while she leaned forward to present her chest to this man who had seemed friendly and just talkative for so long.
“You never were going to let me leave, were you?,” she asked in a small voice.
“Not for one moment since you stepped in the place was there any option for you to depart. I could have simply laid you over your table from the beginning and fucked you madly. Mona would come hold your hand even.”
The thought ran through her that he meant to keep her. It brought out a deeper fear she would not be able to be herself. She liked being who she was. She didn’t want to lose herself.
“You’re going to make my personality go away, aren’t you,” she uttered between light sighs.
“Oh hell no. I love your personality. It’s the single most attractive thing about you. You are magnificent.”
“But you’re still going to keep me,” she found herself letting out a grunt.
He just nodded and had drawn a pocket knife from his pocket. He reached out between her breasts and slipped the steel under the binding of her bra, slicing it. Her breasts fell loose, dark brown nipples stiff in the open air.
She looked around and saw a number of grinning faces. She felt the heat climb up her neck and across her face.
“You see,” he said, “normal people, those who are mute, exist here to serve us as I see it. Since I got over August,” he twisted her nipple and she felt her sex dampen quickly, “it became easy to see normal humanity for what you normals are.”
“Is that,” she grated out between her teeth as arousal spread through her body, “how you see me, as a toy? As a thing?”
“How do you feel about being dressed?,” he smiled.
She hadn’t been thinking about her clothing, only about the way her body was telling her she had a need that wasn’t being fulfilled at the moment. The moment he said though her clothing felt horrible and unnatural. She needed to ditch the blouse, the skirt, everything. It wasn’t burning but it was dreadfully hard to be be dressed. She shook a bit fearfully knowing this was not natural but Connor’s doing. She peeled away the skirt and her blouse quickly, dropping the cut bra to the floor.
“Connor, this is?,” she groaned with need, “this is wrong?”
“Wrong? Ethically or morally?”
“...either...” she was gasping as her hips started to move and she noticed her panties were also uncomfortable to have on. She peeled them away to reveal her wetness and the outer lips with a bit of fur to her sex.
“It may disturb you to know I doubt there’s any supreme being. I mean, here I have this ability to communicate with only my mind,” he played a thumb over her lips which she sucked in and ran her tongue over, “and all there is out past humanity is void. It’s still not a certainty, I know, but I doubt it. So ‘morality’ is just an extension of ethics.” He pushed his thumb into her mouth so it started to choke her a little, then the choking stopped. “as for ethics? I exist, I do as I please. Yes, what would Satre say? He’d probably be indignant but not surprised.”
He took his thumb out of her mouth. Her face was flush with the sexual hunger she felt growing within her. She was damn close to the ‘screw it, just fuck me’ stage. He probably knew it too. That hand went to her hair, stroking it gently a moment. Then he gripped her by the hair tightly, pulling as he did. Having her hair pulled never turned her on before but it did now. She found it very hot, very sensual, very necessary that he control her head movements.
“oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” she was faintly aware as she whispered the words that a number of the women in the place were watching her with envy. Oh shit, she thought, he’s had all of them at one time or another. I’m just another fuck to him.
By then though her face was at his crotch and she knew what was expected of her. Her volition with her hands had returned but she still was unbuttoning, then unzipping his pants. Yanking his underwear down she released his hard firm organ from them. She looked only briefly at it, seeing he was circumcised, so the mushroom like head and it’s opening stared at her. Taking it in both hands gave her a pretty good feeling. She found herself just about wrapping each hand enough to touch finger tips and able to hold with both hands at the same time along his length. She licked the little hole with the tip of her tongue. As if she was just an observer she realized she had become hungry for him to fill her any way at all possible. Her hips were rocking with need so she slipped one hand back between her thighs and started to cup, rub, push, knead the mound of her sex.
He used his grip in her hair to yank her mouth down onto him. Her eyes peered upwards, pleading and starting to be tearful from not being able to breath. The gag reflex seemed to have gone on vacation though, well, mostly so. She felt so helpless wanting to cum but feeling certain suddenly she wouldn’t be able to. Oh no, she thought, he would have to permit her orgasm. He hadn’t said it, but she suddenly was sure with the way she was ravaging her own clit no matter how much need she had it could never happen without him willing it.
He fucked her face and she felt herself being no more than a vessel for him to deposit his seed. She had become his thing, a sex thing. Was she still there at all?
In a rush he flooded her throat and with a greed she had never had before she hungrily swallowed every drop of cum she could. She could feel some of it squeezing out of her lips but she fought fiercely to get to and swallow it all. It was then she felt the permission come.
Her whole body exploded with her sexual release. All she could do was roll her eyes and moan the intensity of the bursting orgasm around his cock. He slowly lifted her head when she slipped into the pulsing aftershocks that kept searing her extremities. He held her head so he could look in her eyes but it was still a couple minutes before she breathed more normally and her eyes focused normally again though yet with tears in them. She knew this was not a battle she could ever win.
She didn’t move. She hated him with a furious passion. Finally he let her head rest against his leg.
“I hate you.”
“I know.”
“I hate you with the fire of a thousand suns.”
“Yes, but you say it anyway.”
“I am your property. I hate you. But you own me now. I have no choice.”
“I think you are delightfully sweet and wonderful, not that I love you, but you will never be able to voluntarily have sex with anyone but me ever again.”
“I could tell.”
“Good. Now sit up.”
Naked as she was, dripping in front of all these strangers, she climbed back into her seat. She hated those people too. They knew exactly what had happened to her, that she was his thing now. His toy.
“May I get dressed again?”
“Yes, you may.”
“Thank you.”
“Remember your place.”
She looked up at him trying to grasp what he meant. Freezing in place with her panties just being pulled up over her ankles she looked at him closely.
“Um.”
“You know the right word.”
“Yes Master.”
“Good girl,” it sounded just like it did when he had said it to Mona only this time it sent a surge of pleasure through her. It caused her to shiver pleasantly and he tilted his head a moment.
She was owned. He owned her. Completely. To the point where even if she hated him it made her feel good to please him. She hung her head a bit.
“I’ll arrange for Roger to come get this. I look forward to reading the books you write.”
Her head snapped up sharply to look at him.
“You’ll let me keep writing?”
“Ahem.”
“You’ll let me keep writing, Master?”
“Yes, of course I will. After all, I am not interested in destroying your personality. And ‘sir’ is as good as ‘master’ when around other people.”
“Thank you, sir.” She wanted to be sarcastic but knew she couldn’t give that tone to speaking to him without penalties of some sort.
“One side effect already in place if you look, that scar you had from being cut in grade school is gone.”
She blinked, looking, seeing indeed the scar he referred to wasn’t there any more. She smiled inwardly. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing after all? She was property. She was trying to decide if it humiliated her deeply, or made her proud now.
That was an awkward thought.
“And just for your information?”
She looked at him with inquiry in her eyes.
“I didn’t change you so you’d feel a delighted sensation shoot through you when you found you’d pleased me. That was all you.”
* * *