Fallout Part 1
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Hello, everybody!
Here's the second part of the Earth Girls Are Deadly series, Fallout. It's been a bit delayed in production, but I hope you find the wait worth it. As before, it must be remembered that this story is primarily a fantasy, though I hope also that you can take something from it to enrich your lives, and those around you. In this vein I would like to ask a favor. As you will see, a central feature of Fallout is abduction. Now, while in a fantasy setting abduction might be arousing, in the real world it is a terrifying nightmare for both the victim and their loved ones, particularly when the victim is a child. For this reason I ask you, gentle reader, to take a moment and look at the pictures of missing children at the America's Most Wanted website and the website for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. It doesn't take long to look at a few pictures, and you may be the one to help bring a missing child home. Then you won't have to just read about heroes in stories; you'll be one.
Thanks!
Pennii
ONE
They drove, the two of them, east along the interstate, away from the coast, from the ocean, passing through foothills and valleys, stopping on occasion at a rest stop or gas station. It was Spring as they drove, the trees they passed showing life, showing green, the sky dotted with a few clouds.
Neither of them spoke much.
The man, hands gripping the wheel, kept his gaze straight ahead, kept the speed steady and just over the limit, matching the flow of traffic around them. He was middle aged, his hair thinning and his body slightly overweight, the kind of body one might associate with the enjoyment of good foods and a life well lived. But his face was different. It looked older than this, like he had already seen too much, felt too much. Lines had formed there, premature lines that told of worry and pain. He was dressed in brown, featureless slacks and a white shirt whose sleeves hid his arms; his shoes had once been dressy but now were scuffed with wear.
The woman beside him was much younger, at that age when women are still called girls, at that age when the difference between the two depends less on development than on perception, when adolescence has recently drawn to a close but adulthood still seems far away. She was at that age when youth and beauty drew the eye to her, but before age brings the ease of motion, the self confidence that is the hallmark of experience. Her body was slender, her hair long and dusty blonde, her features delicate, and she would have been pretty had she smiled. But she didn't smile, not as they drove, and only stared straight ahead, the oncoming lines down the middle of the highway proving almost hypnotic.
From time to time the young woman would reach down, picking at her long, floral skirt as though to remove a piece of lint, though there was none there; any had been picked away long before. When she did this the man's eyes moved, almost imperceptibly, to her, his main focus still on the road. When she returned her hand to her lap he blinked.
"Your mother was a good woman," he said.
The girl was silent.
"She was a good woman. A good, fine Christian woman. In all the world there has never been a finer, more Christian woman than your mother."
Still the girl said nothing. It was an old thing he was saying, like a mantra he sometimes felt a compulsion to repeat, and in all these years she had never answered him, had never said a word, when he spoke it. She looked ahead now, at the highway. The land outside had leveled out, the trees fewer now in number. In the distance you could see a few mountains, gray against the horizon. The man grew silent again, his eyes still straight ahead. The young woman looked over at him, her head barely turning as she did. It hadn't been that long but she thought he looked older.
It's me, she thought, not knowing why. It's because of me.
#
They stopped at a motel that night and each took a room. Dinner was quiet in a nearby restaurant; he ordered for both of them, as he always had, and he tried to make small talk about home, about how it would be good to have her back, but his words were uncertain and unconvincing. She tried to smile but failed, and after that the quiet was only broken by the chatty waitress who smiled a lot and insisted on calling her "darlin'."
The next morning they started early. His hands still held the wheel tightly, his eyes still straight ahead. But he spoke more today, his words sounding tentative but backed, she knew, by conviction.
"It's my fault," he said. "I should never have let you go there. I should have known better."
This was typical and she was used to it; it was his way and there was nothing she could say to change it. Now he went on.
"Sodom and Gomorrah. They were wicked, you know, and God destroyed them. They fornicated and did evil. I knew this place was like that. I knew it. But I let you go, and ...."
His voice trailed off. He didn't know what to say now; there were details but he didn't know these, but the young woman knew this didn't matter. He had seen the place, her room, had heard about police and then something about sex and had made up his mind. The doctor had tried to talk to him but this hadn't mattered either. So she had packed quickly, saying nothing, putting her clothes and a few things into a bag and two suitcases, and they had left, leaving instructions that the rest of her things were to be packed up and shipped home after them.
"I let you go," he said again. "And you sinned. The people there, their ideas, they weakened you and they tempted you. They let Satan do his work. It's not your fault; it's mine. I shouldn't have let you go."
He talked some more as they drove, but added nothing. It grew later and after stopping again for dinner they drove on. Home was close, the safety of a small, familiar town. A place you knew everyone and they knew you. As they drew closer her father spoke again, his words, like the place, familiar too.
"Your mother was a good woman ...."
TWO
She went to her room when they got to the house, carrying one bag. He opened the back of the station wagon, pulled out the heavier two suitcases, carried them in after her. She was standing by the bed when he got there, just looking. Save for what was still at the college, it hadn't changed at all. The rest of the house was much the same also, save that there was more dust and that there were plates in the sink in the kitchen. When she saw this he mumbled an apology.
"I don't get much time to clean, you know. I get home from work and I'm just too tired, and no one else is here ...."
His voice trailed off as she didn't answer. He looked at her, saw her nod finally, just a bit.
"It'll be better now that you're back," he said. "You're good at keeping things clean."
They watched some television and then turned in. She closed the door to her room and he heard her in there, opening her suitcases. He looked sadly at the door and wondered again what had happened to her, then turned and stepped to his own room.
He sat on his bed for a long time and stared at the picture that sat on his nightstand.
Jonathan Edwards liked to think of himself as a simple man. He didn't ask much of people and he tried to give what he could to his community. He didn't like to talk, finding eloquent speech difficult, and he found it hard to trust. He knew this was true, and, perhaps, even knew why.
Trust was hard with people. It was easier with God. God you could trust. God stood by you. When everything else in the world came apart, when nothing else made sense, Jonathan Edwards had found that he could trust in God.
God, and a few others.
But not many.
He reached out now, touched at the frame of the picture. Carol looked back at him, her smile, her loving eyes reaching out to him. He took the picture from the nightstand, held it in both hands and stared down at it. Nicole had her smile, and her eyes, when she chose to show them. You could see the relation between mother and daughter. And that made it hard to look at Nicole sometimes, when a particular angle of shadow or just the low light made him think, just for a moment, that it was Carol there.
Jonathan stared, unmoving.
He had never been able to cry. Men didn't cry, even when they were hurt. That was the way it was. Men had responsibilities and crying just got in the way. He remembered now, remembered the hospital, remembered how Carol had gotten thinner and thinner, smaller and smaller, how he had sat by her bed and looked at all the tubes running into her, remembered how the doctors had lied when they told him there was hope, that remission happened.
He caressed the picture frame with his thumb.
He remembered, too, all his prayers, how the church and the community had raised money for her medical bills, how they had held a special prayer for her every Sunday. But more than any of this, though, Jonathan remembered Nicole, how she had looked to him with her child's face and child's eyes and child's fear, and how he had tried to make it all sound better than it was, because he was afraid of what the truth might do to her.
But the day had come, eventually, when he had to be the one to tell her that her mother was gone.
She cried, of course, screaming and kicking as he held her, as he rocked her, as he wondered how he would ever survive the pain. But he did survive, clinging to his faith in God and his love for his daughter. And in time the pain had receded into a dull ache that was always there, like a hollow place in his soul that could only be comforted by prayer.
And his final promise. I'll take care of her, Carol. I'll make sure she's all right. I'll make sure she's safe.
Jonathan heard noise, now, from Nicole's room, the faint sound of his daughter getting into bed, then silence.
He didn't move. The face in the picture stared back at him.
Once in a while, the thought came to him that he should look for another wife, for the love and companionship that only a woman could provide. But this was impossible; Carol had been perfect and to try and replace her would be a betrayal, something he could just never bring himself to do, even though he knew that having a woman in the house would be good for Nicole. So instead Jonathan had tried as best he could to raise her alone.
This had been hard; harder than he could have ever imagined. Had it not been for God and the help of his neighbors and his church he never would have made it. God was most of it. God had given both their lives structure, meaning.
But there were things Jonathan could not help his daughter with. He was a man and as Nicole became a young woman there were things he did not know, did not understand, that came upon her. He remembered when she was twelve and her woman's time had come to her and he had merely stood, frozen, unsure, as she locked herself in the bathroom and cried until finally he had gone across the street in the snow and, red faced with the shame of his failure, had asked Mrs. Phillips to come and help.
Women's things. Like this. What had happened there, at the college? What had she done? What had been done to her?
Why had he failed to protect her?
#
Nicole lay quietly, warm under the thick, familiar blankets. Her father was in his room, down the hall, and after a while she heard him brush his teeth in the bathroom and then close his door. It would be a work day tomorrow and he would be up early.
You are home now, she thought to herself. She closed her eyes and tried to relax.
But it was hard to relax, even here. Maybe it was the two days sitting in the car, sitting stiffly with him so close and yet with the silence between them. Maybe.
Or maybe it was more.
She knew it was. So many things it was hard to think of them all. Nicole thought back, to the day they had left to take her to college, her things loaded into the car, knowing that he didn't approve but she being so sure she had to go, had to take advantage of the scholarship. It would be a compromise, they agreed; she would live in the locked women's dorm and would keep her grades up, would go to church every Sunday.
Straight A's, that first semester, and a few new friends in the Campus Crusade. He had actually seemed proud of her at Christmas.
And then it had all changed so suddenly.
Nicole felt herself tense. The memories came again, as they had in the hospital, and then, in the motel last night. At first it had helped to pray, to hold her Bible close, to tell God she was sorry, so sorry, for what she felt. But the feelings, like the memories, came anyway.
#
You lie on your bed, covers pulled over your naked form. The room is light despite the shuttered window; it must be daytime outside, out in that other world that seems more a distant memory than a reality, out in that place where you are a name, a schedule, where there are others who you know and who know you, where there are classes and meals and sunlight.
But it is only a distant memory from where you are now.
Where you are now is here.
You are rested, have been sleeping. It is a deep sleep, every time, so deep you cannot remember your dreams. So now you simply lie still, warm and content under your covers. Across the room you see Chrissy, sleeping, just as you have been, unmoving save to breathe. Perhaps she has been there for several hours, perhaps only a few minutes. You aren't sure; time seems not so relevant right now.
The call comes.
You feel yourself stiffen, move. You feel your hand go up, push back the covers of your bed. You feel yourself sit up, stand, walk to your dresser. Your hands pull open the second drawer, take out a pair of clean panties, pull them on. Closing the drawer, you turn and walk out the door and into the hall.
There you walk, joined by others. It is like a dream, where you are only an observer, where your own body is a puppet, controlled from somewhere else, by someone else. Yet you do feel: the floor beneath your bare feet, the sensation of air moving over your bare breasts and belly. To the stairs going down, through the secure doors, propped open now, down again past the lower floors, down to the basement.
It is there.
Animate in the dim light. Red and pink, tendrils moving as you see the other girls atop it, writhing, crying out, held in place as they are taken. And as you see and as you know what is to come for you, you feel your nipples harden, feel your skin grow flush, feel your vulva moisten, feel yourself step forward to the thing.
Beside you, the other girls move too. Out of the corner of your eye you see one as she peels her panties down her legs and lies back on the thing, spreading her thighs widely even as the tentacles wrap themselves around her waist, her thighs, her arms, her breasts. You hear her gasp as another tendril moves up between her thighs, as it penetrates her slowly, as her gasp becomes an involuntary cry of passion.
You are moving then. A step forward, and then your hands are coming up to your waist, pulling your panties down until they pass your knees and settle to your ankles, and you step free of them. Again it seems like a dream as you move forward to the thing, as you lie on your belly atop it, raising your buttocks and parting your thighs widely. Below your face the thing shifts; it is comfortable as it accommodates your cheeks and shoulders, your breasts. You can see the wall ahead, but that is all.
Things wrap around your waist, your arms, your thighs, and suddenly your body is yours again, held tight. You moan, helpless, tensing against the thing, your position impossibly sexual.
It is time.
You feel the thing, moist, long, moving up the inside of your thigh. You whimper, for deep inside you there is the shame, a shame compounded by your own body's betrayal; for as it moves you feel yourself shiver with sudden, guilty desire for it.
It pauses, caressing your moist labia. Breath grows short.
And then it drives in.
You cry out, joining the others. It spurts, suddenly, into you, and you spasm as you orgasm, as it begins to thrust in and out, its rhythm steady, and quickly you climax again, and again.
And then it is pleasure, impossible, constant. Tears stream down your face, for gone is the shame, the fear. Gone are the other girls, held as you are, taken just as you are, their cries echoing with yours. Gone are thoughts of responsibility, of classes, of who you are. All that remains is the fact that you are, that you are female and that you are here and that this is joy, pure, joyous pleasure.
And that it will not end for some time.
#
Nicole moaned softly in her bed. The hem of her nightgown was up, pulled up without thinking, revealing her panties to her questing fingers. She felt them, soft against her touch, as she reached up and under the waistband to feel the moistness of her vulva, caressing herself as she lay.
In time she had to bury her face in her pillow as she cried out from the feelings.
And in time sleep came, and in time, morning.
THREE
It was late Spring.
The semester was more than half over, the small campus settling back into its quiet routine as students returned from break and classes started up again.
Burt Devans crossed a section of grass to the dining hall. He felt good; the break had given him a chance to catch up on his studies and sleep in for a few days. It was beginning to look like he would get through the semester all right, and be fresh and ready to play in the fall. This would be good; he loved football, loved the strategy, the adrenaline, the teamwork.
As he passed Williams Hall he looked over at the main door. They had cleaned up the stairs there, and had replaced the large windows. But this had been the place, where the police had gone in, where the student had been shot, where the ambulances had been clustered.
And where those girls lived.
They were back now, most of them; you would see them in class and you could usually tell who they were, because they were quiet and because they tended to stick together. And people talked, too, about them, about what had happened, about why they had all, every last one, been taken to the hospital after the police raid. Most of this talk was just curiosity, based on the silence, on the fact that no one had ever explained what had happened; a lot of it was gossip and speculation, and not all of it was friendly.
Burt wondered, sometimes, if it had anything to do with what had happened to him, to Chet, to the others.
#
Maybe.
He took his tray and found a place to sit. Chet joined him, and Tom and Randy. They talked for a while, about practice, about the weekend coming up, about the food. It was typical institutional cooking but at least there was a lot of it and their scholarships covered it.
He remembered suddenly; the weight room, the sudden gasping for air, the struggle, the thing in his throat. He had had nightmares once or twice since then, about it, about what it had done, about choking and being afraid.
Burt looked at his friends. They had all been there, that day.
But they had never talked about it.
Across the way, a group of young men were laughing, their voices loud. Freshmen, probably, more boys than men. One in particular was hard to miss.
"I heard they're all dykes. Licking each other, and the cops had to bust it up!"
Burt paused in mid-bite. The boy laughed, and his friends did too.
"I heard they were all down in the basement fucking snakes, and sucking them off!" another added.
"I got something they can suck off!" the first laughed, grabbing his crotch.
Chet shook his head. Burt looked past the boys, to another table. Women were there, sitting together, quietly. He recognized one from his history class and knew who they were.
Williams Hall.
The first boy was going on now, about the snake in his pants and how the women in Williams were dykes and wouldn't appreciate his snake because it wouldn't bite them just like they liked it, being a bunch of dykes and all. The others were laughing with him and at the other table the women were looking smaller and smaller as they tried to eat. Only one, a blonde, was looking up from her tray, her face a mix of rage and shame.
Burt got up. He walked over to the boys' table and sat down in an empty chair. They were still laughing at the latest reference to snakes and now they looked at him.
"You know," Burt said, glancing over at the women, "they can hear you."
The loudest shrugged and sneered.
"So?"
"So isn't it a bit rude to be talking like that where they can hear you?"
The laughter had stopped now, and it seemed very quiet in the hall.
"Hey, we're just kidding," the first boy said. "And besides, it isn't like a lot of it isn't true. What else would they be doing down there, if they weren't fucking each other? Why else would they need the police to break up their little game?"
"And these rumors make it all right to be rude?"
The boy glared at Burt from across the table. "Hey, a slut is a slut," he said, suddenly defensive. "They asked for it."
Burt sighed, returned the boy's glare with a sad shake of his head.
"I can see why you've never been laid," he said.
The boy's face reddened and his eyes went suddenly wide with rage.
"Hey!" he said loudly. "Fuck you! Fuck you!"
Burt just stood up and went back to his meal.
#
Vicky Thompson finished her lunch, trying to keep her hands from shaking. Maybe it was the rage; maybe the shame. Maybe it was the rage at the shame. She didn't know, but it was there nonetheless. Not just today, when the boys who now sat quietly had talked and laughed about her and the others. It was yesterday too, when she had heard others talking, had turned only to find them looking at her, their eyes roaming hungrily over her like she was a piece of meat. It was the man last week who had smiled and winked and then grabbed his crotch and laughed. Them and more and more.
Maybe men were just like that. Maybe they couldn't help themselves. Vicky remembered before, how men had looked at her, how she had been able to feel their gazes on her as she walked or sat. And that had been all right, back then, a lot of the time, because they weren't always looking with pure, hostile lust but because they appreciated the way she looked; she was pretty and she knew it. So did they.
She had always been able to ignore the rude ones.
But now it was different. Now she was one of "those women"; one of the ones from Williams Hall. It didn't matter that no one really knew what had happened, what the thing in the basement had been. All that mattered was that somehow it had gotten out that what had happened was sexual and now they were all seen as sluts.
And that made it all right to talk about them like they weren't really people.
The rage boiled over and she had to set down her spoon. Jenny, sitting beside her, looked over at her, then down again. She said nothing. Vicky looked up again, across the dining hall, saw that the boys who had been laughing were staring at her, and felt herself blush deeply as she tried to look past them.
The other men were there, at a table more distant, the football player who had quieted the boys, and she saw that he was looking at her too. But his gaze was different; gentle, calm. Somehow she even sensed empathy.
No. Not possible. There was no way a man would be able to really understand.
Vicky looked down again, picked up her spoon, poked at the small bowl of pudding on her tray. Maybe if she didn't ever look up again they would eventually stop staring.
#
Maybe.
She walked back to Williams Hall with the others. Nothing was said as they did, as Jenny produced her key and opened the main door, as it closed and locked behind them. Vicky remembered as it did how it had looked before, as the paramedics had carried her, wrapped in a blanket, over the shattered glass and outside to the ambulance, where they had sat her down with the others before closing the doors and hurrying them all off to the hospital. She remembered passing the other paramedics, working frantically over Celeste's boyfriend Weston as he lay by the door, remembered seeing the blood and wondering what was going on, wondering why she had been sitting up in her room, naked except for panties, when they had opened the door and had taken her.
Memory had become clear later.
Now she went back up to her room and sat for a while. It was quiet right now; Celeste had withdrawn from school and her bed was only an empty mattress, her side of the vanity bare. Whatever the thing had been, it was Celeste that had taken the worst of it. It was she who had been found in the basement, where it had been, and Vicky could still remember the hospital, when Celeste's moans had echoed down the hall of the ward that first day.
She had asked why, had asked how her friend was, but they had told her nothing. When Vicky had finally been able to see Celeste it hadn't seemed right to ask.
Maybe if they just never talked about it it would all go away.
Vicky sat in the silence.
No.
The silence only made it worse. The silence only cut them off.
She stood, went and pulled a sheet of paper from the small printer by her computer. She hunted through her desk, found a large pen, wrote. Her hand began to shake as she did and she had to get another piece of paper and start again. This time she got it right.
Then she took the paper in hand and grabbed her purse, walked from her room to the exit of the building and across campus to the photocopy shop. In time she returned with a stack of paper, and door by door she moved through Williams Hall, slipping one sheet under each. When she had finished she tacked one up to the new bulletin board by the main door, stood back and looked at it for a moment.
MEETING TONIGHT. 8:00PM. BASEMENT. YOU KNOW WHY.
FOUR
A lot of girls came, including Barb, the RA. More than she had expected. Vicky had tried to gather some chairs to compliment the couch, form a small circle, but this filled quickly and in the end they sat on the pool table, the counter, and on the floor. A lot of them hadn't been down here since the thing had called them, and many sat nervously, eyes roaming over the walls of this place as they remembered.
All tried to avoid staring at the unrepaired bullet holes in the back wall.
Vicky stood. She had her hands in her pockets as she did, and her mouth was dry. She didn't like speaking in public, hated giving presentations in class, and now she could sense all their eyes on her, waiting, watching.
"Are we alone?" she asked.
Several girls nodded.
"All right. You all know why we're here? Right?"
Everyone looked around nervously. At each other, at the place where it had been, where they had come, time and again. Where they had seen each other and it had seemed almost, but not quite, a dream.
A silence settled over the room. Vicky struggled for words. "We need to talk about this," she said finally.
Nods, here and there.
"Where do we start?" someone asked.
"How about by someone telling me what it was?" Barb put in.
Silence. Finally Vicky spoke again. "Maybe we can say what it wasn't," she said.
"Human," a girl in the back said softly. "It wasn't human."
"That isn't much help," someone else said.
"It wasn't an animal," Jenny said. She was a biology major, a bit heavyset, in jeans and a white sweatshirt. "It wasn't a plant, either. Animals and plants don't ...." Her voice trailed off.
"Rape?" Vicky asked.
It was the "R" word, the word that had been in the background all this time. All the girls looked at each other uncomfortably. One or two held their arms around their chests protectively. Jenny looked up at Vicky, then away, over at the wall.
A voice came then, from the far corner. Judy, usually quiet, polite, studious.
"I've been raped," she said softly. "This wasn't the same."
Patricia answered, across the room. Rings running up her left earlobe, in her usual t-shirt with the Venus sign and the fist in it, baggy pants and boots. Finding politics in everything.
"So it was making love to us?" she snapped "Is that what you're saying?"
Judy looked down. "I didn't say that."
"So what are you saying? You enjoyed letting it fuck you? You liked being its fuck toy?"
"I didn't say that!" Judy shouted suddenly. "Don't say I said that!"
Patricia scowled. Her hands formed fists. "Yeah. You were too busy moaning because you kept on coming. I saw you; you came all over the place."
"So did you!" Judy cried. "I saw you too! You liked it!"
Patricia's face went white with rage. She took a step forward, opened her mouth to speak again.
"Stop it!" Vicky shouted. "Stop it!" She jabbed a finger at the door. "You sound like them! Is that what you want? You want them to be right? You want to be the sluts of Williams Hall? You like being called dirty whores?"
Patricia closed her mouth. Judy looked down at the floor. No one said anything. Vicky spoke again.
"That's what they call us, you know. We've all heard it: Sluts and whores. And it isn't just one of them; its all of them. It's men and women on this campus who don't even know what really happened, but they heard it had to do with sex and that's all it took for them to decide."
She paused, looked everyone over. A few girls had begun to weep softly.
"If we don't stick together," Vicky said, "we're screwed. Whatever happened, it happened to all of us. This thing didn't discriminate."
More nods, even one from Patricia.
"We have to figure this out," Vicky said. "We can't keep on pretending it didn't happen."
She stepped to Judy, sitting on the floor, knees drawn up protectively in front of her. She crouched down in front of her.
"Judy? Can you tell me how it was different?"
But Judy said nothing, kept her gaze down. Vicky nodded.
"That's all right," she said. "You don't have to say anything."
Patricia spoke then.
"It was different," she said. Her voice had changed, was different, softer, quieter. It wavered a bit now as she spoke, and she kept her gaze on the floor as she spoke.
Vicky stood and looked over at her.
"I've been raped too," Patricia said. "Twice. Once was by my uncle, when I was eight."
She paused.
"This was different. It wasn't the same."
Everyone looked at her now. Judy nodded, the motion barely noticeable. No one said anything as Patricia spoke again.
"There's an evil to a rapist," she said. "He's selfish and dirty. He doesn't care about you at all. Maybe he wants to hurt you; maybe he wants to humiliate you. Maybe he just wants to get his rocks off and you are a convenient hole for him to stick his dick into. But he never cares about you or what you want, about how you feel, about if it hurts, about if you're afraid, even if he says he does. He just fucks you and maybe he hits you because it gives him a thrill."
The room was silent. Patricia crouched, suddenly, as though her legs had lost the strength to support her. Her face had gone from white to red.
"I met him at a party. He was this guy, and maybe I had had too much to drink. He said he would take me home, but he didn't. Then he ...."
Her voice broke and she started to sob, settling back against the wall.
"I couldn't stop him! I couldn't make him stop! I wanted him to stop but he wouldn't!"
Vicky moved to her. She didn't know what to do, felt a sudden, deep pang of guilt from bringing everyone here, for letting this happen. She herself had never been raped and now she didn't know what to do. She reached out a hand, touched Patricia's shoulder.
"Patricia, I'm sorry ...."
Patricia shook her head. "No ... no ... it's all right." She sniffed, wiped her nose against her forearm.
It was silent for a moment. Then Patricia spoke again.
"I keep wanting to think that this was rape. The thing in here never asked us if we wanted to be fucked. It just did it, so that was like rape. I keep telling myself that. I don't want it to be something else, because if it was something else then I don't know what it was. If it was rape, then I can be pissed about it."
She wiped her nose again. Someone produced a tissue and handed it to her. She blew her nose.
"But I can't. It's not like it was before. This thing was different."
"How?" Vicky asked. She felt hot, all over, like she should be embarrassed or afraid.
"It wasn't love," Patricia said. "It didn't love me. But it didn't want to hurt me, either. I could tell. It wasn't like a rapist. I -- We, mattered to it. Somehow. It mattered that we came, that we enjoyed what it did. It wasn't like a man."
Silence again. Patricia's voice was softer still as she spoke again.
"I had so many orgasms I don't know how I survived. I came all the time. I even came in the hospital after it was over, just thinking about it." She sat slowly, put her head in her hands, and began to sob again. "And now I feel so ashamed, because I came, even though it never asked to do what it did, so maybe it was rape. I don't know."
She went silent now, sniffling, blowing her nose into the tissue.
Vicky crouched beside her, gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.
"Patricia, I came so many times my legs were numb when I walked back up to my room. I don't know how I made it up the stairs. I even started coming when it fed me." Vicky stood and looked around the room. "And every girl who came down here when I was here, which is almost every one of you, I saw coming too, when the thing took her."
No one said anything. Vicky swallowed, spoke again.
"I don't feel raped," she said. "I just feel ashamed."
A few of the women nodded.
"And I don't like that," Vicky said. "Because I know that I only feel ashamed because the people out there want me to feel ashamed, because I did come when it took me. Well, I'm tired of feeling dirty. I'm tired of not being allowed to have an orgasm unless a man approves of it. I don't know what that thing was, but I know what Patricia knows -- what all of us know -- that even though it was a kind of rape, this thing wasn't the same thing as a rapist, because it did care that we were all right, cared that it didn't hurt us, and it cared that we had orgasms. And I'm sick of being ashamed of my orgasms."
There were more nods, now, as they looked at one another and at her. But this was not the answer, and the question came again, this time from Judy.
"But what was it? What did it want?"
They talked for a while. Not a man, not an animal, not a plant. Elimination produced the improbable from Fran, sitting on the edge of the pool table.
"An alien?"
Jenny snorted.
"What is this, the X-Files?"
No one said anything. Then Fran spoke again.
"All right," she said, "It was a vibrator run amuck."
Someone giggled, then stopped. Vicky smiled. "That's as good an explanation as any," she said. "So what did it want?"
Quiet again. One thought was in all their heads. Patricia vocalized it.
"To mate?"
Jenny shook her head in disgust that held traces of fear. "Now you want to make it a story for the tabloids? Alien babies? Don't you know anything about DNA?"
Vicky looked over at her. "It came in me a lot," she said. "Why else would it do that?"
"That doesn't matter. Your DNA wouldn't be compatible."
"How do we know?"
"They took samples at the hospital," someone offered. "I asked about it. They didn't tell me what it was, but they did say it wasn't semen."
"How would they know, if it wasn't human or animal?" someone else asked.
"I'm telling you, it's impossible," Jenny said.
"We need to make sure," Vicky answered. "Has anyone skipped a period?"
No one spoke. A few shook their heads.
"What else might it have wanted?" Fran asked.
"Maybe it didn't want anything," Jenny answered. "Maybe it wasn't intelligent."
"How did it control us?"
No answer. No answer.
Then, from Patricia: "Maybe it wanted us to have orgasms. Maybe that was all it was."
This was as far as they got, though they talked further. Finally the arguments and speculations withered into quiet and each woman sat silently. Some looked away, others down at their bellies, at their bodies.
"So what are we going to do?" Kathy asked from her place near the door.
Vicky moved back to where she had started, in the center. "We have to stick together," she said. "We can't count on anyone else to understand. How many of you were visited by the rape crisis people?"
A few hands went up, then more.
"Did anyone tell them what happened?"
Jenny nodded. "I did."
"What did they say?"
Jenny shrugged. "They were very nice, but I could tell they didn't believe me. They came back a few days later and asked again. When I told them the same thing they sent me to a shrink. He gave me some thorazine. It made me sick so I stopped taking it. He's still trying to get me to come in for a follow-up. Now I'm afraid they'll commit me, so I just keep quiet."
Kathy's voice was louder now. "They didn't believe me either."
Vicky nodded. "We have to trust each other," she said. "We have to know who was taken down here by the thing, in case any of us needs help. We all have roommates; is everyone's roommate back?"
Chrissy, sitting in the couch, shook her head. "Not Nicole," she said. "Her father came and got her at the hospital. Didn't even pack up her stuff; Barb came and did it and they shipped it all back. She said Nicole wouldn't be back."
Vicky looked over at the RA. "What happened?"
Barb shrugged. "I don't know. I met her father at the hospital. He didn't say much more than hello. He was kind of creepy."
Three other women had likewise withdrawn.
"We should make a list," Jenny said.
"What about Celeste?" someone asked.
Everyone looked at Vicky. They knew, too. Celeste was different. She was the one who had been down here at the end, alone with the thing. She was the one whose boyfriend had tried to kill it.
"She's around," Vicky said. "Spends a lot of time at the hospital with Weston, helping him with rehab. I don't know if she'll be back. I'll talk to her."
The meeting was winding down. They passed around a sheet of paper, asked everyone to write down their names and e-mail addresses. Most of the women did. As the paper came back to her Vicky spoke again.
"Everything that was said tonight stays in this room," she said. "We have to all agree to that. We have to be able to trust each other. All right?"
This time everyone nodded. Then, from the couch, Chrissy raised her hand. The others looked at her as she spoke.
"There's one more thing," she said.
"Yes?"
"They never found the thing. What if it isn't dead? What if it comes back?"
FIVE
Far away, and not so far, the war raged.
Far away, it was among the stars. This was a war of knowledge, of information, of innovation. They had sensed the blast, the sudden silence where the advance party had been, and as they moved toward the small, blue world, the millions of white-hot tendrils considered what they knew.
Energy, dangerous energy, from the settlement. The advance party had been closing in on its source when the blast went off.
New weapons?
Probably. The last bit of telemetry from the advance party had indicated a single female, glowing with power.
How were the weapons triggered? How could they be defended against?
More knowledge was needed. They divided, some of the millions among them racing ahead again, a few white-hot tendrils, as they had before, to the small world.
To feed. To learn. To kill.
#
Closer, in the largest cities of the small, blue world, weapons were spread in anticipation of the coming enemy. Quietly, secretly, ingested by the sentients as they drank. But they did not always adapt, these weapons, except in the young. The young were safe; for those who were older, were past a certain age, it was less certain. They would not always be protected.
And there had been no progress in understanding the sentients' means of communication. It was simply too alien, to primitive.
Had there been time, those in the tiny ship would have researched more closely, would have learned how better to adapt the weapons, would have tried to understand how such simple and primitive sounds could communicate, but there was no time. They had divided now, again and again, into a small armada of tiny ships seeding the water supplies of the cities. This drained their resources, their energy reserves, and billions of the sentients had yet to receive any protection at all.
Some would die, their souls consumed slowly.
#
Unless ....
Closer still, within the bodies of slightly more than a hundred females, the enhanced weapons grew, adapted, became part of their hosts. They were tied, absolutely, to the intense neural response that had charged them; without it they were nearly inert, valuable for protection only. But though the weapons had proven themselves, though they had burned into nothingness those few of the enemy they had faced, they were still not well understood. Tactics had not been formulated; questions remained.
The females must be trained. They must learn to access their power.
How do we train, when even we do not fully understand what we have created within them?
Then we must learn too.
This took some time to formulate. They monitored the females, noted as most of them clustered back in the building they had lived in, noted those who did not. They watched the telemetry of the weapons, as they bonded to the bodies of the females, as the two joined, in time.
A decision was made. They would start with one, learn from her as they taught her.
A place was selected, prepared. It would be away from the other sentients; one mistake before had been arming the females in the middle of a settlement. Here the location would be difficult to reach and unvisited, and they could take their time with the training. These were social creatures and there would no doubt be a search for the female when they took her; the location would also have to be well hidden. Other protocols were considered as well.
The disruption in the female's life will be significant. We must do what we can to make her comfortable.
The dietary fluid must be improved for long term nutritional needs. It must be adapted to solidify in the female's stomach and so function as her normal diet would.
The symbolic garment must be permitted her; it is likely that its presence somehow reduces stress.
She must be protected from the environment; heat, cold, excessive sunlight. This species is not well adapted to survival without tools.
Her body will have to be strengthened to deal with the stress of the training.
There was more, too. More preparation and more discussion. A specialized biomass was constructed, smaller than the unit they had used before, more mobile and designed to meet the physical needs of a single sentient. And in time, those on the small ship were ready to begin.
From among those already armed, a female was selected.
SIX
Life settled quickly into the old pattern. On weekdays he would be up early, showering, shaving and dressing, tying his tie neatly before the mirror, while she made breakfast for the two of them and packed him a lunch. In the old days she would be off to school after he left for work, but she had graduated from high school last year and so now Nicole spent her days cleaning and keeping the house up. At first there was a lot to do; her father was unaccustomed to living alone and it showed, and after a while she began to feel a certain pride in how the house looked, and she knew he noticed.
On Saturdays he would sleep in, relax with the newspaper. Sometimes they would go shopping, and at dinner he would always take out his old, weathered Bible and would read from it, leading her in prayer as they sat together in the dining room.
"Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen."
Nicole had always loved this time, with him so close. When she had been little it had been enough just to watch him, to see his smile as he read to her the stories of the parables, of the apostles, of the resurrection. It was the one time that it was just the two of them and the one time she could most see and feel his love for her. She had a few memories, too, of being very young and sitting with him and her mother as he read, her mother quiet, listening, sometimes holding her on her lap.
On Sunday there was church.
They welcomed her back, politely, but it wasn't comfortable. Behind each of their smiles were their looks, probing deeply into her, all asking the same question: What made you come back? Why did you leave school? The fact that there was no answer she could give only made it harder. She hadn't failed out, hadn't been expelled.
This meant, of course, rumors, especially among the older women, and Nicole could sense them looking at her as they came into the church.
She's pregnant. Found an unchristian boyfriend who left her. It'll show soon.
Tsk. She used to be such a sweet girl.
Lots of sin in those colleges. All those liberals.
If he heard these rumors, her father never showed it. She wondered sometimes what he believed, what he had been told. In the hospital a kind woman from the rape crisis center on campus had come to her, had tried to talk about what had happened, but Nicole had said nothing. It was all too dirty, too shameful. Her father would never need to know, she decided. It would be better that way.
It did not occur to her that imagination can invent things far more awful than reality.
He came home a little late one day, a paper bag in his hand. She was sitting in the kitchen, a pot of stew bubbling quietly on the stove. She looked up as he sat down across from her.
"Smells good," he said.
"Thank you, Daddy."
He smiled, reached into the bag, pulled out a book and handed it to her. It was a hardback, the cover pink and white with the title in silver lettering. She looked at it for a moment.
A WOMAN'S DEVOTIONAL BIBLE
She had a Bible, of course, given to her as an Easter present many years go. But this was more than a Bible, she saw; on each page was commentary, suggestions for prayer, guidance. He spoke softly as she opened it, as she leafed through a few pages.
"Your mother had one of these. She was a good woman, a good Christian woman." He paused. "You know, Nicole, that Jesus loves you. He forgives you. There's nothing he won't forgive, if you keep him in your heart and your life every day."
She looked up at her father. Did he know how dirty she was?
Did Jesus?
Her father spoke again, his voice suddenly weak. "Whatever you did, Nicole .... Whatever they made you do .... Jesus will forgive you ...." He pointed at the Bible. "If you can live this way ... in God's grace ...."
She nodded slowly. "Thank you, Daddy," she said softly.
He smiled, but it was forced now. After a moment he stood and went to his room to change out of his work clothes.
#
The new Bible helped; she went first to the book of Ruth, one of her favorites, read it through again, then read the commentary. It spoke of responsibility, the responsibility that came with being a woman, how it meant that you had to support others, minister to them. It noted that among Ruth's virtues was her loyalty, both to God and to her mother in law, and in the end to her husband.
"For whither thou goest, I will go; and whither thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God."
Women are strong, the commentary said. The strength of any community rests on the strength of women; how we tend to our children, to our husbands, our brothers and our fathers. And like Naomi and Ruth, our strength as women lies in how we tend to each other.
This made Nicole feel better. It made sense, too. Her father needed support, though he would never admit it, and she knew he felt better that she was here, that the house was well kept, that he was eating well again. But there was still time, too much time, when she had nothing to do, when things were clean and meals were cooked and shopping was done and it would still be several hours before he would come home. She turned to television.
He had gotten cable while she had been gone, but save for the Christian channels and one or two science channels, all the programming was blocked. Nicole would watch, not being choosy. Sometimes they would show video from other parts of the world, from Africa or Asia, where people were doing ministry, and this was nice because then she could imagine herself there, seeing things like Mount Kilamanjaro or the Amazon rainforest.
There were evangelists, too. Some did Bible study shows, which she liked to follow with her own Bible, and some preached. These were exciting to watch, though they went so fast she usually wasn't able to refer to every Biblical reference they made. At least they tended to talk about things she was feeling right now.
Reverend Edward Springer.
He was animated, moved around his pulpit a lot, always with his Bible in hand. His hair was slicked back and his suit was invariably immaculate. It could be mesmerizing.
"Do you know what the Devil wants? Do you know what the Devil wants?"
This was a habit of his, to repeat things for emphasis. Springer waved his Bible as he pointed outward.
"He wants you! And do you know how he gets you?"
Pause. The screen switched to another camera, moving among the crowd, the eager faces, expressions begging for the next word.
"Sin!" bellowed the reverend. "Sin! He gets you through temptation! He gets you through lust! You look at your television, you go outside, and you see temptation! You see that girl in her short shorts, in her string bikini, you see her showing flesh! And you say it isn't so bad, it isn't so sinful, just to look! But you don't see the sin! You don't see the sin!"
His Bible Belt drawl was coming out now.
"Do you know why? Because Satan is lonely! It's lonely in the lake of fire! He wants you there with him, cut off from God! He wants you to burn with him! He wants you to feel that lust! Because when you feel lust you are not with God! God cannot see you when you are burning with lust! Matthew five, twenty-eight! ‘But I say unto you, that everyone who looks upon a woman with lust has committed adultery with her!' John eight, forty-four! ‘You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do!' James one, fifteen! ‘Then lust, when it is conceived, bears sin! And the sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death!'"
Springer's face was red now, and from the crowd a few cries of "hallelujah!" could be heard. He paused, looking over the congregation, extending his hand out towards them, and then spoke quietly, making them strain to hear.
"‘But put yourself on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.' Do you hear that, my friends? Romans, thirteen, fourteen. The word of God!"
He shouted again, suddenly.
"Hallelujah! Because you do not have to give in to the Devil! Even though you are wicked and lustful for the flesh, Jesus can make you clean! I want you to tell the Devil: ‘I will not go! I will not go!' Shout it out for me now! Let Satan hear you!"
He was screaming now, and the crowd was crying out.
"I will not go, Satan! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"
The scene faded as Nicole watched. Her heart was beating, rapidly, and her body trembled a bit. She could feel her body, sitting on the couch, as though every cell was alive, was electric. A moment passed as a voice on the screen talked about the Edward Springer Ministry, about how it was dedicated to teaching the Gospel worldwide, to taking the word of Jesus Christ into every home in every country, and then Springer was back, standing with his wife by his pulpit, speaking.
"Friends, we hope we have helped bring the holy spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ into your lives today, and we hope that we will see you next week as we share more of God's loving word with you and your family. I want to make a special appeal now, for your help. As you know, we are trying to bring the word of God to children everywhere, to give every child a Bible and a chance to hear the word of God for himself. Anything you can donate: ten dollars, twenty dollars, praise you, even a hundred dollars, we will put to work spreading the good word of the Lord Jesus Christ. So I urge you, pick up that phone, let us know how much you care ...."
This went on for some time, nearly as long as the sermon itself. But Nicole found that she wasn't paying attention now. There was a feeling in her right now, almost a burning, deep inside. She knew what it was, and she whispered softly now.
"Go away, Satan .... Please, go away ...."
Only it did not. It was a good feeling, warm and tingly. But it was sin, temptation. She should get up, clean, vacuum, wash the walls, start dinner. Anything but this. But the harder she fought it, the more she replayed her memory of the sermon she had just heard, the more it stayed, the more other memories intruded.
Things gripping her naked body, warm and soft and tight against her skin. Holding her in a firm embrace. And she helpless, her thighs widely spread, as the thing came up between them, moist, hard. Caressing her down there, almost lovingly, then taking her deeply. And the sheer, impossible pleasure of it, her body spasming, her hips arching up against the restraints, begging it for more.
Nicole moaned softly. She was still sitting on the couch, her hips squirming as she felt herself moisten between her thighs. It was wrong, she thought, so wrong, to feel this way. She wanted to pray, to ask God for forgiveness for her lust, but the lust was strong and the memories wouldn't go away and the more she tried to make them go the more they grew, the more they became hot and hard and wet and deep inside her.
Finally she couldn't stand it anymore. She rose, went to her room, pulled off her clothes before her bed. She remembered how it had made them wear their panties, how they had only pulled these away as they faced it, and now, after she had stripped all else away, Nicole stood in her panties for a moment, trembling with shame and lust, then peeled this last garment down her legs and crawled atop her bed, her fingers dancing over her soft, moist flesh as she surrendered herself to her feelings with a cry.
#
She yielded every day for a full five days. Afterwards she would shower and carefully wash her sheets and panties, make sure she was clean and proper when her father got home, make sure that dinner was made on time so he wouldn't suspect anything. And at night she would hold her Bible and pray, trembling, sometimes weeping softly as she begged God to forgive her, begged him to drive Satan away. But this never helped for long and the next day would be like the last.
Saturday was easier. Her father was home all day and read from Proverbs that evening.
"Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies."
"She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands."
"She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms."
"Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest of all."
He looked at her now, and smiled. "Amen."
"Amen," Nicole whispered, and she felt herself redden with hidden shame.
#
The next day she rose early, dressed in a simple gray skirt and white blouse, arranged her hair so it was back and away from her face. She sat quietly in church with her father, listened attentively to the sermon, ignored the stares from the ladies in the other pews. After the service she approached the Minister and asked him if there were any odd jobs around the church that she could do during the week.
SEVEN
The semester ended quietly save for the parties along fraternity row. More e-mails had been added to the list, along with some phone numbers; even Celeste and Sandra, both among those who had withdrawn, were there. Barb added the addresses for the others who were gone, just to complete the list. A lot of the e-mail accounts were web-based ones, anonymous, but in their messages most of the women finished with their own names, and those who did not were still respected. There were themes, bandied about, discussed again and again. Some messages were private, sent only from one person to another; others were sent to everyone. Arguments came and went, but they were never cruel.
"I keep wondering why. What did it want? Why did it do it?"
"Why do men do what they do?"
"IT WASN'T A MAN!!!!!!!"
"My boyfriend was a man, that's what I meant. He broke up with me and I think this is why.
: -("
"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. Ice cream and chocolate tonight? Maybe help you feel better?"
"God, I'm horny all the time. Horny horny horny horny."
"Me too me too me too ...."
The e-mail list was a good thing and Vicky was proud she had started it. It gave everyone a chance to open up, to express their feelings. It was, for nearly all of them, the only place they could; Jenny's experience with the psychologist had been repeated two or three times more. It was too impossible, too unreal, for anyone to believe, and it was too sexual and they had all given in to it too completely to expect anyone outside to understand.
You had to have been there.
#
Vicky sat now, in her car, Jack beside her. They had been out, at a local club, dancing, and now had pulled into a place in the lot of his apartment building. She looked over at him as she engaged the parking brake and shut off the motor. He smiled.
He looked good. Short, dark hair, well combed. A nice, well pressed shirt and tie, dark slacks. He wasn't a big man, wasn't the sort of man she had once taken an interest in. But after what had happened this Spring the kinds of men she had dated before had no longer seemed enough; simply because a guy had a good body or a handsome face, or even because she thought he might be good in bed, didn't count for as much as it had.
It was how they acted that mattered, these days. And Jack was a nice guy; he wasn't experienced with women, and it showed, but he was fun and as she had gotten to know him he had opened up. When you talked with him, he was really listening.
Jack really seemed to like her, too. More than the others. Before, it had always been the sex, first. Vicky knew she was pretty; she liked how she looked, and men liked it too. This had usually been innocent before. She enjoyed sex, and was careful about it. There were always a few jerks, of course, but she had never let them bother her.
Until now. Until after what had happened in the basement. The rumors had died down in the last few weeks, but they were still there and even if they weren't Vicky knew that none of the women from the dorm were quite the same.
Maybe the thing had taught her something she didn't know before.
She smiled at her date. She had dressed up too, in a short black dress, her long blonde hair styled just that morning, her face carefully made up. It felt good to look good, and she knew he noticed because he had said so, twice, and now he said it again.
"You really do look good, Vicky. I had a great time."
"I did too, Jack. Thank you."
She released her seatbelt, leaned toward him. On their first dates he had hesitated before they kissed, as though unsure. Later he had told her he wasn't very experienced at kissing and was afraid he wouldn't be any good at it. She had nodded and they had kept at it, practicing. Now the hesitation was gone and his lips felt good against hers, gentle and attentive and warm as he reached for her and held her.
Her whole body tingled as his tongue met hers. She moaned, softly, and for just a moment imagined his hands moving over her back, pulling down the zipper of her dress, releasing her breasts from her bra, touching them, caressing them. She imagined him above her, naked, with his kind smile and attentive hands, kissing her nipples, her belly, her thighs, then holding her against him, her breasts pressed against his chest, her thighs parting to receive him.
She wanted him, needed him. They had not yet had sex; not yet. He was still uncertain how to ask, she knew, and she realized that before, she had never had to ask for it herself. The man had always initiated things and if she was interested she merely had to send the right signals. With Jack this had not happened, and Vicky had begun to see that it wasn't so easy for men after all, always having to ask, to take the responsibility for starting things.
Soon, she thought, as he moaned softly into her open mouth, his tongue caressing hers. Soon she would choose a time and a place to be with him, would bring a box of condoms and a bottle of wine, and she would be the one to initiate things, and they would make love, right there, gently and passionately.
Soon.
But not tonight. They both knew it. After a long time they each drew back. He looked at her in the dim light.
"I wish I didn't have to go, Vicky."
She nodded. "I know. It's already late, and I've got to go too; finish packing."
"I'll see you this summer?"
"Every weekend I can get up here. It's only a few hours."
"We'll have some fun."
He kissed her again, smiled as he opened the door and stepped outside. She watched him as he took the stairs to his apartment door, as he disappeared inside. As she pulled her seatbelt back on and started the car she noted the time on the clock on her dashboard.
Late. And you've got to be out of the dorm by ten in the morning.
Vicky backed up, pulled out of the lot, turned south towards the university and the dorm. She felt good, still warm in the afterglow of the kiss, of her fantasy. It would be good to get home for the summer, find a job and make some money, not have to think about classes for a few months. And it wasn't far from home to here, and so when she wasn't working she could come up here and be with Jack.
She turned east, then north toward the end of town, ran a red light.
No one was coming the other way and it wasn't until she had passed through the intersection that she realized that she had done it. Her hands were gripping the wheel tightly, her gaze locked straight ahead. She was nearing the edge of town now, her speed constant, her foot not moving off the accelerator, only what was directly ahead registering to her. And then, only then, did she realize what was happening.
Her body was a puppet, no longer her own.
Vicky remembered this feeling from before, and a sudden fear gripped her.
EIGHT
Nicole worked hard at the church, and at home, where she started a project to repair the windows in the back of the house. They were old, and in the winter there was always a cold draft running from them. Her father had always said he would get to it, but he never did.
At church she cleaned the floors and the bathrooms, made sure each pew had a Bible and a hymnal and an envelope for contributions, and helped with smaller projects like typing the weekly newsletter to be given out at the beginning of each service. It was all good work, and along with her housework and cooking it kept her busy and tired, most days, and for this she was grateful.
But the lust was still there, deep inside her. She could feel it, like a burning in her belly, and it came up from time to time, unexpectedly. There was Jim, who worked at the hardware store and who she had known in high school. She enjoyed chatting with him when she went in for something, but more than that she enjoyed looking at him as he worked and as they talked. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him, to feel him close. That night she lay in bed and wondered what his penis looked like and couldn't get the thought out of her head.
Don't think about it. Don't think about it.
She prayed, a lot, prayed to Jesus and to God and begged them to make it like it had been before, when sex had just been a distant idea, something other people did and never talked about. But the more she prayed about sex the more it was always there; in her, in everything. She would stand naked in the bathroom in the morning and look at her body in the mirror, at her breasts, at the triangle of hair on her mons, at the shape of her buttocks. These things were a part of her, and they were sexual. There was no escaping this.
She began to pray for answers. Why do I feel this way, God? Why do I look at Jim and think these things?
One day in the church the feelings came on her, hard, without warning. She had been cleaning the pews and suddenly had to sit, her eyes closed, arms tight across her belly.
In you, hot and wet and hard. Gushing up into you as you scream out in passion, as your body seems aflame, as you spasm at the sheer, impossible pleasure of it.
"Nicole?"
She opened her eyes and looked up. Minister Wells was there, standing beside her.
"Are you all right?"
She nodded, feeling her face redden.
"Would you like to lie down for a few minutes? There's a couch in my office."
Her heart was beating rapidly and her mouth was dry. The couch sounded good.
"All right. Thank you."
He went with her, brought her a glass of water and an old blanket, laid this over her. There was a cross over his desk and beside it, in a frame and written in perfect calligraphy, words she knew well.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life."
She stared at this for a time, dozed a bit as she calmed. When she awoke the Minister was there, sitting at his desk, writing.
He saw she was awake. "Sorry. Was I being noisy?" he asked.
She sat up, shook her head. The blanket settled to her lap.
"No," she said. "It's fine."
He looked at her for a moment.
"Nicole, is something bothering you? You seem distracted today."
She looked down, at her feet, at the hem of her skirt just below her knees. He waited patiently as she said nothing.
Wells was older, his face lined with experience. Before coming to Hanesville he had been a veteran, though she knew little about this. It didn't matter, either; he was the Minister she had grown up with, who had spent time with her in Sunday school, who during those terrible days when she was little had told her that her mother was in heaven watching over her, and who preached so eloquently about God's love and about the importance of his grace. There was a respect for him in the small community that can only be earned through time and pain and effort. They were his flock; he was their shepherd. This was an unacknowledged truth.
She looked over at him, wondered if she should say anything. He watched her back.
"I'm afraid," she said finally.
"Afraid? Can you tell me what you are afraid of?"
Had it been anyone else she would not have been able to say it. Even with him the word came out as barely more than a whisper.
"Lust."
He nodded, leaned back in his chair. "Lust is a difficult thing," he said. "It's something we all struggle with."
She kept her gaze down, wiped away a sudden tear from her eye. "I don't want to sin, but I do."
"Can you tell me this sin, Nicole?" He pulled some tissues from the box on his desk and moved to her, gave them to her.
Fear gripped her now. It was still too heard to say, too dangerous. I had sex with a thing in the basement of my dorm, and it felt good.
No. Not that. Too dangerous. She looked up at him, took a tissue, blew her nose. He said nothing, only smiled. She spoke softly.
"I look at men, some men. And I want them to touch me. I think about ... parts of them." She hesitated. "Sometimes, when I'm alone at home ... I touch myself."
He sat himself in the chair opposite her. "And you are afraid that these feelings are sinful?"
She nodded.
"Some people think they are," he said. "Some people live and breathe only about the sin of lust. But you are created in the image of God, Nicole. Why would God create you in his perfect image and yet make these feelings, which are a part of you, sinful?"
"I don't know," she said, reddening. He saw this.
"Nicole, I do not believe that these feelings are the sin. I believe that it is what they may make you do that is the danger. In First Corinthians Paul tells us that a husband and wife must each render to the other their due, that they must not deny each other sexual pleasure; the body of the wife belongs to her husband, and the body of the husband to his wife. What you are desiring, Nicole, is the natural desire God gave you to give yourself, utterly, to your husband, and to have him give himself back to you. The danger of sin is that this gift, that only you can give, might be given too freely, might be given to other men, men who do not give the same gift back to you."
She nodded. His words were good and they made her feel better.
"But when I feel it, so strong, inside me ...." she said.
"This is what is difficult. But always remember this, Nicole: you are a beautiful young woman. God gave you that beauty. It is a gift you will someday give to a good husband, one who you have chosen carefully and who deserves you and your love. And then, these feelings will strengthen your love for one another, and you'll see they aren't sinful at all."
#
Weeks passed.
She was getting better; Jonathan could tell. The house was like it had been before she left, and even better. The windows in the back were fixed for the first time in years, and it was clean in places he had never even known could be dirty. She could cook, too, really well; she had learned this young.
But there was more, Jonathan knew, that was not yet right. Nicole had always been a quiet girl, shy and unassuming. She had never dated in high school and he had been grateful for this; boys at that age were dirty. He knew this from his own experience, and today there were so many more risks than there had been then. Yet he wondered, too, if maybe this innocence had been what got her in trouble at the college. He didn't know much about what had happened and she had never told him, had never told anyone. But he did know that there had been many girls involved, and he was sure that many of those girls weren't Christian.
Had she simply felt the need to experiment? Had she simply not known that it was sinful? Was it because he had never talked to her about that kind of sin?
Jonathan watched her now, as she set a plate of steaming food in front of him and then another in her place across the table before sitting down. She was beautiful, he realized, just like Carol had been. She laced her fingers together, lowered her head and waited for him to say grace. He brought his hands together and lowered his gaze as well, spoke.
"Thank you, God, for this bounty, and for the grace of your only son. We pray to be worthy of your grace, and of your forgiveness of our sins. Amen."
They ate, and he watched her as they did. He had always hoped that someday she would find a good, Christian husband, one who would take care of her as he had tried to do. She deserved this.
There was a singles group, at the church; he had seen a flier for it on the bulletin board last Sunday. Maybe he could get her to go to one of their socials, have her meet some Christian boys her own age. Maybe she could make some friends. Maybe that would help her put the college and what had happened there behind her.
Maybe.
Jonathan imagined, briefly, taking her arm in his and leading her down the aisle of their church, she so beautiful in a long, white wedding gown, smiling at him behind her veil as he presented her arm to a fine, loving groom. He imagined her with fine sons and daughters and he imagined playing with them, reading to them from the Bible and watching their faces as they heard the story of God's love, as he told them how their grandmother was watching them from heaven, making sure they were all right.
This was a good thought, and it stayed with him as he changed into his pajamas and climbed into bed. Maybe there was reason for hope, for Nicole. He lay back and looked over at Carol's picture, reached out and caressed the frame, then closed his eyes for sleep.
He did not feel, until it was much too late, as the impossibly thin, white-hot tendril slipped through a microscopic gap in the window and burrowed deeply into his brain.