Here is the latest installment of The Adjusters and the end of Book VI, “Los Angeles, Aftermath", wherein Daniel gets a reward of a sort for his success in Los Angeles.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #66 - Los Angeles, Aftermath
“So how’s everything?” asked Elizabeth Parkinson—who liked to be called Betty—smiling her usual affable smile, relaxed behind her desk, the consummate HR professional. “I heard you did very well in Los Angeles on an team assignment that turned into a solo assignment.”
Daniel Malcolm nodded. “Not a lot of secrets around here, are there?”
If Betty picked up on the sarcasm, she did not let on. “Oh, quite the contrary. There are lots of secrets around here. Security is paramount at ADCorp, as I’m sure you’re starting to appreciate. With some of the sensitive materials we have, it only makes sense.”
Daniel was curious. “Actually, if you don’t mind the question, do you actually know what those sensitive materials are? Do you know what my assignment involved back in Los Angeles?”
Elizabeth smiled, and shook her head. “I don’t. I don’t have the security clearance. And if you tell me anything about your own work, I’d have to report you, so please don’t.”
Then again, Daniel thought, if she knew anything and the fact that she did was itself classified, then she would have to say that, didn’t she? Daniel, you’re becoming paranoid. He could practically hear Sam O’Neill’s grumpy response in his head: Good!
Continue reading...
Next month: the start of Book VII, The House of the Rising Sun.
Showing posts with label story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label story. Show all posts
Sunday, August 28, 2016
Saturday, April 23, 2016
New Story: The Adjusters #65
(Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Rumors of my inability to get editing done in a timely fashion, however? Right on.)
Here is April's installment of The Adjusters, “Los Angeles, Part 4", wherein Daniel and Cindy close the case.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #65 - Los Angeles, Part 4
"So what's the plan again?” Cindy Caprese asked, her voice sounding petulant over the phone.
"The plan is that I stay here and wait for Fairbank, and you stay in the car and if there's any hint of trouble, you tell Brisecoeur to send in the cavalry." Daniel Malcolm repeated for the third time that evening.
Cindy knew the plan well—her asking about it was merely to emphasize for Daniel’s benefit that she did not like it one bit.
"And remind me why I'm down here and why you're up there?" she asked.
"Because it's not your job to put yourself in danger, and I don't want anything to happen to you."
"That's selfish."
"Tough."
"And that's mean."
"Boo hoo. Non-negotiable, Cin."
"You'll pay for this later."
That banter with Cindy told Daniel that she was not really upset, which was good. He really did not want her to get in harm's way. One did not need to be a trained psychologist to understand why: he had lost too many friends already.
Continue reading...
Next month (the Muses of Creation willing): Los Angeles, Aftermath.
Here is April's installment of The Adjusters, “Los Angeles, Part 4", wherein Daniel and Cindy close the case.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #65 - Los Angeles, Part 4
"So what's the plan again?” Cindy Caprese asked, her voice sounding petulant over the phone.
"The plan is that I stay here and wait for Fairbank, and you stay in the car and if there's any hint of trouble, you tell Brisecoeur to send in the cavalry." Daniel Malcolm repeated for the third time that evening.
Cindy knew the plan well—her asking about it was merely to emphasize for Daniel’s benefit that she did not like it one bit.
"And remind me why I'm down here and why you're up there?" she asked.
"Because it's not your job to put yourself in danger, and I don't want anything to happen to you."
"That's selfish."
"Tough."
"And that's mean."
"Boo hoo. Non-negotiable, Cin."
"You'll pay for this later."
That banter with Cindy told Daniel that she was not really upset, which was good. He really did not want her to get in harm's way. One did not need to be a trained psychologist to understand why: he had lost too many friends already.
Continue reading...
Next month (the Muses of Creation willing): Los Angeles, Aftermath.
Monday, February 15, 2016
New Story: The Adjusters #64
Here is February's installment of The Adjusters, “Los Angeles, Part 3", wherein Daniel and Cindy continue their investigation of the Special running loose in Los Angeles.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #64 - Los Angeles, Part 3
Daniel Malcolm was numb. Had been for several months now. And part of him had known it. But the full extent of it did not strike him until now.
For all the craziness that Cindy Caprese—now Cindy Barnes—exhibited, she could be perceptive, and that night was an example of exactly that. Daniel Malcolm had worried that she might insist on heading back to her place to fuck—something he was surprised she had not clamored for yet, her insatiable libido usually out and about at the first sign of him—but she surprised him by asking him out to a casual dinner and then heading out to a movie.
That was exactly the kind of evening Daniel needed. It felt almost normal. He had not had normal in a long time. And meeting the women affected by the Special—because the latest victim made it clear that a Special was indeed involved—had been the final straw: Christina’s tragic behavior, Rebecca’s hospitalization, and of course, Samantha Royston’s complete transformation into a nymphomaniac with apparently no inhibitions.
Continue reading...
Next month: Los Angeles, Part 4.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #64 - Los Angeles, Part 3
Daniel Malcolm was numb. Had been for several months now. And part of him had known it. But the full extent of it did not strike him until now.
For all the craziness that Cindy Caprese—now Cindy Barnes—exhibited, she could be perceptive, and that night was an example of exactly that. Daniel Malcolm had worried that she might insist on heading back to her place to fuck—something he was surprised she had not clamored for yet, her insatiable libido usually out and about at the first sign of him—but she surprised him by asking him out to a casual dinner and then heading out to a movie.
That was exactly the kind of evening Daniel needed. It felt almost normal. He had not had normal in a long time. And meeting the women affected by the Special—because the latest victim made it clear that a Special was indeed involved—had been the final straw: Christina’s tragic behavior, Rebecca’s hospitalization, and of course, Samantha Royston’s complete transformation into a nymphomaniac with apparently no inhibitions.
Continue reading...
Next month: Los Angeles, Part 4.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
New Story: The Adjusters #63
(Ah! You thought I was dead, didn't you? You should be so lucky. No, I was fighting my “block”, and hanging around the blog just made me feel guilty and blocked me further. But I'm feeling better now. Here's hoping I haven't lost _all_ of my readers. I'll get to your comments and emails in the coming week.)
Here is December's installment of The Adjusters, “Los Angeles, Part 2", wherein Daniel Malcolm meets up with a friend.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #63 - Los Angeles, Part 2
Daniel Malcolm felt strangely conspicuous in the back of the breakfast diner that touted that they served the best breakfast in the city, day or night. Partly it was because he was dressed more formally than the crowd that had been in the diner—more like a breakfast pub, to be exact—and that had steadily accumulated since he arrived. The place was packed.
But it was a silly reaction, because no one paid any attention to him. They were all students, all from the nearby UCLA, and he was not much older than them. They were loud, eating and talking about all of those things that college students talked about when they needed to wind down and the last thing they wanted to think about was anything serious. It was a Friday night atmosphere, but mid-morning. You could smell it in the air, the ethos of the average college student. Go out, have fun, get laid.
Daniel knew he was being unfair, but he also envied their seemingly insouciant approach to life—one he had himself held until fairly recently. A world where the biggest problem one could have was figuring out whether to follow their girlfriend to Texas or not. And even the answer to that one had been easy. Now, everything had weight. Everything was important. Everything mattered. Having fun seemed almost like a foreign concept.
Continue reading...
Next month: Los Angeles, Part 3.
Here is December's installment of The Adjusters, “Los Angeles, Part 2", wherein Daniel Malcolm meets up with a friend.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #63 - Los Angeles, Part 2
Daniel Malcolm felt strangely conspicuous in the back of the breakfast diner that touted that they served the best breakfast in the city, day or night. Partly it was because he was dressed more formally than the crowd that had been in the diner—more like a breakfast pub, to be exact—and that had steadily accumulated since he arrived. The place was packed.
But it was a silly reaction, because no one paid any attention to him. They were all students, all from the nearby UCLA, and he was not much older than them. They were loud, eating and talking about all of those things that college students talked about when they needed to wind down and the last thing they wanted to think about was anything serious. It was a Friday night atmosphere, but mid-morning. You could smell it in the air, the ethos of the average college student. Go out, have fun, get laid.
Daniel knew he was being unfair, but he also envied their seemingly insouciant approach to life—one he had himself held until fairly recently. A world where the biggest problem one could have was figuring out whether to follow their girlfriend to Texas or not. And even the answer to that one had been easy. Now, everything had weight. Everything was important. Everything mattered. Having fun seemed almost like a foreign concept.
Continue reading...
Next month: Los Angeles, Part 3.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
New Story: The Adjusters #61
(I refuse to accept it's already mid-August. So I shan't. Therefore, this is not late. There.)
Here is August's installment of The Adjusters and the beginning of Book VI, “A Warning for Daniel Malcolm", wherein a new ADCorp assignment calls our hero.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #61 - A Warning for Daniel Malcolm
“So tell me, Mister Malcolm—Daniel—how are you adjusting?”
Daniel Malcolm gave Elizabeth Parkinson—Please, call me Betty—a long look, wondering how exactly to answer that question.
He could answer it at face value, given that he was speaking to his main HR contact at ADCorp, his employer: I’m doing okay, I guess. I mean, there’s a lot to learn, and I’m spending most of my time continuing my training and learning the ropes, but I’ve been on a couple of assignments already where we went and nabbed a bad guy and I guess I feel pretty good about it, even though I’ve still got a lot of questions about what we do but I’ve come to understand that it’s a bad idea to ask such questions out loud. I did have a few questions about the benefits package and about floating holidays, though.
Or he could perhaps try to be more frank about what he was feeling: Well, to be entirely honest, Betty, I’m not doing so good. In fact, one might argue with some validity that I’m sinking slowly but surely into a depression. And I don’t care. You’ve got to understand, and I don’t know how much that file you have on your desk tells you about these things, but I’m going through a pretty rough patch.
Maybe he should go into the actual details, just so that he could see her face change, see that arguably beautiful smile fade away slowly. Do you want to hear about my last year at Darnell, where I found out that a bunch of dicks from a frat were messing with girls’ heads to turn them into sex dolls? Do you want to hear about that asshole from said frat who snatched Jenn, my fiancée, and turned her into a fucking slut and sent her out into the world, desperate for cock? Do you want to hear how I got this job, with Agent Shawbank offering it to me after I’m pretty sure she got rid of the man that had given the mind-fuck tech to those frat boys, Thaddeus Cargyle, the one man that might have had the key to undoing what had been done to Jenn? Do you want to hear about how I met up with this guy Sam O’Neill who’s a private investigator and told me that he would look for Jenn in exchange for me accepting ADCorp’s job offer and spying on this company for him? Do you want to hear why I accepted—because he told me that Cargyle had worked for ADCorp, and I believed him, and nothing I’ve seen until now makes me doubt his word? Is that what you would like to hear, Betty?
Continue reading...
Next month: Title TBD....
Here is August's installment of The Adjusters and the beginning of Book VI, “A Warning for Daniel Malcolm", wherein a new ADCorp assignment calls our hero.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #61 - A Warning for Daniel Malcolm
“So tell me, Mister Malcolm—Daniel—how are you adjusting?”
Daniel Malcolm gave Elizabeth Parkinson—Please, call me Betty—a long look, wondering how exactly to answer that question.
He could answer it at face value, given that he was speaking to his main HR contact at ADCorp, his employer: I’m doing okay, I guess. I mean, there’s a lot to learn, and I’m spending most of my time continuing my training and learning the ropes, but I’ve been on a couple of assignments already where we went and nabbed a bad guy and I guess I feel pretty good about it, even though I’ve still got a lot of questions about what we do but I’ve come to understand that it’s a bad idea to ask such questions out loud. I did have a few questions about the benefits package and about floating holidays, though.
Or he could perhaps try to be more frank about what he was feeling: Well, to be entirely honest, Betty, I’m not doing so good. In fact, one might argue with some validity that I’m sinking slowly but surely into a depression. And I don’t care. You’ve got to understand, and I don’t know how much that file you have on your desk tells you about these things, but I’m going through a pretty rough patch.
Maybe he should go into the actual details, just so that he could see her face change, see that arguably beautiful smile fade away slowly. Do you want to hear about my last year at Darnell, where I found out that a bunch of dicks from a frat were messing with girls’ heads to turn them into sex dolls? Do you want to hear about that asshole from said frat who snatched Jenn, my fiancée, and turned her into a fucking slut and sent her out into the world, desperate for cock? Do you want to hear how I got this job, with Agent Shawbank offering it to me after I’m pretty sure she got rid of the man that had given the mind-fuck tech to those frat boys, Thaddeus Cargyle, the one man that might have had the key to undoing what had been done to Jenn? Do you want to hear about how I met up with this guy Sam O’Neill who’s a private investigator and told me that he would look for Jenn in exchange for me accepting ADCorp’s job offer and spying on this company for him? Do you want to hear why I accepted—because he told me that Cargyle had worked for ADCorp, and I believed him, and nothing I’ve seen until now makes me doubt his word? Is that what you would like to hear, Betty?
Continue reading...
Next month: Title TBD....
Friday, February 13, 2015
New Story: The Adjusters #58
Ouch, busier week than expected—sorry about that. But here is February's installment of The Adjusters, “Intermezzo: Eve Shawbank", wherein we hang out with our favorite ADCorp agent, and finally meet with a shadowy figure.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #58 - Intermezzo: Eve Shawbank
Eve Shawbank sat at table in the back of the restaurant, away from the few other patrons, savoring what she considered the best gulyás in the city, thick and meaty, the csipetke perfectly cooked. Gulyás, of all things, was what reminded her of home the most, for better or for worse.
She pressed her thighs together. She was aroused. It had been building up for the past few hours, and she was looking forward to later in the evening, when she could give free reign to her lust. It had been a while.
The restaurant was quiet this evening, the way it often was in the middle of the way, and the way she liked it. The owner, an older Hungarian man called Bognár, barely spoke English and spent most of his days—when he was not cooking—sitting in a corner of the restaurant with equally ancient friends and watching European football games on a flat-screen television against the wall, the only concession to modernity in the small rustic Hungarian restaurant.
She loved the food, but she felt that tinge of anxiety that always bit at her conscious mind whenever she was here. The answer, should Shawbank have chosen to think about it for more than a second, would have been obvious to her. Between the gulyás and the atmosphere, this place was a bubble that held the essence of her youth, the essence of her home, and it was her home, even though she had not been there for a long time, that she bore no desire to return, that as far as she was concerned it was earth she had scorched when Davenham had found her so long ago and brought her back with him.
But it was home—her roots. And roots ran deep. And while the conscious mind may hate something with a burning passion, the subconscious may long for that same something with a searing ache.
Shawbank count not put words to her feelings, but part of her wished she could take Magenta, her trusty hunting knife, and hack that part of her to shreds.
She would laugh doing so.
Laugh and laugh, the way her father used to.
She stopped herself when she realized she was clenching her spoon hard enough to hurt her fingers.
Relax, she told herself. It’s all good.
“What THE FUCK is this SZAR?”
Continue reading...
Next month: “Intermezzo: The Medicine Man”.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #58 - Intermezzo: Eve Shawbank
Eve Shawbank sat at table in the back of the restaurant, away from the few other patrons, savoring what she considered the best gulyás in the city, thick and meaty, the csipetke perfectly cooked. Gulyás, of all things, was what reminded her of home the most, for better or for worse.
She pressed her thighs together. She was aroused. It had been building up for the past few hours, and she was looking forward to later in the evening, when she could give free reign to her lust. It had been a while.
The restaurant was quiet this evening, the way it often was in the middle of the way, and the way she liked it. The owner, an older Hungarian man called Bognár, barely spoke English and spent most of his days—when he was not cooking—sitting in a corner of the restaurant with equally ancient friends and watching European football games on a flat-screen television against the wall, the only concession to modernity in the small rustic Hungarian restaurant.
She loved the food, but she felt that tinge of anxiety that always bit at her conscious mind whenever she was here. The answer, should Shawbank have chosen to think about it for more than a second, would have been obvious to her. Between the gulyás and the atmosphere, this place was a bubble that held the essence of her youth, the essence of her home, and it was her home, even though she had not been there for a long time, that she bore no desire to return, that as far as she was concerned it was earth she had scorched when Davenham had found her so long ago and brought her back with him.
But it was home—her roots. And roots ran deep. And while the conscious mind may hate something with a burning passion, the subconscious may long for that same something with a searing ache.
Shawbank count not put words to her feelings, but part of her wished she could take Magenta, her trusty hunting knife, and hack that part of her to shreds.
She would laugh doing so.
Laugh and laugh, the way her father used to.
She stopped herself when she realized she was clenching her spoon hard enough to hurt her fingers.
Relax, she told herself. It’s all good.
“What THE FUCK is this SZAR?”
Continue reading...
Next month: “Intermezzo: The Medicine Man”.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
New Story: The Adjusters #57
Here is January's installment of The Adjusters, “Intermezzo: Patrick Dee", wherein we get a glimpse of the inner workings of ADCorp, and realize things are always more complicated than they seem.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #57 - Intermezzo: Patrick Dee
“In short,” the vice-president of Sales Division, Michael Halderan, was saying, “as we would expect, profits are steady, and we are probably going to make our numbers for the quarter. We’re steady. We’re growing where we want to grow, and holding steady where we are saturated.”
Patrick Dee sighed, only making a thinly veiled attempt at hiding it with a conspicuous yawn. He found quarterly meetings boring. Which was not surprising, since he found meetings simpliciter boring.
And Halderan was not done. “Our latest analysis does unfortunately predict that we won’t be able to keep this up for long. Frankly, our existing clients are asking for more, and we cannot offer it to them given our current development plans. And we cannot grow out customer base for obvious reasons.”
George Clayton, Vice-President of Investigation and Enforcement Division, more commonly known as Control, nodded. He had quit smoking a few years earlier, after a scare with lung cancer. But a life-long habit of smoking had left him with a tic that made his finger rise up to his lips at regular intervals, like clock work. It drove Dee crazy.
Neither Halderan nor Control needed to spell it out. All ADCorp executives around the table knew the words: critical mass.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Intermezzo: Eve Shawbank”.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #57 - Intermezzo: Patrick Dee
“In short,” the vice-president of Sales Division, Michael Halderan, was saying, “as we would expect, profits are steady, and we are probably going to make our numbers for the quarter. We’re steady. We’re growing where we want to grow, and holding steady where we are saturated.”
Patrick Dee sighed, only making a thinly veiled attempt at hiding it with a conspicuous yawn. He found quarterly meetings boring. Which was not surprising, since he found meetings simpliciter boring.
And Halderan was not done. “Our latest analysis does unfortunately predict that we won’t be able to keep this up for long. Frankly, our existing clients are asking for more, and we cannot offer it to them given our current development plans. And we cannot grow out customer base for obvious reasons.”
George Clayton, Vice-President of Investigation and Enforcement Division, more commonly known as Control, nodded. He had quit smoking a few years earlier, after a scare with lung cancer. But a life-long habit of smoking had left him with a tic that made his finger rise up to his lips at regular intervals, like clock work. It drove Dee crazy.
Neither Halderan nor Control needed to spell it out. All ADCorp executives around the table knew the words: critical mass.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Intermezzo: Eve Shawbank”.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
New Story: Ghosts of Christmas Past (Part 3)
The final part of the Christmas Special.
Ghosts of Christmas Past (Part 3)
(Christmas 2010)
The party was hitting full force. Little radiated more energy than a large group of college students past their final what-not—exams, projects, papers—and needing to unwind after a stressful session. The music was harsh and loud and assaulted the senses even more than the lighting and the crush of bodies as one walked through the dance area. Alcohol flowed freely.
Daniel Malcolm was nursing a dark beer he had pilfered from a table set up for that purpose at one end of the large basement room the party organizers had commandeered, somewhere in a half-abandoned building on campus. It was not a rave but it had been orchestrated as one, with its location advertised by word of mouth. Daniel suspected that the University knew about the party; while they could not officially sanction it for all the obvious reasons, it was better to have such an event occur under quasi-supervision rather than having it take place completely outside its jurisdiction. The two dead giveaways were the near total lack of freshmen, and the absence of drugs.
“I find it somewhat unexpected that there is a preponderance of alcoholic beverages over hallucinogenic and mind-altering substances at this event,” said Radhu Krishnamurthy quizzically, not for the first time voicing exactly what had been going through Daniel’s mind. Then again, perhaps I’m not very good at hiding what I think, he reflected. Jenn certainly seems to think so.
The though of his brand new girlfriend—Jennifer Hansen, smart, sexy, beautiful, wholly undeserved, and conspicuously absent from this Holiday party, the last before everyone split off to their respective family homes for Winter Break—made his heart ache. Which surprised him. He itched to call her again, the fourth time this evening, but was fighting hard not to. Appearing too needy was never a smart way to go. Calling a few times to tell her he missed her already was cute and romantic—sentimental, he could almost hear her correct him, a smile in her voice—but more than that was pathetic.
He turned instead to his Indian friend, tall and lanky and holding a glass of punch whose neon color gave no clue as to its ingredients but suggested nothing healthy. Radhu did not take well to alcohol. It made his already idiosyncratic behavior even more… idiosyncratic.
“Perhaps I should venture to dance tonight,” Radhu said, and Daniel feared that his friend was serious. Daniel had seen Radhu dance before. He was actually a good dancer, unexpectedly so given his gangly body. He had learned to dance watching Bollywood movies, Radhu had told him early in their freshman year when they lived on the same dormitory floor. But Bollywood-style choreography did not mesh well with the mosh-pit slamming that passed for dancing at this point of the party.
“Maybe you can do that later, Rad.”
“Very well. You look absent, Daniel. Are you thinking of Jennifer again?”
Daniel sighed. Radhu was perceptive, in his own way. “Yeah. Guilty. I miss her. Weird, I know. But there it is. She’s off to her mother for the break, and wanted to leave early to beat the storm.”
“Snopocalypse. It does sound pleasantly apocalyptic.”
“I’d argue your use of pleasant when my girlfriend’s on a Greyhound heading north.”
“I was referring to the lexical entity, not the denotation of said lexical entity, but fair point.”
Two month. He and Jenn had been dating two months now, and he already had her under his skin. He was hooked, and hooked bad, his stepbrother would have called it. And Daniel could not deny it. While they did not spend every minute of every day together, she was never far from his mind. They talked several hours every day, either in person or on the phone or via chat. It scared him a bit, too, this longing he felt that he had not know could be triggered in him. She seemed to feel the same—that by itself Daniel found astonishing—but she also took it in stride, as if she had always expected to feel that way and was merely glad it happened with him.
“Jeez, are you already pinning for her? It’s been what, an hour?” came the mocking voice from his left. “You’re pussy-whipped but good, boy!”
Daniel grinned. Only one person could wield that combination of come-hither and mocking in a single voice. Serena Banks strode toward him in a pair of jeans that looked like their were sprayed on and a tank top that left little of what it was meant to cover to the imagination. The top was white and stood out delightfully against her dark skin. With her long hair, full lips, and more curves than anyone would know how to handle, she was sexy, she knew it, and took full advantage.
She was studying journalism, and worked at the University paper. And she was good at it. Although how much investigative reporting one could do in a small town lost in the middle of nowhere New England remained up for debate.
“Hey Serena. How are you?” he greeted her, raising his bottle to bang it against what looked like an oversized cocktail glass. How did she manage to find a cocktail here?
“Fucking elated,” she said. “Term paper for Media During Reagan submitted and out of my face forever. Can’t help but wonder how things would have gone if we had the Internet back then. What do you think, Rad?” She asked the lanky Indian.
Radhu had still not said a word. He was gaping like a lost puppy, not an atypical reaction of his to Serena’s presence. That Radhu had a crush on the black journalism student was the worst kept secret, although everyone acted as though they did not know, Serena first. But she liked teasing the poor boy.
Daniel had asked her point blank once whether she would ever date Radhu. She had merely shrugged. “If he ever gets the balls to ask me out, we’ll see. I am curious whether he’s long and thin all over.”
And so Daniel had been pushing Radhu to ask Serena out. But he resisted—Daniel suspected that Radhu not only feared rejection but also acceptance. He worried what he would have to do on a date with her. Somehow, pining for Serena felt safer than dating her.
“Rad,” said Daniel, subtly kicking his friend whose gaze was threatening to dip down to the generous cleavage of Serena’s tank top. “Hypothetical: how would the 1980’s presidential elections have differed had the Internet been around?”
The direct question snapped Radhu out of his reverie.
“Oh. Well, I would submit that the results would have been sensibly similar. Ronald Reagan had a strong following, that is undeniable, and the Internet would have undoubtedly exacerbated the outpouring of support. The main impediment to the Reagan campaign I would surmise would have been his behavior during his Hollywood years, from which secrets might have emerged. I am basing this on the assumption that the Internet would have fostered the release of information from those years, not unlike what happened to Rock Hudson whose secrets came to light once there was a vector on which to promulgate them. I posit that these two conflicting directions would have annihilated each other.”
Serena made a face. “I wonder if the added scrutiny would have picked up on the fact that he had Alzheimer’s?”
Radhu arched an eyebrow in a way that Daniel could not help but find highly amusing. “There is no proof that Reagan was ill during his presidency.”
Serena grunted. “What about falling asleep at meetings?”
“I will offer the evidence of your own falling asleep in class as the first exhibit in a counter-argument. Do you believe you have Alzheimer’s disease?”
Before the conversation could degenerate further, Serena squealed as a pair of large hands grabbed her breasts from behind. “Guess who?” came a drunken voice.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Serena grinned, wrapping her hands over the man’s, and pressing them more firmly over her large breasts. “You got here before my boyfriend, so you get the spoils. Wanna fuck?”
“Wait, what?” came the man’s confused voice. Serena turned around and kissed the man, who was about the same height as her but twice her width—a mountain of muscles, and not much else. Serena’s current boyfriend.
Daniel shook his head and smiled. Serena liked sex, and liked it with a particular class of men: big and strong. And dumb as doorknobs, Jenn would have added.
Radhu, meanwhile, watched with longing in his eyes Serena kiss her boyfriend—all of a week old, and with probably a week or so to go—and watched the man’s hands dip down to Serena’s ass to squeeze it.
“I’m gonna go dance with my man,” Serena said over her shoulder. “You boys behave. And you,” she said to Daniel, “quit sulking. You’ll see your little sexpot soon enough. Ta!”
Daniel and Radhu watched her sashay her way through the crowd, her boyfriend trailing behind her.
“Special, isn’t she?” Daniel said to Radhu. It was a rhetorical question.
“That she is,” Radhu replied, wonder in his voice.
* * *
Daniel did not last more than twenty more minutes before calling it a night. His melancholy mood was not helped by the people and the music and the thrumming of the bass in his bones, and the last thing he wanted was to be a downer to his friends.
Radhu had run into a fellow student from one of his Computer Science classes, and they soon became engrossed in what Daniel guessed was the redesign of a popular online role-playing game. Serena had gone off in a corner to make out with her boyfriend, and while she had always made it clear that he would be welcome in a threesome, not only did Daniel not particularly want to join in, but he surmised that Serena’s new boyfriend would consider such an intrusion as the perfect opportunity to see if it was possible to rip a body in two like a telephone book.
It was a half-hour walk back to his dormitory, and while the night was not especially cold for December, the snow fell thick and heavy, the wind sending it twirling around the trees. He walked and listened to the silence all around him, that special silence that only a snow-blanketed night could provide. He wondered whether Jenn was okay, whether the snow would make the bus drive treacherous, familiar as he was with New England winters—but then, so was she. He fought back the urge to call her. He even shut off his phone to avoid the temptation.
The lobby of his dormitory was empty, most of the students having already left for the Holidays. Daniel was scheduled to depart in two days himself, but he felt less drive than usual. His mother and his stepfather Gerald had left for the Bahamas to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. He had been invited, as had his stepbrother Sam. The sixteen year old Sam had jumped at the opportunity to go off and hang out on the beach and ogle beautiful bodies.
Daniel understood that impulse, of course—though his own preferences ran to female bodies as opposed to male bodies, unlike Sam—but he had no desire to spend Christmas in the Caribbean. There was too much for him to do over the break—he was doing some undergraduate research work for one of his Foreign Policy teachers that he hoped would help him land an internship in DC come summer—and the thought of being out in the sun while he missed Jenn felt strangely like a betrayal. And so he was heading down to spend the Holidays with his aunt Selma and her family.
He opened the door to the rooms he shared with Jimmy, a quiet and shy sophomore. Daniel had lucked out: Jimmy was the perfect roommate. Daniel wandered whether the feeling was shared. He thought he was pretty easy-going as a roommate, but it was difficult to be objective about such a thing.
There was a light coming from Jimmy’s room, and Daniel expected him to be playing a video game, as he was wont to do most nights.
“Hey Jimmy,” he said. No response. He poked his head through the door, and saw Jimmy at his desk, his oversized headphones dwarfing his head, his eyes closed, his arm pumping up and down in a characteristic fashion with a hand in his lap.
He was masturbating.
Daniel grinned and silently stepped away from Jimmy’s door and headed to his room.
His room was small, but he had grown to like it. A bed against the wall, a working desk with his laptop at its foot, a small nightstand. A small bookshelf, a dresser. It was small but cozy, and he had decorated it in a way that reminded him of home.
He eschewed the harsh overhead light for the small lamp on his desk that gave the soothing warm glow he preferred, and wondered what he would do for the rest of the night. He was not sleepy. Watch television? Read a book? Stare at the walls? Maybe Jimmy had the right idea and he should masturbate.
He turned on the radio, and selected a soft rock channel. Soul music. Romantic. Mellow. Exactly his mood.
“Hello lover.”
Daniel jumped at the sound of the voice, nearly smashing his head against a hanging shelf by his desk.
He spun around, his heart in his throat.
Jenn was there, leaning against the door, dressed in a way that cause his breath to catch. If one imagined a sexy Christmas-themed costume, it would come close to what she wore: a short red tunic with a large black belt, fur-trimmed, zipped up but leaving a cleavage that rivaled the one that Serena was sporting earlier that evening. Her perfect legs looked like they were bare at first, but close attention hinted at the presence of a thin pair of nude stockings. The outfit was topped off by a pair of black boots with a stiletto heel. In a word, she was stunning. And more importantly, she was there.
“What… what are you doing here? I thought…”
She grinned, and shrugged. She had a red Santa Claus hat on her head. “Weather sucked. They canceled all bus routes for the night, and we may not even be able to leave tomorrow if the snow’s too bad. I figured you wouldn’t mind me dropping by and surprising you.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“And miss that expression on your face? Let me tell you, you do know how to make a girl feel pretty.”
“Trust me, it’s no hardship. You look… you look beautiful!”
“You are so sweet. And that deserves a reward.”
“Does it now?”
“Oh yes.” She pushed back from the door and walked towards him, slowly, making sure to swing her hip like a model on a catwalk.
The radio played its part. It was playing an old ballad, one that Daniel had always liked, that he had first heard on that sitcom that first introduced Michael J. Fox to the world, before Back to the Future.
What did you think
I would do at this moment
When you’re standing before me
With tears in your eyes
“Care to dance?” Jenn asked, a step away from him. He wanted to kiss so badly that it was almost enticing for him to postpone that pleasure.
“I’d love to.”
She slipped into his arms as if it was the most natural place in the world for her to be, and as far as Daniel was concerned, at this moment, in this place, it was. He took her in his arms, and there she was, tight and smooth and perfect. She put her head on his shoulder, and molded herself against him.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Your roommate won’t bother us. I slipped my panties on your doorknob.”
“You did what?”
“I slipped my panties over your doorknob. You know, to tell him that we’re busy and not to come in? Isn’t that what you boys do?”
“Generally, we use socks.”
“Ah. Well, I didn’t have any socks.”
Visions of Jenn naked beneath her tunic swirled in his mind. He wanted to grab her and throw her onto the bed and mount her like an animal. But he controlled himself.
Instead, they danced.
It was foreplay.
“I love this song,” she whispered against him. “Always have.”
He did not expect that. “So do I. You know it?”
“Of course. Family Ties.”
“The episode where Alex gets his first girlfriend—wait, what was her name?”
“Ellen. They danced to this song, and they kissed.”
“I remember. Mushy.”
Jenn lifted her head from his shoulder, and looked him in the eyes. The doused light from his lamp cast a shadow on her face, which he could not read. “Yeah. My mom always thought it was romantic. I thought it was sentimental.”
“Lovey-dovey.”
“Schmaltzy.”
“Who does that anyway?”
“Losers, clearly.”
He leaned toward her, and they kissed, a slow kiss that did not keep them from dancing, body against body. Daniel did not want to break the mood, but also wanted to run his hands down his girlfriend’s body and go explore for himself her lack of underwear. He was getting hard. And Jenn felt it.
“Someone’s happy,” she grinned, breaking the kiss, but remaining pressed against him. She shifted her hips against his erection.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I sort of didn’t think I’d see you for a while.”
“And you were thinking of sporting this monster for the whole vacation? Sounds painful.”
“No, but it did cross my mind to…” he almost blushed.
“Oh. I see. Want some help?” The way she said it made his cock even harder. “Mrs. Claus is feeling naughty tonight, what with Santa out on his trek around the world. She needs some attention.”
He kissed her again, and ran his hand down to her ass, under her tunic, luxuriating in the feeling of her naked cheeks, and confirming the absence of any underwear. Stretching he managed to run a finger down between her thighs and just tickle her slit from behind. He was not surprised to find her wet—Jenn got aroused easily.
“Someone’s being naughty,” she said with a shiver in her voice.
“Look who’s talking, Mrs. Claus. You’re drenched.”
“It gets so lonely at the North Pole when Santa’s gone. What’s a sex-starved woman to do?”
“I guess she’d have to find a man…”
“That’s why she dresses like a slut. It makes men hard. And when men are hard, they want to fuck her.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. She can tell when she looks in their eyes. They want to spread her legs as wide as they go and pound her into submission. And you know what?”
“What?”
She finished off whispering in his ear. “Mrs. Claus loves being pounded into submission.”
Daniel groaned, and Jenn laughed as she pushed both of them onto the bed. Daniel landed on his back, and Jenn straddled him, surprisingly nimble in her stiletto boots.
She kissed him hard, pressing her ass against his crotch, and he responded by putting one hand behind her head to keep her in place and using his free hand to flip her short tunic onto her back, baring her ass.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she moaned.
“Just providing better access.”
“You perv!”
“I’m not the one who showed up here like a wanton Mrs. Claus, am I?”
“I don’t see you—or feel you—complaining.” She punctuated her statement by pressing her crotch against his cock. Before Daniel could react, she slipped by his side and unfastened his trousers. “Your roommate didn’t seem to complain either.”
“So he’s the one that let you in then? I’ll bet he didn’t complain. I’ll have to have a little talk with him about rules. Oh fuck!”
Jenn had pulled his cock out and grasped it with a cold hand before running that hand up and down, slowly. Daniel closed his eyes and sank into the feeling.
“Don’t be mad at him,” she smiled as she stroked him, one of her legs draped over his. She was gently humping him, and that movement by itself was enough to drive Daniel wild. “He didn’t have much choice. I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”
“I’m sure,” Daniel moaned. He could just imagine Jimmy opening the door to the vision of loveliness that was Jenn. Jimmy had met her before, of course—but never when she was dressed like she was out looking for a wild time
He also had a pretty good idea what Jimmy had been jerking off to now, and Daniel did not quite know how to feel about that. On the one hand, there was pride kicking hard, that he had landed such a hot girl that his roommate masturbated to her memory. On the other, it was disconcerting that he was, and Daniel almost felt dirty because of it.
Jenn was jacking him off slowly, her eyes closed, unaware of what he was thinking. Or maybe she did.
“He was so cute. He couldn’t help staring at my legs, his mouth hanging open almost the whole time. Just adorable.”
She might as well have been talking about a puppy rather than a man ogling her, though Jimmy was admittedly inoffensive.
Jenn’s hand on Daniel’s cock danced up and down. “He let me come into your room and wait for you. But I feel bad now. Perhaps I should have waited out there, with him. I don’t know, maybe given him a little bit of Christmas cheer too. After all, that’s what Mrs. Claus does, no?”
“What do you mean?” He was having difficulty thinking, and Jenn had a way with words, and her voice was soothing and her hand was maddening. He wanted to flip her back onto the bed and fuck her, and at the same time wanted nothing more than just lie back and let her take him wherever she wanted him to go.
“I don’t know. Maybe I should have sat down on the couch with him? He’d have offered me tea, or something to drink—I don’t think he’d have tried to get me drunk, but maybe. And while drinking that tea, making sure I wasn’t burning myself, my tunic probably would have ridden up, and maybe just maybe I would have been distracted enough to not notice how I was spreading my legs and he would have gotten a peek of the pretty little G-string I wore for you tonight.” Her hand was stroking him faster now—did she pull out some lubricating gel without him noticing? Her hand felt wet.
“Except I didn’t get to see it.”
“It’s on the doorknob if you want to look.”
“Right—I’m pretty sure it’s gone by now.”
“What do you mean? Oh. Oh!” She looked up at him while jacking him off, his cock a steel bar in her hand, clamoring for release. She had a naughty smile on her face, and her voice dropped low. “You think he took it?” She sounded almost shocked, but her hand was a blur on his cock.
“Fuck, love, don’t stop! Yes, I’m pretty sure he took it. I would have!”
“But you’re a perv, we established that already. Jimmy is sweet and innocent.”
“Right. Sweet and innocent and probably jerking off into your panties as we speak.” He did not mention what Jimmy was doing earlier. He did not even know if what he was saying was true or not, and he did not care. He was in a particular headspace with Jenn, and he needed to come.
“Oh my God! He’s jerking off into my pretty little G-string? But it’s so tiny. I mean, it’s barely there, just a few strings and a bit of silk that covered my pussy! And he’s jacking off with them?”
“Urgh…” The pressure in his balls was starting to become unbearable. His hips were starting to move of their own volition. “Jenn…”
“That’s so weird—to think he’s jerking off in my panties. It’s like he’s fucking a little part of me. I feel so… violated.” She made eye contact with Daniel, and winked at him before giggling, never letting his cock go.
“Jenn, I’m gonna come…”
“Do it, lover. Come for me.”
Her hand was a blur. And then she did something that she had never done before—she leaned over and took the head of his cock in her mouth, and sucked.
He had no idea what she was doing with her tongue or her teeth or anything else, but what he felt was an overload of sensations, centered on his cock. And then he grunted out loud and grasped his sheets with clenched fists as he exploded, and Jenn never stopped stroking him and never let his cock slip out of her mouth as she swallowed everything he discharged.
He collapsed back on the bed, realizing that he had been crunching up in a painful spasm throughout his orgasm.
“Yum,” she said, licking her lips and gently caressing his sensitive glans.
Daniel merely groaned in response.
Jenn laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” She slipped up to lie beside him, wiping her lips with the edge of his sheet.
“That was… that was incredible,” he sighed. He took a few breaths, then frowned. “You didn’t have to do that, you know.”
“Oh, I did,” she said. “Laura was right.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” she laughed, and hugged him tight. He knew she wanted to kiss him, but probably feared how he might react, and so he leaned over and kissed her. She stiffened for a second and then relaxed into the kiss.
“Can you spend the night?” he asked her. It was against the rules, but at this point, he did not care much. He did not want to let her go.
“I certainly hope so,” she replied. “In case you didn’t notice, I have a very wet pussy here that will require a lot of attention.”
“Would some of that attention take the form of me sinking between your thighs and licking you into oblivion.”
Jenn shivered. “Definitely.”
And Daniel did. And Jenn came. And they fucked. And they both came once more.
And the next day, when the weather cleared and bus service was resumed, Daniel followed Jenn to Maine and spent Christmas with her and her mother.
And they had a most wonderful time.
Ghosts of Christmas Past (Part 3)
(Christmas 2010)
The party was hitting full force. Little radiated more energy than a large group of college students past their final what-not—exams, projects, papers—and needing to unwind after a stressful session. The music was harsh and loud and assaulted the senses even more than the lighting and the crush of bodies as one walked through the dance area. Alcohol flowed freely.
Daniel Malcolm was nursing a dark beer he had pilfered from a table set up for that purpose at one end of the large basement room the party organizers had commandeered, somewhere in a half-abandoned building on campus. It was not a rave but it had been orchestrated as one, with its location advertised by word of mouth. Daniel suspected that the University knew about the party; while they could not officially sanction it for all the obvious reasons, it was better to have such an event occur under quasi-supervision rather than having it take place completely outside its jurisdiction. The two dead giveaways were the near total lack of freshmen, and the absence of drugs.
“I find it somewhat unexpected that there is a preponderance of alcoholic beverages over hallucinogenic and mind-altering substances at this event,” said Radhu Krishnamurthy quizzically, not for the first time voicing exactly what had been going through Daniel’s mind. Then again, perhaps I’m not very good at hiding what I think, he reflected. Jenn certainly seems to think so.
The though of his brand new girlfriend—Jennifer Hansen, smart, sexy, beautiful, wholly undeserved, and conspicuously absent from this Holiday party, the last before everyone split off to their respective family homes for Winter Break—made his heart ache. Which surprised him. He itched to call her again, the fourth time this evening, but was fighting hard not to. Appearing too needy was never a smart way to go. Calling a few times to tell her he missed her already was cute and romantic—sentimental, he could almost hear her correct him, a smile in her voice—but more than that was pathetic.
He turned instead to his Indian friend, tall and lanky and holding a glass of punch whose neon color gave no clue as to its ingredients but suggested nothing healthy. Radhu did not take well to alcohol. It made his already idiosyncratic behavior even more… idiosyncratic.
“Perhaps I should venture to dance tonight,” Radhu said, and Daniel feared that his friend was serious. Daniel had seen Radhu dance before. He was actually a good dancer, unexpectedly so given his gangly body. He had learned to dance watching Bollywood movies, Radhu had told him early in their freshman year when they lived on the same dormitory floor. But Bollywood-style choreography did not mesh well with the mosh-pit slamming that passed for dancing at this point of the party.
“Maybe you can do that later, Rad.”
“Very well. You look absent, Daniel. Are you thinking of Jennifer again?”
Daniel sighed. Radhu was perceptive, in his own way. “Yeah. Guilty. I miss her. Weird, I know. But there it is. She’s off to her mother for the break, and wanted to leave early to beat the storm.”
“Snopocalypse. It does sound pleasantly apocalyptic.”
“I’d argue your use of pleasant when my girlfriend’s on a Greyhound heading north.”
“I was referring to the lexical entity, not the denotation of said lexical entity, but fair point.”
Two month. He and Jenn had been dating two months now, and he already had her under his skin. He was hooked, and hooked bad, his stepbrother would have called it. And Daniel could not deny it. While they did not spend every minute of every day together, she was never far from his mind. They talked several hours every day, either in person or on the phone or via chat. It scared him a bit, too, this longing he felt that he had not know could be triggered in him. She seemed to feel the same—that by itself Daniel found astonishing—but she also took it in stride, as if she had always expected to feel that way and was merely glad it happened with him.
“Jeez, are you already pinning for her? It’s been what, an hour?” came the mocking voice from his left. “You’re pussy-whipped but good, boy!”
Daniel grinned. Only one person could wield that combination of come-hither and mocking in a single voice. Serena Banks strode toward him in a pair of jeans that looked like their were sprayed on and a tank top that left little of what it was meant to cover to the imagination. The top was white and stood out delightfully against her dark skin. With her long hair, full lips, and more curves than anyone would know how to handle, she was sexy, she knew it, and took full advantage.
She was studying journalism, and worked at the University paper. And she was good at it. Although how much investigative reporting one could do in a small town lost in the middle of nowhere New England remained up for debate.
“Hey Serena. How are you?” he greeted her, raising his bottle to bang it against what looked like an oversized cocktail glass. How did she manage to find a cocktail here?
“Fucking elated,” she said. “Term paper for Media During Reagan submitted and out of my face forever. Can’t help but wonder how things would have gone if we had the Internet back then. What do you think, Rad?” She asked the lanky Indian.
Radhu had still not said a word. He was gaping like a lost puppy, not an atypical reaction of his to Serena’s presence. That Radhu had a crush on the black journalism student was the worst kept secret, although everyone acted as though they did not know, Serena first. But she liked teasing the poor boy.
Daniel had asked her point blank once whether she would ever date Radhu. She had merely shrugged. “If he ever gets the balls to ask me out, we’ll see. I am curious whether he’s long and thin all over.”
And so Daniel had been pushing Radhu to ask Serena out. But he resisted—Daniel suspected that Radhu not only feared rejection but also acceptance. He worried what he would have to do on a date with her. Somehow, pining for Serena felt safer than dating her.
“Rad,” said Daniel, subtly kicking his friend whose gaze was threatening to dip down to the generous cleavage of Serena’s tank top. “Hypothetical: how would the 1980’s presidential elections have differed had the Internet been around?”
The direct question snapped Radhu out of his reverie.
“Oh. Well, I would submit that the results would have been sensibly similar. Ronald Reagan had a strong following, that is undeniable, and the Internet would have undoubtedly exacerbated the outpouring of support. The main impediment to the Reagan campaign I would surmise would have been his behavior during his Hollywood years, from which secrets might have emerged. I am basing this on the assumption that the Internet would have fostered the release of information from those years, not unlike what happened to Rock Hudson whose secrets came to light once there was a vector on which to promulgate them. I posit that these two conflicting directions would have annihilated each other.”
Serena made a face. “I wonder if the added scrutiny would have picked up on the fact that he had Alzheimer’s?”
Radhu arched an eyebrow in a way that Daniel could not help but find highly amusing. “There is no proof that Reagan was ill during his presidency.”
Serena grunted. “What about falling asleep at meetings?”
“I will offer the evidence of your own falling asleep in class as the first exhibit in a counter-argument. Do you believe you have Alzheimer’s disease?”
Before the conversation could degenerate further, Serena squealed as a pair of large hands grabbed her breasts from behind. “Guess who?” came a drunken voice.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Serena grinned, wrapping her hands over the man’s, and pressing them more firmly over her large breasts. “You got here before my boyfriend, so you get the spoils. Wanna fuck?”
“Wait, what?” came the man’s confused voice. Serena turned around and kissed the man, who was about the same height as her but twice her width—a mountain of muscles, and not much else. Serena’s current boyfriend.
Daniel shook his head and smiled. Serena liked sex, and liked it with a particular class of men: big and strong. And dumb as doorknobs, Jenn would have added.
Radhu, meanwhile, watched with longing in his eyes Serena kiss her boyfriend—all of a week old, and with probably a week or so to go—and watched the man’s hands dip down to Serena’s ass to squeeze it.
“I’m gonna go dance with my man,” Serena said over her shoulder. “You boys behave. And you,” she said to Daniel, “quit sulking. You’ll see your little sexpot soon enough. Ta!”
Daniel and Radhu watched her sashay her way through the crowd, her boyfriend trailing behind her.
“Special, isn’t she?” Daniel said to Radhu. It was a rhetorical question.
“That she is,” Radhu replied, wonder in his voice.
* * *
Daniel did not last more than twenty more minutes before calling it a night. His melancholy mood was not helped by the people and the music and the thrumming of the bass in his bones, and the last thing he wanted was to be a downer to his friends.
Radhu had run into a fellow student from one of his Computer Science classes, and they soon became engrossed in what Daniel guessed was the redesign of a popular online role-playing game. Serena had gone off in a corner to make out with her boyfriend, and while she had always made it clear that he would be welcome in a threesome, not only did Daniel not particularly want to join in, but he surmised that Serena’s new boyfriend would consider such an intrusion as the perfect opportunity to see if it was possible to rip a body in two like a telephone book.
It was a half-hour walk back to his dormitory, and while the night was not especially cold for December, the snow fell thick and heavy, the wind sending it twirling around the trees. He walked and listened to the silence all around him, that special silence that only a snow-blanketed night could provide. He wondered whether Jenn was okay, whether the snow would make the bus drive treacherous, familiar as he was with New England winters—but then, so was she. He fought back the urge to call her. He even shut off his phone to avoid the temptation.
The lobby of his dormitory was empty, most of the students having already left for the Holidays. Daniel was scheduled to depart in two days himself, but he felt less drive than usual. His mother and his stepfather Gerald had left for the Bahamas to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. He had been invited, as had his stepbrother Sam. The sixteen year old Sam had jumped at the opportunity to go off and hang out on the beach and ogle beautiful bodies.
Daniel understood that impulse, of course—though his own preferences ran to female bodies as opposed to male bodies, unlike Sam—but he had no desire to spend Christmas in the Caribbean. There was too much for him to do over the break—he was doing some undergraduate research work for one of his Foreign Policy teachers that he hoped would help him land an internship in DC come summer—and the thought of being out in the sun while he missed Jenn felt strangely like a betrayal. And so he was heading down to spend the Holidays with his aunt Selma and her family.
He opened the door to the rooms he shared with Jimmy, a quiet and shy sophomore. Daniel had lucked out: Jimmy was the perfect roommate. Daniel wandered whether the feeling was shared. He thought he was pretty easy-going as a roommate, but it was difficult to be objective about such a thing.
There was a light coming from Jimmy’s room, and Daniel expected him to be playing a video game, as he was wont to do most nights.
“Hey Jimmy,” he said. No response. He poked his head through the door, and saw Jimmy at his desk, his oversized headphones dwarfing his head, his eyes closed, his arm pumping up and down in a characteristic fashion with a hand in his lap.
He was masturbating.
Daniel grinned and silently stepped away from Jimmy’s door and headed to his room.
His room was small, but he had grown to like it. A bed against the wall, a working desk with his laptop at its foot, a small nightstand. A small bookshelf, a dresser. It was small but cozy, and he had decorated it in a way that reminded him of home.
He eschewed the harsh overhead light for the small lamp on his desk that gave the soothing warm glow he preferred, and wondered what he would do for the rest of the night. He was not sleepy. Watch television? Read a book? Stare at the walls? Maybe Jimmy had the right idea and he should masturbate.
He turned on the radio, and selected a soft rock channel. Soul music. Romantic. Mellow. Exactly his mood.
“Hello lover.”
Daniel jumped at the sound of the voice, nearly smashing his head against a hanging shelf by his desk.
He spun around, his heart in his throat.
Jenn was there, leaning against the door, dressed in a way that cause his breath to catch. If one imagined a sexy Christmas-themed costume, it would come close to what she wore: a short red tunic with a large black belt, fur-trimmed, zipped up but leaving a cleavage that rivaled the one that Serena was sporting earlier that evening. Her perfect legs looked like they were bare at first, but close attention hinted at the presence of a thin pair of nude stockings. The outfit was topped off by a pair of black boots with a stiletto heel. In a word, she was stunning. And more importantly, she was there.
“What… what are you doing here? I thought…”
She grinned, and shrugged. She had a red Santa Claus hat on her head. “Weather sucked. They canceled all bus routes for the night, and we may not even be able to leave tomorrow if the snow’s too bad. I figured you wouldn’t mind me dropping by and surprising you.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“And miss that expression on your face? Let me tell you, you do know how to make a girl feel pretty.”
“Trust me, it’s no hardship. You look… you look beautiful!”
“You are so sweet. And that deserves a reward.”
“Does it now?”
“Oh yes.” She pushed back from the door and walked towards him, slowly, making sure to swing her hip like a model on a catwalk.
The radio played its part. It was playing an old ballad, one that Daniel had always liked, that he had first heard on that sitcom that first introduced Michael J. Fox to the world, before Back to the Future.
What did you think
I would do at this moment
When you’re standing before me
With tears in your eyes
“Care to dance?” Jenn asked, a step away from him. He wanted to kiss so badly that it was almost enticing for him to postpone that pleasure.
“I’d love to.”
She slipped into his arms as if it was the most natural place in the world for her to be, and as far as Daniel was concerned, at this moment, in this place, it was. He took her in his arms, and there she was, tight and smooth and perfect. She put her head on his shoulder, and molded herself against him.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Your roommate won’t bother us. I slipped my panties on your doorknob.”
“You did what?”
“I slipped my panties over your doorknob. You know, to tell him that we’re busy and not to come in? Isn’t that what you boys do?”
“Generally, we use socks.”
“Ah. Well, I didn’t have any socks.”
Visions of Jenn naked beneath her tunic swirled in his mind. He wanted to grab her and throw her onto the bed and mount her like an animal. But he controlled himself.
Instead, they danced.
It was foreplay.
“I love this song,” she whispered against him. “Always have.”
He did not expect that. “So do I. You know it?”
“Of course. Family Ties.”
“The episode where Alex gets his first girlfriend—wait, what was her name?”
“Ellen. They danced to this song, and they kissed.”
“I remember. Mushy.”
Jenn lifted her head from his shoulder, and looked him in the eyes. The doused light from his lamp cast a shadow on her face, which he could not read. “Yeah. My mom always thought it was romantic. I thought it was sentimental.”
“Lovey-dovey.”
“Schmaltzy.”
“Who does that anyway?”
“Losers, clearly.”
He leaned toward her, and they kissed, a slow kiss that did not keep them from dancing, body against body. Daniel did not want to break the mood, but also wanted to run his hands down his girlfriend’s body and go explore for himself her lack of underwear. He was getting hard. And Jenn felt it.
“Someone’s happy,” she grinned, breaking the kiss, but remaining pressed against him. She shifted her hips against his erection.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I sort of didn’t think I’d see you for a while.”
“And you were thinking of sporting this monster for the whole vacation? Sounds painful.”
“No, but it did cross my mind to…” he almost blushed.
“Oh. I see. Want some help?” The way she said it made his cock even harder. “Mrs. Claus is feeling naughty tonight, what with Santa out on his trek around the world. She needs some attention.”
He kissed her again, and ran his hand down to her ass, under her tunic, luxuriating in the feeling of her naked cheeks, and confirming the absence of any underwear. Stretching he managed to run a finger down between her thighs and just tickle her slit from behind. He was not surprised to find her wet—Jenn got aroused easily.
“Someone’s being naughty,” she said with a shiver in her voice.
“Look who’s talking, Mrs. Claus. You’re drenched.”
“It gets so lonely at the North Pole when Santa’s gone. What’s a sex-starved woman to do?”
“I guess she’d have to find a man…”
“That’s why she dresses like a slut. It makes men hard. And when men are hard, they want to fuck her.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. She can tell when she looks in their eyes. They want to spread her legs as wide as they go and pound her into submission. And you know what?”
“What?”
She finished off whispering in his ear. “Mrs. Claus loves being pounded into submission.”
Daniel groaned, and Jenn laughed as she pushed both of them onto the bed. Daniel landed on his back, and Jenn straddled him, surprisingly nimble in her stiletto boots.
She kissed him hard, pressing her ass against his crotch, and he responded by putting one hand behind her head to keep her in place and using his free hand to flip her short tunic onto her back, baring her ass.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she moaned.
“Just providing better access.”
“You perv!”
“I’m not the one who showed up here like a wanton Mrs. Claus, am I?”
“I don’t see you—or feel you—complaining.” She punctuated her statement by pressing her crotch against his cock. Before Daniel could react, she slipped by his side and unfastened his trousers. “Your roommate didn’t seem to complain either.”
“So he’s the one that let you in then? I’ll bet he didn’t complain. I’ll have to have a little talk with him about rules. Oh fuck!”
Jenn had pulled his cock out and grasped it with a cold hand before running that hand up and down, slowly. Daniel closed his eyes and sank into the feeling.
“Don’t be mad at him,” she smiled as she stroked him, one of her legs draped over his. She was gently humping him, and that movement by itself was enough to drive Daniel wild. “He didn’t have much choice. I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”
“I’m sure,” Daniel moaned. He could just imagine Jimmy opening the door to the vision of loveliness that was Jenn. Jimmy had met her before, of course—but never when she was dressed like she was out looking for a wild time
He also had a pretty good idea what Jimmy had been jerking off to now, and Daniel did not quite know how to feel about that. On the one hand, there was pride kicking hard, that he had landed such a hot girl that his roommate masturbated to her memory. On the other, it was disconcerting that he was, and Daniel almost felt dirty because of it.
Jenn was jacking him off slowly, her eyes closed, unaware of what he was thinking. Or maybe she did.
“He was so cute. He couldn’t help staring at my legs, his mouth hanging open almost the whole time. Just adorable.”
She might as well have been talking about a puppy rather than a man ogling her, though Jimmy was admittedly inoffensive.
Jenn’s hand on Daniel’s cock danced up and down. “He let me come into your room and wait for you. But I feel bad now. Perhaps I should have waited out there, with him. I don’t know, maybe given him a little bit of Christmas cheer too. After all, that’s what Mrs. Claus does, no?”
“What do you mean?” He was having difficulty thinking, and Jenn had a way with words, and her voice was soothing and her hand was maddening. He wanted to flip her back onto the bed and fuck her, and at the same time wanted nothing more than just lie back and let her take him wherever she wanted him to go.
“I don’t know. Maybe I should have sat down on the couch with him? He’d have offered me tea, or something to drink—I don’t think he’d have tried to get me drunk, but maybe. And while drinking that tea, making sure I wasn’t burning myself, my tunic probably would have ridden up, and maybe just maybe I would have been distracted enough to not notice how I was spreading my legs and he would have gotten a peek of the pretty little G-string I wore for you tonight.” Her hand was stroking him faster now—did she pull out some lubricating gel without him noticing? Her hand felt wet.
“Except I didn’t get to see it.”
“It’s on the doorknob if you want to look.”
“Right—I’m pretty sure it’s gone by now.”
“What do you mean? Oh. Oh!” She looked up at him while jacking him off, his cock a steel bar in her hand, clamoring for release. She had a naughty smile on her face, and her voice dropped low. “You think he took it?” She sounded almost shocked, but her hand was a blur on his cock.
“Fuck, love, don’t stop! Yes, I’m pretty sure he took it. I would have!”
“But you’re a perv, we established that already. Jimmy is sweet and innocent.”
“Right. Sweet and innocent and probably jerking off into your panties as we speak.” He did not mention what Jimmy was doing earlier. He did not even know if what he was saying was true or not, and he did not care. He was in a particular headspace with Jenn, and he needed to come.
“Oh my God! He’s jerking off into my pretty little G-string? But it’s so tiny. I mean, it’s barely there, just a few strings and a bit of silk that covered my pussy! And he’s jacking off with them?”
“Urgh…” The pressure in his balls was starting to become unbearable. His hips were starting to move of their own volition. “Jenn…”
“That’s so weird—to think he’s jerking off in my panties. It’s like he’s fucking a little part of me. I feel so… violated.” She made eye contact with Daniel, and winked at him before giggling, never letting his cock go.
“Jenn, I’m gonna come…”
“Do it, lover. Come for me.”
Her hand was a blur. And then she did something that she had never done before—she leaned over and took the head of his cock in her mouth, and sucked.
He had no idea what she was doing with her tongue or her teeth or anything else, but what he felt was an overload of sensations, centered on his cock. And then he grunted out loud and grasped his sheets with clenched fists as he exploded, and Jenn never stopped stroking him and never let his cock slip out of her mouth as she swallowed everything he discharged.
He collapsed back on the bed, realizing that he had been crunching up in a painful spasm throughout his orgasm.
“Yum,” she said, licking her lips and gently caressing his sensitive glans.
Daniel merely groaned in response.
Jenn laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” She slipped up to lie beside him, wiping her lips with the edge of his sheet.
“That was… that was incredible,” he sighed. He took a few breaths, then frowned. “You didn’t have to do that, you know.”
“Oh, I did,” she said. “Laura was right.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” she laughed, and hugged him tight. He knew she wanted to kiss him, but probably feared how he might react, and so he leaned over and kissed her. She stiffened for a second and then relaxed into the kiss.
“Can you spend the night?” he asked her. It was against the rules, but at this point, he did not care much. He did not want to let her go.
“I certainly hope so,” she replied. “In case you didn’t notice, I have a very wet pussy here that will require a lot of attention.”
“Would some of that attention take the form of me sinking between your thighs and licking you into oblivion.”
Jenn shivered. “Definitely.”
And Daniel did. And Jenn came. And they fucked. And they both came once more.
And the next day, when the weather cleared and bus service was resumed, Daniel followed Jenn to Maine and spent Christmas with her and her mother.
And they had a most wonderful time.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
New Story: Ghosts of Christmas Past (Part 2)
Part 2 of 3.
Ghosts of Christmas Past (Part 2)
(Christmas 2007)
It’s way past two in the morning when Laura drops me off at home. It was a kind thing for her to do—my house is out of the way, out of town, isolated. And December snow in this part of Maine can get pretty treacherous. But Laura’s a good driver, and I had no other way to get home because cabs are few and far between at this time of the night and they hate coming so far out.
Laura didn’t drink at the party. She’s sixteen, she loves to have fun, but she’s also the most responsible girl I know. It’s a weird mix, but one I’m grateful for. I tried to be as good as she was, and only had two shots the whole evening. Then I nursed a piña colada for much of the night. That’s the trick, it seems: if you’re holding a glass, people don’t bug you to get something else. Especially if they’re pretty hammered themselves.
My name is Jennifer Hansen, and it’s Christmas Eve—well, by now, it’s really Christmas Day—and I’m coming back home after what I consider a very successful party, my first real one. It was a Christmas party, though everyone made it a point to avoid calling it that explicitly. Christmas parties are dorky, of course, the sort of things kids like, or parents who work in an office and whine about everything and everyone while they figure out what to get for “their fucking Yankee swap.” (Direct quote from Laura’s mother, I swear. The woman is a hoot and a half.)
It was a glorious party. Lots of fun folks from school—the good crowd, the fun crowd, the almost-but-not-quite popular crowd—were there. And Sebastian was there. Sebastian, nearly six and a half feet tall and skinny as a bone, and smart and funny and a boy that maybe just maybe might like me. And a hell of a kisser, too, I discovered. I blush as I think back to the half hour we spent with me sitting on his lap in the lounge chair, and my blush is half from the memory and half from the biting cold.
Behind me, Laura honks as she navigates my driveway and heads back to her own place.
I go inside. Winter jacket off, boots off, and I’m back in my knit black dress Mom convinced me to wear if I really “wanted to snag that boy I wanted” even though I’m not used to wearing stuff that isn’t denim. I did put on pantyhose though—not only because of the cold, but also because I couldn’t make it too easy for those pesky boys and their wandering hands. Not that it kept Sebastian away, of course.
There’s that heat again that spreads throughout my body at the memory of Sebastian’s hands on me, sliding up my sensitive thighs as I sat on his lap in that lounge chair, kissing softly, my skin on fire. Laura teased me that I was acting like a slut—she’s one to talk. She lost her virginity two years ago, doing it with her brother’s best friend while vacationing. She said it was good but not great. That her dildo felt much better. She’s been fucking around ever since though, and none the worse for wear. The only thing she doesn’t do is oral; she says that taking a boy’s dick in your mouth is one of the most intimate things you can do, because it’s a gift, done purely for the boy’s pleasure.
I’m in no rush myself. Still a virgin at sixteen. I like my fingers a lot, too. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a boy’s hands on me. Sebastian’s hands. I can’t help but imagine what it’ll feel like when I lie down in my bed later on—that bed with the nice winter flannel sheets, the kind that warm up in no time—when I slide my hand into the waistband of my pajamas, on my fuzzy little peach, finding it all wet with anticipation, picturing Sebastian’s hand in its place, tickling me, rubbing me, fucking me. I’m going to come so easily that I’m practically shaking already.
Maybe I won’t even put on my pajamas. Maybe I’ll just lie on the bed in my dress, and pull it about and slide my hand beneath my pantyhose and imagine I’m still at the party, with Sebastian taking liberties with me, touching me—oh yes, that’ll do it.
That’s when I notice that the television is on in the living room, the sound a simple murmur in the background. Peeking around the corner, I see the shadows it casts on the hallway wall.
I shake my head. For once, I’ll be able to reprimand Mom about leaving the television on. I’m usually the culprit. Not that it’s really my fault—it’s just so much part of the background sometimes, just white noise, that I forget it’s even on. Then again, maybe I’m the one who left it on this time as well. Maybe it’s been on all night, entertaining the Christmas tree and the elves.
My mom’s gone off to her own Christmas party, with her new boyfriend, Luke or Luca or something like that. Nice guy. Body of a Greek god, the kind that artists like my mother die to get a chance to sculpt or paint. Which is how Mom met him: posing for one of her sculpture classes at the local community college.
We went our separate way her and I this Christmas Eve. First time ever. She was stressed about it. I admit, it felt weird, but also exciting. A bit of an adventure. A big step into the world of—let me say it—adulthood. That we both had parties to get to was the excuse: me with my friends, her with an overnighter at Luke/Luca’s place with some of his friends. My party was also supposed to be an overnighter, but to be honest, I was getting pretty tired of it by the end, and the gang seemed ready to go on for several more hours. So when Laura told me she had to go, I hitched a ride.
Mom and I are supposed to meet at IHOP tomorrow morning for a late breakfast. Luke/Luca knows the owner, and we can beat the predictable line.
I’m fantasizing about what sort of pancakes I’m going to have as I go in to shut the television.
“Hi sweetie. How was your party?”
I nearly jump out of my skin! In the dark, on the couch, barely illuminated by the glow of the screen, is my mom—a glass of wine in her hand, her feet up on the coffee table. She’s in her dressing gown.
“Mom! Jesus! You scared the shit out of me!”
“Language, young lady.”
“Well, excuse me, but you just gave me a heart attack—that should cut me just a tiny bit of slack!”
She shrugs. “Sorry. I thought you heard the TV.”
I look at her, taking in the scene. I can’t tell you how I know, but she’s been here all evening, I can tell. She didn’t go out. No party for Mom.
I drop down on the couch beside her. On the large television screen, our one decadent luxury, almost larger than life, I spot Michael J. Fox in his old eighties sitcom, Family Ties. I know it well, somewhat unfortunately, because it’s one of my mom’s favorite series. That, and Golden Girls. She has all the DVDs, some in duplicate. I prefer Fox in Spin City myself.
Mom only goes through a Family Ties binge for one reason.
“How was the party?” she asks.
“Party was good.” I snuggle up next to her and she accepts me because she’s my mom and she’ll always accept me that way and there’s never been any question about it. I have to remind myself regularly not to take it for granted. “Kick-ass beer pong tournament.”
She turns her eyes on me, trying to gauge how much I drank. I grin after a long pause. “Don’t worry. I watched a Terminator marathon with Laura and folks in the living room.”
“All three? Or is it four now?”
“I dropped off after the second.”
Mom nods knowingly. “Second was the best.” She takes a sip of her wine. White. Sparkling. Our New Year’s Eve bottle, I’m guessing. Shit.
“Oh yeah,” I second. “That music…” On cue, we both thump the theme from Terminator 2, that industrial drum beat that sticks in your head like nothing else. Then we chuckle. I snuggle up closer.
On the television screen, Michael J. Fox is having an argument with what will turn out to be his first girl on the show, Tracy Pollan. I’ve always preferred the other one, the brunette, Courtney Cox, pre-Friends. I’ve always thought she was prettier. And smart. Probably because I’m a brunette myself, and not too dumb.
“That’s the episode where they get together, right? They go to this school dance and they kiss and she runs away and then she’s catching a train to go and marry her boyfriend and Alex drives all night to catch her before her train arrives to tell her that he loves her?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Super hokey. Like gag-me hokey. I mean, come on!”
“My daughter the romantic.”
“That’s not romantic, it’s… sentimental. At best. And cheaply so, too. I mean, at least have him jump on the train that’s just leaving only to discover that she stayed at the station hoping he would come by and stop her and poof, you’ve got room for a lot more development. This is… too easy.”
“Sometimes easy is good.”
“But it doesn’t make for satisfying storytelling.”
“My daughter the critic.”
“Hey, if you didn’t want a smart daughter, you shouldn’t have raised me as one.”
“I didn’t do anything but try to hang on tight as you became wonderful all by yourself.” There is something in her voice, and I don’t say a thing as I stay there against her.
We are silent for a while. On the screen, Michael J. Fox is at the college party—which looks so much dorkier than the one I’ve just come back from it’s actually pretty funny—looking forlorn. That haunting song is playing in the background—What did you think I would do at this moment? I love that song. It’s also fucking sentimental. But I don’t care. Just don’t tell my mom. She’d never let me live it down.
We listen to the song. At least I do. I don’t know what my mom is thinking, but I listen to her heartbeat.
Tracy Pollan runs away. The song ends.
“Mom, what happened?” My voice is low, and I wonder if she even heard me. Then I feel the shrug more than I hear her words.
“Nothing.”
“Mom, you spent Christmas Eve by yourself.” It was not a question.
“I wasn’t by myself, I had the Keatons.” The Keatons. That ideal through-thick-and-thin family. My mom’s an incredibly well-adjusted divorced woman who’s not looking for a long-term partner because she thinks all men are fundamentally scum, except when she’s down, and then she likes to compare her life to idealized Hollywood versions. A recipe for disaster, that.
“Mom?” My voice gets harder. I don’t like this. She should not have been alone. Not on Christmas Eve.
She shrugs again. “Didn’t work out with Lucas. We’re at… different stages. We want different things.” She answers the question I do not want to ask. “I let him down easy two days ago.”
At least she’s the one who broke it off.
“And you didn’t tell me because…?”
A long silence. “Did you snag that boy you wanted to snag? What was his name?”
“Sebastian—you know full well his name’s Sebastian—and don’t try to change the subject.”
“I’m not changing the subject. You wanted to know why I didn’t tell you? Because you wouldn’t have gone to that party. And I can tell you did snag that Sebastian boy. Like he had any chance at all. You used protection, right?”
“Mom!” I slap her arm. “I did not sleep with him! We kissed! That’s all! And you’re damn right I wouldn’t have gone to that stupid party if I knew you’d be spending Christmas Eve here all alone moping over reruns.”
“First off, watch your language. Second I wasn’t moping. I was just hanging out and watching some good television.”
“And getting drunk.”
“Not drunk. Buzzed, maybe. Celebrating my new-found freedom.”
“I should have been here with you.”
“Not your call to make. You’ve been talking about that party for the past two weeks. That party, and that Sebastian. I wasn’t going to take that away from you because I’m too picky about my male companions.”
“Well, that wasn’t your call to make either.”
She shrugs. “Next time, we’ll use the eight ball, okay? I wanted my only daughter happy. I won’t be convinced that it’s a bad thing. And don’t worry, I’m fine. Beside, a bit of sadness isn’t bad once in a while. It’s inspiring.” She nods towards a sketchbook on the coffee table. “I got a few ideas for the Spring Expo.”
“You know I don’t like that self-sacrificing crap.”
“It’s romantic,” mom said with a small smile.
“No it’s not. That’s also sentimental.”
“Not the ending you’d have written?”
“Definitely not.” I lean back against her, close my eyes. “Let’s see. You’ve have gone to a club, one that throws a big Christmas bash with gaudy costumes and you’d have been wearing one of those super sexy Mrs. Claus costumes and you’d have met a nice man dressed as an elf or a reindeer and you’d have laughed and chatted the whole night and he would have loved the fact that you’re an artist and he would have asked you all sorts of questions about it and he would not even have been bored when you told him how cubism was such a revelation to the world and how Dali didn’t know what he was talking about it and it wouldn’t have been until you crawled back here that you would have even noticed that you still didn’t know anything about him since he only wanted to talk about you and how wonderful and talented you were and all you knew was that he was kind and warm and loving and also a hunk in that nondescript and subtle way and that he had slipped you his phone number before putting you in a cab while still gallantly staring one last time at your legs to let you know that he found you sexy as hell but that he was too gentlemanly to take advantage of you then but that he hoped you would want to sleep with him even though he was not twenty any more and didn’t model for artists in the region.”
Mom is silent for a long while. “Who’s sentimental now?” she asked in a voice that was choked up a little bit.
I choose not to answer, and she hugs me tight. I sink into that hug as if I were a kid again.
On the television screen, Michael J. Fox was lamenting having missed Tracy Pollan at the train station, not knowing she was in the restrooms.
“So how was Sebastian?” Mom asks, and I can detect a smile in her voice, and it sounds like a genuine smile, and it’s not until much later than I realize how wonderful it made me feel to know that I pulled her out of her melancholy mood.
“He’s a great kisser,” I reply after some hesitation.
“That’s good to hear. A man with a good tongue is a prize to be cherished.”
“Mom!” I blush as I pick up her double-entendre, which I know is fully intended. She gets raunchy when she’s had wine.
“Did you really not sleep with him?”
“Mom! What do you think I am? Some sort of slut?”
“No. A sixteen-year old girl with a raging libido, a young healthy body, and a dress tight enough to make any hetero boy drool.”
“You chose that dress for me!”
“Because it fits you like a goddess. What’s wrong with that Sebastian boy anyway?”
“What?”
“If he didn’t want to screw you, something’s wrong with him.”
“Mom!” I don’t know if she’s pulling my leg. It’s hard to tell with her sometimes.
“I’m just saying…”
A long silence again. On the television screen, Fox and Pollan have resolved their differences, and they kiss, in the train station.
“He did want to,” I admit, my voice soft. “Screw me, I mean.”
“Oh? He told you?”
“I felt it—him. When I was on his lap.”
“While you were kissing?”
“Yeah.”
“How did it feel?” It wasn’t a prying question. There is genuine curiosity in her voice. And love.
“Good. Felt very good. And scary. Like… like things are just on the verge of veering out of control but you don’t really mind.”
“Yeah, love feels that way.”
I’m not sure it’s love, but I’m also not sure she’s talking about me either.
“You sleepy?” she asks as the show ends.
“Not really.”
“Feel like making some pancakes and some eggnog and watch something else?”
“It’s three in the morning.”
“So? You got anywhere you need to be tomorrow morning?”
“No…” I guess the IHOP date is canceled.
“Well then. You’re the one who didn’t want to leave your poor old lonely mother alone on Christmas Eve.”
I make a stab-to-the-heart motion. “Fine,” I say, as I stand up and offer her a hand. “One condition though.”
“Oh?”
“We watch some Buffy next.”
Ghosts of Christmas Past (Part 2)
(Christmas 2007)
It’s way past two in the morning when Laura drops me off at home. It was a kind thing for her to do—my house is out of the way, out of town, isolated. And December snow in this part of Maine can get pretty treacherous. But Laura’s a good driver, and I had no other way to get home because cabs are few and far between at this time of the night and they hate coming so far out.
Laura didn’t drink at the party. She’s sixteen, she loves to have fun, but she’s also the most responsible girl I know. It’s a weird mix, but one I’m grateful for. I tried to be as good as she was, and only had two shots the whole evening. Then I nursed a piña colada for much of the night. That’s the trick, it seems: if you’re holding a glass, people don’t bug you to get something else. Especially if they’re pretty hammered themselves.
My name is Jennifer Hansen, and it’s Christmas Eve—well, by now, it’s really Christmas Day—and I’m coming back home after what I consider a very successful party, my first real one. It was a Christmas party, though everyone made it a point to avoid calling it that explicitly. Christmas parties are dorky, of course, the sort of things kids like, or parents who work in an office and whine about everything and everyone while they figure out what to get for “their fucking Yankee swap.” (Direct quote from Laura’s mother, I swear. The woman is a hoot and a half.)
It was a glorious party. Lots of fun folks from school—the good crowd, the fun crowd, the almost-but-not-quite popular crowd—were there. And Sebastian was there. Sebastian, nearly six and a half feet tall and skinny as a bone, and smart and funny and a boy that maybe just maybe might like me. And a hell of a kisser, too, I discovered. I blush as I think back to the half hour we spent with me sitting on his lap in the lounge chair, and my blush is half from the memory and half from the biting cold.
Behind me, Laura honks as she navigates my driveway and heads back to her own place.
I go inside. Winter jacket off, boots off, and I’m back in my knit black dress Mom convinced me to wear if I really “wanted to snag that boy I wanted” even though I’m not used to wearing stuff that isn’t denim. I did put on pantyhose though—not only because of the cold, but also because I couldn’t make it too easy for those pesky boys and their wandering hands. Not that it kept Sebastian away, of course.
There’s that heat again that spreads throughout my body at the memory of Sebastian’s hands on me, sliding up my sensitive thighs as I sat on his lap in that lounge chair, kissing softly, my skin on fire. Laura teased me that I was acting like a slut—she’s one to talk. She lost her virginity two years ago, doing it with her brother’s best friend while vacationing. She said it was good but not great. That her dildo felt much better. She’s been fucking around ever since though, and none the worse for wear. The only thing she doesn’t do is oral; she says that taking a boy’s dick in your mouth is one of the most intimate things you can do, because it’s a gift, done purely for the boy’s pleasure.
I’m in no rush myself. Still a virgin at sixteen. I like my fingers a lot, too. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a boy’s hands on me. Sebastian’s hands. I can’t help but imagine what it’ll feel like when I lie down in my bed later on—that bed with the nice winter flannel sheets, the kind that warm up in no time—when I slide my hand into the waistband of my pajamas, on my fuzzy little peach, finding it all wet with anticipation, picturing Sebastian’s hand in its place, tickling me, rubbing me, fucking me. I’m going to come so easily that I’m practically shaking already.
Maybe I won’t even put on my pajamas. Maybe I’ll just lie on the bed in my dress, and pull it about and slide my hand beneath my pantyhose and imagine I’m still at the party, with Sebastian taking liberties with me, touching me—oh yes, that’ll do it.
That’s when I notice that the television is on in the living room, the sound a simple murmur in the background. Peeking around the corner, I see the shadows it casts on the hallway wall.
I shake my head. For once, I’ll be able to reprimand Mom about leaving the television on. I’m usually the culprit. Not that it’s really my fault—it’s just so much part of the background sometimes, just white noise, that I forget it’s even on. Then again, maybe I’m the one who left it on this time as well. Maybe it’s been on all night, entertaining the Christmas tree and the elves.
My mom’s gone off to her own Christmas party, with her new boyfriend, Luke or Luca or something like that. Nice guy. Body of a Greek god, the kind that artists like my mother die to get a chance to sculpt or paint. Which is how Mom met him: posing for one of her sculpture classes at the local community college.
We went our separate way her and I this Christmas Eve. First time ever. She was stressed about it. I admit, it felt weird, but also exciting. A bit of an adventure. A big step into the world of—let me say it—adulthood. That we both had parties to get to was the excuse: me with my friends, her with an overnighter at Luke/Luca’s place with some of his friends. My party was also supposed to be an overnighter, but to be honest, I was getting pretty tired of it by the end, and the gang seemed ready to go on for several more hours. So when Laura told me she had to go, I hitched a ride.
Mom and I are supposed to meet at IHOP tomorrow morning for a late breakfast. Luke/Luca knows the owner, and we can beat the predictable line.
I’m fantasizing about what sort of pancakes I’m going to have as I go in to shut the television.
“Hi sweetie. How was your party?”
I nearly jump out of my skin! In the dark, on the couch, barely illuminated by the glow of the screen, is my mom—a glass of wine in her hand, her feet up on the coffee table. She’s in her dressing gown.
“Mom! Jesus! You scared the shit out of me!”
“Language, young lady.”
“Well, excuse me, but you just gave me a heart attack—that should cut me just a tiny bit of slack!”
She shrugs. “Sorry. I thought you heard the TV.”
I look at her, taking in the scene. I can’t tell you how I know, but she’s been here all evening, I can tell. She didn’t go out. No party for Mom.
I drop down on the couch beside her. On the large television screen, our one decadent luxury, almost larger than life, I spot Michael J. Fox in his old eighties sitcom, Family Ties. I know it well, somewhat unfortunately, because it’s one of my mom’s favorite series. That, and Golden Girls. She has all the DVDs, some in duplicate. I prefer Fox in Spin City myself.
Mom only goes through a Family Ties binge for one reason.
“How was the party?” she asks.
“Party was good.” I snuggle up next to her and she accepts me because she’s my mom and she’ll always accept me that way and there’s never been any question about it. I have to remind myself regularly not to take it for granted. “Kick-ass beer pong tournament.”
She turns her eyes on me, trying to gauge how much I drank. I grin after a long pause. “Don’t worry. I watched a Terminator marathon with Laura and folks in the living room.”
“All three? Or is it four now?”
“I dropped off after the second.”
Mom nods knowingly. “Second was the best.” She takes a sip of her wine. White. Sparkling. Our New Year’s Eve bottle, I’m guessing. Shit.
“Oh yeah,” I second. “That music…” On cue, we both thump the theme from Terminator 2, that industrial drum beat that sticks in your head like nothing else. Then we chuckle. I snuggle up closer.
On the television screen, Michael J. Fox is having an argument with what will turn out to be his first girl on the show, Tracy Pollan. I’ve always preferred the other one, the brunette, Courtney Cox, pre-Friends. I’ve always thought she was prettier. And smart. Probably because I’m a brunette myself, and not too dumb.
“That’s the episode where they get together, right? They go to this school dance and they kiss and she runs away and then she’s catching a train to go and marry her boyfriend and Alex drives all night to catch her before her train arrives to tell her that he loves her?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Super hokey. Like gag-me hokey. I mean, come on!”
“My daughter the romantic.”
“That’s not romantic, it’s… sentimental. At best. And cheaply so, too. I mean, at least have him jump on the train that’s just leaving only to discover that she stayed at the station hoping he would come by and stop her and poof, you’ve got room for a lot more development. This is… too easy.”
“Sometimes easy is good.”
“But it doesn’t make for satisfying storytelling.”
“My daughter the critic.”
“Hey, if you didn’t want a smart daughter, you shouldn’t have raised me as one.”
“I didn’t do anything but try to hang on tight as you became wonderful all by yourself.” There is something in her voice, and I don’t say a thing as I stay there against her.
We are silent for a while. On the screen, Michael J. Fox is at the college party—which looks so much dorkier than the one I’ve just come back from it’s actually pretty funny—looking forlorn. That haunting song is playing in the background—What did you think I would do at this moment? I love that song. It’s also fucking sentimental. But I don’t care. Just don’t tell my mom. She’d never let me live it down.
We listen to the song. At least I do. I don’t know what my mom is thinking, but I listen to her heartbeat.
Tracy Pollan runs away. The song ends.
“Mom, what happened?” My voice is low, and I wonder if she even heard me. Then I feel the shrug more than I hear her words.
“Nothing.”
“Mom, you spent Christmas Eve by yourself.” It was not a question.
“I wasn’t by myself, I had the Keatons.” The Keatons. That ideal through-thick-and-thin family. My mom’s an incredibly well-adjusted divorced woman who’s not looking for a long-term partner because she thinks all men are fundamentally scum, except when she’s down, and then she likes to compare her life to idealized Hollywood versions. A recipe for disaster, that.
“Mom?” My voice gets harder. I don’t like this. She should not have been alone. Not on Christmas Eve.
She shrugs again. “Didn’t work out with Lucas. We’re at… different stages. We want different things.” She answers the question I do not want to ask. “I let him down easy two days ago.”
At least she’s the one who broke it off.
“And you didn’t tell me because…?”
A long silence. “Did you snag that boy you wanted to snag? What was his name?”
“Sebastian—you know full well his name’s Sebastian—and don’t try to change the subject.”
“I’m not changing the subject. You wanted to know why I didn’t tell you? Because you wouldn’t have gone to that party. And I can tell you did snag that Sebastian boy. Like he had any chance at all. You used protection, right?”
“Mom!” I slap her arm. “I did not sleep with him! We kissed! That’s all! And you’re damn right I wouldn’t have gone to that stupid party if I knew you’d be spending Christmas Eve here all alone moping over reruns.”
“First off, watch your language. Second I wasn’t moping. I was just hanging out and watching some good television.”
“And getting drunk.”
“Not drunk. Buzzed, maybe. Celebrating my new-found freedom.”
“I should have been here with you.”
“Not your call to make. You’ve been talking about that party for the past two weeks. That party, and that Sebastian. I wasn’t going to take that away from you because I’m too picky about my male companions.”
“Well, that wasn’t your call to make either.”
She shrugs. “Next time, we’ll use the eight ball, okay? I wanted my only daughter happy. I won’t be convinced that it’s a bad thing. And don’t worry, I’m fine. Beside, a bit of sadness isn’t bad once in a while. It’s inspiring.” She nods towards a sketchbook on the coffee table. “I got a few ideas for the Spring Expo.”
“You know I don’t like that self-sacrificing crap.”
“It’s romantic,” mom said with a small smile.
“No it’s not. That’s also sentimental.”
“Not the ending you’d have written?”
“Definitely not.” I lean back against her, close my eyes. “Let’s see. You’ve have gone to a club, one that throws a big Christmas bash with gaudy costumes and you’d have been wearing one of those super sexy Mrs. Claus costumes and you’d have met a nice man dressed as an elf or a reindeer and you’d have laughed and chatted the whole night and he would have loved the fact that you’re an artist and he would have asked you all sorts of questions about it and he would not even have been bored when you told him how cubism was such a revelation to the world and how Dali didn’t know what he was talking about it and it wouldn’t have been until you crawled back here that you would have even noticed that you still didn’t know anything about him since he only wanted to talk about you and how wonderful and talented you were and all you knew was that he was kind and warm and loving and also a hunk in that nondescript and subtle way and that he had slipped you his phone number before putting you in a cab while still gallantly staring one last time at your legs to let you know that he found you sexy as hell but that he was too gentlemanly to take advantage of you then but that he hoped you would want to sleep with him even though he was not twenty any more and didn’t model for artists in the region.”
Mom is silent for a long while. “Who’s sentimental now?” she asked in a voice that was choked up a little bit.
I choose not to answer, and she hugs me tight. I sink into that hug as if I were a kid again.
On the television screen, Michael J. Fox was lamenting having missed Tracy Pollan at the train station, not knowing she was in the restrooms.
“So how was Sebastian?” Mom asks, and I can detect a smile in her voice, and it sounds like a genuine smile, and it’s not until much later than I realize how wonderful it made me feel to know that I pulled her out of her melancholy mood.
“He’s a great kisser,” I reply after some hesitation.
“That’s good to hear. A man with a good tongue is a prize to be cherished.”
“Mom!” I blush as I pick up her double-entendre, which I know is fully intended. She gets raunchy when she’s had wine.
“Did you really not sleep with him?”
“Mom! What do you think I am? Some sort of slut?”
“No. A sixteen-year old girl with a raging libido, a young healthy body, and a dress tight enough to make any hetero boy drool.”
“You chose that dress for me!”
“Because it fits you like a goddess. What’s wrong with that Sebastian boy anyway?”
“What?”
“If he didn’t want to screw you, something’s wrong with him.”
“Mom!” I don’t know if she’s pulling my leg. It’s hard to tell with her sometimes.
“I’m just saying…”
A long silence again. On the television screen, Fox and Pollan have resolved their differences, and they kiss, in the train station.
“He did want to,” I admit, my voice soft. “Screw me, I mean.”
“Oh? He told you?”
“I felt it—him. When I was on his lap.”
“While you were kissing?”
“Yeah.”
“How did it feel?” It wasn’t a prying question. There is genuine curiosity in her voice. And love.
“Good. Felt very good. And scary. Like… like things are just on the verge of veering out of control but you don’t really mind.”
“Yeah, love feels that way.”
I’m not sure it’s love, but I’m also not sure she’s talking about me either.
“You sleepy?” she asks as the show ends.
“Not really.”
“Feel like making some pancakes and some eggnog and watch something else?”
“It’s three in the morning.”
“So? You got anywhere you need to be tomorrow morning?”
“No…” I guess the IHOP date is canceled.
“Well then. You’re the one who didn’t want to leave your poor old lonely mother alone on Christmas Eve.”
I make a stab-to-the-heart motion. “Fine,” I say, as I stand up and offer her a hand. “One condition though.”
“Oh?”
“We watch some Buffy next.”
Thursday, December 25, 2014
New Story: Ghosts of Christmas Past (Part 1)
Merry Christmas to all of you that celebrate it, and Happy Holidays to everyone else.
I have a The Adjusters Christmas Special for you this year. Three parts, pushed out over the next few days. Starting tonight. Enjoy.
Ghosts of Christmas Past (Part 1)
(Christmas 2002)
Daniel Malcolm, all of twelve years old, was watching television, waiting for his mother to finish getting ready.
They were going to the family Christmas Eve at Aunt Selma’s, and he was ambivalent about it.
He liked his Aunt Selma, he liked his cousins, he liked opening gifts. He liked Christmas, because he was a kid, and every kid likes Christmas.
But Christmas also reminded him of his father, who had loved the Holiday season, and anything that reminded him of his father made him sad.
Not sad in a cry-your-eyes-out way, but that sadness that hooked in the pit of one’s stomach and shifted everything from colorful to gray.
The television was set on a channel running through old seventies and eighties sitcoms—there was nothing else playing on Christmas Eve but that and Christmas specials, the good old ones and the weird new ones.
In the corner of the living room stood the Christmas tree, heavy with the familiar decorations that he always remembered. This year, Gerald and his son Sam had helped put them up. It was a natural tree, and its fir smell permeated the room, making it impossible to ignore.
He could hear his mother moving about in the bathroom, and Gerald in the kitchen arguing with his son about something that Daniel cared nothing about.
The television was showing an old sitcom from the eighties, Family Ties. Daniel enjoyed it. He had caught a few episodes already, and while a lot of it went over his head—they kept talking about old stuff he knew nothing about—who was Reagan—he understood the bickering between the sibling and the love between the parents and everyone. He watched it rapturously.
He tried not to think about Gerald in the kitchen. Gerald was his mother’s boyfriend. They had met earlier that year at the hospital where his mother worked. He was also a doctor, though not a surgeon like his mother. He was old, he was a dad, and he was divorced. Which meant that his wife had left him. Or that he had left his wife. Daniel was not sure, and he did not want to ask. His son, Sam, was younger than Daniel, and a complete brat.
On the television, the brother in the family, Alex, was hanging out at his school with a pretty blonde girl, and they were doing grown up stuff. It was not as interesting as usual—he preferred the episodes where Alex and his sister argued. Those were funny.
He suppresses a groan when Sam, small, bushy dark hair, thick glasses on his nose, stomped into the room and jumped on the couch next to Daniel. “What’cha watchin’?”
“Just a show.”
“Looks old.”
“It is.”
Sam fidgeted for a few minutes, while on the screen the brother Alex was hanging out with his new blonde friend. She was pretty, Daniel observed the more he looked at her. Long blonde hair, a friendly smile. He had just started to notice that girls were, well, maybe slightly more interesting than they had been before.
“I’d bone her,” Sam said suddenly, and Daniel was astonished. He was not entirely sure what boning was, but it had to do with sex, he knew, and he was pretty sure that Sam had no idea what he was saying.
“What?”
“The girl. I’d bone her.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sam was bouncing in place, the hyperactive little runt.
“It’s what my dad does to your mom. He bones her. That’s what Frankie says at school.”
“Does not!”
“Does too! She’s a slut, Frankie says. That’s what you do to sluts, you bone them.”
Even though Sam was four years younger than he was, Daniel wanted to punch him. “That’s not true! Take it back!”
He hated how whiny he sounded. He was older than Sam, more mature. Who cared what a little boy barely out of diapers said? “You don’t know nothing. You’re a stupid kid.”
“Slut! Slut! Slut! Boning the slut!” Sam was bouncing on the couch. On the television screen, Alex and the pretty girl were talking.
Daniel reached over and wrapped his arm around Sam’s neck and pulled him down. “Stop it!”
They wrestled for a while, Daniel older and stronger, Sam younger but without any restraint. They fell from the couch, Daniel never letting go, both of them missing the coffee table on their way down. Daniel flipped Sam around and pressed him down against the floor, resisting the impulse to rub his face against the rug. “Take it back!”
“BOYS!” Gerald irrupted into the living room. “Cut it out! Please!”
Daniel let Sam go, and the younger boy crawled away, tears in his eyes. “He started it, dad!” Sam started crying, rubbing his arm and his face.
Daniel grunted, and pressed his back against the couch, staring at the television. On the screen, Alex was at a party, at his school or something.
“Go get cleaned up, Sam,” Gerald said.
“But daaaad…”
“Now.”
Sam stomped off. Gerald watched him go, then stood for a moment before dropping down on the couch. Daniel was still on the ground, stubbornly watching the television set. Alex was talking to the pretty blonde again, at the party.
“I’m sorry about Sam, Daniel,” said Gerald after a while. He always called him Daniel, the way he wanted to be called. Only his father had the right to call him Dan. And he never would again.
Gerald sighed, and from the corner of his eye, Daniel could see that the older man looked tired, for a moment. “Hey, Family Ties,” he said. “I used to love that show. There’s that bit, where Alex completes a thought by… what’s her name? Mallory? She goes ‘It’s like that little voice in my head that says…’ — ‘Man, you can see for miles from here.’ Gets me every time.” He laughed softly to himself. “Pure comedic timing. The guy’s a genius.”
There was a longer pause. “I’m sorry about what Sam said.”
“It’s okay,” Daniel responded quietly.
“No it’s not. But I appreciate your patience with him. And he deserved what he got.” A pause, as they watched the television. Alex and the blonde girl were dancing, and there was music playing in the background, the kind of music that his mother liked, the kind that sometimes put sadness in her eyes.
“He thinks he can get away with stuff. And maybe I’m too soft on him. He thinks I don’t notice, or maybe he does. I don’t know. I’ll talk to him. I’ll make it better. I promise.”
Daniel had no response. He did not care—though at the same time, he did.
Gerald kept talking, his eyes on the television along with Daniel’s. “I can only imagine how hard it is for you, with me and Sam here. I don’t know how to say this. I’m not good at talking about this sort of stuff. But I’m not here to replace your dad, Daniel. And I don’t want to. It’s like no one can replace Shelley.”
On the television screen, Alex and the pretty blonde were kissing, and it made Daniel feel all weird inside.
“And I can’t replace your dad for your mother either, Daniel. I want you to know that. I’m not taking his place.”
Aren’t you? thought Daniel, but he said nothing.
“True love is marvelous,” Gerald continued after watching the screen, as the blonde girl left. Alex looked upset. Daniel did not know why. He had lost the thread of the story. “When you have that, nothing else really matters.”
The way he said it made Daniel pause.
“Do you love her?” he said finally. Whether Gerald expected the question or not, he seemed to take it seriously.
“Your mother is a good woman, Daniel. And I care an awful lot about her. And I think—no, I know—I can do good by her. And I think she can do good by me. But it’s not going to be easy. For any of us. But I’m willing to make an effort. I’m willing to meet you halfway, if you’re on board.”
Daniel remained silent, watching the credits of the show. And listening to Gerald.
“I miss having a family, Daniel. Miss it an awful lot. And I’m hoping you guys are too.” His voice trailed off.
“You’re not going to replace him,” Daniel said in a low voice.
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. I’m my own person. I’ll screw up in wholly distinct ways, believe me.”
“What are you two plotting?” Daniel’s mother stepped into the arch of the living room, decked in a beautiful dress that Daniel had never seen before. And he knew—without understanding how he knew—that she had worn it for Gerald.
“Gosh, you look beautiful,” said Gerald, and his voice conveyed admiration and—yes, love. And Daniel saw the smile light up his mother’s face, as Gerald stood to go and hug her.
Daniel felt that ambivalence again, wanting to like Gerald but hating him at the same time, and he wondered what his dad—his real dad, the only dad he ever wanted—would have thought about all of this were he still alive, how he would have reacted.
And as he watched his mother and Gerald hug and kiss, he knew. As his mother looked at Daniel with a tentative smile on her face, her eyes almost expectant, waiting for a reaction from him, he knew exactly what his dad would have said.
She’s happy. How bad can it be?
And if his mom was happy, who was he to destroy her world? He smiled at her, and her own smile beamed back at him with the strength of all the Christmas stars.
And in the living room of their house, there was a moment of happiness. A moment where Christmas for the first time in a long time felt like Christmas.
For a moment, Daniel’s world was whole.
Which did not make him miss his future stepbrother miming an obscene gesture looking at his mom and Gerald. For a moment, Daniel was happy. His revenge on the little runt would wait.
I have a The Adjusters Christmas Special for you this year. Three parts, pushed out over the next few days. Starting tonight. Enjoy.
Ghosts of Christmas Past (Part 1)
(Christmas 2002)
Daniel Malcolm, all of twelve years old, was watching television, waiting for his mother to finish getting ready.
They were going to the family Christmas Eve at Aunt Selma’s, and he was ambivalent about it.
He liked his Aunt Selma, he liked his cousins, he liked opening gifts. He liked Christmas, because he was a kid, and every kid likes Christmas.
But Christmas also reminded him of his father, who had loved the Holiday season, and anything that reminded him of his father made him sad.
Not sad in a cry-your-eyes-out way, but that sadness that hooked in the pit of one’s stomach and shifted everything from colorful to gray.
The television was set on a channel running through old seventies and eighties sitcoms—there was nothing else playing on Christmas Eve but that and Christmas specials, the good old ones and the weird new ones.
In the corner of the living room stood the Christmas tree, heavy with the familiar decorations that he always remembered. This year, Gerald and his son Sam had helped put them up. It was a natural tree, and its fir smell permeated the room, making it impossible to ignore.
He could hear his mother moving about in the bathroom, and Gerald in the kitchen arguing with his son about something that Daniel cared nothing about.
The television was showing an old sitcom from the eighties, Family Ties. Daniel enjoyed it. He had caught a few episodes already, and while a lot of it went over his head—they kept talking about old stuff he knew nothing about—who was Reagan—he understood the bickering between the sibling and the love between the parents and everyone. He watched it rapturously.
He tried not to think about Gerald in the kitchen. Gerald was his mother’s boyfriend. They had met earlier that year at the hospital where his mother worked. He was also a doctor, though not a surgeon like his mother. He was old, he was a dad, and he was divorced. Which meant that his wife had left him. Or that he had left his wife. Daniel was not sure, and he did not want to ask. His son, Sam, was younger than Daniel, and a complete brat.
On the television, the brother in the family, Alex, was hanging out at his school with a pretty blonde girl, and they were doing grown up stuff. It was not as interesting as usual—he preferred the episodes where Alex and his sister argued. Those were funny.
He suppresses a groan when Sam, small, bushy dark hair, thick glasses on his nose, stomped into the room and jumped on the couch next to Daniel. “What’cha watchin’?”
“Just a show.”
“Looks old.”
“It is.”
Sam fidgeted for a few minutes, while on the screen the brother Alex was hanging out with his new blonde friend. She was pretty, Daniel observed the more he looked at her. Long blonde hair, a friendly smile. He had just started to notice that girls were, well, maybe slightly more interesting than they had been before.
“I’d bone her,” Sam said suddenly, and Daniel was astonished. He was not entirely sure what boning was, but it had to do with sex, he knew, and he was pretty sure that Sam had no idea what he was saying.
“What?”
“The girl. I’d bone her.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sam was bouncing in place, the hyperactive little runt.
“It’s what my dad does to your mom. He bones her. That’s what Frankie says at school.”
“Does not!”
“Does too! She’s a slut, Frankie says. That’s what you do to sluts, you bone them.”
Even though Sam was four years younger than he was, Daniel wanted to punch him. “That’s not true! Take it back!”
He hated how whiny he sounded. He was older than Sam, more mature. Who cared what a little boy barely out of diapers said? “You don’t know nothing. You’re a stupid kid.”
“Slut! Slut! Slut! Boning the slut!” Sam was bouncing on the couch. On the television screen, Alex and the pretty girl were talking.
Daniel reached over and wrapped his arm around Sam’s neck and pulled him down. “Stop it!”
They wrestled for a while, Daniel older and stronger, Sam younger but without any restraint. They fell from the couch, Daniel never letting go, both of them missing the coffee table on their way down. Daniel flipped Sam around and pressed him down against the floor, resisting the impulse to rub his face against the rug. “Take it back!”
“BOYS!” Gerald irrupted into the living room. “Cut it out! Please!”
Daniel let Sam go, and the younger boy crawled away, tears in his eyes. “He started it, dad!” Sam started crying, rubbing his arm and his face.
Daniel grunted, and pressed his back against the couch, staring at the television. On the screen, Alex was at a party, at his school or something.
“Go get cleaned up, Sam,” Gerald said.
“But daaaad…”
“Now.”
Sam stomped off. Gerald watched him go, then stood for a moment before dropping down on the couch. Daniel was still on the ground, stubbornly watching the television set. Alex was talking to the pretty blonde again, at the party.
“I’m sorry about Sam, Daniel,” said Gerald after a while. He always called him Daniel, the way he wanted to be called. Only his father had the right to call him Dan. And he never would again.
Gerald sighed, and from the corner of his eye, Daniel could see that the older man looked tired, for a moment. “Hey, Family Ties,” he said. “I used to love that show. There’s that bit, where Alex completes a thought by… what’s her name? Mallory? She goes ‘It’s like that little voice in my head that says…’ — ‘Man, you can see for miles from here.’ Gets me every time.” He laughed softly to himself. “Pure comedic timing. The guy’s a genius.”
There was a longer pause. “I’m sorry about what Sam said.”
“It’s okay,” Daniel responded quietly.
“No it’s not. But I appreciate your patience with him. And he deserved what he got.” A pause, as they watched the television. Alex and the blonde girl were dancing, and there was music playing in the background, the kind of music that his mother liked, the kind that sometimes put sadness in her eyes.
“He thinks he can get away with stuff. And maybe I’m too soft on him. He thinks I don’t notice, or maybe he does. I don’t know. I’ll talk to him. I’ll make it better. I promise.”
Daniel had no response. He did not care—though at the same time, he did.
Gerald kept talking, his eyes on the television along with Daniel’s. “I can only imagine how hard it is for you, with me and Sam here. I don’t know how to say this. I’m not good at talking about this sort of stuff. But I’m not here to replace your dad, Daniel. And I don’t want to. It’s like no one can replace Shelley.”
On the television screen, Alex and the pretty blonde were kissing, and it made Daniel feel all weird inside.
“And I can’t replace your dad for your mother either, Daniel. I want you to know that. I’m not taking his place.”
Aren’t you? thought Daniel, but he said nothing.
“True love is marvelous,” Gerald continued after watching the screen, as the blonde girl left. Alex looked upset. Daniel did not know why. He had lost the thread of the story. “When you have that, nothing else really matters.”
The way he said it made Daniel pause.
“Do you love her?” he said finally. Whether Gerald expected the question or not, he seemed to take it seriously.
“Your mother is a good woman, Daniel. And I care an awful lot about her. And I think—no, I know—I can do good by her. And I think she can do good by me. But it’s not going to be easy. For any of us. But I’m willing to make an effort. I’m willing to meet you halfway, if you’re on board.”
Daniel remained silent, watching the credits of the show. And listening to Gerald.
“I miss having a family, Daniel. Miss it an awful lot. And I’m hoping you guys are too.” His voice trailed off.
“You’re not going to replace him,” Daniel said in a low voice.
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. I’m my own person. I’ll screw up in wholly distinct ways, believe me.”
“What are you two plotting?” Daniel’s mother stepped into the arch of the living room, decked in a beautiful dress that Daniel had never seen before. And he knew—without understanding how he knew—that she had worn it for Gerald.
“Gosh, you look beautiful,” said Gerald, and his voice conveyed admiration and—yes, love. And Daniel saw the smile light up his mother’s face, as Gerald stood to go and hug her.
Daniel felt that ambivalence again, wanting to like Gerald but hating him at the same time, and he wondered what his dad—his real dad, the only dad he ever wanted—would have thought about all of this were he still alive, how he would have reacted.
And as he watched his mother and Gerald hug and kiss, he knew. As his mother looked at Daniel with a tentative smile on her face, her eyes almost expectant, waiting for a reaction from him, he knew exactly what his dad would have said.
She’s happy. How bad can it be?
And if his mom was happy, who was he to destroy her world? He smiled at her, and her own smile beamed back at him with the strength of all the Christmas stars.
And in the living room of their house, there was a moment of happiness. A moment where Christmas for the first time in a long time felt like Christmas.
For a moment, Daniel’s world was whole.
Which did not make him miss his future stepbrother miming an obscene gesture looking at his mom and Gerald. For a moment, Daniel was happy. His revenge on the little runt would wait.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
New Story: The Adjusters #56
(Sigh. To file under “better late than never,” right?)
Here is November's installment of The Adjusters, “Intermezzo: Sam O'Neill”, wherein we follow O'Neill on his visit to the Craven-Wilford Institute to look for Jennifer Hansen.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #56 - Intermezzo: Sam O'Neill
“Director Altman will see you now, Mister O’Neill.”
Altman’s assistant, a young man with a vampiric complexion and duvet in lieu of a beard stood by the door of the director’s office, looking disapprovingly at Sam O’Neill.
O’Neill thrust the cigar on which he was chewing back in his trench coat pocket.
The assistant gave him a wry look, and Sam had to stifle every impulse he had to not yell “booh!” to the kid. Part of him was happy that Altman did not feel the need to have a stereotypical airhead blonde bimbo as a secretary. But did he really have to pick the most annoying surly teenager this side of Caulfield?
O’Neill, while waiting for Erich Altman, director of the Craven-Wilford Institute for Mental Health—which the prospectus that littered the waiting room called the premier facility for research and care in mental disorder on the East coast—had been working over the case in his head.
Two weeks ago, he had come across an entry in the newspaper—he still read the New York Times sitting at a chair in his favorite pub, bothered only by the morning staff who cared not iota for this old man that bugged no one and consumed black coffees while reading a newspaper for half an hour. It was his routine, and he liked routine, which was ironic because being on the road so much meant that he was more often than not out of his routine.
In any case, he had come across the small column of text that described the discovery of a body in a lake in upper New York state, a body that was well on its way to decomposition, but had been identified as Richard Sanderson, last known as a nurse at the Craven-Wilford Institute in the upper Hudson Valley, a facility that specialized in treating mental disorders. The reporter had seen it fit to comment that Sanderson was working in one of the sexual neurosis wards, although she also stated that the local police did not think that whatever had befallen Mister Sanderson had anything to do with sexual deviancy. But the investigation was ongoing.
Continue reading...
Next month (really, January 1st): “Intermezzo: Patrick Dee”.
Here is November's installment of The Adjusters, “Intermezzo: Sam O'Neill”, wherein we follow O'Neill on his visit to the Craven-Wilford Institute to look for Jennifer Hansen.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #56 - Intermezzo: Sam O'Neill
“Director Altman will see you now, Mister O’Neill.”
Altman’s assistant, a young man with a vampiric complexion and duvet in lieu of a beard stood by the door of the director’s office, looking disapprovingly at Sam O’Neill.
O’Neill thrust the cigar on which he was chewing back in his trench coat pocket.
The assistant gave him a wry look, and Sam had to stifle every impulse he had to not yell “booh!” to the kid. Part of him was happy that Altman did not feel the need to have a stereotypical airhead blonde bimbo as a secretary. But did he really have to pick the most annoying surly teenager this side of Caulfield?
O’Neill, while waiting for Erich Altman, director of the Craven-Wilford Institute for Mental Health—which the prospectus that littered the waiting room called the premier facility for research and care in mental disorder on the East coast—had been working over the case in his head.
Two weeks ago, he had come across an entry in the newspaper—he still read the New York Times sitting at a chair in his favorite pub, bothered only by the morning staff who cared not iota for this old man that bugged no one and consumed black coffees while reading a newspaper for half an hour. It was his routine, and he liked routine, which was ironic because being on the road so much meant that he was more often than not out of his routine.
In any case, he had come across the small column of text that described the discovery of a body in a lake in upper New York state, a body that was well on its way to decomposition, but had been identified as Richard Sanderson, last known as a nurse at the Craven-Wilford Institute in the upper Hudson Valley, a facility that specialized in treating mental disorders. The reporter had seen it fit to comment that Sanderson was working in one of the sexual neurosis wards, although she also stated that the local police did not think that whatever had befallen Mister Sanderson had anything to do with sexual deviancy. But the investigation was ongoing.
Continue reading...
Next month (really, January 1st): “Intermezzo: Patrick Dee”.
Monday, October 13, 2014
New Story: The Adjusters #55
(Well, only a week later than I hoped. Remember when I was telling you about work being crazy for lack of resources? Well, that was these last few weeks in a nutshell. Things have finally calmed down, and with Columbus Day, I managed to catch up. As a bonus, this is longer than usual.)
Here is October's installment of The Adjusters, “Intermezzo: The Platinum Plan”, wherein we discover the flip side of Family Counseling Services.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #55 - Intermezzo: The Platinum Plan
Jeffrey Coogan entered the nondescript building through the only door waiting beyond a well-manicured lawn. Nothing distinguished this building from those surrounding it within the Marina District of San Francisco. He double-checked the address, wondering whether he had taken it down wrong from his interlocutor earlier that day.
Inside, he found a charming and welcoming interior lobby, and made a mental note to ask someone about the interior decorator or architect that had designed it. He had been thinking about his new building for SocialCircles, his company, and wanted to demarcate it from other Bay-area headquarters. Maybe something like this would be nice? He tended towards glass and metal himself, but this could work too. Perhaps with a more modern touch. Like a touch more metal. And certainly more glass.
There was no one waiting in the lobby. The only person was a pretty receptionist who gave him a bright smile as he entered.
“How may I help you, sir?”
His sneakers scuffed slightly on the polished floor. He put his hands in his jean pockets, the way he often did when he was confronted with good-looking women in a social occasion. He was not a social person, had never been. He always felt awkward about it.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Intermezzo: Sam O'Neill”.
Here is October's installment of The Adjusters, “Intermezzo: The Platinum Plan”, wherein we discover the flip side of Family Counseling Services.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #55 - Intermezzo: The Platinum Plan
Jeffrey Coogan entered the nondescript building through the only door waiting beyond a well-manicured lawn. Nothing distinguished this building from those surrounding it within the Marina District of San Francisco. He double-checked the address, wondering whether he had taken it down wrong from his interlocutor earlier that day.
Inside, he found a charming and welcoming interior lobby, and made a mental note to ask someone about the interior decorator or architect that had designed it. He had been thinking about his new building for SocialCircles, his company, and wanted to demarcate it from other Bay-area headquarters. Maybe something like this would be nice? He tended towards glass and metal himself, but this could work too. Perhaps with a more modern touch. Like a touch more metal. And certainly more glass.
There was no one waiting in the lobby. The only person was a pretty receptionist who gave him a bright smile as he entered.
“How may I help you, sir?”
His sneakers scuffed slightly on the polished floor. He put his hands in his jean pockets, the way he often did when he was confronted with good-looking women in a social occasion. He was not a social person, had never been. He always felt awkward about it.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Intermezzo: Sam O'Neill”.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
New Story: The Adjusters #54
Here is September's installment of The Adjusters, “Intermezzo: Cindy Caprese”, wherein Cindy Caprese gets something started without realizing it.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #54 - Intermezzo: Cindy Caprese
Cynthia Barnes pushed her chair back from the table and leaned back, letting the California sun fall upon her face. It was one thing she had missed about the West Coast in her time in New England: the yearly sun, and its particular warmth.
She had been born Cynthia Caprese, but she called herself Cindy, and expected others to do so as well. She had been Cindy Caprese until less than six months earlier, after the events at Darnell University, the events that had left a body in the smoldering ruins of Daniel Malcolm’s apartment, a body that would subsequently be identified as that of Cindy Caprese. Barnes was her mother’s maiden name. She had refused to take any other.
She looked at the napkin on which she had been doodling, an intricate pattern of circles and squares that had emerged from her subconscious and now nagged at her memory. She shook her head, and took a sip of her drink. A Cranberry-Lime flavored Smirnoff Ice, her one weakness. She had discovered the drink upon arriving at the University of California in Los Angeles, during orientation. It was devilishly good.
She stared at the napkin again, as if it held the solution to the problem she had been fighting with since the previous night. Her project for molecular biology was going well, but she had hit a snag—a particularly thorny protein folding problem—that might have benefitted from talking it over with her lab partner. The partner in question seemed to live on a different circadian cycle, unfortunately, and probably was still sleeping despite it being two in the afternoon.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Intermezzo: The Platinum Plan”.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #54 - Intermezzo: Cindy Caprese
Cynthia Barnes pushed her chair back from the table and leaned back, letting the California sun fall upon her face. It was one thing she had missed about the West Coast in her time in New England: the yearly sun, and its particular warmth.
She had been born Cynthia Caprese, but she called herself Cindy, and expected others to do so as well. She had been Cindy Caprese until less than six months earlier, after the events at Darnell University, the events that had left a body in the smoldering ruins of Daniel Malcolm’s apartment, a body that would subsequently be identified as that of Cindy Caprese. Barnes was her mother’s maiden name. She had refused to take any other.
She looked at the napkin on which she had been doodling, an intricate pattern of circles and squares that had emerged from her subconscious and now nagged at her memory. She shook her head, and took a sip of her drink. A Cranberry-Lime flavored Smirnoff Ice, her one weakness. She had discovered the drink upon arriving at the University of California in Los Angeles, during orientation. It was devilishly good.
She stared at the napkin again, as if it held the solution to the problem she had been fighting with since the previous night. Her project for molecular biology was going well, but she had hit a snag—a particularly thorny protein folding problem—that might have benefitted from talking it over with her lab partner. The partner in question seemed to live on a different circadian cycle, unfortunately, and probably was still sleeping despite it being two in the afternoon.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Intermezzo: The Platinum Plan”.
Monday, August 11, 2014
New Story: The Adjusters #53
Back from traveling. Man, it's nice to be home. Thanks for your patience, folks.
Here is August's installment of The Adjusters, “Intermezzo: Family Counseling Services”, wherein we discover a business model.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #53 - Intermezzo: Family Counseling Services
James McGregor—Jim to his employees, Jimmy to his close friends—did not hesitate to cross the threshold of the nondescript building in East Los Angeles.
Whatever else one might say about James, and one could say many things about James and not all of them heartwarming, being prone to indecision was not one of them.
When James ran into a problem, James stopped long enough to determine the extent of that problem, formulate a plan to solve said problem, and then enact said plan. That approach had served him well for the previous twenty-five years, from the time he wrestled control of Electro Manufacturing Incorporated away from his then father-in-law and grew it into the largest industrial control panels manufacturer on the West Coast.
That approach had served him well years later when he determined that his then wife—the daughter of the father-in-law in question—after a solid fifteen-years marriage that had yielded two sons, was simply not worthy of being the wife of one of the most successful businessman in Southern California. She was unhappy, and was letting herself go, and he found it increasingly embarrassing to be seen in her company.
When he concluded his wife had become a liability, that she was a problem, he formulated a plan and enacted it without pity. It had been a simple matter to hire a handsome out-of-work actor to seduce and sleep with her while a private investigator followed the couple and documented the affair in exquisite graphic detail. Armed with incontrovertible evidence, suing her for divorce was a short and easy affair. James obtained custody of his sons and left his ex-wife with hardly anything. The one-time lump payment for relocation that his wife’s lawyer did manage to obtain turned out to be less than the fee James had promised the out-of-work actor but never paid due to the poor fellow’s deportation proceedings back to Canada—his visa having expired a year prior, something that had not escaped James’s careful screening of potential candidates—an anecdote which James would have considered poetic had he had any appreciation for poetry.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Intermezzo: Cindy Caprese”.
Here is August's installment of The Adjusters, “Intermezzo: Family Counseling Services”, wherein we discover a business model.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #53 - Intermezzo: Family Counseling Services
James McGregor—Jim to his employees, Jimmy to his close friends—did not hesitate to cross the threshold of the nondescript building in East Los Angeles.
Whatever else one might say about James, and one could say many things about James and not all of them heartwarming, being prone to indecision was not one of them.
When James ran into a problem, James stopped long enough to determine the extent of that problem, formulate a plan to solve said problem, and then enact said plan. That approach had served him well for the previous twenty-five years, from the time he wrestled control of Electro Manufacturing Incorporated away from his then father-in-law and grew it into the largest industrial control panels manufacturer on the West Coast.
That approach had served him well years later when he determined that his then wife—the daughter of the father-in-law in question—after a solid fifteen-years marriage that had yielded two sons, was simply not worthy of being the wife of one of the most successful businessman in Southern California. She was unhappy, and was letting herself go, and he found it increasingly embarrassing to be seen in her company.
When he concluded his wife had become a liability, that she was a problem, he formulated a plan and enacted it without pity. It had been a simple matter to hire a handsome out-of-work actor to seduce and sleep with her while a private investigator followed the couple and documented the affair in exquisite graphic detail. Armed with incontrovertible evidence, suing her for divorce was a short and easy affair. James obtained custody of his sons and left his ex-wife with hardly anything. The one-time lump payment for relocation that his wife’s lawyer did manage to obtain turned out to be less than the fee James had promised the out-of-work actor but never paid due to the poor fellow’s deportation proceedings back to Canada—his visa having expired a year prior, something that had not escaped James’s careful screening of potential candidates—an anecdote which James would have considered poetic had he had any appreciation for poetry.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Intermezzo: Cindy Caprese”.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
New Story: The Adjusters #52
Here is July's installment of The Adjusters, “Intermezzo: Daniel Malcolm”, wherein Daniel Malcolm is tested.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #52 - Intermezzo: Daniel Malcolm
Daniel Malcolm sat on the floor of his apartment, his back against the couch, twirling a thumb drive between his fingers. On the floor before him, his laptop stood open, awaiting the drive. The laptop was playing music, but only his subconscious registered it.
He twirled the thumb drive, the activity requiring just enough concentration to keep him from thinking too hard.
On the wall to his right, Jenn looked out over her shoulder from the poster-sized picture he hung there as constant reminder. Her smile was joyous, free, unburdened. She was happiness itself. The one memory of her he cherished and wished he could take to his grave unsullied by any other.
But then there was the thumb drive.
On that thumb drive could be found the videos that that fucker Biff had made of Jenn when he had his ugly paws on her, when he had control of her, when he twisted her mind around to turn her into his sex doll, his sex slave, his thing. Videos he had made to send to Daniel, to bait him, torture him, hurt him. Videos that thankfully Daniel had never received, and that he had never watched.
The one video he had seen, the one video that Biff had sent on a DVD soon after first abducting Jenn, the one video that had unravelled everything at Darnell University, the one video that led to the death of his friend Radhu, to the fire that destroyed the Delta Iota Kappa fraternity house killing everyone inside including Biff, to the disappearance of Jenn, to Daniel joining ADCorp at the behest of a private investigator called Sam O’Neill who volunteered to search for Jenn in exchange for Daniel spying on ADCorp looking for a group O’Neill had called The Adjusters—that one video had been terrible enough.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Intermezzo: Family Counseling Services”.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #52 - Intermezzo: Daniel Malcolm
Daniel Malcolm sat on the floor of his apartment, his back against the couch, twirling a thumb drive between his fingers. On the floor before him, his laptop stood open, awaiting the drive. The laptop was playing music, but only his subconscious registered it.
He twirled the thumb drive, the activity requiring just enough concentration to keep him from thinking too hard.
On the wall to his right, Jenn looked out over her shoulder from the poster-sized picture he hung there as constant reminder. Her smile was joyous, free, unburdened. She was happiness itself. The one memory of her he cherished and wished he could take to his grave unsullied by any other.
But then there was the thumb drive.
On that thumb drive could be found the videos that that fucker Biff had made of Jenn when he had his ugly paws on her, when he had control of her, when he twisted her mind around to turn her into his sex doll, his sex slave, his thing. Videos he had made to send to Daniel, to bait him, torture him, hurt him. Videos that thankfully Daniel had never received, and that he had never watched.
The one video he had seen, the one video that Biff had sent on a DVD soon after first abducting Jenn, the one video that had unravelled everything at Darnell University, the one video that led to the death of his friend Radhu, to the fire that destroyed the Delta Iota Kappa fraternity house killing everyone inside including Biff, to the disappearance of Jenn, to Daniel joining ADCorp at the behest of a private investigator called Sam O’Neill who volunteered to search for Jenn in exchange for Daniel spying on ADCorp looking for a group O’Neill had called The Adjusters—that one video had been terrible enough.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Intermezzo: Family Counseling Services”.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
New Story: The Adjusters #51
(Sorry for the delay, folks. I wish I had a good reason, but frankly, I was just completely exhausted this past week. The one month hiatus will be particularly welcome...)
Here is May's installment of The Adjusters, “The Craven-Wilford Institute, Revisited”, wherein we learn more about the inner workings of the Institute.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #51 - The Craven-Wilford Institute, Revisited
Erich Altman, director of the Craven-Wilford Institute for Mental Health, was having a bad day.
Which would not have been such a big deal had it not started out so well. He had met the representatives from the funding agencies that were involved in the annual review of the Institute at their hotel for breakfast, and the food had been excellent—the smoked salmon simply out of this world—and the weather had cooperated so that they could sit on the restaurant terrace overlooking the gorge.
The representatives from governmental agencies—the NIH, the DHHS, the NYSDOH—as well as those from private funding organizations—the National Mental Health Foundation and ADCorp —got along famously, all the chief representatives having moved in the same circles for many years.
Review visits such as the one that day were meant to keep the funding agencies abreast of the life of the Institute, and ensure that the public health arm of the Institute satisfied federal and state requirements on the one hand, and also matched the direction that public health policy emphasized year in year out on the other. The private foundations and the National Institute of Health, for their part, wanted to be kept informed of the latest research developments.
Continue reading...
Next month: No update—I'm taking a month-long hiatus from The Adjusters to recharge batteries. Back in two months with the first installment of Book V (Intermezzi).
Here is May's installment of The Adjusters, “The Craven-Wilford Institute, Revisited”, wherein we learn more about the inner workings of the Institute.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #51 - The Craven-Wilford Institute, Revisited
Erich Altman, director of the Craven-Wilford Institute for Mental Health, was having a bad day.
Which would not have been such a big deal had it not started out so well. He had met the representatives from the funding agencies that were involved in the annual review of the Institute at their hotel for breakfast, and the food had been excellent—the smoked salmon simply out of this world—and the weather had cooperated so that they could sit on the restaurant terrace overlooking the gorge.
The representatives from governmental agencies—the NIH, the DHHS, the NYSDOH—as well as those from private funding organizations—the National Mental Health Foundation and ADCorp —got along famously, all the chief representatives having moved in the same circles for many years.
Review visits such as the one that day were meant to keep the funding agencies abreast of the life of the Institute, and ensure that the public health arm of the Institute satisfied federal and state requirements on the one hand, and also matched the direction that public health policy emphasized year in year out on the other. The private foundations and the National Institute of Health, for their part, wanted to be kept informed of the latest research developments.
Continue reading...
Next month: No update—I'm taking a month-long hiatus from The Adjusters to recharge batteries. Back in two months with the first installment of Book V (Intermezzi).
Sunday, April 6, 2014
New Story: The Adjusters #50
Here is April's installment of The Adjusters, “Awry”, wherein a plan is enacted and Jenn is set up as bait.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #50 - Awry
It’s dark. Middle of the night. I can’t sleep. I’m on my back, on my bed, my arms folded with my hands underneath my head. I’m staring at the ceiling. On the other side of the room, Allison is sleeping soundly, having none of my problems. I envy her for that.
My name is Jennifer Hansen, and by now I should be used to things being out of my control and they should not keep me up at night. Yet here I am, worrying about the fact that in order to get that Pig Gutierrez in trouble enough that he has to abort his plan to sell Mouse to animals who want to take revenge on her, I’m setting myself up bait to get the Pig to molest me so that we can record it and show it to representatives of whatever agencies are funding the Institute that are coming to visit in three days time.
That’s a reasonable plan on paper, but I can’t shake the feeling that something is about to go horribly wrong. And that’s despite having spent all my life being referred to as the optimistic happy-go-lucky one.
Continue reading...
Next month: “The Craven-Wilford Institute, Revisited”.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #50 - Awry
It’s dark. Middle of the night. I can’t sleep. I’m on my back, on my bed, my arms folded with my hands underneath my head. I’m staring at the ceiling. On the other side of the room, Allison is sleeping soundly, having none of my problems. I envy her for that.
My name is Jennifer Hansen, and by now I should be used to things being out of my control and they should not keep me up at night. Yet here I am, worrying about the fact that in order to get that Pig Gutierrez in trouble enough that he has to abort his plan to sell Mouse to animals who want to take revenge on her, I’m setting myself up bait to get the Pig to molest me so that we can record it and show it to representatives of whatever agencies are funding the Institute that are coming to visit in three days time.
That’s a reasonable plan on paper, but I can’t shake the feeling that something is about to go horribly wrong. And that’s despite having spent all my life being referred to as the optimistic happy-go-lucky one.
Continue reading...
Next month: “The Craven-Wilford Institute, Revisited”.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
New Story: The Adjusters #49
Here is March's installment of The Adjusters, “Cassandra's Plan”, wherein Jenn and Sanderson regroup following their discovery and find an ally.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #49 - Cassandra's Plan
Richard Sanderson, despite having experienced it once before, still could not get used to the alienating feeling. He was back at work, two days after Gutierrez’s party, and just like after the first party he had attended, everyone was acting completely normal, as if nothing had happened at all.
But something had happened.
Sanderson had gone to the party, and had caught up with Gutierrez. Even though he was there to help Jennie escape, Sanderson had tried to act as normally as possible. Gutierrez had been happy to see him, and had reminded him of Sanderson’s promise to get Jennie back under sedation in exchange for having a free pass at the redhead patient Allison.
Sanderson was in fact not interested in Allison at all, but that had been his cover story for the party, and so he had said and done what Gutierrez expected of him. Gutierrez even offered him a blow job from Allison when she was done with her male friends, as he called them, a blow job that did arouse a primitive part of Sanderson—Allison, as Sanderson knew first hand, had an astonishingly skilled mouth—but that he did manage to get out of because Gutierrez had been distracted for most of the night.
When Sanderson had gone to find Jennie where they had arranged to meet, she was there but with disturbing news. Gutierrez, whom Sanderson thought wanted to sell Jennie, was in fact scheming to sell Mouse to some people she had pissed off during her previous job as a district attorney, or so Jennie claimed to have overheard Gutierrez discuss with a man.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Awry”.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #49 - Cassandra's Plan
Richard Sanderson, despite having experienced it once before, still could not get used to the alienating feeling. He was back at work, two days after Gutierrez’s party, and just like after the first party he had attended, everyone was acting completely normal, as if nothing had happened at all.
But something had happened.
Sanderson had gone to the party, and had caught up with Gutierrez. Even though he was there to help Jennie escape, Sanderson had tried to act as normally as possible. Gutierrez had been happy to see him, and had reminded him of Sanderson’s promise to get Jennie back under sedation in exchange for having a free pass at the redhead patient Allison.
Sanderson was in fact not interested in Allison at all, but that had been his cover story for the party, and so he had said and done what Gutierrez expected of him. Gutierrez even offered him a blow job from Allison when she was done with her male friends, as he called them, a blow job that did arouse a primitive part of Sanderson—Allison, as Sanderson knew first hand, had an astonishingly skilled mouth—but that he did manage to get out of because Gutierrez had been distracted for most of the night.
When Sanderson had gone to find Jennie where they had arranged to meet, she was there but with disturbing news. Gutierrez, whom Sanderson thought wanted to sell Jennie, was in fact scheming to sell Mouse to some people she had pissed off during her previous job as a district attorney, or so Jennie claimed to have overheard Gutierrez discuss with a man.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Awry”.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
New Story: The Adjusters #48
Here is February's installment of The Adjusters, “Awhirl”, wherein Jenn and Sanderson enact their plan to run away from the Institute.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #48 - Awhirl
The ward has gone dark for the night. Everyone’s asleep. I have my nightlight, of course, and I’m happy about that, because a soft light is what’s best for my mood right now.
Everything is quiet. Last week, they transferred me into a double room with the redhead girl called Allison. I like her. She’s smart, even through the slight dulling of the drugs they give us. It’s not too too difficult to guess what her particular kink is—she’s always sucking on a lollipop, and Cassandra’s nickname for her is Cock-Sucker. That Richard Sanderson sometimes blushes when Cassandra says that tells me that he’s partaken of Allison’s particular skills. Probably at the party thrown by that pig Gutierrez that he attended, that party where he first fucked me. Or where I first fucked him.
My name is Jennifer Hansen, and when I’m not drugged up to my eyeballs, I’m a raging slut that can’t control her cravings to be taken, and taken hard. Which is why I’m locked up in this insane asylum called the Institute. But I’ve got an escape plan.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Cassandra's Plan”.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #48 - Awhirl
The ward has gone dark for the night. Everyone’s asleep. I have my nightlight, of course, and I’m happy about that, because a soft light is what’s best for my mood right now.
Everything is quiet. Last week, they transferred me into a double room with the redhead girl called Allison. I like her. She’s smart, even through the slight dulling of the drugs they give us. It’s not too too difficult to guess what her particular kink is—she’s always sucking on a lollipop, and Cassandra’s nickname for her is Cock-Sucker. That Richard Sanderson sometimes blushes when Cassandra says that tells me that he’s partaken of Allison’s particular skills. Probably at the party thrown by that pig Gutierrez that he attended, that party where he first fucked me. Or where I first fucked him.
My name is Jennifer Hansen, and when I’m not drugged up to my eyeballs, I’m a raging slut that can’t control her cravings to be taken, and taken hard. Which is why I’m locked up in this insane asylum called the Institute. But I’ve got an escape plan.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Cassandra's Plan”.
Monday, January 6, 2014
New Story: The Adjusters #47
Here is January's installment of The Adjusters, “Jennifer's Plan”, wherein Jenn and Sanderson figure out an escape plan, and Beatrice cashes in on her owed favor.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #47 - Jennifer's Plan
Richard Sanderson could not sleep. He tossed and turned in bed, trying to find a comfortable position and failing miserably. His bedside clock shone a bright green 3:10, the glow almost mocking him with its fluorescence.
Sanderson sighed, flipped onto his back, and stared at the ceiling of his room, arms behind his head.
In the darkness, he could pick up the sounds he had grown used to hearing for the past weeks coming from the other end of the apartment: his roommate Erik and his new girlfriend were going at it. It was an almost nightly event, one that lasted for several hours, and that made Sanderson wonder exactly how much sleep those two were getting, and how they managed to be coherent at work.
Granted, Erik worked part-time and usually had his mornings free, and Sanderson had no idea what the new girlfriend did during the day but he suspected that she was still in school, and thus had a somewhat more accommodating schedule. Or at least so he hoped for her sake.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Awhirl”.
As usual, comments welcome.
I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for general discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)
The Adjusters #47 - Jennifer's Plan
Richard Sanderson could not sleep. He tossed and turned in bed, trying to find a comfortable position and failing miserably. His bedside clock shone a bright green 3:10, the glow almost mocking him with its fluorescence.
Sanderson sighed, flipped onto his back, and stared at the ceiling of his room, arms behind his head.
In the darkness, he could pick up the sounds he had grown used to hearing for the past weeks coming from the other end of the apartment: his roommate Erik and his new girlfriend were going at it. It was an almost nightly event, one that lasted for several hours, and that made Sanderson wonder exactly how much sleep those two were getting, and how they managed to be coherent at work.
Granted, Erik worked part-time and usually had his mornings free, and Sanderson had no idea what the new girlfriend did during the day but he suspected that she was still in school, and thus had a somewhat more accommodating schedule. Or at least so he hoped for her sake.
Continue reading...
Next month: “Awhirl”.
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