A Loner Mentalist Pt. 07

Shortly, he found himself in a classroom of his old elementary school. He shot the cartoon dog a sardonic look. "How did you know?"

"I am a facet of your subconscious, after all," the dog replied, sounding like an aging Englishman. "On to the matter at hand!" He tapped his long stick against the blackboard, where Jack read the words, "Cloaking During Sleep". "First off, you must know that an unconscious mind is a safe mind." Jack frowned. "As long as no thoughts are running through a brain, there can be no resonance and no takeover effected by a mentalist. It is the same reason why you cannot go waking people up from persistent vegetative states. There are simply no coherent thoughts for you to latch on to so you could intervene inside their minds. Even if there were, you couldn't know what they were so you would be unable to match them to slip into their minds."

Jack felt a little ashamed for never before thinking about helping people in comas.Well, at least my subconscious did.

"However, the mind isn't truly unconscious during the whole time it's asleep. During REM sleep, the mind dreams and drags up the memories of the day to process them for storage, or oblivion. It is during this stage of sleep that a mind is truly vulnerable. If a mentalist knows how you have spent your day, they can stake out your dreaming mind until those images reappear in it. Then, they've got you at their mercy. Jacobs had known how you had spent your day and had thus been able to enter your mind while you had slept."

"Ok," Jack said, nodding at the explanation. "How do I defend against that? I always felt like I could keep my cloak up while asleep, but I don't know how. I have it up when I fall asleep and it's down when I wake up."

"You cannot defend yourself while you're truly unconscious. But, that's ok, since there's no need for it then. What you can do is train your mind to raise the cloak before it starts to dream. That would make you protected at all times."

"Excellent. How do I do that?"

The classroom disappeared to be replaced by his newly outfitted meditation room at home. The cartoon dog sat down cross-legged on the mat-covered floor and Jack did likewise, facing him. The dog then taught him a new meditation exercise, which would make his subconscious raise his cloak before every dream cycle.

Jack did the exercises until his high ran out and he found himself back in the car. He raised his cloak and checked on the dogs. There was still no sign of either scent they had been taught to track. He did the meditative exercises until Drew came out of the house to go to work.

Jack spent the day following Drew at a distance, as the man with the bushy moustache and shiny badge drove all over the county, doing police work. At every stop, Jack would deploy the dogs to search the perimeter and find either target. There was no sign of Patrick, or her master, anywhere. After Drew drove home again, Jack growled and gave up. He had spent almost 48 hours in his car, drinking bottled water and eating gas station snacks and he had had enough. His dogs were troopers, eager to keep going even though the small bag of kibble he had brought for them had ran out. He felt bad about subjecting them to any more of the torment. He figured the woman was not going to call on Drew and that was that.

Call.

Jack nearly slapped himself silly when he thought of another way a mentalist might engage people's minds. He could call them up on the phone, speak into their ears from a distance and slip into their minds. He could think of no reason for that to not work. He had once already felt Sébastian's mind from the next town over; this shouldn't be any different. He decided to try it out. He called Mia.

"Hey, Babe," she said, "how's it going?"

"Alright. Listen! I'm doing this experiment and I need your cooperation. Can I have your cooperation?" As he focused on his words and made the appropriate holes in his cloak, he felt Mia's mind through them. He expanded his holes and felt Mia's excitement at the chance to help him. He thought he could also sense her feeling proud, but his cloak-hole-making wasn't quite quick enough, yet.

"Of course! Anything you need, babe! What can I do?" His excitement at figuring out his mentalist power really did work over long distances vanished the instant he remembered he had told Mia she was safe from other mentalists, so long as they weren't near her. He lowered his head in his hand and rubbed his brow in frustration. How was he going to tell her that her own phone could turn into her doom if she answered wrong call? "Babe? You there, babe? Jack?"

"Yeah, I'm still here."

"What's going on?"

He didn't trust himself to speak. He made holes in his cloak in the shape of her words and caught up with her mind again. He made more holes, in the shape of the knowledge about the danger the phone could be, and sent his power through them.

"Oh," she said. "I see."

"Yeah. Sorry."

"No, no," Mia quickly said, "it's better to know than to get jumped, you know?"

"My thoughts exactly."

"Anything else?"

"No." Jack paused for a moment. "Well, there's just that I'm coming home soon."

"Did they come?"

"No, and I suspect they're not going to."

"Shame, that," Mia said, sighing. "Want any dinner?"

"Sure. Order us a large pizza with everything."

"Will do. See ya soon."

"Bye."

Jack ended the call and looked at Drew's house. He chuckled to himself.Mia's getting awfully blasé about all this stuff. He called Drew up on the phone.

"Oh, yeah," Drew drawled after Jack identified himself. "You're the guy that trained those nervous rats my sister keeps feeding. What's up?"

Jack spoke in a monotonous voice. "I was just thinking about asking you whether or not I could make an inquiry with regards to this thing I wanted to know something about." During his speech, he made the appropriate holes in his cloak and felt Drew's mind receiving his words through them. He carefully expanded the holes and checked to see if Drew had gotten any strange phone calls that day. He hadn't, but he had been called by a woman the previous morning and she had recited poetry at him over the phone. She had hung up halfway through and Drew had traced the call to a pre-paid cellphone broadcasting from a tower that was some fifty miles to the north. Since that was out of his jurisdiction and she had made no more calls, he had dropped the matter.

Jack knew that Shauna Patrick had a degree in English literature. It said so in the file Drew had made on her and given to Jack. That call must have come from her and she was definitely not coming here. She was likely no longer in the area, either.

"What the Hell is it with you young people and your lack of communication skills over the phone? Or is this a prank? What's going on? Why are you talking like this?"

"Ah, forget it, Drew. Never mind. Thank you for your help." Jack ended the call and started the engine. He recalled his dogs to the car and drove home. He had nearly turned towards Janice's place before he remembered he no longer lived there. He floored it as he drove out of Springfield and towards the city, where his home was waiting for him.

He nearly fell asleep behind the wheel. He had to let his dogs into his mind to stay awake. When he came home and finally relaxed in the comfy downstairs couch, he groaned with relief, sounding like an old man. Mia giggled and settled down next to him. They watched some TV and Mia handed him his slices of pizza. He wished the world would go away and leave him alone with her like this, forever. He wished he didn't feel like he had a duty to go around and warn other mentalists about Shauna Patrick and her handler. During a commercial break, he said, "I have to go."

Mia raised an eyebrow as she looked at him. "To the bathroom?" She grinned. "Aww, is my baby so tired he needs my help to go to the toilet?" She tickled his ribs with a finger, eliciting a grin from him.

"No," he said, suppressing a chuckle.

"Then, where do you have to go?"

He paused and looked away. "I have to travel across the whole country. Perhaps even farther than that."

She looked uncertain. "Um, why?"

"I need to find other mentalists and warn them about Patrick. I can't just sit on that knowledge and let people get blindsided by her." He looked into her eyes and saw her nodding.

"I totally get it, Jack. You really should do that. You can find them when you get high, right?" He nodded. "You should really go warn them. Warn them all. I'm coming with you."

Jack looked at her in surprise. "You are?"

"Yes! You're crazy if you think I'm going to be separated from you for longer than a bathroom break. I mean, seriously, Jack! There's evil people with magic powers hanging around and I'm not gonna be more than ten feet away from you at any fucking moment from now on. Shit, I can even find myself taken if I answer the wrong call." She shook her head vigorously. "I'm not leaving your side! Not for a second! You got me? I'm coming with you. And that's that!"

He smiled and rubbed her knee. "I'd like that."

"Good. Then it's settled. When do we leave?"

Jack leaned back in his seat and sighed. "I seriously need a good night's sleep in a proper bed before hitting the road again. We go tomorrow, before noon. Before the heat." They spent the rest of the evening in front of the TV. When he followed her up the stairs to their bedroom, his eyes were glued to her tight ass in short shorts. He reached out to touch it, making her skip and twist. "You've got such a great ass."

She blushed with arousal and took him by the hand. She led him into the bedroom and pushed him down on the bed. She straddled him and leaned down for a kiss, even as she worked his jeans loose. As soon as she had his cock out, she pushed up his T-shirt and kissed down his slim torso until she captured his manhood with her mouth. She sucked him to hardness within seconds. She jumped up to shuck her few, brief articles of clothing and then straddled him again. She lifted his swollen cock and aimed it at her pussy before she carefully lowered herself.

They both groaned as she slowly sank lower on his shaft, engulfing him with her wet, hot tightness. They relaxed and looked into each other's eyes once she had him fully buried inside her. She started to grind herself on his shaft and he gasped at the sensations. He grabbed her ass and gave it a few squeezes, before reaching up and grabbing her ample breasts. The thing he loved best about her new arousal mechanism was that it eliminated the need for any foreplay. He still liked to caress and kiss her, but making her wet with a single look or word had its charms, too. Her gasps slowly turned into moans as her orgasm crept closer.

The phone call realization from earlier made him think on how poorly he had been using his powers. He couldn't help but grin as he made holes in his cloak, shaped like his grinning face. Once he had contact with her mind, he made more holes and projected his power into Mia.

Mia's mouth flew open as she was suddenly kissed by dozens of hungry mouths, sucking and teasing every inch of her flesh. She screamed in orgasm as her skin broke out in an angry shade of red. Her veins popped out on her forehead and her whole body shuddered. Jack turned the kissing lips into feathers that lightly tickled her sensitive flesh in unison. She gave strangled cries and her whole body convulsed with each caress. He smiled triumphantly and used his power to strum every tense fiber of her body like a harp. She clutched at his shoulders and fell into another paroxysm of ecstasy. Her pussy convulsed against his shaft, making him groan with delight.

She collapsed against him with his dick still inside of her. His hips reflexively adjusted their angle to alleviate the sudden stab of pain her maneuver caused to come from his taint. Her body was hot against his and her breath came in irregular gusts against the front of his throat. He stopped the feathers. "Too much?"

She gulped air some more and then emphatically shook her head no. "More." She lifted her head and looked him in the eye. "Please," she gasped. "More."

He laughed an evil laugh and put his hands behind his head. He made her feel a strong tug on her scalp. She squealed in pain and quickly sat up in his lap, forcing his dick deep into her pussy and alleviating the discomfort he had felt earlier. Before she could complain, he suggested to her mind that something prickly was pressing against her asshole, trying to get in. Her eyes grew comically large as she rose up away from it. Her tight pussy slid along his dick. He told her mind that her nipples and clit were attached to him by lengths of delicate chains. If she ever rose so high as to let his dick slide out of her pussy, she'd be in agony. She yelped in pain and let herself drop back down the length of his shaft, where the cactus was waiting to try and invade her bowels again. She gasped and rose again, only to grit her teeth against her yelp and fall back down.

"Too much?" he asked her.

She shook her head no. "Faster."

He barked out a laugh of delight. "You're a superslut." Her eyelids fluttered at the spike of arousal those words caused. "Here we go!" He used the cactus and chains to speed up her humping and she squealed continuously as she bounced up and down on his dick. When he felt the heat rise from the pit of his stomach, he turned the chain on her clit into a suction tube with a million tiny fibers that tickled her clit from all sides. She collapsed against him as her whole body flailed impotently in the throes of a massive orgasm. Her voice cut out and her eyes rolled back into her skull. The fluttering walls of her pussy coaxed his seed out of his tight balls and he came, shooting deep inside of her. His whole body flexed, from his head to his toes, seemingly to give more oomph to each shot of his cum.

When he came down from his orgasmic high, Mia was still shuddering against him. He hugged her tight and enjoyed the feeling of his softening dick slowly easing out of her. He lost the connection he had to her mind and double-checked his cloak holes. He then looked at her face and saw that she had fallen unconscious from all the pleasure. He chuckled.I fucked her brains out. He laughed some more and then slowly rolled her off himself. He went to the bathroom to get a soft towel. He gingerly dabbed her juices and some of the sweat off her skin before gently arranging her to lie on her side. He got in bed next to her and spooned her while he covered them both with a thin, soft sheet.

He listened to her breathing for a while. It was strong and even. He did his protective meditations and let sleep claim him.

The next thing he knew, he was in a darkness that was so thick, he could feel it pressing against his skin. He drew his trusty longsword from its scabbard. The blade shone with a pale light, forcing the darkness away. He waved the blade around and flinched when the light hit Shauna Patrick's face. It was the only part of her visible underneath her dark cloak. She was mere inches away from him and her round face was distorted by her sneer. She reached towards him with arms made of darkness. He knew that if she touched his skin, he would lose everything.

His sword whistled through the darkness as he swung it around. With a meaty thunk and a jarring impact he felt deep in his bones, Jack slashed Shauna Patrick in two. Her body vanished almost instantly, leaving only her dark robes to pool on the ground where she stood. Before he could rejoice at his triumph, a second cloaked figure stepped over the robes and reached for him.

Jack flinched and backhand swung his blade at the last possible instant. He slashed the cloaked figure with a grunt of effort and it too vanished to leave a pooling cloak behind it. Before the cloak fell to the ground, a third cloaked figure advanced from the darkness. Jack barely had the time to lift his blade and let the dark figure impale itself on it. The weight of the cloaked figure nearly pulled the blade from Jack's hands, but his adrenaline kept a death grip on the hilt and he remained armed when the figure dissolved into just a falling cloak.

Immediately, another cloaked figure stepped over the cloak and advanced to touch Jack. He swung his glowing sword and cut it down without mercy. The next one then separated from the darkness to try where its predecessors had failed. Jack relentlessly swung his blade at the cloaked figures as they emerged from the darkness, one by one. It seemed to him that there was an endless line of them, hidden just beyond the small circle of light his blade was casting. As soon as he cut one down, another would step forward.

Their bodies were solid when he cut them and he exerted himself to slay each and every figure. He grit his teeth with every impact of steel against bone. Once he cut them down, though, their bodies would vanish and he would be left off balance, struggling to keep his footing.

He couldn't catch a break and his endurance was waning fast. Sweat poured into his eyes. Before long, his arms grew tired and his hands became numb. His lungs burned for air as battery acid flowed through his veins. He knew he had to keep at it and slay all the cloaked figures, but there were just too many of them. Pure desperation fueled his swings after his adrenaline rush ran out.

At length, a cloaked figure impaled itself on his blade and wrenched it from his grasp with its weight. The light of his blade was dimmed under the pooling cloak and the darkness advanced on him. Just before it swallowed him whole, he could make out the next cloaked figure lunging at him, arms of an even blacker darkness stabbing towards his eyes.

He flinched awake and gasped for breath as his heart raced. He looked at the darkness around him and saw that he was in his bed. It was just a dream. His pillow was soaked with his sweat. He flipped it over and found a fresh spot to rest his head on. He pulled Mia into his embrace and spooned her sleeping form once again. It took him a few minutes to let go of the nightmare and fall back asleep.

A gentle caress on his forearm coaxed him to wakefulness. He squinted with one eye and saw Mia lying next to him. She was wearing nothing but a goofy grin as she slowly traced the fingers of one hand across his arm. He made a small motion and she looked up at his face. Her smile was made of sunshine. "Good morning, sleepyhead!"

He groaned. "Morning."

"So...last night was something else, huh?"

The nightmare was still on his mind as he grudgingly said, "Yeah, I guess it was." He pulled his cloak around his mind, like he always did when he woke up.

Mia began to look guilty. "I mean, I, I, I don'tneed more than just you, you know, it's just that...uh..."

He guessed he must look displeased, or angry at her words, for her to start backtracking like that. He didn't want to dwell on the bad dream and the endless stream of cloaked figures. He wanted to lose himself in her deep blue eyes. He smiled. "Relax, Mia, I liked it, too."

"Oh," she said and gave a small laugh in relief.

"As a matter of fact, would you like some more, right now?"

Her blue eyes grew humungous at his words. She nodded, shyly. Her religious shame had already made an appearance, he knew, when she had woken up naked next to him. Thus, she was already aroused. He didn't bother asking her for her likes and dislikes. In all matters sexual, it fell on him to take the lead.

He smiled and got out of bed. When she followed suit, he held out his hand, palm out. "Wait! Stay there. Lie back." She lay back down on the bed. "That's it. Just relax and close your eyes. Relax and listen to the sound of my voice."

As Mia relaxed on the bed, he made holes in his cloak, shaped like his words. He felt Mia's mind through them. She was very eager and on the verge of starting to squirm on the bed in impatience. He smiled evilly and made more holes to project his power through.