Free Universal Carnal Knowledge Pt. 41

XLI

A well elaborated delusion

In the hall there was a fairly tense stand-off in progress. Wendy, hearing the whistle and grateful for any interruption, pulled the phone from her pocket. "Excuse me a moment, please, Dr Stone," she said, but the courtesy of these words was belied by the determined way she stood her ground and the fierce glare that wordlessly said, "Don't even think about using this diversion to get past me."

Laura paused. Even she was not immune from the strange but universal rule that someone engaged in a telephone conversation may on no account be disturbed or interrupted.

"Hello," said Wendy into the phone.

"Wendy, darling," I said, "you've done everything you can. Let her have her way. Take her upstairs to see Elspeth. She's in Vicky's room. I'm in the garden. Oh, and put the phone on loudspeaker so I can join in the conversation, it's not fair to leave you alone to deal with this termagant."

It was all very well for me to call Laura names, because she was seriously getting on my nerves by now, but I was also conscious that she was a beautiful woman, even more so, by what little I had seen from the window, than the pictures of her suggested; moreover, she had obvious qualities of intelligence and determination that I should normally (were they not being so ruthlessly employed against me) find highly attractive. In short, I had little doubt that FUCK would work its magic if I met her face to face. This, I thought, gave me an insurance policy, but meanwhile I wanted to stay well away from her because I still had hopes, admittedly not high ones, that if she were permitted to see Elspeth she would go away.

Laura, Wendy and Fran entered Vicky's bedroom just as Connie finished rearranging Elspeth in the bed. "Here she is," I heard Wendy announce.

Laura gave an audible gasp of shock and dismay. "Elspeth? Elspeth?" she said quietly. "It's me, Laura Stone." There was, of course, no response, and Laura's next words were angry ones, addressed to Wendy. "What have you done to her?" she demanded.

"She's fine. Really," said Wendy in a vain attempt at reassurance.

"She's drugged out of her mind on something," said Laura (not a bad guess actually). "I'm going the police if you don't tell me what you've pumped into her, and I'll -- yes, young lady, what's so funny?"

Connie had failed to suppress a snigger at Laura's unwittingly apt choice of words. "Nothing, nothing. Sorry," she said hastily.

Laura leant over Elspeth to examine her more closely. "I've never seen anything like this," she muttered. Then she stood up and spoke in peremptory tones: "Mrs Walker, there are laws in this country. Tell me what you've done to her or I'm calling the authorities right now."

It was time for me to intervene. "Ask her yourself," I said. "She'll be right as rain in an hour or two."

There was a pause as Laura looked round for the origin of this new voice. Then she saw the phone, which Wendy had placed prominently on the dressing-table. "Who's this?" she demanded.

"I'm Wendy's husband, James. Hello, Dr Stone. You're welcome to wait till Elspeth recovers, then you can talk to her as much as you like."

"I don't just want to talk to her. I don't know what you've got going on here, but I'm taking her away. I'm not letting you keep her here like this."

"Who's keeping her?" I asked. "She's here by her own choice. She's free to leave any time she likes."

"Are you telling me, Mr Walker," asked Laura angrily, "that I can take her away with me? It's as simple as that?"

"Yes, of course, if she wants to go. What do you think is going on here, Dr Stone? It isn't a prison."

"I don't know what it is," said Laura, "but it stinks. As soon as I get Elspeth safely away from here I'm going to have the authorities down on you like a ton of bricks."

"Would you like to wait here, Dr Stone," asked Wendy courteously, "or down in the hall?"

"I'll wait here," said Laura firmly. "Elspeth, Elspeth," she said more gently. "You poor kid. What have they done to you?"

I cut in again. I had come to a decision. What little hope I had entertained of getting rid of this woman had now vanished. There was nothing for it but to capture her. But before I did, I was curious to see what she would make of my little set-up, while her mind was still unaffected by FUCK.

"You'd love to know, wouldn't you?" I asked.

"I'm going to find out," she replied with decision. "I'm going to get to the bottom of it and then I'm putting a stop to it."

"All right," I said. "If you're that keen to know, I'll tell you."

And I did. I told her about the serum, the power it had given me, the deliberate and accidental capture of dozens of women. Her reaction surprised me. I had expected the same scepticism that I had got from Fran that day in the office, but instead she seemed to accept the whole thing. Then I realised she was humouring me.

"Well, James," she said when I had finished (and I noted that she was calling me uninvited by my first name and in a distinctly patronising manner), "I certainly must congratulate you. That's one of the best elaborated delusions I've heard for a long time."

"So that's all it is, is it?"

"Please," she said; "I've written papers on this sort of thing."

"Then how do you account for Wendy, and Fran and the others?"

"Well," she said, "I agree it's a little surprising you've got these women to go along with you, but there are plenty of cases on record where an attractive, charismatic man has managed to draw apparently quite sensible and level-headed women into his fantasy world. But it doesn't alter the fact that it's a delusion. It would be quite amusing if not for its effect on women's lives."

I decided that two could play the humouring game, and the first-name game. "You certainly seem to have it all worked out, Laura," I told her.

"I have," she said complacently.

"All right," I said. "Wendy, I think perhaps Laura would like to see the rest of my delusion. Let's show her what's going on here. Take the phone off loudspeaker a moment, please, darling, and pass me to Fran, if she's there."

I told Fran that she and Connie should go downstairs and tell the rest of the girls to relax, the emergency was over, they should go back to whatever they had been doing before the interruption. If a woman with clothes happened to pass by they were to pay her no attention even if they recognised her (as many presumably would) but if she spoke to them they were to answer frankly.

So Laura, led by Wendy and with Fran and Connie tagging along, undertook her tour. I listened in to begin with, but after a few initial comments Laura lapsed into almost complete silence, so I turned to other matters. Wendy took the tour slowly, so that Laura stayed a considerable time in each room and had ample time to take in whatever was happening before she moved on.

First they attended the library, where activities were relatively decorous. Until Laura's arrival at the house Wendy, with Alicia's assistance, had been running an impromptu deportment class for a few girls, and now Alicia was carrying on alone. Although remarkable in that teacher and pupils were wearing nothing except high-heeled sandals, this was a quiet, orderly scene punctuated only by the occasional thump as some valuable volume borrowed from George's shelves fell from a girl's head. Laura, who took pride in her appearance, felt she was actually picking up some useful points for bearing herself as she watched the girls practise. But she was surprised there were so many girls here (six, including Alicia) and that they were all so young and pretty; moreover some of them were vaguely familiar from Cambridge. This James man is clearly mad, she thought, but he must be dangerously charismatic.

"Is that it?" she asked eventually.

"Oh, no," Wendy assured her. "That's only the start."

They passed into the drawing room, which housed George's immense (of course) plasma-screen (of course) television. Laura suppressed a shudder of distaste as she saw the hardcore pornography on the screen. It was Connie, inevitably, that had decided that the weekend would be enlivened by a stock of triple-X multiple-penetration DVDs and these had found a ready audience; there must have been ten or a dozen naked girls dotted around the room, all utterly fascinated, several feeling themselves suggestively. Laura recognised among them more faces she had seen around Cambridge, and was shocked that young women would watch this material. It did not need an expert psychologist like her to know that the normal female reaction to this sort of thing was indifference at best, and much more often disgust. How could these girls lap it up? She spent some time vainly scrutinising them for any possible clue until her eye was caught by one particular activity on the screen that repelled her so much she had to move on.

The dining room, however, was hardly an improvement. There were even more girls here, about fifteen, and one of them, a buxom black woman a little older than the others (this was Gina) was standing on the sturdy oak table giving a talk describing, in unsparing detail, exactly how a girl goes about pleasing a man. Entirely naked, she held a large black dildo with which she demonstrated, on herself, various possible moves and explained their advantages and disadvantages (strictly from the point of view of the man). She held her audience spellbound.

After a while she put the dildo aside. "Now," she explained, "what we really need here is Jim. But he's busy," she smiled, and the girls laughed as from the garden there came the distinct sound of a massive female orgasm, "so you'll have to make do with me." With that she rummaged in her holdall and emerged with an even bigger dildo, this one of the strap-on variety. She put it on and announced, thrusting it proudly forward, "Right, I'm the man. Who wants to come up here and be the girl?" Every girl in class raised her hand.

Laura watched in fascinated horror and revulsion as a student called Penny, whom she knew to say hello to, was plucked randomly from the audience and quickly and skilfully steered through a succession of gross sexual acts during which every possible hole was penetrated and throughout which Gina maintained a non-stop commentary, pointing out good moves and bad moves and offering all manner of suggestions and handy hints. It was a veritable fucking masterclass.

Finally the smiling and sweating Gina sent Penny back to her place and announced, "Right, that's one-girl. But often guys want two girls; then we have to work together. Any volunteers?" Again a forest of hands went up. As Gina picked out a couple of girls, Laura decided she had seen enough, and the tour proceeded to the sitting room. Here, at least, nothing disgusting was going on; naked girls were simply draped lazily around the room, chatting and laughing, drinking wine or eating fruit, or merely gazing blankly into space with blissed-out smiles. Laura relaxed a little, dully asking Wendy whether this completed the full stock of women.

"I think a few have wandered out in the grounds," said Wendy, "but otherwise, yes, that's the lot."

Looking round, Laura saw those idiot Marjoribanks twins giggling together on the sofa; she knew them from Cambridge, of course, but she could never remember their first names nor, for that matter, could she tell them apart. Then she was shocked to see a much more familiar face.

"Kathryn!" she exclaimed. "Kathryn Hayward! What are you doing here?"

It was at this moment, back in the garden, that I happened to tune in again. I had been otherwise engaged for some time. It had been obvious from an early stage that the tour would be very boring to follow by phone, and besides I had a raging erection as it must have been almost two hours since my last fuck and after what I had got used to the day before this seemed an unduly protracted abstention. I was not sure which girl I wanted -- any would do, let me be frank -- so I took pot luck and waited behind a hedge, reckoning that on such a lovely day it would not be long before someone took a walk in this direction.

Only a few minutes passed before I heard approaching voices, then Olga, the blonde Estonian goddess, hove into view talking with a pretty student with shoulder-length brown hair whose face I vaguely remembered from yesterday. It was good, I thought, to see girls from such different backgrounds getting on so well. They were surprised to see me but, of course, delighted.

Considering that I had given her the fuck of her life the day before and that she now loved me with utter devotion, I thought the brunette might be offended that I had to ask her name. But not a bit of it; she told me it was Megan and added sympathetically, "Poor James, it's so good and generous of you to see so many of us. It must be so very difficult for you."

"It's tough work, but very satisfying," I told her, and got down to some daylight open-air fucking to complement my nocturnal activities in much the same spot with Fran and Connie. I took Olga first so that I could really let myself go with Megan. It was her cries of ecstasy that interrupted Gina's lecture.

It was as I sat between their prone bodies that I picked up the phone in time to hear Laura's surprise at seeing Kathryn. Laura was, in fact, almost kicking herself at her failure up to this point to connect Kathryn's lovesickness with what was happening to Elspeth. This vital clue had been right under her nose and she had failed to realise its significance.

"Hi, Laura," said Kathryn with a casual wave.

"What are you doing here?" repeated Laura.

Kathryn looked hesitant. "Answer freely, dear," encouraged Wendy.

Kathryn rolled her eyes and let out a sigh that started at the soles of her feet and got stronger all the way up. "James," she breathed.

"That libidinous man of mine," said Wendy, shaking her head but smiling.

Laura ignored this and focused on Kathryn. "You mean this man just summoned you here to, er, make love?"

"To fuck," corrected Kathryn cheerfully. "He brought me here to fuck."

"I can't believe it," said Laura quietly, more to herself than anyone. She sounded subdued, almost crushed, certainly a little scared. Then she turned to Wendy, not angrily now, but almost pleadingly. "But you, Mrs Walker --"

"Wendy," said Wendy.

"All right, Wendy. You seem like a sensible, balanced sort of person. How can you let this go on? How can you be so blasé? You must know it's all wrong."

"I know nothing of the sort," replied Wendy firmly. Then she continued in more sympathetic tones, "Laura, I know this must be very hard for you to understand, but none of the women in this house, me included, would have it any other way. Since my darling James acquired his -- well, gift -- my life has changed out of all recognition, and all for the better. My only regret is that it didn't happen years ago."

"You're not telling me," said Laura hotly, her spirit returning, "that if someone had offered you this life before it happened, you'd have wanted it."

"Oddly enough," Wendy replied, "James himself asked me something like that the other day, and I'll tell you the same as I told him. You're right. I shouldn't have wanted it because --"

"Ah!" cried Laura.

"Wait, hear me out. I shouldn't have wanted it because I could never have imagined what it would really be like. I never dreamt anyone could be as happy and fulfilled as I've become these last few weeks. And if I'd known that, if I'd really understood what it could do for me, then yes, of course I'd have wanted it. Anyone would."

"Not me," said Laura in horror. "You've given up self-respect, free will, everything that matters, everything that makes you a real person."

Wendy was plainly affronted at not being considered a real person. "Rubbish", she snapped. "What do you think is happening, Laura? Do you think there's some different 'me', buried away inside somewhere, that's being held prisoner by the serum? That's not how it works. I'm still the same 'me'; that's the only 'me' there is. And I've still got my free will."

"But the serum's controlling you, it's changing how you feel and what you think."

"Tell her, Fran," said Wendy. "Tell her your Law."

"Laura," explained Fran, "these feelings we have, we know they're caused by the serum, but that doesn't mean they're not real feelings."

"But can't you see?" implored Laura. "It's changed you, it's made you different."

"Of course it has," agreed Fran calmly. "But so do lots of things in life change us, make us different. The thing about the serum is that the changes are so positive."

"Positive?" echoed Laura in disbelief. "They're appalling."

"Listen, Laura," said Wendy. "Let me tell you some not very ancient history. The difference between 'me' now and 'me' a month ago isn't that we're different people; it's that I was miserable then and now I'm not. I was fed up with James and thinking of divorcing him even though I knew I'd be just as unhappy without him as I was with him, and lonely to boot. What sort of life was that?"

"A free one," said Laura firmly.

"A free miserable one," said Wendy. "And now I've got a free happy one. Which would you rather?"

"This is grotesque," declared Laura. "I'm not bandying words with you any longer. I'm taking my student and I'm leaving you to your 'free happy life'. It's one of subservience to a sexual monster."

"Don't knock it till you've tried it," said Wendy.

"May I please see Elspeth now?" asked Laura with exaggerated politeness.

"I should think she's taking notice by this time," replied Wendy. "Let's go and find out."