My Nine Monsters Ch. 01.5-02

First I must apologize, dear reader, for the delay in bringing you this second installment of young Chloe's tale. While Chloe and I suffer different challenges in the Academy, her deadlines are not so hard written as my own.

On that note, it was necessary to greatly expand and revise chapter one in order to make chapter two possible. The expanded material is presented here, in the interest of clarity. If you haven't read the first chapter please do so, otherwise this entry will make absolutely no sense.

And one final note, I have filed this story under "Mind Control" as that is the overarching theme of the novella length piece I hope this to become, but this chapter could fit equally well under Erotic Horror, or perhaps several other categories. So please do read on, but consider yourself warned.

*****

Ch. 1.5

Standing at the opposite end of the long room Thomas struggled to make sense of the last few seconds. A librarian by nature as well as training, he preferred to have his thoughts organized before making conclusions, but what had just transpired defied rational description. Peering around the edge of the door he had just swung open on it's creaking hinges, he saw Chloe fleeing out the back door an instant before it slammed shut. The air at the other end of the room appeared to shimmer, as though Thomas was looking down an asphalt road on a hot day, rather than down the length of one of the oldest library reading rooms in the world.

The floor to ceiling windows to Thomas's left cast bright shafts of daylight every few feet, unusual for Britain in the fall, alternatively the spaces between windows were virtually uniluminated, black with shadow. In the light, golden motes of dust hovered suspended in the air. Surely the unusual light accounted for the disturbance to his vision, Thomas thought. But nothing could remove from his mind the hard "c" of Chloe's voice begging to come, which still seemed to echo from one end of the room to the other, pounding on his eardrums with each pass of the sound waves. Chloe had been talking to someone, he was certain of it. But no, talking was the wrong word, she was pleading, making a desperate entreaty to some unknown man or woman that had brought her to such arousal. And frustrated academic or not, the sound of an orgasming woman was not entirely unfamiliar to Thomas.

He didn't think of himself as a great lover, he knew he was sometimes too eager, and occasionally too quick. But he liked to think he made up for his faults in generosity and thoroughly refined oral technique. In fact, his favorite joy in the bedroom was employing his talented tongue to tease his partners to the edge of bliss and keeping them there for interminable amounts of time before allowing them release.

Thomas had moved slowly to the center aisle between the great oak tables, each which sat twelve, arranged in two rows down the length of the room. He trod lightly, endeavouring to make no sound as he approached the table where Chloe had been working. He had not admitted anyone else to this portion of the library today, and his instincts told him he was alone here. Still, he struggled to see into the shadowed corners, and though walls, and into the small alcoves between the sagging bookshelves. Something here made the hair of the back of his neck stand up, but whatever it was gave no hint of its nature.

As he walked towards the table two thirds of the way down where he had left Chloe earlier Thomas felt he was steadily losing control of his thoughts. He had heard Chloe coming! Damn his eyes why hadn't he come to check on her as soon as he had heard her first cry out? He could have seen her! He had struggled to keep his desire for the young Historian secret to anyone but himself, but secretly he burned for her. All the way from the vault where the oldest volumes were kept to Chloe's workstation he had envisioned what might happen after he finally, after all these weeks, managed to find the courage to make his move. But of course he had wrecked his chance, probably his only one. And now this catastrophe had happened! Clearly she had some lover who had snuck in here to see her, and had managed to depart before Thomas caught a glimpse of him. Or her, Thomas further ruminated, whatever young Chloe's sexual proclivites were (surely she had them?) she kept them well concealed under her matronly attire and the steely expression on her beautiful face.

In his jealousy, and in his imagined fantasies of earlier, Thomas's own arousal began to impose itself on his conscious thoughts; sneaking in from the back corners of his mind. He saw Chloe, as he had imagined her many times, pushed back from her worktable, her single-minded devotion to the old and odd replace by desire for himself. He imagined her, with her woolen skirt pulled up above her pale and muscular thighs, reavealing the downy hair on her sex. He saw himself on his knees before her, gently teasing her clit with his tongue. He imagined her unbuttoning her sweater show the creamy skin of her breasts, to run her hands over her engorged pink nipples. He almost could feel her twisting her fingers in his own red hair as he pleasured her. Her voice that he heard echoing earlier began to change, and it was he to whom Chloe made her impassioned pleas. "Make me come Thomas!" she wailed in his mind, as he curled a long finger inside her to push on the spot he knew would send her over the edge.

All of these fantasies flying about Thomas's mind in such an inappropriate place at such an inappropriate time were the residual effects of the magic unleashed in full upon Chloe earlier, though he had no idea, nor any way possible to understand that this was what was happening to him now.

A dozen steps from Chloe's table, which was still burdened with the old book he himself had brought her, Thomas stopped in his tracks. He was rooted to the floor in shock at the aroma that had just drifted past; and he knew it exactly, at once. He had never given this smell words, nor had anything he'd ever read given it a description he found satisfactory. To him arousal smelled like arousal and that was that. And even though it was always the same and he always knew it for what it was, it was also as unique to every woman as a fingerprint or a strand of her DNA. And this was Chloe's! This was how she smelled!

He reeled, drunk on his own need and the smell of the woman for whom he longed, and there on the chair that Chloe had shoved back so roughly in her flight from this room was the source of the scent. A small pool of clear fluid no larger than a half dollar coin lay there. Odd that such a small amount could overpower Thomas's senses to such a degree, some back corner of his mind reported in, completely unnoticed by the rest of his conciousness. His sense of decorum was gone entirely now. He would be shocked at his own behavior if he saw himself doing what he was doing now, falling to his knees, entranced by this pool of clear liquid, and the thoughts ricocheting of the interior of his skull would shame such an outwardly proper man. But still he moved ahead, Thomas was barely aware of releasing the top button of his trousers with his right hand as he stretched out his trembling left toward Chloe's vacated chair. He was fully hard inside his pants, without having touched himself at all previously, he noted to his mild surprise.

Inhaling deeply, he bent toward the chair. He had intended to touch it, to feel it with his fingertips, only to confirm that it was what he believed this substance to be. But that wouldn't do now, he dropped his outstretched hand and bent towards the gift that Chloe had left him. As he moved his head forward to partake of this sacrament, his vision began to narrow and the little pool almost seemed to glow. Thomas couldn't help himself now, even though some part of his mind knew what he was about to do was disgusting. He was going to lick that chair. He was going to lap up Chloe's juice that she had left behind from an encounter with some other lover and he was going to like it. Now without will, without volition, with nothing existing at all but the smell, and soon enough the taste of Chloe, he bowed his head and extended his tongue.

Flavor and inexplicable visions exploded through Thomas's mind the instant his tongue met the little pool. "This was Chloe!" his mind rang! Here. This. This was all he ever wanted forever. All his harbored fantasies and things he never even recalled imagining before raced through his head, and tore down his spine, and exploded out of his cock, far surpassing the power of any orgasm he had ever experienced before. He immediately felt faint, his cock still pulsing in his hand, the taste of Chloe's arousal on his tongue, everything began to go dark. "I love you, Chloe," was the young man's last conscious thought before collapsing to the hardwood floor in a heap.

****

I'm running at a dead sprint all the way back to my small flat the University provides me with. I couldn't let Thomas see me in the state I was in. I couldn't let him see my hooded eyes and swollen breasts. I couldn't let him see my full lips, I couldn't let him see what I look like with my mask of scholarly indifference stripped away. If I had seen Thomas, if he had seen me looking like that, I would have fucked his brains out right there in the library. So I ran away. Honestly, that's my typical response.

When I finally get to my apartment I throw myself headlong through the door and slam home every lock in it and jam a chair under the door handle for good measure. I have no idea if this works or not, but I saw it in a movie once. Then I run for the small closet just off the hallway: shucking off the clothes I was wearing in the library as I go. I burrow to the bottom of this nest of old quilts and pillows that I keep in this tiny place, where I hide from light and noise when the migraines come to split my skull apart and turn my stomach inside out.

Now, here, alone in the dark, I start to cry in earnest. This is an all out, sobbing, ugly cry. The rage and frustration of what just happened to me in the safest place I know runs so hot down my face it seems to turn to steam on my cheeks. My arms and legs are still shaking. I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that the single greatest orgasm of my life was forced on me by some supernatural rapey thing. I cry out the humiliation I feel because I loved it. I scream and beat the walls with my little ineffectual fists because deep down in some dark part of my soul, I want to find that thing again, and I want to let it do whatever it wants to me.

Some time passes before I notice the scent in my closet. It smells rich and spicy and exotic, and very, very good. I freeze in terror with the thought that something is in here with me. A quick sob of horror jumps out of throat before I have any chance to push it back down. I don't know how to deal with this. I am in no way prepared for this new reality.

I was looking for monsters recorded in obscure ancient texts. I never thought that I would encounter actual beings, lovely, lovely, good smelling beings that look like men, that can appear out of thin air and fuck me blind without touching me. Minutes pass before I can breathe. I am alone in here. I must be. Then it dawns on me that what I smell is my own sex, and some essence of the Library Thing lingering on my skin. The little tuft of hair at the top of my slit is still wet from what happened just mere minutes ago. I realize that even though it feels like a long time to me, it has probably only been a brief period since what happened at my worktable and my full-blown flight into this closet. Gingerly, I run my fingers through that downy hair and over my still aching lips. I'm just as swollen and just as wet as I was back in the library. Just that light touch has started heating me up all over again; I slowly rub my sex, hating my body for its betrayal of my mind. My brain tells me this was forced on me but my pussy doesn't care. When I come it is a pitiful shadow of what happened before.

I fall into a fitful jerking sleep in the safety of my closet. I wake frequently from fevered dreams of being fucked inside out by angelic looking men. I rub myself to orgasm and back to sleep a half dozen times before the dawn finally must have come to the outside world.

Dawn is a pale gray smudge of an affair, the rare sunshine of yesterday has been banished in favor of weather much more typical of Britain in the Fall. Slowly, emerging from my cocoon of blankets, and my tiny closet one thought dominates my mind, I'm sure this is likely to become the most pressing question of my life until I find a satisfactory answer.

"What in the world have I discovered, and what in the hell do about it now?"

Ch. 2.

"Goddammit, Freyr! You were supposed to frighten her off! Not mind-fuck her insensible!" The impossibly big man roared at the smaller, but still rather large man across a broad desk from him in what appears to be a normal, if very well decorated, modern day office space.

"Michael. You knew I'd never be able to resist such a sweet as that one. She's spent her entire life restraining herself. Denying what she really wants. I had to find out how she looks when she comes. Which is lovely, in case you were wondering." His counterpart glowered in response, a look which should have terrified anyone, but Freyr was calm in his seat.

As he spoke the blonde man seemed to be changing. But instead of transforming, it appeared something camouflaged beneath his exterior was bleeding through. Gradually the smooth shaven face of the man who had prowled the Oxford libraries earlier that day gave way to harder planes and a flaming red beard. He tended to wear it cropped close to his face these days, but in the days songs had been sung about him it had fallen to his now rapidly broadening chest. By the time the last of the glamour had worn off he appeared to be nearly seven feet tall and at least as broad as the average handicap accessible doorframe.

The man across from him had similarly outsized dimensions, but where Freyr looked a Viking warlord in a modern suit Michael was not distinctly anything. He had olive skin and dark hair; he also had blue eyes, but a lighter shade than the Norseman across the desk. His apparent age might be in his mid to late thirties, but whatever humans he might have resembled must have died out long ago, something in him was much more fiercely animal than anything else that currently walked the Earth.

"You must stop her, looking into us." Michael said softly in a tone that brooked no argument.

"Or what? You're gonna bend my dog tags? Take my birthday away? I'm every bit as impossible to kill as you are." Countered the impish Freyr.

"You have clearly spent too much time in the armies of this age," the darker man sighed. "Why do you still fight when the rest of us haven't shed blood in a hundred years?"

"It's what I do, Michael." Freyr murmured, in acrid tones of modern cordite and ancient forges. "But don't worry. I'll go frighten off the tiny human that unmans you so."

"I'm not afraid of her, you blithering idiot! If she finds out enough about us, she'll eventually find out about them. And you know what that will cause."

It's been decades, maybe even a century or two since the last time Freyr felt whatever it is he's feeling crawl up his spine now. The feeling is so unfamiliar it takes him several long moments to recognize it as fear. He knows perfectly well whom Michael was talking about with that word they, and he didn't like it even a single bit.

"You can't possibly believe they could be around, it has been a very long time since last they were seen."

Freyr kept his voice quite steady as he spoke, but there are far too many memories between these two for Michael to possibly be deceived. The darker man merely tilted his chin down a quarter inch, then moved it back to its original position once to confirm the old Viking's suspicions.

"You're not telling me someone has seen them?"

"The Gaul did." The darker man almost whispered.

"Oh fuck you, Michael!" Freyr exploded out of his chair as though he had been seated on a land mine, or a basket of the world's most venomous snakes. It occurred to Michael that at least he was now understanding the gravity of their problem. Under any other circumstance, the sight of the truly massive, nearly thousand year old thing that Freyr was pacing a trail into his office carpet would have been nothing short of hilarious, but Michael had his doubts that anything would be funny today.

"The Gaul hasn't spoken to you ever since you bollocksed up that cavalry charge at Gettysburg!"

"He's old. Not elderly, Frey. He's fully capable of sending an email."

"And another thing, why do we still call him The fucking Gaul anyway? He has a name. And Gaul has been France for a long goddamn time now. " Rage is starting to well in Freyr's voice, his mind wandering back to a very old grievance as he goes on, "For fucks sake he got to lead the sack Rome himself. He got his revenge."

"Just go take care of the girl, Frey. Quietly. It wasn't that long ago that we finally managed to push the darkness back a step, I have no intention of giving back the ground we've gained."

With that, their meeting was over.

*********************

I crawl out of my closet and start going about the business of making myself human again. I start the coffee and go to shower while it brews. As I go through the rituals of washing and dressing my mind turns over and over this question, "What now?" Since I woke up this is the only question I can ask myself. "What have I stumbled into, and what do I do now?"

If Impossible Sex Monsters and Where to Find Them 101 was offered at any of the universities I've attended I must have missed it in the catalog. I am utterly unprepared for the situation I now find myself in. 12 hours ago, despite the fact that I had accepted the existence of a supernatural mystery, it had only been in a theoretical sense. I wasn't actually looking for one of these things themselves, not if I was really honest. I only wanted to find enough documents that hinted at their existence, and tie a neat bow around them. Honestly wouldn't even have been able to reveal my discovery to the scholarly world. Really, who would ever believe me?

Certainly that has changed now. I knew about the monsters, or at least I thought I did, but what was the thing in the library? If I'm right and he wasn't one of them, then what other things might there be living secretly in the world, far outside of human existence? And what powers might they have? The ability to totally control a woman's sexuality was a new one for me. I'd never even heard of it in all the lore and legends I've ever read. But if the Library Thing can do that, what other abilities might these creatures have that I know nothing about? And how do I find out about them? Can I protect myself from them? My mind reels in possibilities equal parts horrifying and erotic.

Learning more about what I'm dealing with is my only option. Of course it is. My entire life the only response I've known to a crisis has been to try and find something in a book to help me. I let one little snort of resignation blast through my nose. Under attack or not, I'm a scholar to the bone. Still, lame as that is, the fact remains that my only option is to try and find out what I'm dealing with.

Everything I've learned thus far about these things, for lack of a better word, is contained in six large corrugated cardboard boxes I had shipped over two months before I left the States to come here. Media Mail for scholars is a great way to ship heavy books on the cheap, but everyone knows they come on the very slowest boat. I thought I had it timed so that my materials and myself would arrive about the same time. I spent a full month waiting for these to come in. Thankfully, I didn't follow the advise of an older, cheaper, colleague and ship my clothes concealed amongst the books. Trying to do research in only what I wore over the flight and had in my carry on would have quickly become embarrassing.