Sheila and Her Friends Pt. 05

Parts 1 thru 4 (combined) of Sheila and Her Friends got over 11,000 hits. Part 5 only around 4,000. So I've revised Part 5 and added an introduction. Hope you like as much as I do. Part 6 should follow around the same time. Have fun. Your comments are much appreciated.

So, in Parts 1 thru 4 we met Sheila, the telepathic vampire who finds herself mysteriously attracted to Julie. Julie was almost a midnight snack before they realized just how far back they really go: Friends Don't Eat Friends (Part 1). In a bar, they discover another delicious karmic friend, Lily, who is connected to them both: Tip Your Lovely Bartender (Part 2). Sheila's telepathy is three-dimensional, timeless, and at least among these destined friends, shared, allowing them access to each other's senses: When We Put Our Minds Together... (Part 3). To experience the past in another's memory, vivid and all too real, can be confusing. The implications begin to unfold in Where Are We... (Part 4).

Join the friends again, in Part 5, to learn about their lives in the 1800's when their love made the bond that is their destiny today.

All of the characters are 18 years old...some are much, much older, agelessly older.

Sheila and Her Friends, Part 5

Where We Meet Again

"Here is the story of a strong-willed girl," Sheila says as Julie and Lily snuggle closer. "A girl who finds her heart's desire one sunny day while exploring the steps and alleyways of Bisbee. This is my story and the woman you now hold so closely, like the events in my story, are well over a hundred years old.

"So let me introduce you to Mistress Sheila on another of her walks, unknowingly on the cusp of discovery and, as these once upon a time tales encourage, her destiny..."

On one of her morning hikes, she sees the girls of Cheroots lounging in their tatty nightgowns, capturing the morning sun, pleasantly drinking coffee, idly chatting. They wave, beckoning her to join them. How happy they look! She smiles shyly but continues to climb the stairs until she reaches the road at the top of the ridge. Hidden by a tree, she stares down at the girls, small and childlike at play on the porch. Laughter and odd curses waft up the hill. Secretly, she wishes she knew them better.

As a proper girl, your Sheila lived in the big house on the hill over there, one of the few with a cobble-stoned road by its door. I was from a wealthy family--a young mistress you would hardly expect to venture into the sun without both a parasol and a chaperone. My father tells me never to walk alone, to bring the maid or a brother, but your future girlfriend wants neither. She wants her freedom to explore, even if being free means danger--shivers of fear on those occasional close calls when she meets a mean drunk or two. (Looking back, I was probably immune from the usual dangers of a woman walking alone might face--most everyone knew who the mine boss's daughter was.)

Unconsciously, she takes to walking the steps that pass by Cheroots more often. The pretty sleepy girls and their friendly waves become a special part of her morning ritual. She does't know who they are or what they do to earn their morning's freedom from the long hard work others must do during the day. (How innocent I was.) It takes an overheard conversation to glean more--"

"You ain't working there no mat'er how much that Miss Betty pays." Mrs. Jones, her mother's maid, tells her daughter as they fold the big comforter on Sheila's bed. "Ain't no place for a woman who ain't whoring, so keep away."

"But ma, Miss Betty said she'd look after me."

"Yeah, wouldn't be the first time a negro girl was 'looked after' on her back in there. Just stay away." She says, their voices fading as they head out back to air the comforter.

Now Sheila is intrigued. She knows from other slips in polite conversation that whoring involves loose women who do bad things no proper woman would dare. What bad things? She isn't entirely ignorant; she understands sex in a mechanical way, one absent apparent pleasure (what a stallion does to a mare to result in a foal). She also understands all too clearly from her mother's countless admonitions that sex (or any contact, for that matter) between a man and woman is only the province of a proper marriage to a suitable gentleman. Her nubile body has other ideas, sometimes aching with a worrisome wet desire, a fuzzy longing she keeps secret. The secrets arouse her curiosity, what do "bad things" really mean and who does them and why, especially since whenever they were discussed, a guilty frisson takes over the inhabitants of the room, especially among the men.

So on her walks the friendly girls on the porch become more intriguing, their "bad things" a secret beguiling, until one morning pausing at the top of their steps, a tempting dozen feet from the porch, she smiles at them and waves. Of course they wave back, inviting her over. She declines, shaking her head, almost giggling and steps lightly along, wishing she could visit.

The sirens lay a trap, relying on her predictable schedule. The next morning as Sheila turns onto their street, they place on the top step directly a silver tray: On it sits a china teapot, six thin cups and saucers, bowls of honey and thick cream (the weather is still cool). Dainty spoons, small embroidered cloth napkins, and a vase in which a long-stemmed red rose proudly stands to complete the elaborate presentation. What better way to tempt a proper miss!

Sheila looks up the long stairs. Heart beating wildly, she realizes how excited she is. Something red glints in the morning sun at the very top of the stairs. Up she goes, step by step, visiting temptation. When she finds the tea service, she stops and smiles, how lovely. Who could be so bad they would offer a proper girl her tea so nicely?

(Little red riding hood wasn't one of your girlfriend's childhood stories, Sheila adds, smiling wistfully as the thought causes giggles from Julie and Lily.)

Erma, a small shapely woman disguised as a cute girl, makes first contact, toying with her like a cat its mouse.

"Care for some tea, Miss?"

Lost in her appraisal of the tray on the step, Sheila is startled to find that Erma is somehow standing right at her elbow.

"Oh...hello!" Sheila says.

"Hello to you too!" Erma smiles and adroitly kisses Sheila's cheek, leaning into her like a little girl.

How forward! How sweet!

"I'm Erma, but everyone just calls me Tiger."

"I am Miss Sheila Gordon. Pleased to meet you." Oddly she is thinking of a curtsey, why would I do that?

Erma does curtsey, there on the third from the top step where a misstep might send them both toppling down the long stairs. She bows low until her head rests (accidentally?) on Sheila's thigh just above the knee. Sheila does almost stumble, but the apply named Tiger is quick and steadies her with an arm firmly around her bottom.

"Careful, these steps are steep! I'm sorry I startled you, Miss. Won't you come have tea with us, please."

Sheila can't help but say yes, distractedly smiling, as she remembers the strength and sureness of that warm arm that protected her from falling. Erma takes her hand and leads her to the porch.

(Julie interrupts, Sounds familiar doesn't it?--Stopping on the street to help a stumbling maiden. Both have given up speaking, lost as they are in Sheila's bygone world, their telepathic conversations the better to preserve the movie of Sheila's past.

You and Julie were so coy and cute--first contact, discovering each other: Electric ladies of the night! adds Lily, the image of them floating in her mind.

Yes, I learned a secret or two about the fine art of seduction from Tiger, as we called her. Let's go back...)

On the porch, the girls surround Sheila, happy to have a new plaything, someone to tease, a pleasant diversion with whom to wile away their sunny morning.

"Your hair is so fine and shiny, how do you get it that way?" Asks Eileen, a dark-haired beauty with unruly curls, who timidly touches the silvery blond locks that stray from under Sheila's bonnet.

(Eileen, I would later learn to my astonishment, had the densest forest of velvety black pubic hair, vast mountains of curly peaks, into whose valleys a girl could loose herself.)

"You dress a little manly--those pantaloons and boots could be on a gentleman or two we know, but not one of the miners. I'm Helena, they call me the Greek goddess when they bargain with me, and that ugly girl playing with your hair is Eileen."

"Here's your ugly!" says Eileen, who pinches Helena's bottom, causing her night dress to ride up her leg and generously display the pale flesh of her calf. Sheila frowns but is secretly attracted by the informality, the togetherness of the girls' and their outrageous teasing.

(After Cheroots, I never had any more sisters--until you all. Sheila interrupts. This causes a long pause in her story as Julie and Lily fondle and coo over their new sister, so happy to be a family of three. They tease her about those 'vast mountains of curly peaks' she must have explored. As Sheila continues her story, they lounge together in a big round bed in Miss Betty's huge boudoir where the walls are pale pink and the curtains lacy white over windows framed in red velvet. Around them matching chaise lounges, big mirrored dressers, and a half-dozen crystal lamps clutter the big room--over-decoration being the fashion in the late 1800s. The window is open, the curtains billow, and the breeze that greets them, touching their bodies snuggled almost naked on the bed, is from the porch where Sheila long ago first met the ladies of Cheroots.)

"You've met Tiger. The girl with the black eye hiding on the couch is Cornelia. We call her Tricksie; she's a busy girl. Come on Tricksie say hello to Miss Sheila. She won't bite--not like that fist you ran into last night."

"Fist?" says Sheila.

"Joey wanted a little something for nothing. Tricksie refused him--and not like a lady either. Joey hauled off and poked her. Miss Betty got the shotgun. Now Joey is banned from Cheroots for a month."

"Cheroots?" Sheila asks, wondering who Miss Betty is, but figuring she'd eventually find out.

"This is Cheroots--we live and work here!"

"Like a big family," Sheila offers.

"You could say that," Eileen adds, "but not around everyone."

"Where is miss sour pussy?" Asks Helena.

"Still asleep with Blackie," Tiger replies.

"Why do you call her 'sour pussy'?" Asks Sheila. Another question she thinks--that's all I do is ask questions.

"Let's just say her and water ain't friendly," smiles Helena. "Blackie bathes her like a baby 'fore they play." The picture of a girl bathing another girl--silvery warm water slipping over naked, shining flesh--flits intriguingly through Sheila's mind...

Tiger takes her hand and leads her to the couch against the wall in the shade. Sheila ends up sitting next to Tricksie who greets her with a soft moan, her rest disturbed, and slumps over carelessly onto Sheila's shoulder. Sheila tentatively puts an arm around her to keep the thin girl from sliding onto to her lap. Tricksie smells like the bourbon Sheila sometimes brings her father in the evening. Despite the steading arm, Tricksie slides down Sheila's front, her head coming to rest on her lap. After the shock of such an unlikely encounter--the glaze of sliding cheek along her blouse, the warmness of the girl's small but heavy head fitted to her lap, her face folded into her pantaloons, she worriedly presses her thighs together. As she adjusts to this strange sitting, Sheila feels oddly maternal toward the helpless girl resting peacefully on her lap. Timidly, she pats Tricksie's head, gently straightening her flyaway blond hair.

"Careful!" giggles Eileen, "Tricksie's like a stray cat, give her a little milk and she'll be your pussy for life!"

"Frrmh ya!" mumbles Tricksie, her mouth vibrating against a now warm thigh, makes Sheila squirm.

"What?" Asks Sheila.

"If I know our sweet-mouthed Tricksie, she said 'Fuck you,'" Helena replies matter-of-factly.

Sheila is shocked by the language but still unwilling to move away, much less flee the porch where the girls surround her with their welcoming smiles. Given the cold formality of her own sterile family life, where smiles much less hugs (that arm around her bottom!) are rarely to be had, the closeness of the girls and their casual familiarity is like a secret narcotic...

(I craved their closeness, like a lost kitten its milk.

Are we your pussies, too? Thinks Lily, big smile, as she licks Sheila's nipple, Can I get something tasty here? Nipping at her...

Shush, little kitten, Sheila says and strokes Lily's soft hair not unlike the way she stroked Tricksie's on that day long ago.)

Tiger scoots to a swing seat opposite Sheila and sits on it along side Eileen. Helena sits next to Sheila, their shoulders and knees lightly touching. Helena's arm is casually draped over the back of couch. Sheila is very aware of that arm resting just inches from the back of her head, as she is those bare knees, so unusually near, peaking out from her nightgown. After all, how often does a proper girl encounter, at quarters close enough to feel another body's animal heat, such a statuesque goddess, one so loosely dressed, her hair the color of peaches in bloom, her skin clear and milk white, her face the picture of a haughty, classic beauty, now softened by a playful smile.

Meanwhile, Tiger sit's up to get some tea for Sheila. She fiddles with the tea tray, and winks at her as she puts spoonful after spoonful of sugar into her cup.

"Cream?"

"Please."

Tiger hands her the cup, "Sweets for the sweet," she adds and settles back, stretching, the contour of her naked body pressed against the thin cotton of her night dress. Bare legs extend and she props her feet, painted red toes wiggling, on the edge of the couch next to Sheila.

"Good tea, my lady?" Tiger asks, a smile nipping at the edges of her upturned lips which struggle not to giggle as their owner nudges Sheila's thigh with her slender foot.

Tiger's foot stops moving and affectionately comes to rest against Sheila's thigh as though it belonged there. Again, as Sheila nervously thinks she should leave, her hand continues to unconsciously stroke Tricksie's silky hair. Her thighs relax, pressed from above by Tricksie's resting head and to the right by Helena's warm body. When Tiger can't restrain her giggles anymore and Eileen pinches her knee, she realizes the girls are teasing her, that she is folded into a wonderful warmth; that despite the adventure and the odd flirting, she is at ease, pleased with all their attention. She leans her head back happy to feel Helena's warm arm fold itself further around her, fingers lightly caressing the starchy cloth that binds of her upper arm.

Now what, Sheila wonders, and decides to just to ask. "So what do you all do here?"

Sheila, looking from one girl to another, says, "I heard someone tell my father that this is a whore house, but I don't think I really know what that means."

"Show her, 'elena, you cunt!" Another voice booms out shrilly behind the blackness of the open door, as the wooden screen door slams open banging against the wall. Sheila starts, the peacefulness suddenly shattered.

"I should be going," she jumps up, untangling herself from the girls, and runs to the stairs, this time going back the way she came. As she rounds the corner, she hears--

"What a bitch you are, Jilly, scaring off our new girlfriend ..."

As she runs away, feet automatically trampling down the steps, hand trailing the rusty steel railing, she remembers her feathered bonnet. Her mind is drawn back then to the place where she left it on the end table by the couch, there by the resting blond-haired Tricksie, next to Helena, the beautiful girl who hugged her, while she sat across from the cute giggling Tiger, the touch of her playful feet still fresh upon her thigh, along with the raven beauty of the playfully pinching Eileen. Like sirens, she thinks...or maybe, someday, new exotic friends?

A few days pass, other routes are taken down far less interesting pathways. Still, the sirens call, the memory of them rich with shivery speculation, each empty long stairway up this street but not that street, a memory of a red rose waiting, the tea service inviting, the girls smiling. She resists for all of three long days. On each of those days the sirens worried, missing their new playmate. At the top of the stairs, little Tiger baits her trap, yet again, now with the addition of a distinctive white feather, souvenir from the forgotten bonnet. Each day, the tea tray is removed by a disappointed Helena, the rose a bit droopy from the sun.

On the third day, three roses fill the vase, one for each day their new girl friend stayed away. Sheila passes the steps, coming this way obliquely, failing to find the different route she vaguely had in mind. At the distant top of those long stairs, the roses' red glint shines in the sun, beckoning. Her hand touches the railing, wondering what will happen if she does climb these stairs again. A big sigh, double darn this half-faint heart! Then up she goes, lightly now, strong legs stepping, hoping all will be well, that the roses mean her new found friends do, really, forgive her her hasty departure.

There at the stop, sighs of relief escape her tormenters, as they watch her take the stairs. Tiger skips to edge of the building, peaking around corner, impishly following Sheila's progress. Again, Sheila stops three stops down from the top stair, smiling, seeing the new addition--a white feather from her bonnet, resting like an eyebrow over the edges of the bowls of sugar and cream.

Tiger, frisky with relief, can't stop herself and hugs Sheila, ending her embrace with a frank pat on Sheila's bottom. Instead of jumping, Sheila leans toward Tiger and pinches her ear, and smiles, "Leave my bottom alone bad girl!"

Tiger laughs and takes Sheila's hand, skirting the tray, she skips over to the porch bringing her find. Eileen kisses Sheila warmly on the cheek, lips lingering, and says, "So happy to see you again, pretty Miss!" and goes to collect the tea service they will use to welcome their friend.

Being a bit overwhelmed by this affectionate welcome, she does't at first notice the two new girls. Sitting In the corner, occupying the place where she sat before, is a slender black girl dressed like the others in night clothes, hers being particularly short, revealing long legs, graceful and slender in ebony that end but inches from hips spread comfortably wide--enough to shockingly reveal a deep dark hairy center barely covered by the nighty. Sheila tries not to stare, her gaze shifting from the black girl's frank sultry smile to the mysterious dark down there, hardly believing what she sees in either direction. (Back then, white people and black people weren't much for mingling, let alone being the source of such relaxed directness.)

Next to the black girl is a lanky girl with frizzy red hair, eyeing her. The girl pushes the black girl's legs closed, "Blackie, quit tormenting the virgin, leave that pussy for the gents!"

The voice is familiar from her last encounter with its indignity, Sheila says, "So you must be Jilly?"

Jilly's eyes shift hiding their surprise. Up she gets, graceful and strong, full of herself, and walks to within a step of Sheila, "How do you know my name?" There is a bit of threat there, but something else, too, something suggestive that Sheila has no name for except to understand this enforced closeness is an intriguing part of it.