The Familiar Ch. 04

Chapter 4 -- In the Flesh

Virginity can be lost by a thought.

-St. Jerome

Scratch's searching hand finally climbed her leg and began to worry at the tight knot that Catherine had wrapped her thighs into. After a few moments of trying to get in, he stopped bruising and raising the skin on her neck to murmur, "Open."

Catherine's thighs parted, and Scratch resumed his nipping and sucking at her neck. A thousand thoughts seemed to speed through her mind, and yet none seemed to stir at the same time, her consciousness as lax and throbbing as her body. Prime in her thoughts was the sudden understanding (one that was, notably, not as life-shatteringly horrifying as it should have been) that this may be the way that she lost her virginity.

Well, she had no hymen -- she could remember the gross sound it made as she had punctured it with, of all things, a plastic broom handle during one horny period when she was fifteen -- but the most she had put inside of her had to of been downright puny in comparison to the thing that seemed to burn against her. And nothing she had used had ever been attached to something with large horns.

A glance, more due to morbid curiosity than anything else, carried her rolling eyes down to the large piece of hard flesh that separated their lower bodies from one another. Her mouth hung open, for one long moment, in shock, as she realized that the belief that porn would -- could -- have ever prepared her for the sight and feel of it had been a horrible myth. Had she been aware, before that night, that the path in life would lead her directly into the path of that throbbing cock, she may have very well entered a convent to ensure that she would never encounter it.

"Oh my Goooood." She groaned.

Scratch paused, pulling his face away from the shivering skin on her neck to say, "Remember: Scratch. Not God. Scratch."

When he lowered his head to take up tormenting the other side of her neck, Catherine's body convulsed, and she choked out, "Scraaaatch, oh Goood!"

He laughed, and the sound seemed to strike some electrical current in her spine, on a direct path to her pussy. Horrified by her body's traitorous reactions, Catherine brought her hands down to cover herself, and realized, far too late, that her hands were also pressed bewteen her and as well as Scratch's massive erection.

Her hands, tiny in comparison, felt as though they were close to burning, under the hot weight of the cock that pressed, mercilessly, against them. The head laid against her lower arms, and seemed to more than equal the width of one of them.

Scratch chuckled, the sound an expression of pure sex. "Bring up your arms, I want a nonviolent surrender."

Momentarily finding herself able to gather a single sentence together, Catherine hurriedly said, "Please, don't, I've never been with anyone before."

The smile that had played, wickedly, on Scratch's lips, went down a tic, and his eyes seemed to widen ever so slightly. The red in his eyes that she had seen previously returned, as he nearly whispered, "No one had every touched you?"

"No." She moaned, her insides in turmoil over her desire and her fear. "What are you -- you're so large -"

"Oh, later," he mumbled softly, rising gently from off of her on his arms so that he could snake one of his massive arms down to push her will-less hands away from what they were guarding. Breathing heavily, Scratch parted her lips with one thick index finger.

The feeling was indescribable, and sent Catherine reeling, as every muscle in her body tensed and relaxed, including her throat, which let out one loud shriek.

Following that, she was only vaguely aware of her moaning his name, in the hope that he could thrust his finger one more time, and, somewhere in the haze, she felt herself mumbling in disbelief that she was close to cumming.

She came, with herself tight around Scratch's finger, in the strongest orgasm that she had ever imagined having.

"Oh, I shouldn't have done-" Catherine heard Scratch mumble, sometime later.

Catherine woke up with a troubling soreness deep inside of her and a nurse shaking her shoulders. When Catherine woke, slowly, the nurse told her that she could leave the hospital, and likely when she thought that she couldn't hear her, muttered about how it must be nice to sleep in till noon.

Cold horror took her, as she pieced together how long she had slept for and the sore feeling that seemed to fill her abdomen. As she looked around the room, however, a feeling of relief began to take over as she soon saw that the television was missing from the room and that the ring that she had imagined putting on was nowhere to be seen on her hand.

As she cleaned everything up and out of the room and put on the clothes that she had come in, she realized that she could not find the ring anywhere. Fear -- and relief -- came with that realization, and when she asked the nurses if they had seen a purple ring, they informed her that they had not seen any sort of a ring, Catherine took it as fate, and walked outside to get into the awaiting cab.

She rode in the taxi in silence, the haunting thought of the missing ring at the forefront in her mind. She hoped, dearly, that the ring had gone with any chance that she could ever be troubled by Scratch.

When she finally arrived at the hotel, she spared a thought for the manager, who she would have to thank, extensively, once she was dressed and in a better condition, as she climbed up the stairs, with the cabbie following in tow.

Once she got in the room, with the key that the manager had kindly handed to her when she had checked into the hospital, Catherine quickly located her purse and pulled out some of the money that her mother had sent her. She gave the cabbie a nice tip, in return for having to follow her upstairs to get paid, and was relieved to, finally, be alone.

"No, we got it for now," Danny voice still sounded as though it was swimming in tar, even over the phone. "we're just gonna be here for an hour more -- we'll be more n' happy to see you tomorrow before noon, if you're feeling better by then."

"Oh -- I'm feeling just fine," Catherine replied, not sure if she should feel relieved or distressed at the thought of spending the day in her hotel room alone. As she spoke on her expensive cell phone, her eyes were busy pawing at Jason Simmons' photo in the slideshow on the University's web page. "Really, they just wanted me to stay over for the night, just to make sure I really didn't have a concussion-"

"Well, that's good to hear, an' we'd love to see you tomorrow, if you can make it. You know, they say on the news that in a week there's gonna be a big storm that'll be rollin' around. Might be a blizzard. You been keeping up with the news?"

Frightened -- as though the mere mention of it would somehow cause it to re-awaken -- Catherine cast a frightened stare over at the television in the room. "I don't watch too much tv."

"Ah, well, maybe you oughta consider watching it -- at least for the weather channel -- or go an' start picking up the paper. The weather's gonna start getting nasty, always does this time a the year, we always turn into Canada." Danny laughed. The sound made Catherine wince.

"I'll, uh, consider it." Catherine continued to stare at the television.

"Keep your head up, girl, if a storm blows through here, it may just set us back a few more weeks, if we're lucky."

"Oh." A possibility Catherine had never before considered. After last night, she had begun considering calling her mother and calling this whole thing a wash. Since that morning, she had been weighing her fear of her mother against the entity that had done... that... to her in her sleep.

Still, though, was it really in her sleep?...

"Anyway," Danny continued, "if that storm really does blow through, you oughta consider checking out the town a bit, afore it's all covered in snow."

Sparing a glance out of a gap in the curtain that covered her window, Catherine began to very seriously consider what these people considered "covered" in snow. "I'll look into that."

"Well, good. Y'know, the museum here has a lot o' the stuff your ancestor had in this place, before it was turned into a Bed and Breakfast. Maybe you'd like to see some a that."

"Alright."

A long, awkward pause stretched, before Danny quickly said, "Well, you have a good one, see you tomorrow, I guess." and hung up the phone.

Catherine sat the phone to the side of the desk and thought about the virtues of going outside or sitting around in the room to waste time. After another go-around of that picture of Jason Simmons, she felt as though she could do with a break from web games and crying to episodes of Doctor Who to go see the rest of the town.

Catherine walked into the bathroom, intending on taking a quickie shower before she could fix her hair and go out the door, but the sight of the ring, sitting on the edge of the sink, made her stop dead in her tracks.

Picking it up, Catherine walked to the door and, channeling all of her small amount of energy, she threw it across the parking lot as far as she could manage. Her heart pounded hard in her ears, and an insidious fear filled her.

A walk outside seemed like a good idea, following her re-discovery of the ring, and so Catherine pulled on her winter coat -- a white, heavily insulated thing that fit snugly around her that came with a large, faux-fur lined hood -- and visited the manager to thank her for her help the day before she went off towards the town proper.

The downtown area (one street that was full of mainly abandoned little shops) was only a few blocks away from the hotel, but the blustering cold made Catherine long for the comfort of her warm hotel room, and, for a moment, she thought, longingly, of the apartment back in Chicago.

The first place that looked at all interesting to Catherine was a thrift shop that was owned by an elderly couple who watched her, silently, behind the counter. Even thought he place was heated, their gazes were so cold that she quickly found her way back outside.

The next place was a dilapidated computer repair shop, which had a sign on its door that read, "Be back at 3:00!"

She passed up a small, sad-looking diner before she found the "museum" that Danny had told her about. The place looked, for all of the world, like some sort of an antiques shop run by a hoarder, but the sign above the door proclaimed it to be the Witchwood Museum. A small, sun-beaten sign in the window proclaimed that paid tarot reading were also done inside.

Feeling a bit as though she should walk back to the hotel and not come inside of the strange-looking "museum," Catherine nevertheless walked into the store.

Mismatched shelves with multiple pieces of paper taped to them, warning patrons to make certain that they did not damage any of the things on display that filled out the thin, hallway-like museum. Everything -- from bizarre-looking baby dolls to gaudy vases -- seemed to be covered in a thin layer of dust.

It was hard not to look at everything as she passed by them; there was a macabre appeal to nearly everything, along with the way that some form of neglect seemed to touch everything on the shelves. As she came to the end of the museum, she came to a simple, stand-alone counter that had a an old-school Maneki-neko and a sign that said, "Ring bell for Tarot Reading" on it.

Eager to get out of the museum, Catherine quickly turned around and began to make for the door before she heard a soft female voice say, "Came to look around the estate of Amanda Rook?"

Turning around, Catherine gave the woman behind the counter a nod. The woman, a short, chubby lady with blond, curling hair in a scrunchie, immediately looked familiar to her, but she could not put her finger on who, exactly, the woman reminded her of.

"I, well, yeah," Catherine stammered for a moment, for some reason feeling as though she had broken into the place.

The woman seemed to notice her embarrassingly obvious discomfort, as she came from behind the counter to walk closer to Catherine. "I don;' believe I've seen you before around town. You -- you're new here, aren't you?"

"Well, yeah, I'm just here for a little while."

"Oh, just enjoying a Rock Garden vacation, are you?"

"...Something like that, I guess." Catherine mumbled, suddenly hungry for that one McDonald's that was likely to be one of the only three restaurants in town. The thought that she could possibly enjoy chowing down on a Big Mac made Catherine feel a bit sick in the pit of her stomach.

"Would you like to know some more about everything in here?"

"Oh, I was just about -" Catherine's eyes caught with the woman's, and suddenly she couldn't spit out a convenient lie. She nodded, and tried to fake a smile.

The woman began to explain the different odd objects that were, apparently, collected by her ancestor, and it left Catherine with the impression that somewhere along the line, the woman had gotten a penchant for collecting creepy porcelain dolls and must have gone pack rat crazy.

Sometime after the woman had set about explaining the different cutlery sets that Amanda Rook had owned, Catherine managed to talk herself out of the museum. About half way down the street, Catherine realized that she had not asked the woman where she could have remembered her from.

The walk back to the hotel was bitterly cold, made worse by her guilt at having actually eaten in a McDonald's. Even though the thought of the ring did not leave her memory, for at least an hour, she had very real, physical concerns to think about. Just how long would she have to live in this town?

What was she going to do, after this was all done?

That last thought, truthfully, frightened her more than the entity ever could.

Could she live in her mom's house, down in that rotten, unimaginative town with all of those people all caught with their heads far up their own asses?

When she got back into the hotel room, she sat down at her lap top and thought, again, of calling her mother to tell her what had happened to her, and, again, she decided against it. Somewhere along the line, she ended up playing music on her computer, and began the process of moving everything in her car into the room and organizing all of it.

Somewhere around an hour later, as she sat, with everything put away and her heart beating hard in her chest from running up and down the stairs, Catherine was vaguely aware of the sound of the tub in the bathroom turning itself on. Partially reclining on the bed, Catherine slowly turned her head to look into the bathroom's doorway. In just a split second, she could see a tall, muscular shape filling up the doorway, leaning against the right side of the frame.

The man, she realized for the first time, was blond, including the tuft of golden hair which his long, relaxed penis grew from, but most noticeable, once again, were the giant horns that curled around his head.

She only had a moment to take note of the wicked grin that he was giving to her before he disappeared utterly, there one moment and gone, completely, the next. A man who looked like some strange mix between a muscular angel and a tall, powerful demon.

She jumped off the bed, her memory of the dream the night before coming back to her in full force. "What do you want?!"

At first she heard nothing, but then she heard a voice -- not aloud, but in her head -- speaking so softly that she had to concentrate to understand it.

"...you know, oh Catherine, you skin is so cool., so soothing.." The voice sounded almost cooing, but it was unmistakable to hear the powerful, albeit soft, taunt underneath it.

"I am not wearing the ring; I threw it away." It was a struggle to keep her voice calm, but she fought to keep her tone as clam as she could. Somehow his voice made her feel foolish to shout and made her feel childish to respond to him in such a manner.

"My gift." his voice was a sigh, and Catherine froze in place, as she believed that she could feel someone's breath (his breath) on her ear as he said it. "You disposed of it in a very rude manner. Not to worry, though, as I have taken the liberty of returning it to your finger. Not to worry, your finger," he seemed to let the word out in one long, erotic growl. "is the only part I touched this time."

Catherine's eyes darted down to her hand, where, to her horror, the ring glinted almost merrily with a light all its own. Staring down at it, all that she could manage to do was to let her mouth fall open as no noise came out.

"Speechless? I will take that as a compliment. That ring is worth more than you could imagine. Don't worry, though, it isn't your fault that you're naïve, and I won't hold it against you. Well, at least, not for much longer"

"What are you?" Catherine whispered, parroting the question that she had asked him the night before. "A -- a demon, an angel -- why are you here, with me..."

Scratch laughed, and the sound sent an equal amount of dread and bizarre desire running through her entire body. "I thought I told you that I would let you know about that business in due time. You have left me none, girl, and after I gave you your pleasure, you left me without. Tonight will be your turn, and, perhaps, after you sate me, I will consider giving you more knowledge about this relationship of ours. Now, I have gone through the trouble of running you a bath -- I believe you prefer those to showers -- and you can clean yourself now so that you do not need to worry about it... Later."

Catherine continued to stare down at the ring, and wondered about what would happen if she could manage to destroy the thing then and there.

Scratch seemed to guess the trail of her thoughts, as he said in a voice that sent a terrible chill up Catherine's spine, "Until I tell you to, you are not to remove that ring. I have plans that will allow you pleasure tonight, but bear in mind that I can make it as pleasurable for you as I want to." His voice dropped then, and for a moment, Catherine could scarcely believe that the same two voices could come from the same being. "I will be waiting for you, when you are ready. Well, whether you are ready or not."

"What does that mean?" Catherine asked in a voice that she hoped sounded braver than she felt. After a few seconds, she realized that the voice -- and, possibly, the presence with it -- had gone.

Feeling suddenly angry -- a fiery anger that seemed to fill the bland, empty emotions that had formerly been there -- Catherine walked into the bathroom and pulled the drain in the tub out. As she walked out of the bathroom, the sudden memory of the night before came to her, and then the realization came that the reason why it had to of happened had to be because...

She had fallen asleep.

"Well, motherfucker," she snarled. "you chose to fuck with me on the wrong terms. I am an insomniac; I've gone five days without sleeping before. You prepared to wait to rape me for that long, you bastard?!"

Even as she said it, she could already imagine what he could say back to that. I will have to sleep, sometime.

She would just have to cross that bridge, when the time came for it. For now, she would need to go fetch her old stand-byes -- the things she called her Study Aids.

Some hardcore energy shots, some coffee for the shitty little coffee maker that came with the room and some horror movies sat in the back of her little car as she drove back to the hotel room, wondering, darkly, if the voice or the presence was going to come back at some point.

Am I really prepared to wage war right now? She had come to town, broken, defeated, literally depressed and with no pride to speak of, whatsoever. She was Christian; just, admittedly, not a very studious or serious one. After this incident, I may take to Catholicism.