"The fourth squad will be led by Camilla," I announced, causing some shuffling in seats and a couple dropped jaws.
"Yes!" Camilla fist pumped in her enthusiasm.
"I want four squads so we can make easy rotations without wearing out any of the weaker women. It will also allow us to have multiple units on guard when needed. Camilla will have Judah, Lenah and their friends on her team, as well as a few key people that have earned our trust. We need to get that group meshing with the rest of our colony quickly. Riley and Alexa will help with that."
"Speaking of my first two wives," I continued. "Neither of them will be assigned to a squad due to their administrative responsibilities. But we will certainly put their talents to use when needed."
I turned to see Ling clinching her fists and fighting to keep a calm face. She clearly felt overlooked. Stella showed no emotion but may have been wondering why she wasn't assigned a squad either.
"Stella is in charge of agriculture and all the coordination that comes with it. She won't being going out on patrol at any time. Ling has an important job as well. We will be continuing to fortify our position here, and possibly even expand our territory. A full-time construction manager is essential for our colony. In times of combat, I'll bring both of them with me into the battle. Their assistants will also not be selected for any of the squads."
No one debated that decision. My phantom casting Asian friend seemed happy with it as well. As the meeting broke up some of the girls began working on how to divide up our teams. Riley had the whiteboards cleared for the occasion. I hung back observing, waiting until my input was needed.
Off to the side I noticed Camilla approaching Stella with a smug look on her face. Stella took a defensive stance when she saw her old friend coming toward her. There apparently had been some negativity brewing between them of which I was not fully aware.
"We can always count on Mason making good decisions, can't we?" Camilla whispered. "I'm sure that you are happy to be placed where you belong, in the garden."
"Oh, I know where I belong," Stella replied, obvious distaste for the flirtatious woman a rare emotional display for her. Then Stella promptly walked up to me and grabbed me by the face. Standing up on her tip toes, she gave me a firm kiss that lasted uncomfortably long. When she released, she said, "Love you, Mason." Then she walked out the door without looking back. She was rubbing it in Camilla's face that she had the privileged position of being one of my wives.
"Love you, too," I muttered, still trying to make full sense of what was going on. When I turned to face Camilla, she was boiling with anger, but only for a split second. Then she put on a fake smile and turned her attention to the whiteboards where her new team was being assembled.
Alexa had been paying attention as well, no doubt picking up on the strong emotions in the room. When she stepped up to me, I asked what that was all about.
"Camilla has always had an issue with Stella getting so much of our attention," Alexa explained. "Rejoining our group to find the young lady firmly established as one of your wives was quite a blow to her. She regrets ever agreeing to being swapped over to Corinne's clan. She's come a long way in maturing, but some things are hard to get over. I know how she feels in that regard."
We shared a look for a moment. It took a lot for Alexa to get over sharing our bed with other women. But eventually, she got past it. Would Camilla come to terms with Stella's position, too?
"The problem is that Stella is no longer that timid little girl," Alexa continued. "Her confidence has increased exponentially. Especially since having sex with you. She's not going to take any of Camilla's shit anymore."
"Well, good for her," I said.
"I agree," Alexa replied. "But I don't think this feud will be ending anytime soon. At least this will give Camilla extra motivation to prove herself to us."
CHAPTER FIVE:
I offered to help Ling hone-in her scary mutant ability. Not only had she selected me for such assistance, I was also the only one that would not immediately flee at the sight of her conjured phantoms. Even though they appeared to be just vapor ,and having no physical bodies, it was only natural to fear the monsters as they moved realistically and charged straight for you.
I recalled back to when Jada first helped me realize the potential of my newly acquired power of deflection. It was a hit-and-miss process that eventually required an emotional response to activate. Ling's situation was even more dependent on fear and anger than mine. It didn't take long before I tired of trying to simulate conditions to trigger her demon shadow casting reaction. In some ways she was very much like a child. I just couldn't bring myself to anger or frighten her for real. My fake attempts were more often a cause for laughter from her.
Surprisingly, the meditation exercises that I introduced to her proved the most useful. I taught her to gain control of her mind and body first, demonstrating while explaining the technique. I was by no means a master of the method, but I was successful enough with my own meditation to help me.
I instructed Ling to focus intently on scenes that made her very angry. They could be things that have happened or possible events in the future that she wanted to avoid. I encouraged her to add as many details as she could manage to slide into in a mock hallucination. It had to be something that she could visualize so effectively that it would trigger a legitimate emotional response. It didn't take long before we saw results.
Dark smokey shadows formed out of the thin air around her. Originally, I had thought that they came directly from some part of her body. Her hands, her ears or her ass, I didn’t know. Instead, they began to gather form at about arm's reach, then thickened in appearance as they left her vicinity. The monsters faded back into nothingness within a few seconds regardless of where they wandered off to with their haunting effect.
Ling tested using her arms to direct them with very little success. She wanted to look like me when I positioned my hands to concentrate my power of deflection. It wasn't until I helped her appreciate that the arms were not doing the actual work before we saw any progress. The movement of her limbs were just to help her mind focus on where to direct the phantoms.
I stopped the exercise after a couple of hours. Not that I was getting fatigued by it. No, it was due to how surprisingly well she was controlling her power. She could continue to practice on her own daily without my assistance. But both of us had other things to do with our time the rest of the day anyway.
"Can I ask what mental images you used to assist you in honing your skill?" I asked. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to know. Or even if I did. It just seemed like the proper question in the moment. We were having a bonding experience much different than anything we had ever shared before.
"I don't want to say," she replied with a rare display of bashfulness. It more closely resembled an exaggerated display from a foreign movie. I almost laughed.
I placed my arm across her back and pulled on her shoulder to bring our bodies together. I had learned that physical contact with me was an effective reward for her achievements. She eagerly responded with a two-armed hug around my waist.
"You don't have to tell anyone," I told her. I nearly kissed her on the top of the head before I saw a beetle crawling around in the unkempt mess of wiry strands. "It might be best to keep it a secret."
"Okay," Ling said as she pulled away. "Now I want to tell you. But you have to promise not to tell anyone. And don't think different of me, either."
"Alright," I replied. Her overacting before was apparently meant to be a tease. She wanted me to pry the information from her. I had experienced such situations before with girls. They would desperately want to tell you something about themselves but were afraid it would damage your mental image of them. Somehow, they believed a feigned reluctance would make all the difference. "But let me reiterate. You don't have to tell me if you don't want."
"I see you dying in battle," she says, peering into my eyes like a hypnotist. I resisted the urge to pull back. It felt li
ke she was trying to transmit the images directly to my brain through her awkward stare. Did she have the ability to do that?
"Oh. That's not too bad."
"They kill Stella and Bianka, too. You see, the three of you ride into the middle of a huge enemy army without support. You are all so powerful that you are too fearless for your own good."
"That's good," I tell her. "The more specific the better, I think."
"There's lots more."
"Oh, okay. I don't need to know all the details. As long as they help you, that’s all that matters."
"Stella sits in the horse’s saddle guiding the animal without the need of her hands, because she is shooting two pistols, one to each side. Enemy soldiers drop with each pull of a trigger. You are weaponless, shielding our favorite girls with your incredibly sexy deflection ability. Your body is right behind Stella's, pressed up against it. You are bare naked, and your hard cock extends between her ass cheeks under her skirt as she bounces happily with the horse."
"Oh," I say wide-eyed. "That doesn't need to be part of the vision, does it?"
"I like to think about it,” she told me without any waver in her gaze.
"Ummm, okay."
"Bianka is on the horse's ass, balancing on her tiny feet. She’s wearing the pink toenail polish that I gave her months ago. It is the first time that I have ever seen her use it, or anything else to dress up those awesome nice toes of hers. Her feet are so perfect.”
Did Ling have a foot fetish? Was it just girls’ feet or was she ogling mine when I walked through the house barefoot?
Ling continued her story. “She has a bag full of pink ninja stars, and she's throwing them at lightning speed, taking down opponents as fast as her girlfriend. They never seem to be aiming at the same people. I guess that is weird. You would think that some bullets or stars would be wasted by shared targets, but it never happens. It is like they are perfectly in tune with each other. And you, too. You are the sexiest battle threesome ever, and it gets me hot. Not when you die, of course! Just the section of story where you are all naked on the sweaty horse. And the massive animal has a boner, too. It is flopping around like crazy, banging into his legs and belly."
“Oh, my, Ling,” I muttered. What had I gotten myself into?
"All the bad guys are men," Ling continues to explain, dropping her intense focus on the sexual aspect of her story. "Bad men that want to hurt my best friends. They have scraggly beards, eye patches, and warts on their noses. And one of them has a rocket launcher."
"A rocket launcher?"
"Yeah. A rocket launcher. It is made of shiny bronze with black accents. There is a picture of a big ole cock and balls on the barrel. And he shoots it at Stella's horse from like ten feet away. The animal's chest explodes nastily, sending all three of you to the ground. Then a hundred bad soldiers surround you. They are all wearing cut off jean shorts with the pockets hanging too low underneath. Brown socks with sandals, too."
"I can see why this would make you angry,” I said, wondering if it was their action of killing her friends or their poor fashion sense that really did the trick. “Good job."
"You can't recover in time," Ling just won't stop with her harrowing story. "Bianka takes an arrow in her lovely ass. Not in the hole! It sticks into the middle of one of those exquisite tan cheeks. She's not wearing any pants either, for some reason. I think that has something to do with you. Did you know that her ass cheeks are tan, too? Oh, yes, of course you do. You two almost had sex that night. I wish I was there when it happened. I would have held her down for you so you could send your seed deep inside of her perfect body. Or all over her beautiful face. Whatever you wanted."
"Should we talk about this?" I ask hesitantly, nearly stuttering. This conversation was much scarier than her conjured demon smoke!
"Then an army general steps up with a big knife. It had three holes and a slot in the blade. I don’t know why. And a price tag sticker, but I can’t read the numbers clearly. I don’t know how much he paid for it.”
I stared at her dumbfounded.
“He has a face like a zombie. He’s not wearing pants or socks or sandals like the others. His hairy hobbit feet are exposed. His penis is tiny and receded back into his furry ball sack. I think that is one of the reasons that he is so angry. He sees your glorious boner and that of the horse. But the horse is dead now!”
“Ling?”
“The bad general then stabs Stella in her little flat belly over and over again. She uses her hands to shield my eyes from the blood that flows out. She is so considerate of other people’s feelings, even when she is being killed. When you try to stop him, he swings the blade and slits your throat."
"What the fuck, Ling?"
"You are all dying as I come running up, wearing one of Camilla's beautiful lace gowns. It fits my pudgy form perfectly because her and I are almost the same size. I’m not sure if you knew that. Because you and I had plans to go out to a dance after the war. Just you and me. I can't dance, but I'd try, for you. After a couple songs you would have taken me outside to the gazebo. It’s covered in chicken wire. I’m not sure what that is about. Anyway, that's where you would pull me tight like you would a beautiful, graceful woman. Except it’s me instead. And you would be okay with that. And then you would kiss me passionately on the lips."
"Oh, Ling."
"But you can't, because you are all dying. And those fucking assholes are the ones that killed you. So, my shadow ghosts need to rip the skin off their bodies and rape their skulls with the severed cock of the dead horse!"
I stared at her in complete shock. I've run out of words that might be appropriate to say. I'm not sure that there are any. Except possibly encouraging her to find medicine or therapy that could help.
"So, that's what gets me off," Ling then blurts out. "Not like an orgasm! That is how I get angry enough to cast these demon images."
My condition remains the same. Instead of thinking how to reply, I remember conversations with Alexa when she was still trying to figure out the new additions to our team, Ling being one of them. She explained that she had a hard time getting a clear picture of Ling's mind or emotional state but mentioned that it was dark and scary. Now I finally knew what she meant. And more than anything I wished that I didn’t.
"You promised not to tell anyone," she insisted.
"Yeah, sure," I replied. I was tempted to add that I wouldn't wish that mental picture on anyone else anyway.
"Okay," she stood up, smiling like we just had a nice productive talk. "Back to work. Thanks for your help, Mason."
She gave me a quick, signature bear hug, then walked away hastily like she was in a hurry to use the toilet. Between her phantom shadows and the vision used to conjure them, I just about had the shit scared out of me, too.
"Mason," Jada’s voice came across the new phone/two-way radio clipped to my pocket. "We found four more zombies. I've got them under control. I'm bringing them back to join the others."
"Okay," I replied. With Ling’s story still fresh in my mind I then ask, "Are any of them male?"
"Yes, one of them. How did you know?"
"Just a hunch," I answered. "Is he dressed in an army general's uniform?"
There was a lengthy pause before Jada replied. "No. Why?"
"No reason. Be careful." I refrained from asking if they were wearing jean shorts or socks with sandals. Or eye patches.
I could tell by the sound coming from my unit that Jada pressed the button to talk but said nothing. She did it again for moment before muttering something to herself. I knew that I was being confusing, but I figured explaining it for everyone to hear would only make it worse. Plus, I had sworn an oath of secrecy. The communication equipment was still new to me. I had no idea if Ling was already overhearing the conversation or if the call was somehow linked only to me.
Jada had taken most of her new squad to systematically clear the neighborhood of armed threats. Some of the girls now assigned to her new unit were due for
some sleep, so the ebony warrior goddess wouldn't have her full complement until tomorrow.
The plan was to start along the river to the west and work their way to the north. Once they reached the destroyed high school building, they'd go east then south, zigzagging all the way until they made it to the main road in the east. It seemed optimistic to me to complete the task in one day, but there was no harm in getting done what you could before dark.
Jada and her girls had developed a system for herding the newly acquired zombies that was working quite well so far. It only took a few of them, so the remainder of the squad could continue their search and capture efforts.
Some parts of Ling’s story lingered in my body, like hormones in my blood. Thoughts of Jada was suddenly getting me a little frisky. It had been a while since I had tapped that fine ass. The backshot she gave me in the yard was still one of my favorite sexual experiences ever. I tried to think of new places to take her, and maybe a crazy new position, too. Could we rig up a swing in the barn? Or perhaps go at it in the back of a transport vehicle?
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