by Casey Morgan
I knew that real life wasn’t going to be anything like that — and not just due to the need to use a condom. But at least I’d made myself cum, something I had gotten quite used to during all these years without having sex, but that still could take me a while sometimes, and I was feeling ready for Charles to have his way with me.
It was Charles at the door, alright, there was also someone right behind him. Peering around behind his head, I was able to see that it was Shelly, the nosy Resident Assistant for my dorm’s floor.
Great.
“Hi, Marilyn,” she said, sticking her nose through the door after I’d pulled Charles in through it, but before I’d had time to close it on her. “We’re not going to break any dorm room rules today, are we?”
I knew she was talking about not having guys in the room with the door closed. It was an old-fashioned rule that the college maintained in theory — enough to put on the website and make my dad happy about, anyway — but rarely in practice, with all of my friends having had plenty of sex in their dorms, with the door tightly closed.
Of course, though, I had to get stuck with Miss Rule Enforcer Shelly as my RA, and she was acting like she was training for some sort of elite police force.
“No, we’re not,” I told her, as if she was a parent of mine, instead of an overly zealous peer who was trying to fulfill all of her RA duties to collect whatever kind of work study paycheck I assumed came with that role, or else I had no idea who would voluntarily want to do it. “Charles and I just need to study for our Physics final.”
“That’s good,” she said, with a pert smile on her face. “Oh, and this came in the mail for you.”
She handed me an envelope that was red and embossed with gold letters. Just like the ones my aunt always sent me.
Shelly seemed to be peering at it as closely as I was, and she was starting to say, “It looks like it says it’s from a Miss Marla Bitting-”
“I’ve got it,” I said, before she could finish, taking it from her hands just as quickly.
I was annoyed that she always checked my mail and brought it to me. There was a community mailbox at the end of our floor, and she was supposed to let us get our mail out of it ourselves. But she had a key to everyone’s box, in order to check for contraband like drugs or porn magazines our friends from more liberal colleges might send us, and she abused the privilege quite heavily, because she was a nosy busybody.
“Okay, just trying to help,” she said, and I almost felt sorry for her – almost.
Maybe she was a nosy RA because she didn’t have any friends. But that still didn’t give her the right to check my mail, I reminded myself. (I have the tendency to be too nice sometimes, so I have to remind myself of things like this or else I become a doormat.)
She walked back down the hallway and I quickly shut the door.
Now I wasn’t even very interested in the quest to lose my virginity with which I had been formerly obsessed. And I certainly didn’t care about losing it to this douchebag standing in my dorm room.
A letter from the aunt I had never met – or, at least, couldn’t remember ever meeting – but with whom I secretly corresponded since I was a young girl always took priority over everything else.
Chapter Two
Marilyn
“What a narc,” Charles said about Shelly, as I was staring at the envelope that had come from my aunt.
Or, maybe not from my aunt.
Something was wrong.
I could just feel it.
My address was not written in my Aunt Marla’s normal handwriting.
It was true that the envelope was the same shape and size and color as the ones she always sent. It even had the same stamp she always used, which featured a pear tree, and which I always thought was fitting since she lived in a forest far away.
Her actual address was Bethel Forest, believe it or not.
And, of course, it was addressed to me, and it had had her name— Marla Bittinger, as Shelly had so proudly started to pronounce— and address in the return address portion of the envelope.
But she always handwrote my address in her gorgeous penmanship. I had once complimented her on it in one of my letters to her, and she had written me back saying that she had taken calligraphy courses in high school and prided herself on her perfect handwriting. She said it was one of her best memories from her youth.
I guess my aunt acted older than she was, because that seemed like something a grandma would say, not an aunt. I had always wondered why such a silly thing like penmanship meant so much to her, but apparently it did, for some strange reason.
And the handwriting on this envelope was not gorgeous at all. It looked choppy and scribbled, and way more masculine than feminine. As if a man had written it.
Or almost as if a man had clawed the words on the envelope with his nails.
But I guess guys rarely had good handwriting, compared to girls.
I was running my hand over the envelope, trying to figure out why it could be so different than normal, when Charles made a sound of disgust, his impatience causing him to nearly growl.
“Are we fucking or what?” he asked me, grabbing me by placing his hand around my waist and bringing me in to him.
“Hold on a sec,” I told him, shooing his arm off of me.
“Excuse me, Miss High and Mighty,” he said, heading over to the mini fridge in the corner of my dorm room and then pulling its door open.
My dad had insisted I go to a school with only female dorm rooms – and RAs like Shelly who were supposed to make sure they stayed that way – rather than one with co-ed dorms. The only benefit to this lame drawback was that the tuition at this school was higher and the rooms were therefore a bit bigger.
Charles looked at the meager contents in the fridge before removing one of my few beer bottles and opening it without asking.
I had a fake ID, so it wouldn’t be hard to get more, technically speaking, but I didn’t exactly have a lot of money, my dad seeing to that when I left home without his blessing. Yes, he had been happy I’d chosen to go to this rather conservative college — not out of choice so much as necessity, as it was the only one he would pay for — but, still, we hadn’t parted on the best of terms, to say the very least.
“But I thought I was doing you a favor here,” Charles continued, after he’d taken a big swig of my beer. “Deflowering the campus virgin and all.”
My cheeks flushed but I didn’t have time to worry about how he’d found out I was a virgin. I certainly hadn’t told him, but I guess word spread like wildfire, so one of the few “friends” I’d managed to make here so far, to whom I’d confided my secret after one too many wine coolers during freshman orientation, must have told someone who told someone else who told Charles.
No wonder he’d asked me out.
Or, should I say, no wonder he’d invited himself over to hook up.
I tore open the envelope, although usually I save them. I had a box of them in my room, and I always folded up all the letters or cards after I read them and put them back in the envelope before placing them in the box. They had never been disturbed, other than that one time by my dad, which had nearly ended in disaster.
Now, though, I knew this envelope wasn’t even worth saving because it hadn’t been sent by my aunt. I was sure of this, not only from seeing the different handwriting with my own eyes, but also due to some kind of premonition I felt in my gut.
I refused to believe any logical explanations my mind came up with — someone had been running errands for my aunt and she’d asked them to address it on their way to the post office; her hand was sore from knitting too many baby gowns and she’d asked a friend to help her out — even though they were all very plausible, since she was very pregnant.
My instincts — or something even stronger than instinct; more like something overpowering that overtook me in a way I’d never felt before — told me that the letter wasn’t from her and that I’d never see another letter from her again.
There were butterflies doing summersaults that tied them in knots and caused them to land like rocks in my stomach as I started reading the letter.
Dear Marilyn,
I know that your Aunt Marla wrote you frequently. I thought you deserved to know that she passed away during childbirth.
She had a baby, your cousin, who is alive but needs your help. As we all do. Therefore, my reasons for writing you aren’t entirely altruistic, but rather at least a bit self-serving.
Please forgive me for the intrusion and for the inconvenience this will cause on your life — or even the entire upheaval of it that it may cause — but it’s imperative that I ask you to please come home.
Follow the North Star and if you get lost, look for the partridges. You’ll find me in a pear tree, and I’ll do my best to be your guide from there, but you’re the only one who can save us.
Love Melchior
I stared at the strange writing, clearly sent by a stranger. I had never heard of anyone named Melchior and I was sure I would remember that odd name if I had met someone who had it.
I had no idea what was going on, other than the fact that the aunt I had met when I was too little to remember, with whom I had exchanged correspondence with ever since then, but with whom I had never been able to reunite, was dead.
And that she had had her baby and that baby needed me. Apparently so did a bunch of other people in Bethel Forest, but my focus was on the baby.
Therefore, I had to go.
The force that had been taking over me was making me feel like running to the forest as fast as I could. I knew it was a crazy idea, but I couldn’t ignore it. Plus, it beat letting this asshole steal my cherry on top of stealing my beer.
Chapter Three
Marilyn
“Who the fuck is Melchior?” Charles demanded, having sauntered back over to me, his beer in his hand, and without bothering to have asked if I wanted one. “What kind of weird-ass name is that?”
“I have no idea,” I told him, honestly, although I was annoyed at his questions, which were starting to sound as intrusive as Shelly’s had.
At least Shelly had had a job to do and was trying to do it in her own overly eager and nosy way. Charles was just an asshole with no excuse for his boorishness.
“He says your aunt died,” he remarked.
I thought No shit, sherlock.
But I just said “Yep.”
Then I went over to the fridge and helped myself to a beer, to try to calm myself down. I still felt that same feeling of an overwhelming power or energy coming over me, driving me to hurry up and go help Aunt Marla’s baby like this Melchior guy said I should.
I still couldn’t believe I was supposed to help all of them.
Whatever that meant.
I should just ignore the letter but I couldn’t. I knew it made no sense. I didn’t even know this crazy Melchior guy. He could be making all of this stuff up. It could be some kind of trap.
I knew that that whole side of my family was shrouded in mystery and danger and that I was supposed to stay away from them. But I couldn’t help it. I had never been able to help it or to stop myself.
I had always been curious about it but had never been directly invited to explore that world, even from my aunt, who had always said she wanted to meet me but that it wasn’t safe for me to come visit her. She often talked about coming to visit me, after she had the baby, so that I could meet not just her but also my cousin, but she hadn’t had the baby yet so it hadn’t happened, and apparently, now, it never would.
So, I felt very drawn to following the instructions in the strange letter from the stranger with the strange name.
If I couldn’t meet my aunt, then at least I could meet my baby cousin. I knew she would have been happy to have that happen, even if she couldn’t be there to see it.
She’ll be with us in spirit, I told myself.
I was so intrigued by the part of the letter that told me to hurry up and save my baby cousin that it was hard to focus on the sad news it contained about my aunt’s death. Perhaps the force inside me was a way for my mind to protect itself from grief. I was still very much in denial about that part: I knew it, but I didn’t want to face it, so I didn’t care at the moment.
“Was this your dad’s sister?” Charles asked me. “I didn’t see him dropping you off at orientation, but some people say you have a dad.”
“Had a dad,” I told him, not wanting to get into that whole story. “He’s not exactly present in my life anymore. And this was my mom’s sister.”
“Oh, okay, so you have a mom? I heard you didn’t.”
Jesus. How fast did rumors spread around here and how much information about my life had I divulged over one too many drinks on $5 Margarita Nights at Cowgirl Jane’s, the dive bar close to campus? With people I thought were my friends but who were clearly just into the gossip.
“I don’t,” I told him. “I mean, obviously I did have a mom, too, at one point, but I don’t anymore.”
And not for any meaningful time of my life, since I can’t even remember her.
“So, what? Are you some kind of orphan or something?”
Charles asked it the same way he would ask if I have two extra heads, and the look on his face matched what it would probably look like if he was asking that, too.
“Kind of,” I told him, as I downed the Corona Light. “You could say that, I guess.”
“You are really weird,” he said, moving closer to me. “But whatever. If you’re still down to fuck, I am, too. I’ve stuck my dick in plenty of weird, so that doesn’t scare me off.”
“Congratulations,” I told him, suddenly deciding to jump into action.
I walked over to the hook near the door where I kept my purse and keys. I felt like going out into the night right then and there and putting my aunt’s address in my car’s GPS and driving until I ended up in this allegedly godforsaken place everyone warned me not to go.
But then I realized I had to pack a bag and some supplies. I would need to Google some YouTube survivalist videos on how to become a prepper, because I had no idea where this journey would lead me or how long it would last. And I wasn’t about to ask Charles or anyone else for their advice – because I knew they would just think I was crazy, and they would probably even be right.
“What does that mean?” Charles asked. “Congratulations?”
“Nothing. Just wanted to say good job on your sexual exploits. All that weird you’ve stuck your dick in, without getting scared. That’s impressive.”
“So, do you still wanna fuck or not?” he said, sounding confused.
“My aunt just died.”
“And?”
I just looked at him, wishing my eyes were daggers I could throw at him.
“So now you don’t want to fuck?” he demanded. “Not even a comfort fuck?”
“I doubt it would be very comforting.”
“Listen, bitch, if you don’t want to fuck, you should have said so, instead of wasting both our time.”
I opened my front door and pointed a finger out into the hallway.
“You’d better go, then, before I waste any more of your time, or before Narc-y Shelly comes back and calls the campus cops on you.”
“You fucking cunt,” Charles said, but my threat had obviously worked, because he moved towards the door, leaving his empty beer bottle on top of my mini fridge, of course. “Wait ’till all the other guys hear about how you gave me blue balls. You idiot tease of a bitch. You’ll never get laid at this school. You’ll turn into an old dried-up prune of a spinster.”
“I didn’t realize it was the 1800’s,” I told him, just as Shelly appeared at my door. “Back when that threat carried some weight. These days, most of us women are glad not to have to put up with men like you. Haven’t you heard?”
Shelly smiled at me when I said this, obviously stifling a laugh. I never thought I would be happy to see her, but I was eating my words today.
I
couldn’t believe I had thought I wanted to let an asshole like Charles take my virginity.
If there was anything good that came out of my aunt’s death, it was that at least someone had cared enough to inform me about it, and at least Shelly had had the bad-but-turned-out-to-be-good timing of bringing me the letter Melchior had sent me right before I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life.
“Did I hear that you might need my help?” she asked me, raising an eyebrow at Charles. “Is someone getting a little over-aggressive while studying the laws of gravity?”
“Yes,” I told her. “As a matter of fact, he was pushing the… um, physics… on me a little bit too hard.”
“Okay, then, be on your way now, sir,” Shelly told Charles, who pushed past her with a grunt. “And I’ll just pretend not to notice the two glasses of beer you have out, Marilyn, since that’s not allowed, according to the dorm room rules you promised me you were going to follow. I’m sure you were corrupted by that, um, gentleman who just left.”
“Thank you, Shelly,” I told her, meaning it.
“Do you have any more?” she asked, winking at me.
“Here you go,” I said, taking out the last of the bottles from my fridge and giving it to her. “To thank you for your help.”
I wasn’t going to need it, anyway.
Or maybe I would, but it would be a bad idea to bring it along.
There are laws against wandering around with open alcohol, I thought. Plus, the glass would be too easy to accidentally break.
“You don’t want to drink it together?” she asked, looking lonely and hopeful. “I don’t mind sharing. I’m a lightweight and would get drunk if I had this whole bottle by myself, anyway.”
“I would, Shelly,” I told her, and I really would, even if just as a way to thank her, out of pity for her obviously lonely state. “But I have something I need to do.”
I reminded myself that apparently, there was a baby — and some other people, including someone with the strange name of Melchior who would be in a pear tree — who urgently needed my help.