by Carla Blake
“Yes! Go on hon. Fuck yourself! Come for me.”
“Yes! Oh, God, yes. Emily. Emily. Emily!”
Jessica came. Her legs spread as wide as her jeans would allow her. Her top bundled up beneath her bra. Her hand gripping the phone so hard she thought she might break it. She came. Hard and intense. Gushing liquid that she scooped up with her fingers and spread across her swollen, pink lips whilst her hips bucked beneath her and she gasped Emily’s name over and over again. Coming. Coming… Oh, God, coming!
Until finally, she could take no more.
A soft chuckle sounded down the phone. “ I take it that was alright then?” Emily said, sounding pleased. “ Sounds like you enjoyed it.”
“Oh, I did.” Jessica replied, pulling up her jeans and panties and pulling down her top. “ You are a very naughty girl.”
“What, me? I didn’t do anything. Just suggested what you might like to do.”
“Yes, well you certainly managed that alright. And here’s me thinking you were hard at work. Christ, I hope no one saw me!”
“Is anyone around?”
“Nope.”
“Then stop worrying! What you gonna do now then, aside from wallow in post orgasmic bliss?”
Jessica smiled. “ Dunno. Think of lots of evil ways to get my own back? Don’t suppose I can now, can I?”
“Sadly not, I’ve got to get this report done before two. But you can have your wicked way with me tonight if you like. How about I bring take away home? We can slob in front of the telly in our dressing gowns and drink copious amounts of wine before tumbling into bed and having lots and lots of debauched sex.”
Jessica chuckled. “Sounds perfect.” She said. “I’ll get home for five then. And Emily?”
“Yeah?”
“ Thank you.”
“My pleasure darling. Have a lovely afternoon and be careful. Don’t want anything biting you on the bum.”
“Aside from you, of course.”
Emily laughed. “Yeah, aside from me. See you later darling. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Jessica hung up and immediately felt lonely. Lying back down again, she stared at the leaves and suddenly felt less than enthusiastic about carrying on with her walk. Maybe she should just go home instead, she mused, and wait for the weekend when she could walk with Emily. But what would she do if she went home? Laze in front of the telly? Tackle that pile of ironing? Write? God, what was she thinking! This was her day off and the sun was actually shining! She should make the most of it and be grateful that thanks to Emily’s offer of take away, she no longer had to get home to cook.
Packing up the remains of her lunch, she folded the blanket and stuffed both back into the rucksack. Then she pulled out the maps. She might know where she was now, perched up on the hill with a sweeping valley below fringed with woodland, but if she veered off the beaten track, she would soon be in unfamiliar territory and she decided it might be better to plot out a route now rather than try and make it up as she went along. She might also, if she was lucky, hit upon a really lovely walk she could take Emily on later. One that might take them through secluded woods…
The map spread on her knees, Jessica traced her fingers along the tree line, noticing how the woods below her had designated paths running through them. Smiling, she nodded to herself, thinking she’d keep to the paths for now, but once Emily was with her, they could be a bit more adventurous and maybe veer off the beaten track and find a nice bit of undergrowth to hide behind. And how lovely would that be? Making love with Emily out in the open. Her nipples would really get hard with a nice, refreshing breeze blowing over them.
The hike down to the woods took just over half an hour. She stopped twice. Once to drink and once to peel her knickers from her still moist pussy. She was still very wet and determined that once Emily was home, she’d throw the take away into the oven to keep warm whilst she carried her girlfriend off to bed for some serious sex.
She came to the tree line. The sun was still shining and thus far she was fairly certain she’d picked up a fair amount of colour on her arms and face, but once she was amid the trees, there’d be no more of that and she briefly wondered if she really wanted to sacrifice this unexpectedly glorious weather for a walk though the woods?
“ Course you do.” She muttered to herself. “ Stop being such a bloody wimp. Em’s gonna want to know where you went. At least have something different to tell her.”
Before going in though, she slipped the rucksack off her back, delved inside for a hoodie and tied it round her waist. She hoped she wouldn’t need it, but it looked shady in there and she didn’t want to catch a chill.
She laughed to herself.
God, I sound just like my mother, she smiled and stepped onto the track.
It was well worn and footprints from dozens of walking boots ran back and forth along the slightly tacky mud together with several shallow animal tracks and the heavier imprint of horse’s hooves. She was, she realised, not the first to pass this way, yet the sight comforted her and she wandered on, listening to bird song and hoping Emily would choose curry rather than chicken for their take away tonight.
Thinking of Emily turned her thoughts to sex, as it inevitably did, and she recalled one of the first times they’d made love. It had been in the store room of a local club, and it turned out that Emily knew the owner, the owner knew Emily had the hots for Jessica and in a secret deal, involving the promise of a home made chocolate cake, the owner had slipped Emily the keys to his back room, warning her that she had two hours tops, before the staff might wander in to restock and get the shock of their lives!
Emily, though, had used the time well and after two hours of being kissed, sucked and licked until she could hardly breath for coming, Jessica had barely been able to walk, let alone carry on dancing.
It had been a magical night. A filthy, dirty, sexually magnificent night. The store room must have reeked of sex afterwards.
“Oh shit!”
Jessica pulled herself up short and stared at her feet. God knows how she’d done it, but somehow she had wandered off the path and now, looking around her and seeing nothing but undergrowth and trees, she had no idea where or how she had lost it.
Swearing again, she turned round and looked back the way she’d come, but there was still no sign of the track. “ Bugger.” She said and walked a few paces, searching for the path and finding nothing but bracken and plants and a small crop of battered looking toadstools.
Shit, she really was lost! But how? She’d only walked a little way and she couldn’t have been that caught up in old memories to entirely dismiss where her feet were going, but there was no track! Where the hell was it?
Digging out her map, Jessica traced the footpath with her finger and tried to determine where she might have gone wrong. But the map offered her no clue. All the paths were clearly marked. There was nothing vague about any of them and none of them showed thin, spidery paths leading off from the main ones. She had done this all by herself.
Way to go Jessica.
She took a deep breath. Okay. To find her way, all she had to do was look for the sun. It had been on her back when she’d entered the trees, so if she turned round to face it and then started walking, she should end up back where she’d started.
It took her a while. It was mid summer and the canopy above her was at its most lush and thickest, but eventually she found what she was looking for and keeping the sun firmly on her chest, she began to walk, telling herself that once she found the path, she wouldn’t day dream herself off it again.
It was right where she’d left it, the path, and she stepped gratefully onto its tacky surface, not realizing until now just how nervous she’d been without its reassuring presence to guide her.
Pausing to rest, she drank from her water bottle and too
k a bite of the chocolate bar, checking her watch to see if she should press on or call it quits and go home. It was a little after two and she quickly decided it was still a bit too soon to start thinking about heading home. Emily wouldn’t be in for at least three hours and she still wanted to have some new, uncharted territory she could brag about finding and then promise to take her to see one day.
She walked on, drinking from the bottle and raising her head to the sun whenever it put in an appearance amongst the leaves.
She didn’t notice her hoodie coming untied from her waist or when it fell to the ground.
“Okay babe, I’m getting seriously worried now. Ring me as soon as you get this, okay? The minute to you get this!”
Hanging up Emily bit on her lower lip and wondered where the hell Jessica had got to? It was four o’clock in the afternoon and she’d first started to ring her at two thirty, thrilled with the unexpected surprise of getting home early and wanting to get hold of Jessica to let her know she’d be at the house by three at the latest. Except she couldn’t get hold of her at all and instead of hearing Jessica’s voice, all she was getting was her voice mail.
It was driving her crazy!
“Oh, get a grip!” She told herself and wandering into the kitchen, switched the kettle on. “ She’s probably in a bad reception area or something. And she’s not expecting you to call. Maybe her phone’s on silent. But shit! What a waste.”
The trees were thinning and despite telling herself that everything was fine now she’d found the path again, Jessica still breathed a sigh of relief.
It would be good to be in the valley again, she thought and even better to feel the sun. It was starting to get chilly beneath the trees.. oh, for crap’s sake!
It dawned on her that she’d lost her hoodie.
Great, she sighed. Now what do I do? Go back and look for it?
One glance over her shoulder, however, immediately made her think of the beginning of the poem by Robert Frost. ‘ The woods are lovely, dark and deep..,’ and shuddering, she decided against it. She didn’t want to get cold and she definitely didn’t want to get lost for a second time and it was only a hoodie. The birds could have it. She could always buy another one.
She came to the edge of the tree line and closed her eyes in anticipation.
Ah, sunshine, she smiled. Come lay your golden hands upon me.
But when she opened her eyes again and took a step forward, it wasn’t onto lush, green grass sprinkled with wild flowers and dancing butterflies, but onto concrete. Or to be more precise, a road.
Blinking, Jessica rubbed her eyes and actually felt her mouth fall open.
She was standing in a road. A bloody road! What the hell?!
Out came the map. But there was no road anywhere near this area, or any other kind of man made structure. Just fields and woods and the contours of hills. But she was standing on a road. In the North.
Jessica had no idea how she knew this, but as she took in her surroundings, she became more and more convinced that she was standing in the north of England.
To her left and running alongside a dirty and scuffed pavement was a wall. Easily six feet tall it obscured from view most of several smoke spouting industrial chimneys that billowed grey, black smoke high into the air.
On the other side of the ‘street’ stood a row of terraced houses. Their brickwork blackened with years of soot from the chimneys and most of them with grubby lace curtains in the windows. Two of the doors had numbers, two and seven, but the rest, or at least those she could see, had none. But there were ten doorways in total and only one appeared to have a window that you could see inside. Not that she wanted to.
She wanted to get away. Back to the woods and valley and the sunshine and Emily.
This place, wherever it was, didn’t feel right and it seriously spooked her. Not least because it shouldn’t be here! Hell. It couldn’t be here! She was in Devon, the rural south west, not hundreds of miles away in some coal mining industrial heartland.
She looked around herself again. There was no one about, but the smell of burning hung thick in the air. Behind her, the row of trees remained stoically where she’d left them and part of her couldn’t help but wonder at this strange constant. Surely they should have disappeared, she thought. Like in all the best nightmares.
Maybe that’s it, she thought. Maybe I drifted off after that session of phone sex with Emily and I’m dreaming. That would explain the disappearing path and this weird, fucking street!
Oh my God!
Her eyes had caught the street sign. A marker she hadn’t seen until now, primarily because it had been adjacent to her as she’d emerged from the trees, but now that she had, her blood ran cold.
Mint Street.
Holy, fucking hell!
How could it possibly be?
She stared, her hand going involuntarily to her throat as she gawped at the sign.
Mint Street. How..?
Suddenly she was sixteen again and at Monica’s house, slumped on her bedroom floor in her pyjamas. She had gone there for a sleep over to celebrate Monica’s birthday and someone, Rebecca probably, had snuck in booze. Someone else had brought cigarettes and enough incense sticks to light a small town. They’d had enough crisps to feed an army.
Then they’d started on the ghost stories.
And someone had mentioned Mint Street.
Jessica immediate reaction had been to laugh. What kind of name, she’d wanted to know, was that for a ghost story? Mint street. It was hardly the stuff of nightmares. What happened there? Everyone doomed to go round forever with fresh breath?
But then Sue had started to speak and Jessica had started to shudder.
“You don’t want to go there.” Sue had begun. “Ever. It’s awful. All dark and menacing and.. evil. There’s smoking chimneys and pokey, little houses with grubby windows. You never see anyone there either. At least not outside. Sometimes shadows go past the windows, but its best not to look at them. Best not to see what goes on behind the glass. Because if you do, you get sucked in. Not straight away though. For a while, you’ll think you can control it, that you’re in charge of what happens when you cross the threshold, but you’re not. Not ever. And then they have you. And you can never leave. You can never get away. You just have to stay there.. suffering…”
“Girls! Anyone for a hot chocolate?”
That had been Monica’s mum, breezing into the incense filled, booze ridden bedroom and completely destroying the moment. She’d then gone on to destroy it even more once she’d spotted the cigarettes and alcohol, and after confiscating everything harder than a cup cake and embarrassing Monica into a state of mortification, she’d slammed out again, threatening to tell everyone’s mum in the morning.
Mint Street hadn’t been mentioned again but Jessica had never forgotten and now here she was, in the very same place Sue had described.
It was impossible! It was incredible, but it was here! And she had no intention of staying. Stuff how it got here in the first place. She no longer cared or wanted to know. She was getting out of here, right now!
“Jessica.”
The sound of her name made her flinch so hard she almost left the ground.
Trembling, she felt her heart thrust itself into her throat literally cutting off the scream she knew was coming.
“Jessica.” The voice called again. “Jessica.”
Jessica turned.
The woman was standing outside number seven. Tall and willowy, with skin so pale Jessica doubted if she’d seen the sun all year, she wore a dark, diaphanous gown that was belted at the waist but open at the front to show a lot of leg and the barest glimpse of cleavage. Her dark hair, falling beyond her shoulders, stirred, as if by an invisible breeze as she beckoned Jessica with a single finger and slowly began to retreat back
into the house.
Jessica followed. She didn’t know why? Everything inside of her was screaming at her not to, yet she went. Her ears full of the sound of Sue’s voice, echoing back through the years, warning her not to go in there, not to look, not to suffer, not to bloody GO Jessica! But she was still going! Still moving towards that dreadful door as though her feet were on wheels and the woman was pulling her along on a piece of string, dragging her further and further into the awful, terrible Mint Street.
She came to a halt outside the house. The woman had gone. The front door was closed.
Nervous, she studied the building. This was the house without the grubby net curtains, she noticed. She could see inside. Cupping her hands on the glass and pressing her head to them, she peered through. Into a room with faded, floral wallpaper and a single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. There was a mirror on the far wall, cracked with age, and an old fashioned, round light switch to the left of the door. A hard backed chair stood in the middle of the room and beneath it, engrained deep into the bare wooden floor, the kind of stain you didn’t want to see.
Blood, Jessica thought, it looks like blood. Old blood. Christ, what is this place? It looks like it hasn’t been lived in for years! And that woman. Who the hell was she?
The woman stepped into the room, dragging a bin liner behind her. Dumping it on the floor in front of her, she then sat on the chair and looked straight at Jessica, who, for the briefest moment, looked into a face so marred with anguish and pain that it made her gasp and want to draw away. But then the woman smiled and as Jessica watched, began to untie the belt around her middle.
She was naked beneath. The room was gloomy and bathed in shadow in places, but Jessica could still see that her skin was pale from head to foot. Her breasts full and firm with coffee coloured nipples that Jessica took one look at and immediately wanted to put into her mouth. Her hair flowed around her shoulders in a gently moving current.
The gown fell open still more, revealing pubic hair trimmed into the shape of an apple, complete with stalk. Jessica stared, thinking how bizarre this was, then figured maybe it was supposed to represent forbidden fruit. But then the woman spread her legs, wide enough for Jessica to see the soft, pink folds of her pussy, and all thoughts of her five a day went out of the window, as the pale, beautiful, haunted woman carefully slid a single finger deep along the slippery channel and into her cunt, where she began to fuck herself with practiced ease. Slowly and deliberately as though she was almost afraid of arousing herself too quickly. A preference she clearly was not going to be able to keep up for very long, as after only a minute of this slow, gentle fucking, her hand suddenly began to pump harder and faster inside her cunt, and her pussy engorged in front of Jessica’s eyes, whilst her other hand grabbed at her breast and squeezed the nipple until it looked painful.