Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten

by Richard M. Heredia

  I closed my eyes, knowing she was trying to divert attention from the obvious, but she had failed miserably. She actually might’ve made things worse. I could sense Leda and Sandy were beginning to catch onto the idea of just how close Katie and I really were. They kept glancing from the two of us and then to Ramona in rapid succession, their understanding deepening with each look. Fucken females!

  “’Pull’ – what does that mean?” wondered Ramona, walking the few steps it took to stand before my cousin.

  My cousin surprised me by peering up at her with eyes that glimmered with genuine enthusiasm as if she couldn’t wait to divulge the entirety of it. “It is just that, Mona. It is like something is pulling you toward him and you have to fight with every ounce of strength to keep from throwing yourself into his arms. It is intoxicating, the smell of it, unlike anything I have ever experienced.” She quieted down, not out of self-consciousness or because she didn’t want the others to hear. No, it was because of the conviction with which she said her next words: “I almost lost control.”

  Ramona’s eyes widened as she searched over my cousin’s face, then she gazed over Katie’s head toward at me. I was unnerved when I saw more anxiety there than shock.

  “Are you saying you almost lost control with your own cousin?” blurted Leda, sitting up in the middle of the bed. She seemed well into the recovery process.

  Son of a bitch! I seethed internally. This wasn’t going as we had planned the day before. We hadn’t really put our demented plan into full swing yet and already we looked transparent. This was never going to work. If people could figure out what was going – or going to transpire – between us, then our families would surely find out. Where would that leave us? We would be outcasts, pariahs, excommunicated from our loved ones, like heretics before the Inquisition. My mother, what would she do…?

  “Being related has nothing to do with it…,” was all Katie said. Then she grabbed Ramona by both elbows and gave each a quick squeeze, before she brushed past her to sit upon the bed. My girlfriend reached for her and caught her by the wrist, making Katie turn back to look at her. They stared at one another for no more than a second, but I could have sworn a thousand unsaid words passed between them. Words that men cannot read, but we get the notion they’re real and they’re important.

  Katie returned attention toward the small, dark haired girl. “It doesn’t even matter if you don’t like him or if he has wronged you in the past and have come to hate him. If you lack the will to refuse him, he can make all of that go away… in a heartbeat.”

  Leda was looking at my cousin as if she had lost her mind in the last few minutes. She worked her mouth, but no words coming forth.

  Then, the quietest of us spoke. Her words proved quite startling indeed.

  “Show us.”

  We all turned to Sandy, who was standing now, hands clasped behind her, slowly twisting at the waist.

  “No!” said Katie at once.

  Ramona uttered, “I don’t think that is a good idea,” upon the heels my cousin.

  I was too astounded to say anything, wondering why Sandy would want to push the limits all of a sudden. Was it because Leda had put her in an awkward situation earlier? Was she merely trying to get back, level the playing field? Or… or was she wondering if she had the will to refuse? What the hell was she after?

  “Why not?” she began, “How else are we going to understand what Katie is talking about without thinking of her as some crazy sex fiend who wants to bone her cousin?”

  I blushed furiously, because I couldn’t help but go back ten hours or so. The mental image flashed before, having a mind of its own… I was balls deep in my cousin… the walls of her vagina electric with orgasmic pleasure… her telling me, over and over, to fuck her hard. What Sandy had proposed was either the soundest judgment I have ever heard or it was the most underhanded form of coercion that had ever existed. I was beginning to realize how smart Sandy truly was, how she had utterly confused us all. She might be bubbly and enthusiastic, but there was a whole other person just waiting to get out of her. I couldn’t make head or tails of her true intent, because I had underestimated her. She had a huge advantage over the rest of us.

  Katie laughed throatily, having come to the same conclusions as had I, while Ramona squinted at her suspiciously. Leda chuckled knowingly, exuding a sort of ‘I knew it all along’ tone that befouled cheer and smacked of sarcasm.

  “What do you think, Eff?” asked Sandy, as if only my opinion mattered, was permanent, and the issue would be resolved one way or the other.

  I shook my head. “I sort of agree with Katie and Ramona that it wouldn’t be the best idea. I’ve seen what it does. It’s pretty powerful, whatever it is.”

  “What about you, Leda, since you seem to think I have to ‘hot’s’ for Estefan anyway, do you think is it wise to tempt fate?”

  Why is she pushing so hard?

  Leda stared at her for a few moments, bringing her arms up one hand cupping her chin. “I think you’re just trying to prove a point that doesn’t need to be made right now,” was the girls answer.

  “Why, because you’re not in control of it?” shot back Sandy at once, more than a little agitation in her voice.

  Leda merely rolled her eyes, but the knowing sneer never left her face.

  “Whatever, then,” began Sandy, walking around the bed so that now all of us were on the right hand side of bed, except Leda who remained sitting at its middle. “Do it, Estefan. I want to see this… change you and Katie are talking about.”

  “Sandy - ,” I started, but she cut me off.

  “Whatever happens will be on me, ok? No blame on you, got it?” Her eyes were piercing and direct, which was a mold of her I had yet to see. She was always so cheerful and happy, seeing her keen, like a raptor, made me feel like I was walking on uneven ground. My mind was wobbly, my thoughts jumbled.

  I glanced at Katie, sitting on the bed before me, searching for some sort of direction. She tilted her head to the side with the universal, “I don’t know” expression on her face.

  My eyes found Ramona, but she wasn’t even looking at me. Here gaze was locked on Sandy, unyielding and cold. I knew she had learned something new about her long-time friend. It was something she hadn’t known was there. She didn’t seemed pleased by it ether.

  “Give it her, Effy. I can’t wait to see what happens,” challenged Leda, of a sudden, surprising me by using my childhood moniker – a thing she hadn’t done before.

  Ramona let out a gasp of exasperation and spun on a heel. She walked to the end of the bed, her hands crossed forcibly across her body, but she stayed silent.

  When I look back on it - though she was absolutely opposed to anyone other than Katie wanting me in a sexual fashion – somewhere, hidden, she was curious. She wanted to know more about this “change” in me. I think she wanted to see what would happen, even if it raised the possibility Sandy would be unable to stop the urges Katie had said would pour through her, unabated, unopposed. I think, even way back then, Ramona had a clue of what was really happening. If I did, in fact, make her friend crazy for a good pounding, it would confirm what her instincts had already told her. Mutation hadn’t been the root cause of Ramona’s intuition. She’d been born with it. Mutation eventually turned her into the most powerful Empathist any of us have ever seen. She was most likely on the verge of unearthing the truth of what was occurring, the sickness, and the changes. It was too bizarre for the rest of us grasp. We were baffled. I don’t think Ramona was – not at all.

  “Okaaaay,” I drawled and stepped back from the bed and into a more central location, away from the girls. I wanted to make sure there was sufficient distance between them and me – just in case…

  “So, the times I did this earlier, it started with me searching out some sort of scent and I… I don’t know, I guess I kind of fell into it. I began breaking apart its component parts and, according to Katie… that’s when the ‘power’ or ‘smell’ or whate
ver came out and she…” I stopped to glance at her and she was shaking her head in resignation at the memory. “Well, she was acting very, very strange to put it mildly.”

  “I was acting like a bitch in heat, is what he is trying to say,” added Katie.

  “Fucking gross,” muttered Leda under her breath, but we all heard it.

  Ramona’s laser wielding eyes bored into the side of Leda’s head, but the other girl was entirely unaware.

  “So, Sandy - .”

  The girl’s expression was frozen in place, the bravado she’d shown earlier seemed to crack and waft out of her like an errant smoke.

  “ – if you would open your blouse a bit more, or maybe take if off if you don’t mind, so I might be able to smell your perfume or something, ok?”

  “Oh fuck,” mumbled Ramona.

  We all watched Sandy, somewhat robotically, remove the garment she wore over her pink tube top and let it fall to the floor.

  I couldn’t help myself, watching her drop the cotton shirt to the ground, seeing the white skin at the inner portion of her arms, the delicate splay of her fingers as the blouse left them – all of it, captivated me where I stood. I know I have said on many occasions, during the course of telling this tale, I’m not the best person in the world. I have numerous faults. I have many flaws and this had always been one of them. I am typically helpless against the onslaught of the female form, in whatever guise it may show itself to me. I am simply mesmerized by women. I always have been, and I always will be. There is no evading what has been engrained in me since birth.

  The second I was turned on by the graceful gesture, my senses expanded automatically. The fragrance she was wearing hit me like a ton of bricks. I closed my eyes to revel in it. It was some sort of body mist, because it wasn’t heavy or overpowering, like so many perfumes they had sold back then. I could smell the Aloe Barbadensis Leaf extract offset by a calm sort of Chamomile that washed over me at once. This was followed by an overall garden type of scent. It smelled mildly of grapes and peaches and honey. It was a lovely mix of fruity sweetness, combined with the natural musk of her. That thin sheen of her in basic olfactory form, seeping from her pores over the course of the day. I inhaled deeply and then opened my eyes to look at her.

  She had already come half the distance between us, her hands reaching for me, her face somewhere between rapture and pure lust. She was still coming forward.

  I drank her in once again and her pace increased just as Katie came forth and blocked the larger girl from moving any closer to me. Katie’s shoulder bowled into Sandy just below her breasts. I could see Sandy’s erect nipples through her pink tube top. I couldn’t stop. I reached forth with a combination of my mind and my nose. I delved through the weft and weave of the garment barely covering the upper portion of her body and into the taunt flesh of her nipple. It reeked of the detergent her mother had used to clean the cotton top and of something else. I smiled. This was the something I had come to know all too well when I had laid girls upon their backs, so I could make love to them – expectation. Sandy was ready.

  “Oh god, I need to…,” she said, a plea that edged toward begging. She tried to bodily move Katie out of the way.

  I held my breath then, a tiny bit of control sneaking back into my consciousness. I knew if inhaled her one more time, even my cousin might lose it. We were one more sniff away from seeing Katie do a quick about face, from seeing her throw me to the floor and have her way with me.

  Instead, I chanced a quick look back in Ramona’s direction, seeing her hold her ground by the bed. She watched the entire episode with eyes as wide as saucers, both hands absently pulling upon her breasts, kneading them as she often did when she wanted to bring herself to her peak.

  She’s doing pretty well, I had just thought to myself when I saw a dark brown blur out of the corner of my eye. I was just turning to see what it was when something slammed into me with bone-jarring force and knocked me to the ground, lifting my feet cleanly in the air. An instant later, I felt arms and legs, hands and feet all over me, clutching, rubbing, squeezing, grasping, pinching, and clawing at me from what seemed like every direction imaginable. I felt nails digging into my skin, lips and teeth kissing, sucking, nibbling and biting. I could only think a wild banshee had attacked me, licked me, nibbled at me and was now shoving its’ tongue down my throat.

  That was the first positive impression I received in those moments. Whatever it was atop me was, at least, human. Its tongue felt very much like many others I had toyed with over the years. I had only a moments’ time for that to register, when it spoke. I was dumbfounded into complete inaction.

  “Please take me,” came the voice, eerily familiar, deep, husky for a female, but one I could easily recognize. “I want you. I don’t care who’s here. I don’t care who’s watching, just fuck me! Fuck me!!!” demanded Leda in her usual, no-holds-barred manner. Only now, she was forcibly asking me to do something sexual to her. I could never have dreamed of her saying what she was saying to me right then.

  She stopped long enough, so her eyes met mine. I swear, her pupils were dilated almost to the very edge of her irises. I had never seen anything like it. Whatever I had sent out, whatever smell or scent or pheromone, it had affected in her in the exact same fashion as the best synthetic drugs on the market today would have.

  She didn’t wait long though. She lowered her head, her mouth over mine, talking into me. Her harsh, horny breath filled me, making me respond out of sheer animal instinct. “Effy, do it, please. Do it. I am sorry for every bad thing I ever did or said about you. Please, forget all of that. Let me make it up to you. Let me. Yes, let me. I’ll let you have me any way you want, every way you want. I don’t care just fuck me!” She continued on, but I hardly heard her.

  I couldn’t fight it, my dick began to swell in my shorts and my arms began to encircle her of their own volition as I began to push my knees in between her legs, so she could straddle me. Almost at once, I felt the boney hardness of her public bone smash against the shaft of my cock. Instantaneously, I was harder than rock. I was just about to put my hands on her ass and crush her into me even harder, suddenly…

  …She was no longer there.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~ Chapter 30 ~

  (Summer – 2018)

  Explanation

  I lay there, stunned for a split second. I saw Ramona’s face hovering over mine, a mask of anger one moment, and then, one of puzzlement the next.

  “Jesus Christ, Steve, were you really gonna fuck my friend right in front of me?!?” she yelled.

  There was more disbelief in her tone than true anger. Even then, she was teetering. She hadn’t quite gone over the edge into rage, because there was something else precluding her from blowing her lid. I glanced around quickly to get my bearings. Katie no longer had held back Sandy. Ramona had Leda by the wrist, her grip vice-like, making the smaller girls’ skin whiten from the harsh compression caused by her palm. Ramona must have yanked her off me - that was the only way I could imagine how the teenage girl was pulled from me so swiftly.

  I peered over at Leda, who was still only partially aware of Ramona. She was looking back at me as though I was some sort of fix she couldn’t have. Her face was contorted with internal anguish and longing. Her eyes remained unchanged.

  “Fucken shit!” went on Ramona. “Katie, do you have something that Leda can wear so her boobs aren’t flapping in the wind?”

  That stunned me for a second. I let me eyes drop a tiny fraction and was shocked to see that somehow - in the midst of our tussle - Leda had managed to take off her bra. Her perky breasts jutted out before her, her dark brown areoles had contracted to the point where they were no more than an inch across. Her nipples were so hard they appeared about to burst. The entire upper portion of her body was flushed bright pink, from her neck to the top of her abdomen.

  Ramona’s statement seemed to shake her free of the all-consuming desire to screw. Leda glanced down at h
erself and then back at me. She had just realized what she had done and said. Her eyes bulged, threatening to pop right before me. The pink flush turned red and swept up to the top of her face like a tsunami.

  “Oh god, no!” she screamed, humiliated, got up and ran into the bathroom without another word or a glance backward.

  None of us moved for nearly a quarter of a minute.

  “Son of a bitch!” breathed Sandy, gulping air in quick shallow gasps.

  Katie didn’t skip a beat. “I told you this shit is dangerous, didn’t I?” She had produced a plain white t-shirt from one of the drawers she was using, scooped Leda’s bra and stormed off toward the bathroom.

  From within, we could all hear Leda crying like a baby.

  “Yeah, but…,” was all Sandy was capable of saying.

  “We understand, Sandy, you didn’t know how strong Estefan’s new… whatever the fuck you wanna call it… was,” commented my girlfriend, rubbing her hands together. Her rough treatment of Leda must’ve stung the pads of her hands.

  Hell ya, she’d been rough… she had sure pulled Leda away like she was no more than a ragdoll…!

  “How do you do it, Eff?” asked Sandy, still too mesmerized by the whole situation. Her focus was elsewhere and not on what her friend was going through at the moment.

  “It starts with smell,” I began trance-like, rehashing what I’d already said. I was still trying to get my head around the idea that it had been Leda that had rushed me. It was her, who had kissed me so violently, with so much passion and shameless lechery. It was hard for me to see a girl with her grumpy temperament, her harsh way of dealing with people, in that sort of light. She was shut-off and cold. I hadn’t been lying when I had mentioned earlier that morning. Yet, she had just shown me the complete opposite. She was a wild cat when she was horny! I simply couldn’t believe it.