“The plan?” I queried.
“Yeah, cuz, the plan,” she repeated emphatically. “I mean what are we going to do about Tirza in the short term, the long term and all the rest of the shit we’re going to have to figure out in between?”
I still didn’t comprehend the point she was trying to make. I shook my head and shoulders, one eyebrow raised above the other. I was clueless.
Katie huffed in exasperation. “Jezuz, Eff, if you weren’t such a fucking saint, you would understand that for all intents and purposes, Tirza is a fugitive. She is wanted by the NIA, Estefan, that’s like half of the world, and when they find her they’re gonna shoot her on sight. Don’t you get it? What the fuck are we going to do about it?”
It hit me like a floppy cock upside my cheek - …
(NOTE: For the record, I am speaking metaphorically. I’ve never actually felt a man’s dick along the side of my face. Thank you.)
…I stood there, as a flood of thought washed over me. I tried to solve each and every aspect of what Katie had purposed at once. The only thing I succeeded in doing was develop of an unwelcomed pain behind my eyes. There was so much to figure out. It was happening all at once.
“Well, we are definitely not going to let that happen,” announced Ramona resolutely. “We might not see eye to eye on Estefan, but, Tirza, I’m not going to let some government assholes fuck with you.”
Tirza - and I think this was the first time it had ever happened – smiled warmly at my girlfriend. It was the sort that touched her eyes and made them squint. Her full cheeks nearly shut them entirely.
“She’ll have to stay here,” proclaimed Katie, inadvertently glancing about the Loft as she did so.
All three of us peered back at her, flummoxed and uncomfortable.
“She will?” I quacked like an idiot, my voice suddenly excruciatingly high-pitched and cracking.
“Where the hell else is she going to stay? Her house has been bum-rushed by a bunch of chink-goons with the complete authority of the NIA behind them. Her parents -,” she paused and reached out and squeezed the smaller girls shoulder, “– have been murdered.” She said this in a much lower tone. “Her sister had been missing for days… Where else is she going to go…?
“Besides…,” she added with a wicked gleam in her eyes, and then let her voice drop to nothing.
“Besides what?” wondered Ramona. Her hands clasped before her, wringing, furtive movements, disturbed. A sarcastic glare tried to surface upon her face with every ounce of strength it could muster . To her credit she held herself in check.
“Who the fuck is going to believe her ex-boyfriend, the very guy she reputedly hates to the very center of her guts, is the person hiding her. It’s fucking perfect!” came Katie’s enthusiastic response.
“I don’t hate his guts,” corrected Tirza, then she gazed in my direction. “I don’t hate you, Estefan.” She seemed adamant I know that.
I nodded positively, but that did appear to assuage what she was feeling. Only a half-sick cast etched her visage now.
“That part of it might be perfect, but how in the hell are we all going to make it work when there had been so much bullshit between her, me and Eff?” outlined my girlfriend. “I mean that alone raises a lot of doubt in my mind. Plus, we still have to think about how we are going to keep her out of sight. I mean, Effy, this is your parent’s house. How are we going to keep them from seeing her? And what about your brothers and sisters, what’re we gonna do about them? Once the little ones find out, they’re gonna blab like crazy. You know little kids can’t keep anything from their parents. They’ll be excited to tell. Also, today is Saturday, your parents don’t go to work. In a few hours, everyone will be awake and no one is going to leave. We’re going to have to figure that out as well.” She looked at each of us in turn, her face plaintive, but not angry or jealous in any way. She appeared to have real concerns, and, as it turned out, she had more. “That’s only the tip of the iceberg, guys. How are we going to feed her? How are we going to make sure she has clean clothes? And what about all the other shit that goes into keeping someone alive and healthy? How are we going to do all of that?” She put her hands over her head in frustration and stood.
I stared at Ramona, knowing I was going to have to walk a narrow precipice to convince her. I had already decided, there was no way Tirza was going to go back out on the streets. I wouldn’t let her out of my sight, if it meant she was to be killed. No way. I might have grown to be extremely annoyed with her. Because of it, I had decided months ago, it would be best to exclude her entirely from my life. Still, that didn’t mean I wished her dead. She and I had some good times together – real good times… cute dates, camping trips with my family, long languorous days where we sat before my flatscreen TV and made love throughout the morning, afternoon and night. I had many fond memories of the girl. I didn’t want her shot to death or worse, raped by some maniac trooper and then shot through the temple.
“I think some of those things can be worked out,” I began. I wasn’t all that surprised when Ramona’s eyes flashed. Yet, amazingly, it was only for a second – or two – and then she quickly filed it away and forced her face blank.
I continued only after the briefest of a pause. “We’ll just have to tackle them one at a time and not all at once. That makes the entire situation a bit overwhelming, but I will say this,” my voice took on the very slightest of an edge, “Tirza stays if she wants to. I won’t turn away a friend in need, even if, at times, we wanted nothing more than to pull out each other’s hair.” I made a point to look at both of the other girls in the room.
Katie wasn’t going to be a problem. She’d been nodding through the entire exchange.
My girlfriend, on the other hand, cupped her elbow with one hand and chewed on her lower lip as if the pain from her gnawing could prevent what she really wanted to do and say. I could see the tears beginning to well at the corner of her right eye socket; she was in profile at the time, so I couldn’t see both.
I forced myself to gaze at my ex-girlfriend. In this matter, I would have to be strong. It was what Tirza’s mother and little sister would have wished. I wasn’t about to let them down. “Teezee, do you want to stay here… at my house? I promise I will try my hardest to keep you safe.”
Through most of the exchange she had been peering down at the comforter that covered my bed. When I asked the question of her, she looked up at me. I could see she’d been silently, if not stoically, weeping the entire time.
“Is that something you could handle after everything that has gone on?” I inquired once more.
She sighed hugely. Then she wiped at her face, fingers first, followed by her palms. For a few moments, she made her eyes slant. “I will try my hardest to not cause any problems for you, Estefan,” was all she managed.
I frowned for a heartbeat. “Does that mean you will stay?”
She merely bobbed her head up and down in affirmation.
Suddenly, Katie was all action. “Good, so that settles, but first things first, girl, let’s get you cleaned up and out of those torn up clothes, ‘cuz you’re boobs are practically falling out.”
“What?!?” screeched Tirza, covering her chest with her arms.
Katie giggled snidely. “It’s just a figure of speech, dude – chill. Come on I have some PJ’s that might not be too terribly big for you. You can wear them after you shower.”
A sense of relief, a relaxation of tension left Tirza’s shoulders. She seemed uplifted. She chortled nervously and scooted off the bed to follow my cousin to the other side of the room, and eventually into the bathroom.
Above me, Ramona spoke abruptly. “Fuck, Steve, you are going to drive me absolutely crazy with this shit. Trust me, I will go fucking insane.” Then she sat down upon the bed in a huff, so close to me her nice round ass was bumping against my knee.
“What shit, my dear?” I asked. I was watching the two other girls from across the Loft. Katie was going through her drawer
s looking for the sleepwear she had in mind for my one-time girlfriend to sleep in.
“She still loves you, Effy. It is written all over her like graffiti on a wall, plain as fucking day. I could see it a mile away.”
“No way, Mona, you’re crazy, she doesn’t think of me that way,” I disagreed, but my eyes stayed upon the tiny form of my ex-.
“She doesn’t know any other way to think of you, other than that way. There is no ‘friend-zone’ for her, when it comes to you.” Ramona sniffed then.
I jerked my head in her direction, scared that she might be crying.
She wasn’t; she was just rubbing her nose as if it was itching, but she kept on speaking. “And soon Leda and Sandy will be there too, and then what, I’ll be sharing you with four other girls, that’s what!” She tried to add anger, but it only sounded like hurt in my ears.
I stared at her like I was seeing her for the first time. “Don’t you think you are exaggerating things just a little bit?” I asked, thinking she was being dramatic.
She grabbed a hold of my shoulder and turned me to face her squarely, scooting toward me, so she was in my “personal” space. She was serious, simply that and nothing more, no guile or sarcasm, no anger or angst. “Ever since I was sick, Estefan, I can see things in people,” she said, forcefully as if to make me understand, “not like I can see them with my eyes. What I see is nothing like that. It is emotional, as though I can read their most central thoughts, feelings and desires. You know, the things that actually drive people to do what they do.” She raised her eyebrows, her hands splayed to either side of her. “I can sense them in my mind and my mind… I don’t know… can turn them into images, only these have pictures have emotion attached to them, intent as well They are so deeply rooted in the people I have seen, I know it would be very hard from dissuading them once their decisions on this level are made. It would be like trying to stop an avalanche with a wall made out of Legos¹. It would be an endeavor doomed to failure. There would be nothing you or I, or anyone else, could do.
“Well, it is the same with these feelings. They are too strong, too steadfast to hope to alter.” She came even closer and took me in her arms. She placed herself over me, straddling, so her public bone rubbed against my knee before she sat fully in my lap. I felt a thickening in the center of me. I had a split-second thought that she actually wanted me to have a savage hard-on just so she could make her point.
“So what are you saying?” I asked, trying to stay interested in what she was saying, but my dick kept clouding my mind, even my pulse was betraying me. I wanted to fuck her, to feel her - .
Come on, man, stop!
“What does that mean, Ramona?” I made myself ask, almost repeating myself in order to force my mind in a more sane direction.
“It means, Effy, when I look at every one of those girls and I open this… thing, this ability that I now possess, I can see that with time, all of them will take you in their arms. All of them will lay down with you and let you make love to them. It is an eventuality that you or I, or any of them, cannot escape. Whether they realize it on a conscious level or not, deep down they have all already made the decision to do just that. They all want to be with you. They just don’t know it yet… well, some do.” She hugged me then, not aggressively or tragically, but softly as if she were trying to garner strength from the warmth of my body.
I sat there, statuesque, barely returning her embrace, moving more out of habit than anything else. “How can you say you know this for sure?”
She shrugged. “I just do.”
A long silence followed.
“Leda, too?” I asked in squeaky voice.
She broke away from me and leaned back, holding up a hand between us. “Katie,” she said and began ticking off the count upon her finger tips with her other hand as she said each new name. “Then Leda, then Sandy, and finally Tirza, in that exact order, will come to you of their own choice. They will tell you they would be willing to share you with the others and you will agree. Because, when I look at you, I can see you already want all of them – on some level or another, but it’s all the same in the end.” She shook her head as if she were tired. “Katie already has, so you can see things are progressing quite nicely in that department.”
“Yeah, but we planned that out already, that doesn’t count,” I replied hastily, not really wanting to believe what she was saying, and yet… fuck, man! Who wouldn’t want to have FIVE chicks at once!
NO! I chastised myself; it was too good to be true. It was all conjecture and based on one of the flimsiest theories I had ever heard. Come on, Tirza? Leda? Why would those two give me a shot at their holiest of holies? Tirza was too appalled by me and Leda, well, she was way out of my league. There’s no fucking way!
“It doesn’t matter, Estefan, what you think. What matters is what I know! Each one of those girls is going to throw themselves at you at one point or another, and when they do they won’t care about how they felt or what they said in the past. They will do so willingly.” She stopped then, grabbing my chin and gave me a quick peck on the lips. Her orbs stared directly into mine. “You won’t even have to use your ‘powers’, they have been yours since the day they were born…” Then she let go of me and stood of a sudden, half turning, her arms once again clutched before her, flipping and flopping at the waist.
I stared after her, trying to put my head around everything she had just said, daring myself to believe even a shred of it. I felt set upon and a bit overwhelmed. I struggled to figure out how I was going to be capable of juggling that many women. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am totally obsessed with the opposite sex. The combination of a biting wit, a broad sense of humor and a nice, round ass is fucking irresistible to me (and fuck, if you throw in a nice pair of feet… then I’d be reduced to a quivering ooze of jizz). But let’s face it, you chicks can be as difficult as a motherfucker to try and understand. When you all group together with a common thought or goal or intent, it is like trying to stop an asteroid from hitting the earth. The sheer velocity is enough to shred most defenses.
Now, Ramona was telling me I was going to have five!
I knew I was screwed, and I wasn’t even thinking about the amount of pussy that would be floating around me. Trust me – five against one didn’t sound all that good if the shit hit the fan… and like they say, at some point, the shit always hits the fan.
Yup, I was screwed.
“And you know what sucks even more, Effy?” asked my girlfriend, startling me out of my reverie. “It’s the same with me.”
I looked up at her. She was, once again, gazing my way, her eyes so full with tears, my thoughts scattered in a thousand different directions.
What? I thought or maybe I had said it out loud, but nevertheless, she continued before I could discern either.
“I too am foresworn to you by the very fact I have been born.”
I shook my head then, because she said it with an enunciation, an inflection, so unlike her own that for a moment I forgot it was her that was speaking. I was absolutely certain it was some sort of oracle direct from ancient Greece, twisting and writhing upon the ground in the throes of a drug-infused ecstasy. Ramona had never spoken like this before, who was this girl…!?!
“All done!” came the shrill, if not overly excited announcement from my cousin. Both Ramona and I jumped like we had been goosed by the original Anal Intruder itself (you know, the floor mounted one… oh, nevermind!).
My eyes jerked toward the sound of her voice, but stopped of a sudden.
“Don’t forget what I said, Estefan,” said my girlfriend in a rush as our gazes shifted toward the two others as they emerged from the bathroom.
“That was quick,” I commented clumsily, trying to cover whatever discomfiture I had been feeling seconds before.
Katie merely nodded with a wildly gleeful expression topped with a smile. It was so wide it look as though it was about to split her skull in two.
Something’s up, I
though immediately. My vision shifted toward Tirza. She stood before us wearing a long-sleeved, long-legged matching set of flannel pajamas. They had to be the least sexy sleepwear Katie’s parents had stuffed in her suitcase when they’d sent it to her. It looked like something right out of the 1950’s, or the “Sandra Dee²” section of the Juniors department at a JC Penny’s. It was pink, pin-striped with white. It had a seemingly random smattering of wide pedaled daisies that stood out above the pattern below. They fit my ex-girlfriend perfectly, which made me wonder, if they were garments Katie had worn to bed when she was younger. That would explain a lot - the weird print, the overall chasteness of the garments - all of it.
Tirza herself was clean, admittedly beautiful, in her impish sort of way. Her hair was combed back, still damp, though not dripping. The style revealed her high forehead above her light brown eyebrows, framing her large oval, dark browns eyes. Her small angled nose was still more than a few shades redder than the rest of her complexion, so the impression she’ been crying was evident. Hopefully, she hadn’t felt the urge in the bathroom, while she showered. She was barefoot and had bundled her torn, filthy clothing before her at her waist. She was gripping it with hands made into claws. The trepidation coursing through her was palatable.
“So now what?” asked Tirza, trying to keep her embarrassment from affecting her voice.
Ramona glanced at me and sighed heavily. She turned back toward the other two teens. “Well, we have a shit load of crap to figure out, but first things first…,” she began and paused dramatically.
I remember all of our eyebrows climbing upon our foreheads.
“We,” began my girlfriend with a stern tone, “have to figure out the sleeping arrangements. If we’re supposed to all be together for an extended period of time… well, things could get a little weird in like a heartbeat, especially during the night.”
I felt my stomach turn at that. I had just barely gotten used to the idea of a threesome, but the way things were going… I didn’t want to think about an outcome.
Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten Page 47