Friday 3:30 PM on the road one-half mile from West Roswell High.
The sun was already low in the sky and the temperature falling rapidly in the high desert as the Strobe light bar of the Yukon came on and the siren briefly sounded behind the four teenagers in the black jeep. Max Evans looked quickly at his speedometer, then slowed the jeep and pulled off to the side of the road, removing his right hand from Liz Parker’s left knee to take the transmission out of gear as he did so. As Jim Valenti walked up along the driver’s side of the Jeep, Max started digging his wallet out of his jeans pocket to get his license. The Sheriff raised his hand and said, “Keep it, Max. I know who you are.”
“What’s the problem, Sheriff?”
“No problem, …I just need you to come to my office for a minute….if you don’t mind.”
“Is there some kind of trouble, Sheriff,” asked Liz Parker.
Valenti had to smile, noticing the protective/possessive look on the small girl as she gripped Max Evans’ arm comfortingly. He recalled the last time she’d warned him he’d better take good care of Max Evans. She sure wasn’t the shy young girl she had been before they’d become a couple…or before they’d spent that time in the vault.
“I assure you, Miss Parker, I have no intention of harming Max here. We just need to talk…in fact, I think we ALL should talk.”
Friday 3:45 Chavez Country Sheriff’s Office small conference room, Roswell NM.
“I wanted to know what you kids could tell me about this,” said the Sheriff, as he laid two old black and white pictures on the table. Both were of bodies…one of a man, one of a woman, laying on the autopsy table, their clothes removed and naked. Each one had a light colored handprint in the middle of its chest. The pictures were typical coroner’s office pictures, one dated in 1959, the other in 1970.
“What are these, Sheriff?” asked Max, as Liz handled each of them, Michael and Isabel staring over her shoulder.
“My father….well, my father believed in aliens, Max. He was Sheriff here for many years. People joked about it when I was growing up….he really didn’t have any proof, but he believed it….he believed that both of these people were killed by aliens.”
Max looked up defensively. “I wasn’t alive….or at least…I wasn’t conscious in 1959 or 1970 Sheriff.”
”I know that Max. What I’d like to know is….the handprints…could an alien kill someone that way?”
Liz knew that Max had only recently started to trust the Sheriff, and she really wasn’t too surprised when she heard the wariness in his voice. “Well Sheriff. I guess if an alien wanted to kill someone…without using a great deal of energy, they could probably put their hand on them and then use molecular manipulation to speed the motion of their molecules…that’s all heat is, just motion of the molecules…you probably wouldn’t have to heat them very high….107, maybe 108 degrees,…and they’d die..with no real marks…at least not after the handprint went away. They’d probably look like heat stroke or something.” He looked at Valenti with suspicion…”Why do you ask?”
The Sheriff tossed down a picture that was obviously newer, in color, of the body of an elderly Native American. “That man was found a few days ago. It looked like he died of heatstroke…maybe brought on by some medicines he was taking…but he also had a handprint like that, it was almost gone..but showed up briefly under ultraviolet light. I’m thinking he may have been killed by an alien.”
“So you think that….we did this?” Max said, Jim Valenti cringing when he saw the look that came to the face of Liz Parker as she looked up at him.”
“I said nothing of the kind Max, Liz…. I know what kind of people your parents are Max, Isabel. I watched you kids grow up, playing on the same soccer and softball fields as Kyle. I do NOT think either of you had anything to do with this…I’m just trying to get help with the case…help to find out who did do it.”
A look of hurt and anger came to the face of Michael Guerin. “So I guess I’m the suspect, Sheriff?”
“No Michael. I know your foster father too. You’ve lived with him for six years now and if you’ve been putting up with that drunk old reprobate and the things he’s put you through without killing him for that long,…well I doubt that you’d go pick on some elderly Indian shaman who hasn’t done you any harm. Besides, you have an airtight alibi.”
“I do?”
“Yes. You were with Maria DeLuca when the killing occurred. “
“You checked up on me?”
“Not actually. We don’t even have a good idea exactly when the death did occur, the body wasn’t found for sometime. It’s just that…well, I’m sort of dating Amy DeLuca, and she insists that Maria spends all her time with you…ergo, you must have been with her at the time.. Amy was asking me to try to find out if your intentions were honorable, by the way.”
Michael blushed, stammered, and coughed, as the other three teenagers burst out in laughter.
“Guys….,” Jim Valenti said, “I don’t want to ever go through this with you three again. I know that the three of you could kill me right now if you wanted to, and I probably couldn’t do a thing about it, and,” the Sheriff said smiling, “I’m pretty sure Liz WOULD kill me if I did anything to hurt Max. I really do trust you guys. If I didn’t, I’d be reading you your rights…probably with a SWAT team backing me up. I’m asking for your help here.”
It was actually Liz that was probably the most helpful. She calculated out the energy requirement to raise a 170# body 8 degrees. It was only about 300 calories, easily within the metabolic ability of even humans. If you could instantly transfer the chemical energy in just the sugar a couple of cans of Coca-Cola through your hand into a human being…that person would die. It really didn’t surprise Jim Valenti. He’d seen a video of two humans flying through the air …already crushed, even before the hit the vault wall. He had no illusions as to the power of three of the teenagers standing before him. But he really did trust them.
“Well this fellow…..whoever he is…has been gone for a long time. But now he’s back. I don’t know if he had a grudge against Mr. Riverdog…if he was robbing him…or just what.” Picking up one of the older photos he said, “This gentleman, Mr. James Atherton, was an author who specialized in aliens living among us theories. Apparently he was getting too close or something. This woman……just a young pregnant woman on an outing with her husband. The guy apparently was trying to steal their car. She was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But we need to find out the story on this guy,” said the Sheriff. “Well, that’s my job, anyway. And if he’s out there…. The three of you may be at particular risk…so be careful….all of you. Thanks for your help.”
“We’ll keep our eyes open, Sheriff,” promised Max.
“So… Isabel…Michael….how is the Toys for Tots campaign looking this year?”
“Oh, great, Sheriff.” Said Isabel.
“Couldn’t be better, Sheriff,” said Michael.
“So Michael, if you don’t mind my asking…..What are your intentions toward Maria?”
Liz was trying not to laugh as she turned toward her best friend’s boyfriend, now blushing and stammering.
Finally Michael found his voice, “Well…probably not a whole lot different than your intentions toward her mother, Sheriff.” Valenti smiled, and just shook his head. “I’ll tell her you said that…”
For a meeting that had started with so much distrust and tension, it actually ended pretty well. Unfortunately, the end of the meeting would not be the end of the problem of the alien serial killer.
Friday 5:30 PM The Evan’s residence…..the garage.
Max’s hands were working on putting the new headliner in to the top of the Jeep, but his mind was elsewhere.
While the dry high desert had kept the body of the old vehicle his father had found for them rust free and in relatively good condition, the sun and the heat over the years had done a number on the interior of the vehicle. The long back-ordered interior he had sent for from the mail-order auto parts catalog had arrived by UPS three days ago and he was working with Michael to get it installed in the old Jeep. But putting in the new headliner to insulate the top of the Jeep had reminded him of bringing her to the Crashdown, after the daydream they had shared, too frozen to talk in the Jeep.
He hadn’t really expected Liz’s father to invite him in….certainly not to invite him upstairs…with Liz. When he’d come back with the hot chocolate…well Max could tell he was uncomfortable but he could tell too that Jeff Parker…..well, he was trying to give them space…trying not to at least not appear as anxious and uncertain as he so obviously was.
This afternoon was even more comforting. The Sheriff had gone out of his way to make the point that he really was asking for their help…that he trusted them. Six months ago Max would have never believed that such a thing would have ever been possible.
And then when he had dropped Liz off…..It’d just been a quick kiss inside the backdoor as he’d dropped her off…..but Nancy Parker had chosen that moment to take the trash out and walked in on them. He’d waited for the look of anger…the look of fear in her eyes…but it had never come. She’d turned around, pretending that she’d heard her husband calling her, and it hadn’t been until he’d seen the quick indulgent smile on her face that he’d realized that it wasn’t because she was embarrassed or upset about what she’d seen,…but because she didn’t want to embarrass them. She’d been less offended than…..what? Amused? Approving? Almost…loving?
With the headliner finally glued in place, the new seat cushions installed, and the new floor mats, the interior looked a lot better. As they installed the foam rubber tape around the bottom of the Jeep top, and lifted it into place on the body of the Jeep, Michael and Max looked at it approvingly. It’d be a lot warmer and more comfortable for Liz and Maria, and for them too. Before they had been dating, the cold really didn’t bother Michael or Max, they’d just heat up the air next to them with molecular manipulation, but neither of them could bring themselves to do that with anyone but Izzie in the car. If Liz or Maria had to be cold, they were going to be cold too. Stupid maybe, it wasn’t their fault the new interior had been back ordered, but it was hard to be comfortable when you watched someone you cared about suffer. Now, even if the pitiful little heater of the jeep couldn’t keep it warm inside the top….well, they could, with their powers, not just for themselves but for the girls too.
Max smiled when he looked at the new interior. Maria had said that the Jeep had to be the most uncomfortable vehicle that had ever been built to make out in. He wondered if his father had that in mind when he’d found it. Probably not. His parents probably didn’t think their son would ever be interested in girls when they’d bought it.
He hadn’t really believed back then it would ever be possible for a girl…..for Liz…to be interested in him. He’d have never believed it then, but now….a year later….all of the obstacles he had always envisioned would prevent him from ever really being happy….they were falling like dominoes. Even fellow paranoids Michael and Isabel seemed so very happy with Maria and Alex.
It scared him to admit it to himself, but even Max Evans was starting to believe in happy ever afters……
Dominoes falling..... (M/L) Mature 9/26/06 complete
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Monday 6PM St Paul’s Catholic Church Parking Lot, Roswell New Mexico
The young blonde girl sat alone in the red Mustang. ‘I wonder what’s taking him so long,’ she thought. She was a little frustrated. She’d tried it again in second period just before the bell, with the same result. Liz hadn’t even been in that room, she was in an entirely different part of the building. It hadn’t made the least bit of difference. As soon as she’d start to stimulate his receptors….she’d ripple in to the mindwarp orb…and they’d ripple away. It was obvious from Max’s body language what was going on. Tess wondered if they had beat the bell or not. Kind of hard to tell, not being able to be in the orb at all, and not seeing Liz when it happened. And the damnable thing was, she thought, that she hadn’t had the least bit of trouble mindwarping Kyle that way in third period…..as part of her research. It had been extremely…..educational….and even…stimulating, in a primitive sort of way. It wasn’t like she’d really……enjoyed it, of course….but it was important to understand local customs…. 'when in Rome’, and all that.
That’s why she had accepted his invitation to dinner and a movie. She was unsure of this artificial pheromone substitute she was wearing…the perfume, but it was recommended to her by a girl in her first period class, Pamela Troy, who rumor had it had mated with every sentient and semi-sentient being within a few hundred kilometers.
Since the mindwarp orb didn’t seem to be working on Max, and eventually she would have to actually interact with him physically, a little practice with Kyle, getting close enough to him to allow the perfume to work on him in the movie,…..well, it seemed like good practice for the real thing. She’d told that to Nasedo at least, and he appeared to have bought it. ‘What is taking him so long, though?’
Although he had only gone to Church intermittently since his mother ran off when he was six, the past week had seen a resurgence of interest in Confession by Kyle Valenti. He was currently on his knees facing the altar, and saying his 46th Pater Noster. When the door to the confessional opened and the priest walked out, Kyle glared at him out of the corner of his eye.
His resurgence of interest in religion had followed the first daydream he’d had about Tess. He’d felt guilty…..even knowing it was a daydream. He’d really sort of…forced himself on her. Today he’d been equally out of control….although she hadn’t seemed to mind that in the daydream. That actually made him even more guilty….fantasizing about her submitting to him when he wasn’t even in control of himself. At confession last week, the priest had seemed interested in exactly what had occurred. Today…well…he could practically hear the man panting as he’d made him tell every sordid detail. He thought the priest was probably some kind of a pervert.
‘Damn,’ thought Kyle, ‘…am I ever glad I was never an altar boy here…’
He said his 50th Pater Noster. ‘…only fifty Hail Mary’s to go….’ Ten minutes later he jumped back into the Mustang. Tess smiled up at him, and for the time being the world seemed good. As he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, he smelled a hint of perfume, and started to feel just a little bit….distracted. ‘If this really gets serious,’ thought Kyle Valenti, ‘I may have to convert to Buddhism…’
Monday 6:30PM Crashdown Café break room.
Liz was on her dinner break during her night shift. She’d quickly put down a Sigourney Weaver with fries, and now had her probability and statistics book out looking at her homework.
But while her eyes were on her book, her thoughts were on the daydream at the end of second period. It had seemed so real. She looked again at her fingernails, almost surprised to not see the skin from his back lodged there. She wondered if, in the daydream, he could heal those scratches. She really was sorry, she hadn’t meant to claw him like that….she just got carried away she guessed. After the bell went off, they’d connected and she had apologized to him for doing that, but maybe they weren’t having quite the same daydream this time, because he had told her he hadn’t noticed any scratches. Of course, he’d been a little carried away himself at the time.
She wondered if this daydreaming business was really due to sexual frustration….she’d read that in a book somewhere once. It wasn’t just the daydream that she’d had in second period…..although that clearly had been the most intense…..but she seemed to daydream about sex with Max quite frequently lately.
She looked down at her textbook. ‘Gee, if I kept track of how often I daydream for a week now, and then after we started having sex how often I daydreamed then….well I could do a T-statistic and determine if that were really the case..’ she told herself.
Ever the scientist, she penciled out a test that would have even more statistical power. ‘With a chi-square…’ she thought, ‘we could get to statistical certainty for greater..precision.’ She looked at the rough figures, then blushed intensely as she figured a way to add a couple more degrees of freedom to the analysis. “But if we made that a 4 by 4 cell, and did an analysis of variance analyzing frequency of sex, position, duration, and intensity against number of daydreams, with only say five samples per cell….., the power of the statistical analysis would be huge with only 80…uh…sample observations.’
Liz Parker found the room suddenly becoming very warm. She couldn’t believe Maria had told her that her probability and statistics class was the most boring thing in the world. Liz found it very….stimulating.
Trying not to hyperventilate as she returned to her waitress duties, Liz Parker too appeared to be starting to believe in happy ever afters…..
The young blonde girl sat alone in the red Mustang. ‘I wonder what’s taking him so long,’ she thought. She was a little frustrated. She’d tried it again in second period just before the bell, with the same result. Liz hadn’t even been in that room, she was in an entirely different part of the building. It hadn’t made the least bit of difference. As soon as she’d start to stimulate his receptors….she’d ripple in to the mindwarp orb…and they’d ripple away. It was obvious from Max’s body language what was going on. Tess wondered if they had beat the bell or not. Kind of hard to tell, not being able to be in the orb at all, and not seeing Liz when it happened. And the damnable thing was, she thought, that she hadn’t had the least bit of trouble mindwarping Kyle that way in third period…..as part of her research. It had been extremely…..educational….and even…stimulating, in a primitive sort of way. It wasn’t like she’d really……enjoyed it, of course….but it was important to understand local customs…. 'when in Rome’, and all that.
That’s why she had accepted his invitation to dinner and a movie. She was unsure of this artificial pheromone substitute she was wearing…the perfume, but it was recommended to her by a girl in her first period class, Pamela Troy, who rumor had it had mated with every sentient and semi-sentient being within a few hundred kilometers.
Since the mindwarp orb didn’t seem to be working on Max, and eventually she would have to actually interact with him physically, a little practice with Kyle, getting close enough to him to allow the perfume to work on him in the movie,…..well, it seemed like good practice for the real thing. She’d told that to Nasedo at least, and he appeared to have bought it. ‘What is taking him so long, though?’
Although he had only gone to Church intermittently since his mother ran off when he was six, the past week had seen a resurgence of interest in Confession by Kyle Valenti. He was currently on his knees facing the altar, and saying his 46th Pater Noster. When the door to the confessional opened and the priest walked out, Kyle glared at him out of the corner of his eye.
His resurgence of interest in religion had followed the first daydream he’d had about Tess. He’d felt guilty…..even knowing it was a daydream. He’d really sort of…forced himself on her. Today he’d been equally out of control….although she hadn’t seemed to mind that in the daydream. That actually made him even more guilty….fantasizing about her submitting to him when he wasn’t even in control of himself. At confession last week, the priest had seemed interested in exactly what had occurred. Today…well…he could practically hear the man panting as he’d made him tell every sordid detail. He thought the priest was probably some kind of a pervert.
‘Damn,’ thought Kyle, ‘…am I ever glad I was never an altar boy here…’
He said his 50th Pater Noster. ‘…only fifty Hail Mary’s to go….’ Ten minutes later he jumped back into the Mustang. Tess smiled up at him, and for the time being the world seemed good. As he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, he smelled a hint of perfume, and started to feel just a little bit….distracted. ‘If this really gets serious,’ thought Kyle Valenti, ‘I may have to convert to Buddhism…’
Monday 6:30PM Crashdown Café break room.
Liz was on her dinner break during her night shift. She’d quickly put down a Sigourney Weaver with fries, and now had her probability and statistics book out looking at her homework.
But while her eyes were on her book, her thoughts were on the daydream at the end of second period. It had seemed so real. She looked again at her fingernails, almost surprised to not see the skin from his back lodged there. She wondered if, in the daydream, he could heal those scratches. She really was sorry, she hadn’t meant to claw him like that….she just got carried away she guessed. After the bell went off, they’d connected and she had apologized to him for doing that, but maybe they weren’t having quite the same daydream this time, because he had told her he hadn’t noticed any scratches. Of course, he’d been a little carried away himself at the time.
She wondered if this daydreaming business was really due to sexual frustration….she’d read that in a book somewhere once. It wasn’t just the daydream that she’d had in second period…..although that clearly had been the most intense…..but she seemed to daydream about sex with Max quite frequently lately.
She looked down at her textbook. ‘Gee, if I kept track of how often I daydream for a week now, and then after we started having sex how often I daydreamed then….well I could do a T-statistic and determine if that were really the case..’ she told herself.
Ever the scientist, she penciled out a test that would have even more statistical power. ‘With a chi-square…’ she thought, ‘we could get to statistical certainty for greater..precision.’ She looked at the rough figures, then blushed intensely as she figured a way to add a couple more degrees of freedom to the analysis. “But if we made that a 4 by 4 cell, and did an analysis of variance analyzing frequency of sex, position, duration, and intensity against number of daydreams, with only say five samples per cell….., the power of the statistical analysis would be huge with only 80…uh…sample observations.’
Liz Parker found the room suddenly becoming very warm. She couldn’t believe Maria had told her that her probability and statistics class was the most boring thing in the world. Liz found it very….stimulating.
Trying not to hyperventilate as she returned to her waitress duties, Liz Parker too appeared to be starting to believe in happy ever afters…..
Last edited by greywolf on Thu Nov 16, 2006 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
It was two days before Thanksgiving.
Tess had decided to give up trying to mindwarp Max. After two more attempts, it was obvious it wasn’t working. Tess had decided to continue her explorations on local foreplay customs with Kyle. Nasedo had OK’d it, cautioning her not to get carried away, since Kyle obviously wasn’t the target they needed.
‘How stupid was that?’ she thought to herself, instantly feeling uncomfortable, just knowing how he’d punish her if he ever knew she’d thought of him as stupid.
But the truth was, Nasedo was a real uncomfortable being to be around. He was just plain mean, with no conscience, no real feelings. She knew he’d never really cared for her so much as….cultivated her. Like a plant. No, not even that. She was just an egg and a uterus to the guy, really. Just a ticket home. Tess wondered if there would be a lot of beings like Nasedo on Antar. That would suck.
Hell, Kyle was nicer than Nasedo….more fun to be around. Kyle was even more fun than Max. Kyle at least noticed her. And if she mindwarped Kyle, well Kyle could have some of the most interesting mindwarp dreams about Tess. Not just the things he thought about doing with her…well, to her really, but at least he seemed to want her to enjoy it too.
Not like Max. Mindwarp Max and tell him you are available and what happens? He ripples off with that brown-eyed Earth girl somewhere,… and the Creator alone knows what they are doing, and it probably even embarrasses the holy crap out of Him at that.
At least Kyle would get….cozy.
It was two days before Thanksgiving, and Kyle Valenti was convinced he was going insane.
He’d had crushes on girls before, fantasized about a lot of them, but this was beyond bizarre. He couldn’t get Tess out of his mind. He’d be sitting there doing homework, driving the Mustang, …anything, and boom, he’d be right in the middle of a sex dream with Tess….a wet dream if he wasn’t real careful. Definitely not the kind of thing that you wanted to have happen to you in Study Hall, although in the boy’s locker room while showering had actually been worse. The other guys in your PE class catch you in the shower room with a woody and they either make fun of you, or beat you up, depending on whether they thought you were fantasizing about some girl, or …them.
And all the confessions and Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s hadn’t helped a damn bit. Plus, he was sort of afraid the priest taking confessions was going to start hitting on him any day now…., not like the guys in PE, but the other way.
‘Maybe it’s because God thinks I’m being manipulative,’ thought Kyle. ‘I mean, I rarely go to Mass, just to confession. It’s sort of like I only go there when I’ve screwed up. Maybe I ought to go to Mass tonight.’ Then he remembered, he had a date with Tess. ‘Hey, just ask her,’ he thought. ‘Maybe she’d like to come too…'
Maybe they could go to the movie AFTER Mass.
Tess had decided to give up trying to mindwarp Max. After two more attempts, it was obvious it wasn’t working. Tess had decided to continue her explorations on local foreplay customs with Kyle. Nasedo had OK’d it, cautioning her not to get carried away, since Kyle obviously wasn’t the target they needed.
‘How stupid was that?’ she thought to herself, instantly feeling uncomfortable, just knowing how he’d punish her if he ever knew she’d thought of him as stupid.
But the truth was, Nasedo was a real uncomfortable being to be around. He was just plain mean, with no conscience, no real feelings. She knew he’d never really cared for her so much as….cultivated her. Like a plant. No, not even that. She was just an egg and a uterus to the guy, really. Just a ticket home. Tess wondered if there would be a lot of beings like Nasedo on Antar. That would suck.
Hell, Kyle was nicer than Nasedo….more fun to be around. Kyle was even more fun than Max. Kyle at least noticed her. And if she mindwarped Kyle, well Kyle could have some of the most interesting mindwarp dreams about Tess. Not just the things he thought about doing with her…well, to her really, but at least he seemed to want her to enjoy it too.
Not like Max. Mindwarp Max and tell him you are available and what happens? He ripples off with that brown-eyed Earth girl somewhere,… and the Creator alone knows what they are doing, and it probably even embarrasses the holy crap out of Him at that.
At least Kyle would get….cozy.
It was two days before Thanksgiving, and Kyle Valenti was convinced he was going insane.
He’d had crushes on girls before, fantasized about a lot of them, but this was beyond bizarre. He couldn’t get Tess out of his mind. He’d be sitting there doing homework, driving the Mustang, …anything, and boom, he’d be right in the middle of a sex dream with Tess….a wet dream if he wasn’t real careful. Definitely not the kind of thing that you wanted to have happen to you in Study Hall, although in the boy’s locker room while showering had actually been worse. The other guys in your PE class catch you in the shower room with a woody and they either make fun of you, or beat you up, depending on whether they thought you were fantasizing about some girl, or …them.
And all the confessions and Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s hadn’t helped a damn bit. Plus, he was sort of afraid the priest taking confessions was going to start hitting on him any day now…., not like the guys in PE, but the other way.
‘Maybe it’s because God thinks I’m being manipulative,’ thought Kyle. ‘I mean, I rarely go to Mass, just to confession. It’s sort of like I only go there when I’ve screwed up. Maybe I ought to go to Mass tonight.’ Then he remembered, he had a date with Tess. ‘Hey, just ask her,’ he thought. ‘Maybe she’d like to come too…'
Maybe they could go to the movie AFTER Mass.
Tess was a little uncertain about this….afraid she’d be conspicuous. Nasedo had taught her never to be conspicuous. But as she entered the Cathedral with Kyle, she realized that this was one aspect of her human knowledge that was totally absent…..organized religion. That was probably because of Nasedo. He hated organized religion.
Oh, Nasedo believed in a creator. He was an artificial life form and he’d actually met his, back on Antar. Nasedo told her that his creator was kind of a shy dumpy biogenetic engineer. Nasedo figured the reason he was created with no genitals was that his creator had never used his own, and considered them superfluous. Nasedo would have kicked his ass for that, but apparently the guy had been bright enough to build inhibitions into Nasedo’s brain. His creator was the one guy Nasedo couldn’t directly harm, apparently. But she had no doubt Nasedo could betray the guy to Kivar, Nasedo was skilled at treachery, and if there were any inhibitions built into him about that….well, Tess had never found them.
So Tess was a little worried about this Mass-thing that Kyle wanted to do before their date, but Nasedo was going to be in California…probably working to get a better deal for himself when Tess was eventually successful with Max…for another two days. She didn’t want to be home alone….that just frustrated her, because she wasn’t really sure anymore she’d be able to pull that conception with Max thing off…..at least, not as long as Liz was alive.
Not that Nasedo would think the latter was a problem, but Tess didn’t want to think such thoughts….at least not before going in to a religious building.
Tess did believe in a Creator…capital ‘C’-type. Oh, she knew that she was created ‘lower-case ‘C’ in the same factory that created Nasedo, all the pod people had been. But that was just mixing DNA, human DNA and Antarean DNA that had already been created ages before without any help from laboratories or dumpy biogenetic engineers.
Tess did believe in a Creator of life, she just didn’t know much about Him. As she looked up at the big building, she wondered how He’d feel about Nasedo killing Liz. Since the Creator had given Liz life for some purpose of His, if Nasedo killed her for his purpose….well, it kind of sounded like it might piss Him off.
Oh, He might not exactly be pleased about Tess mindwarping Max or Kyle for her purposes either…but she wasn’t really hurting them. Especially not Max, who would just ripple off for a quickie with Liz or something. No, she decided, she wasn’t afraid that she’d pissed off the Creator all that much.
As long as He let Nasedo continue to walk around, Tess decided she was probably OK since she was just kind of chump-change in the doing evil on Earth business.
As she walked through the door to enter the building she decided to follow Nasedo’s general teaching about what you do to fit in if you are in an unfamiliar environment….watch what others are doing…especially others of your age, size, and gender, and just do what they do.
It had always worked before….
Oh, Nasedo believed in a creator. He was an artificial life form and he’d actually met his, back on Antar. Nasedo told her that his creator was kind of a shy dumpy biogenetic engineer. Nasedo figured the reason he was created with no genitals was that his creator had never used his own, and considered them superfluous. Nasedo would have kicked his ass for that, but apparently the guy had been bright enough to build inhibitions into Nasedo’s brain. His creator was the one guy Nasedo couldn’t directly harm, apparently. But she had no doubt Nasedo could betray the guy to Kivar, Nasedo was skilled at treachery, and if there were any inhibitions built into him about that….well, Tess had never found them.
So Tess was a little worried about this Mass-thing that Kyle wanted to do before their date, but Nasedo was going to be in California…probably working to get a better deal for himself when Tess was eventually successful with Max…for another two days. She didn’t want to be home alone….that just frustrated her, because she wasn’t really sure anymore she’d be able to pull that conception with Max thing off…..at least, not as long as Liz was alive.
Not that Nasedo would think the latter was a problem, but Tess didn’t want to think such thoughts….at least not before going in to a religious building.
Tess did believe in a Creator…capital ‘C’-type. Oh, she knew that she was created ‘lower-case ‘C’ in the same factory that created Nasedo, all the pod people had been. But that was just mixing DNA, human DNA and Antarean DNA that had already been created ages before without any help from laboratories or dumpy biogenetic engineers.
Tess did believe in a Creator of life, she just didn’t know much about Him. As she looked up at the big building, she wondered how He’d feel about Nasedo killing Liz. Since the Creator had given Liz life for some purpose of His, if Nasedo killed her for his purpose….well, it kind of sounded like it might piss Him off.
Oh, He might not exactly be pleased about Tess mindwarping Max or Kyle for her purposes either…but she wasn’t really hurting them. Especially not Max, who would just ripple off for a quickie with Liz or something. No, she decided, she wasn’t afraid that she’d pissed off the Creator all that much.
As long as He let Nasedo continue to walk around, Tess decided she was probably OK since she was just kind of chump-change in the doing evil on Earth business.
As she walked through the door to enter the building she decided to follow Nasedo’s general teaching about what you do to fit in if you are in an unfamiliar environment….watch what others are doing…especially others of your age, size, and gender, and just do what they do.
It had always worked before….
Crashdown Café, Roswell New Mexico 6PM two days before Thanksgiving
It was a very different sight than had existed only several weeks ago as Diane and Philip Evans were sitting in the booth opposite Jeff and Nancy Parker, sharing a stack of Rings of Saturn Onion Rings while waiting for their burgers. They were looking into, not out of the birthday room this time, where six teenagers were making their plans for dividing up the work for the Thanksgiving Day meal they were cooking for their parents and the Valentis.
“Isabel is so organized with that easel, writing down tasks, and assigning jobs, Diane. And the others just follow right along,” said Nancy Parker.
“They’ll let her do anything as long as she doesn’t try to cook,” said Philip Evans.
“Philip! She’s not that bad. She’s gotten a lot better recently. How about yesterday’s breakfast.”
“Oh, it was OK, but it’s hard to screw up Cheerios.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s just fun to see them all working altogether, all enjoying each other’s company so much. It’s hard to believe it’s just been a few weeks since we were in there….since Nancy and I were so frightened of Max. It’s hard to believe we were that stupid, those two get along so well together.”
“And it’s not just Liz and Max,” said Nancy. “Look at Maria and Alex. They’ve been Liz’s friends since second grade, and I’ve never seen them look happier either. Whatever Liz and Max have…well, it’s apparently contagious,” Nancy said laughing. Then she noticed Diane’s face.
“What is it Diane?”
“I wonder if they know too? Max’s secret…whatever it is. I bet they do. Isabel has stopped being the Ice Princess and actually seems to care about Alex, Michael is no longer the little lost boy, and can’t keep his eyes off of Maria. I bet they know. I bet all six of them are in on it.”
“Whatever they know, they seem to be very comfortable with the secret,” said Jeff Parker. “I can’t see it being something bad or hurtful, whatever it is.”
“Then why can’t he tell his own mother?” asked Diane.
“He may be scared…..you do stupid things when you are scared sometimes, Diane. We almost lost our daughter, just by being scared of your son. Both Max and Liz are happy, and given what we’ve put them through, the fact that they are still speaking to us at all shows they care for us.”
“It’s not like Max doesn’t love us, Diane,” said Philip Evans. “Nobody has ever had a better son.”
“I know, I just wish….well, I wish there weren’t this kind of barrier between us…and I guess I’m sort of jealous because it feels like Liz knows him more than I do.”
“They are good kids, Diane,…all six of them,” said Jeff Parker. “And whatever Max did in the vault….we have a lot to give thanks for this Thanksgiving.”
“Yeah,” said Philip Evans. “We can be thankful that they have Izzie doing the decorating and not the cooking.”
“Phil! Stop that…” said Diane, swatting him on the shoulder as all four parents laughed.
Assumption Catholic Church, Roswell New Mexico, 6:15 PM
The words were strange and somewhat ritualistic. The audience, even Kyle, seemed to know the responses by heart. Tess was just trying to fit in, doing her best lip-synching as the rest of the audience spoke, trying to appear inconspicuous. Otherwise, she pretty much tuned out the whole show.
The service, Tess thought, went on for an unnecessarily long time. Even so, she was surprised when the people in the front rows went up to the rail and the priest started to give them snacks. 'When in Rome…,' thought Tess, as she followed Kyle to the rail and knelt beside him.
The wafer was kind of bland, and there wasn’t a whole lot to it. Tess’s stomach had rumbled embarrassingly, and she was really looking forward to dinner all of a sudden. The man had said the small glasses in the center of the tray held grape juice, and Tess liked grape juice. But the young woman two places to her left had taken a glass from the front of the tray. She figured to be inconspicuous she should do the same. She thought it tasted somewhat like grape juice, or at least grape juice that had started to go bad.
Her next coherent thought was when Kyle kissed her three hours later, in the bed of a hotel room in Dexter, New Mexico.
It was a very different sight than had existed only several weeks ago as Diane and Philip Evans were sitting in the booth opposite Jeff and Nancy Parker, sharing a stack of Rings of Saturn Onion Rings while waiting for their burgers. They were looking into, not out of the birthday room this time, where six teenagers were making their plans for dividing up the work for the Thanksgiving Day meal they were cooking for their parents and the Valentis.
“Isabel is so organized with that easel, writing down tasks, and assigning jobs, Diane. And the others just follow right along,” said Nancy Parker.
“They’ll let her do anything as long as she doesn’t try to cook,” said Philip Evans.
“Philip! She’s not that bad. She’s gotten a lot better recently. How about yesterday’s breakfast.”
“Oh, it was OK, but it’s hard to screw up Cheerios.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s just fun to see them all working altogether, all enjoying each other’s company so much. It’s hard to believe it’s just been a few weeks since we were in there….since Nancy and I were so frightened of Max. It’s hard to believe we were that stupid, those two get along so well together.”
“And it’s not just Liz and Max,” said Nancy. “Look at Maria and Alex. They’ve been Liz’s friends since second grade, and I’ve never seen them look happier either. Whatever Liz and Max have…well, it’s apparently contagious,” Nancy said laughing. Then she noticed Diane’s face.
“What is it Diane?”
“I wonder if they know too? Max’s secret…whatever it is. I bet they do. Isabel has stopped being the Ice Princess and actually seems to care about Alex, Michael is no longer the little lost boy, and can’t keep his eyes off of Maria. I bet they know. I bet all six of them are in on it.”
“Whatever they know, they seem to be very comfortable with the secret,” said Jeff Parker. “I can’t see it being something bad or hurtful, whatever it is.”
“Then why can’t he tell his own mother?” asked Diane.
“He may be scared…..you do stupid things when you are scared sometimes, Diane. We almost lost our daughter, just by being scared of your son. Both Max and Liz are happy, and given what we’ve put them through, the fact that they are still speaking to us at all shows they care for us.”
“It’s not like Max doesn’t love us, Diane,” said Philip Evans. “Nobody has ever had a better son.”
“I know, I just wish….well, I wish there weren’t this kind of barrier between us…and I guess I’m sort of jealous because it feels like Liz knows him more than I do.”
“They are good kids, Diane,…all six of them,” said Jeff Parker. “And whatever Max did in the vault….we have a lot to give thanks for this Thanksgiving.”
“Yeah,” said Philip Evans. “We can be thankful that they have Izzie doing the decorating and not the cooking.”
“Phil! Stop that…” said Diane, swatting him on the shoulder as all four parents laughed.
Assumption Catholic Church, Roswell New Mexico, 6:15 PM
The words were strange and somewhat ritualistic. The audience, even Kyle, seemed to know the responses by heart. Tess was just trying to fit in, doing her best lip-synching as the rest of the audience spoke, trying to appear inconspicuous. Otherwise, she pretty much tuned out the whole show.
The service, Tess thought, went on for an unnecessarily long time. Even so, she was surprised when the people in the front rows went up to the rail and the priest started to give them snacks. 'When in Rome…,' thought Tess, as she followed Kyle to the rail and knelt beside him.
The wafer was kind of bland, and there wasn’t a whole lot to it. Tess’s stomach had rumbled embarrassingly, and she was really looking forward to dinner all of a sudden. The man had said the small glasses in the center of the tray held grape juice, and Tess liked grape juice. But the young woman two places to her left had taken a glass from the front of the tray. She figured to be inconspicuous she should do the same. She thought it tasted somewhat like grape juice, or at least grape juice that had started to go bad.
Her next coherent thought was when Kyle kissed her three hours later, in the bed of a hotel room in Dexter, New Mexico.
Last edited by greywolf on Mon Dec 04, 2006 3:41 pm, edited 5 times in total.
“Who are you trying to kid, Tess?”
“What do you mean? I’m not trying to kid ANYBODY”
“Bullshit! Who are you trying to kid?
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean…’What do you mean?’….? You know DAMN WELL what I mean, Tess.”
Have you ever been really drunk? I mean, REALLY drunk?
I mean, knee walking, wasted, lay-in-the-gutter, shit-faced drunk?
If you have, you may have carried on a conversation like Tess is having right now. That’s her up above….talking to….well…herself.
And it’s going to get worse momentarily. She’s going to be talking to herself…and Kyle, simultaneously. She is going to be referring to herself in the first person, second person, and third person, while trying (albeit not very well) to hold up her end of the conversation with Kyle.
To make things easier, we’ll color code those conversations, so you can kind of tell who is who. It won’t help much though, cause the gal is damn near terminally wasted. Tess, the quintessential cheap drunk.
And that’s an Antarean for you…..they are notorious throughout the whole universe for being wusses that can’t hold their liquor. So even though this is going to be color-coded, expect it to get a little confusing.
This is also going to confuse the hell out of Kyle Valenti. But he’s likely to learn once and for all the truthfulness of the old Willy Wonka saying, “Candy’s dandy, but liquor’s quicker…”
She tried not to stumble as she got in to the red Mustang.
“The Crashdown has it’s own charm…but I’m kind of tired of alien-themed stuff right now, Tess. Would you like to try some Italian?”
“Hey Tess. Kyle Valenti is Italian. Would you like to try him? No?? Didn’t think so. It’ll never happen, Tess. You aren’t going to do it. Not with Max, not with Kyle…not with anyone. You know that. Why kid yourself?”
“Why..uh, sure Kyle,..uh, Italian would be just fine.”
“I will do it. I will. It’s the only way I can get away from him…I’ll do anything for that…anything at all.”
“Well that’s great. They have a new Italian restaurant over in Dexter, it’s about twenty minutes away.”
“That sounds good, Kyle.”
“Who are you trying to kid, Tess. You still have the nightmares…still wake up screaming in the night…still lie there sobbing until morning.”
“I can do it….I have to do it. Otherwise I stay here with him….I stay with him forever. That’d be worse….far worse.”
“You say that now. You say that when Max is somewhere else. You wouldn’t say that if you knew he were really here….if you knew that he was going to use you…..hurt you for his own pleasure….degrade you like Nasedo did.”
“So how are you adjusting to school?”
“Oh God, don’t talk about it…don’t force me to remember….”
“Uh…It’s fine, Kyle…..West Roswell is…uh….real nice.”
“It’s not just the memories, Tess. Some of the nightmares are about the future, aren’t they. About Max violating you too. About Max having the same look in his eyes that Nasedo had when he holds you down, pushes himself into you……watches your fear….your pain….your horror…..and laughs.”
“Oh please go away……..don’t make me remember……don’t make me think about it……I can’t stand it……How could he…..? How could Max….? Doesn’t anyone love me?”
“No Tess, why should anyone love you? In another lifetime you had a loveless marriage for political purposes. Now you think you can let him do that to you for a ticket back to Antar. And Nasedo? He doesn’t love you…doesn’t hate you either. He raped you, RAPED YOU with that device, just to teach you your place. You aren’t a person, Tess. Only a body. Only a body for other people to use and abuse, for their purposes. Nobody cares about Tess……how could they? You are slime, Tess, pond scum.”
“Don’t make me remember…..I didn’t mean to make him mad…..I wasn’t being a bad girl…..I didn’t think…it just…the idea scared me so…., he thought I was disobeying but I was just so frightened by the idea……, I just blurted out to Nasedo that I wouldn’t do it…without thinking.”
“Well are you making friends? I’d think someone like you would make friends real easily.”
“Nasedo? Why call him Nasedo, Tess? Don’t you remember? He’s ….Daddy.”
“No! NO! Don’t say that. He’s not my daddy…..my daddy wouldn’t treat me like that…..my daddy wouldn’t do that...he wouldn't.…rape me.”
“I don’t know, Kyle. I …I really don’t make friends that easily I guess.”
“Of course he’s your Daddy…as much of a daddy as you have….as much of a daddy as you deserve. You’re worthless, Tess. Just a husk….a shell….an incubator for someone for Kivar to use, someone who will buy a ticket home for you and your Daddy. Maybe he can go back to the factory…maybe he can be retrofitted with the real equipment…so he won’t need the dildo next time…”
“NO! O God NO! Shut-up……..PLEASE shut-up.....I don’t want to listen to you…..go away, PLEASE! Oh Please just go away……..”
“You know you can’t do it, Tess. You know you swore you’d kill yourself if he ever touched you like that again. You aren’t going to let Max do it either…..even if he would. You know that. You’re worthless, Tess. Reincarnated from the dead flesh of a dead queen who lived a dead life in a dead loveless political marriage, whose only purpose in existence was to be a vessel for a child that was conceived without love…..and you died before it was even born.
And today, Tess? Today you’re worse than that. You are just something to be used, and then discarded. By Max….and by Daddy, too. And you know what Tess? You don’t deserve any better…”
Kyle wasn’t sure why Tess was shaking so much sitting next to him, the weather wasn’t that cold. Maybe it was just the wind…..he noticed it seemed to be causing tears in her eyes as she looked out at the desert with a vacant stare……
“What do you mean? I’m not trying to kid ANYBODY”
“Bullshit! Who are you trying to kid?
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean…’What do you mean?’….? You know DAMN WELL what I mean, Tess.”
Have you ever been really drunk? I mean, REALLY drunk?
I mean, knee walking, wasted, lay-in-the-gutter, shit-faced drunk?
If you have, you may have carried on a conversation like Tess is having right now. That’s her up above….talking to….well…herself.
And it’s going to get worse momentarily. She’s going to be talking to herself…and Kyle, simultaneously. She is going to be referring to herself in the first person, second person, and third person, while trying (albeit not very well) to hold up her end of the conversation with Kyle.
To make things easier, we’ll color code those conversations, so you can kind of tell who is who. It won’t help much though, cause the gal is damn near terminally wasted. Tess, the quintessential cheap drunk.
And that’s an Antarean for you…..they are notorious throughout the whole universe for being wusses that can’t hold their liquor. So even though this is going to be color-coded, expect it to get a little confusing.
This is also going to confuse the hell out of Kyle Valenti. But he’s likely to learn once and for all the truthfulness of the old Willy Wonka saying, “Candy’s dandy, but liquor’s quicker…”
She tried not to stumble as she got in to the red Mustang.
“The Crashdown has it’s own charm…but I’m kind of tired of alien-themed stuff right now, Tess. Would you like to try some Italian?”
“Hey Tess. Kyle Valenti is Italian. Would you like to try him? No?? Didn’t think so. It’ll never happen, Tess. You aren’t going to do it. Not with Max, not with Kyle…not with anyone. You know that. Why kid yourself?”
“Why..uh, sure Kyle,..uh, Italian would be just fine.”
“I will do it. I will. It’s the only way I can get away from him…I’ll do anything for that…anything at all.”
“Well that’s great. They have a new Italian restaurant over in Dexter, it’s about twenty minutes away.”
“That sounds good, Kyle.”
“Who are you trying to kid, Tess. You still have the nightmares…still wake up screaming in the night…still lie there sobbing until morning.”
“I can do it….I have to do it. Otherwise I stay here with him….I stay with him forever. That’d be worse….far worse.”
“You say that now. You say that when Max is somewhere else. You wouldn’t say that if you knew he were really here….if you knew that he was going to use you…..hurt you for his own pleasure….degrade you like Nasedo did.”
“So how are you adjusting to school?”
“Oh God, don’t talk about it…don’t force me to remember….”
“Uh…It’s fine, Kyle…..West Roswell is…uh….real nice.”
“It’s not just the memories, Tess. Some of the nightmares are about the future, aren’t they. About Max violating you too. About Max having the same look in his eyes that Nasedo had when he holds you down, pushes himself into you……watches your fear….your pain….your horror…..and laughs.”
“Oh please go away……..don’t make me remember……don’t make me think about it……I can’t stand it……How could he…..? How could Max….? Doesn’t anyone love me?”
“No Tess, why should anyone love you? In another lifetime you had a loveless marriage for political purposes. Now you think you can let him do that to you for a ticket back to Antar. And Nasedo? He doesn’t love you…doesn’t hate you either. He raped you, RAPED YOU with that device, just to teach you your place. You aren’t a person, Tess. Only a body. Only a body for other people to use and abuse, for their purposes. Nobody cares about Tess……how could they? You are slime, Tess, pond scum.”
“Don’t make me remember…..I didn’t mean to make him mad…..I wasn’t being a bad girl…..I didn’t think…it just…the idea scared me so…., he thought I was disobeying but I was just so frightened by the idea……, I just blurted out to Nasedo that I wouldn’t do it…without thinking.”
“Well are you making friends? I’d think someone like you would make friends real easily.”
“Nasedo? Why call him Nasedo, Tess? Don’t you remember? He’s ….Daddy.”
“No! NO! Don’t say that. He’s not my daddy…..my daddy wouldn’t treat me like that…..my daddy wouldn’t do that...he wouldn't.…rape me.”
“I don’t know, Kyle. I …I really don’t make friends that easily I guess.”
“Of course he’s your Daddy…as much of a daddy as you have….as much of a daddy as you deserve. You’re worthless, Tess. Just a husk….a shell….an incubator for someone for Kivar to use, someone who will buy a ticket home for you and your Daddy. Maybe he can go back to the factory…maybe he can be retrofitted with the real equipment…so he won’t need the dildo next time…”
“NO! O God NO! Shut-up……..PLEASE shut-up.....I don’t want to listen to you…..go away, PLEASE! Oh Please just go away……..”
“You know you can’t do it, Tess. You know you swore you’d kill yourself if he ever touched you like that again. You aren’t going to let Max do it either…..even if he would. You know that. You’re worthless, Tess. Reincarnated from the dead flesh of a dead queen who lived a dead life in a dead loveless political marriage, whose only purpose in existence was to be a vessel for a child that was conceived without love…..and you died before it was even born.
And today, Tess? Today you’re worse than that. You are just something to be used, and then discarded. By Max….and by Daddy, too. And you know what Tess? You don’t deserve any better…”
Kyle wasn’t sure why Tess was shaking so much sitting next to him, the weather wasn’t that cold. Maybe it was just the wind…..he noticed it seemed to be causing tears in her eyes as she looked out at the desert with a vacant stare……
Last edited by greywolf on Mon Dec 04, 2006 3:47 pm, edited 2 times in total.
As they went in to Anthony’s Fine Italian Restaurant, Kyle was really feeling pretty good. While he wasn’t really what you’d call an observant Catholic, his last Mass being three years previously, it was kind of neat that Tess had been willing to go to the service with him.
She’d been quiet most of the way to the restaurant, but the sunset in the high desert had been beautiful, and watching it reflect off her hair and bathe her face in the last rays of the day, had been an awesome sight.
The restaurant and inn was in an adobe building, in keeping with the character of the neighborhood. In the summer it was quite popular with the tourist crowd, but two days before Thanksgiving it was much quieter.
They were quicky ushered to a table by themselves and he found himself looking closely at Tess. She seemed nervous and ill at ease, and he wondered why. He hadn’t realized until now just how much he was starting to care for her and he asked, “Tess, are you OK? If you aren’t feeling well….well we could do this some other time…”
“Uh, no…..I’m fine Kyle. This place is…..great.”
“I’m glad you like it. The food isn’t quite as good as Grandma Valenti makes, but it’s pretty good. I hope you like garlic though, it’s a little bit heavy in Sicilian dishes,” he said, trying to remember to buy some breathmints before he left….just in case she felt like kissing him goodnight later.
But the thought of a goodnight kiss from Tess still sent some anxiety through him as he thought of those daydreams….so strong….so powerful….so….explicit. While they were great…..no, let’s face it, they were awesome…..they had frightened him, because they were so intense.
When they occurred, he couldn’t make them stop, even in the middle of his classes, even when he had tried hard to concentrate on other things. And what he was doing in some of those dreams….well there was a brutality to it that just wasn’t Kyle Valenti. It was like he was living someone else’s version of those dreams, not really his own. It was almost like he was possessed in those dreams.
Yes, he thought, as he looked at her sitting across from him, he wanted her, but he also really cared for her. But after those dreams….for the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure he really trusted himself. ‘She’s too nice a girl to rush, Valenti,’ he told himself. ‘You’ve just got to keep it under control. If there’s going to be any chance that she’s going to fall in love with you, you have to take it easy.’ And he would take it easy too he decided. Because he really did care for her. She really just might be the one…his soulmate.
“I’d recommend the Chicken Piccata, but the fettucinni is pretty good too.”
“Why don’t you just order for me, Kyle. I trust you.”
'What had she meant by that?' Kyle wasn’t all that sure he trusted himself around her. 'Oh…the food selection…..right!'
“Then let’s make it two Piccatta. I wish we could order a glass of Chianti with it, too. They go well together…..kind of like us,” he said smiling.
“Well maybe we can get some sparkling grape juice or something.”
“OK, but it will hardly be the same. If we were at my grandma’s, she’d just sneak us a little. My dad takes his job too seriously. How can an Italian boy eat Piccata without wine? But we’ll have to settle for the grape juice here I guess. Unless you can whip up some fake ID out of thin air.”
She gave him a funny smile when he said that. Kyle hadn’t thought it that funny. 'Was she flirting with him? How great was that!' Kyle’s eyes feasted on her throughout the dinner, wondering what was going on behind her own beautiful eyes….
She’d been quiet most of the way to the restaurant, but the sunset in the high desert had been beautiful, and watching it reflect off her hair and bathe her face in the last rays of the day, had been an awesome sight.
The restaurant and inn was in an adobe building, in keeping with the character of the neighborhood. In the summer it was quite popular with the tourist crowd, but two days before Thanksgiving it was much quieter.
They were quicky ushered to a table by themselves and he found himself looking closely at Tess. She seemed nervous and ill at ease, and he wondered why. He hadn’t realized until now just how much he was starting to care for her and he asked, “Tess, are you OK? If you aren’t feeling well….well we could do this some other time…”
“Uh, no…..I’m fine Kyle. This place is…..great.”
“I’m glad you like it. The food isn’t quite as good as Grandma Valenti makes, but it’s pretty good. I hope you like garlic though, it’s a little bit heavy in Sicilian dishes,” he said, trying to remember to buy some breathmints before he left….just in case she felt like kissing him goodnight later.
But the thought of a goodnight kiss from Tess still sent some anxiety through him as he thought of those daydreams….so strong….so powerful….so….explicit. While they were great…..no, let’s face it, they were awesome…..they had frightened him, because they were so intense.
When they occurred, he couldn’t make them stop, even in the middle of his classes, even when he had tried hard to concentrate on other things. And what he was doing in some of those dreams….well there was a brutality to it that just wasn’t Kyle Valenti. It was like he was living someone else’s version of those dreams, not really his own. It was almost like he was possessed in those dreams.
Yes, he thought, as he looked at her sitting across from him, he wanted her, but he also really cared for her. But after those dreams….for the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure he really trusted himself. ‘She’s too nice a girl to rush, Valenti,’ he told himself. ‘You’ve just got to keep it under control. If there’s going to be any chance that she’s going to fall in love with you, you have to take it easy.’ And he would take it easy too he decided. Because he really did care for her. She really just might be the one…his soulmate.
“I’d recommend the Chicken Piccata, but the fettucinni is pretty good too.”
“Why don’t you just order for me, Kyle. I trust you.”
'What had she meant by that?' Kyle wasn’t all that sure he trusted himself around her. 'Oh…the food selection…..right!'
“Then let’s make it two Piccatta. I wish we could order a glass of Chianti with it, too. They go well together…..kind of like us,” he said smiling.
“Well maybe we can get some sparkling grape juice or something.”
“OK, but it will hardly be the same. If we were at my grandma’s, she’d just sneak us a little. My dad takes his job too seriously. How can an Italian boy eat Piccata without wine? But we’ll have to settle for the grape juice here I guess. Unless you can whip up some fake ID out of thin air.”
She gave him a funny smile when he said that. Kyle hadn’t thought it that funny. 'Was she flirting with him? How great was that!' Kyle’s eyes feasted on her throughout the dinner, wondering what was going on behind her own beautiful eyes….
Last edited by greywolf on Tue Dec 05, 2006 4:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Behind those eyes that Kyle thought were so beautiful the voices were still raging in Tess's mind.
'You'll never do it. Even if Max were interested in you....and he never could be interested in someone like you.....but even if he was...you'd scream and run away as soon as he got close. Who are you trying to kid?'
'I'd do it. I'd do ANYTHING to get away from him. I would....'
'You'd never do it. You wouldn't even do it with Kyle here, a weak earthling you could control...someone you could stop if it got too terrible. You can't even do it with him.'
And some part of Tess's mind did consider that. Kyle was just an earthling. She could control him. If not by mindwarp, she still had her other alien powers. It wasn't like Nasedo...or even Max.
It would be horrible...it was horrible even to contemplate being touched like that again. But with Kyle she COULD stop it,....she WOULD stop it, when it became unbearable. And the voice in her mind was right, if she couldn't do it with someone like Kyle, where she did have some control, she WOULD never be able to allow someone like Max to touch her like that, someone with powers like her own.
The voice was right about her, she knew the memories of what Nasedo had done to her would come flooding back at the first touch.....knew she really might not ever be able to voluntarily let someone touch her like that at all. But if she couldn't do it with Kyle.....if she couldn't do it when she had control.....she might as well kill herself.
Because if she couldn't conceive Max's child, she could never go home. And it wasn't really even home she was seeking she admitted to herself.....she wanted freedom from Nasedo, and even the freedom of death was better than letting him do that to her again.
'I can do it with Kyle,' she told the voice. 'You'll see. And then I can do it with Max too, and when I have I can get away from him at last. I can get away from.......Daddy'
The dinner had been pleasant, even if Tess had been a little quiet and distracted. The more he was with her, the more he really liked her. He left a larger tip than usual, grateful that the service had been efficient. The waitress hadn't hovered, but left them alone...left him to enjoy Tess's company without undue distraction.
As he walked to the till he looked at her, remembering how she had looked in church today kneeling next to him in front of the altar. 'She looked so beautiful there,' he thought. 'She looks beautiful here, too.'
But just for a few seconds Kyle let the fantasy rest in his mind, before he pushed it away, determined not to get his hopes up, not to expect somethng out of a casual relationship that likely could never be. The fantasy wasn't as erotic as the ones he'd had previously about her, but in its own way it was even more breathtaking for Kyle Valenti.
But it would do nothing but set him up for disappointment if he lingered on that one, for it certainly was as improbable as the vivid sexual fantasies he had about her.
Kyle and Tess....Tess and Kyle, kneeling again before the altar....taking their vows...........
'You'll never do it. Even if Max were interested in you....and he never could be interested in someone like you.....but even if he was...you'd scream and run away as soon as he got close. Who are you trying to kid?'
'I'd do it. I'd do ANYTHING to get away from him. I would....'
'You'd never do it. You wouldn't even do it with Kyle here, a weak earthling you could control...someone you could stop if it got too terrible. You can't even do it with him.'
And some part of Tess's mind did consider that. Kyle was just an earthling. She could control him. If not by mindwarp, she still had her other alien powers. It wasn't like Nasedo...or even Max.
It would be horrible...it was horrible even to contemplate being touched like that again. But with Kyle she COULD stop it,....she WOULD stop it, when it became unbearable. And the voice in her mind was right, if she couldn't do it with someone like Kyle, where she did have some control, she WOULD never be able to allow someone like Max to touch her like that, someone with powers like her own.
The voice was right about her, she knew the memories of what Nasedo had done to her would come flooding back at the first touch.....knew she really might not ever be able to voluntarily let someone touch her like that at all. But if she couldn't do it with Kyle.....if she couldn't do it when she had control.....she might as well kill herself.
Because if she couldn't conceive Max's child, she could never go home. And it wasn't really even home she was seeking she admitted to herself.....she wanted freedom from Nasedo, and even the freedom of death was better than letting him do that to her again.
'I can do it with Kyle,' she told the voice. 'You'll see. And then I can do it with Max too, and when I have I can get away from him at last. I can get away from.......Daddy'
The dinner had been pleasant, even if Tess had been a little quiet and distracted. The more he was with her, the more he really liked her. He left a larger tip than usual, grateful that the service had been efficient. The waitress hadn't hovered, but left them alone...left him to enjoy Tess's company without undue distraction.
As he walked to the till he looked at her, remembering how she had looked in church today kneeling next to him in front of the altar. 'She looked so beautiful there,' he thought. 'She looks beautiful here, too.'
But just for a few seconds Kyle let the fantasy rest in his mind, before he pushed it away, determined not to get his hopes up, not to expect somethng out of a casual relationship that likely could never be. The fantasy wasn't as erotic as the ones he'd had previously about her, but in its own way it was even more breathtaking for Kyle Valenti.
But it would do nothing but set him up for disappointment if he lingered on that one, for it certainly was as improbable as the vivid sexual fantasies he had about her.
Kyle and Tess....Tess and Kyle, kneeling again before the altar....taking their vows...........
The voices in her head had quarreled throughout dinner, but eventually the logic got through, even to a very drunken Tess. She could use Kyle….use him as a test. She could see if she could bear the pain…bear the humiliation…..bear the horror that she knew would return to her if she put herself in a position where she could be …touched…like that again.
If she could…well, there was hope for her. It would be far worse than unpleasant….the memories it would evoke would be terrifying….even though she could control him…could make him stop at any time. But if she could do it with Kyle, perhaps she’d find a way to do it with Max…..she dreaded it….even dead drunk she dreaded it with every cell in her body. But it was the only way….the only way to get away from…Daddy.
She could feel his puzzlement as she sent him to the registration desk…feel the resistance as she made him get the room.
But once he was in it….she knew twin terrors.
One was of her own creation. As she mindwarped him, she forced him to come to her…forced his mind to have the thoughts, forced the thoughts to overcome his own wishes. She drove him….drove him to do it….to do all the steps that it would take for their coupling. And with every step….with every time he came near her, every time he touched her, she relived the terror of that night, that horrible night, when a young Tess was savaged by the only parent she had ever known. When a fifth grader who appeared to be 11, but who in reality had only known five years of life since leaving the pod, had her innocence stolen forever by the only being she had ever trusted.
She had known it would be hard……terribly hard, but every piece of clothing he removed, every touch, every breath of his that she felt against her body, sent flash after flash of memories at her of Nasedo, ……..Nasedo grinning, leering, laughing at her pain…..showing her her true place in the world, her utter worthlessness, a husk to be claimed by whoever needed her. And her mind cried out in anguish as she relived that again and again and again.....
The second terror…that one was almost as great. He was resisting her….sometimes humans would resist a little, but never like this. Not even another alien should be able to resist her like this.
He was resisting her as if his life depended on it, as if his soul depended on it. She fought, fought constantly, to keep his mind under control, afraid of the damage, afraid of the cruelty, afraid of all the horror she would see again if she couldn’t control him. He wasn’t….Daddy, but still what he might do to her…..it was like he knew…..he didn’t have to do what she wanted, because she was nothing….even this earthling felt he could have contempt for her.
She felt it when the time came for him to enter her, her body revolting at the thought, the boy’s face in front of her but the face of Nasedo swimming in her eyes. She thought she would die but she forced him in the mindwarp, forced him to push, felt her unwilling flesh part for him, relived again the utter degradation of that night as she forced him to push his body into her deeper…..deeper…..again….just like Daddy had done. And then she felt his body buck against her…felt the warmth, even through the pain as his body forced its release into her.
As she lay there Tess knew, this had been no victory. She knew she could never do this again….nothing…nothing would ever make her go through this again, relive those memories again…feel the emptiness, the guilt, the horror as she watched the images replay in her mind. She couldn’t do it…..never again….not for her very soul, would she ever go through that horror again.
As the despair and self loathing welled up in her, she cried softly, willing herself to be somewhere else…anywhere else. But that didn’t have the desired effect. She was still in the bed, laying beneath Kyle Valenti. As her sobbing started she felt her mindwarp slip and Kyle gained back control of his mind and body…only for a few seconds….but it would be long enough.
The evening that had started with such promise for Kyle Valenti turned suddenly to terror for the young man almost immediately after he left the cash register. The direct path to the car would have taken him out the front door. For no particular reason he found himself deciding to walk toward the other door, past the inn registration desk. He was puzzled by his own behavior but with Tess at his side looking up quizzically at him, it had at first seemed harmless enough, even sort of funny. It stopped being funny when he stopped at the desk and took his credit card out of his wallet. As he handed it to the clerk he took Tess’s hand and said, “We’d like a room.”
‘My God, what am I doing?’ he asked himself as he filled out the registration form. His hand seemed to move of its own volition. He looked at Tess in total confusion, and saw fear growing in her eyes as well. ‘This can’t be happening….this has to be another daydream…this can’t be real,’ he told himself as he pulled her along by the wrist down the hall. His terror grew by the step, and as he looked down at her, he saw terror growing in her eyes as well.
He tried to stop….fighting every footstep, not understanding what could be happening, how this could be happening to him. He tried to call out to Tess, ask her for help, but the words wouldn’t come out. The other daydreams had seemed real….but not like this, and as he closed the door and pulled her to the bed, as he felt his body react to her, he knew why he had brought her here. ‘Oh God no…. You’ve got to stop, Kyle. You can’t do this. You can’t. This isn’t a fantasy…..this isn’t something you can say a few Hail Mary’s about, and it’s all better. This is Tess….this is REALLY Tess. You can’t….you mustn’t….. Good Lord, Kyle…LOOK AT HER. She’s frightened out of her mind. Leave her alone….for God’s sake leave her ALONE.’
And the terror was obvious in the face of the young blonde girl. Kyle could see her quaking with fear, too terrified to move as he went up to her. Too frightened even to scream as he tore at the buttons of her blouse. They were his hands, but he had no control of them, as they pulled the blouse off of her. She shuddered and turned her back to him, her entire body quaking as his arms went around her, and he heard her stifle the scream that tried to come from her throat.
He wanted to believe his hands belonged to someone else, ....to believe that he could never do such a thing..., but he felt the warmth of her breast as he reached under her bra with one hand, pulling it from over her head with the other.
'Oh God,....please don't let this be happening.....please make it stop!'
As his hands cupped her breasts he could feel her shake, see in the mirror the tears falling from panicky eyes, feel with his body and arms the sobs that wracked her as he tightened his grip on her right breast as his left hand descended to the zipper of her dress.
‘Kyle, stop,’ he told himself, his very thoughts panicky. ‘Kyle, you can’t do this. You’ve got to stop…you’ve got to stop right now! This has already gone way too far. You are in so much trouble now….you can’t do this…no…NO! DON’T DO THIS! ’
But the screams in his mind had no effect, while the movements of his hands did. His mind screamed at him to stop as he turned her toward him, holding the quaking and now whimpering girl as he pushed her back to the edge of the waiting bed…..pushed her back onto it. She stared up at him, tears in her eyes, her lower lip quivering, hands visibly shaking.
‘That’s enough, Kyle,’ he told himself. ‘ENOUGH!' he screamed.
But it apparently wasn’t enough he saw ....as his hands went to his belt. He listened in horror, in disbelief, in panic, as he heard his levis fall to the floor, watched in horror as he lifted the shirt over his head.
He looked away from the terrified young blonde to the mirror on the wall, and was horrified to see in the reflection his hands push down his boxers…..to see his nakedness, and to watch, watch with even more horror than the horror in the eyes of the girl, as his arousal grew.
He fought…he fought with every fiber of his being to keep his hand back….and it hesitated….hesitated for long seconds….but inexorably he saw it go to the panties of the cowering girl….to claw at them briefly before finding a grip that let him pull them from her.
He watched her then, laying on the bed, looking up at him, whimpering…pleading at him with her eyes to not do this….not do what he knew his body was getting ready to do. He prayed then, prayed to God…. ‘I’ve gone insane….please, please don’t let me do this to her….she doesn’t deserve this Lord, don’t let it happen.’
But his body moved as if it had a mind of its own, crawling onto the bed, pushing the shaking girl back, feeling his knee push her legs apart. As he looked down at her……looked at such beauty, looked at such fear, he stopped himself. He hovered over her for long seconds…ten ….fifteen, fighting what he knew he was trying to do, but then he could stop himself no longer.
As his body descended toward her he closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of her fear, the sight of her pain. He hesitated once more, his soul wracked with agony and guilt at what he knew was coming.
He prayed one last time to the Almighty, ‘Please God….take my life…..do it now….don’t let me do this……that’s all I ask.’
But apparently no one was listening today, because he felt himself enter her roughly, heard her whimpers as her body spasmed in horror, trying to keep him out. He thought he would go insane hearing her cries…..hoped he already was insane…hoped to God that this was just another dream, but he knew it wasn’t. His body moved mechanically, repeatedly, pushing into her, his soul in torment.
Eventually it happened, but though his body found its own release, Kyle Valenti knew no pleasure. His mind was elsewhere. As he looked down at the crying girl he could see it in his mind, the gunsafe where his father kept his spare revolver. It was locked, but he knew where the key was.
He knew this was not a daydream. Penance would not be a few Hail Mary’s. This was far worse than a sin. He would expiate this crime….this horror, with the ultimate act of atonement. That was a mortal sin itself, but it no longer mattered to Kyle Valenti. He had defiled an angel…..defiled Tess. He deserved an eternity in Hell for what he had done. It couldn’t be worse than how he felt now.
Her eyes were filled with terror……she was hysterical, not even trying to move beneath him, sobbing quietly. He knew she wanted him dead…..Hell, he wanted him dead. But she had to know. He pressed close to the face that had been so beautiful and now was looking up with such terrible anguish, terrible fear.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he kissed her lips softly, “Tess I’m so very sorry….”
If she could…well, there was hope for her. It would be far worse than unpleasant….the memories it would evoke would be terrifying….even though she could control him…could make him stop at any time. But if she could do it with Kyle, perhaps she’d find a way to do it with Max…..she dreaded it….even dead drunk she dreaded it with every cell in her body. But it was the only way….the only way to get away from…Daddy.
She could feel his puzzlement as she sent him to the registration desk…feel the resistance as she made him get the room.
But once he was in it….she knew twin terrors.
One was of her own creation. As she mindwarped him, she forced him to come to her…forced his mind to have the thoughts, forced the thoughts to overcome his own wishes. She drove him….drove him to do it….to do all the steps that it would take for their coupling. And with every step….with every time he came near her, every time he touched her, she relived the terror of that night, that horrible night, when a young Tess was savaged by the only parent she had ever known. When a fifth grader who appeared to be 11, but who in reality had only known five years of life since leaving the pod, had her innocence stolen forever by the only being she had ever trusted.
She had known it would be hard……terribly hard, but every piece of clothing he removed, every touch, every breath of his that she felt against her body, sent flash after flash of memories at her of Nasedo, ……..Nasedo grinning, leering, laughing at her pain…..showing her her true place in the world, her utter worthlessness, a husk to be claimed by whoever needed her. And her mind cried out in anguish as she relived that again and again and again.....
The second terror…that one was almost as great. He was resisting her….sometimes humans would resist a little, but never like this. Not even another alien should be able to resist her like this.
He was resisting her as if his life depended on it, as if his soul depended on it. She fought, fought constantly, to keep his mind under control, afraid of the damage, afraid of the cruelty, afraid of all the horror she would see again if she couldn’t control him. He wasn’t….Daddy, but still what he might do to her…..it was like he knew…..he didn’t have to do what she wanted, because she was nothing….even this earthling felt he could have contempt for her.
She felt it when the time came for him to enter her, her body revolting at the thought, the boy’s face in front of her but the face of Nasedo swimming in her eyes. She thought she would die but she forced him in the mindwarp, forced him to push, felt her unwilling flesh part for him, relived again the utter degradation of that night as she forced him to push his body into her deeper…..deeper…..again….just like Daddy had done. And then she felt his body buck against her…felt the warmth, even through the pain as his body forced its release into her.
As she lay there Tess knew, this had been no victory. She knew she could never do this again….nothing…nothing would ever make her go through this again, relive those memories again…feel the emptiness, the guilt, the horror as she watched the images replay in her mind. She couldn’t do it…..never again….not for her very soul, would she ever go through that horror again.
As the despair and self loathing welled up in her, she cried softly, willing herself to be somewhere else…anywhere else. But that didn’t have the desired effect. She was still in the bed, laying beneath Kyle Valenti. As her sobbing started she felt her mindwarp slip and Kyle gained back control of his mind and body…only for a few seconds….but it would be long enough.
The evening that had started with such promise for Kyle Valenti turned suddenly to terror for the young man almost immediately after he left the cash register. The direct path to the car would have taken him out the front door. For no particular reason he found himself deciding to walk toward the other door, past the inn registration desk. He was puzzled by his own behavior but with Tess at his side looking up quizzically at him, it had at first seemed harmless enough, even sort of funny. It stopped being funny when he stopped at the desk and took his credit card out of his wallet. As he handed it to the clerk he took Tess’s hand and said, “We’d like a room.”
‘My God, what am I doing?’ he asked himself as he filled out the registration form. His hand seemed to move of its own volition. He looked at Tess in total confusion, and saw fear growing in her eyes as well. ‘This can’t be happening….this has to be another daydream…this can’t be real,’ he told himself as he pulled her along by the wrist down the hall. His terror grew by the step, and as he looked down at her, he saw terror growing in her eyes as well.
He tried to stop….fighting every footstep, not understanding what could be happening, how this could be happening to him. He tried to call out to Tess, ask her for help, but the words wouldn’t come out. The other daydreams had seemed real….but not like this, and as he closed the door and pulled her to the bed, as he felt his body react to her, he knew why he had brought her here. ‘Oh God no…. You’ve got to stop, Kyle. You can’t do this. You can’t. This isn’t a fantasy…..this isn’t something you can say a few Hail Mary’s about, and it’s all better. This is Tess….this is REALLY Tess. You can’t….you mustn’t….. Good Lord, Kyle…LOOK AT HER. She’s frightened out of her mind. Leave her alone….for God’s sake leave her ALONE.’
And the terror was obvious in the face of the young blonde girl. Kyle could see her quaking with fear, too terrified to move as he went up to her. Too frightened even to scream as he tore at the buttons of her blouse. They were his hands, but he had no control of them, as they pulled the blouse off of her. She shuddered and turned her back to him, her entire body quaking as his arms went around her, and he heard her stifle the scream that tried to come from her throat.
He wanted to believe his hands belonged to someone else, ....to believe that he could never do such a thing..., but he felt the warmth of her breast as he reached under her bra with one hand, pulling it from over her head with the other.
'Oh God,....please don't let this be happening.....please make it stop!'
As his hands cupped her breasts he could feel her shake, see in the mirror the tears falling from panicky eyes, feel with his body and arms the sobs that wracked her as he tightened his grip on her right breast as his left hand descended to the zipper of her dress.
‘Kyle, stop,’ he told himself, his very thoughts panicky. ‘Kyle, you can’t do this. You’ve got to stop…you’ve got to stop right now! This has already gone way too far. You are in so much trouble now….you can’t do this…no…NO! DON’T DO THIS! ’
But the screams in his mind had no effect, while the movements of his hands did. His mind screamed at him to stop as he turned her toward him, holding the quaking and now whimpering girl as he pushed her back to the edge of the waiting bed…..pushed her back onto it. She stared up at him, tears in her eyes, her lower lip quivering, hands visibly shaking.
‘That’s enough, Kyle,’ he told himself. ‘ENOUGH!' he screamed.
But it apparently wasn’t enough he saw ....as his hands went to his belt. He listened in horror, in disbelief, in panic, as he heard his levis fall to the floor, watched in horror as he lifted the shirt over his head.
He looked away from the terrified young blonde to the mirror on the wall, and was horrified to see in the reflection his hands push down his boxers…..to see his nakedness, and to watch, watch with even more horror than the horror in the eyes of the girl, as his arousal grew.
He fought…he fought with every fiber of his being to keep his hand back….and it hesitated….hesitated for long seconds….but inexorably he saw it go to the panties of the cowering girl….to claw at them briefly before finding a grip that let him pull them from her.
He watched her then, laying on the bed, looking up at him, whimpering…pleading at him with her eyes to not do this….not do what he knew his body was getting ready to do. He prayed then, prayed to God…. ‘I’ve gone insane….please, please don’t let me do this to her….she doesn’t deserve this Lord, don’t let it happen.’
But his body moved as if it had a mind of its own, crawling onto the bed, pushing the shaking girl back, feeling his knee push her legs apart. As he looked down at her……looked at such beauty, looked at such fear, he stopped himself. He hovered over her for long seconds…ten ….fifteen, fighting what he knew he was trying to do, but then he could stop himself no longer.
As his body descended toward her he closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of her fear, the sight of her pain. He hesitated once more, his soul wracked with agony and guilt at what he knew was coming.
He prayed one last time to the Almighty, ‘Please God….take my life…..do it now….don’t let me do this……that’s all I ask.’
But apparently no one was listening today, because he felt himself enter her roughly, heard her whimpers as her body spasmed in horror, trying to keep him out. He thought he would go insane hearing her cries…..hoped he already was insane…hoped to God that this was just another dream, but he knew it wasn’t. His body moved mechanically, repeatedly, pushing into her, his soul in torment.
Eventually it happened, but though his body found its own release, Kyle Valenti knew no pleasure. His mind was elsewhere. As he looked down at the crying girl he could see it in his mind, the gunsafe where his father kept his spare revolver. It was locked, but he knew where the key was.
He knew this was not a daydream. Penance would not be a few Hail Mary’s. This was far worse than a sin. He would expiate this crime….this horror, with the ultimate act of atonement. That was a mortal sin itself, but it no longer mattered to Kyle Valenti. He had defiled an angel…..defiled Tess. He deserved an eternity in Hell for what he had done. It couldn’t be worse than how he felt now.
Her eyes were filled with terror……she was hysterical, not even trying to move beneath him, sobbing quietly. He knew she wanted him dead…..Hell, he wanted him dead. But she had to know. He pressed close to the face that had been so beautiful and now was looking up with such terrible anguish, terrible fear.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he kissed her lips softly, “Tess I’m so very sorry….”
As his lips touched hers the fog lifted in the brain of Tess Harding, and the connection formed briefly.
As the pain, the anguish, the self-loathing, and the terror filled her mind, she shrank back in fear, her eyes coming wide with horror. She had felt these things…all of these things…when she was in fifth grade.
But it was not her feelings that were now agonizing through her mind…..they were Kyle Valentis. She had not just seen these things in his mind, she had felt his thoughts, felt the shame, felt the self-reproach…..felt his total and absolute disgust….not for what had been done to him……but for what he had done to her…..done to Tess…….done to the beautiful girl he cared for.
And he had cared for her….not love, not yet, but it might have developed into that. It might have become that, if not for what had just happened....
The girl who had been told all of her life that humans were animals, an inferior people, felt shock after shock going through her mind as she realized why Kyle felt these feelings. Not because she had used him……..he didn’t even know he’d been used……but because he believed he had used her……used her like he had……like her Daddy had. And she saw….saw with certainty what he intended to do…….what he WOULD do….to expiate a sin that was not even his. Or perhaps merely to make the pain stop…..the pain that she had caused him.
‘What have I done?? What have I done?’ Tess’s mind was wracked by its own horror now, its own shame. Her mind cried out, her heart cried out …..in anguish…, ‘I’m no better than him…….no better than Daddy. I used Kyle…….he trusted me and I used him like he had no mind of his own…no feelings. He trusted me….like I trusted Daddy…..and I violated him…..I violated him worse than I was violated.’
Who is the superior being now, she thought. The aliens who use others…who profane those around them without shame.... or Kyle…Kyle who takes responsibility for a horror that was not even of his own making.
And he had cared for her. Tess’s despair…her contempt for herself….her revulsion for what she had done all burned inside of her….. how could she have done that to him? In two lifetimes she hadn’t had anyone care for her and finally….finally when someone had…had dreamed of sharing his life with her….she had done this to him.
But as Tess lay there, looking up at the face of the person whose life she had destroyed tonight, she realized there was a difference between what Nasedo had done to her and what Tess had done to him and what Kyle believed he had done to her….
There was only one….only one who had felt remorse, even as it was happening…and only one…even now, that stood ready to perform an act of contrition to atone for their actions…and that was Kyle.
‘Time to choose, Tess,’ the voice in her mind said. 'Choose to be like Nasedo, or choose to be like Kyle, those are your choices. Choose to steal innocence and laugh about it, or choose to take responsibility for your actions….those are the only choices you have.’
As she looked up at his face, saw the anguish there, even without the connection, Tess knew the only way she could purge her soul of intolerable guilt, the only way she could redeem herself, the only way she could ever believe she was anything more than the mindless unfeeling thing that Nasedo was, would be to somehow make amends.
Kyle couldn’t bear the fear in her eyes…couldn’t believe the abomination he had become…the things he had done. He couldn’t believe she could even bring herself to look at him, but suddenly the eyes that were filled with terror stared into his eyes. The eyes still held fear, but there was something else there as well. He didn’t believe his ears when he heard her voice say sadly, “Don’t be sorry Kyle…..You have nothing to be sorry for…it was all my fault”
He pushed himself off of her…. half sitting next to her shaking …trying to find the words, “Oh God Tess, I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t stop myself…….I still can’t believe…” and his words were stopped as she sat up next to him, both of them naked on the bed, and she stared into his eyes and held her hand to his lips.
The other hand went softly to the side of his head and suddenly his memory seemed to get foggy. He shook her hand away, and the pain and shame he felt came crashing back. “I raped you, Tess. It wasn’t your fault. It was ME, I did this to you.”
The hand went back to the side of his head and the fog seemed to return. “It was my fault, Kyle. Remember? I took the bottle of Chianti from the rack…remember you wanted Chianti? We both had too much…we both just got drunk…..it wasn’t your fault.”
Kyle wasn’t sure…at times it seemed like he remembered Tess taking a bottle of Chianti from the winerack, at other times he wasn’t sure. But he saw no difference in his guilt. He had seen her pain…seen what he had done to her. Drunk or sober, there was no excuse for that …there COULD BE no excuse for that.
“I saw you Tess….I saw the horror in your eyes. I saw the terror that I put there. I saw…..Oh God forgive me….I saw how frightened you were,,,,,and I did it anyway. You didn’t want that…that was obvious. I had no right to do that….no right to act like an animal……and that’s what I am, a rabid animal……an animal that needs to be put down.”
She had hoped the mindwarp would work, but the memories were too strong. She understood that now. It was like when he was fighting the mindwarp before, this was too important to him……more than a thought or feeling, this was who Kyle Valenti was. And she didn’t have the power to change Kyle Valenti into a Nasedo or a………Tess.
‘But I can change myself,’ she thought. ‘Maybe I can’t be a Kyle Valenti…maybe Nasedo is right, maybe I’m nothing ….a thing to be used. But I can try. I can try to be like Kyle. I can try to take responsibility for my actions…’
“Kyle, it wasn’t you. Kyle….when I was eleven I was raped.”
Kyle watched the horror return to Tess’s face as she told him. “It was someone I trusted, Kyle. Someone I thought cared for me. When you touched me tonight…the memories came flooding back…that’s why I was like that. It wasn’t you….it wasn’t your fault.”
“It wasn’t my fault? Do you think the fact that you were raped when you were eleven, somehow gives me the right to rape you now? It wasn’t your fault, Tess, that he raped you then. You couldn’t do anything about it. And it wasn’t your fault tonight. You weren’t just damaged goods that anyone could have, Tess. You are a human being…and I had no right…no one had any right to do what I did to you.”
And the fear started to come back into the mind of Tess Harding. The horror started to come back, because as she looked at Kyle’s face, as she saw his eyes fill with guilt that should never have been there, she knew what she would do. She couldn’t have done it to save her own life, but she knew she would for Kyle….to try to atone for what she’d done to him.
Her mouth went dry with the horror of what she was about to say, the chain of events that she knew she must start….she heard the words come from her mouth as if someone else had said them, “You didn’t rape me Kyle, I was just frightened, that’s all. But I wanted you then……I still want you.”
He never really did believe, but she mindwarped him again, mindwarped him for what she promised herself would be the last time she would ever mindwarp Kyle Valenti. She didn’t control him…not really. She gave his mind a push…that was all. Not enough to force him, just enough to make him not be so certain of the terror she felt for him….and she did feel the terror.
She felt it as badly as she had the first time, as badly as back in the fifth grade when Daddy had done that to her, as she brought his hand to her breast, cupped the back of his head, and pulled his mouth to hers.
The kiss was long and she deepened it, pulling his lower lip into her mouth and nibbling on it. Her body shook with terror, but as she broke the kiss her face had a frightened half-smile on it. She cupped his head again and brought his mouth to hers again, while her hand went to his and pushed it down against her nipple, kneading it slowly with is, before lying back still kissing him, pulling his body back on top of her.
As she felt his weight on top of her, her mind screamed out as the images of Nasedo holding her with his powers leaped back into her awareness. She wanted to run….wanted to be anywhere else…..but as she looked up she weighed the horror of what was going to happen to her with the horror of what he would do to himself if she didn't go through with this…and she really had no choice.
The world seemed to be in slow motion for Tess Harding, as she saw him look down at her warily, not believing….. She mindwarped him again…just a nudge, then another, her fear growing as she watched his arousal….and her voice quavered as she spoke, but she kept her face from showing her fear and hoped he’d mistake the shaking of her body for passion as she said, “Now Kyle…..please. I need you…”
Afraid she could no longer keep the fear from her face, she buried her head under his chin as she pulled him to her and waited for the brutal entry. But instead there were caresses, and a hand running through her hair, and gentle explorations.
‘You are so stupid Tess,’ she said to herself then, ‘You saw in his mind that he would have died rather than hurt you…’ And she felt amazement as she responded to him, despite her fears, as her body readied itself for his entry.
She spasmed briefly as he entered and he stopped at once, his hands igniting warmth over her entire body until the spasm eased. He was slow…gentle, and she was surprised at how little pain there was…surprised at how comfortable he felt enfolded within her, despite her fear.
And as he moved first slowly, then faster as her hips responded to him, she was again caught by surprise. She had every intention of deluding him...., hoping to convince him that she had desired him, that she still desired him, but before she could feign it she found her breath coming in quick gasps in time to his movements, and as the feeling spasmed through her body, as she felt it trigger his own release, her own thoughts were lost in the crescendo of pleasure and warmth and unexpected rapture.
It felt like her body was exploding, the spasms of her muscles clamping rhythmically on to hold him inside of her, to drain the last of his essence from him hungrily, as the ripples of pleasure cascaded throughout her.
As he lay on top of her, both exhausted by their passion, their bodies coated with a sheen of sweat, as she felt his warmth still filling her, she heard him say the words.
“I love you Tess……I love you so much.”
And because she knew he needed to hear it, needed those words to heal his tormented soul, the words formed in her brain, even though she knew they were a lie.
It wasn’t a hateful lie…merely a little white lie, something to give comfort to someone she had hurt so badly. She never meant the lie to hurt him, only to heal him.
And she would never understand how, on that short a journey ….between her mind and her lips……, the words……the words that had been a lie, somehow changed. Because even as she heard herself speak them, she knew that they were now true..
“I know, Kyle. I love you too….”
As the pain, the anguish, the self-loathing, and the terror filled her mind, she shrank back in fear, her eyes coming wide with horror. She had felt these things…all of these things…when she was in fifth grade.
But it was not her feelings that were now agonizing through her mind…..they were Kyle Valentis. She had not just seen these things in his mind, she had felt his thoughts, felt the shame, felt the self-reproach…..felt his total and absolute disgust….not for what had been done to him……but for what he had done to her…..done to Tess…….done to the beautiful girl he cared for.
And he had cared for her….not love, not yet, but it might have developed into that. It might have become that, if not for what had just happened....
The girl who had been told all of her life that humans were animals, an inferior people, felt shock after shock going through her mind as she realized why Kyle felt these feelings. Not because she had used him……..he didn’t even know he’d been used……but because he believed he had used her……used her like he had……like her Daddy had. And she saw….saw with certainty what he intended to do…….what he WOULD do….to expiate a sin that was not even his. Or perhaps merely to make the pain stop…..the pain that she had caused him.
‘What have I done?? What have I done?’ Tess’s mind was wracked by its own horror now, its own shame. Her mind cried out, her heart cried out …..in anguish…, ‘I’m no better than him…….no better than Daddy. I used Kyle…….he trusted me and I used him like he had no mind of his own…no feelings. He trusted me….like I trusted Daddy…..and I violated him…..I violated him worse than I was violated.’
Who is the superior being now, she thought. The aliens who use others…who profane those around them without shame.... or Kyle…Kyle who takes responsibility for a horror that was not even of his own making.
And he had cared for her. Tess’s despair…her contempt for herself….her revulsion for what she had done all burned inside of her….. how could she have done that to him? In two lifetimes she hadn’t had anyone care for her and finally….finally when someone had…had dreamed of sharing his life with her….she had done this to him.
But as Tess lay there, looking up at the face of the person whose life she had destroyed tonight, she realized there was a difference between what Nasedo had done to her and what Tess had done to him and what Kyle believed he had done to her….
There was only one….only one who had felt remorse, even as it was happening…and only one…even now, that stood ready to perform an act of contrition to atone for their actions…and that was Kyle.
‘Time to choose, Tess,’ the voice in her mind said. 'Choose to be like Nasedo, or choose to be like Kyle, those are your choices. Choose to steal innocence and laugh about it, or choose to take responsibility for your actions….those are the only choices you have.’
As she looked up at his face, saw the anguish there, even without the connection, Tess knew the only way she could purge her soul of intolerable guilt, the only way she could redeem herself, the only way she could ever believe she was anything more than the mindless unfeeling thing that Nasedo was, would be to somehow make amends.
Kyle couldn’t bear the fear in her eyes…couldn’t believe the abomination he had become…the things he had done. He couldn’t believe she could even bring herself to look at him, but suddenly the eyes that were filled with terror stared into his eyes. The eyes still held fear, but there was something else there as well. He didn’t believe his ears when he heard her voice say sadly, “Don’t be sorry Kyle…..You have nothing to be sorry for…it was all my fault”
He pushed himself off of her…. half sitting next to her shaking …trying to find the words, “Oh God Tess, I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t stop myself…….I still can’t believe…” and his words were stopped as she sat up next to him, both of them naked on the bed, and she stared into his eyes and held her hand to his lips.
The other hand went softly to the side of his head and suddenly his memory seemed to get foggy. He shook her hand away, and the pain and shame he felt came crashing back. “I raped you, Tess. It wasn’t your fault. It was ME, I did this to you.”
The hand went back to the side of his head and the fog seemed to return. “It was my fault, Kyle. Remember? I took the bottle of Chianti from the rack…remember you wanted Chianti? We both had too much…we both just got drunk…..it wasn’t your fault.”
Kyle wasn’t sure…at times it seemed like he remembered Tess taking a bottle of Chianti from the winerack, at other times he wasn’t sure. But he saw no difference in his guilt. He had seen her pain…seen what he had done to her. Drunk or sober, there was no excuse for that …there COULD BE no excuse for that.
“I saw you Tess….I saw the horror in your eyes. I saw the terror that I put there. I saw…..Oh God forgive me….I saw how frightened you were,,,,,and I did it anyway. You didn’t want that…that was obvious. I had no right to do that….no right to act like an animal……and that’s what I am, a rabid animal……an animal that needs to be put down.”
She had hoped the mindwarp would work, but the memories were too strong. She understood that now. It was like when he was fighting the mindwarp before, this was too important to him……more than a thought or feeling, this was who Kyle Valenti was. And she didn’t have the power to change Kyle Valenti into a Nasedo or a………Tess.
‘But I can change myself,’ she thought. ‘Maybe I can’t be a Kyle Valenti…maybe Nasedo is right, maybe I’m nothing ….a thing to be used. But I can try. I can try to be like Kyle. I can try to take responsibility for my actions…’
“Kyle, it wasn’t you. Kyle….when I was eleven I was raped.”
Kyle watched the horror return to Tess’s face as she told him. “It was someone I trusted, Kyle. Someone I thought cared for me. When you touched me tonight…the memories came flooding back…that’s why I was like that. It wasn’t you….it wasn’t your fault.”
“It wasn’t my fault? Do you think the fact that you were raped when you were eleven, somehow gives me the right to rape you now? It wasn’t your fault, Tess, that he raped you then. You couldn’t do anything about it. And it wasn’t your fault tonight. You weren’t just damaged goods that anyone could have, Tess. You are a human being…and I had no right…no one had any right to do what I did to you.”
And the fear started to come back into the mind of Tess Harding. The horror started to come back, because as she looked at Kyle’s face, as she saw his eyes fill with guilt that should never have been there, she knew what she would do. She couldn’t have done it to save her own life, but she knew she would for Kyle….to try to atone for what she’d done to him.
Her mouth went dry with the horror of what she was about to say, the chain of events that she knew she must start….she heard the words come from her mouth as if someone else had said them, “You didn’t rape me Kyle, I was just frightened, that’s all. But I wanted you then……I still want you.”
He never really did believe, but she mindwarped him again, mindwarped him for what she promised herself would be the last time she would ever mindwarp Kyle Valenti. She didn’t control him…not really. She gave his mind a push…that was all. Not enough to force him, just enough to make him not be so certain of the terror she felt for him….and she did feel the terror.
She felt it as badly as she had the first time, as badly as back in the fifth grade when Daddy had done that to her, as she brought his hand to her breast, cupped the back of his head, and pulled his mouth to hers.
The kiss was long and she deepened it, pulling his lower lip into her mouth and nibbling on it. Her body shook with terror, but as she broke the kiss her face had a frightened half-smile on it. She cupped his head again and brought his mouth to hers again, while her hand went to his and pushed it down against her nipple, kneading it slowly with is, before lying back still kissing him, pulling his body back on top of her.
As she felt his weight on top of her, her mind screamed out as the images of Nasedo holding her with his powers leaped back into her awareness. She wanted to run….wanted to be anywhere else…..but as she looked up she weighed the horror of what was going to happen to her with the horror of what he would do to himself if she didn't go through with this…and she really had no choice.
The world seemed to be in slow motion for Tess Harding, as she saw him look down at her warily, not believing….. She mindwarped him again…just a nudge, then another, her fear growing as she watched his arousal….and her voice quavered as she spoke, but she kept her face from showing her fear and hoped he’d mistake the shaking of her body for passion as she said, “Now Kyle…..please. I need you…”
Afraid she could no longer keep the fear from her face, she buried her head under his chin as she pulled him to her and waited for the brutal entry. But instead there were caresses, and a hand running through her hair, and gentle explorations.
‘You are so stupid Tess,’ she said to herself then, ‘You saw in his mind that he would have died rather than hurt you…’ And she felt amazement as she responded to him, despite her fears, as her body readied itself for his entry.
She spasmed briefly as he entered and he stopped at once, his hands igniting warmth over her entire body until the spasm eased. He was slow…gentle, and she was surprised at how little pain there was…surprised at how comfortable he felt enfolded within her, despite her fear.
And as he moved first slowly, then faster as her hips responded to him, she was again caught by surprise. She had every intention of deluding him...., hoping to convince him that she had desired him, that she still desired him, but before she could feign it she found her breath coming in quick gasps in time to his movements, and as the feeling spasmed through her body, as she felt it trigger his own release, her own thoughts were lost in the crescendo of pleasure and warmth and unexpected rapture.
It felt like her body was exploding, the spasms of her muscles clamping rhythmically on to hold him inside of her, to drain the last of his essence from him hungrily, as the ripples of pleasure cascaded throughout her.
As he lay on top of her, both exhausted by their passion, their bodies coated with a sheen of sweat, as she felt his warmth still filling her, she heard him say the words.
“I love you Tess……I love you so much.”
And because she knew he needed to hear it, needed those words to heal his tormented soul, the words formed in her brain, even though she knew they were a lie.
It wasn’t a hateful lie…merely a little white lie, something to give comfort to someone she had hurt so badly. She never meant the lie to hurt him, only to heal him.
And she would never understand how, on that short a journey ….between her mind and her lips……, the words……the words that had been a lie, somehow changed. Because even as she heard herself speak them, she knew that they were now true..
“I know, Kyle. I love you too….”