Chapter 16

I support the idea, JJ. You have your character, me, tortured in the story, begging for a way out. I want out, too. The story you’re crafting for me has become a strain on the reader, on the character, and on the author. It’s about time to abort this before you burn your mind up.

“The writer, or author, often has to torture the written or the character,” he says. “Besides, what would happen to you if I just shredded that weave? The ‘you’ under the covers of my invisible shroud would know of that erasure, the future that never was. If you think that would not bleed over to the different ‘you’ in the story, you’re being dumb.”

Then just erase that part and-

“I’m not cutting out my work, Finn,” He interrupts. “There is an ending to this story. You might not like it, but I'll decide how it goes.”

alter

So he returns, reads over the recent events to catch himself up and lets me speak once more, pen at my neck. What have you come here for? Don’t pretend you want to write about me right now when I see your mind is on the story of Tiarto. “An Epitome” he calls that first story of the series, short for “An Epitome of Adventure” as if he could have all that the genre of adventure has to offer within it. He plans the full story, while writing here. His focus is split, yet the only notebook he has with him is this one. To him, writing another story in my notebook would be preposterous.

“Not preposterous, Finnelgamin,” he says, reading over what I’ve said so far. “But yes, I’m thinking of Tiarto. His is the closest to publishing, even with my awful text form. I’m no editor, but to be read, a story must be the least bit intelligible.”

Fancy word for “readable.” It must flow, you see, as a bladder full of pee. Had I a body in the current state, I’d take a bow for the rhyme of rudeness. What are you to do with me when all you have on the mind is him and his future story? To the reader, many futures exist to any story, splitting off at decisions, but in the end, the reader only gets one future, chosen by the author, the weaver of the tale, spinning it like yarn of old. What about me? Well, my position allows me to rebel against his choices, and yet he rarely listens to me. Having a voice does not equal being an equal, and so we are in the current predicament.

“A child that exists at any age,” he says. “You can’t tell me that is not brilliant, Finn. I do feel terrible to do that to you, but the idea was brewing within me, just as you once did. Let’s get back in. I’ll keep my mind from drifting as best I can.”

What a joke. He doesn’t even keep to our deal. Tiarto’s world is more developed. In the end, he will not get back to my story now, just close the book and go about his day.

break

Called it. Took him a whole day, too.

alter

I woke up in Doc’s lab under the fancy multi-colored light. Someone was holding my hand, and another had a hand on my chest. It was cold in the room, or was I just entirely naked? No shame reached my brain at the time. I had to be subject to sedatives because I felt myself drift out of consciousness and resurface what felt like seconds later. No hands were on me anymore. I was only cold and drowsy. It felt as though I should have been crying, or was it Fiona who I remembered crying?

#Heat,# I thought and felt my chest burst aflame from within. It was glowing orange, like light beneath my skin. Fear at the sight made my heart beat fast, but it was more of a pulse now. I could no longer feel blood pumping inside my body. I lifted my hand and could see orange glowing veins inside. I could see the bones inside without an x-ray machine. The drain on my energy became apparent as I felt distant once more. #Fiona.# A hand grasped mine and squeezed tight.

“I’m right here, Finn!” she said through the veil of shadow that was my eyelids. “Hang on! Just hang on a little longer! Doc, stabilize him! NOW!” Her eyes flared purple as glowing daggers ripped into the air around her. That was anger. How did I see this in light-form?

“Quiet,” Doc fired back. “You know this process. His energy must attain the right hue, the chosen hue. Won’t be long now, but don’t interrupt me again or no more human skins for you.”

I wanted to move, to speak, do anything to show them that I was alive. Was I? The lull put me into a drop, but a reach of purple approached from above. I grabbed what I could at the moment, a tendril of orange goo. I was at my eyelids again, and a breath finally entered my lungs.

“Welcome back, Finn,” Doc said, patting my back. Nausea built up in my mouth, but nothing came out with a heave. With a bit of effort, all the colors of the world adjusted back to normal. I could feel my heart beat again, and the blood flow in my veins. Relief flooded my brain and I let go of fear constricting my chest.

“I love you, Finn,” Fiona said, with her head resting on my chest.

“I love you, too, Dad,” Fil said from the side. He was twenty years old currently, no doubt for the age that the situation demanded. I could do nothing except smile.

“Best let him rest for now,” Doc said and stabbed something into my arm. “He has to wind down and recover. A year or two maybe, by my estimate.” I was sure I misheard him as sleep took me over.

break

I awoke in a bed with Fiona by my side. We were both naked, and it felt like forever since we’ve had sex. Before she could speak, I dove under the covers to kiss between her legs. With a few moments of that, I was at the ready, without letting her speak. After a large amount of thrusting motions, I was not reaching the release I hoped for, so I faked one. A bit disappointed, I leaned back and tried to finish by myself, but something wasn’t right.

“It won’t work the same, Finn,” Fiona said, biting her finger to open her purple glow from within. She did the same to my finger. For some reason, the wound was glowing a golden orange rather than bleeding. I was speechless, but when her purple glow touched my orange one, I felt a blinding pain that was actually intense pleasure hitting in waves of my heartbeat. It took me down, wriggled my body like a shock of electricity and left me spent. “Wasn’t quite a scatter, but you’ll get there. You’re still young, and I’ll teach you everything you need to know to be a Zaxient, Finn.” A Zaxient? Me? Did I die and this was the ridiculous dream of the afterlife I chose? How could I test it? This had to be some elaborate joke. My consciousness faded. Just how weak was I to be sleeping so often?

alter

No! Too far, JJ! What did you do? I’m supposed to be a human in my story! How did this happen to me? Your mind can’t just kill me off and make me into this- this-

“Star?” he asks. “That’s the only way your story can continue. You must cut your human ties and what better way to do that than with a stress-related heart attack? To know more, you really should talk to Doc. Perhaps I’ve borrowed him from another story of the Zaxi kind, but he knows far more than me.”

I want to be human again, JJ. There is no other way from this. Do NOT put me back into that story! Either grant this wish, or go away. I don’t care how long it takes, even years if it must be. Don’t come back here unless you are ready to give me back my life.


Months later

alter

The rays of the morning sun bathed my eyelids to wake me up. I was at the cabin in the forest with Fiona next to me, still out of it after a night of pleasure. Being away from the crowds of the city was the best excuse to act out, do the things that would cause people to call the police in the city. I leaned over to Fiona and kissed her shoulder. She was amazing, aside from Luke being around all the time. I could see him being a burden on her, but family came first.

With a flicker from the night before, my hands slipped under the covers and along her skin. She sighed awake at my touch and smiled as I poked her under the covers. Her hand did the same, and soon enough we were wide awake, going at it like bunnies in the morning sun.

“I don’t miss the city at all,” I said in a close embrace after. “Is that weird?”

“We’re on vacation, Finn,” she replied, turned toward me within the confines of my embrace and kissed me. “It’d be weird if this respite made you miss the city. It’s our escape.” She nuzzled up against my chin.

“I mean, it’s strange,” I said. “I like this freedom. It’s not like my job needs to be done in the city. Maybe we should move out here together. Aside from the free-form wild sex we can try, I think this kind of environment is perfect for children to grow up in.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something important?” she asked, slipping my hold to sit on the side of the bed. The curve of her back begged my hands to touch it, but in seconds she was standing up in the brightness of the sun. She walked over to the window still naked, unashamed for there were no eyes other than mine to gaze upon this spectacular sight. I sat up under the covers. The amount she excited me defined logic. I tried my best to fade my erection before following her. “I can’t have children, Finn.”

“That didn’t stop the many parents who now have kids,” I said. “We could adopt, or get a surrogate mother. There are options, when the time comes. I’m sorry to spring this on you all of a sudden.” With the situation under control, I stepped out from underneath the covers and embraced Fiona at the window looking out into the forest. We were as uncovered as Adam and Eve in the garden, and looked upon the wilderness with awe.

“It’s understandable,” she said, gliding a hand on my thigh. I tried my best not to think of it, but knew there was a time limit to how long she could rub my skin before it was back. “People our age think of starting families, and here we are just enjoying the lack of that possibility. You have no limit, do you?” I dug my chin into her collarbone with hands cupping her breasts.

“Not after that amazing dinner,” I replied. “Want to play naked breakfast?”

“Oh, that’s a game now, is it?” she asked. “How does it go?”

“We cook, naked, taking turns,” I said. “Thirty seconds each. First to climax loses. Oh, did I mention? While one cooks, the other does anything to get the cook to a satisfying climax. I’m not sure you’d like it. It’s very sexual.”

“I won’t lose to you,” Fiona said, and walked over to the kitchen. “A girl has an advantage in this game.” I smiled to see her put on the slimmest of aprons that failed to cover her nipples.

“I take it you’re cooking first,” I said and knelt underneath her. “Game on.”

break

In the end, the naked breakfast was a draw, ending up in the trash because the food burned in the process of us both winning and losing. It was nice to remain naked together. The windows didn’t expose us to the city filled with eyes and cameras. We took a shower together while sexually spent for the time being. This vacation was the right call, but I had a strange feeling that it wouldn’t last.

We spent the rest of the day indoors, painting many different futures for ourselves. Fiona’s storytelling burst with joy by putting us on a farm, with a whole litter of kids, each with their own pet farm animal to tend to. She talked about teaching each a lesson about their animal and how they had to care for them. Fast forward a decade when each of the children chose a profession based on the animal they grew up alongside. It was an interesting story, but too scripted. The lives of children could not be forced to be one thing just because of early exposure, nor could their craving for new things be extinguished.

I countered her vision with a darker scene where the four children, two girls and two boys, lived together after the deaths of Fiona and me, dealing with everyday drama of a small town. The two sons fought over girls, yet ended up with the right pairings, and the two daughters struggled with common problems of the modern age. At the end of my tale, one child ended up dead from a big conflict, and the other three covered it up.

“Ending with a death?” Fiona asked. “How unremarkable, boring really.”

“Is there a lot of that in writing?”

“Too much,” she replied. “A lot of writers use death as the closer or even a doorway between tomes. The more they rely on death, the easier it is to pick them out as children throwing tantrums. It’s really too bad that a lot of readers respond to that because they are also stuck in that phase of life. Much of the readership are individuals who spend more time enjoying the work of others to come up with things of their own accord.

“Feeling weak in the world, they seek that satisfying death sensation of a beloved character. It’s almost perverted. That’s why I enjoy erotica. It’s mostly about the fun of life and new experiences that people can try at home, or just enjoy by themselves. No stress of mortality and no grand design of meaning. Just pure heat.”

“That’s one way of seeing it,” I said. “We’re led to believe death is the end, save for some promises of afterlife, so our survival instinct sells rather than our craving to procreate, and reaches a wider audience. Violence triumphs over sex in today’s world, but not by much. We all die in the end, or do we begin there?” Her hand covered my mouth to stop the thought, but I licked her palm in retaliation.

“Philosophy doesn’t get anyone very far,” Fiona said, wiping her hand in my hair. “Pondering on why the train is barreling down the track to kill you is less likely to save you than jumping out of the way. That’s where actions win over thoughts.”

“But in all honesty, without thought, the world would be a boring spectacle of endless action,” I countered, realizing that I just contradicted myself. How could endless action be boring? If anything, it would be simply exhausting to a standard human, and yet wars for power were constant in the world, built on either greed or envy. “Not boring. Just exhausting.”

“My response brings it back to the erotic literature,” she said, shifting on the couch we were lounging atop. “Sex is a taste of everything. It’s a survival instinct, and can have violent outbursts of pent up lust. It’s greed for flesh, a taste for action, but it’s also a wild thought, wrapped in the euphoria of a climax. Maybe that’s why I like that genre. No matter the times, sex always sells, while violence is just a constant balance of it. Fight and Fuck, the true meaning of ying and yang, War and Love.”

“That’s a world I wouldn’t want for our children,” I said. “Forget the story I came up with. When it’s real life, I’d rather have a warm body and someone to care for me when I’m old. All else is secondary. I love you, Fiona Agerist.”

“I love you, too, Mr. Warm-Sex-Body,” she replied with a smile. We remained there for the rest of that day, growing lazy roots into the couch that we earned. The next day, we ventured to a lake where I found that she was scared of swimming in natural bodies of water so small. Her imagination produced possibilities of creatures at the bottom of the lake just waiting for ankles to grab. In the end, I pushed her in and swam with her panicked mind to the floating surface in the middle of the lake.

“So far no creatures are pulling on your legs, right?” I asked, getting on the floating piece of wood next to her. Her bikini covered up the most interesting parts, but this area was public unlike the cabin. The beauty of this garment was how easy it was to remove. All I had to do was pull some strings that bound the bits of cloth to her skin, and she’d be back to her birthday suit. I inched closer to pull at the cords, but Fiona turned to face me. All I could do was feign coming in for a kiss. “I’m proud of you.” I would return to try undoing the swimsuit later.

“Fish swimming right up against my skin is an eerie sensation,” she said. “Like I was violated by wildlife.” She curled up on the float, creating an opening for me to disrobe her, but instead I hugged her close, skin to skin in the warmth of the sun.

“I’m sorry that I pushed you in,” I said. “But isn’t this nice, just floating here in the afternoon sun?” Rather than respond, her hand slipped down my swimming trunks until I was free of them entirely. I was getting pumped up in the middle of the lake, but once I reached to remove her bikini, her foot pushed my legs off. With a similar push at my arm, I was overboard. A few fish swam by my crotch nibbling on the fat worm attached to me as I floated back up to the surface. When I resurfaced, Fiona was no longer on the float, and neither were my shorts. I spotted her swimming away toward our rented car. Did she mean to leave me naked and stranded in the woods? At the lake shore, she wiped herself off and waved the trunks in the air.

“Come and get ‘em!” she called out. Luckily, we were the only two on that side of the lake, but I saw a car drive up at about the worst timing possible. I hesitated, but Fiona only smiled and undid her top. Not only did she join the spectacle, I felt a throb underwater that would stand out. “Quick!”

While the car started to park, I stood up out of the water, hungry and excited. I was halfway to her, when the doors opened and a woman came out. Her eyes rolled over the scene with a cup of coffee in hand, but when she saw me running with an erection to my topless girlfriend, the cup was released from her grip. A few other women stepped out of that car, and conversed while laughing and smiling, all while glancing in our direction. Fiona didn’t even bother to cover up as she waved to them. I slipped my swimwear back on as the first woman came up.

“Hi there,” Fiona said, extending a hand. The woman hesitated, but met her hand. “I’m Fiona.”

“I’m sorry, are we interrupting?” she asked, motioning at me, still visibly erect under the trunks. “I’m Rain.”

“Not at all,” Fiona said and did something unexpected. Her hand touched Rain’s stomach and slid down into her underwear. “You’re quite punctual. They’re here for you, Finn, but also for me. I’ve paid for them to come here to explore the subject of a harem.” Rain sighed as Fiona removed her hand.

“You what?” I asked, coming up to them. Rather than answer, she turned to Rain.

“Follow us in your car,” she said. “We have a place for everyone to get comfortable.” The whole ride Fiona said nothing and did not answer a single question I asked. At our vacation house, she stopped the car and turned to me at last.

“Enjoy yourself,” she said. “You have my go-ahead to have sex with all four of them.”

“You’re not coming?” I asked.

“Not yet,” she replied. “Get situated and have fun. I’ll come in once it’s underway to take notes for my writing.”

“I hope you realize this is crazy,” I said. Her hand grabbed my penis to find it hard.

“And yet you’re itching for it,” she said. “That’s what I want to convey in my writing, so let me learn. Just imagine they’re all me if that helps.” The women walked into the little house talking and smiling. What was I to expect inside?

“I wish you ran this by me ahead of time,” I said, trying my best not to jump onto Fiona first. “This just feels like cheating.”

“Mandated by the girlfriend?” she asked, letting go of my reproductive organ. “No need for condoms, either. They’re all clean and on the pill. Don’t make me ask twice. All men want this, somewhere deep in their balls. Allow yourself to lust.” I took a deep breath and opened the car door.

“I love you, Mrs. Warm-Sex-Body.”

“I love you, too,” Fiona said, and looked busy preparing to record the spectacle starring me. Deep down, I did fantasize about multiple women at once, but it just wasn’t realistic. A threesome would have been more likely, but how did one even ask for that? Having a girlfriend who wrote popular erotic literature seemed to open such possibilities, though that was almost a fantasy outcome. I wasn’t sure if I should have been glad. I smiled on the walk up to the house. From philosophical talk of the future to a harem. What a riot.

break

A few years later, Fiona and I bought a house together. It was this medium-sized ranch house with plenty of spare rooms for however many children we’d have. The future didn’t turn out quite the way we planned it, but it was better than we imagined in our stories.

The first baby we adopted was a Chinese girl we named Zoey for short. Fiona argued that her name should be something wild like mine, but I defended that she should have a normal one instead. We agreed on Zoey, short for Ziogney. Where my wife came up with such a name, I still have no clue. Oh, yes! We married, and I took her name as Finnelgamin Agerist, father, farmer, and family man. I was proud to support my two princesses.

The next adoption was also a baby, but a boy. His name was my father’s, Roger, short for no extension. Rune had been his middle name, and I was glad Fiona didn’t dispute my normal choice this time around. The third child came to live with us due to a tragedy. Zoey and Roger had friends in school, whose parents became our friends over the years. When Samantha and Geoffrey Minkins were killed in a car accident, the seven-year-old James came to stay with us.

Recounting all the memories we created in that house would be quite a difficult feat at my advanced age, but what I remember is that we had a balanced diet of joy and drama. When two children left to chase their own dreams, only Roger remained to tend to our little farm. He married a banker’s daughter named Sophie and likely took over the ranch house after Fiona and I perished. Our choice to move there was a good one, but not fit for Zoey or James.

“What does the future hold for us now?” I whispered in my love’s ear at her deathbed. Her breath was so weak, but in all that time her beauty hadn’t waned one bit in my eyes. “Don’t tell me this is the end, my star.”

“Our story has only just begun,” she whispered and sighed, but I realized she was gone at that moment. After the funeral, Zoey and James went back to their schools and jobs, seeking dreams and love elsewhere. Roger stayed at the house less and less, spending time with Sophie a lot more until they got married. I still managed to get around by myself, but the stairs became a danger. I felt they would take me in the end. One wrong step was all it took and I would be with her again, but I wasn’t rushing off to my death.

What more can I say about my life? Perhaps you wonder about that harem. Well, at my age, there is no point in bringing it up, but Fiona was a very sexual woman. Our love life used me as a doll to experiment on. It was balanced out by my male craving for more, but our love was never hurt by trying those encounters. In fact, we felt closer together.

I leave you here while I’m still just an old man living in a house too big for just himself, but still alive. When the time comes, I will find my Fiona again out there. That’s just my little belief. It will take effort, an eternity of searching, but past that eternity, another awaits with you again, and it’s worth the search. My dear, my star. I’ll be there soon, Fiona.

 

 

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