Griffin and Kim woke up in that motel that night, after having slept about six and a half hours. Kim woke first, and, sitting up, fidgeted and squirmed in agitation on the bed, waking him up with a start. She was gasping loudly and sweating.
"Kim?" Griff asked, putting his hand on her shoulder. "You OK? What's wrong?"
"Please, Griff," she said, practically hyperventilating. "I need a minute." She took his hand off her shoulder.
"OK," he said, backing off. "Did I hurt you?"
"Many people did," she said, shaking. She was seeing flashes of many men having sex with her, one after the other: some flashbacks were PTSD-style real memories, others memories of her hallucinations when on Cream.
She saw brief visions of former boyfriends on top of her. She saw Ron, Officer Cole, and the mayor gang-banging her, then those three and Manny spraying bukkake on her.
She saw Griffin having her, first in the Jack-In-the-Box VIP Room, then in Manny's mansion, and finally there in the motel. Seeing this last lover made her smile a bit.
"Kim, if I hurt you, I'm sorry," Griff said. He wrapped a bed-sheet around his waist, got off the bed, and went into the bathroom to get his clothes. "I thought you wanted-"
"Shut up, OK? I'm trying to think." She was frantically looking around the room. "Is he here? Your brother? Where am I?"
Having put his pants and underwear on, Griff returned from the bathroom and knelt by her side of the bed, where she was still sitting up, completely naked, the bedsheets lying in the middle of the bed in a clump. Griff put his shirt on.
"Manny is far away from here, I assure you," Griff said, his left hand on hers. "I got you out of his house and drove you here, to this motel."
"What city are we in?" she asked, still shaking.
"Windsor."
"Where's his house?"
"In the Toronto area."
"How do you know he isn't coming here now?"
"I smeared Cream on his face, making him trip out the way you were. He could still be tripping on it, for all we know. If he isn't, by the time he'd got it off his face and come back to normal, we were already long gone."
"'Cream' is that shit he rubs on you, to make you horny and high, right?" she asked.
"Yeah," Griff said. "It's his invention, originally to slow down the aging process, but he altered it somehow to drug women into being men's 'willing' sex partners."
"Bastard."
"Yeah, that's my psychopath brother for you. Money over people. But there's no way he'd know where we are."
"I guess not."
"What do you mean, you 'guess not'? Of course not: he couldn't know where we are."
"Griff, there's something in that 'Cream', something that isn't...of this world."
"What are you talking about? It's just chemicals from Manny's lab."
"Some of it is his chemicals, and some of it's other things. I can feel it."
"What 'other things'?" Griff asked.
"I'm not sure, but I think I can move things with my mind because of Cream," she said, staring at a pen on the desk across from the foot of the bed.
"You can move things with your mind?" Griff sneered in disbelief.
"Look at that pen over there, Griff. Gimme a minute."
"OK, I'm looking at it. You think you can move i-?"
Suddenly, the pen flew off the desk in a twirling motion and the nib hit Griff hard on the forehead, leaving a spot of blue ink there. The pen landed on his lap.
"Ow!" He rubbed his head.
"Oh, sorry," she said. "I meant to make the pen come to me. I don't know how to control this power yet, but I know I can do things like that. I can sense other people, in other places, places far away. If Manny has rubbed enough Cream on himself, he should have these abilities, too. That's why I think he might know where we are."
"Maybe he hasn't put it on himself as much as he's put on you," Griff said, still rubbing his head. "If so, he might not have those powers as well-developed as you do."
"I guess not...I hope not. He put lots and lots on me, and on other girls. I can see them...feel them...in flashes. Even now." She closed her eyes. "Yeah...Roxy. Svetlana. Some Asian girl. Other girls I don't know, but they're all beautiful and desirable. A guy or two, too. If I'm together with any of them, I think these powers of ours will be stronger. It sure seemed that way when I was with Svetlana one time."
Griff got the remote control from the bedside table and turned on the TV. "There has been a lot of news coverage of a bunch of missing girls, all pretty ones, like you were talking about." He switched the channel to CBC's The National. Peter Mansbridge was talking about the missing girls, including Kim. "Here it is!"
Photos of all the missing people were shown, one by one.
"Roxy!" Kim said when her picture was shown. "That cop, Cole, has her. The one you were talking to earlier."
"Wow," Griff said. "You really are psychic."
"Hey," she said when a picture of the next familiar face showed. "There's the Asian girl I keep seeing in my visions-Xiao Wei. And there's a man I see sometimes..."
"And another man," Griff said. "They're as good-looking as the girls are. Manny must be selling Cream to gay men, too."
"Or to ugly, desperate women. There's Svetlana, the one I was with at one point. I think we moved things together, but I don't have a clear memory. Must have been how stoned I was."
Griff turned off the TV, still rubbing his head. He was pouting with guilt.
"Wow, I really hurt you with that pen," Kim said. "I'm sorry."
"I deserved it," he said. "I've hurt you, too."
"No, you didn't. What are you talking about?"
"Look at yourself, Kim. You're naked. I was naked ten minutes ago, on this bed with you. What do you think happened when I brought you here, when you were too stoned to think for yourself?"
"We fucked, of course."
"I took advantage of you while you were high on Cream. I'm such an asshole."
"I was coming off the Cream after the shower, Griff. I wanted the sex."
"But...I fucked you in Manny's house, too, while you were peaking on Cream. You weren't able to consent to the sex meaningfully. I took advantage of you. I...raped you." He was choking back a sob.
"No, you didn't. I've enjoyed every fuck you've given me, including your fingering of me in the VIP Room in Jack-In-the-Box. Normally I never let a guy stick his fingers inside my pussy or asshole, but I let you do it, because you were getting me hot. You actually made me come. You're the only guy who's ever made me come. You're the only guy I've ever been with who actually wanted to please me in bed. Every other guy just had me for himself. You're different. I love having sex with you, Cream or no Cream." She leaned over to him and stroked his hair.
"Oh, come on, Kim!" Griff barked, moving away. "You must still be high on Cream. You shouldn't internalize rape culture."
"'Rape culture'? What femi-nazi bullshit is that you're talking about?"
"It's about women's liberation, Kim. We learn about it in university."
"University-bullshit! All books and no real life experience. I've really been raped, Griff, not just drunk with a guy, then regretting the sex the morning after, like a lot of women who cry 'rape'. My father used to rape me when I was a teen; he even sodomized me. Your brother and his customers raped and sodomized me, but there's no 'culture' accepting what they did to me."
"Yes, there is," Griff said.
"No, there isn't. What we just saw on the news, they rightly suspect those missing people are being sexually abused, and they're not condoning it. What happened to me, and what's happening to Roxy and the others, is something that happens only to a minority of unlucky girls, boys, men. We're unlucky. Most other people don't experience what we have, and I'm glad they never have."
"Are you sure you're not high on Cream anymore?"
"Not one bit. And even if I were still, my enjoyment of sex with you would still be real, 'cause while I was on Cream, when I saw you in Manny's house, coming into that room to rescue me, I knew you were the only guy I genuinely liked fucking. When I say I like your touch, I mean it."
