Goldenrod Prequel Ch 03

I saw a circle turning. It felt like I was tied to it, or maybe it was taking me somewhere, but it didn't seem like a car tire. A wagon wheel is what it reminded me of, with big carved spokes, and each one of them was like a clock hand.

When I woke, we were driving, and I had my head on Rebecca's shoulder. She had her arm around me. Her smile greeted my tired eyes through the kaleidescope of passing tree shadows, and I settled against her to fall back asleep. Resisting fatigue, I muttered.

"How far?"

"Another hour." As she kissed my head I knew it was okay to slumber. It was just her and me in her huge red pick-up truck, winding up leisurely into the mountains.

We'd been together for three months. She was my first serious thing after high school, but she'd gone through one marriage and several relationships, though of those she didn't say much. It was at a bookstore that she'd approached me, offering to pay for some item which I discovered too late I couldn't afford. A short stroll to the adjacent coffee shop let us get to know each other. Her hair was a wild sandy brown, and the way her firm body filled out her tight, dark bluejeans and suede jacket left me utterly captivated. I regret not being able to listen closely to the things she said, because she was brilliant always well-spoken, but as we hunched over our stale pastries and frappes and laughed about this or that, I heard her confess it was my ass that had convinced her to approach me. We made love that night.

Since then she'd been helping me to postpone college, and otherwise totally corrupting me. I think she felt bad because of the damage it was doing to my self-esteem, her keeping me, but she only made up for it by pampering me all the more. We were both living on a cliff's edge, anticipating the separation that would reveal the extent of my habitual helplessness, yet wondering if it would ever come. Until it did I had the thrill of being the lover of a radiant, fascinating older woman, and she had whatever it was that she got from being with me.

At the cabin, I had a view of the breathtaking scenery that seemed assembled on the horizon just for our enjoyment. She removed the bags from the bed with an ease that I'd grown accustomed to ignoring, despite my chivalrous nature and proper upbringing. I think she in turn was used to seeing me dazzled by things from her world.

"Don't fly away," she chided.

"It's beautiful."

"Damn," I heard her say softly. I turned to see her studying a rosebush by the front door. She hefted the luggage and went inside. After another glimpse of the verdant range beneath us, I made to see what she'd been looking at.

They made me think of silkworms. For all I knew, that's what they were. A multifaceted jewel of web had encased many of the struggling blooms as the industrious creatures ate and crawled. Rebecca appeared in the doorway with her hands on the frame above her.

"Maybe you can kill those for me later."

"Okay. I'll try."

"It's true what they say about mountain air, isn't it?" I stared at her broad, friendly face with its feline eyes, suddenly aware that she was glowing. Before she could set me off, she asked, "Want to go for a hike?" As usual, I was rendered helpless by her charms.

We traversed a wide, sparsely wooded valley, a small stream, and the curving side of a hill. When we got back I was exhausted, and took another nap. That time, I dreamed of the worms in the garden eating all the leaves, and covering the cabin and its surrounding area in their white, wispy strands.

The day was done when I woke up in the bedroom, and my initial thought was a fear that I'd ruined my sleep cycle. A slight electronic buzzing drew me out. Rebecca was sitting at her laptop beside a small fire. Otherwise, the interior was dark. I shambled over to her, and she took my hand.

"You get internet out here?" She nodded, licking her lips and putting her mug down.

"It's satellite. I'm always connected."

"What are you doing?" I peered at the text hazily. She quickly Xed-out the chat she'd been in, leaving a chart of statistics.

"I'm on break. Some work piled up while we were heading here." She moved the mouse arrow among different values on the grid, highlighting some and deleting others. Her hand came away from mine to hit digits on the keyboard that appeared in rectangles on the screen. A window popped up featuring hundreds of names of different types, all of which had locations and summaries after them.

"Those are your clients?" I asked.

"Yep. I have to remember their needs, keep in contact, be sensitive to cultural differences when speaking to them, and more. It requires a lot of care, but for a business today a lag can be fatal."

"I can't remember a birthday." She laughed quietly, watching the monitor for changes being made in real time to the data from afar.

"This guy's a real pig," she grumbled, pointing at a thumbnail of a man, "at least by Western standards. I have to alternate between male and female perspectives so much I think I've started to dissociate from my body." She turned up at me. "I guess it's a good thing the Information Age doesn't require much heavy lifting." I recollected how little trouble she'd had with our suitcases. Her interest centered completely on the task she'd set herself, and I hovered there dumbly for a moment. Then I meandered toward the bedroom.

When I got there I thought about how I'd kill those worms in the bush outside, and I noticed some books on the shelf of the open closet. I switched on the light to see their titles. They were all economics textbooks, and too boring to read. My next thought was to find a jigsaw puzzle or something similar to occupy myself. A comforter came down on my head as I rummaged around, and after it a shoe box that landed quietly on the fallen bedspread, sending photos tumbling out. As I gathered them up, I glanced at some.

The snapshots were of women, dozens at least, at a rural retreat. Most were in t-shirts of different colors, black spandex pants, and sneakers, and the better part of the pictures had been taken outdoors. Some were in what resembled a ski lodge, or a summer camp's cafeteria. In a few the ladies brandished trophies, others had them posing arm in arm, and more were stills of an obstacle course being run. I was about to replace the last of the photos when I winced.

"What the fuck?" I whispered. On the profile of one woman in a shiny, form-fitting bottom was the distinctive bulge of a penis. Another image had the same trait. Then I saw a third. When I examined any photo, I found the females in it packing meat, or a simulation of it. A happy, skinny redhead in a yellow tee flexed her biceps, and her crotch swelled. A stocky girl in a bathing cap and a soaked t-shirt, smiling at the photographer as she stepped into a lakeside shower, had a thick swell in her men's boxer briefs. One woman smirked proudly down from a ridge with her shoulders back as her dick saluted in her green gym shorts, the sun's rays crowning her head. Two jogging blonds both sported erections.

"This has to be fake," I mumbled. That was when I saw Rebecca, posing for a photo, half-embracing a hippie girl with a devilish grin. Neither was without a tool in her pants. The picture paper-clipped to that one showed them kissing in more normal clothes, and without the phallic prostheses. They were standing at the rosebush by the front of the cabin.

Suddenly nauseous, I picked up all the snapshots, stuffed them into their container, put it away, and turned off the bulb. I trudged over to the bed, and got under the covers. After a couple minutes, I realized I could hear Rebecca typing.

I didn't sleep, but kept motionless on my side for hours. My thoughts flew as madly in my head as her fingers did on their keys. Finally she came to the door, and called out.

"Matt?" I paused, but replied.

"I'm awake." She crept across the floor in the low light, clearly energized by her titanic digital labors. Her hands fell upon me and we kissed. A moment later her leg swung over my midsection so she was mounted atop the blanket. I waited as she hesitated on her knees, in the darkness. "What is it?"

She removed her leg and tore the bedding away. Then she grabbed me by the upper arms, and repositioned my body until my head and feet had switched places, and I was again on my back. As she remounted, her lips again reached mine.

Her hips ground carefully in time with the gentle lunges of her torso. Immediately I realized that we weren't joined in foreplay, but that she had skipped ahead to later stages, and was steadily getting off. Unsure of her wishes, I stroked the taut denim on her solid thighs, and took a light hold of her alluring hips, but without changing her subdued rhythm at all she lifted both her hands from their places beside my head, broke my grips, put my arms down on the bed at my sides, and returned the forward supports of her posture to the mattress.

I gulped and remained still to let her use me, gradually becoming conscious of a division in her attention. Something was on her mind that wasn't orgasmic pleasure, but which had forced her to economize the effort she could spend to relieve her sexual tension. It was as if dry humping me was all she had time for, though we would be together the whole week.

"Yes," she cried through stifled laughter. "Mm," she insisted under a current of choked sobs. She was having no problem coming from rubbing her pelvis on me, it was obvious. When her spine arched and she gasped sharply, I caught sight of her face in the weak illumination given by the distant monitor. Her gaze had stayed locked on the stream of data output while she'd ridden my stationary form. There was a chime from the machine as a message arrived for her.

"Shit." She instantly peeled herself away. "Don't wander off," she said without taking her focus from the screen, and left. Her vocal reactions to the news indicated she wouldn't be horny anytime soon, and I drifted into oblivion.

In my dream, the wooden wheel was turning, this time part of a loom. It spun a fine cord that slowly changed from pale, to gray, to shining black. I followed the line to its source and recoiled in horror at the vision that greeted me; a thick, sickly-pale worm perched loyally on Rebecca's thigh as she sat naked on a square pedestal of obsidian. Her satisfaction at my presence was lascivious and evil. She raised a beckoning hand as the monster on her leg busily spat its hideous product, inviting me to sit by her. Bound at the ankles in the coiling fiber, I began to rotate where I stood like a spindle, until the rising sheath of ebony mummified me. Waking from the nightmare, I cried out.

Night hung at the window like a curtain, but I wasn't certain of the date anymore. I clambered out of bed and coughed. At the door I looked for signs of Rebecca. The fire had shrunk to embers but in its faint red I could discern the shoe box on the desk beside her charging laptop. Halfway to it, I froze at the sound of her voice.

"You're up early." She was sitting on a stool by the counter with a cup of tea next to her. A large v-neck short-sleeved shirt was all she wore.

"What's that?" I asked coyly, tilting my head at the photos. She got up and walked to me. Standing at my arm, she exhaled loudly through her nose, and tried to smile.

"Nothing," she said, eventually. She picked up the box. "It's a part of my life I've put behind me." I was convinced she'd throw it on the smoldering ashes. Instead she brought it into the bedroom, and shut the door.

Unable to sleep but feeling empty, I went out on the patio. It flattened the top of a steep hill with smooth granite plates, and provided a perfect vantage for the approaching dawn. I sat in one of the long, low chairs, comfortable in the cool morning breeze. Everywhere the day prepared to explode into being.

"Matt."

At the opened glass door, Rebecca was wearing only a shimmering, open black robe, and a black latex bikini bottom from which protruded a featureless black rod, about six inches in length. She glided to me silently and raised my hand from its rest on my abdomen. I met her willingly.

We kissed as she ran her fingers through my hair, massaging the alertness from me. Her other hand curled around my waist. Still sucking my breath out, she undid my belt and then pushed down on my pants, to banish them. Repelled from her by red nails at my chest, I obeyed her unspoken command and discarded my sweater. She let the silk fall about her to the pavement at our feet.

Prepared to be taken, I watched on all fours as the east began to bleed and her thumbs traced spirals on my lower back. Birds sang and the forest stirred. From out of the chaos of night clouds assumed their shapes. The corona climbed at last across the tree tops, and her blunt end punctured me. I hissed and gritted my teeth but it continued to come, and when the first hard beam seared my retinas she slid the thick plastic determinedly in, splitting my ass and probing my endurance. Sensation poured in through the gates of my senses.

Rather than churn it she held me fast as if we were a stone sphinx with its confused set of qualities. She let the pose saturate its environment like a yoga stance, so we could live in that moment forever. In my memory, we do.