Chapter 2
Roger had made it up to his room, still holding the Elmo toy, which he put on the dresser by the door. The price tag on it said "Tina's Toy Store", so he plugged in his laptop, and when it was on, he opened the browser to his preferred mapping site, located Arbroath, and then located the toy shop, which was just up the main street a few blocks. The store closed at 9:00 on Friday nights, and to his surprise, it was only 6:30, so he had plenty of time. On a whim, he opened a new tab and went to Twitter, where he saw that "Glowing Cock Man" videos and comments had appeared. "Oh, the wonders of technology," he muttered after reading some of the comments, most of which were explicit in their content. Closing that tab, he saw that Arbroath was having a Midsummer Festival in the local park this evening, which would be under way by now. He realized that it was August 1, which actually is the midpoint between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox. He knew it had a name, but couldn't remember it, so he went to the Source of All Knowledge, as he referred to Wikipedia, and saw that it was "Lughnasadh".
"People complain about how hard it is to guess the pronunciation of English words," he said, checking the page to see that it's said 'Loo-neh-seh'. "The first rule of Gaelic is that no matter how you say it, it's wrong." He checked his watch and found to his surprise that 45 minutes had passed. He closed the cover of his laptop and remembered that he'd have to get his laundry so he could go to the festival. This improvised loincloth thing would not do, especially if it got windy. He reached for the doorknob.
Sarah wished that she could scrub her mind as clean as she could her body as she showered. That filthy thing was finally gone, but it would take some time for her to recover from it, even though it had possessed her for less than a day. She hoped that people would understand and be forgiving because they all had seen that she was not being herself. It took her fifteen minutes to clean herself up and get dried off. She could see that some of her clothes had been brought over from her house at some point during the day, since obviously nobody had any idea how long she'd be indisposed, and they were in a pile in a corner of Julia' bedroom. Her cute white sundress, ankle socks, and underclothes were soon on her. She felt that her blue dress that she'd been wearing before Roger freed her, and the red party dress, needed cleaning, so she put them on top of the nearly full laundry hamper in the closet and lugged it downstairs.
"Hi, Julia," she said, rather shyly as she encountered her younger sister in the laundry room. "I'm so sorry about everything..." She just managed to put the basket on the table before bursting into tears, and Julia left the open dryer to move to hold her while she cried.
"What an awful thing to have happen to you," Julia replied, her eyes also leaking tears. "It must have felt so good to tear it to pieces." Sarah nodded.
"There's nothing like bottomless rage to give one strength." She looked over at the dryer. "Whose laundry is that?"
"It's Roger's. There isn't very much of it, so the dryer finished earlier than usual. I expect that he'll be down in a while to get it so that he can replace his shorts and underwear."
"Drop it on the table. I'll fold it and bring it up to him and save him the trip."
"Oh, and there's, uh, this. Emma didn't know what to do with it." She pulled the dildo out from a hiding space behind the laundry detergent and a box of tissues, which Sarah was raiding and using to blow her nose. She turned red as Julia waved it under her nose.
"That's a Pink Magic," she managed to say, retreating to the bathroom to discard the tissues into a waste basket and wash her hands. "I was staggering by Trina's and told Mandy to not go in there because it had naughty stuff in it, so of course he did, then I said not to get a dildo because a real cock was so much better, so Mandy grabbed the first one he could reach and made me buy it. Trina didn't know what was going on, but knew that I was not being myself."
"It was just outside the store where we caught up to you," Julia remembered. "You must have stuck it in your handbag. We were wondering why you seemed so eager to get home."
"It's not as effective as a Double Dragon, but it's a damned good one," Sarah replied as they both turned pink. "I'll add it to the pile of clothes in your room, if that's OK, before I take this up to Roger. What's his last name, by the way?"
"I'm sure that Mister Matheson will appreciate a little room service," was the reply, with a slight emphasis on the latter two words, and Sarah blushed more when she realized that she was handling his underwear. It only took a few minutes to get it all folded and put in the backpack. She put the dildo in the pack too so that it wouldn't be seen in case she bumped into anyone on route to the apartment.
"See you later. And, thanks." After a warm embrace, she left, stashed the Pink Magic in the pile of clothes in the apartment, then walked to the front of the house to go up the stairs.