Beetlesmith's

The next two weeks were a slow descent into hell for me. I didn't know it at the time, but my life started to unravel the next morning.

I was already awake when my two lovelies slowly returned from the land of slumber. Groggy though they were, I anticipated a renewed level of eroticism equaling that of last night, equaling that of every morning since administering the drug.

Yet, this morning was different. Both politely begged off having sex until...Well...Until well into the day; and our romp, although nice, was far less than I've experienced in many a week since that first time with Gloria. It was, to put not too fine a point on it, your garden-variety fuck. Don't get me wrong, even a mediocre fuck with two beautiful women is better than most things in life, but lately, I've come to expect more than the bland. Such is my anticipation now. Such was my initial disappointment.

It was as if the 'arousal faucet' had been shut off, as neat as you please. One minute, they're begging me to fuck them six ways 'til Sunday—pussy, ass, mouth or tits—and the next, nothing but lame promises. Even my mental prodding, so acute and infallible in elevating a woman's libido over this past week had no effect on them this morning. Obviously, my powers were abating, along with the ladies' sexual appetites.

I took this in stride. For after thinking about the new situation, I saw their change in attitude as a positive. Fool that I was—though not realizing how big a fool as yet—I assumed the residual effects of the drug had limits. Saints be praised!

Yes, I took it in stride. The drug was starting to wear off. There were limits to its effects on us, and as I looked past my initial disappointment, I began to feel relief that our 'peculiarities'—what I've come to call the strange events of my recent life—were beginning to dampen.

My relief at this new turn of events was short lived, however.

By Monday, it became evident to me that what was occurring wasn't just the drug wearing off. Something more insidious was taking hold of my life, twisting me about as if I were a ragdoll caught in that familiar whirlwind of chaos.

Yes, Karen's libido continued to fall, right through the proverbial floor, through the proverbial basement, and planting itself somewhere south of China. No morning 'twofer.' No evening 'twofer.' No anything for that matter.

Tuesday followed, then Wednesday, both with the same result. On Thursday, I got her to spread her legs long enough so that I could fuck her, but like that morning when everything changed with her and Denise, it was bland.

No, it wasn't just bland, it was humiliatingly boring. Jesus, talk about your mercy fuck, because that's what it was. She lay there like a lump, her eyes just staring blankly up at the ceiling. At the time, I sarcastically thought she might check her watch to note how long I was taking. The only thing that would have made it worse is if she were eating a sandwich during the act.

I bit my tongue, though. Saturday, and our ménage with Denise were soon approaching. I figured Karen would perk up then, as having another, willing person with us would give her renewed impetus for sex.

Yeah, right.

The best laid plans—as it's been said—wither and die on the vine.

I knew the minute Denise walked through the door that things had really changed toward the celibate.

Right away, Karen and Denise both asked if we could forego sex for the evening. They were polite about the request as well as a little embarrassed, knowing how disappointed it would make me, but they were also adamant. I tried to push them in my own way, mostly by reminding them how much we all enjoyed the last two times together, but they politely refused saying they would rather we all talk.

Perfect. Let's just talk.

Isn't that the bastard step-child of, 'I still want to be friends?'

I even tried coercing them with my mental abilities, but like last Sunday, I could no longer ramp up their arousal with just my thoughts.

Out of curiosity, about forty-five minutes into 'our' conversation I asked Denise if she was wearing the chain I gave her. The look of awkwardness she gave told me everything I needed to know.

I had had enough. Livid, but hiding my ire, I poured myself about five fingers of scotch, clipped a cigar, and went out on the porch to lick my wounded pride.

Which is the only thing I was going to lick that night.

An hour later, still pissed and significantly drunk, I went back into the house. Denise had gone, but Karen was still sitting on the couch, waiting for me.

"Will, she's really sorry she wasn't wearing your chain. She felt awful. She said she took it off to take a sauna, and forgot to put it back on."

"Are you at least wearing yours?"

"Of course."

"Then let me see."

She looked at me with a flash of anger that I would dare question her, and yelled, "Great, you still don't trust me!"

Bolting off the couch, she ripped her shirt open. The buttons were still flying through the air as she defiantly pointed at her gold chain with the diamond, still draped loosely around her hips.

"See? Satisfied?"

It was the start of our first fight since I can't remember—a real knock-down, drag-out squabble that went on well into the night. It wouldn't be the last, either. There would be many more to come over the following days and weeks.

********

Things got worse.

It was the following Tuesday when I got a call from Denise asking if she could cancel our next ménage.

I'm not sure why I keep calling it that, except that it reminds me of better days—we were getting as 'ménage' as soured marmalade on burned toast.

I asked, not hiding the disappointment in my voice, "What gives, Denise?"

She stammered for a moment before answering, "I'm sorry Will, but I have an appointment with a hairdresser."

"Hairdresser?"

"I know it sounds weird, but I've been trying forever to get in to see this new hairdresser. He's fabulous, but he's very exclusive and has a select Clientele. All those artistic types are the same. Anyway, it's to die for if you can get in to see him."

"Can't you get your hair done on another day?"

"He had a last minute cancellation. It's for Saturday night only. I just happened to luck into..."

"Saturday night. This guy is still working on a Saturday night?"

"Well...Yes...It's not so weird if you know how these temperamental, artistic types are."

"What about after? I assume it doesn't take all night to have your hair done."

She stammered again, "Well, I'd rather not...I mean...I don't want to get my hair all messed up right after spending so much time and money on it. You understand, don't you?"

Yeah, I did—all the fucking bitches in my life were fucking me over.

Hell, she didn't even apologize for not wearing the chain I gave her. I would have thought she would have at least done that after going to all the trouble of cancelling on me. I might as well tattoo, 'Doormat,' on my forehead, and be done with it.

It got worse.

Over the following days after that first fight on Saturday, Karen completely lost interest in sex. I couldn't even get that god-awful mercy fuck out of her. She continually made excuses, saying she was too tired and really needed the rest.

Coincidently, whenever she whined about being tired, it would trigger another knock-down, drag-out that would last for many hours.

Funny how she didn't have the energy to fuck, but she could scream 'Asshole!' into my face, all the live long day.

I was getting desperate. I hadn't fucked in almost a week, and I hadn't had a good fuck in almost two. You see, one thing I hadn't mentioned was that although Karen's libido took to ground like a groundhog seeing its shadow, mine hadn't. In fact, my libido was ramping up ever higher with each passing day.

By the start of my second week in hell, I had almost a constant erection. I was jerking off ten to twenty times a day just to keep from slipping into some sort of celibate-induced insanity—and that barely helped.

To top it off, many of the women at work were starting to get flirty with me. It was nothing overt. It was just a sly look here, a compliment there, or a subtle sexual innuendo thrown in my direction from time to time by the various women in the secretarial pool.

In the days before I got married, these would have been clear signs for me to hit them up for a date. After I married Karen, I ignored the complements and the flirting, although I was flattered by the attention. And of course, when I passed that magical age of forty, compliments from much younger woman were few and far between. Now, however, they were being thrown at me fast and furious, and from all quarters.

So what's the problem, you might ask.

Karen doesn't want to have sex, but it would be so easy to dip my toe—or something else—into the unfamiliar, yet potentially refreshing waters at work. Believe me I was tempted beyond human endurance to do just that.

My problem with all this—chump that I am—was my honor pact I made with Karen: not to dibble with other women behind her back. I was sure Karen was keeping up her end of the deal, which made me doubly obligated to my word.

Thus, I took the high road and tried to ignore their flirting—and it was all ripping me up. For even the smallest, most innocent nicety about my tie or suit coat seemed like a full-throated, slut scream invitation for me to fuck them silly. Moreover, I knew I could have any one of them in a heartbeat—just for the asking—just for the thinking. You see, even if my mental abilities had no effect of Karen or Denise, my thoughts still seemed to be affecting the women at work, given their newfound, flirtatious natures.

It was literal torment. The kind of torment shipwrecked sailors must endure stranded on the open ocean, dying of thirst; surrounded by so much water, day after dehydrated day, but you can't drink. I was surrounded by a sea of women ready to cure me of my aroused state, but my honor kept me from drinking deep at that well. It was maddening.

Even Beatrice the crone—as she's called by many of the executives, but not to her face—was laying down complements and flirting with me, and she never flirts with anyone.

Beatrice wasn't old, maybe five years my senior, but she dressed old. She always sported a bee-hive hairdo and cats-eye reading glasses, the kind popular with matrons in the 1950's. She was thin, flat-chested, dour and sour in looks and spirit. Looks and mean-spiritedness aside, she was very protective of 'her girls,' as she like to call them, and ran the secretarial pool with an iron will. More importantly, for the company executives anyway, she had considerable pull with Jack Avery.

One time, she found out a junior exec was 'hitting on' one of her girls a tad too eagerly and a bit too suggestively, and making the poor thing uncomfortable. The junior exec was gone the next day. Rumor has it Beatrice made one call to Jack, and that was that.

That! Yes, even

that

was giving me the 'suggestive' eye—and, the gods help me, my cock got hard thinking about even her.

However, the worst offender in all this office flirtation was Candice. Over these past two weeks of hell, little by little, she began to break out of her 'fat' clothes.

Loose fitting, blousy shirts, buttoned all the way up to the collar and at the cuffs, became tight fitting pull-over sweaters that accentuated her massive breasts. The pull-over sweaters were soon jettisoned with button-down types, and for each new day, another button was left unclasped exposing her ample cleavage.

Her baggy, ill-fitting, gaucho pants were discarded for skirts. At first, they extended down to her ankles, but day by day, their hems creped ever higher until they were barely covering her thighs, and no matter if she wore the skirt long or short, they molded tightly against her pear-shaped ass.

Worse still, it wasn't enough for her to just bounce around the office in tight sweaters and short skirts, leaving little to the imagination—though imagination was all I had left. No, she had to accentuate her sexual displays by dropping items in front of me with the purpose of bending over to pick them up; thus, giving me a bulls-eye view down her cleavage or square into that candied-apple ass of hers.

It took all my resolve not to stick my cock between those luscious globes—both sets, front or behind.

Worse still, each time I fought off the lust, and my lustful feelings were coming at me hour by painfully sickening hour, that sickening, debilitating nausea would return. Moreover, each time it happened, the feelings of nausea were more intense, and lingered for minutes on end. After a while, I had to sequester myself in my office and out of sight of Candice and the other women, or I would be in a constant state of debilitating sickness, unable to work or even think.

I saw the pattern soon after Candice's transformation. All of the women I've given the elixir to had zero libido, and all of those I hadn't indulged in were primed.

Even Jackie—yes, I broke down and hit Jackie up—but even she had no desire to fuck.

Jackie, for fuck's sake?! That stupid bitch would fuck a horse while blowing a goat if there wasn't a man around, but she begged off Robo-cock quick enough, saying it wouldn't be fair to Karen.

I let her words roll around in my head, "...fair to Karen...," and knew then I was totally—yet figuratively—fucked. In the days before the elixir, Jackie would have made it a point of honor to fuck me, just so she could throw it back into Karen's face. Now, she wanted to be fair!

Oh, fuck me!

It was the cosmic joke of all jokes, and I was its punch line.

********

All that I've described so far wasn't the worst of it, however, for not too long after Karen and Denise's snubbing of our ménage—where they just wanted to talk—I began seeing apparitions.

I can't describe it better than that, except that I was being haunted by ghostly shadows.

It wasn't there all the time. Usually when I was alone in my office at work or when I was reading in the quiet of the evening at home, I'd catch sight of the shadow out of the corner of my eye. It was just a grayish shade having the gross, rough outline of a man standing a few feet to my side—standing at a distance as if watching me.

I'd flinch each time I caught it 'watching' me, and each time when I snapped my head around to look at it, it was gone.

I went to an eye doctor after a few days of this, thinking at first, the elixir had affected my vision, somehow. However, she found nothing structurally wrong with me—and yet, the apparition still haunted me.

I got a second opinion, but with the same results. When the second doctor told me nothing was wrong, I became irate, swearing up and down in his office that the incompetent fool must have missed something, and that he should test me again more thoroughly. He didn't take my advice, but he did recommend I seek psychiatric help while he shoveled me out the door. Dejected, when I got into my car to drive back to work, the apparition was there by my side, mocking me.

Worse than the apparition itself, was the deep, almost debilitating feeling of dread I experienced each time it was in the room with me, as if I was truly in the presence of a conscious being with deep-seated malice for me.

Whenever it paid me a visit, I tried to watch it sometimes out of the corner of my eye. Those moments were the most terrifying for me. As I watched it, stealthily, the apparition would grow larger in my vision, as if it drew closer, looming over me. Then, the malice radiating from the specter would grip me in full force. It froze my heart, and fomented such a debilitating fear in me that I was almost compelled to put my hands over my face and shut my eyes to it—just as children shut their eyes to the fictitious goblins that live in their closets.

Whatever it was, ghost, phantom or genie of the elixir bottle, I had convinced myself that this was the force pushing me into hell. Such were my paranoid delusions. Such was my life these past two weeks.

It was as if all this were being done by design, all with the purpose of forcing me to use the elixir once again. That was my thought, anyway. If I were to use the elixir again all these symptoms would pass. The vials I had stashed in my sock drawer continually nagged at me like a splinter in my mind.

However, and for some reason unknown to me, I knew in my heart that what was happening to me was many times better than what would happen if I used the elixir again. I cannot tell how or why I felt this way, but there was something inside me, warning me against approaching danger—warning me to turn on my headlights as I zipped down that metaphorical mountain road.

Moreover, it didn't just warn me, but at times comforted me, and helped me fight off that malignant shade whenever it appeared. As such, I continued in my resolve—even against the continual sickness and fear—to never again use the elixir.

With that decision, and as each day passed without giving in to temptation, I could feel my resolve strengthening. I

was

winning the battle against these forces, real or imagined, aligned against me!

Then, it all ended as quickly as it started on the second Thursday in hell—and it ended in the worst way imaginable for me.

********

The office was abuzz.

It always was when quarterly reports were due, and I was well behind getting mine finished and into Jack's hands before the end of the day. However, this time I relished the frenetic nature of the day, because it was at least keeping my mind off all the other crap that was happening to me. The only fly in my soothing, albeit feverish, ointment, was Candice.

It figures she'd pick today of all days to be more the slutty office manager than ever, by wearing an overly tight, one-piece, lavender, spandex mini-dress. I swear the hookers on Market and Classen dress with greater modesty.

I could tell she was losing weight—hard not to considering the tightness of the dress—and I suppose she wanted to show herself off. She still had a bit of a belly though, but without the sidecars, and when looking at her from behind, her narrowing waist made her ass appear more pear-shaped than usual. However, even with the weight loss, her breasts were still heavy, full and firm, nearly popping out of her sweater whenever she swung around too fast in her chair, or, when using that trick I've come to know and hate, bending over to pick up something on the floor between us. That dress suited her build well—in all its full voluptuousness.

Seeing her as she was, it was all I could do to keep my mind on my work, and more importantly, keep my mind from wandering into

those lustful areas

that, if not acted on, cause me nausea.

It wouldn't have been too big a problem except that I had to continually get files from the cabinets behind her desk. I considered getting the janitorial service to move the filing cabinets into my office temporarily, and avoid my close encounters with her, but that would take all day. I just didn't have the time for that drastic a measure, so I bore her teases as best I could.

However, just as I thought would happen, each time I moved behind her to get another client's file, she would stand up out of her chair, and purposefully narrow the 'safe' corridor between her and the cabinets. I couldn't help but brush up against her each time Candice did this.

She always made it out like it was an innocent, clumsy mistake when we touched, saying things like, 'Oh, sorry again Mr. Henry, I didn't see you there. I'm such a dork. I was going to get more coffee. Do you want some?', or 'Oh gee, sorry again, but I need to go to the little girl's room,' and with each of these pathetic excuses, she would comment on how attractive I looked and that she was still so very appreciative of that raise I gave her.