*All characters are 18 years of age or older*
I swear, I'm not a bad person. I try to do the right thing. You will see how, in several instances, I at least attempted to behave nobly. I make an effort to be... well, a gentleman. I fail, nearly every time. I am up against something I do not understand, and I am only human. Is that aphorism always used as a roundabout way to say that someone is horny? I'm horny, I'll freely admit it. There's no point in denying that.
Who am I? Your horny narrator? My name is Mac. I'm an average, nerdy guy living in a small town in middle America. The fact that it is a small town is important: it means that although we have representatives of every demographic, nerds, jocks, goths, preppies, stoners, and more, there aren't enough of any of us to make an actual community. We're all kind of stuck with each other unless we move out to a real city that has more of our own kind, as it were. Everyone knows everyone, but nobody really likes anyone all that much. Or at least, that's how it has always felt to me.
I've lived here all my life, and although I got accepted to all of the colleges I applied to, there just wasn't enough money for me to get out. I got a job at the local hardware store which doubles as a computer supply shop. Yeah, it's a really small town. I live in a duplex just off main street, it's a small development block leftover from when some out of town investor thought we were going to become important somehow. They were wrong, but I can't complain about my unit. It's clean, relatively modern, and I can walk to work. The only drawback? My neighbor, Katie.
Katie was a cheerleader in high school. She was engaged to the star quarterback, but he got a scholarship to a big university and she didn't. Apparently he cheated on her his first day on campus. She's been waiting tables at the corner cafe ever since, and I'm pretty sure she hates me. We have a shared entry to our building, and our schedules are similar. Every morning I see this look of disappointment in her eyes as we both leave for work, as if she expects to meet someone else in the entryway instead of me. She never talked to me in high school, and I didn't dare, but now that we're neighbors I sometimes muster the courage to make small talk. It doesn't go well. No matter what I ask, she replies in terse monosyllables before striding gorgeously and dismissively away.
For a while, that was my life: getting iced out by my beautiful neighbor every morning, day in and day out. But then, weird stuff started happening around town. Small things, like people saying they'd seen lights in the sky. One old timer said he saw 'something' at the edge of town one night, but he was a notorious drunk so nobody paid much attention. Two high schoolers had a wild story about waking up naked together in a field with no memory of how they got there, but we all figured they were hooking up and the tale was just a flimsy cover to not get busted by their parents.
Then one night I was closing up the store, and I found it. We have a shed in the back that's open on one side to the alley. Sometimes bored kids will rummage through it and make a mess, but on this particular night, it looked like someone had left something on top of a corner cabinet near the open end. I figured some doofus must have just dumped their garbage on the way down the alley. But when I approached, it didn't look like trash.
It was some kind of crystal. Several facets winked at me in the dim light. It was in the shape of a sort of flattened teardrop, although slightly askew. It was hard to tell what color it was, exactly. From one angle it seemed like an orangey brown, yet when I stepped closer it appeared to have veins of pink and purple shot through which suffused it with brighter hues. It wasn't very big, maybe two inches at most. Was it someone's earring? It looked expensive, why would they leave it here?
Then I tried to pick it up. I can't really explain what happened. I don't think I lost consciousness or blacked out, but the next thing I can clearly remember is that I was locking the front door of the store. The thing was in my pocket. And I liked touching it. It was smooth, it felt good- reassuring- in my hand. I should have been freaked out, but I was completely calm. It did kind of feel like I had gone somewhere, or rather, that the place around me had changed... like the entire hardware store had been picked up and hurtled through a wormhole. But I looked around: it was the same old store, the same stock, the same neon signs across the street. Maybe the last few moments were just a fatigued delusion. I was exhausted, I had pulled a double shift that day. I touched the stone in my pocket again, and then just went home and fell asleep.
The next day I was back at the store. I was certain I had put the stone in my pocket when I got dressed. I remembered its soothing sensation. But the strangest thing happened: I was in the back stockroom taking inventory and Tanya walked in.
Remember when I said that we had goths? Tanya was one of them. She may have been the only one in town, I honestly didn't know anyone else who dressed like her. At work, she had to wear the apron over all her black clothes. I'm sure she hated it. But she still had the dark eye makeup, the piercings, the deep shade of lipstick. She was just 19, and she thought I was kind of a joke. Anyone older than her who hadn't left town yet was an embarrassment. I fully confess, I agreed with her. I admired the fact that she was so driven to get out. One more season, she kept saying, and she would have enough saved to get "the fu-huck" out. Of course, it was over a year ago that I had first heard her say that. Not that I would ever call her on it. Remember what I said about being a gentleman? Keep that in mind.
"Mac, quit goofing off back here and cover the register. I haven't had my break yet." I thought Tanya was cute, and I think she knew I thought that, which is why she had no qualms about walking all over me. I could never tell if she was actually flirting or just making fun of me, but I would never do anything about it because she was so much younger.
"I'll be right out, T, hold your horses." I said, finishing the inventory on a box of assorted cables.
"Why do you talk like my grandpa?" Tanya chided snidely. Her raven-dark hair was spilling messily out of a ponytail that made her look even more witchy and ethereal than usual.
"Maybe because you talk like my little sister?" I retorted, standing up from the box and trying to move past her. The stockroom had really narrow aisles, unless she got out of the way I wouldn't be able to go anywhere. And of course, Tanya wasn't paying attention, now. She was looking at something on the stock shelf.
"You don't have a sister, boomer."
"C'mon, I'm not that old. Would you move, please, so I can cover your oh-so-important break?"
"What is this?" she ignored me and asked, reaching out to pick up my crystal.
Yes, I already felt possessive about it. I had a flash of panic, realizing that it wasn't in my pocket and this manic pixie doom girl was about to steal my stone. But as soon as her fingers made contact with the smooth surface, something happened. Again. This time I could have sworn that I felt her fingers, soft and inquisitive, sliding over it and then picking it up. It made no sense, but somehow I was sensing her touch through the stone. It was warm in her hand. It felt good.
For a second, we both just stood there, me looking at her, her holding the crystal. Whatever it was that was happening, maybe I was getting used to it, because I managed to say:
"Give that to me." My voice sounded odd, sort of hollow in the close space of the stock room. Tanya turned and held it out to me. I took it. The sensation was strange, I simultaneously knew exactly what it would feel like and at the same time was shocked by how different it now felt, as if something from Tanya's touch was still there. I quickly put the thing back in my pocket. How had it gotten on the shelf? I had no memory of putting it there.
Tanya was just staring at me now, her dark eyes wide and luminous, made even more eerie by her black makeup. She had a funny little smile on her face.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" I finally said, starting to feel like myself again.
"You." she said with that same little smile. Was she messing with me now? I had never seen that impish look on her face before, but the way her eyes were locked onto me was definitely unsettling.
"What's wrong?" I said, running a hand through my hair self-consciously.
