AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Hi all, thanks for reading! This is the start of a longer story, but it isn't a quickie -- if you're looking for instant gratification you should skip the first 1000 words or so. I think the buildup helps, but you're free to draw your own conclusions. I promise that once things are in full swing the action will come fast and heavy!
If you like what you've read, please let me know! Comments are great, or shoot me message via the CONTACT tab on my profile. I'll continue the story if there's interest, so I need to know if there's interest! Critiques and responses are always welcome.
THE CASE OF THE ROMAN KINTSUGI
James was tired. It was nearing 3 in the morning, he still hadn't slept, and he just couldn'tget it to make sense. Maybe it
didn't
make sense. He knew it was a long shot; honestly, how many people must have found the same book, had the same idea, and been disappointed just the same as he was? But James decided to give it one more try; this had become a problem to solve. And for someone as studious as he was, a problem like that was too tempting, too tantalizing to just set aside.
His Latin was pretty good; 4 years in high school, and another semester under his belt so far in his first year of college. He knew the shape of what he was reading, but there were a few words he couldn't work out and they weren't in any dictionary he could find. His library didn't have a copy of Adams'
The
Latin Sexual Vocabulary
, or he might have shortened his search.
Even so, he had a pretty good idea of what he was looking at. It was a copy of an inscription found on a lead tablet in the Roman province of Dacia. Modern day Romania? Or Moldova? Lead tablets were used in the ancient world for spells; you carved your spell into the soft lead and threw it into a pit, a well, or something like that. The important part was that it got underground, where the spirits could find it and bring it to fruition.
This particular inscription was a spell, or maybe a curse, and he had the gist of it. It was a love spell, an invocation to make the object of affection fall in love with the person who used it. 'Love' was maybe too soft a word; it was very specific about what the enchanted person would want, and even if all of the words weren't the kind that were covered in Latin class, he could make a pretty good guess at their meaning; lots of
phallus
alongside
cunnus
. The object of the spell is supposed to offer up their
cunnus
to the spell-user's
phallus
, etc. etc. This was all clear enough. But there was one fragment at the very end that he just couldn't work out.
Res plena fiat fracta. Malus kintsugi mihi est; potens dispersa me petant animi incisi incisum
.
The first part wasn't too bad.
Fiat
was weird, but he had the sense that it worked.
"Let the full thing be broken. A bad (wicked? evil?)
kintsugi
is for me. The dispersed power, they seek me, the minds,
incisi
incisum?
" James mumbled to himself.
For the life of him he couldn't figure out
kintsugi
; it didn't even look like a Latin word. And the rest of his translation was a bit of guesswork too. He was missing something.
He put aside the book containing the inscription and sighed. It was late, and he had class early tomorrow - early being 10am, but when you're a freshman in college that counts as early. He had actual homework that he had been working on before getting sidetracked; his class tomorrow was Roman History, where he was supposed to have been reading about the Roman empire's expansion but had instead discovered the book of love spells tucked away in a dusty corner of the campus library stacks. One of the benefits of attending an old, private college like his was the library. It had countless volumes: all the new, important academic works of course, but also room after room of oddities donated by alumni in the 19th century. He loved it, even if it did occasionally distract from what he was supposed to be reading.
James set his phone alarm for 8am, with every intention of getting up early to finish the assigned reading before class. He shuffled the pile of books off of his extra long twin bed, thankful once again that his roommate had decided at the last minute to take a gap year; he had the small double room to himself, an empty bed the exact match of his across the room currently served as storage for his books and clothes that he hadn't put away in their proper home. As he flicked off his lamp and turned on his side in the dark, he turned the inscription over in his mind for just a minute or two, then fell fast asleep.
------
James woke, frazzled. He felt like he had been asleep for ages or maybe not at all. The sunlight coming through the window of his dorm room told him it was morning, and not especially early either. He grabbed his phone from the nightstand; 9:40am. He had class in twenty minutes!
He scrambled out of bed and into the bathroom. A quick brush of his teeth -- he had forgotten the night before -- and a comb through his short, dark hair had him presentable as he threw a t-shirt and jeans on his 6'1" frame. He was lanky, but not a total stringbean. At 170 pounds he looked decent enough with his shirt off, but no one would call him ripped, exactly. That was just fine. James knew he looked good enough, and it's not like anyone had seen him shirtless recently anyway. He had his own bathroom thanks to the absent roommate, and aside from a few drunken hookups at the start of school he hadn't been into the party scene. He liked to have fun but usually in smaller groups, and he wasn't exactly the type to meet a girl on the dancefloor at a party and try to bring her home to his room. It just wasn't his style.
As James slouched into his seat only two minutes late, he was relieved to see the lecturer had not yet arrived. It was a fairly big class, maybe 50 students, and best of all it was independent. Professor Quayle gave her lecture twice a week for 45 minutes, and the rest of the course was reading and assignments. Professor Quayle had that wonderful quality of caring about learning more than grades, so as long as you demonstrated that you attended class and did the work you didn't have much to worry about. James was one of the few students who knew Latin, so he occasionally asked a question or two after class; sometimes he was curious, but other times he was showing off just a little bit, if he was being honest. College was different, but some high school habits had yet to be broken.
Professor Quayle walked in and smiled at the room. She was cute, but not the kind of woman who college boys elbowed each other about. In her mid-forties she had dyed blonde hair with brown peeking through, and stood a charming 5'6". She looked more or less how you might expect: certainly pretty, a body that showed her age but not without grace, maybe a little mousey. She was the kind of woman who made scared young freshmen feel comfortable. Professor Quayle was warm, and her smile showed it.
As she dove into the lecture James yawned and sank lower into his seat. His mind wandered back to last night, driven as much by the frustrating grammar and vocabulary of the spell as by its admittedly exciting purpose. As his eyes wandered from the blackboard and over the room he started to think about what he would do if he could use such a spell, even if right now he wasn't able to read it properly let alone put it into action.
His eyes stopped first on Rebecca. A sophomore, she had been assigned to his dorm to help on move-in day. He felt a little bad thinking about her in such explicit terms, since she had been nothing but lovely to him -- friendly, helpful, outgoing, almost like a big sister. She had brown hair that was very thick, and it stretched down to her mid back. She was maybe a tad pudgy, but that only added to her charm. She seemed comfortable and happy in her body, even if her legs weren't pencil thin and she had a little bit of a tummy. James admired that about her, and even though he was a little intimidated -- she was a sophomore, after all -- he was sure it wasn't just an act. Rebecca was the kind of girl who would probably go on to be everyone's favorite fifth grade teacher, and spend her life making other people's lives better.
Feeling slightly ashamed -- but once again noticing how soft the curves of her body looked -- James ripped his gaze away, landing next on Sophia. Sophia lived down the hall from him in the same building, and that was about all he knew of her. They'd said hello at a dorm meet-and-greet back in September, and his sense was that she was if anything more shy than him. She was also petite. Scratch that,
tiny
. Sophia could not have been more than 4'11", and James didn't even know how to guess her weight. She was Asian and rail thin; a tank top in September had revealed to James that she had hardly any breasts to speak of, and two little points in the front of it had told him she certainly didn't feel the need for a bra. It wasn't everyone's cup of tea, but even someone who didn't prefer her body type would be lying if they said she wasn't cute. And she was very pretty, too -- lovely smooth hair and a sweet little face. She was shy, yes, but she looked people in the eye and her smile was dazzling.
To James, she was in the maybe category. It's not that he didn't like her -- he did -- but she was just so remote from him that he had a hard time imagining her doing anything sexual. His mind didn't even know where to begin.
Finally, his eyes landed on Jolene. She was a definite yes for him, and for just about every single male and a fair proportion of the females on campus. It was almost comical, and she must have known it: she looked like the kind of grown woman who played a college kid in movies. Blonde, gently curled hair sat atop her 5'8" frame toned by years of field hockey and lacrosse. She was tall, yes, but the first thing James and everyone else noticed was her eyes, bright blue and accented with long, fluttery lashes.
Honestly, she looked like sex. From her bright red toenails in her strappy leather sandals to her bare, well-defined legs, to her short denim skirt and midriff-baring red tanktop that showed off her breasts. James was far from expert, but he guessed they had to be at least a C cup. Her smooth skin made him think of honey and cream.
Yes
, James thought to himself.
