Just after my daughter, Natalie, turned two years old my wife, Marie, complained that she had a slight headache and was going to bed early. I kissed her good-night, never realising that I was kissing her goodbye. She never woke up. I found her there when I went to bed, already passed on. There had to be an autopsy, of course, and I was told that she'd had a brain aneurysm. She was probably dead minutes after going to bed. Nothing that could have been done even if we'd known what was happening.
Since that time I've raised my daughter alone. Fortunately I've got a decent job and can afford to take her to a good child-minding centre near my work. If I want an evening off occasionally, and I do, I hire a baby-sitter for the evening. I've had several but my regular sitter is a fifteen year old, name of Susan. She's a nice kid.
I'd arranged for Susan to come around one Saturday evening as I was going out for a while. Come seven o'clock and there was a knock on the door and I went to let her in. Standing there I found a charming young lady. She was casually dressed in yoga pants and a loose t-shirt, both items which she filled out very well. I might point out that the loose t-shirt wasn't that loose around the bust-line, the material showing a bit of stretch.
"Ah, can I help you?" I asked, figuring she was a collector for something.
"Hi," she said. "I'm Melanie, Susan's sister. Susan's got a broken arm and won't be able to sit tonight."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. You should've just rung. I'd have called around for another sitter."
"You've got another sitter. Me. Susan insisted that we couldn't let you down and that I'd have to fill in for her."
"That's very kind of you, but there's no need to spoil your evening. I'm sure I can find another sitter."
"Ah, like I have any choice in the matter," Melanie told me. "Susan says it's the least I can do, seeing I'm the one who broke her arm, so here I am."
Why didn't that knowledge fill me with trust and happiness?
"Well, come on in and we'll have a chat," I said. If I considered her unsuitable then she wasn't staying, paying off a broken arm debt or not.
My first worry was resolved as soon as Melanie stepped into the house. Nat was looking out of her bedroom door, expecting Susan, and she gave a squeal and came racing out to greet Melanie. So, they knew each other and I wasn't leaving her with a stranger.
I shooed Nat back to bed and sat down for a quick chat with Melanie. She was eighteen, had finished school, and worked at a couple of part-time jobs. Fast-food, both of them. She seemed reasonably intelligent and she was Susan's sister, which was a plus. I decided that I had no problems leaving her to look after Nat.
I eventually got home and I offered Melanie a cup of coffee before she left. We sat in the front room drinking it while Melanie told me all the little stunts that Nat pulled, trying for dominance over a first time sitter. Nat knows how to call my mobile, but also knows that she's only supposed to use the number in an emergency. She threatened to call me and complain at one stage and Melanie had calmly passed her the phone and waited. Nat decided not to push the issue.
So there I was, sitting comfortably, enjoying my coffee and chatting to a lovely and intelligent young woman. Then we had the earthquake and I was sitting comfortably listening to a terrified young miss bewailing her life choices now that she was faced with imminent death.
I had better clarify that last sentence a little. When I say earthquake, there was a tremor. A very small tremor that caused the house to give a very slight shiver. It was obviously an earthquake, but only a very minor one. I ignored it, apart from noting that it had happened. Melanie was scared stiff, assuming that the house would collapse or the ground would swallow us up. The specific life choice she was bewailing was the argument she'd had with her boyfriend the night before, regarding matters sexual.
It appeared he'd been busy seducing her and she'd been with him all the way until it was time to lose her panties and get down and dirty. She was still a virgin and he must have rushed her a little, because she'd panicked and backed right off, much to his chagrin. He'd even pulled the old line that we couldn't know the future and that we might be dead tomorrow, so why not? She now thought that the 'might be dead' bit was coming true.
Melanie didn't actually sit down and explain all this to me in lucid language. It was more that she was babbling out her regrets and was half frantic with fear that the roof might collapse upon us, burying us all. I put down my coffee cup, extracted hers from her waving arm and put it aside before she poured it all over the carpet.
I pulled her over against me, just holding her and talking soothingly, explaining that it was just a tremor and it's over now and no harm done. Everything is fine. I managed to get her nicely calmed down and starting to feel a little sheepish about her behaviour. Then there was another fucking tremor.
It was no worse than the previous one. Lighter, if anything. It still managed to push all Melanie's buttons again. Maybe she had a phobia about earthquakes.
Maybe I wasn't being quite as sympathetic as I could be this time, but her over-reaction was a little on the irritating side. She must have experienced tremors before. It seemed to me that the thing upper-most on her mind was lost opportunity. When she wailed that she was going to die a virgin I couldn't help myself.
"Don't let that worry you," I told her in as soothing a voice as I could come up with. "As soon as you calm down I'll take off your panties and initiate you myself, here and now. Then you won't have to worry about it anymore."
That got through to her. She gave a start, stopped rabbiting on, and gave me a shocked look. I jumped into the sudden silence.
"Little tremors hit all the time," I told her. "Usually you can't feel them. If you hadn't been standing still in the middle of the night you probably wouldn't have noticed those ones, either. This isn't exactly an area renowned for earthquakes, now is it? Those ones probably occurred a hundred miles away and we just felt a very small tremor."
I managed to calm her down again, suggesting some fresh coffee wouldn't hurt. Over the fresh coffee I managed to find out that a friend of hers had been killed in an earthquake. Well, not exactly killed by the earthquake, but she'd panicked and run out of the house and onto the road. A car had done the actual job, but Melanie still blamed the earthquake and was rather sensitive where they were concerned.
Coffee finished I took her cup and placed them both on the coffee table. I encouraged her to stand while I remained seated on the couch. She was standing right in front of me and within easy reach, so I reached.
I lifted up the bottom of her t-shirt and taking hold of her yoga pants I started to pull them down. That got an immediate reaction.
"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded, grabbing hold of the front of her pants to hold them in place.
"Taking these off. I told you that once you'd calmed down I'd take your panties off and initiate you. You seem a lot calmer now and it's time for me to keep my promise."
"You have got to be kidding. I barely know you. Why on earth would I let you, ah, initiate me?"
"Because we've both got a highly developed sense of civic responsibility," I smartly replied.
"What?"
"You're too highly strung. If I let you go and drive home in your present state and there was another tremor you might panic again and crash. You could get killed or you might run over some old lady who couldn't get out of the way in time. This sort of tragedy could be fixed by a little effort on our part right now."
"That is the biggest load of crap that I've ever heard," I was told. "You can't seriously expect me to believe that."
"It was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment, but it seems to me you do need to lose your virginity. It's preying on your mind. Once it's gone you'll be able to make more rational decisions."
"Maybe. Letting you pop my cherry seems to me to be a most irrational decision. I have a boyfriend. He'll be more than willing to help me out in this situation."
"There, you see? An unwise decision. Your boyfriend would rush you before you could change your mind again and probably wind up hurting you in his hurry. You wouldn't enjoy it, you'd have a fight about it, and just like that he's your ex and you're regretting the whole thing."
"And I'm sure of instant ecstasy with you, am I?"
"Well, I can't guarantee that, but I'll take my time and give you a chance to back out if you really want to. If I do wind up hurting you and you don't enjoy it you won't mind so much because I'm not your boyfriend and it won't bother you if you don't see me again."
"I hope you buy toilet paper in bulk loads, because the bullshit you throw around must need a lot of clearing up. You can't seriously expect me to yield to your dubious charms."
"No, but it will be fun finding out."
Seeing she was distracted I jerked harder on her yoga pants and they slipped out of her hands and down. She made a shocked sound, hastily crossing her hands in front of her.
"You leave me alone," she snapped, trying to pull away from me, finding herself stuck as I was still holding onto her pants, albeit at a rather low level.
"No. What say we take these off and sit you on my lap and I'll just pet you a little and see where it leads? If you decided the final answer is going to be no then I guess I can accept that."
With that I pulled her down onto my lap, resulting in her sitting there with her hands in her lap and her clothes around her ankles, blushing furiously. Bare from the waist down it must have seemed a much more minor detail when I lifted her t-shirt up and she let it go with only a few words of protest.
I slid my arm around her, cupping and stroking her breast, while my other hand was caressing her leg. Outer thigh and the top of her legs only, mind you, as she was keeping her knees together. I just stroked what was available, chatting on about inconsequentialities, seeing what time would bring.
