Honey Wild and Manna Dew

DESPITE what the paramedic report said, I wasn't drunk or drugged when they found me. Well, drugged, maybe, but not the recreational drug they assumed. And I hadn't taken it voluntarily. Whatever my other vices, hard drugs have never been among them.

Not that I can expect anyone to believe my story. They find a guy lying under the Storrington Bridge, out to the world, sleeping with a blissful smile on his face, what other conclusion can they possibly come to?

Given I hadn't actually broken any law, nor been the victim of other lawbreakers - my wallet and phone were still in the pockets of my suit and my watch right where it should be - there was no need for any kind of police report. As far as they knew, I was just one of the many tramps you find sleeping rough in the city in the early hours of any Saturday morning, though perhaps better dressed than most. Nor did they bother with a blood or urine test. Whatever foreign substance I'd ingested would have been well through my system by the time they got around to doing such tests anyway.

And since I spoke perfectly coherently, and took good care not to mention any lingering memories from the night before, I was allowed to go on my way after a single perfunctory chat with a bored, rushed social worker. Then all I had to do was work out how to find Cobweb again. But even as this thought struck me I knew it was a losing game. It was obvious Cobweb didn't want to be found.

And yet, the memory of her lingers still. And the only chance of shaking off this lethargy, this infatuated paralysis, and become again what I once was, is to write it down. Dr Harkness, my psychologist, is clear on this point. And though Dr Harkness has done no good whatsoever up to now (not, to be fair, that this is her fault - my experience is way outside her, or anyone else's sphere) it's worth the experiment I feel.

So, to begin.

I've always thought of myself as, well, not to put too fine a point upon it, a bit kinky. Someone, probably Quentin Crisp, once said that "kinky is a feather, perverted is the whole chicken." Well, by that criterion I guess I'd be closer to the whole bird than a single feather.

Putting it bluntly, I've tried everything. Women, men, people halfway between the two, blow-up dolls, even trees. I've steered clear of animals (because of the cruelty aspect) and children, of course, since I have certain standards - though I've tried the occasional adult dressed as a school kid and enjoyed it. I've literally lost count of all the bizarre things I've done. I've done just about everything. Every orifice in which it is possible to put a part of your body, I've put that part of mine in it, or had someone else put it in mine.

I've done it in all sorts of places, from a department store after dark (with a shop dummy no less) to a mock up of an alien spaceship, with a whore dressed in the suit the aliens wore in that Close Encounters movie. Naturally, I've not only joined the Mile High Club but renewed my membership three times, once in the pilot's cabin. I've done it on trains, buses, on a motorbike (twice) in a car (while driving) and even on an airship. I've had my partner pretend to be a corpse, and played the role myself.

I've done chains and whips, tie-up games, submission and domination. Tickling games, golden showers, scatology, blood play. I've been characters from fiction fucking other characters, historical figures, celebrities, characters completely from my own or others' imagination. I've had whores, virgins, the bi-curious and the het-curious. I've done cybersex on a computer, phone-sex on a mobile, and imaginary sex in my head, the latter to the extent that I reached a stage where I was able to cum without even touching myself.

Some readers at this point might be envying me. Well, perhaps they're right. All I can say is, there is a drawback to being a libertine like myself, and it's this. That eventually you reach a point where you feel you can't go any further. No matter what anyone suggests, what you contemplate, it seems old hat. The dreaded phrase been there, done that echoes mockingly in your mind.

So, on the day in which my story begins, I was looking for a new thing. Something I had never done before. Not even a new thing to do - perhaps, I was simply contemplating a new, more perfect way to revisit what I'd done before.

For a person as obsessed with sex as me, everything is an adventure. I check out people I encounter, mentally undressing them, imagining what it might be like to be with them. I check out mens' "packages" while, with women, I look down their tops, up their skirts, even through the armholes of their vests and tank-tops.

On this occasion I was on the train, the line that runs from Winton towards the City. It wasn't peak hour, and the compartment was almost deserted when I boarded. I sat, listening to the "diddly-dum diddly-di" that trains make as I read the day's edition of the Edenglassie City Courier, fantasising about the people whose photographs featured therein, and what I might do with them if we ever met.

I don't know when she first got on and took her seat opposite me. The first hint of her presence was a strong, extremely pleasant odour of some herbal perfume, and then I looked up as I turned a page and she was there.

Jaded as I am, like any other het guy I'm not above checking out a pretty girl. And this one was well worth a look. She had an oval face, with well-shaped lips, and large blue-grey eyes, making her look a bit like a doll. Her hair was probably quite long in its natural state, but held up with a green bandanna fashioned out of a kind of sequined material. Her hair was a yellow blonde, with a fringe that hung down over her eyes, giving her a slight touch of vulnerability to offset her otherwise haughty, detached expression.

Her body was well worth the looking, too. She was slightly below average height, what people call "petite" I guess, slim but with plumpness everywhere it counted. Her tits were on the small side, yet made up for their lack of size by being firm and perky. She had amazingly well-shaped calves and slim ankles, and from what I could see of her thighs - she had on a skirt that sat only a few inches above the knee - they were pretty good too.

I have a practised strategy at such times. It doesn't do to look too obviously up a woman's skirt. Women know when they are being looked at and, in most cases, don't like it and take care to avoid you seeing too much. They have a whole repertoire of leg-rearranging, hem-tugging and aggressive "do you mind" looks to call upon in defence of their modesty. If you go too far, they will publicly call you out and shame you, even report you to the authorities. A thing that's never happened to me in real life, though I role-played it once, but that does not come into this tale.

The trick, then, is to be subtle. To look away, make it obvious you are not attempting to violate their privacy. Yet, with your peripheral vision, you take in every change in their aspect. Small things register. The hem of her skirt shifting upwards an inch or so. The edge of a lacy slip peeking into view. A hint of bra-strap slipping into sight from a sleeveless top. An uncrossing and recrossing of legs, allowing the merest, most fleeting glimpse of panties.

The woman at whom I was now looking (while pretending not to) wore a suit, in a kind of shiny brown that you might almost call chocolate. No match for her colouring at all, though this didn't seem to matter, since it still looked stunning on her. Her hose was also brown, though a lighter shade, and extremely sheer.

I soon saw, to my joy, that she was a fidgeter, the best kind of woman to be sitting opposite when engaged on the kind of exercise I had embarked upon. Hardly a minute went by when she was not resettling her bandanna, brushing her fringe away from her eyes, straightening the shoulders of her jacket, smoothing her skirt.

The tight, cream-coloured top she was wearing under her jacket seemed to be giving her particular trouble, and she fussed with this as much as her other items of clothing combined, constantly pinching the hem at various points and tugging it down, only for it to have again ridden up into small furrows and ridges a minute or so after each attempt to adjust it.

Her skirt, too, being somewhat tight, also seemed unwilling to submit to her attempts to keep it in place. Despite her frequent smoothing and yanking, it persisted in slithering up along her legs, seeming to reveal more and more between adjustments. At first I thought she was pulling it down so often because she knew I was looking at her legs, but after a while it became clear this was just part of her normal routine of appearance-maintenance, since she wasn't giving me the "do you mind" look I mentioned above.

I have mentioned the skirt was, when pulled down to its maximum length, a few inches above the knee, so even when it had reached its "high water" of riding up it was by no means especially revealing. I've seen many women whose skirts were shorter than hers even when they weren't creeping up. There was, for example, no chance of seeing her panties, and it was obvious she was not wearing a slip, though I did, for the very briefest of split seconds get an enticing flash of the darker band at the top of her hose, proving she was wearing stockings rather than pantyhose.

When I saw the bands of the stockings, my mental classification of the woman sitting opposite did not change. I had already catalogued her as upper crust, and saw no reason to change this conclusion. As I always do, I allowed my thoughts to wander, wondering what she did. Was she, perhaps, a property developer? A stockbroker? The owner of a successful small business? The spoiled wife of a banker or well-paid sportsman?

I pondered this, knowing of course it was unanswerable, as I surreptitiously watched her twitch down her skirt yet again, flick her fringe away from her eyes, tug down her wrinkled top in a series of sharp jerks.

As I say, you have to be subtle in situations such as this, and concentration is necessary to make sure you don't inadvertently make yourself too obvious. I think, however, that I must have let this concentration slip, and looked for too long, and too openly, for suddenly, while in the act of straightening her tight top yet again she looked up at me and her eyes widened. Her face took on a slight pink tinge, the beginnings of a blush.

Oh shit. That's torn it, I thought. The best I might expect from this point was a sarcastic comment, probably a few choice remarks about the size of my penis and auto-erotic practices. She would probably get out at the very next station and change carriages. Perhaps even pull out her phone and tell the authorities there was a filthy perverted voyeur on the train, complete with my description.

To my surprise, however, her reaction was nothing along these lines. Instead, she gave me a kind of shy, self-effacing smile and flicked her fringe out of her eyes again. "Damn top," she said, in a friendly kind of way. "It's been driving me crazy ever since I put it on this morning."

'Yes, I noticed you were having a bit of trouble with it," I said, before I could think what I was saying. "Sorry, I shouldn't have been looking."

The reply I expected was along the lines of a tart no, you shouldn't at one pole, and oh, I'm sure you weren't doing it deliberately at the other. What she in fact said was so surprising I actually felt myself start.

"Oh, you can't help it," she said, matter-of-factly. "Full Mortals can't, you know."

"Full Mortals?" I stammered.

"Oh, yes. I'm half Mortal myself, you see, so I know how it is. I occasionally find myself checking out Mortal men. It goes with my bloodline, I'm afraid."

"Bloodline?" I asked.

"Yes, bloodline. My father was a Mortal, my mother was of the Folk. It often happens that way. It's not supposed to, of course," she winked, "but sometimes neither party can help themselves, if you know what I mean. And though it isn't common, a lady of the Folk can become pregnant to a Mortal, and vice versa. I myself am living proof."

Right now, as you might imagine, the gears of my brain were churning fast. The thing was, despite the long catalogue of partners and practices in my long and intriguing history, I was forced to admit there was one significant gap. Namely that I had never before actually done it with an actual delusional lunatic. Oh, I'd had men or women who pretended to be vampires or werewolves or zombies, and adopted the same pretence myself, but in every case my partners and I had known it was merely a fantasy persona adopted for the duration.

The absolute sincerity in this woman's voice, the casual way she imparted the information, told me that she genuinely believed what she was saying.

I decided on the spot to humour her. If nothing else, it could, I felt, be an interesting conversation.

"So you're a... a fairy?" I asked. "Erm, part fairy, I mean."

"Part Nixie, actually," she replied, as if explaining she was not in fact Korean but Malaysian. "My mother was a Nixie princess, my father, or so she tells me, a soldier. She found him wounded on the field, his bow lying broken by his side, his quiver exhausted, and tended him back to health. Well, if you knew the make-up of a Nixie, you'll know what form that 'tending' took."

"Bow? Quiver? Excuse me asking, but just when was this?"

"We of the Folk aren't too good with Mortal dates," she replied. "She told me the name of the field, though. Cressy, I think she said. The French knights and crossbowmen against the English knights, and men-at-arms and archers. Some silly Mortal quarrel about nothing, as usual." She covered her mouth, guiltily. "Oops, sorry. No offence meant."

"No, I take your point," I replied. I did, too. The history of the last two centuries is, after all, defined by a series of stupid and destructive fights about nothing important. "So your mother nursed this soldier, and cured him of his wounds?"

"She did. Though I can't help feeling it might have come as something of a shock to him when he emerged into the Mortal world again." She gave another little giggle. "Tricorne hats and knee-britches. Not what he would have been used to." Seeing my puzzled look, she added, "Mother was of the full blood, you see. No idea about time at all. Given the short breeding cycle of Full Mortals, he'd have been able to share a glass of wine with his sixteen times great grandson."

"So what's it like?" I asked, "being a part, erm, Nixie, in a Mortal world? Or do you live here? I confess, I always thought the, erm, Folk, rode butterflies and had wings."

She giggled again.

"Have you noticed the size of me?" she asked. "If I stood on a pair of butterflies, they'd be nothing left but a squelchy mess. No, even Folk of pure blood are of a similar size to Mortals. How else could Mother and the soldier have, erm... come together? In fact, both my parents were quite tall for their respective backgrounds. As far as Half Mortals go, I'm considered quite lanky, even if I'm short by Mortal standards. As for wings, mine are just vestigial, completely useless for flight. And, yes, I do live entirely in the Mortal world, except for occasional visits home. Perhaps once every century or so." She tugged down her top again, and yanked at her hem. "The Folk prefer Half-Mortals not be seen at court."

"And you're happy? Living among Mortals?"

"Mainly so." She gave me another of her little half-smiles. "Though of course there are problems. I'm always late for appointments - no idea about time, you see. And I can't ride on aircraft of any kind. The emanations that come from me play havoc with navigational equipment, though, strangely, I can drive a car and operate a phone or a TV and such things. People of the the Folk living in the Mortal realm give off a kind of chaotic wave, and it plays havoc with all kinds of things."

She straightened the shoulders of her jacket again, and gave her skirt hem another twitch. "It's impossible for us to get Mortal clothes to sit properly as you may have noticed. I'm forever having to adjust myself, which can be a little embarrassing in company. And I can't wear any jewellery with the slightest hint of iron in it. It brings me out in a dreadful rash."

"And is this common?" I asked. "Half Mortal offspring of the Folk living in the Mortal world?"

"Rare indeed," she replied. "I think at present I'm possibly the only one. If there are others, I've yet to meet them. But yes, others have found themselves in my situation through the long years. You may have heard of Messalina of Rome? Audrey Hepburn, the actress? Anne Boleyn, the wife of the English King Henry? Queen Marie Antoinette? There have been others of course, who have kept a lower profile, like myself."

"And magic?" I asked. "Can you do, like, magic? Turn people into toads?"

She broke out into a wave of tinkling laughter.

"Why would anyone," she asked, "wish to turn a person into a toad? No, I can't do that. Magic? Well, many would say the world itself is magic. Excuse me." She tugged at her top again. "It's these damn wings of mine that make it keep rucking up of course."

I was forced to admit that while this strange woman was obviously delusional, she certainly did not seem dangerous. Her story, while obviously fabricated, had the virtue of total internal consistency. And, I was forced to admit, it was extremely fascinating. I'd often played sexual role play games, of course, and knew the joy of totally immersing oneself in a character.

"Perhaps I should introduce myself," I said. "My name's James. James Jones." It's not my real name, of course, which I never give to strangers. I usually go by "James," sometimes "John," "Jim" or "Jack." Sometimes my surname is "Brown" or "Green" though never "Smith" which is far too obvious.

"Well, I am very pleased to meet you, James Jones," she replied.

"And you?"

"You may call me 'Cobweb.' "

*****

Though Cobweb claimed she could not perform magic, she was certainly magic enough for me. Just her conversation was enough to keep me spellbound for the entire trip.

She told me everything about her past history, and the joys and annoyances of being a Fairy living among humans. Of being sketched by Michaelangelo, courted by Joseph Bonaparte, exiled in disgrace from Frederick William I's court after two besotted noblemen fought a fatal duel over her, of being taught to write haiku by Matsuo Basho and her narrow escape from a sticky end during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. "They said I put a murrain on their cattle," she told me, indignantly. "I don't even know what a 'murrain' is!"

I didn't try that hard to trip her up and find contradictions in her story - I know the joys, as I say, of "living" a role and I was desperate to keep the illusion going. But I had a strong feeling that even if I'd tried, I'd have been unsuccessful. Her story flowed, appeared completely authentic.

And not only was she entrancing me in a conversational sense, but in that other, earthier way, too. The Nixie, she told me somewhat shyly, tended to fascinate Mortals whether either party wished it or not, but that she could, by an effort of will, "damp down" this power of attraction. She hinted, in fact, that she was making no attempt to do so at the present moment. She was, I registered with delight, flirting with me. Obviously I recognise the signs.

And there was no doubt her flirting was successful. Every flick of her rebellious blonde fringe, widening of her lovely eyes, every tug at her top or skirt, her giggles and blushes when I offered subtle compliments, these things drew me further and further in.

Even without the embellishment of her claimed supernatural bloodline, I would have wanted her. And, she made it clear, in a number of unmistakable ways, that she wanted me.