Chapter 4 -- In the Flesh
Virginity can be lost by a thought.
-St. Jerome
Scratch's searching hand finally climbed her leg and began to worry at the tight knot that Catherine had wrapped her thighs into. After a few moments of trying to get in, he stopped bruising and raising the skin on her neck to murmur, "Open."
Catherine's thighs parted, and Scratch resumed his nipping and sucking at her neck. A thousand thoughts seemed to speed through her mind, and yet none seemed to stir at the same time, her consciousness as lax and throbbing as her body. Prime in her thoughts was the sudden understanding (one that was, notably, not as life-shatteringly horrifying as it should have been) that this may be the way that she lost her virginity.
Well, she had no hymen -- she could remember the gross sound it made as she had punctured it with, of all things, a plastic broom handle during one horny period when she was fifteen -- but the most she had put inside of her had to of been downright puny in comparison to the thing that seemed to burn against her. And nothing she had used had ever been attached to something with large horns.
A glance, more due to morbid curiosity than anything else, carried her rolling eyes down to the large piece of hard flesh that separated their lower bodies from one another. Her mouth hung open, for one long moment, in shock, as she realized that the belief that porn would -- could -- have ever prepared her for the sight and feel of
it
had been a horrible myth. Had she been aware, before that night, that the path in life would lead her directly into the path of that throbbing cock, she may have very well entered a convent to ensure that she would never encounter it.
"Oh my Goooood." She groaned.
Scratch paused, pulling his face away from the shivering skin on her neck to say, "Remember: Scratch. Not God. Scratch."
When he lowered his head to take up tormenting the other side of her neck, Catherine's body convulsed, and she choked out, "Scraaaatch, oh Goood!"
He laughed, and the sound seemed to strike some electrical current in her spine, on a direct path to her pussy. Horrified by her body's traitorous reactions, Catherine brought her hands down to cover herself, and realized, far too late, that her hands were also pressed bewteen her and as well as Scratch's massive erection.
Her hands, tiny in comparison, felt as though they were close to burning, under the hot weight of the cock that pressed, mercilessly, against them. The head laid against her lower arms, and seemed to more than equal the width of one of them.
Scratch chuckled, the sound an expression of pure sex. "Bring up your arms, I want a nonviolent surrender."
Momentarily finding herself able to gather a single sentence together, Catherine hurriedly said, "Please, don't, I've never been with anyone before."
The smile that had played, wickedly, on Scratch's lips, went down a tic, and his eyes seemed to widen ever so slightly. The red in his eyes that she had seen previously returned, as he nearly whispered, "No one had every touched you?"
"No." She moaned, her insides in turmoil over her desire and her fear. "What
are
you -- you're so
large
-"
"Oh, later," he mumbled softly, rising gently from off of her on his arms so that he could snake one of his massive arms down to push her will-less hands away from what they were guarding. Breathing heavily, Scratch parted her lips with one thick index finger.
The feeling was indescribable, and sent Catherine reeling, as every muscle in her body tensed and relaxed, including her throat, which let out one loud shriek.
Following that, she was only vaguely aware of her moaning his name, in the hope that he could thrust his finger one more time, and, somewhere in the haze, she felt herself mumbling in disbelief that she was close to cumming.
She came, with herself tight around Scratch's finger, in the strongest orgasm that she had ever imagined having.
"Oh, I shouldn't have done-" Catherine heard Scratch mumble, sometime later.
Catherine woke up with a troubling soreness deep inside of her and a nurse shaking her shoulders. When Catherine woke, slowly, the nurse told her that she could leave the hospital, and likely when she thought that she couldn't hear her, muttered about how it must be nice to sleep in till noon.
Cold horror took her, as she pieced together how long she had slept for and the sore feeling that seemed to fill her abdomen. As she looked around the room, however, a feeling of relief began to take over as she soon saw that the television was missing from the room and that the ring that she had imagined putting on was nowhere to be seen on her hand.
As she cleaned everything up and out of the room and put on the clothes that she had come in, she realized that she could not find the ring anywhere. Fear -- and relief -- came with that realization, and when she asked the nurses if they had seen a purple ring, they informed her that they had not seen any sort of a ring, Catherine took it as fate, and walked outside to get into the awaiting cab.
She rode in the taxi in silence, the haunting thought of the missing ring at the forefront in her mind. She hoped, dearly, that the ring had gone with any chance that she could ever be troubled by Scratch.
When she finally arrived at the hotel, she spared a thought for the manager, who she would have to thank, extensively, once she was dressed and in a better condition, as she climbed up the stairs, with the cabbie following in tow.
Once she got in the room, with the key that the manager had kindly handed to her when she had checked into the hospital, Catherine quickly located her purse and pulled out some of the money that her mother had sent her. She gave the cabbie a nice tip, in return for having to follow her upstairs to get paid, and was relieved to, finally, be alone.
"No, we got it for now," Danny voice still sounded as though it was swimming in tar, even over the phone. "we're just gonna be here for an hour more -- we'll be more n' happy to see you tomorrow before noon, if you're feeling better by then."
"Oh -- I'm feeling just fine," Catherine replied, not sure if she should feel relieved or distressed at the thought of spending the day in her hotel room alone. As she spoke on her expensive cell phone, her eyes were busy pawing at Jason Simmons' photo in the slideshow on the University's web page. "Really, they just wanted me to stay over for the night, just to make sure I really didn't have a concussion-"
"Well, that's good to hear, an' we'd love to see you tomorrow, if you can make it. You know, they say on the news that in a week there's gonna be a big storm that'll be rollin' around. Might be a blizzard. You been keeping up with the news?"
Frightened -- as though the mere mention of it would somehow cause it to re-awaken -- Catherine cast a frightened stare over at the television in the room. "I don't watch too much tv."
"Ah, well, maybe you oughta consider watching it -- at least for the weather channel -- or go an' start picking up the paper. The weather's gonna start getting nasty, always does this time a the year, we always turn into Canada." Danny laughed. The sound made Catherine wince.
"I'll, uh, consider it." Catherine continued to stare at the television.
"Keep your head up, girl, if a storm blows through here, it may just set us back a few more weeks, if we're lucky."
"Oh." A possibility Catherine had never before considered. After last night, she had begun considering calling her mother and calling this whole thing a wash. Since that morning, she had been weighing her fear of her mother against the entity that had done... that... to her in her sleep.
Still, though, was it
really
in her sleep?...
"Anyway," Danny continued, "if that storm really does blow through, you oughta consider checking out the town a bit, afore it's all covered in snow."
Sparing a glance out of a gap in the curtain that covered her window, Catherine began to very seriously consider what these people considered "covered" in snow. "I'll look into that."
"Well, good. Y'know, the museum here has a lot o' the stuff your ancestor had in this place, before it was turned into a Bed and Breakfast. Maybe you'd like to see some a that."
"Alright."
A long, awkward pause stretched, before Danny quickly said, "Well, you have a good one, see you tomorrow, I guess." and hung up the phone.
Catherine sat the phone to the side of the desk and thought about the virtues of going outside or sitting around in the room to waste time. After another go-around of that picture of Jason Simmons, she felt as though she could do with a break from web games and crying to episodes of Doctor Who to go see the rest of the town.
Catherine walked into the bathroom, intending on taking a quickie shower before she could fix her hair and go out the door, but the sight of the ring, sitting on the edge of the sink, made her stop dead in her tracks.
Picking it up, Catherine walked to the door and, channeling all of her small amount of energy, she threw it across the parking lot as far as she could manage. Her heart pounded hard in her ears, and an insidious fear filled her.
A walk outside seemed like a good idea, following her re-discovery of the ring, and so Catherine pulled on her winter coat -- a white, heavily insulated thing that fit snugly around her that came with a large, faux-fur lined hood -- and visited the manager to thank her for her help the day before she went off towards the town proper.
The downtown area (one street that was full of mainly abandoned little shops) was only a few blocks away from the hotel, but the blustering cold made Catherine long for the comfort of her warm hotel room, and, for a moment, she thought, longingly, of the apartment back in Chicago.
The first place that looked at all interesting to Catherine was a thrift shop that was owned by an elderly couple who watched her, silently, behind the counter. Even thought he place was heated, their gazes were so cold that she quickly found her way back outside.
The next place was a dilapidated computer repair shop, which had a sign on its door that read, "Be back at 3:00!"
She passed up a small, sad-looking diner before she found the "museum" that Danny had told her about. The place looked, for all of the world, like some sort of an antiques shop run by a hoarder, but the sign above the door proclaimed it to be the Witchwood Museum. A small, sun-beaten sign in the window proclaimed that paid tarot reading were also done inside.
