"I tell you, they are mind controlling our women, and if the council won't do something about it, I will!" Mrs. Edith Claridge's voice went up half an octave as she got more excited and angry. She was an unattractive woman. The weight she carried might have made her curvy or pleasingly plump, but the perpetual frown she wore on her face and the loose fitting grey and brown clothes she wore made her seem dumpy. If there had been a no-fun league, Mrs. Claridge gave the impression she would want to be president of it. Instead, she was chairwoman of People Resisting the Infernal Servants of Satan. It was in that capacity that she had signed up to address the council for the five minutes that was the right of any citizen who managed to navigate the internet form within two minutes of the time it became available after the previous meeting, two minutes being the average time it took for four people to sign up.
"Thank you, Mrs. Claridge," said the Honorable Lewis Thurston. "Your time is up."
"There is no such thing as a matter of too much time on a matter like this!" Mrs. Claridge stated. "Humanity itself is at stake!"
"Mrs. Claridge, please sit down. We are prepared to look into this matter as soon as you do so."
"Well. I should hope so!" With a harrumph, Mrs. Claridge sat down heavily.
"Dr. Canwell, I understand you've done some research into this?" Thurston liked to be prepared, and Claridge's speech had been predictable enough, so he had asked Abigail Canwell to be present at the meeting.
Abby stood up. "Yes, sir," she said.
The Honorable Lewis Thurston liked being called sir. "And what were your findings."
"The skin and secretions of the Enhanced," she started, using the nomenclature preferred by the beings more commonly called "demons," "do indeed contain a mild aphrodisiac."
"See! Mind control!" cried Mrs. Claridge, getting back to her feet.
"It would be a shame," The Honorable Thurston said, not meaning a word of it, "if we had to have you removed for being out of order, Mrs. Claridge."
Mrs. Claridge frowned even more than usual and sat back down.
"You were saying, Dr. Canwell?" Thurston prompted.
"A very mild aphrodisiac. Laboratory tests indicate that even the sort of dose one would get from prolonged physical contact - say, dancing for several minutes, even if very little, er, fabric was in the way -"
"As it usually is," interjected Mrs. Claridge. "Satan's servants are all perverts."
"You have been warned, Mrs. Claridge. Please resist the impulse to stand, speak, or otherwise demonstrate." Thurston made a face. "I promise to have a question for you later on, if you're still here." It might work, he thought, and he imagined he could make up something. "Dr. Canwell, please continue."
"Even that sort of dose produces an amount of arousal less than what most of our test subjects experience while watching a video designed to produce arousal."
"And you did tests with both women and men? Should I inquire about how you were able to do this experiment?"
"Yes, to the former, of course. And men reacted more strongly to the videos, as you might guess, but we used videos based on what we thought was likely to be arousing for each participant. As for the testing of the aphrodisiac, we obtained a sample, and chemically analyzed it until we could eliminate the possibility of all but a few chemicals being the active agent. We then tested the agents until we determined that only one had the arousing effect. This agent - which is present in humans, too, by the way, albeit in smaller quantities - was then synthesized and used in the test."
She paused while she remembered getting the samples. After an hour of dancing with a demon, she had managed to pull herself away. The little black dress she had worn had been analyzed, as well as samples from her skin. There was some guess work involved, in all of it, of course, and it was true that she'd erred on the side of understating the amount of aphrodisiac transmitted - all within reason, of course. And advertising for subjects to watch erotic movies as part of a study probably selected for those who were more likely to be aroused by pornography. But still, everything she said was defensible, and her study had every chance of being approved by a peer-reviewed journal.
She had gone back to the club. She could now speak from experience that giving a blowjob with an absorbent piece of cotton in her mouth to gather samples wasn't an enjoyable experience. The concentration of aphrodisiac in the semen of the demon's was many times higher than in their skin, but of course that happened afterward, and even so, it was hardly mind control in Abby's opinion. They just had a chemical boost for making their lovers feel very, very good. She looked forward to repeating the experience - without the cotton.
"Thank you, Dr. Canwell," said Thurston, snapping her out of her reverie.
"I have a question for Dr. Canwell," The speaker was Ginger Schmidt, a friend of Thurston's but also the council member who was most sympathetic to Mrs. Claridge and PRISS.
"The lady has the floor," Thurston said, with grace he did not feel.
"What could account for the behavior we've heard of going on at Inferno, Dr. Canwell?" Ginger said, referring to the demon nightclub. "I refer specifically to the way women, even married women, behave there."
"I'm a biologist, not a sociologist," Abby said. "So I really am not an expert on human behavior. As a human, and a woman, I could hazard a guess."
"Please do," Ginger prompted.
"I think it's likely that women have sexual drives of their own, and enjoy being with well built, skillful lovers."
"You're not here to advertise for them!" Mrs. Claridge shouted. "How'd you collect those samples, anyway?"
"Sgt. Dornan, please escort Mrs. Claridge from the meeting. Thank you," said Thurston, relieved he didn't have to engage her later as he promised.
"Well, I never!" Ginger said, no doubt meaning something. The handful of people who read the minutes later speculated that perhaps Ginger was a virgin, which given that she was the mother of three children, missed the mark widely. One of those children, christened Saffron but called Saffy by all her friends, was twenty years old and had been sitting in the back row. She listened a few minutes longer, and when the council moved on to other matters she slipped out. After all, it was Friday night, and Friday night meant Inferno.
Meanwhile, Alissa Cartwright was being talked into having her photo taken.
"If they are good enough to be fucked -" her friend Jane was saying.
"And oh, they definitely are!" interrupted Alissa.
"Then they are good enough to be acknowledged. More than acknowledged. We should be proud."
Alissa looked over at her husband Kyle. "What about it, honey? Are you ready for your wife to be outed as a demon fucker?"
