Escape From Forestblind

ESCAPE FROM FORESTBLIND: CHAPTER ONE

"What the hell?"

Monica was the first of the three friends to pause clicking her keyboard, but Jonelle and Tiffany quickly followed suit. Their gazes were locked, eyes wide, on the screens of their laptops, fingers motionless above their keyboards after Monica's surprised reaction.

"Jonelle!" Tiffany exclaimed. "What kind of game is

this

? Where did you get it?"

Jonelle, a chemistry major in a blue long-sleeve t-shirt and jeans answered cautiously. "Umm, I don't know. I mean, I know where I got it — at that used book store we wandered into last month on the trip we took to go to the concert. But I don't know much about the game, except that it looked kind of fun from the description on the case. It only cost, like, three bucks or something, and it was kind of nostalgic to actually buy a DVD game," Jonelle said. She leaned down to retrieve the case. "Yeah. Just like I remember," she mused, her eyes scanning the game case. "Lots of good ratings, and I liked this right here," she announced, pointing to some writing on the case: "'Join a group of young women bucking norms in a race to escape an oppressive, toxic male society.' I figured we'd have some hoots playing a cheesy, low-res groaner, but at least it seemed to have a social conscience about male jerks and the trouble they cause."

"Still trying to forget Brad, obviously," Monica said. The comment drew a scowl from Jonelle.

"But, Jonelle! This . . . this . . . whatever you call this . . . it came out of nowhere," Tiffany said, pointing at her laptop screen. Also a chem major, the slender and athletic young black woman with close-cropped hair fixed her gaze back on the paused gaming scenario showing on her laptop. "Do the comments on the box say anything about Xandria's and Gabrella's and Kelsana's escape out of the forest requiring them to use those things on Scaffaro and his guards?"

"Yeah," Monica chimed in. "Did you know about this?" She cocked her head to look at Jonelle. In the process her light brown/blonde-wannabe hair fell back into her eyes, and she brushed it away. Again. For maybe the fifty-eth time since the three of them began playing "ForestBlind: The Escape" over an hour ago. She shook her hair to free the strands that had fallen into the collar of her green blouse.

"Look, guys. I swear. If I'd known something like this was going to come up, well, I don't think I would have-"

"You don't

think

? Really?" Tiffany asked, incredulous.

"Jeez, let me finish," Jonelle said, miffed. "I was about to say that I don't think I would have bought this game for us to try out if I'd known about this particular scenario." The dark-haired young woman in glasses looked hurt, but only for a few seconds. Then a very small smile started tugging one corner of her mouth upward.

Tiffany narrowed her eyes at her. "You're lying, Jonelle. I see that face you're making."

"No, I'm

not

lying. I had no idea this was coming up in the game. For real."

"Then why that face, Jonelle," Monica asked. "I saw it, too."

"You guys!" Jonelle said, flopping back in frustration but then quickly returning her gaze to her own laptop screen as it sat on what passed for a coffee table in the small apartment the three of them shared a little ways off campus. "I did

not

know this situation was part of the game! Here — see?" She thrust the game case at her two friends. "There's nothing about this anywhere in the description, and the names of the characters aren't even shown on the case."

Tiffany and Monica held the case between them, scanning the front, then turning it over.

"But, you know," Jonelle said cautiously, "Umm, well, uh, aren't you at least a little curious about this?"

Tiffany interrupted. "You mean curious about Xandria, Gabrella, and Kelsana luring Scaffaro and the guards into the cottage to get in from the cold and snow, and-"

Monica interrupted in order to finish Tiffany's observation: "-and casting a spell on them to yield the code to open the amulet by-"

Jonelle cut them both off by jumping into the middle of their accusations with the thing that had yet been spoken by the three gamers: "Yes! Exactly! By enchanting the men using strap-on cocks. And just waving those things in front of that evil dictator and his guards to hypnotize them is surely only the first step toward whatever else the three of us are about to do with those strapons."

Silence. Tiff looked at Monica. Monica returned the stunned expression, then fixed her gaze on Jonelle, as did Tiffany.

"So you're saying we just strap in and do this?" Monica asked.

Jonelle's enthusiasm came through in her response. "Look. You two would never even consider a game with female characters using strapon cocks to cast spells or for anything else — and remember, ladies, we don't know what's going to happen yet in the game. Maybe the strapons are just magic wands in disguise." Jonelle smirked at her friends. "Admit it. You wouldn't touch a game like this with a ten-foot-long sword of any heroine you can name if you knew your character would pull out a strapon cock in Level 2."

More silence. Tiff drew in a big breath, opening her eyes wide and shaking her head. "You're right about that, Jonelle," she said. "So what are you saying? That we go ahead and do this?"

Monica chewed her lip and brushed back her hair, waiting to hear Jonelle's answer.

Jonelle stood up suddenly, pinning back her dark hair with her hands, elbows out to the side, and looked at the ceiling, then back at her roommates. "It's a really good game, right? We've been at it for how long? And it's been intense and fun and cool the whole time." She paused, glancing to the screen of her laptop. "And, well, the whole idea of the three heroines — Gabrella, Kelsana, Xandria . . .

us

, you guys,

US!

— doing guys with strapons . . . I just think it's kinda sexy."

Tiff jumped up to look at her friend. "What?"

Turning toward her roommate and shrugging, Jonelle said, "Maybe this will be a really sexy scene. Come on, you guys! We've all heard of pegging, right? We're college women. It's not the 19

th

century, you know."

Monica chimed in. "There

was

that scene in the film about the anti-hero in the red suit, Tiffany."

The three of them had seen the movie together. Monica streamed it from her laptop onto the flat-screen TV they'd lugged up the stairs to their second-floor apartment when they moved in together as juniors at the state university. After three weeks of fall semester, and none of them with a particularly serious relationship, a movie night with popcorn was just what they needed.

"Yeah," Jonelle said to Tiffany, laughing. "And you just about peed yourself when Monica said, and I quote, 'He's talking about his girlfriend strapping a dildo to her crotch and using it to . . . uh . . . you know . . . uhmm . . . well, ah-'" She exaggerated Monica's stumbling, didn't-want-to-actually-say-it approach to trying to help Tiffany get a clue.

Monica couldn't hold back a giggle and sagged back into the sofa. "I didn't exactly know how to put it, but I knew you got the message, Tiff."

The black girl dropped back into her seat, turning immediately to her laptop on the side table next to her chair. She toyed with the drawstring to the colorful lounge pants she was wearing. "So you think this might be sexy? Xandria doing Scaffaro with a strapon?"

"Hell, yeah," Jonelle enthused. "And me as Gabrella and Monica as Kelsana pegging Scaffaro's guards. Haven't you ever wondered what it would be like?" She sat back down, looking at her friends, her question demanding answers from her roommates.

"

I

have," Monica said, an announcement, plain and simple. "I'd like to see some girl doing it to a guy, and not just in a video game. I'd like to see it in real life, I mean." She paused a beat, then jumped in on the end of her previous comment. "No, not in

real

life! Not there in the room with them — I mean a real girl doing a real guy with a strapon, like in a video or something, and in a way that shows everything, not just some quick images and implications."

The three friends had gossiped about guys and sex and frustrations many times across the years. The conversations had evolved from junior-high giggling through high school escapades through all of them having had sex with boyfriends — Jonelle with several, Monica and Tiffany with only a couple. There had been debriefing talks, what-iffing talks, oh-no-he-didn't talks, and just random talks that wound around to sex and guys and hopes and dreams. It was true bonding conversation that had become far more frequent when Monica transferred into the university after doing her first two years in their hometown's community college, joining her two friends who were already at State.

But the topic of pegging had never come up, except for Monica's halting explanation of what the guy's girlfriend had been doing to him in the movie. And Tiff's reaction — a wailing "Eeeyueeeiick!" — pretty much ended that conversation.

So Tiffany Sorrell, the leggy beauty among the three friends, each with their own kind of attraction for a range of men, was the young woman most unsettled about strapon sex. She wrestled with emotions as she looked back to her computer screen to see Xandria frozen in place, strapon in a harness dangling from one hand as she smiled at Scaffaro in front of the fireplace in the large cottage in ForestBlind where snow would continue to drift down from a darkening sky as soon as she, Monica, and Jonelle, resumed their engagement in the fantasy game.

Jonelle's Gabrella character was in another room in the cottage, one of Scaffaro's guards cornered, his sword and dagger mysteriously gone, and Gabrella smiling innocently as she held a strapon and harness. Kelsana, Monica's character, was in the cottage's kitchen, and had backed the guard she was confronting against a large wooden prep table.

"Come on, guys!" Jonelle's entreaty to her friends bordered on exasperation. "This is the coolest RPG we've found yet. The graphics are incredible, and we're all gorgeous as the heroines in this story."

"She's right, Tiff," Monica said. "This game rocks. How many times in the past hour have we said, 'How did the game designers do that?' when something we didn't think could happen in a game actually did?"

Tiffany shook her head slowly. "Damn, Jonelle! I wasn't thinking anything like . . . like

THIS

would be part of the story."

Jonelle responded with some good-natured cajoling to try to convince her friend. "Come on, Tiff — those PG games you keep finding to download have been okay, but wouldn't you like to-"

"Okay. Okay!" Tiffany answered. "But I have no idea how to do this. How do we level up out of this scenario? Is there a right way to . . . to

peg

a guy, and if there is and we don't do it right, are we gonna get busted back down to Scaffaro's repulsive dungeon?"

"Only one way to find out," Jonelle responded simply. "And I'm going in!"

She tentatively poised her hands over the keyboard of her laptop and cautiously tapped the key to resume the action.

"My guard is kind of handsome, at least from what I can tell under his helmet and armor," Monica said. "I wonder if he's gonna get naked before I do him." She, too, tapped a key to re-enter the game.

Tiffany spewed out a combination laugh and regret, then hit the key on her laptop.

***

"What kind of witchery is this?" Scaffaro demanded. A light sheen of perspiration on the dark cocoa skin of his face testified to his exertions and his rising alarm. "What is that?"

"Oh, I think you know," Xandria replied, advancing on ForestBlind's autocratic ruler. "It looks like a cock, don't you think?"

Glancing wildly around the cottage, his sword nowhere in sight, he lunged at Xandria.

Slipping nimbly to the side, she laughed as Scaffaro crashed into a wooden chair. "Clumsy of you, Your Highness!"

"You are not the only one here with magic to cast!" he bellowed. From behind his back he flung his hand out, and a spiral white bolt of energy lanced through the air at Xandria.

"No!" She crossed her forearms in front of her, the strapon and harness still secure in one hand. The light arced away, sizzling. The air instantly took on an electric smell.

Incredulity knitted his eyebrows, and Scaffaro looked dumbly at his hand. "Sorceress! Nay, you are a demon!"

Xandria smirked. "No. Simply wise and gifted in the arts of the mage." She dangled the strapon and harness once more in his face. "I

am

your enchantress, and you are powerless to stop my advance."

She threw her arms wide and exclaimed, "Be gone, clothing! Be gone, evil nature! Be gone, all resistance!"

In the blink of an eye, his armor, his boots, his clothing, his undergarments simply vanished. Looking down at his naked body, Scaffaro's confused expression was hidden from her, but Xandria knew he was trying to process something completely foreign to him.

He had met his match.

Her power was growing as the scenario progressed. She felt the thrill of knowing this man, now completely naked and comically crossing his hands in front of his crotch and bending over to hide himself, was going to surrender to her pleasure.

But the evil Scaffaro was now somehow different. He was no longer so . . . so brutish. Xandria observed carefully. Was this his own trickery to gain the upper hand? How could he now suddenly be . . . well,

clean

? No more matted hair, no more stench of a day's ride. No more dirt carelessly allowed to cling wherever it wanted.

He straightened to look at her. They locked their gazes on each other, and Xandria tried to read his mind. But even her powers at their greatest — at least yet — did not include the ability to know what he was thinking.

Slowly, his gaze began to waver. She saw his eyes move. He was looking at her. From the top of her head down to her face, his gaze traveled as she watched him. He was not coy about looking at her body — his gaze traveled all over it, lingering here and there before his eyes again focused on her face.

The light from the fire in the fireplace painted an orange glow along one side of his body as he stood before her. The flickering light danced across the muscles in his shoulders, chest, abs, now all completely revealed.

He looked almost . . . normal? No: intriguing? He was somehow different, somehow no longer the vile dictator of ForestBlind.

And his nude, muscular body held an erotic enchantment of its own.

How can he look so alluring?

Xandria thought.

No! No! No-o-o-o!

she yelled mentally.

It is his sorcery! He is tricking me!

She widened her stance, ready to repulse an attack.

But he remained standing. Looking. Examining her.

"My lady," he said simply.

And he dropped his hands to his sides.

***

"Shit!" Tiffany exclaimed, scooting back quickly from her laptop. "Jonelle! Monica! Are you seeing-"

"Whoooo," Monica said softly, air escaping through her lips slowly. "Where did the game designers find the coding for this beautiful man!" She pointed to her own laptop screen. "My guard looks like the hottest guy imaginable!"

"Nuh-uh," said Jonelle. "

My

guard is hotter!"

The three friends looked at each other. "What is going on?" Tiffany asked, almost in a whisper. "What is happening?"

The air in their apartment was eerily still.

Jonelle leaned over to look at Monica's screen. Then she looked at Tiffany's screen, then looked back at her own.

"I do

not

know how this could be coincidence," she said slowly. "Each of the guys we're dealing with are, are-"

"Yeah," Tiffany interrupted. "They are each completely naked, and if we'd designed these guys ourselves, they couldn't have been closer to what we've told each other is our own perfect man, at least in terms of physical appearances."

Tiffany looked at her friends' screens, then back at her own.

"Don't lie, Tiff," Jonelle said, pointing at Tiffany's screen. "You said once you do like looking at big dicks. It's not something we'd forget. And Xandria has just discovered that Scaffaro has a very large cock."

Nodding in agreement as she looked at Scaffaro on Tiffany's screen, Monica said, "That guy is hung." Then she grinned. "Not that I'd kick him out of bed, but I really like my guy better." She gazed at her screen, scrutinizing the incredibly realistic, 3-D character who was blonde, blue-eyed, and ripped.

Monica and Tiffany looked at Jonelle. They giggled and said, in unison, "And Jonelle loves her some Latin lovers!"

Jonelle pouted for a second, but then grinned broadly. "And my guard is a Latin fox!" she exclaimed.

Jostling each other to see the others' laptop screens, the three friends were voyeurs to naked male eye candy: Tiffany's dark-skinned Adonis, Jonelle's handsome Latin man, and Monica's blonde Viking. The male characters were so realistically rendered by the game's designers that — except for the fact the three college women knew they were engaged in a role-playing game — these guys looked

real

. What showed on the screens of their laptops looked like photographs taken for some kind of explicit, high-class coffee-table book of nudes, with these three naked men on a location shoot at a forest cottage.

The three friends fell silent, looking at each other, then to their laptop screens, then back at each other. Tiffany moved one hand slowly to her mouth, covering it reflexively as an unsettling thought came unbidden to her mind. Then Jonelle sucked in a slow breath and said quietly, "How the hell did this happen? How did this game know what each of us would want to see if we went looking for naked men?"

"Just coincidence," Monica said, breaking the tension in the air. "We three could be as different as possible from what we are, and the game would still have Scafarro and his guards looking exactly like they do right now."

"But only if the three women players had leveled up to 2," Tiffany said. "Maybe that's it — maybe the game learns stuff about the players during Level 1."

"But learning the players' sexual fantasies about naked guys? About the exact kind of body, face, even dick size?" Jonelle asked. "I don't think so."

Tiffany rose to go to the kitchen for a glass of water, adjusting her t-shirt in the process and unconsciously smoothing the front of it to make clear the image of the knight on horseback, her high school's mascot, and the 'DHS Track Team' wording underneath. "And what other so-called coincidences have happened? Like, how did the launch of the game already have characters that hooked us in immediately — remember? We thought it was so cool that-"

"Yeah," Jonelle interrupted. "What a coincidence that Xandria is tall, athletic, and black, and Gabrella is . . . well, like me, and Kelsana is like-"

"You guys are trippin'," Monica said, interrupting Jonelle's accelerating conspiracy theory. "You're letting your imaginations run wild."

Tiffany — every bit the 'tall, athletic, black' young woman that Jonelle had just described as being Xandria — came back into the small den quickly and reached for the game box. "A-ha! I thought so!" She was holding the box in front of her, turning it from front to back and side to side. "What kind of role-playing game doesn't have a rating or pictures of the main characters on the box?"

"Huh?" Jonelle said, taking the box from Tiffany. "I didn't notice that." She scrutinized the box, just as Tiff had done. "The landscape shots take up a lot of space on the cover, and when the characters are shown at all, everybody is on horseback, shown from the back. You can't tell who's who. It's even hard to figure out how many characters are being shown."

She lowered the box, her brow knitted in puzzlement. "And no rating symbol anywhere."