No one at the high school caught Sibley's attention, and she didn't catch theirs either. She was tiny for eighteen, wispy and forgettable, her hair and eyes mud brown and unassuming. She sat at the back of every class, doodling fat lines with the softest pencil she could buy at the tiny corner store; she drew face after achingly intimate face.
Sibley was the first out the door when the last bell rang, her thick rag skirt wheeling around her legs as she fled through the long grass behind the school. She put rigidity and fact behind her, the strict lines of the schoolhouse fading below the curve of the hill until she was free of prying eyes.
She ran so often that even the three-mile jog felt easy; she was still breathing lightly, eyes bright, when she trotted up to the abandoned telegraph station and slipped into the cool interior. She'd arranged her sketchbooks on the operator's shelf, where the logs had been long before she'd found the place; she slipped the latest, only half full, between the last one and the rock that served as a bookend.
Then Sibley sat down on the chair and lifted her skirt.
She reached for the Morse key and slid it to the exact center of the desk, where there was a groove in the wood. She gently touched the metal button as she slipped her other hand between her lower lips and gently distributed the moisture gathering there. She closed her eyes and shivered with a private smile. This was always a perfect moment of anticipation.
She began to tap the familiar Morse code, slipping her fingers inside herself as she did so: C-O-M-E-stop-T-O-stop-M-E.
A light breeze stirred the dead leaves swept into the corner. Sibley smiled, her eyes still closed, and pressed the key again: C-O-M-E-stop-T-O-stop-M-E.
The wind picked up. Eddies of exotic scents caressed Sibley's cheeks and made her wrinkle her nose with a smile. She began to tap the message once more: C-O-M-Eβ
Then it was there with her, a figure neither male nor female, twice as tall as she was and rippling with muscle. Its ethereal skin crackled arcs of light in an unnamable color. Sibley tilted back in the chair to look up at the being, her hand never moving from between her legs.
The being trained its vivid purple gaze on her, consuming her. Sibley widened her legs invitingly, her face alight with desire. The first time she had discovered the being that lived in the abandoned lines, its power had terrified her and she had fled. She'd lain awake, thinking of those eyes that had wanted her, and finished herself off with her hand as she imagined its lightning fingers on her body.