Greg Myer browsed through a magazine in the waiting room of the mayor's office. The outmoded media publication absolutely fascinated him from top to bottom. The waxy feel of each page as he turned it, the time locked articles in a world of constantly flowing information, and the photoshopped images of celebrities -- he found it charming and inspirational. Things could be more simple if change stopped. Men and women could be beautiful, shaped to an ideal perfection without flaw or blemish. And everything could feel so delightfully sinful.
His eyes moved to the clock. Greg was not impatient, but he was curious if he was being kept waiting. From the secretary's initial reaction, he was not a welcome sight. Mayor Bill Hawthorne had been reluctant to take the meeting at all, but Greg and his associates had been quite insistent. The secretary heard his name before she looked at him which explained her initial blanched reaction. She had been expecting the typical type of greasy businessman who would rapidly buy up property and convert it to whatever industry could turn the quickest profit regardless of the long term effects. Greg knew the secretary, Carla if her name plate was to be believed, had pictured a short man in an ill fitted, cheap suit with a bald patch, greasy face, and sweaty palms. His actual appearance had flustered her immediately. Like so many women, her eyes were drawn to his biceps. Greg had considered wearing a suit, but didn't want to seem overly formal and instead opted for a short sleeve polo and a nice pair of slacks. The shirt had the obvious benefit of showing off his barrel chest and even showing a few rogue chest hairs sticking out from the neckline.
Greg's new power let him keep tabs on everything about Carla. He could sense her heartbeat rising. In a way, he could even hear her thoughts. The closer she came to sin, the more tangible her desires appeared to him. True mastery of his power remained out of reach, though. At first, he thought of it as mind reading, but he quickly learned that was not the case. The mind, he realized, was like a busy highway with thousands of conflicting thoughts, some conscious some not. Even if he could read a human's mind, it would be the equivalent of incoherent screaming, a sound all too kin to what he'd heard on his one trip to Hell. At best, he might glean a snapshot of a thought process, but they change too quickly to be of much use.
Instead, he saw things about his victims in flashes, like thoughts forced into his own mind. As he browsed the magazine, Carla clicked away at her computer, filling out a spreadsheet and focusing most of her attention on keeping track of numbers. But her subconscious was busy with other things. A small thought in the back of her mind lingered on Greg's presence. Greg concentrated, and the thought opened itself to him. Carla imagined bending over her desk while the burly stranger played with her pussy. She concentrated on two feelings, first Greg's fingers buried in her juicy snatch, and two, the feeling of Greg's thick cock pushing against her inner thigh. The image shifted slightly, like flicker in an old film, but Greg saw it as a door. Behind it waited other thoughts, things linked to her current fantasy. He saw an image of a young man, also Latino, her boyfriend. He saw other lovers and other fantasies.
With each image came a feeling that provided context. Greg thought if he were still human and not a sex demon, the feelings might overwhelm him, but as disconnected as he was from humanity, the feelings were yet another foreign object for analysis. One scene of sex with a young man had shame associated with it. If he chose, Greg could have prodded the thought and understood why, but he already knew enough about Carla to win her over. Another image showed sadness. It was not of sex, but of the afterglow, cradled in the arms of a man she had not seen in years. Beside the sadness was a profound feeling of love that Greg wrinkled his nose at. Carla loved the man greatly. Greg pushed the memory away as he browsed further into her feelings.
While he perused her deepest thoughts, his mere presence continued to have a profound effect on her. Carla was an attractive woman, the perfect eye candy for a mayor's office. Before his ascension to demonic servitude, Greg would have been embarrassed to be looked at by her. She was probably a little under thirty with a slim figure and a nice pair of breasts. A caramel colored Latina complexion gave her a smooth glow, and silky black hair framing her face nicely. While Greg could only properly be satisfied by one of his completely changed harlots, he still appreciated the uncorrupted beauty of an unsuspecting young woman. He knew that she was getting wet from her errant thoughts. Her breathing lost its normal rhythm, and the arousal caused her breasts to imperceptibly swell. Greg looked up from the magazine and smiled at her. She brushed her hair aside and smiled back. Greg laughed to himself. Sometimes he liked a challenge, but other times it was fun to find an easy one.
The door of the office opened. "Mr. Myers, won't you come in?"
***
The mayor's office looked like any other civil servant's office. Fatuous awards and pictures of Hawthorne shaking hands with local businessmen lined the walls. Greg strode into the room confidently as Hawthorne stood to the side. He'd not voted for the mayor and considered him a little too ingrained with the city's business sector. At the time, Greg had wanted to stand up for the communities, but now he was glad the weasel had been elected. Hawthorne would suit his purposes well. "Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Mayor."
"Certainly," Hawthorne answered as the two men took their seats. Greg irritably tried to get comfortable in a chair designed to be too short. Mayor Hawthorne clearly read some fool's book about power structures in furniture. "I'm always happy to meet with my constituents. If anything I need to apologize for being so hard to nail down. My schedule stays surprisingly busy."
Greg smiled. "Of course, I have the same problem. Always a different place that needs me."
"Yes, I see that you've been acquiring property at, forgive me for saying it, an alarming rate."
"I think that our town is a little overdue for some resurgence. Our local businesses have become entrenched and started to stagnate. I'm trying to inject some investment." Greg sat up in his chair, managing to look intimidating even from his lower position.
Hawthorne began to answer, but hesitated. He remember his father often saying someone had walked over his grave whenever an ill feeling passed over him. Hawthorne had never once thought of that old adage in regards to himself until he looked across the desk at Greg Myers. The handsome businessman falsely smiled back. "Ahem, we certainly appreciate any investment, Mr. Myers, but these things require process. The system makes sure everything is done so the public's voice is not ignored. And we must account for things like safety. These buildings you've acquired, like the old warehouse a few blocks over, you want to turn it into a night club or lounge, but it's not zoned for that."
"My people are bringing it in line with expectations. The only thing slowing them down is where an arbitrary line has been drawn."
"All due respect, sir, but those lines aren't arbitrary."
Greg cocked his head to the side. "I misspoke. You're right. They aren't arbitrary at all. Those lines are drawn to protect current businesses. If my club is allowed to open, then the others in the district will face competition. Or worse, they might see a different element of customer in their neighborhood." He let his power seethe out of him once again. Hawthorne was not an easy man to win over with Greg's brand of skills. The man was preoccupied by greed, but Greg felt he'd already given too many concessions to that other demonic tribe. Still, he was having trouble wriggling out the mayor's dirty little secrets. "And you wouldn't want any of your little interests to be damaged."
Hawthorne stiffened. "I'm not sure what you mean. Frankly, Mr. Myers, you're correct in that your businesses would attract an undesirable element." He flipped through a stack of papers. "This bar that you've purchased. You're wanting to convert it to a strip club. That would violate everything our city has stood for."
"It breaks no law," Greg answered.
"Then we will put it before the city council," Hawthorne was not veiling his icy demeanor any longer. The cold glare on the man's face made Greg wonder what had made him so hard hearted at such a young age. Hawthorne was only in his early forties, much too young to have such cynical drives. "We'll allow the citizens to hear your plans and see if they approve of your club."
"That would be unusual in the issuing of a normal permit. Maybe you would satisfied with testimony of a few normal citizens. Let's get Carla in here and ask her what she thinks of it." Greg wanted a distraction, but with the mention of Carla's name he saw the flicker in Hawthorne's thoughts. The mayor's life opened up for Greg to peruse. Greg saw a prudish wife more concerned with her looks and the opinions of her friends than satisfying her husband. They'd married out of convenience, and Greg saw no love in Hawthorne's thoughts. But it also seemed Carla wasn't the only one fantasizing about bending her over the desk.
"I'd rather not involve my secretary in your machinations, Mr. Myers."
"Then allow me to make the argument a little differently. I'm interested in seeing a strong night life return to the city. We have a young demographic that needs places to blow off steam. Ceder Pines is at a crossroads. You can isolate a few businesses with protectionist policies and keep them afloat for a few more years, but eventually they will fail. Your employers will leave, the economy will falter, and the city will die. I lost my job before I started all this. I was downsized, but they didn't hire a younger man to replace me. They just didn't replace me. My job was moved to a call center overseas. My neighbor's daughter was going to finish her degree and move off to a city where she could find a job, but we need people like her to stay here. She's at the top of my list to help run some of these clubs. We can open the night life. We can give people a reason to stay. Sure, some of my business ventures aren't exactly family friendly, but that's why we have suburbs, as havens to keep the pure and chaste away from reality until they're ready. I can fix this city. I can give people a reason to stay in Ceder Pines. That means they'll need jobs which I can also help with. That means they'll pay taxes. They'll settle down here. I have the means. All I need is for City Hall to get out of my way."
Hawthorne leaned back in his chair. Myers clearly knew more than he let on. In a matter of weeks, the seedy businessman had appeared on Hawthorne's radar out of the ether. Hawthorne looked into him as best he could, but quickly began to fear he might be meddling with something above his pay grade. The owners of the other companies in Ceder Pines paid him to keep the wheels greased. Myers was a significant obstacle to that goal. The mysterious new player had more money and guile than anyone else Hawthorne had ever met, but more disconcerting to the mayor was Myer's apparent lack of goal or motivation. Every property and venture the man pursued seemed to random. Hawthorne didn't believe the man's sad story about helping Ceder Pines one inch. Considering his options, Hawthorne concluded that his best path at the moment was to take no action and wait for more information. "Greg, I think you've done a good job making your case. But at the moment, I can't promise anything. These zoning restrictions are a lot of red tape and getting these lines moved and your permits approved will take some time to bounce around the bureaucracy."
Greg stood up without prompt. "I think that's the best I can hope for. Mr. Mayor, pleasure to see you, I think we'll meet again soon. With time to reconsider my proposals, I think you'll wind up siding me. I really do." Greg shook the man's hand.
Hawthorne had to resist recoiling at the man's touch. He watched Greg leave the room and close the door behind him. The mayor rubbed his eyes as his heart thumped quickly in his chest. He knew what he saw. As Greg Myer walked out of the door, his shadow lingered for a few seconds more. A shadow with eyes that watched, that had been watching all along. Hawthorne reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle.
***
