The Desire Principle Ch 03

Chapter 3: Customer Service

Jake woke up in a position so far from comfortable that he felt compelled to invent a word for it. He had spent the night crumpled up on the sofa in the front room of his house, having fallen asleep to his quietly playing stereo. He as of yet was still untrusting of the phantom bed. He felt a little silly worrying about it now, after the previous night and the much harder to believe reality of his spontaneous blowjob at the hands of a delivery girl. He glanced sidelong at the pizza box sitting on the coffee table, and smiled.

Rolling out from the entanglement that were the spare sheets he had retrieved from the hall closet in lieu of using the new covers that came with his new bed, he resolved that he had better get out of the house today, and so would need clothes. The outfit he had been wearing on the night of his unique discovery was out for reasons relating directly to grass, dirt and blood stains, not to mention it had been a work outfit and was rather restrictive. His clothing from the previous day wouldn't look terribly out of place in the world at large, but he hadn't taken a shower yesterday, and wondered if there was an odor starting to grow.

The only options other than these two would require that Jake venture into the bedroom, where he was fairly sure he still had a bed of unknown origin. Figuring that the supposedly magical charm that had apparently conjured the bed had also granted him an exceptionally enjoyable orgasm at the hands (or rather lips) of an exceptionally cute young woman, it seemed that Jake's odds of anything bad happening if he was near the bed were rather low. He braved the perils the furniture posed, and went in to get a tee-shirt and cargo pants out of his dresser.

As Jake dressed he began to seriously, perhaps for the first time, consider the implications of a magical amulet that granted the wearer anything they wished for. Not wishes, he reminded himself, echoing the instructions of the old man he had encountered on his first night possessing the artifact.

But if it doesn't grant wishes, then what does it do? And how?

Jake wanted those answers, or part of him did, but he somehow knew that he wouldn't find them by spending his entire day at home, like the day before. He also knew that he couldn't - and perhaps didn't want to - avoid any unexpected surprises by spending his entire day at home, like the day before. He wondered at the chance of the day before being all in his head anyhow, but balked at a realistic way to test the theory, such as calling the delivery girl to for a recap of events.

Starting with a quick stop in the bathroom to brush his teeth and inspect his face and hair, he began the process of preparing to depart his sanctuary. All the while he busied himself with thoughts on the cause and capacity of the power the Heart of Gold had. He brushed his hand against it a few times, partly simply because he enjoyed the sensation of having the heavy trinket around his neck, and also partly in some abstract hope that he could awaken its powers. Not that awakening it would help him, as he hardly had the instruction manual. For that matter he was not even certain that instructions existed. If this amulet did have some forbidden or indefinable power, he worried now that he might not have the means to control it.

That thought reminded him of the strange man, standing in the cold water of the river, the night that Jake found the Heart. In retrospect, Jake lamented that he had not listened to the seemingly addled creep. He really hadn't had a reason to, of course. Who in their right mind could take such testimony at face value? But if he had, then maybe he would not be reaping the rewards of this mysterious treasure, instead of tip-toeing around his new bed and wondering if he could expect a visit from the very pissed off boyfriend of a very confused delivery girl.

As Jake finished tying his shoes and snatched his car keys from the hook by the door he realized with a little embarrassment that he had no Earthly idea where it was that he intended to go. He stopped with his front door open, gazing out into the bright sunlight, and called up a little mental checklist of what he wanted to do while he was out of the house today.

Item #1: Eat something. Item #2: Continue testing this golden heart. Item #3: Eat again.

Eating, Jake was fairly certain, could be accomplished almost anywhere. This left his choice of destination largely dependant on where he believed he could best test the Heart to get a sense of the scope and strength it possessed, if any. Stepping out into the warm day and heading for his car, he recalled the words of that odd old man again, and believed he might have an idea of where to go.

*****

The best and only lead that Jake had to go on when attempting to decipher the origins of the Heart was that it supposedly gave him 'whatever his heart desired.'

A desire

, Jake supposed to himself,

is sort of like a basic need. Something that you have to have, and can't possibly live without.

And so Jake made for the place that, in the modern world, hosted all of the things that most people desired: the mall. And they had food, too!

He walked in the main entrance feeling very peculiarly self-conscious, but reassured himself that there was no way that anyone here could know about his motives, or for that matter the strange occurrences he had lived through very recently. And so he fell into the usual routine of wandering the somewhat crowded hallways of the local shopping center. This time however he felt different, as if he were on some mission of dire importance. And he might have been, but the logical part of his mind would remind him at regular intervals that this was all quite insane.

Jake never realized before now, having recently come into the proper perspective, how much of a monument to lust these malls were. Not carnal lust, or at least not always, but simple insatiable desires for those things that will make your living experience more pleasurable without actually making it any more meaningful. Each store he passed was distributing some form of self-gratification.

Life got you down?

Jake began a little commercialized diatribe in his mind.

Buy a pair of shoes that cost more than a small house. Noticing that you lack any relevant skills? Reaffirm your value with this computer game.

He wandered by the front of a lingerie boutique.

Not fuckable enough? These crotchless panties will help.

Of course they weren't actually selling crotchless panties, but Jake felt that he was making his point, if only to himself. What he didn't feel was any strong connection to the mindless folk ambling through the corridors. For the first time he felt like a genuine spectator, removed from the grind of desire-and-acquire that the masses around were instinctively repeating. It seemed, very much to Jake's disappointment, that he didn't want anything out of this place. Didn't desire anything.

A pang of dread shot through him at that revelation. He wondered if the Heart somehow drained him. Perhaps he would only get so many uses before his ability to desire was gone altogether. That one fear began to fracture, sending out little variant concerns with rapidly increasing velocity. He decided that he had better stem that tide quickly, and decided to just do some shopping until his brain gave up and went back into hibernation.

He stopped in a music store, a dying breed in the modern age of digital distribution, and spent more time perusing their add-on items such as posters and small sculptures than he spent looking through the CDs themselves. Eventually he resolved that he wasn't really going to buy anything anyway, so he moved on.

The next location that Jake found himself seriously considering was a novelty store, essentially an entire sales floor filled with the nick-nacks that he'd been eyeing before. He amused himself with the various inventive lighting fixtures, which ranged from simple black lights to glass spheres with ionized gas inside. One of these such devices plugged into an MP3 player, and Jake pretended that he was interested in purchasing it, but knew he would forget within moments of wandering away.

As he circumnavigated the store's outer boundaries he came across the adult section, was the real draw of coming in. Many of the products seemed as if they were making an attempt at legitimacy, but when bordered by gummy penises on one side and Get Well cards sporting caricatures of wrinkly old women on the other, it was clearly a losing battle. Jake had just begun to peruse the novelty condoms and paraphernalia when he took note of a particularly short skirt not far in front of him.

The skirt was the color and design of the stereotypical Catholic schoolgirl outfit in red and black, but unlike the somewhat conservative genuine article, this one frilled out at an unrealistic angle, very nearly showing the bottom of the wearer's cheeks. A series of buckles, chains, and oversized safety pins also helped in ruining the illusion.

Although Jake had been seriously tempted to allow his eyes to wander upward, so as to discover the owner of the posterior which he was almost able to admire in earnest, he instead let his eyes linger on the legs below. There was not a great deal of bare skin on the slender legs, but where that bare skin was positioned would send a thrill through any warm blooded man. Green and black striped stockings came out of heavy-soled faux leather ankle boots, and provided cover up to just above the knee. From that point up to the bottom hem of the skirt there was naught but skin, which was such an alabaster shade that it practically glowed in the faint illumination from the black lights at the rear of the store. Contrasting the black lines of the skirt and socks, the clearly very smooth and toned legs were difficult to look away from, and even lacking a complete visual of the body it would be easy to forget oneself in a fantasy which involved these legs wrapping his head, suffocating him in her womanhood.

Jake almost visibly shook as he forced his eyes to travel up, but was instantly gratified as he did so. Another band of unfettered skin rested above the waistline of this magnificent female form. Gently widening hips rose from the top of the skirt to curve inward and upward, framing in a taut belly with a dainty black pearl navel ring as its centerpiece. There was something inherently and inexplicably erotic about that eight inch swatch of flesh that lay bare around her midsection, and as Jake took in the sight his mind was filled with an illusory image of that slender tummy quivering momentarily, perhaps with anticipation, or something else.

Rising past this evocative eyeful there came an entirely clothed upper chest and arms, however not much less inspiring to the imaginative mind. Her breasts were larger than might be expected given the rest of her slight form, and were held much higher than a typical bra would allow. It was perhaps owing in part to the unique garment which enfolded her; It seemed similar to a hooded zip-front sweater, but clung tightly to the skin (perhaps only due to her generous endowment), and stopped before reaching the end of the ribs, and the arms seemed likewise formfitting. The small hood hanging from the rear of the neckline seemed decorative only.

From out of the neck and hood there lifted a delectably sylphlike neck, surmounted by a face with sharp features not unlike those of some Persian feline. Jake, previously rapt, was now ensconced. He slowly took in the features one at a time, beginning with the elegantly pointed chin, above which sat a pair of full lips, which were pursed to seem as if in a constant slight pucker. In keeping with her evocative theme, her lipstick was a shade of red that seemed very desperately to want to be black, and became so when not directly illuminated. Set not far above her pouting mouth was a slightly pointed nose, which apart from being picturesque would also be mostly unremarkable if it had not been for the tasteful stud on her left side, which matched her other (visible) piercing with a black pearl tip.

Jake's eyes wandered to either side now to follow high cheekbones that gave her face a naturally jovial appearance, which became an exotic quality when coupled with her dark garb and various augmentations. Dark eye liner pulled his gaze upward, which drifted further yet as he noted the deep crimson mascara that spanned the distance from lash to brow, and reached as far as it dared outward to each side. The dark red, he now noted, matched the color of her smooth mane of hair, which was a deep and glossy shade of auburn hair that he was forced to suspect could not be natural, but couldn't know without seeing more evidence. Her locks had clearly been slightly curved to travel the exact path desired, with the tresses in the back reaching to just past the shoulders and gradually shortening until becoming bangs, which curved outward on each side into small crescents that pointed directly back to the mascara which they so closely matched.

This natural flow of his gaze led Jake back to the dark lines around her eyes, which he now witnessed to be an almost iridescent shade of blue, aided certainly by specialty contact lenses, which appeared to even glow just slightly. It was then that Jake also made the realization that these beautiful eyes were gazing at him, directly.

He blushed furiously, and instinctively looked off toward a different rack, finding himself staring directly at the feather ticklers and fuzzy handcuffs. He seemed to have been given a moment of brief respite from the mortification he had felt at being caught, but his mind would have none of this and began to play the scene back for him. He attempted to focus on suppressing these images, and for a little while he was successful, dispelling his urges and managing to slowly recede from his state of lingering arousal. But even as he was beginning to relax he felt the lukewarm presence of the Heart of Gold, and realized the potential of what that meant. He lowered his defenses, and allowed his mind to wander.

As he watched the look on her face when their eyes locked in his memory for the second, and then third time, he slowly came to realize that while he had expressed humiliated shock, her look of somewhat surprise was actually mingled with something else. A slightly dreamy expression, with focus fixed on him but almost looking through him, objectifying him. He recognized it as a look he had not seen often, in fact having only seen it once, last night.

His head swiveled and craned to catch another glimpse of the exotic auburn-haired temptress, and found that she had not gone far. She stood not more than two feet from her last location, now in the middle of the toy section and holding an impressively intimidating floppy rubber cock. She seemed to be perusing it with only mild interest, as one would inspect an apple wile actually craving a peach, and seemed to be about to set it down again. Jake's imagination had her placing it elsewhere, but the sensible part of him knew better than to expect that wish to come true.

Almost as if she sensed his eyes on her, the language of her body changed abruptly and she halted her movement to return the phallus to its stand. Her eyes flicked to the side enough to suggest that she did indeed know that he was watching, but didn't want to break the moment with another averted glance. A seductive smirk grew from her deep red lips, and she brought the synthetic member toward her face for another look. Her tongue rapidly darted from her mouth in a snakelike fashion, stopping just short of the tip of the cock she held. Jake gasped audibly, thankful to not be standing very near to anyone at the time.

With her point apparently taken, she allowed her tongue to retreat back to its warm, moist home, but not before Jake took note of the third piercing she had. Matching the others, there were two black pearls, one resting on either side of a bar that ran through her tongue. Gently she laid the dick back where she found it, and turned slightly toward a darker portion of the store with an almost blatant 'come hither' saunter.

Jake's heart jumped, and he began to second guess this whole ordeal. He began an internal debate with his own libido, thinking rationally at himself,

Fucking a stranger is one thing, but I can't really do it out in the open at the mall!

He couldn't come up with a legitimate rebuttal for that, but he still contended with,

But she's damned ready for it, isn't she? I could get in trouble, but this would be really hot.

He had a good point, he had to admit.

As lust gave way to logic, Jake decided that the intelligent course of action would be to make a few seductive comments and suggest moving to a discrete location, which she surely couldn't deny. He took just another moment to act casual as he picked up and set one or two things down, mentally scripting his dialogue before he made his approach. Finally with a good list of openers and comebacks, he swirled around a display and headed to the rendezvous that he believed she was headed for. However she was not there, and as he combed the store with his gaze he found that she was nowhere between her apparent original destination and her original starting point.

Jake became very confused, and began to move around the shelves and racks to see the rest of the store. As he rounded one large cardboard stand with dozens of fart machines draping off of it he caught sight of her. She briskly strode out of the store, ass swaying to an unconsciously seductive beat, but otherwise looking entirely ambivalent. This did nothing to make Jake less confused, but it certainly did a lot to make him less aroused. He stared out of the now empty doorway into the hall speckled with bustling shoppers, and silently cursed to himself.

*****

Jake wandered out of the third clothing store in a row that didn't have anything that he wanted, now in an entirely awful mood both at missing out on what he had now convinced himself would have been the most erotic and kinky sex of his life, and depressed at the discovery that his poor mood was making his interest in other forms of sex with other attractive women harder to focus on. His little charm had not done anything to suggest that it was any more than an attractive lump of metal, and he was about ready to call it a day.

He decided to poke into one of the specialty clothing shops that mostly sold pleather garments of various usage and gothic attire. They were known to carry vintage shirts that appealed to him from time to time, and he figured that if he was going to spend an entire day at the mall he might as well come out of it with something. Seeking cover behind a wall of beanie hats sporting smart ass phrases and cute, smiling animals, he wove his way into the store undetected. It wasn't that he minded the usual clientele, but with how he dressed - usually collared shirts and casual slacks - he tended to get those little glances from the staff that seemed to say, 'You're not going to wear any of this, so why are you wasting our time?'

He managed to make his way past the meager music section and finally reached the shirts he sought. There were the usual offerings of logos, both classic and resigned, of old cartoons and video games that he'd been a fan of as a kid. One or two were new, and there was one in particular that melded the logos of two different shows into an interesting composite image. He wasn't really a big fan of any of them, but his eye was caught by a simple looking shirt that seemed abstract enough but was actually an inside reference to a cult film that had come out a month or so prior. Satisfied that this was subtle enough for what he believed to be his superior sense of humor, he plucked a large out of the pile and began his weaving course back to the cashier's island.