The Monsters of Faggot Forest

Making a donation to Nifty would be a good way to stand up to this darkening 'strange old world' in which our enemies are fighting tooth and nail to make us all invisible again. I've lived through the eighties as a gay man. I do not wish to do so again.

https://donate.nifty.org/

Let's see...supernatural drugs...sexual mind control...incest...references to bestiality...an out of control, sex-crazed 13-year-old boy...and piss drinking.

Sorry, I suck at writing warnings. Any pointers?

SUPERNATURAL SEX PARTY!!! Robbie Byrne finally attends his Christ- mas Make-up Party and discovers the joys of having extradimensional monsters phase in and out of his lungs, stomach, and rectum. Even The Creeping Vine gets plenty of the white, sticky stuff while the Steve-Guile faces off against the dour Lieutenant Veronica Preston and the U.S. military. And in a Flash Forward, the sinister and enigmatic Mister Harris has decided Robbie Byrne's post-Faggot Forest fate, and a desperate Steve- Guile considers doing something UNTHINKABLE to stop him from carrying it out! Finally, Caleb-Guile is about to have his meeting with Reality Itself, after which EVERYTHING CAN BE QUICKLY AND EASILY RESOLVED!

What could possibly go wrong?

The Monsters of Faggot Forest

Chapter 11

On The Way To The Feeding Area ***************************************************************************

A nineteen-year-old young man and a thirteen-year-old boy walked through the nighttime woods. Their hearts were pounding furiously as they made their way amongst the bare trees towards their respective destina- tions. Robbie Byrne was on his way to heaven, and Russell Hawksmoor was journeying to hell.

They were both going to the same place.

"-not doing this....it ain't fuckin' happening....I ain't doin' any more faggot shit," Russell muttered in spite of knowing that Robbie was gay. "Fuckin' find my AR...Fuckin' KILL that faggot sonuvabitch for doing that shit to me....and making me do shit to HIM!"

Robbie let Russell continue to babble hate speech unopposed, since Robbie didn't care. Robbie was drifting on a cloud, one made of horniness, anticipation, and a wonderful Pit Fog-induced high.

For Robbie, being Entangled by Lecher had been like filling his lungs, belly, and colon with indescribable pleasure, fulfillment, joy, and a bizarre combination of submission mixed with freedom.

"Here's a little sumthin' for your troubles," Lecher teased, hand- ing Robbie a fifty dollar bill from his ankle wallet (which Robbie saw no reason NOT to accept and stuff into the pocket of his folded shorts). "I know it's $49.99 more than your regular fee, but you were worth it, and I appreciate you letting me DO you in spite of me not being a member of the Timbersburg Police Department."

"You feeling okay?" the Entangled Tyler Whitlock asked Robbie, his brainwashed, brand-new, best-est buddy in the whole wide world.

"Yeah," Robbie said thoughtfully.

"He won't be, not after I order him to eat his mom's pussy!" Lecher teased.

Robbie rolled his eyes and shook his head, secretly concerned that Lecher might make good on his threat....as a VERY unfunny joke.

"He cannot order you to do ANYTHING," Guile sighed in irritation. "That reminds me, as I told your father and young Mister Hawksmoor over there: Idle Minds Are the Devil's Playthings."

"What's THAT supposed to mean?" Robbie asked. "Wait...that's what you told me to text to Mike!"

"Yes, and I order you and Officer Whitlock to forget about it," Guile commanded.

"Sure," Robbie affirmed.

"Okay," Tyler Whitlock agreed.

Tyler looked at his fellow officers, who now looked more concerned than ever.

"You guys are weird," Tyler told them with a gooned-up grin while ignoring Lecher's cum, which was dripping off of his nose, hair, and chin, and running down his face and body. "I feel so fucking GOOD right now, and so will you! You won't even care about what all those guys are gonna do to us! I can already tell that I'm gonna fucking LOVE IT!"

"There it is! Ooooooo-YEAH!" Lecher suddenly shouted as the begin- ning of the power influx due to Robbie's semen caused him to engage in a full-body stretch that ended with Lecher flexing all of his lean muscles at once...to the point that Lecher trembled! Russell, the cops, and Robbie all jumped when Lecher's fist lashed out and slammed into a thick tree trunk, creating a deep impression and making the whole tree shudder. Then he picked up the rock that the cops used to try to kill him, and raised it up in front of his chest, holding it between his palms. Robbie would never forget the cracking and crunching sounds as Lecher strained to crush it, ulimately succeeding, then blowing the dust on his hands into the faces of George Klempernick and Joe Prender.

"You're the best fuck EVER, Robbie" Lecher grinned, brushing the rest of the rock dust off of his hands before removing the wallet from his ankle and handing it to Robbie. "Ignore any top who tells you different, because what the hell do grown-ups know anyway? And don't let the fact that I'm giving you money for sucking my cock and letting me fuck your boy-hole make you feel like a sleazy hustler. I just gave you MORE than enough money to qualify as a 'male prostitute', instead!"

"Thanks," Robbie muttered, not really even paying attention to Lecher's bullshit.

Robbie put the ankle wallet with his clothes. It was an impressive haul, but the wallet itself would soon become far more valuable to Robbie as a momento. It's sentimental value would increase even more on the night a black man in a gray suit appeared in his bedroom....along with two VERY rowdy 'gifts', to make Robbie a special offer.

"Contact with ALL Entangleds reestablished!" Guile stated in a pleased tone. "I've used my controller on them. They're all under MY command now, not Lure's."

"Send them out to look for the Overseer!" Lecher blurted as the peach tendril slid out of his asshole, came up underneath, and squirted his cock, balls, and pubes with frothing goop.

"Faggot Forest is HUGE!" Guile pointed out. "And the last thing we need is for them to get stuck in the mud, puncture a tire, OR ACCIDENTALLY CHANGE THE OVERSEER'S DESIRED FUTURE! They're staying PUT and SAFE until we get there to disarm the Daggen boy. Besides, Mike might be following the instructions I had Robbie text to him, which will be useless if the Entangleds aren't exactly where I SAID they'd be."

"Why didn't you ask the Overseer or the future YOU what the Over- seer looks like, his pre-activation form I mean?" Lecher commented, rubbing the foaming peach stuff all over his crotch and handling his junk in a way that looked less like 'washing' than 'playing with himself'.

"Review the memory I sent you!" Guile grumbled. "The Overseer told me, quite plainly, that he hatched from a humongous egg with a propeller on top of it."

"Funny," Lecher lied.

"If I asked what the Overseer's "propeller egg" looked like, that would indicate that I do not intend to follow HIS plan. Besides, his embryo ...or larva...probably isn't even a physical object, or it would've been spotted and photographed by one of the many ufo and bigfoot crazed idiots in this region, like the sub-amateur monster hunters who couldn't flood into these woods FAST ENOUGH tonight! No, I believe that at this point, the Overseer is a free floating mass of coalescing mental energy, and from what the Overseer has told me, I'm assuming that only someone with a significant amount of telepathy, like a Thrall Master, can detect the unactivated Over- seer, and even THEN, only if he or she is close enough."

"Maybe, but we should at least TRY to get our hands on the Over- seer's....uh....'propeller egg', just in case...and pardon the expression.. ...things go 'tits up' because of any unforeseeable statistically unlike- ly scenarios," Lecher pointed out.

"And how do you propose we DO that?" Guile asked, since getting Lecher to embarrass himself usually led to him shutting up.

"As soon as we arrive at Faggot Forest, we get Pearson to do it FOR us," Lecher suggested, knocking Guile off-guard, as he usually did whenever Lecher made a recommendation that wasn't either a sad attempt at being funny.....or fucking STUPID.

"Mike has some degree of telepathy, probably more than you, but DEFINITELY not as much as me," the Overseer had told Guile...who'd trans- ferred the memory to Lecher. (chapter 9) ___________________________________________________________________________

"You never even THOUGHT of using Pearson as a bloodhound, DID you?" Lecher taunted with a smug grin.

"A part of me is presently standing on a dock, awaiting a being who has dared to vex GODS for CENTURIES, and that was before he acquired the ability to wield his considerable power intelligently," Guile burned, "so I'm a little distracted right now. Besides, we have no idea if Michael is even telepathic enough to-"

"Mike doesn't have telepathy," Robbie scoffed, startling both Guile and Lecher, ".....DOES he?"

"Yeah, you're distracted all right, if you forgot to switch telepathic channels so that Robbie and the other newly-Entangleds couldn't hear us," Lecher snarked. "And yes, Robbie, your half-brother is telepathic AS FUCK!"

"MY WHAT?!" Robbie shouted, absolutely flummoxed.

"Yes, Robbie, my idiot partner is correct," Guile groaned, "Your father cheated on your mother, but it's not really his fault for being unfaithful, since the guardian of the biosphere probably used his influence to make your dad plow Mike's mother in the same way you'll soon be using YOUR influence over your father to make him plow YOU. But I order you not to think about any of that until tomorrow."

"Okay," Robbie agreed.

"Guile," Lecher added far too excitedly. "Tell Robbie he has to call his dick a pee-pee!"

"And for the rest of the evening, Robbie," Guile sighed wearily, "I order you to only refer to your penis as a 'pee-pee'."

"AND...AND...AND HE DOESN'T KNOW HE'S CALLING IT A PEE-PEE!" Lecher blurted with cruel delight. "AND WHEN OTHER PEOPLE SAY 'PEE-PEE' BACK TO HIM, HE THINKS THEY'RE SAYING 'DICK'!"

"Do you understand what Lecher wants?" Guile questioned, having no desire to repeat Lecher's idiotic buffoonery.

"I understand it, but I'm not gonna DO it! You promised-!"

"Shut up, do it, and forget about me ordering you to do it," Guile commanded.

"Sure," Robbie automatically conceded.

"Robbie, follow the light bubbles to the feeding area and indulge in your sickest sexual fantasies," Guile instructed. "And Russell, I order you to accompany Robbie, and once you arrive at the feeding area, you will become obsessed with performing oral sex on anyone who allows it, and offering your ass to anyone who wants it."

"Y-yeah," Russell acknowledged with a tiny amount of resistance in his voice.

Mark Pudroolen let out a sob of despair.

Lecher reached out and started diddling Robbie, earning him a weird look from the boy...but Robbie being Robbie...no resistance.

"What do you CALL this?" Lecher asked while giving Robbie's dick a tickle, "...this THING right here?"

"It's my pee-pee," Robbie sneered, wondering what Lecher was up to.

Lecher smiled so broadly that his teeth showed.

"Just checking."

"Tyler's already Entangled, so why isn't he coming too?" Robbie inquired, pointing at the happy, grinning, obediently-silent cop with cum still running down his face and body.

The aqua-blue and red tendrils sprang forth from Lecher's ass. The aqua-blue one widened until it looked like a garden hose, and the red tendril spiraled around it.

"HEY!" Tyler yelped as he found himself taking an unexpected hot shower.

"We'll send your adult friend-with-benefits to you after he's been thoroughly groomed, or at least when he's less sticky," Guile informed Robbie.

"It's difficult enough getting straight guys to fuck other dudes who AREN'T covered in spooge," Lecher commented while blasting Tyler so hard that he turned his face away and shielded his junk with his hands.

Robbie and Russell started off, following a cluster of light bubbles.

"What are you spraying at me NOW?" Robbie heard Tyler ask in the distance.

"It's like soap," Lecher answered.

It was nothing like soap.

"Now lather up and start singing 'I'm a Little Teapot'!" Lecher commanded while looking at Guile hopefully. "LIKE A LITTLE GIRL!"

"Do it," Guile sighed at Tyler.

"I'm a Little Tea-POT, Short and Stout," Officer Tyler Whitlock sang gaily as he rubbed frothing, peach goop all over his body, making a fool of himself in front of his three increasingly-terrified coworkers, "THIS Is My Handle, THIS Is My Spout...."

Lecher stepped behind Tyler, reached around, and heartily soaped- up the police officer's cock and balls while using his left hand to cover Tyler's mouth so he could finish it solo.

"When You Get All Boned Up, Hear You Shout....." Lecher sang while leaning his chin on Tyler's broad, muscled shoulder and making sinister eye contact with George, Mark, and Joe. "Flip You Over And TURN YOU OUT!"

Russell finally stopped spewing hate, which snapped Robbie back to reality, away from his disturbing sexual thoughts.

Robbie turned to see Russell staring in disgust at Robbie's erect cock.

"You LIKE what they're gonna try to make me do, DON'T you?" Russell grumbled.

Robbie didn't answer, he just continued to walk. However, he fell behind a little so that he could stare at Russell's bubble butt, the only pleasing thing about him.

"Hey! I was talkin' to you, kid!" Russell snarled, looking back and noticing that Robbie was scoping his ass, causing him to turn around and walk backwards with his hands crossed in front of his cock and balls.

"Are you asking if I like DOING the things that you'll be doing, or if I like that YOU'LL be doing them?" Robbie asked sarcastically. "Because either way, the answer is 'yes'."

Russell stopped, blocking Robbie's way.

"I saved your fucking life," Russell growled, making the odd choice of employing intimidation to make an impassioned plea. "That geezer with the rock would've killed you if I hadn't saved you! You fucking OWE me!"

"Guile MADE you save me," Guile's anti-manipulation training helped Robbie to inform Russell, "You were INvoluntarily SELected to save me, or "incel" for short."

"I'm not an incel!" Russell thundered. "You liberal fags always SAY that because you WANT it to be true, but it isn't! Just like how you say that anyone who stands up for God and traditional values is secretly a FAG. WHATEVER, kid, WHATEVER!"

Robbie suddenly stopped being irritated that the American nazi, with hair that looked like a wig made from brown poodle fur, was standing in his way. Robbie now felt...social.

"How many girls have you fucked, Incel?" Robbie provoked, setting Russell up.

"SEVEN!" Russell crowed triumphantly.

"Then how can you claim to support God and traditional values?" Robbie interrogated. "You SHOULD be a virgin, and your celibacy should be VOLUNTARY! And you should NEVER jack off! And you shouldn't have sex until you're married, and you should only fuck to make babies!"

Russell sighed and rolled his eyes.

"YOU SEE?" Robbie shouted. "Your Christian HORSESHIT is STUPID when YOU have to obey it, but we gays are s'posed to BE virgins...FOREVER...to make FAKE CHRISTIANS like you HAPPY!"

"I should've let that cop bash your brains in," Russell seethed in place of a well-thought-out comeback.

"A real Christian wouldn't say that," Robbie mocked. "And by the way, the guy with the rock...the COP who was gonna KILL me? He wouldn't shut up about being a Christian either. NOW GET OUT OF MY WAY!"

"NO!" Russell screamed in Robbie's face.

Russell was perspiring, there was strain on his face, and his muscles were trembling. He was attempting to fight the orders he'd been given by Guile, and he was losing.

Robbie started to slide his tongue across the roof of his mouth and lick his lips, exaggerating the severity of a craving that was growing stronger and stronger as they neared the feeding area.

"STOP THAT!" Russell snapped, compulsively doing the same thing.

"I can't help it!" Robbie lied.

When Robbie was smoking and drinking Lecher's cum, the Entanglement process was kicking in, sharpening his senses with respect to male sexual attractors. Robbie became KEENLY aware of the dizzying smell of Lecher's crotch, turning him into an instant male scent addict. But more powerful than THAT was the salty, funky TASTE of Lecher's dick.

Robbie NEEDED the taste of a man's sweaty sex organs back in his mouth!!! .......And since Russell had been Entangled much less recently than Robbie, Robbie was betting that Russell's cravings were FAR more insistent than his!

"Just knock it off!" Russell snarled, enraged that Robbie was working against Russell's efforts to break free of Guile's mental condi- tioning.

"Is your asshole buzzing, too?" Robbie asked, digging his fingers between his butt cheeks and pushing and pulling while clenching and unclenching to make his asshole rub against itself to relieve the aching desire to have a cock slide through it.

It was BAD for Robbie, and he'd JUST been fucked a few moments ago, so for Russell, it just HAD to be SO MUCH-"

"I FUCKING HATE YOU!" Russell barked in a high school football player bully voice, getting out of Robbie's way and quickly stalking towards the feeding area.

"But Christians aren't SUPPOSED to hate!" Robbie shouted at him. "Now that Republicans have decided that Christ was 'woke', does that mean they'll stop calling themselves Christians, or will they keep using a religion they don't even BELIEVE in as a weapon against the LGBTQ+ community? I mean, isn't that like....weird and stupid? I mean.........."

Russell ignored Robbie and surrendered to his Entanglement, racing ahead to the feeding area, desperate to fulfill the burning sexual urges that Robbie had maliciously stoked into a forest fire.

The Top of the Rise Overlooking the I-147 Bottleneck, Above the Pit Fog ***************************************************************************

When the applause finally died down, the chaos started. Before people even had a chance to process having their hearing restored, the army was barking commands at everyone to go back to the road and board one of the transport vehicles that would take them two miles down the road to await the completion of the military operation that would hopefully lead to the recovery of the missing police officers and civilians (and the capture and study of a creature that was believed to be not of this world).

"I'm not wearing my hearing aids, Marsha, I SWEAR!" Gary Orlinski shouted excitedly into his cell phone. "Look, we'll talk later. I have no idea how long it's gonna take until I get home.....yeah, not the way I wanted to spend the last night of this heat wave either, but if it means I don't have to keep going to my hearing appointments.... But He's SURROUND- ED by people, Marsha, and we're being led away. And even if I could go back and get to him, it wouldn't be SAFE. The military's just GOTTA be planning to arrest the poor kid, and I don't want to get caught in the middle. Sorry, Hon, there's no way I can ask him if it's permanent!"

The people walking ahead of Gary suddenly shrieked and parted in horror, leaving Gary face-to-face.....with a GHOST!

"Please tell Marsha that your hearing issues have been permanently healed, in spite of almost requiring a more.....invasive procedure," the ghost of a boy in a wheelchair informed Gary, who was too startled to pass the information along to his wife, who was yelling at Gary to tell her why she'd heard screaming.

"The Creeping Vine requires your assistance," Steve-Guile informed the stunned man, and the equally stunned crowd who were taking pictures of the haunting figure. "PEOPLE, I'M A TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATION! I APPRECIATE THE INTEREST MORE THAN YOU COULD KNOW, BUT YOU'RE WASTING MEMORY SPACE FOR NOTHING!"

(Guile was LOVING the attention! He'd never BEEN able to show him- self to so many people before! But still, there was work to be done.)

"What does the Creeping Vine need me to do?" Gary asked, shouting over the gathering crowd.

Gary suddenly went COMPLETELY deaf.

"Don't worry, your hearing still works," Steve-Guile calmed. "I'm blocking your brain from perceiving the auditory overload of my 'fans', to help you concentrate. By the way, you can THINK at me instead of yelling."

"Uh...okay, I...." Gary fumbled, trying to acclimate.

"The Creeping Vine needs you to clear your thoughts and think back to when you looked over the fallen cedar.....and picture the monster you saw."

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"PRIVATE PARTY!" <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

"Thank you, Gary Orlinski," the ghost said as he faded away. "You've been VERY helpful to us.

"Creeping Vine, they're not forcing us onto those transports just to move us to safety!" seasoned reporter Stan Houseman yelled vindictively as soldiers roughly pulled him, the last remaining reporter, and his cameraman, away from the group that now only consisted of Steve and the Timbersburg police officers who'd held members of the military at gunpoint. "This area has a saying: When you live here, you never trust a uniform... and you're SURROUNDED by them!"

"Yeah, but I've got a uniform, too," the Creeping Vine replied, giving Stan the quote that would make his report SING: "And it might LOOK ridiculous, but the joke ends THERE!"

"Noted," Lt. Veronica Preston said with a smirk as she approached the group with seventeen unarmed male soldiers. They were joined by a pretty, young brunette in her mid-twenties, apparently a civilian, who eyed the superhero nervously as she approached. She was taking frequent, furtive hits off of a cigarette.

"The girl is Cynthia Keim," Tracy told Steve. "She was in the SUV that was attacked, along with her boyfriend and his brother. The brother, Jayce Harris, is the one who was abducted by Guile...the OTHER Guile, I mean. I told Lieutenant Frog that you want information from me, but I didn't say anything about Reality Itself, so she must think you only want intel about tonight's attacks. She's probably planning to use Cynthia to 'quid pro quo' intelligence out of you."

"Got it," Steve acknowledged. "Thank you."

"And if Miss Keim is correct about what you and her attacker....... ....consume," Police Captain Harry Patrell added, "I think there's a reason those soldiers with her look like they're going to a photo shoot."

"Oh, how CUTE! The humans are playing at being Guiles!"

"You don't have to be so patronizing about it," Steve sighed.

"I'm not being patronizing!" Guile claimed. "I really DO think it's just simply ADORABLE!" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Police Captain Patrell," Veronica Preston announced, "my superiors have instructed me to ask you to take your men and leave...now. If you do, we're willing to forget about our mutual misunderstanding, and we will work with your public information officer to try to recontexturalize the standoff into something less damning, which might spare your department more negative national scrutiny."

"Fucking cunt," Harry muttered under his breath, but deliberately loud enough for Steve and the rest of the cops to hear.

Steve-Guile disagreed. Lieutenant Preston was FASCINATING....in a manner of speaking, and he needed to OWN her....in a manner of speaking.

"Steve, I have a present for you, and although you don't know what it is, allow me to assure you that you'd go INSANE if I told you what it was, absolutely BONKERS!" Guile tantalized. "And all you have to do to GET IT is to give me FULL, UNQUESTIONED AUTHORITY for....say.....five minutes, tops."

"Uhhhh......in the middle of all THIS?" Steve gasped, taken by surprise. "I don't know about FULL authority. I might need to start fight- ing at any moment! Tell me why you even NEED full authority right now!."

"How'cum you didn't let ME in on this 'gift'?" Lecher pouted. "Tell me what it is, in private. I won't tell Steve."

"psspssspsssspsssspssspsssspsssspsspss," Guile revealed.

"ARE YOU SERIOUS?????" Lecher screamed in Steve's head, making him wince. "HOW'RE THEY DOING IT???? WHAT ARE THEY MADE OF??? HOW DO THEY WORK????"

"That's precisely what a large number of the men presently staring at US would like to know, those who are aware of the contents of Miss Keim's statement, anyway," Guile replied, using language meant to entice Steve. "The only MALE witnesses to the event in question are the now- hospitalized driver of the SUV, the boy who was ABDUCTED by the renegade Thrall, a man who followed the Thrall into the woods, and said man's thir- teen year old SON, who was apparently snatched by the Thrall just before the Pilot Fish scream."

"Well...FIND one of them," Lecher snapped. "You're Entwined with every male mind in the area, RIGHT?"

"Not the minds in the WOODS!" Guile gasped as if Lecher had said something incredibly stupid....which he HAD. "If I Entwine with a mind that's already connected to our quarry, we lose the element of surprise, and Kaschak could be here RIPPING OUR MOLECULES APART before Master Morgan notices that Kaschak is gone from the grounds of the compound!"

"FUCK!!!!!!!" Lecher screamed in frustration before coming to a realization. "Wait...the renegade Guile ISN'T Entwined with all these army boys? Why not? He's still in range!"

"I don't know," Steve-Guile replied. "It's stupid NOT to be Entwined with the police and the military, given what he's done, but not only is he NOT Entwined with anyone in the vicinity, he doesn't even have a SINGLE phantom duplicate floating around the area."

"If our situation were reversed with THEIRS, we would've spotted them the SECOND they arrived at the bottom of the hill," Steve noted, feeling left out of the conversation. "We're ALWAYS on the ball with our reconnaissance."

"Damn straight!" Lecher grumbled. "Wait....what were we talking about before? Oh, yeah. HOW ARE THEY DOING "IT", GUILE!"

"If I had to guess, they used shape-shifting," Guile attempted to pacify.

"To do WHAT?" Steve asked, hoping that Lecher's enthusiasm would cause him to slip up and tell him.

"No, that ain't how they're doing it!" Lecher denied, ignoring Steve. "It takes effort just to change Steve's eye and hair color, or give him a tan...or make his lips fuller....or make him grow a foreskin. There's no fucking WAY they're using our weak, useless shape-shifting to do some- thing THAT awesome!"

"Maybe Kaschak upgraded his Thralls, like Coach Morgan did to us," Steve offered, hoping it led to more details about WHAT Guile thought the other Thrall was using their shape-shifting TO DO!

"Nah, Kaschak's just like the others," Lecher dismissed. "He'd NEVER give his Thralls an upgrade THAT FUCKING COOL!!!!!"

"I swear to God, you two'd better not be doing a 'bit'," Steve muttered.

"I WANT IT, GUILE!" Lecher suddenly raged, letting Steve know that whatever Lecher and Guile were discussing, it definitely wasn't a 'bit'. "AND IF THEY DON'T HAND OVER THEIR ARCHIVE FILES, YOU'D BETTER NOT BRAIN-FRY ME WHILE I'M BEATING THEIR SECRETS OUT OF THEM!"

"I couldn't, since I'd need to devote ALL of my power towards jamming their Guile's telepathy to keep him from contacting Kaschak. But if I could redirect your attention towards the matter of STEVE..."

"The 'MATTER' of Steve???" Steve balked.

"Guile's in command," Lecher snapped, cutting to the heart of the matter in order to avoid any more unnecessary discussion. "You've been out- voted. If it makes you feel better, you can call it a mutiny if you want, like you ALWAYS do. And DON'T ask about what we were discussing. I ain't telling you, 'cuz you'll freak out about it even worse than I am."

"You guys SUCK," Steve muttered, curiosity KILLING him over a present that he was now desperate to GET.....even though he didn't even know what it was. ___________________________________________________________________________

Steve went NUTS with his restored and enhanced mobility, learning gymnastics, parkour, free climbing, tightrope walking, swimming, skin diving, and every other skill that involved taking one's body from point A to point B, regardless of the terrain. (chapter 10) ___________________________________________________________________________

"You know, I think I liked it better in the OLD days, before Coach Morgan changed the way our Thrall works...back when I had complete con- trol over YOU guys, and Guile couldn't lie and hide stuff from me!" Steve mumbled.

"Sorry, but you've just been outvoted AGAIN," Lecher snarked. "You have to like things better the way they are NOW!"

"Could we just DO whatever Guile wants us to DO, so I can find out what my present is?" Steve complained. "The present I somehow unwrap by.... ....beating up another Thrall (????)."

"Excellent, we are all in agreement" Guile smiled. "The game has begun. I must go introduce myself to my opponent. Come, Lecher. We have preparations to make."

"Preparations for WHAT?" Steve asked.

"I'm sorry, but you're not presently authorized to question me," Guile informed the confused superhero, sounding quite pleased with himself before breaking his telepathic link with Steve. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"....Rogers?" Harry Patrell negotiated.

"No," Veronica refused with an outward swipe of her raise right palm. "We have some questions for her and the Creeping Vine...things we need to know before we enter the woods in force. The fog is rendering our information-gathering drones useless. Cameras, thermal imaging, sound detection.....all non-functional. We NEED intel, or we'll be going in blind and deaf, and we'll risk losses...maybe heavy ones. After we learn what we need for this operation, Officer Rogers can go...for NOW...provided that we can schedule follow-up interviews with her."

"At MY precinct...in MY office," Harry bottom-lined while seeming to slam his index finger into the top of an imaginary desk, or possibly a podium...it was hard to tell.

"Fine, but I also w-AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Veronica yelled as the ghost of a boy in a wheelchair screened himself into existence directly between the cops and the members of the military.

"I'm terribly sorry, I tend to have that effect on people," Guile apologized pleasantly, steepling his fingers over his pinned slacks. "While Captain Patrell is weighing his options, perhaps I can introduce myself. My name is Guile, and to spare you a long and involved explanation that ONLY a salivating military scientist could BEAR to listen to, please just think of me as a mind ghost."

Veronica directed her startled gaze at the Creeping Vine, who just shrugged.

"Sorry, I'm not authorized to comment," Steve commented without Guile's authorization.

"Excuse me, I'm not over there, I'm sitting right in front of you," Guile said in a slightly testy tone. "If 'mind ghost' doesn't work for you, you could think of me as the Vine's on-board computer. I know EVERYTHING you want to know. And before we go any further, would everyone please lower your weapons? Although I am technically a psionic projection, and not REALLY a ghost, if anyone shoots me, the result would be exactly the same."

Police Captain Harry Patrell ran his hand through his thin, reced- ing hair and tried to make sense of the insane conversation taking place in front of him. He couldn't allow the weirdness to overwhelm him, however, or he might start missing details and all-important facts.

Harry was suddenly struck deaf.

"Do not panic, Captain Patrell," Guile advised, his image separat- ing into two. One Guile continued talking with Veronica Preston, and the other one turned and propelled his wheelchair closer to Harry.

"I'm creating this illusion so that you and I might have a word with one another," Guile explained. "You can either talk or think your part of the conversation. No one will hear you either way. But please be careful not to bump anyone. If they address you, your mind probably wouldn't be able to cope with a reality-based conversation and an illusion- based conversation at the same time."

"I'm a police captain," Harry scoffed, choosing to speak aloud. "I spend every damned day having lots of people talk at me at the same time."

"Fair enough," Guile agreed.

"Is that woman on the level?" Harry questioned.

"Absolutely not," Guile declared before expertly guiding the talk exactly where he wanted it to go, "which is why you must accept her bull- shit offer and leave with your men. FAST."

"It's bad enough that the military expects me to leave four of my officers behind," Harry growled. "I'm not leaving Tracy, TOO! She made the mistake of telling that lieutenant she had information about-"

"I was listening...I heard everything...let's stay focused," Guile interrupted. "I will take care of Officer Rogers, but I CAN'T guarantee the safety of you and ALL THESE COPS, too! Please GO! You do not know just how BAD this situation could get!"

"Just how dangerous IS that thing in the woods?" Harry demanded.

"Them?" Guile snickered. "They and we are incredibly powerful, but we are all nothing....utterly NOTHING....compared to the being THEY serve and the being WE serve. They and we are like....uh....well....RENFIELDS. Good, I sense you understand the reference."

"So if you and that thing in the woods fight..." Harry pondered. "....your bosses...your DRACULAS...could show up here?"

"Yes, if by 'Draculas' you mean beings who can transmute and mani- pulate matter and energy to a TERRIFYING degree!" Guile elaborated.

"They were responsible for Malawny Hollow?" Harry surmised.

"Yes," Guile confirmed reluctantly, "and if it weren't for the fact that the owner of 'that thing in the woods' needed OUR Dracula...our MASTER...ALIVE, the EVIL Dracula would've tried to win BY SPLITTING ATOMS!"

Harry looked over at the superhero, then let his eyes drift over to where Guile's (body? form? spirit? ghost?) was speaking to the lieutenant. Harry wondered how his life had turned so strange, so fast.

"But WAIT....it gets EVEN WORSE!" Guile continued, irritated at having to fake so much passion and fear, just to instill said emotions into a human's mind.

"What could be WORSE than a potential local nukular detonation?" Harry jeered, his mispronunciation of the word 'nuclear' making Guile cringe.

Guile paused before telling Harry the information that would change EVERYTHING, even after the underhanded machinations of the future version of the Caleb-Guile would result in TIME turning into a BLENDER. The inform- ation that nature's guardian never foresaw...never accounted for in his horrific plans....simply because he couldn't CONCEIVE of a Guile actually TELLING A HUMAN OF HIS EXISTENCE!

"Before she fled from me, Tracy Rogers indicated that 'that thing in the woods' told her there might be someone TRYING to.....uh.....lure the two Draculas here, deliberately," Guile revealed with an internal groan at how CRAZY this would sound to an uninitiated human. "I need to find out what she knows, but as she is female, her mind is inaccessible to me."

Under any other circumstances, Harry would've joked that female minds were inaccessible to HIM, as well.

"And what do we know about this instigator?" Harry queried.

"Imagine that Mother Nature and Lady Luck's evil brother had a child, and that child spent its life being a hopeless drunk."

"It controls the weather and....makes bad luck?" Harry guessed, succeeding in impressing Guile.

"Yes, now imagine that for reasons you don't understand, but Tracy Rogers MIGHT, that the child suddenly sobered up and decided to carry out an insane agenda that seems to involve pitting ONE nukular Dracula against ANOTHER nukular Dracula."

"What's the thing's name?" Harry said humorlessly. "What's it called?"

"We call it 'Reality Itself', due to its ability to affect probability and nature in ways that make it seem as if reality...itself has become alive....sentient. But until tonight, it has never TRULY been sentient, because it has never exhibited intelligence.....just instinct- ive behavior and random behavior."

"Maybe you DON'T need to talk to Tracy," Harry put forth. "THINK about it. If the other 'Renfield' is EVIL, like his...I mean...THEIR Drac- ula, maybe they're lying. Maybe they knew that you'd be coming for them, and they're trying to scare you off."

"I told the Creeping Vine something similar, but it was a lie that I used to allay his concerns and put his focus elsewhere. The truth is that Reality Itself is directing his efforts and energies HERE, to this region, and I can prove it."

"So can I," Harry admitted sadly, WISHING that he couldn't. "I've lived here all my life, and we've never experienced a heat wave like this in January. It's funny, actually."

"Please share the joke, I could use it," Guile requested, in spite of already having read Harry's active thoughts...and knowing exactly what he was going to say.

"I studied meteorology in college until I realized I wasn't smart enough to hack it," Harry reluctantly admitted. "But as smart as my egghead classmates were, I very well might be the only person, the only HUMAN person anyway, on Earth who knows why the heat maps show our area as a red dot....surrounded by a whole lotta blue."

Harry lowered his head and rubbed his chin as he considered doing as Guile asked.

"I need SOMETHING!" Harry suddenly demanded, digging in his heels. "SOMETHING as a show of good faith. SOMETHING I can act on if Tracy never comes home tonight!"

"Very well," Guile agreed after a moment, "but I'm going to con- struct a mental dam around the information I give you. In other words, if you try to divulge the information I tell you now, or act upon it, be ready to deal with the worst headache you'll ever know."

"Understood. Tell me."

"The master I serve uses the name 'Maximus Morgan'. He's-"

"I know who he is," Harry said coldly, "and if anything happens to Tracy, I'll be downing a bottle of aspirin and making some phone calls he won't like."

"Do not go to my Master's compound, ever," Guile advised. "The evil Dracula has been standing outside since Malawny Hollow, waiting for Coach Morgan to emerge. And if HE doesn't kill you, my Master WILL. He tries to blend in with humans, but it's a tiresome act for him. Your life will NOT be as important to him as his secrecy."

"Understood," Harry affirmed, realizing that he tended to overuse that word.....and ALSO realizing that he was going to call home and tell his wife to head down south and spend the night with her sister.

Harry wished he could join her, but until Tracy was returned safe and sound (and Joe Prender, George Klempernick, Tyler Whitlock, and Mark Pudroolen were located), Harry had no intention of leaving the area....even if it meant dying in a nukular explosion.

The Feeding Area. Robbie Byrne's Christmas Make-up Party ***************************************************************************

Robbie's telepathic visual overlay, the Caleb-Guile's method for giving humans temporary night vision, suddenly shut off, leaving Robbie fully dependent on the light bubbles floating overhead, whose light didn't travel very far, due to the natural forces of the Earth attacking every single photon they put out.

"THIS sucks," Robbie thought at not being able to see more than a few feet in front of him. "I'll probably get stuck in the eye with a-HEY!"

The naked boy suddenly found himself standing in a clearing, a a clearing full of meandering, naked older boys...and even more important- ly, naked MEN!

"DAD?" Robbie called out without thinking, getting the bleary attention of several guys who were obviously deeply under the influence of the Pit Fog that surrounded the clearing.

"A man in his early thirties with a boy-ish face (and a beard intended to visually age, mature, and hide most of that boy-ish face) turned around and looked at Robbie with confused, questioning eyes.

"Holy FUCK is that guy hairy!" Robbie thought during the man's slow, unsteady approach. Robbie was also captivated by his heavy, pendulous cock, that looked like it had been transplanted from a significantly more imposing and masculine man.

"Oh, hey," the young fatherly-acting man greeted as he and his penis swayed all the way over to Robbie.

The man unexpectedly put both of his hands on Robbie's shoulders for balance, forcing him to adjust his stance to take the additional weight.

"Thought you...you were my kid, but he's with his mom, I think.... and he's younger than you.....he's not a red head, either," the bearded man informed Robbie at (unwanted) length, slurring as if he were drunk.

Robbie wanted to wriggle his shoulders free and hurry away. The hairy, young father was definitely NOT Robbie's type. Robbie was sexually attracted to big, masculine guys like his father, not otters. However, just before Robbie was about to shift the guy's weight off of him, something happened. Robbie glanced down to take another look at the guy's dick....and experienced an overpowering desire to make it spit......into Robbie's body.

Robbie's face brightened, and he gave the man a friendly smile. He could've fought against what he was being made to feel...it was POWERFUL, but it wasn't compulsory. However, when combined with his innate predatory instincts, it wasn't optional at all. Robbie Byrne realized that in spite of Guile's promises, he WAS now a slave. But as Pit Fog and Ball Vapor were introduced into his lungs, filling him with lust and euphoria, the boy honestly didn't give a fuck.

"Perhaps I should've mentioned that when a male is Entangled, he doesn't care about the age or appearance of his sex partners," Guile informed Robbie, too late for Robbie to change his mind about Entanglement ...if he'd wanted to. "It's difficult enough locating men who find a particular Entangled sexually attractive, without ALSO having to worry about the Entangled finding HIM desirable as well."

"That's okay," Robbie dismissed instead of being absolutely FURIOUS at Guile and TERRIFIED by the thought that he might have undergone even MORE unagreed-upon changes. "I want to try something. What's this guy's name...and his son's?"

"His name is Gavin and his son is Dylan," Guile found out by look- ing in Gavin's sex memories for the name his wife regularly called out during intercourse. As far as Dylan's name went, fortunately Gavin had just been thinking about him after Robbie called out for his father.

"You're really nice, Gavin. I like you, and I think Dylan's lucky to have a dad like you," Robbie told Gavin with such casual sincerity that the Pit Fog-addled man questioned his certainty that he'd only JUST met the boy.

"I like...like you too, Robbie," Gavin reciprocated automatically, having no idea how he knew Robbie's name, which only strengthened Gavin's false belief that he must've blacked out at some point and had some sort of rambling heart-to-heart chat with the boy.

A wave of Pit Fog-induced sentimentality washed over Gavin, making him weepy and causing him to develop feelings of closeness with Robbie, closeness that his sloppy, doped-up mind suddenly craved. Closeness that made Gavin completely drop his defenses, and allowed Robbie to reach down and lift up Gavin's dangling penis, cradling it in his hand.

"Robbie, whut're you doin'...whut're you doin' down there?" Gavin asked, his sluggish brain struggling to process why the boy would suddenly touch him inappropriately.

"It's heavy!" Robbie praised, lightly tapping Gavin's semi-engorged tool upward a couple of times so he could feel it's heft as it flopped back down. "How much pussy did you get with this monster before you got married?"

Unbeknownst to Robbie, the words he let tumble out of his mouth were the cunning product of his brand-new subliminal Entangled instincts, words which not only played on Gavin's ego, they also established that Robbie was not as pure and innocent as he appeared, and distracted Gavin while Robbie used his free hand to gently cup Gavin's balls, too.

"Not...not much," Gavin confessed, his intoxicated mind failing to make him realize that it wasn't appropriate for a man his age to discuss his sex life with a boy who appeared to be either ten or eleven, especially when that boy happened to be holding Gavin's cock and balls. "I get about as much sex now as I got back then."

"I guess you're doing this a lot then, aren't you?" Robbie asked while tugging on Gavin's gradually hardening penis.

"I don't think you...you should-" Gavin babbled with disorganized concern, taking his hands off of Robbie's shoulders and straightening up, but not backing away, letting Robbie know that it was safe to continue giving the confused, helpless man a nice, slow handjob.

Robbie's natural sexual cunning was mixing with his unnatural Entangled sexual instincts, making him unstoppable.

"I jerk all the time, about three times a day," Robbie confessed, jabbering to relax Gavin and make it harder for him to think, which might cause the reality of the taboo situation to penetrate the literal fog that was clouding Gavin's brain. "How much do you jerk off?"

"Uh....uh....I....I dunno," Gavin stammered, his body rocking slightly due to him unknowingly obeying his hips' need to push and pull against Robbie's strokes. "Once a...a day, when I get up...early in the morning...when I have a....I have a fucking minute to myself."

Gavin unconsciously put his hands back on Robbie's shoulders so he could fuck the boy's hand more easily. Robbie shifted to take the extra weight once more, while managing to maintain the rhythm he was using to rub Gavin's shaft.

Gavin's tool was now as hard as steel.

Gavin lowered his face closer to Robbie's, similar to the way drunk people do when intoxication makes them forget about respecting other people's interpersonal zones. But Robbie 'knew', instinctively, that in Gavin's case, he was drawn to Robbie's breath, which was making him feel a level of virility that beta males like him never experience....and he wanted MORE!

"I'd....uh....I'd 'bate a lot more if Dylan could ever leave me alone for a few minutes," Gavin chattered while taking conspicuously deep breaths that made his furry, sunken chest expand cartoonishly, "but as soon as I close the door to the bedroom or the den, he's...he's pounding on it, wanting to know what I'm doing."

"I used to do that to my dad all the time," Robbie admitted after sighing directly into Gavin's mouth, which caused Gavin to inhale sharply.

"Why?" Gavin asked with an idiotic, loopy expression.

"I wanted to catch my dad beating off," Robbie felt the need to confess, knowing with absolute certainty that Gavin was now completely under Robbie's 'spell', lacking the willpower to make himself reclaim his penis and leave in disgust, no matter WHAT Robbie said. "I wanted to catch him so I could blackmail him into finishing in front of me. And before he could get up and wash off, I would've wiped my hand through his cum, scoop- ed some of it up, and slurped it down before dad could stop me...you know, to make it even scarier for him...'cuz he would've had to admit to the police that he jerked-off in front of me, and some of his cum went down my throat. They would've thought that he was trying to cover up for making me suck his dick!"

Gavin's hips stopped moving, prompting Robbie to look up from his "work". The elementary school teacher's face was horrified.

"Yoo'd....you'd do that....do that to yer DAD?" Gavin inquired, fighting against the drugs, and the pleasure they were giving him, with all of his might. He was doomed to fail.

"No, I wouldn't do that," Robbie chuckled, failing to calm Gavin's nerves and encourage him to fall back into the Pit Fog's loving embrace, "but I'd threaten to, unless he either stopped forcing me to come with him on visitations, OR if he agreed to let me do stuff with him....sex stuff. I have this fantasy where I blackmail him into taking off all his clothes and sitting with me in his kitchen, with his chair pointed to the side so I could still see everything. I'd order him to drink until he got real drunk, like you are now, and then play music and get him to stand up and dance all stupid while I recorded it on-"

"Robbie, do zhou...you....even love your father?" Gavin inter- rupted, fighting for focus.

Robbie's mood instantly darkened.

"I didn't tell you about my plan because I wanted a lecture," Robbie pouted. "I just wanted to know if my plan would've worked. I asked you because you're a dad, too, and you're fucked up on the fog and horny from my breath...so you would've been honest."

Robbie released Gavin Norwich's privates and walked away.

"Robbie, we need to talk," Guile said in Robbie's head.

"Not NOW! I'm...I'm trying to find another guy!" Robbie lied.

"No, what you're doing is experiencing psychological turmoil as a result of not being able to make Gavin tell you what you NEED to hear," Guile corrected. "I've just conducted a mental poll on everyone here. ALL of them, regardless of their sexual orientation, agree that if their son, actual or theorhetical, were to walk in on them while they were masturbat- ing, they would simply cover themselves, order their child out of the room, and would react...shall we say....poorly, from a parenting standpoint, to any attempt at blackmail. Unless your father already had sexual desires for you, Robbie...which he did NOT, before Entanglement...he NEVER would've made your incest porn fantasy a reality. Entanglement is the ONLY reason he can now be HAD."

"Whatever," Robbie muttered, trying to block Guile out while scop- ing for hot guys.

"Robbie, I order you to listen to me and think about what I'm saying," Guile commanded. "You're feeling guilty about enslaving your father, and it's causing you to mess up a porn fantasy that you CAN turn into a reality. You deliberately screwed up your encounter with Gavin, and you'll KEEP screwing up, even if you find the loudest, beefiest, raunch- iest, wildest, sexiest man in the clearing!"

Robbie tried to think of a dismissive response, but he couldn't. He could only obey Guile's order.

"Your father fought like hell to avoid being Entangled, and I can see in his mind that if he were given the choice, he would absolutely want to be freed."

Robbie let out a sigh that contained a single sob.

"Could you let him go, but make him forget about all the.....every- thing?" Robbie proposed, admitting defeat.

"I can, if you want, but he'll probably be dead in a few months, or weeks," Guile revealed.

"WHAT?!"

"You've allowed your emotionally unstable mother to poison you against your father, and she's been bleeding him dry and amusing herself by ruining his reputation and repeatedly calling the police and making false allegations. Your father is at the end of his rope. That Glock he keeps dropping wasn't meant for carjackers or cum vampires, it was in his glove compartment because he wanted it handy for when he finally found the resolve to end his life."

Robbie stopped walking and fought to absorb what Guile had told him. He almost accused Guile of lying, but before he'd even formed the thought-

"It isn't normal for divorced men to not date, Robbie, especially when they look like your dad. It's also not normal for a father to risk his life by running into a forest at night to fight a terrifying supernatural monster. As concerned as he was about Jayce's fate, you and your father BOTH wanted Craig not to come out of this forest alive.

Realizing the truth of Guile's words, Robbie tried to solve the problem...to flee from the knowledge that his father intended to end his own life.

"What if I-" Robbie started to ask.

"Even if you fight your mother's efforts to the contrary, abiding by the court-mandated visitation schedule won't be enough to make your father want to live. Like you, your father is trapped by his own fucked up psychology, both of which, relevantly enough, can be traced back to your mother."

"I could move in with my dad," Robbie suggested. "Would THAT fix things?"

"As I continually point out to Lecher, I am NOT capable of seeing the future. However, moving in with your father could be the solution. Your Entangled healing capabilities and my anti-manipulation training would help you cope with the physical and emotional bruises you would receive from your mother when you broke the news to her. And as I tried to point out to your father, Pit Fog is a harmless, non-addictive drug that could help him kick his out of control addiction to meth and heroin...."

Robbie tried to express surprise, but Guile didn't feel like getting further off track, so he prevented him from doing so. After all, Robbie needed to get BACK TO WORK......er.....back to celebrating, I mean.

"....however, if you have the power to breathe Pit Fog at your father, drugging him in countless different ways, you WILL use it to intox- icate him and fulfill the bizarre sexual fantasy you JUST got done outlin- ing to Gavin Norwich," Guile pointed out. "You have your OWN addiction, and unlike your father's, yours cannot be brought under control with Pit Fog. And once your father sobers up and realizes that he's been turned into an incestuous pedophile against his will, without Entanglement altering his mind to make him not GIVE a fuck, that Glock will start calling to him again."

"You can order me to stop wanting to mess with my dad!" Robbie blurted, proud of himself for finding the perfect solution.

"Robbie, I ORDER YOU to NOT have sex with ANY of the men in this clearing!" Guile commanded before filling Robbie's lungs with Ball Vapor.

Robbie started licking his lips and the roof of his mouth again, and his asshole began to buzz worse than ever.

"Do you want me to make it WORSE," Guile offered, "or will you just accept the fact that there are some things that I cannot order an Entan- gled to do....like NOT wanting to suck cock and NOT wanting to get fucked?"

"There's gotta be another way!" Robbie whined while licking his arm for the salt on his skin.

"There is not, because I have not mentioned the biggest hurdle of all! If Craig is Unentangled, you wouldn't be able to USE Pit Fog to replace his addiction, because the instant you DID, his memories of tonight would return, and he would become an unacceptable security risk."

"Then what should I DO???" Robbie cried out audibly, earning stares of confusion from many of the already quite confused naked men around him.

"Simple," Guile breezed, "Robbie, I order you to accept that I take FULL responsibility for Entangling your father, because due to his refusal to help Churn you, I was going to do it regardless of your opinion on the matter. Furthermore, you will feel no guilt for using your father to fulfill your sexual desires, because I am ordering you to feel no guilt about it. Feel better?"

"Yes," Robbie had to admit.

"Good. Please go be a slut."

"I'm horny, but I'm not really all that high," Robbie complained.

There was a sudden coolness in Robbie's lungs as they filled with Pit Fog. Gradually, Robbie started to smile...and he couldn't stop himself from doing it.

"Now," Robbie pondered with sinister intent, "where'd Gavin go?"

"GAVIN!" Robbie called out jovially once he reached the end of the illusory dashed yellow line.

Gavin did not turn around, choosing instead to stagger away, but although both Gavin and Robbie were under the influence of Pit Fog, Robbie was just high.....Gavin was trashed.

"Where you going?" Robbie asked with a devilish grin, navigating through the naked, milling throng of human cattle and stepping in front of Gavin. "If you need to put your hands back on my shoulders for balance, go ahead. Touch me anywhere you want!"

"N-no, Robbie," Gavin refused. "You need to...you need to go find your dad...like you said."

"Let's go find him together!" Robbie suggested, taking Gavin's hand and interlocking their fingers. "You can tell him about how I was going to blackmail him...and I can finish jerking you off...OR SUCKING YOU OFF... right in front of him! Don't worry, he won't get mad at you. Now that he has to do whatever I want, he and I can BOTH suck you off...at the same time!"

"Robbie, pluh...please just leave me alone," Gavin growled, letting his eternally-patient, mild-mannered elementary school teacher mask slip a little bit.

"Y'see, the guy who got you and all of these guys to come here and take their clothes off also fixed it so my dad has to do any sex stuff I WANT, so even if my plan wouldn't've worked BEFORE, it's fucking GONNA work NOW!"

Gavin was about to turn and walk in the opposite direction...when something occurred to him, managing to wriggle its way through his mental sludge.

"That guy way over there...lying on a table," Gavin slurred. "He's got red hair, too. Izzat...Izz that your FATHER?!"

"If he's really big and muscly, yeah...that's HIM!" Robbie confirm- ed before broadening his mischievous grin. "I haven't been over there yet. What's he doin'?"

"G-GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!" Gavin snapped. "J-J-JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"Is my dad having a good time over there, Gavin?" Robbie asked in spite of knowing the answer. "Tomorrow morning, I'll be able to close my eyes and watch it all...like I was standing over there the whole time! Isn't that fucking cool! Wouldn't you want Dylan to be able to watch YOU sucking off and getting fucked by a bunch of dudes...any time he wanted?!"

"I TOLD YOU TO STAY AWAY FR-!" Gavin started to say before Robbie obeyed his instincts and blew...HARD, expelling a thick plume of Pit Fog that wrapped around Gavin's head.

Gavin panicked and flailed at the fog with his right hand while blindly whipping his other arm around to ward Robbie off, should he decide to approach.

"This is s'posed to be a PARTY, Gavin, a party for ME!" Robbie growled hatefully. "But you just HADDA go and make me feel bad...and I didn't WANT to feel bad. I'M FUCKING SICK OF FEELING BAD! So NOW...I'm gonna make YOU feel GOOD, even though YOU don't WANT to feel good!"

Gavin gasped, unable to hold his breath anymore. Pit Fog poured into his lungs, soaked in, and went straight to his head, forcing Gavin down on his knees, and in short order, onto his back.

Gavin was now stone sober, but almost completely paralyzed, only able to move his eyes, which he used to look up at all the dazed human cattle. The full horror of the situation dawned on him, but fortunately, so did the realization that Gavin hadn't brought Dylan along with him on his trip to Timbersburg. Dylan was safe, and not wandering around naked, confused, afraid and defenseless amongst easily sexually aroused, drug- addled strangers.

Robbie knelt down, separated Gavin's legs, and crawled forward. Gavin felt the boy take him into his mouth.

"WHY AM I STILL HARD!" Gavin yelled in his mind, wondering why his horniness didn't go away when his sobriety returned. "The kid doesn't even have PUBES! He's probably only TEN! Maybe YOUNGER!"

Gavin's torment got worse when Robbie leaned forward and took Gavin's cock all the way down his throat, farther than his wife or any of his former girlfriends ever had, without gagging!

It was heavenly torture. Gavin loved it......but CHRIST he didn't want to.

"Look'it him!" Someone called out. "How's that boy doin' that? His lips are like....all the way down to the BASE!"

Attention whore that he was (as his internet fans could attest), Robbie quickly lifted his head off of Gavin's penis so that whoever had spoken could see just how impressive Robbie's feat really WAS! Amused groans, a couple of "ouch"-es, and an amazed "WOW!" were uttered in response to the SIZE of the cock that Robbie had been deep throating. Considering the man's small frame, and how deep Robbie's lips had been buried in the man's pubes, no one had expected Gavin to be hung!

Robbie slowly lowered his head and went all the way down again, earning even more ghastly validation, in the form of claps, whistles, and indecent praise and encouragement.

"What the FUCK?" Robbie thought as he licked Gavin's shaft while keeping it down his throat for a full minute. "I'm not gagging, and I don't haff to breathe!"

"Jesus, kid, I know you're testing out your new cum vampire side- kick super powers, but you might want to move your head up and down before even BALL VAPOR can't keep this guy hard!" Lecher's voice teased in Robbie's head. "You did a MUCH better job on Klempernick. Oh...wait...is it because THIS guy ain't a COP?"

"To answer your questions, Robbie," Guile broke in, "when an Entangled performs oral sex, his gag reflex shuts off. And the reason you don't need to breathe is because....Entangleds don't need to breathe."

"WHY?" Robbie demanded.

"I order you not to flip out about what I am about to tell you," Guile prepped in advance. "Your lungs, stomach, and rectum are synched up dimensionally with the specially-designed internal organs of a HUGE, DISGUSTING, FREAKISHLY UGLY MONSTER!"

"You're not gonna stop with that shit, ARE you?" Lecher snarled.

"No. Anyway, the organ that is linked to your lungs across an extradimensional barrier sends over swarms of tiny, bioengineered creatures that dispense needed gases, like air, Ball Vapor and Pit Fog. They're sort of like oxygen tanks with wings.....and legs.....and appendages best left unmentioned."

"Seriously?" Robbie inquired emotionlessly, glad that Guile ordered him to take the news so well. "Are they doing anything bad?"

"You smoke," Lecher informed Robbie. "Why the fuck do YOU care if they're bad for your lungs?"

"No, Robbie, they're genetically engineered to only do GOOD things in your lungs.

"Yeah, they're not like the big, sharp-toothed, EVIL monsters that rip up your stomach and ass from the inside!" Lecher shrieked, seeking to upset Robbie so that Guile would have to deal with the fallout...as payback for Guile calling Caboose 'ugly'. "Those look like a cross between a shark, a tarantula, and a porcupine! BRRRRRRR!!!!"

"Robbie, do I really need to tell you that Lecher is just trying to scare you?" Guile sighed. "The creatures are harmless. They come and go, doing helpful things. They prepare your anus for intercourse by eating your feces...."

"EW!" Robbie editorialized.

"There ain't nothing wrong with eating shit," Lecher argued. "I've been eating shit all evening, and I feel fine!"

"They can fill you with lust, using Ball Vapor, the vapor that you instinctively blew at Gavin's nose and mouth to make him horny," Guile bravely soldiered on, "They can settle your tummy, so you can perform anilingus without nausea and retching....they can slather a coating of green tendril residue all over your rectum and anus, instantly putting you 'in the mood' no matter how you feel, and no matter what's going on in your head."

"And they can keep the elementary school teacher you're sucking off from falling asleep," Lecher added. "Watch! Hmm...I guess you can't."

Something slithered up Robbie's throat. He felt that he should be screaming or something, but thanks to Guile's command to stay calm, all he could do was casually inquire: "What's happening?"

"You should relax, Robbie," Guile suggested as the tip of the belly monster's tentacle suddenly started to spray, coating Robbie's mouth and the cock inside of it with magenta. "You're about to learn why you should make peace with the creatures who visit you, perhaps even regard them as helpful little pets. However, you mustn't become SO attached that you do anything stupid and embarrassing, like NAMING THEM."

"WHAT'S GOING ON?" Robbie screamed telepathically, his forced calm shattered by the fact that something was occurring to him that he didn't directly link to the monster in his belly...and it was causing him to go WILD!

Several drugged onlookers stared at the sight of a boy going utter- ly insane, licking and sucking the magenta-colored cock of a skinny guy who resembled a caveman, who seemed to be unable to move.

"Iz that gonna happen to us?" a man asked, giving voice to a fear held by all those who were watching.

"I'LL go next if YOU don't want to," another man slurred, missing the first speaker's point entirely. "I keep jacking, but I can't get myself off. If the kid wants to give it a try, I don't fucking care."

"I can't cum either!" a sixty-ish man seconded, displaying his boner as if it were somehow proof of his claim.

"I busted when I fucked that red-headed strong man over there," someone else hollered. "And I watched him suck off a couple of guys, him AND that black kid."

Several spectators drifted away towards the direction indicated, while others decided to save themselves the walk by waiting to see if the young cocksucker was able to make the cave man bust his nut.

"Well, Robbie, the chemical reaction caused by the friction between your treated tongue and mouth...and Gavin's treated erection...mixed together with your saliva -once it's been sufficiently contaminated by the spray-, causes a complex chemical reaction which-" Guile tried to explain in order to answer Robbie's question, until his telepathy told him that Robbie wasn't exactly in a learning frame of mind.

"Ignore him!" Lecher urged, fulfilling his purpose. "It's just something that makes your mouth and throat feel GREAT when you suck cock, eat ass, or tongue kiss. How do you think I got your straight dad to smoke and drink my cum? NOW SHUT UP AND FOCUS! SUCK THAT COCK! MORE SLURPING!!! LESS DIGNITY!!!"

"I...I didn't ASK him to do this!" Gavin informed the crowd as the interaction between his magenta-treated penis and Robbie's magenta-treated mouth made his loins heat up and tingle, his abs spasm uncontrollably, and his nuts tighten to the point of cramping. "I DIDN'T WANT THIS! I DIDN'T... .....UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Spectators watched in macabre fascination as a helpless man was forced against his will to have an extremely powerful and impossibly pro- longed orgasm in public.

"FUCK! I'm cumming, too!" Robbie announced during the incredible length and internal pressure of the build up, which surprised him, since he'd never, ever, even HAD a hands-free orgasm before.

"Whenever you're feeding for us, YOU cum when your partner cums, with the same intensity and duration," Lecher chuckled, enjoying Robbie's initiation immensely, since he was the only newly-Entangled who hadn't been forced into it, which therefore enabled Lecher to live vicariously through the boy. "Wait until you see what happens AFTER your orgasm, when Gavin starts pumping out semen! Just GO with it, kid. Just relax and let it happen! You'll never be a cum vampire, but being an Entangled ain't all that bad either!"

"Would you like to ejaculate, too?" Guile offered. "Or would you like a dry orgasm. As I previously told you, Entangleds have a choice. Please keep in mind that as you've experienced SEVERAL dry orgasms tonight, when you ejaculate...it will be...uh...quite messy."

"I WANT TO SAVE IT FOR MY DAD!" Robbie yelled mentally as his and Gavin's shared climax began, just in time for Lecher to make the requisite adjustments to Robbie's Entangled physiology.

Robbie felt another tentacle snake up his throat, but as he was in the throes of orgasm, and because Robbie had made peace with the monsters inside of him (since everything they DID made him feel fucking AWESOME in a brand new way), Robbie didn't protest to Guile when his tongue felt the tentacle cap the tip of Gavin's cock, stealing away his jizz for the benefit of the cum vampire.

"Don't worry, kid," Lecher purred. "You're about to get paid in something a lot better than a mouthful of goo!"

"What do you...FUCK!!!" Robbie yelled mentally as cum exploded out of Gavin's dick and got funneled down into Robbie's tummy monster. "What's goin' AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHNNNNN.....UHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.....UHHHHHHHHHHHHH......UHHH HHHHHHHH.....UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.....UHHHHHHhhhhhhhh.....uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..... uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh............*"

"Think of them as dessert," Guile suggested, "although what they REALLY are are blasts of dangerously high levels of enjoyment, nearing the upper limit of your pleasure threshold. They're synched to your partner's ejaculatory pulses, to encourage you to keep him in your mouth until your belly creature is done sucking out the last drop. If you disengage early, the pulses stop abruptly, instead of gently dying down. I've seen it happen. According to the other Entangleds, it's jarring and unpleasant, which is why Lure makes them do it."

"Izz...izz the hairy guy squirtin'?" Julian Frisch, one of Russell Hawksmoor's militia buddies groaned, so afflicted by blue balls that he was in pain, and desperate for release that he couldn't make his penis provide.

"Yeah," Gavin croaked, suddenly able to talk again....because Guile had a function for him to perform. "I didn't want to....he forced me! Stay away from him! Whatever's happening to us, he's connected to it! He para- lyzed me! I'm still having trouble getting my arms and legs to move! Some- one get me away from him....PLEASE!!!"

"STAY DOWN!" a biker-sort with a handlebar mustache, a moderately muscled body, and a small beer belly, shouted at a dazed Robbie, who'd let Gavin's dick fall out of his mouth and was preparing to stand up.

Robbie obeyed, partly because he always knuckled under in the face of naked, male authority, partly because he realized he was comfort- able on his knees (Pilot Fish healing creatures ensure that Entangleds can stay in sexual stress positions for extended periods), but mostly because Robbie felt a sudden fullness in his rectum, followed by the now-familiar sensation of his insides being coated by a fresh layer of green tendril residue. Robbie was being prepared to receive another dick up his ass, so standing up would've been pointless...and in just a few seconds..completely impossible.

The biker, Karl Lacklund, reached under Gavin's armpits and easily dragged him across the tongue mat, several yards from Robbie, before suddenly letting go and letting Gavin's head and shoulders thump to the ground.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Gavin yelped at Karl, who'd reached down and gave Gavin's dick a really rough squeeze, causing a glob of cum to form on top of his piss slit.

"Yeah, the kid can make you cum," Karl called to Julian, whose obvious pain tugged on Karl's heart strings....and Karl didn't even HAVE heart strings.

"Oh thank God!" Julian begged before suddenly shoving Robbie between his shoulder blades, knocking him down onto his hands, and picking Robbie up by the hips to get him on all fours.

"HE'S NOT EVEN GONNA ASK!" Robbie squealed excitedly to Guile. "HE'S GONNA FUCK ME WITHOUT ASKING!"

"He has a rape fantasy at thirteen," Guile marveled.

"Kids are maturing faster these days," Lecher justified. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Robbie shivered with anticipation from the feel of Julian's inner thighs sliding down the sides of his ass as he positioned himself. A second shiver hit when Robbie suddenly felt something quickly poke out of his ass and quickly spray Julian's cock and the exterior of Robbie's anus.

The best shiver of all, however, happened when Julian shoved his treated dick through Robbie's treated o-ring, taking Robbie to heaven...... ...yet again.

Karl approached, spitting in the hand he'd used to touch another man's penis, rubbing the saliva around with his fingers, then wiping his hand on his thigh, as if that would do.....ANYTHING to remove or kill ANY- THING he'd picked up from Gavin's dick. Truth be told, considering the filthiness of Karl's hand, Gavin was the one who should've been worrying.

"He wants a blowjob, Robbie," Guile informed him. "and he doesn't see why he should have to wait until your current 'client' is done sodom- izing you before receiving it. 'Karl' has a remarkably high drug tolerance, but if you exhale a few lungfuls of Pit Fog at him, I'm sure I can slow him down a bit."

"NO!" Robbie insisted excitedly. "I want them to fill both of my holes at the same time!"

"I'm so proud I could cry," Lecher sniffed.

"Robbie, that's a LOT of pleasure to endure," Guile fretted. "Are you absolutely..."

Robbie had stopped listening.

"You're at least eighteen, right?" Karl asked, obviously joking, but giving no outward signs of it.

"Yep!" Robbie agreed, accepting the man into his mouth.

"Yeah, that's it....suck it," Karl ordered, giving Robbie's hair a mussing, the most affection he'd ever shown a child, certainly more than he'd ever given his own children, none of whom he acknowledged as being HIS, in spite of conclusive DNA tests.

"Damn, he's tight and slippery!" Julian commented, too inebriated to realize that when two heterosexual male strangers are being serviced by the same underaged homosexual boy, it's basic etiquette to ignore one other. Just like when standing at a urinal, conversation is frowned upon, especially when the conversation concerns how tight and slippery the boy's asshole is.

"You know, saliva contains enzymes that destroy D.N.A.," Karl said. apropos of EVERYTHING (everything that should've been important to Julian at that moment, anyway), while keeping his eyes downward (as decorum demands) and watching Robbie slide his lips along his pole.

"You're gonna be letting lots of other guys fuck you, right?" Julian asked hopefully, encouraging a sexually active thirteen year old to engage in lots of unprotected (as far as HE knew) sex, in order to 'muddy the pedophile D.N.A. waters' as much as possible.

Unable to speak at the moment, Robbie gave Julian an enthusiastic thumbs up.

"It's cool," Julian informed Karl, who didn't actually give a fuck anyway.

"Guile, why isn't there a monster spraying my mouth and this guy's cock?" Robbie mentally interrogated.

"But....your ass and the penis penetrating it have been coated with green!" Guile objected. "Isn't that pleasurable enough?"

"It feels fucking AWESOME, but I want to try BOTH sprays at the same time!" Robbie squealed.

"Oh...well...okay," Guile agreed, caving completely. "Let me know if it's too much for you. Lecher and I can work together to neutralize the coatings and their effects on you."

"YOU WON'T NEED TO!" Robbie stated with giddy defiance.

"You know, it's fucking shame that the boy can't become a cum vampire," Lecher lamented.

"Yes, it is," Guile agreed. "If my meeting with Reality Itself goes bad, and we DO end up dying tomorrow, in spite of the Overseer's endless pretty promises, Robbie will Unenthrall, and he'll be completely on his own again. Without a Guile to advise him, the boy is doomed to put himself in dangerous situations as he hopelessly tries to satisfy needs that can never be fulfilled. If we fail...if we fall...I fear that all life will have to offer Robert Byrne is violence, disease, and early death."

Or.....

Flash Forward: Robbie Byrne's Bedroom, Four Weeks After The Timbersburg/

Johnsport Incident and The Battle of Faggot Forest *************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************

"REALLY?" Robbie blurted in astonishment at the stranger in the gray suit. "SERIOUSLY?!"

"I didn't come all this way to lie to you, Robbie," Mister Harris said, smiling inside at the intensity of the boy's sudden excitement. "If you say 'yes', I can arrange it."

"YES! PLEASE, Mister Harris," the naked boy begged, rolling over onto his back and scooting his recently abused ass down to sit at the edge of the bed.

Robbie's buns still ached from Mister Harris' men spanking him and roughly kneading his poor glutes so much that they were STILL radiating heat. Robbie wasn't complaining, although he wished he would've lifted his ass off of the bed and crab-walked to the edge instead of scooting.

Robbie grabbed a pillow, intending to cover himself, but his unexpected late-night visitor tisked and waved his hand to indicate that modesty was not required.

"I....I....I thought I COULDN'T be turned into a cum vampire!" Robbie babbled excitedly. "Guile told me that gay kids CAN'T be cum vampires! He said we'd EXPLODE if we-"

"He was telling the truth," Mister Harris interrupted while leaning forward on Robbie's desk chair, two moves meant to let the boy know that he should probably listen instead of talking, "but after all of the terrible things that happened on that stretch of I-147 and Faggot Forest, we are living in a whole new world, and none of the old rules apply any more. Not at ALL."

"Am I gonna get turned into a cum vampire HERE, or do I hafta go somewhere?" Robbie blurted. "'Cause I could throw on some clothes and..."

"Robbie, Robbie, slow down...." Mister Harris urged, patting the air to indicate that Robbie needed to take things down a notch.

Mister Harris stood up, went over to Robbie's bed, and sat down next to Robbie. It was a psychological trick to establish psychological closeness with the boy by being physically close to him during one of the most important moments of Robbie's life.

There was a reason Robbie had been told to order Craig to go to bed. Mister Harris wanted to be the ONLY father figure in that room AT THAT MOMENT.

"...we need to talk about some things, first," Mister Harris said, putting his arm around Robbie's shoulders.

Robbie didn't resist, neither did he lock up. Those were excellent signs.

"Y'see, there IS a price involved, but it's a really easy price to pay," Mister Harris informed Robbie while reaching over and running his fingertips across the boy's stubbly, orange pubic region, which had been shaved smooth by the Caleb-Lecher on the night of the The Timbersburg/ Johnsport Incident.

"I'll do anything," Robbie offered in a begging tone, making no effort to stop Mister Harris from touching his private area. In fact, Robbie 'boyspread' his legs, putting his right leg on top of Mister Harris' to make his sex organs more accessible to him, should he desire to handle them.

"I'm glad to hear that," Mister Harris praised, removing his hand, but patting Robbie's leg to let him know that he hadn't done anything wrong. "I need you back in Timbersburg."

"Uh....w-w-w-what?" Robbie stuttered, as stunned as he should've been while the stranger had been rubbing his crotch. "But...my mom just sold the house."

Mister Harris gently lifted Robbie's right leg off of him and stood up. Now that Robbie's psychological defenses had been breached, it was time for Mister Harris to use his towering height to establish dominance over the boy.

"Yes, she sold it to your dad...although neither of them know it," Mister Harris revealed. "I bought your house and put it in your dad's name. You and your father hate this rented piece of shit, and you both hate living in Johnsport. You two want to go home...so you will."

"Sure! I'll go back!" Robbie suddenly blurted.

Nothing was working out for Robbie in Johnsport. Now that Guile and Lecher were dead, Robbie's Entangled powers wouldn't work right. He could still make his dad and the cops do weird sex stuff, but although THEY could make THEMSELVES high and horny (and no one else), Robbie couldn't summon Pit Fog or Ball Vapor AT ALL. This meant that Robbie couldn't use them to make LOTS of friends. Worse, it meant that Robbie couldn't HUNT!

It was the wheelchair kid's fault. Robbie was certain of it!

"You're right, it IS that bastard's fault," Mister Harris confirm- ed out loud, making Robbie gasp.

Robbie had thought that Mister Harris was 'normal'.

He wasn't.

"When I'm a cum vampire, will he still come and bother me?" Robbie asked, spite sneaking into his voice.

A satisfied smile crossed the face of the man in the gray suit.

"Not if things go my way...and things always go MY way," Mister Harris smirked. "By the time you arise as Thrall, he won't be AROUND to bother you."

Mister Harris realized that he'd been clenching his fists, which wasn't a good look. People who clenched their fists conveyed frustration and a general lack of control, and Mister Harris wanted to always be in COMPLETE control.....of himself, and EVERYTHING ELSE!

Mister Harris quickly relaxed his hands...and his shoulders, which had apparently ALSO clenched.

"I know he came here to tell you that the Caleb-Guile and the Caleb-Lecher are dead, Robbie, but I didn't know he'd been back," Mister Harris said with forced tranquility.

"He does that thing my mother does," Robbie sighed. "They hurt you, then make it worse by...by.....I can't think of how to say it."

Mister Harris looked into Robbie's mind.

"They hurt you, but instead of apologizing, they make you listen to them justify their actions and try to strongarm you into agreeing that they were right to do what they did," Mister Harris articulated for Robbie.

"Yeah," Robbie agreed. "When he shows up, he asks if I'm 'ready to behave like an adult and have a mature conversation', and shit like that."

"That sounds like him, the patronizing prick," Mister Harris muttered.

"I keep asking why he killed Guile and Lecher, but he won't tell me. He just keeps saying that they shouldn't've Entangled me, because I'm too young. He's also trying to get me to let him take away the memories Guile made for me. He said they're not good for me. And he said he wants to take away my control over my dad, George, Mark, and Tyler!"

"He wants to take away everything and leave you with nothing," Mister Harris established and summarized. "It's not enough that he took away your friends, he's also gotta take away their gifts."

"Can he take them without my permission?" Robbie fretted. "And can he make me do and think stuff I don't want to?"

"No," Mister Harris stated honestly with complete sincerity. "He can shut down your creatures, but he can't fuck with your mind. He wouldn't DARE to pull a stunt like that. Not on you!"

"What should I do if he comes back?" Robbie pleaded, so focused on stopping Guile and Lecher's killer from haunting him that Robbie didn't pick up on the fact that Mister Harris had just implied that there was something special about Robbie. "He's gonna try to talk me out of becom- ing a cum vampire, I just know it."

"He can't," the smirking man in the gray suit informed him. "But just in case he DOES decide to stop by and bother you again, let Mister Harris tell you EXACTLY how to get rid of him."

"How?!" Robbie insisted, his eyes going wide.

"You throw a fucking FIT in your mind!" Mister Harris explained with a look of drop dead seriousness. "You convince yourself that that son of a bitch is here to KILL YOU, and you motherfucking SCREAM FOR HELP in your head, as LOUD AS YOU CAN! THAT'S what you do!"

"Will he go away then?" Robbie blurted.

"Most DEFINITELY," Mister Harris choked out while laughing into his hand. "After Faggot Forest, there are invisible forces in this world that won't take kindly to a Guile upsetting a nice boy like you.

(One of whom Mister Harris was fairly confident was watching his and Robbie's conversation with great interest.)

"Mister Harris, how did Guile and Lecher die?" Robbie inquired out of the blue, his emotions going...cold. "I don't really care that they're dead, I guess because Guile ordered me not to, but I...I need to know if .....if....if.....I dunno."

Mister Harris reached into Robbie's mind and undid Guile's final command to the boy, opening an emotional floodgate.

"I guess I...I just need to know," Robbie sobbed, contorting his face in a doomed attempt to control his sudden, weeks-delayed outpouring of grief. "W-w-w-was Guile s-s-s-s-scared? Did it...sob...h-h-h-hurt when he was k-k-k-killed...?"

Mister Harris pulled some tissues out of his suit and walked over to wipe away Robbie's tears. Afterward, he sat down next to the miserable naked boy once again, expertly framing the all-important moment that Mister Harris would tell the crying boy something that would make everything all better...and bind Robbie Byrne to Mister Harris forever.

"Robbie, if I were in your shoes...if you were wearing shoes....I wouldn't believe what I'm about to tell you," Mister Harris said in a conspiratorial tone, as if the two were about to share a forbidden secret, "but Guile and Lecher are still alive."

"SERIOUSLY???" Robbie shouted at Mister Harris, point-blank, while excitedly smearing the fresh tears from his face with the back of his hand.

"Yes, yes," Mister Harris confirmed. "Seriously."

"But why haven't they come to see me?!?!?!" Robbie blurted.

"All I can tell you is, they want to see you again, but they can't. The ONLY person who can help you talk to them again is the Robbie- Guile, YOUR Guile, but the Robbie-Guile doesn't exist...yet."

Mister Harris pulled Robbie close, physically and symbolically, hugging the boy and allowing him to cry tears of grief that had now become tears of joy.

Mister Harris was thinking that his suit would definitely need to be dry-cleaned after so much contact with the weeping, sticky child....when Mister Harris suddenly saw Robbie's mind form The Forbidden Question.

"Mister Harris, what are you?" Robbie sniffed after pulling away due to suddenly feeling silly and childish.

"Young man," Mister Harris responded, making deliberate eye-contact with Robbie, "you just asked the one question that no one EVER asks Mister Harris."

"Oh....sorry," Robbie replied nervously, hoping he didn't just ruin his chance to become a cum vampire....and find his lost friends.

"That's okay, son. Everyone's allowed to make that mistake...once."

Robbie's red eyes shot open.

"Are you...are you a Thrall Master?" Robbie suddenly realized. "Or a Tethered One? Are you gonna change me?? NOW???"

"First, a Tethered One and a Thrall Master are the same thing," Mister Harris explained. "Second, I am not a Thrall Master, but I can arrange for you to be Enthralled. Third, I won't be arranging anything until you and I discuss that 'price' I mentioned....what I want from YOU in exchange for everything I've done...and WILL do...for you and your dad."

"Sure....whatever!" Robbie blurted. "What do you want?"

"I want you to look into my eyes, ignore what I say, and don't interrupt me until I'm done."

"Uh...okay," Robbie agreed, knitting his brows as the imposing black man stared at him in a way that looked...evil.

"I am Mister Harris, and you two OWE me!" Mister Harris snarled at Robbie's puzzled face. "There's now a freeze on the creation of NEW Guiles and Lechers, so getting YOU TWO made took a LOT of effort on MY part, and I WANT PAID...in LOYALTY! You can talk shit behind by back, and we all know you WILL, but when I need your support...OR YOUR VOTE...you'd better DAMN well give it to me! I can do a lot more for your Lure and his dad than just buying them back their home! I can make the BOY happy, I can make his DAD happy, and I can even make YOU TWO happy! I've planned out EVERYTHING! But if you cross me.....let's just say that the Robbie-Lure will always have a Robbie-Guile and a Robbie-Lecher, but that don't mean the two of you can't be REPLACED. You KNOW what I'm talkin' 'bout."

Mister Harris reached into his pocket and pulled out a zip drive.

"This is a prospectus, written out in Screen Code," Mister Harris explained, tossing it onto Robbie's computer table. "It details my exten- sive plans for this area, and the parts that I want the Robbie-Thrall to play in it. You might want to study it before doing something RASH and STUPID, like siding with the opposition party. Happy Birthday...I hope you enjoyed feeding on all the presents I sent to your Awakening...and I look forward to hearing your collective decision."

Mister Harris stood up, buttoned his jacket, and prepared to leave.

"I hope that didn't scare or confuse you, Robbie," Mister Harris apologized. "Guiles and Lechers can be independent and stubborn. Sometimes you have to be stern. Remember that."

"I will, Mister Harris. And...uh...if you get me turned into a cum vampire, I promise to always give you my vote...about...whatever."

"You're a good boy, Robbie," Mister Harris praised while reaching out and giving Robbie's dick a brief farewell tickle. "And you're gonna make a GREAT cum vampire. You'll hear from me soon, but in the meantime, will you do yourself a little favor?"

"Sure! What?" Robbie readily agreed, as children often do in the face of getting exactly what the want.

"Spend lots of time all by yourself, and appreciate the peace and quiet," Mister Harris suggested. "As much as you'll love your new life, you'll look back on those moments fondly."

Robbie opened his mouth to reply, but Mister Harris had vanished.

Mister Harris departed Craig Byrne's shitty, rented house through the front door and stepped out onto the front porch. He took a deep breath of the bitterly cold, late-February air, using it to sigh at the sight of three figures waiting for him on the sidewalk.

He'd been followed.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!" the ghost of a boy in a wheelchair demanded.

Mister Harris raised his chin, crossed his arms, and looked down his nose at the Steve-Guile and his companions: the emaciated ghost in a tank top and shorts, ....and the Pariah-Guile.

"I dunno," Mister Harris smirked. "Winning, I suppose."

"He's a thirteen-year-old BOY!" Steve-Guile raged. "He's off limits! He never should've been Entangled in the FIRST place."

"He's a thirteen-year-old boy who spent yesterday making his father and three cops think they were momma cats and Robbie was their kitten," Mister Harris countered. "And after Robbie got bored of having every inch of his body tongue bathed, he had 'em all put on cowboy hats and boots.... and nothing else...and ordered them to get all bonered and bothered while they did some sexy line dancing, while he RECORDED them for his website. But that ain't the WORST of it! THEN, he went and-"

"We GET it," Pariah-Guile snapped, snagging Mister Harris' attention and almost making him retch.

"No you don't!" Mister Harris snapped back. "And why the hell are you even HERE, Pariah-Guile?! A Guile in YOUR position should be playing both sides and keeping his options open, instead of limiting them by PISSING ME OFF!"

"I'm here because Robbie Byrne was supposed to be mine!" Pariah- Guile wailed with rage, crying holographic tears that streamed down his face to mix with the holographic blood and gore. "but you're taking him from me, giving him to a BRAND NEW, FRESHLY MADE Guile and Lecher, so I'll have to go back to sleep again, maybe until THE END! Thanks to Kaschak, we only have a few hundred years LEFT...and I don't want to miss a single one of them! PLEASE LET ME HAVE THE BOY!! I'M....I'M SO AFRAID!!"

Mister Harris leaned his head back and roared with laughter.

"You're FILTH, 'Mister Harris'!" Steve-Guile hissed.

"I ain't laughing at HIM, I was laughing at YOU!" Mister Harris snarled before turning back to Pariah-Guile...but averting his eyes. "It's getting a little late, so why don't I tell you a bedtime story? Once upon a time, a few months ago, there was an 18-year-old native boy who was sucking dick in the men's room of the public rest area off'a the turnpike."

"WAIT....STOP!!!!" the Steve-Guile commanded, causing Pariah-Guile to focus his astonished gaze at the 'friend' who'd apparently deceived him.

"The native boy, Nathan Talltrees, approached a young man who declined his services, but he showed back up an hour later with some friends," Mister Harris continued, undaunted. "They hauled the boy outside, and started beating the shit out of him. But...and you'll never, EVER believe this...an honest-to-God SUPERHERO appeared and SAVED HIM. After Nathan watched the superhero dope those boys into horny, giggling idiocy and Churn every last one of the little bastards, good and proper, Nathan asked...begged shamelessly, actually...if there was any way that HE could become like the superhero."

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?!" Pariah-Guile raged at Steve-Guile, spewing holographic spittle and blood.

Mister Harris fought not to chuckle. These Guiles were all masters of manipulation, yet he was turning them against each other with EASE. No matter HOW Steve-Guile tried to spin his betrayal, he'd lost Pariah-Guile's trust and loyalty. Now it was time to shatter the bond between Ryan-Guile and Pariah-Guile as well.

"What I don't understand is why you didn't at least Entangle that boy," Mister Harris cut in before Steve-Guile could start flinging bullshit to the four corners of the globe. "Coach Morgan was weak...broken...leaking Soul-Creation Energy...and CONSTANTLY in danger of Kaschak finding a way past his compound's defenses. If Nathan Talltrees was so ballsy, sleazy, and horny that he was suckin' off strangers in rest stops, IMAGINE how much S.C.E. he would've collected if he'd only had access to all your Pilot Fish's creatures."

"I did Entangle him!" Steve-Guile informed Mister Harris COLDLY.

Mister Harris tightened his abs, swallowed hard, and forced himself to stare directly into the pariah's disgusting face.

"Did Steve-Guile just LIE to me?" Mister Harris gasped. "I mean, back when Kaschak activated that telepathic barrier around Coach Morgan's compound, and the Steve-Thrall was inside, Steve-Guile had to disengage from Angelo Consiggieri, an Entangled of his, in one HELL of a hurry to avoid being yanked out of Angelo's mind, else he would've shredded it. So unless Steve-Guile kept disconnecting and reconnecting with young Nathan each and every time he teleported through that field to feed Coach Morgan's Fingernail...."

"YOU Entangled him, NOT Steve-Guile!" Pariah-Guile accused Ryan- Guile. "You've BOTH been keeping Nathan Talltrees a secret from me! WHY!?"

"They ain't gonna tell you," Mister Harris advised Pariah-Guile, "but you're a GUILE. You already KNOW why they did it."

"You lied to me," Pariah-Guile accused, focusing on Steve-Guile, "You said Robbie Byrne was the LAST potential Thrall candidate, and you promised him to me so I'd side with YOU in your power struggle against Mister Harris. But all this time, you had a SECOND candidate...AND HID HIM FROM ME! You let me dread being put back to sleep, and all the while, you could've eased my fears by letting me know that there was A POTENTIAL LURE JUST WAITING FOR ME AND MY LECHER!"

"Well...yes...but....Mister Harris won't be able to get Robbie Enthralled NOW!" Steve-Guile floundered. "He's only THIRTEEN! He can't be Enthralled until he's at least SIXTEEN! And when that happens, you and your Lecher will GET HIM!"

"NO!" Pariah-Guile hissed. "I've decided I'm NOT going back into hibernation until Robbie is ready! I want the native boy...Talltrees...and I want him as SOON as my present Lure is dismissed from service! Do it! Or I'LL SWEAR MY ALLEGIANCE TO MISTER HARRIS!"

"Okay-okay-okay!" Steve-Guile frantically assuaged, quickly filling the air with words to prevent Mister Harris from opening his mouth and fomenting any MORE conflict. "I'm in telepathic contact with Nathan, and I've told him that homosexuals can become Thralls now. He's thrilled, he knows he needs to wait for a bit, and he knows you're a kind of a mess at the moment, but he wants me to guide you to him right away and screen you so you two can meet and talk."

"OR, you can disengage YOUR mind from the boy...then I'll insert MY mind...and I'll screen MY OWN DAMNED SELF....WITHOUT ALL THIS DISGUSTING GORE!" Pariah-Guile snarled. "My Lecher and I will be managing Nathan's Entanglement from here on out...until his eventual Enthrallment!"

"Of course, of course," Steve-Guile capitulated despite his author- ity as Thrall-Leader, seeking to TRY to minimize the damage caused by his STUPID decision to plot against Mister Harris.

"EXCELLENT!" Mister Harris clapped. "Not one, but TWO more cum vampire employees for me to put to work! I should've worn a MUCH darker gray suit today! May the money and semen FLOW!"

"Not so fast!" Steve-Guile growled, allowing his resentment to do his thinking for him. "You're NOT getting your hands on that boy until he's sixteen! The Overseer will NEVER allow it."

Mister Harris walked up to the ghost of a boy in a wheelchair and squatted down, just like Ladislav Kaschak did on the night of March 1st. of the previous year.

"Do you think that I'd DARE to come to THIS HOUSE if I hadn't spoken with the Overseer ALREADY?" Mister Harris taunted with his beauti- ful, gleaming white smile. "He agrees with me."

"But...but the boy is SICK!" Steve-Guile argued. "You've SEEN the depraved things he did at that feeding area! You even MADE MY POINT by telling us what Robbie did yesterday. He's out of control! As an Entangled, he's obsessed with degrading four men, one of whom IS HIS FATHER! What Caligula-level debaucheries will he crave once he's ENTHRALLED?!?! Robert Byrne needs help, NOT Enthrallment! Caleb Crandal PROVED that some minds are too damaged to be fixed by the tranformation process! And the Overseer KNOWS that as much as ANYONE!"

"Which is why the Overseer performed a full mental audit on Robbie before giving me permission to talk to him," Mister Harris countered. "The boy is messed up sexually, but he ISN'T 'sick', not like poor Caleb Crandal was after Reality Itself and Ladislav Kaschak got ahold of him, that's for SURE! But although the Enthrallment process can't cure Robbie's rampaging sex drive, why would we WANT it to? What it WILL do, however, is CHANNEL that lust...FOCUS it...make the boy want to have his holes filled by as many DIFFERENT men as possible, instead of wasting his time obsessing about stupid sex games with men he's already HAD...REPEATEDLY. And since cum vampires are sexually-repelled by drained men, which includes Entangleds, the boy will leave his daddy's ding-a-ling alone, as he should. And before you bring up Caligula again, I ain't saying that Robbie should be a TYPICAL Thrall. No, that boy's Guile needs to have SUPREME veto power, and a direct line to the Overseer in case shit goes sideways."

"I won't mention Caligula, but I WILL mention...AGAIN...that Robbie Byrne is only FUCKING THIRTEEN!!!" Steve-Guile screamed, working himself up to the highest level of outrage possible for a Guile.

"So? It ain't as if the boy has to stop aging and maturing now, at thirteen," Mister Harris argued, deliberately sidestepping Steve-Guile's point to piss him off even MORE. "He can serve as a cum vampire, but continue to develop until he's 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, or even 21."

"YOU KNOW THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEAN!!!!" Steve-Guile raged.

"I'm telling you this as an ally," Ryan-Guile spoke up. "Mister Harris outmaneuvered you. The bastard won this round, but you'll make him pay in the next one!"

"Watch it, ass-kisser," Mister Harris spat at Ryan-Guile. "or I'll invite Jeremy Klein, MY NEW LAWYER, to lunch. I think he and I desperately need to have a LONG discussion about his son's future, especially after what Ryan told Officer Tracy Rogers a few hours before The Battle of Faggot Forest! Jeremy Klein convinced his sixteen-year-old son to accept Maximus Morgan's offer, essentially encouraging his own CHILD to become a HOMOSEX- UAL SEX WORKER...all because it was the only way to save Ryan's life. But now that Ryan's brain tumor is gone, and Faggot Forest brought his obliga- tion to Maximus Morgan to an early end, how much effort do you HONESTLY think it would require for ME (!!!!!) to convince Jeremy Klein that it's finally time to INSIST that his son reclaim his humanity? Jeremy wants a "normal" life for his son, and that means going off to college, getting lots of pussy, falling in love, getting married, and raising a family of his own. Ryan can't do NONE of that shit if he stays a THRALL!"

After a telling amount of hesitation, Ryan-Guile tentatively opened his mouth to speak. Then he closed it.

"Thank GOODNESS," Mister Harris sighed. "I honestly thought you were going to try to argue that Jeremy and Kendra value their friendship with you and your Lecher OVER their child's FUTURE! But don't worry, I'm sure they'll throw you and Ryan-Lecher a sad, tear-filled farewell party before you're packed up and put back into stasis for.....who knows how long?"

Ryan-Guile lowered his head and stared at the ground as if he were terrified that hell was about to open beneath his feet.

"What's the matter, Ryan-Guile?" Pariah-Guile taunted VENGEFULLY. "No more secret, approved Thrall candidates tucked up your sleeve? Don't worry. Once Ryan's mom and dad pressure him into being Unenthralled, I'm sure you'll be taken out of storage EVENTUALLY....at SOME point before the 'DEAD-line'."

"Ryan-Guile, I'll FIND YOU another Lure, I-" Steve-Guile started to promise.

"That's what he told ME," Pariah-Guile pointed out to Ryan-Guile. "If it meant giving up an advantage over Mister Harris, do you honestly think he would've willingly offered up Nathan Talltrees to prevent me from being placed back into storage?"

Ryan-Guile finally looked up.

"I apologize for calling you a bastard, and if you promise to prevent me from EVER going back into storage, I'll give you my loyalty."

"I won't offer you a promise, I'm making you a VOW!" Mister Harris beamed. "I'll expect a loyalty pledge from YOU TOO, Pariah-Guile, but not until AFTER your name is Nathan-Guile. You know how petty Steve- Guile can be."

"Whether you call it a 'promise' or a 'vow', it's still just a WORD!" Steve-Guile spat.

"Nope. I submitted three potential Thrall candidates to the Over- seer today...for his consideration...just before I came here," Mister Harris revealed. "I tried to convince him to let me approach the most promising one to lay a little groundwork in preparation for Pariah-Guile's upcoming layoff, but the Overseer was confused, since he'd already APPROVED a candidate that YOU submitted WEEKS ago...Nathan Talltrees! THAT'S when I learned all about him. If you'd bothered to speak with the Overseer before coming here, you could've headed me off by offering up Nathan to Pariah-Guile THEN, and beat me to the punch. Fortunately for me, it's your nature to be defiant, and now none of us will EVER know if you would've saved Pariah-Guile from wasting PRECIOUS time in a futuristic ice chest!"

"I WOULD'VE!!!" Steve-Guile screamed.

"AND THOSE ARE JUST WORDS, TOO!!!!" Mister Harris boomed back at him, far more powerfully!!!! ......appropriately enough.

"But getting back to a certain 13-YEAR-OLD BOY!" Steve-Guile hissed, determined to fuck over Mister Harris SOMEHOW!

"We already finished that conversation," Mister Harris sighed. "Robbie's perversity is out of control, and the Overseer chose Enthrallment to deal with the problem instead of a major telepathic overhaul of the boy's mind and personality."

"I don't agree with the Overseer's decision," Steve-Guile threat- ened. "I might have to speak to-"

"STEVE-GUILE, SHUT UP!" Ryan-Guile demanded. "And if you're listen- ing, Thrall Overseer, I do NOT support what I think Steve-Guile was about to say!"

"You would seriously go over the Thrall Overseer's head, JUST to check Mister Harris' power???" Pariah-Guile gasped in horror, despite his much-improved mood, brought on by the fact that one of his points of view was now firmly embedded inside Nathan Talltree's mind, and the two of them were getting along WONDERFULLY and making plans for their bright and sleazy future together.

Mister Harris' smile turned maniacal.

"I BEG OF YOU TO DO AN END RUN AROUND THE OVERSEER!" Mister Harris cackled with glee. "PLEASE! I'LL GIVE YOU ANYTHING...ANYTHING!!! I'LL BUY YOUR LURE A GODDAMNED BATCAVE! HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA- HA-HA-HA!!!!"

"You haven't won YET!" Steve-Guile seethed. "You think you have, but you haven't!"

Mister Harris' laughter instantly stopped, and his smile disappear- ed just as quickly.

"You'd be wrong about that, Steve-Guile," Mister Harris stated with confidence as he straightened up and brushed the wrinkles out of his topcoat with a few swipes of his gloved hands. "I won at 3:18pm this after- noon. You're gone. Adios. My plans can proceed, full steam ahead, without YOU around to keep playing POLTERGEIST."

Mister Harris walked away, down the sidewalk toward his gold Lexus. Luke, one of the two goons he'd sicced on Robbie, was holding the back door open for him. The other goon, Adrian, was sitting in the driver's seat, messing with his phone. Mister Harris hired both men because of their experience working as enforcers, but what had really caught his eye was the fact that both men were heterosexual manwhores who, while serving time, regularly fucked other men to satisfy their needs. Better still, after being told about Entangleds, instead of being put off by the idea of fucking an ass full of genetically-created, pleasure-enhancing monsters, they were actually intrigued. Both men passed that particular 'audition' with flying colors, making their cocks useful as oral or anal pacifiers for whenever Mister Harris needed to relax a difficult Entangled, or even a cum vampire, whose instincts would sense the goons' perpetually-brimming supply of S.C.E. right away, as well as their willness to squirt it into anyone Mister Harris told them to. And after they finished being orally or anally receptive, they'd become a lot more aurally receptive to whatever Mister Harris wanted to tell them.

Tonight, Luke and Adrian had shown that they were also good at following Mister Harris' orders to the letter, giving Robbie all the toxic masculinity he could handle as they took turns fucking the boy into his mattress, each man hootin' and hollerin' filthy encouragement to the other.

Craig had been stripped down and brought into the bedroom to watch his child being ravaged by the two rowdies. He stood there, watching the action and playing with himself while spitting tobacco juice into a cup that he would eventually ejaculate into...and continue using as a spittoon.

At the end of the session, Mister Harris came upstairs and quietly stood outside the door to Robbie's bedroom and waited for his men to finish up and introduce him. Inside, an exhausted Robbie was flat on his stomach, and Craig was squatting in front of Adrian. A skinny gray projection, look- ing like a cross between a hollow, sucker-free, textured octopus tentacle and a baby elephant's trunk, was hanging out of Craig's ass, squirting peach goop into Craig's cupped hands, which he was using to wash Adrian's genitals while getting all emotional (Alternate Personality 3) and weeping as he praised Adrian's dick, telling the stranger how soft the skin was, and how beatiful it looked, causing Adrian to flash Robbie a "what the fuck is up with THIS guy?" amused sneer that made Robbie break down in uncontrollable laughter.

A moment later, Mister Harris walked into Robbie's bedroom and nodded politely at the boy.

"Robbie, I'd like to introduce our employer, Mister Harris," Luke told Robbie while pulling up his underwear and reaching inside to adjust himself. "He needs to talk to you about something important, and me and Adrian sure would appreciate it if you would listen to what he has to say."

Thanks to meticulous preparation, Mister Harris' meeting with Robbie went FAR better than expected. In just a few short weeks, Mister Harris had won! And by the end of THAT week, Mister Harris would be declared the boss of every Lure, Guile, and Lecher who set FOOT in the region, his authority only exceeded by that of the Tethered Ones and the Thrall Overseer.

Mister Harris was the FUTURE, and the future was looking pretty

fucking FANTASTIC!!!

"What did you DO?!" the ghost of a boy in a wheelchair demanded of Mister Harris, rolling down the sidewalk behind him.

Mister Harris turned around to address Steve-Guile. Since the ghost wasn't screening himself, neither Luke nor Adrian could see him. It didn't matter to either man, since Mister Harris spoke to thin air all the time. They just waited for their boss to finish talking to whichever Guile, Lecher, or disembodied Lure he was speaking with.

"That's the beauty of it," Mister Harris replied. "I didn't have to do a fucking THING. I may've made a suggestion here and there, whispered a few words into an ear or two, but I can't take the credit for making you go away......although I might."

"And where exactly am I going?" Steve-Guile interrogated.

___________________________________________________________________________ After half a century of being stuck on his Master's 47 mile leash, Steve Collier was destined to not only travel the world, but stand on the surface of the moon, and dive to the bottom of the ocean, all in the name of saving lives or tackling problems that no one but he could deal with. The Thralls weren't the only supernatural beings on the planet, and Steve would have to face many of them, doing battle against people and things whose freakish abilities would test his own. (chapter 9) ___________________________________________________________________________

"EVERYWHERE BUT HERE!" Mister Harris called out triumphantly, hold- ing his arms up like a victorious boxer.

"I don't understand what you mean!" Steve-Guile objected.

"And you don't have even a FRACTION of the money required to buy enough of my time for me to explain it to you," Mister Harris gloated. "But I just HAVE to be the one to tell you who DOES deserve the credit for your PERMANENT VACATION."

"Who?!"

"REALITY ITSELF!" Mister Harris informed the alarmed ghost as he stepped into the back seat of his car.

"Where to, boss?" Adrian called over his shoulder, using the same gangster voice he always used when he asked that question.

"I'm still learning the area. Are there any high class bars in Johnsport where I could have a celebratory martini without feeling like I'm slumming?"

"No," Adrian and Luke replied in unison.

"Well, until my grand reopening of the Timbersburg Rainbow Tavern, we'll have to make due with what's available," Mister Harris lamented.

"The airport has a bar," Luke offered. "I don't know if you'd consider it high class, but it's expensive."

"I'm willing to settle for expensive," Mister Harris chuckled. "Take me there."

"Can I ask you a question about you reopening the Rainbow Tavern, boss?" Adrian requested uneasily as he pulled into traffic, still not having figured out if Mister Harris preferred his goons to be of the speaking or non-speaking kind.

"Is it chit-chat or a concern?"

"Umm.....a big concern."

"I see," Mister Harris chuckled once more. "Then by all means, ask away."

"The whole area HATES gay people...always has, and everyone in Timbersburg CHEERED when they heard about that raid. When the national news came here to cover the raid and the protests, a whole lotta people jumped in front of cameras to voice support for both the raid and the police. I dunno....it just...."

"Please continue, Adrian," Mister Harris urged. "I have the perfect answer to your question, but you haven't asked it yet. Go on! Go on!"

"Well, no matter how much you grease the pigs, you just know they're gonna want to raid it AGAIN, and if they do, they'll have the support of the community...again," Adrian continued. "And even if the COPS leave you alone, the Tavern had TONS of problems with vandalism, gay bash- ings, windows getting shot out, slashed tires, arson attempts..."

"I'm still salivating for that question," Mister Harris informed Adrian.

"With respect, sir, I've worked for guys who own LOTS of bars, and I've been with them when they scouted locations and did all sorts of business research. NONE of them would ever CONSIDER reopening that place. But you're smarter than any of them...."

"Nice save," Mister Harris noted, returning the compliment.

".....so why are YOU doing it? I mean, what's your inside track?"

"Well, Adrian, I won't be able to answer your question completely until my right hand is holding stemware, but for now I'll just say that the Timbersburg Rainbow Tavern WILL reopen, and it will make LOTS of money, in spite of what your doubtlessly 'connected' former bosses might think. Why? Because on the night of The Timbersburg/Johnsport Incident, three angry GODS decided to have themselves a little war at Faggot Forest."

"Seriously, boss?" Luke jumped in. "THAT'S what all that shit was about?"

"Sure was, Luke. And Adrian, you know all those bad people you mentioned? The ones who got the OLD Rainbow Tavern shut down, and who you think will try to get my NEW Rainbow Tavern shut down, too?"

"Uh.....yeah?"

"They CAN'T! They've been neutered!" Mister Harris proudly proclaimed with unanticipated passion. "They can't throw a SINGLE punch, shout a SINGLE threat, shatter a SINGLE window, photograph a SINGLE patron, slash a SINGLE tire, or throw a SINGLE molotov. They can't do a GOD-damned THING except leave my bar and my customers the HELL alone. AND DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY, ADRIAN? DO YOU?!?!?!?!"

"Why, boss?" Luke asked, since Adrian now seemed too nervous to do so.

"Because at the Battle of Faggot Forest...THOSE FUCKERS LOST!!!"

End of Flash Forward *************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************

The Top of the Rise Overlooking the I-147 Bottleneck, Above the Pit Fog ***************************************************************************

"Before we begin, Lieutenant Preston, I just have to ask, why were YOU chosen to debrief the Creeping Vine?" the mouthy little ghost in a wheelchair inquired, beaming the friendly smile of a hungry shark. Unlike the rest of his Thrall, Steve-Guile neither required water nor craved semen ....but nevertheless, he knew what it meant to thirst. Steve-Guile drank deeply of Veronica Preston's self-doubt and uncertainty about how to pro- ceed with her fake interrogation.

"I don't understand what you mean," Veronica replied, trying to radiate confidence.

On the greatest day of Steve's life, he would be striding across the surface of the moon. Steve-Lecher's favorite day would find him and his Thrall in the Sonoran Desert, engaging and slaughtering hostile beings from another world. Steve-Guile's favorite day, however, was THIS one. All the attention...all the social interaction...all the manipulation...all the danger...all the tension...all the crises requiring MASSIVE thought, but INSTANT solutions.... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Oh, I guess I'll need to explain it to you, then," Guile demeaned. "As someone who's been forced against his will to study military strat- egies, unnecessary survival skills, and of course, hand to hand combat, I accidentally learned that a situation like this would not ordinarily be handled by a lone lieutenant. There are 37 higher ranking officers in the area...although they've all chosen to go into that tent over there......... .......and they're all standing in a cage for some reason."

Guile rolled his wheelchair closer to Veronica. To her credit, she didn't flinch.

"Did they do something wrong, Lt. Preston?" Guile asked innocently. "Are they under arrest? Did you lock them in there so that YOU could be the one to question us? I only ask because Guiles respect unscrupulous ambition."

"I was chosen because I am the highest ranking female officer, and because we've gathered sufficient intelligence to verify our working theory that you cannot connect telepathically with female minds," Veronica admitted, just to move things along. "Please understand, we cannot risk classified secrets falling into civilian hands. We have to take precautions."

"Did you know, in the dimension that my Master comes from, electricity behaves RADICALLY different than it does in THIS dimension, yet in BOTH dimensions, telepathy operates the exact same way?" Guile pointed out. "I only bring it up because it underscores the unlikelihood of successfully blocking telepathic signals by treating them like electrical fields."

"Uh, you're probably right, but as I said before, we'd feel better if we took-"

"Wait, I'll prove your chicken wire cube doesn't work," Guile offered helpfully. "The launch codes for Mawklynd Base's BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles are as follows: seven...four...nine...one...seven...six..."

"Please stop," Veronica interrupted. "I don't understand why you helped all those injured people, but you're not serious about aiding us in capturing this renegade 'Thrall', as Officer Rogers called your kind."

"Oh, I'm VERY serious about stopping my 'KIND' from doing whatever the hell he's doing, I just don't see how putting male, Caucasian military officers in cages as if they were hispanic children ripped away from their parents by the immoral Moral Majority-"

"WHAT kind of resistance can we expect from the Thrall?" Veronica interrogated, talking over Guile.

"Probably none, since you won't be able to him FIND him," Guile scoffed. "He'll use illusions to lead you around in circles while he feeds on your men, one by one, so efficiently that you won't even notice they're gone until they rejoin the 'circle', smoking a cigarette and asking if they can be dismissed so they can go take a nap. Shall I demonstrate on one of the snacks you brought us?"

"Yes, please do," Veronica snapped, calling Guile's bluff, which wasn't a bluff at all.

Guile was stalling, just like Veronica was doing.

"NOW!" Guile yelled, just to make the moment dramatic.

Several things happened, so quickly that it was impossible for the human eye and mind to establish the order of events.

At the exact moment that the crotch of Steve's costume opened, causing his cock and balls to fall out into the open, surrounded by the same swirling pink energy that filled his mask's eye holes and his mouth, the silver tendril had sliced through the camouflage pants of one of the soldier's combat uniforms, causing HIS genitals to fall out as well. But before Cynthia Keim, Veronica Preston, or Tracy Rogers, none of whom averted their gaze, could see the handsome, rugged soldier's cock, baby blue engulfed it and got to work. By then, the tip of the black tendril had grown lots of soft bristles, collected some of the sweat off of Steve's nut sack, and wiped it across the soldier's upper lip while Guile psionically ordered it to vaporize as quickly as possible.

"RRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" Pvt. Troy Hundal yelled, look- ing up and directing his instant, savage, sexual aggression towards the moon...his flexed biceps straining against his sleeves, and his neck muscles so taunt that Cynthia Keim wondered if he might crush his own Adam's apple.

"Is he all right!" Veronica barked. "Will that substance he's inhaling cause any lasting effects?"

"No, but if it does, you could always handle it the way you deal with soldiers who develop cancer and other lung ailments from inhaling smoke from burn pits," Guile sweetly suggested.

The soldier dropped to his knees, his face contorted in unbearable AGONY.....or so Veronica, Cynthia, and Tracy believed. The rest of the cops and soldiers had a different and far more accurate interpretation of what Pvt. Troy Hundal was going through, physically, mentally, and sexually.

"UGHHHH!......UGHHHH!......UGHHHHH!" Troy primal-grunted, his erection jerking sharply upward with each surge, something that would've been difficult to see if it weren't for the way the movement made Baby Blue conduct a small transverse wave with each squirt.

Away from the group (conspicuously so), military members around the periphery, who'd been rushing around like worker bees, stopped to watch the bizarre spectacle.

All of a sudden, Troy's passionate fury dissipated. He dropped down onto his hands, gasping for breath, as Baby Blue continued to milk him..... .....like a cow.

While everyone stared at Troy Hundal and tried to figure out how they should react to what they'd just seen, the private standing next to Troy, who was in position to be next in line, suddenly decided to unvolun- teer himself.

"Ma'am, requesting permission to withdraw from-" Pvt. Clyde Hawkins started to say.

"EVENIN', GENTS!" the completely naked and erect ghost with a loose man bun cried out triumphantly upon materializing between the soldiers and the cops. "THE NAME IS 'LECHER'!"

"He's like me!" Guile groaned, amazed at human stupidity. "Everyone PLEASE stop raising your guns!"

"Guile's a little bifurcated at the moment, so I'LL be handling promotion and scheduling. So raise your hand if you want to go next! CUM ONE....CUM ALL!!" Lecher announced, raising his arms like an over-the-top ringmaster. "But before we continue, how about a nice round of applause for Private Troy Hundal!!!"

No one did or said anything, but that didn't stop the air from filling with screened cheers, clapping, and whistles.

Several people looked over at the Creeping Vine, who just pointed his palms up and shrugged.

"Private Hawkins and anyone who no longer wishes to participate is dismissed," Lt. Preston announced.

"PUSSIES!!!" Lecher spat at the five soldiers who hurried away.

"That one is talking exactly like the guy who attacked us!" Cynthia whispered to Veronica. "He doesn't look like him, though."

"Yes...thank you, Cynthia," Lt. Preston replied testily, making it clear that she wasn't really interested in anything Cynthia had to contrib- ute.

"Why did she even ask me to BE here?" Cythia muttered to herself.

Lieutenant Preston spun around, startling Cynthia.

"Because, like ME, the military deals in illusions," the fake image of Veronica informed Cynthia. "In this case, they wish to create the illusion that they care about getting Jayce back, when all they REALLY care about is capturing the Creeping Vine. They care about that SO MUCH that they're willing to endanger your life by putting you, a civilian, in the middle of an upcoming firefight. I suggest you follow the example of the soldiers who have suddenly changed their minds about orgasming and ejaculating publicly...if you'd like to avoid the possibility of becoming an acceptable loss."

"Why should I trust YOU?" Cynthia hissed after taking a moment to process the fact that Lt. Preston had never actually spun around, and Cynthia was actually speaking with Guile.

"Because unlike the Army and the Air Force, getting the hostages back is my PRIMARY objective. Also unlike them, I DO value the informa- tion you possess, and since I cannot obtain it psychically, I'd rather your brain remain bullet-free until you can TELL me what I need to know."

"That didn't answer my question," Cynthia pointed out.

"I know, but since I have no way of gaining your trust at the moment, I thought I'd tell you what might happen to you if you don't trust me, instead," Guile explained dispassionately. "But don't worry, if your doubt and defiance get you 'friendly fired', I can always get the information I require from your boyfriend......or perhaps Craig Byrne or his-"

"Is Jayce alive?" Cynthia broke in.

"Under normal circumstances, I'd laugh at the notion of a Thrall killing his prey," the false image of Veronica Preston lamented, "but tonight is anything but normal, and I don't have sufficient information to even guess at Jayce Harris' fate. Maybe I will, after you, the female police officer over there, and my Thrall have our private meeting."

"WHAT 'private meeting'?!" Cynthia asked in alarm.

"I'm cloaking you in illusion, Cynthia," 'Lt. Preston' informed her before turning back around. "I'm even cloaking you inside the four rifle sights and seven military cameras pointed at the Creeping Vine, because I'm just that good. You can either run to safety, or remain and risk 'dying for a grateful nation'....or whatever bullshit patriotic spin the government uses to justify blowing your head off. Conversation over. Choose wisely. We'll talk shortly, if you're alive. Bye."

Veronica Preston finished a sentence that Cynthia hadn't heard her begin, telling Cynthia that Guile's illusion had indeed ended.

Having already made her decision, Cynthia hustled to safety. No one called after her. As she approached other people, she realized that no one could see her, which might lead to her getting slammed into, so Cynthia found a safe area that was free of her fellow humans. When she looked back towards the Creeping Vine, the cops, and the military, Cynthia shivered at the sight of herself, still standing where she'd been.

Fake Cynthia waved at her. Real Cynthia didn't wave back.

Cynthia briefly considered running over to the transports, which were loading up the last few civilians, to hopefully get herself out of Guile's reach, and ruin whatever 'meeting' Guile had planned. She forced herself to stay, however. If Guile was right about the military's true priority, which would be confirmed if shots rang out, Cynthia's only REAL hope of getting Jayce back alive would be the Creeping Vine.

While Guile was introducing himself to Cynthia, Lecher walked over to Pvt. Troy Hundal, who was kneeling with his hands on the ground, trying to come down from what he'd just gone through.

"The human body attracts a special kind of energy, and discharges it though cum!" Lecher lectured in the most crass of ways. "The energy supports life and makes babies. That's all it does....and we FEED on it! There is no negative impact on YOU! But let's talk about the positives!"

Baby Blue released Pvt. Hundal's penis and zipped back into the Creeping Vine's Gauntlet (then through the channels in his costume and back up his ass) for sterilization. A murmur of concern ran through the onlook- ers when Troy made no effort to cover himself. He appeared to be suffering from exhaustion.

"A large, although insignificant, amount of the energy has been unnaturally removed from Troy Hundal's body," Guile took over. "Being that he is heterosexual, nature now DEMANDS that he replenish it as soon as possible. And how does he replenish it, Lecher?"

"FUCKING!" Lecher gleamed. "LOTS AND LOTS of NO CONDOM FUCKING!! She can use any birth control she wants, and she doesn't even have to have a functioning uterus. All that matters is that there's a cock rubbing against the inside of a pussy."

"It will take a few weeks or so to replenish your natural energy level," Guile picked up. "And during those weeks, you will-"

"BECOME FUCK GODS!" Lecher announced with a thrust of his hips. "You'll wanna fuck all the time! NO premature ejaculation, NO psychological impotence, NO performance anxiety, NO ruined orgasms, and NO limits to what filthy things you'll do to put your girl in the mood!"

One of the soldiers, Pvt. Elliott Berg, pushed his pants and under- wear down to his ankles in a desperate attempt to beat everyone else by attracting Lecher's attention first. Before he even had time to straighten back up, his penis was in a light blue tube, and there was a vaporizing strip of wetness across his mustache.

Elliott Berg's suddenly stared at Officer Tracy and began to snarl at her while his penis stiffened. But just when it looked like he was about to charge at her, he suddenly looked straight up and screamed, just as Troy Hundal had done.

Pvt. Hundal's feelings of humiliation evaporated at the sight of Elliott going through the same process, giving Troy the boldness to force himself to his feet, cover the shredded crotch of his pants, and discretely walk away.

Tracy looked over at Captain Petrell, intending to ask if he'd come to any decisions regarding whether or not he was going to accept Lieutenant Preston's offer.

Something was wrong. Harry seemed somehow.....disconnected from his surroundings.

"Sir, are you all right? Tracy inquired, reaching over to put her hand on his shoulder.

"Officer Rogers, don't touch him," the Creeping Vine cautioned. "He's fine. He and Guile are talking, and he's cloaked with one of our illusions, like you and I are right now."

"After all of this, please call me 'Tracy'," Officer Rogers whispered.

"Steve Collier," the Creeping Vine announced to Tracy's surprise. "You don't need to whisper. We can do sound illusions too, so no one can hear us."

"I wish you hadn't told me your last name," Tracy said in her normal speaking voice. "If you end up becoming a fugitive because of all this, I'm going to have to make a difficult decision."

"No you're not. Steve Collier disappeared from an orphanage in 1970. Guile looks like I did at the time, missing legs and all. You have my permission to tell my name to anyone you want. It doesn't matter to me."

"It mattered to you at the bottom of that steep ass road I had to run up," Tracy reminded him.

"I would've teleported you," Steve defended. "And I don't care who knows MY name, but Ryan needs to stay anonymous. I had a shitty childhood thanks to losing both parents and my legs in a car accident. Ryan WAS having a bad childhood, thanks to a terminal brain tumor, but becoming a Thrall FIXED THAT. Things were going well for him, until Malawny Hollow, but I'm deeply committed to Ryan being as happy as possible until gradua- tion, so exposing him would be a mistake....Tracy."

"Don't you think your family would like to know that you're still alive, Steve?" Tracy inquired to move beyond the implied threat concerning Ryan's identity.

"They were willing to let me rot in an orphanage," Steve grumbled. "I don't care what they think, if any of them are even still alive."

"What is Guile talking to my captain about?" Tracy asked, deciding to stop stepping on conversational landmines.

"Guile is trying to convince Captain Petrell to take Lt. Preston's offer."

"I don't trust the military not to 'disappear' me," Tracy protested.

"Yeah....ABOUT that," Steve began in a irritated tone. "I've been studying anti-interrogation techniques for a LONG time, but you got me so flustered that I completely folded! You're GOOD!"

"I know," Tracy agreed, only HALF joking.

"So how does THAT woman go and COMPLETELY spill her guts VOLUNTAR- ILY to the military, with no interrogation NEEDED, even AFTER they threat- ened you at Malawny Hollow?!"

Tracy sighed and looked away from Steve.

"I got pissed off," Tracy confessed. "They made me afraid at Malawny Hollow, and when I found out that the big, bad, scary military couldn't even connect the dots between Malawny Hollow, Ryan's and your actions at Dugan's, and a bizarre, ALLEGED one vehicle car accident involv- ing the coach of the Weyerhauser High Fightin' Woodpeckers, I needed to let that fat, ugly CUNT, who called me a stupid BITCH, know just how bad HER military FUCKED UP A SIMPLE INVESTIGATION."

"Tracy, I'm not going to insult your intelligence by trying to convince you that Coach Max Morgan has nothing to do with any of this, but what I AM going to tell you is that Maximus Morgan, with his gaudy 10 gallon hat, his ALMOST-Texan accent, and his frequent mishaps, NEEDS to be LEFT ALONE. Nothing GOOD, but lots of BAD, will happen if he's outed."

"Christ I wish I'd never responded to Malawny Hollow," Tracy muttered before suddenly looking up. "Why IS Morgan so accident prone, anyway? He's FAMOUS for it."

"Because the Earth is a living, breathing organism," Steve explain- ed, "and it has a bodyguard that doesn't like things that don't belong here. For centuries, it's been attacking Coach Morgan with meaningless random bad luck. I'd tell you the name we gave it, but you already know it."

"Reality Itself."

"Yes. And once Guile is done playing 'Lieutenant Frog' for a 'stupid bitch', I'm going to need to know EVERYTHING that the evil Guile told you about it."

"SHIT! We might have a problem!" Tracy blurted.

"What?" Steve asked, bracing himself insufficiently for what Tracy would say next.

"What's a Lure?" Tracy requested.

"Me," Steve replied nervously, correctly sensing that he wasn't going to like where this conversational thread was heading. "I'm a Lure. A Lure is the formerly-human component of a Thrall. Why?"

"The other Guile said that Reality Itself incapacitated his Lure," Tracy revealed, "and then made the Thrall turn violent and homicidal."

"HOW DID REALITY ITSELF DO THAT?!?!?!?" Steve freaked.

"Something to do with....uh...activating the Thrall's 'outdated' and 'counterproductive' Emergency Survival Protocols."

"GUILE!!!!!!!!!!!!" Steve screamed telepathically.

The Feeding Area. Robbie Byrne's Christmas Make-up Party ***************************************************************************

"I hope you get AIDS and DIE, you fuckin' FAG!" Phil Tillery jeered after pulling his shrinking cock out of Robbie's ass, spitting at the back of Robbie's head, and walking away with a pleased look on his face.

Robbie wore the same expression.

"I know you don't need to hear this, but the reason they tend to say cruel things after they've finished is because the reality of what they did sets in, and they need to transfer their confusion, regret, and self- loathing away from themselves," Guile explained.

"I like the mean ones," Robbie sighed contentedly, getting to his feet to continue his search for his father.

"They don't make love, they just fuck....they don't care about hurting you internally....they don't care about YOUR pleasure, only their own....and after they climax, they're done with you," Guile observed. "I'm starting to understand your fascination with being mounted by dogs."

"You think too much, Guile," Robbie opined as he walked amongst his naked 'guests', making a game of reaching out and touching as many penises as possible. "Mean guys are just hotter, and better at fucking!"

"Robbie, could you ever imagine yourself falling in love and being in a monogamous relationship?" Guile questioned.

"FUCK no!" Robbie scoffed.

"Lecher, YOU can see up Robbie's ass. Are you absolutely CERTAIN there aren't tendrils up there somewhere?"

"I'm sure," Lecher lamented. "Damned shame....such a fucking damned shame...." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

No man in the drugged crowd had sufficient physical dexterity or mental acuity to prevent the boy from momentarily handling their genitals. A few, mostly the ones with erections, didn't even try, giving Robbie either a silly grin or a stare of intense confusion as he stimulated them, as if they weren't really sure where they were, why they were naked, and why they were allowing an underaged boy to tug on their meat.

"HEY, KNOCK IT OFF," commanded a stubble-headed man with so many neck tattoos that it looked as if he were wearing an artistic brace. His skin was flushed red, and he had a veiny, muscular body that made him look like a penis. Pete Mendelson's actual penis, however, was so tiny from shrinkage that had his brain been unaffected by Pit Fog, Pete would've been covering himself with his hands, or perhaps even seeking out a private area of the clearing to discretely fluff himself.

Robbie had been seized by the desire to fluff it FOR him.......... ....whether the inebriated man wanted him to or not.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, FAGGOT?" Pete Mendelson shouted point blank after pushing Robbie's hand away, only to have the boy put his hand BACK on Pete's dick.

"Guile, what IS he doing?" Lecher demanded.

"The boy wishes to test his new powers," Guile answered calmly. "He knows the risks...he's already been hit in the face twice tonight...and he's seen what an Entangled's enhanced healing can do. Let him play at being a cum vampire. It's the closest he'll ever get. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Robbie, that man is very dangerous," Guile warned. "He's been drunkened by the Pit Fog, but he's a violent drunk...and possibly the most homophobic man in the clearing. Busy as I am, it's all I can to do keep him from starting fights with the other men, especially the 'handsy', affectionate drunks."

"I want him to fuck me," Robbie said with dark determination.

"Hmm, it seems as if Robbie has found an abusive father-substitute to give him the hate-fuck that he's always wanted from his real father," Guile diagnosed. "Lecher, for this particular sexual encounter, Robbie will require protection."

The buzzing and crackling electrical yellow tendril sped through the forest towards the feeding area. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Robbie walked up to Pete Mendelson again and hyperventilated Ball Vapor straight at his face, making the man crinkle his nose at the strange, musky oder, and giving Robbie the opportunity to reach back down and grab Pete's sleeping penis. It was cold, so Robbie enclosed it with his hand and worked his fingers to generate heat and get the man's blood pumping to the lifeless organ.

"I SAID TO KNOCK IT OFF!" Pete yelled, shoving Robbie backwards and making him fall onto the tongue mat.

"Oh, Christ.....if he starts crying again, Guile, YOU'RE dealing with it!" Lecher hissed. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

But Robbie DIDN'T start crying. Instead, he jumped to his feet and looked at Pete with predatory eyes. The man's angry expression was still firmed plastered across his face, but the Ball Vapor was obviously affect- ing him. He was moving his head around while sniffing the air, and his chest was expanding broadly with each deep, nasal breath.

"He wants more," Robbie thought to himself.

Robbie's theory was confirmed by Pete's penis, which was finally showing signs of life...slowly filling out and drooping down.

Risking another shove, perhaps even a punch, Robbie ran back up to Pete and resumed blowing at the man's nose and mouth as fast as he could.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" Pete bellowed, grabbing Robbie's arms and holding them in a vise grip.

"Robbie, I order you to listen to me," Guile instructed. "He's holding you to convince himself and those watching that HE is the one in control here. He needs to feel and project that illusion of control, so DO NOT attempt to free yourself! Continue blowing Ball Vapor at his mouth and nostrils, but do not try to manipulate his genitals again...yet. His nudity, and that of the men around him, have made him afraid, and he is the sort of man who uses violence to cope with fear. He's concerned that his intoxication is due to him being drugged so that he can be subdued and raped. To ease his worries and speed up the weakening of his resistance, simply tell him that you want HIM to fuck YOU. And since you enjoy debasing yourself, BEG FOR IT. That will establish his dominance over you, in his eyes and those of the witnesses, thus making him far more likely to submit to what you want him to do to you."

"I just...PFOOOOOOO...want you to....PFOOOOOOO...fuck me, sir!" Robbie pleaded, not giving a shit about how pathetic and desperate he sounded. "Please...PFOOOOOOO....please fuck me...PFOOOOOOO....that's all I want, mister, I swear!"

"Keep going," Guile instructed after about a minute.

"Why's it taking so long?" Robbie whined.

"The Pit Fog and Ball Vapor you're exhaling is diluted by air to keep you from asphyxiating," Guile explained.

"I thought you said I don't need to breathe!" Robbie protested.

"You don't, when the creatures are only bringing you air and taking away carbon dioxide," Guile elaborated. "When they're bringing over Pit Fog or Ball Vapor, however, the gases MUST be diluted for your safety...and to give you something to breathe."

"Why does this guy keep looking over my shoulder?" Robbie question- ed.

"Because he's in love with the effects of your breath, but he's uncomfortable with a naked, male, erect child affecting him sexually and making him feel the way he's feeling. In his intoxication, his only psychological recourse is to "play ostrich" and attempt to dissociate by looking away from you. Now relax your right arm, completely. Ironically, he will interpret it as surrender, and he will let go of it, using solely his right arm, his dominant hand, to maintain his public and private perception of being the one in control."

"Why is everyone around us so quiet?" Robbie asked.

"I'm using the Pit Fog to muddy their thinking and weaken their speech centers so that they don't interrupt the spell we are weaving," Guile answered.

While continuing to blow Ball Vapor at Pete Mendelson's face, Robbie relaxed his right arm. Pete let go, exactly as Guile predicted.

"If it weren't for Entangleds, I would never get to serve my function," Guile lamented.

"If it weren't for Lure bashing his brains in, I never would've GOTTEN to serve mine," Lecher grumbled. "Guile, if things go bad with Reality Itself.....and Lure takes his body back....I don't....I don't think I want to survive tomorrow morning."

"Let's not have that discussion until we have to," Guile suggested, "but just so you know, there are SIX things that I WILL be saying to Thrall Master Ladislav Kaschak of the Tethered Ones before he obliterates me. In the meantime, we have a new problem."

"Oh WONDERFUL," Lecher groaned, "What NOW?"

"I have a headache."

"How does a GUILE get a HEADACHE???" Lecher scoffed.

"If this were a laughing matter, I would blame it on you...but since it is NOT, I will simply say that I have no earthly idea."

"SPECULATE!" Lecher demanded.

"Mental exertion."

"Shit," Lecher exclaimed. "I wasn't gonna saying anything, but do you remember how good I felt when we Entangled Robbie and took all of the S.C.E. Reality Itself packed him with?"

"Since it just happened a few minutes ago, yes."

"Well, I feel like crap now...like I'm pushing myself way too hard. You don't think Reality Itself poisoned that S.C.E. or something, do you?"

"I don't know," Guile confessed, "but.......LECHER! CHECK YOUR PHYSICAL ENERGY LEVELS!"

"I.....no, that ain't right," Lecher gasped. "It's way too high! Robbie didn't have THAT much Soul-Creation Energy in him, and neither did any of the other guys we've been Entangling!"

"Correct, and most of the S.C.E. we've received tonight from Churn- ing and basic feeding hasn't fully processed yet. Michael Pearson took us down to almost NOTHING, and despite Robbie's 'contribution', we should STILL be around that area...but we're not. Far from it!"

"Where's it coming from?" Lecher wanted to know.

"And where's it going?" Guile added to the mystery. "My mental energy level is far higher than it should be, but it's also dropping as if I were........*."

"I think you were going to say: 'mentally exerting myself'."

"Correct."

"So what should we DO?" Lecher asked.

"Allow me to mull this over," Guile instructed. "We might need to make an early break for Faggot Forest if the phantom energy drain takes us below a certain point. I'll let you know. In the meantime, let's make sure that we have PLENTY of cum in Caboose's 'hopper' so that we'll have an abundance of S.C.E. later, when it's done being processed."

"Robbie, casually put your freed right hand near your testicles," Guile instructed. "A creature will materialize in your rectum and reach out through your anus to spray it with the same friction-nullifying substance that was used on Officer Pudroolen's torso when he took your virginity. It will help you to give your prey a more enjoyable handjob, making it less likely that he will be able to resist." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Robbie felt the fullness up his ass, but in spite of knowing what was going to happen next, he automatically clenched at the feeling of some- thing trying to shit itself out. It didn't matter. The tentacle wriggled out of the boy's pucker and kept going, sliding 18 inches of its specially- designed, textured skin through Robbie's hole, massaging it and forcing Robbie to relax and unclench. For Robbie, it was like taking a satisfying, hard, and lumpy shit.

The tentacle slid along Robbie's taint and brushed his scrotum as it instinctively reached out for his hand. Robbie wanted to see what it looked like, so he looked down, only to find that it was invisible. Guile was screening it from him.

"Seeing it will distract you," Lecher advised. "You can look at it, touch it, and play with it later. I recommend having it floss your asshole after it's been sprayed with green. You won't be able to fucking STAND it!"

Robbie felt something being sprayed at his hand. The hissing sound was audible as well, but Robbie's prey didn't react to it, so Robbie correctly assumed that Guile was making it so he couldn't hear it.

"Slowly and gently reach for his penis again, but warn him of your intentions beforehand....ALSO slowly and gently," Guile instructed. "DO NOT ask for permission, since he would rather bite off his own tongue than use it to give verbal consent for a homosexual to manually stimulate his penis."

"I'm gonna...PFOOOOOOO...touch it again," Robbie advised Pete while enjoying the sensation of the tentacle squirming back up into his ass, massaging him intimately once more.

Pete shuddered at the feel of Robbie's slippery mit and briefly squinted at the feel of Robbie starting to stroke, but beyond that, he just kept huffing Robbie's exhalations and staring off into the void.

"He keeps looking away, like I'm not here!" Robbie griped.

"So?" Lecher questioned.

"It's not...what I want," Robbie replied. "I want him to....I don't know...."

"You want him to engage with you," Guile said, finding Robbie's words for him, exactly the way Mister Harris would do for Robbie a few weeks later.

"Tell us exactly what you want from him, and we'll make it happen," Lecher boasted.

"I would prefer it, however, if you did NOT ask us to make him perform oral sex on you or submit to passive anal intercourse," Guile clarified. "In addition to gaining us nothing, it is needless cruelty, and I've been forced to play a part in cruelty far too often since my creation."

"Can you make him....kiss me....with tongue?" Robbie tip-toed.

"Oh....certainly," Guile breezed. "Keep exhaling, but with less force....and bring your mouth closer to his."

"Okay," Robbie acknowledged, doing just that.

Robbie felt a familiar pressure in his stomach, followed by a tentacle slipping up his throat and continuing on, sliding through his teeth. The tentacle was visible this time, but before Robbie could take a good look at it, its tip entered Pete's huffing mouth and....

PAFF-PAFF-PAFF

Pete Mendelson jumped back and clutched his mouth, at which point the gray, snake-like tentacle retreated back between Robbie's teeth and...

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

While Robbie felt the interior of his mouth being sprayed by a fresh coat of magenta, Pete opened his mouth and tried uselessly to wipe off his tongue. It was colored magenta, too. The paffs had apparently been tiny explosion of magenta, used to deal with less-than-cooperative victims.

"HEY!" Pete screamed, pushing Robbie away, making him bump into one of the curious onlookers. "WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?"

Robbie opened wide to reveal that he'd gotten a matching paint job. Instantly, Pete Mendelson, a thrice married, twice divorced father of five lunged in, instinctively shoved his tongue into Robbie's mouth, and swirled it around madly to create MORE and MORE friction to fuel the chemical reaction that was happily driving Pete CRAZY....and overwheming a boy who didn't have Pete's level of pleasure tolerance, achieved by years of drink- ing and drug experimentation.

"I'M GONNA PASS OUT!" Robbie shrieked telepathically to Guile as Pete managed to work his tongue beneath Robbie's, selfishly generating TOO MUCH magenta-contaminated saliva and chemical reaction-inducing friction for the boy to handle.

"So?" Lecher asked. "You've worked up so many guys around here that I'm sure unconsciousness won't affect your quota at all."

"Lecher's just joking, Robbie," Guile lied.

"No I'm not," Lecher contradicted, wondering why Guile thought that he was.

"Robbie, I won't LET you pass out," Guile promised. "I'll regulate your pleasure center if necessary, and render the magenta in your mouths inert."

"But before you ask him to do that," Lecher advised, "please take into account how much of a PUSSY that would make you, and how much RAZZING I'd send your way. Just sayin'. Ya gotta THINK about stuff like that before making rash decisions. It's part of being an adult."

"Fuck you!" Robbie thought while continuing to be orally savaged by Pete, who was so insanely focused on sucking face with Robbie that he didn't notice that two guys he knew were watching him make out with a boy who looked to be about ten, or younger, taking his lack of pubes into account. Considering that both of the men were obviously getting off on what they were witnessing, though, and since one of them had recently engaged in active anal intercourse with a red-headed man who could've been (and WAS) the kid's father, neither man would go on to blab about Pete frenching a young boy while the lad stroked Pete's hard-on.

And they sure as hell couldn't discuss what happened next!

"You LIKE this faggot shit!" Pete accused, suddenly shoving Robbie backwards while tripping him up with his right leg.

Pete had performed this maneuver on Robbie before, however, so Guile had taken the precaution of thickening and fluffing up the tongue mat behind Robbie, giving him a more comfortable landing.

"Kid, I neutralized the 'lube' on your hand," Lecher notified Robbie as an angry Pete stared down at Robbie hatefully. "You can either present while on all fours or just roll over and spread your legs. Either way, you're gettin' FUCKED!"

"Robbie, I'm a little worried for you," Guile sighed. "The man is extremely homophobic, so in order to cope with what he's DONE and what he wants to DO, he's transferring all the blame for his urges and actions onto YOU, which...to be fair...he SHOULD. If you want, I can drop him...right now. But if you choose to go through with this, be aware that it could get rough. And while you think you WANT a man like Pete Mendelson to brutalize you sexually, your treasured porn fantasy might suffer if you risk allowing it to be exposed to the harsh light of reality. Choose now."

"If he hurts me..." Robbie growled in his mind while getting on all fours, reaching back, and pulling his left buttcheek to show Pete his ass- hole, further enticing a man he'd ALREADY driven to the point of sexual insanity, "...at least I know I'll heal fast."

"Attaboy!" Lecher praised. "Bravery brought on by possessing super powers is STILL bravery!"

Robbie felt like he needed to take a shit again, letting him know that another monster had materialized inside of him, this one giving him a fresh coat of green.

"Fucking FAGGOT!" Pete screamed, so loud that his throat sounded like it was ripping.

Robbie didn't take offense. He was too busy giggling and shivering in anticipation.

Robbie felt the irate homophobe straddle his hips and squat down. Meaty hands slapped down on Robbie's shoulders, stinging like hell, and pulling them back while shoving his hips forward, impaling Robbie's trembling, tight, slippery asshole and stopping the boy's feverish need for cock before the uncontrollable yearnings even had time to start.

"You fucking faggots make me SICK!" Pete informed Robbie, who'd pretty much already figured that out for himself.

Thick, fleshy haunches rubbed Robbie's skinny legs as Pete began to hump Robbie like a bull, furiously trying to achieve release from his unwanted, uncontrollable, indiscriminate need to breed.

"I MOTHERFUCKING HATE YOU!!!" Pete screamed drunkenly, pounding Robbie's bum with his loins so hard that Guile changed some of the Pit Fog in Robbie's body into a superior form of adrenaline, just to give the boy enough arm strength to keep him from toppling. "I FUCKING HATE ALL OF YOU!"

Robbie smiled. Unlike Joe Prender's hate, which was mixed up with religious justifications and bloviating bullshit masquerading as wisdom, Pete's hate was just HATE, which Pete had whipped up into a wild, angry, physical frenzy that he was using to try to injure Robbie internally with his cock, something that the green coating inside of Robbie made absolutely impossible.

And just when Robbie thought it couldn't get any better, the ass monster took aim at the flesh piston that was entering and exiting his lair at high speed....and blasted it with green spray, covering it completely. Almost immediately, the rubbing of Pete's treated cock against Robbie's treated colon started a chemical reaction, causing Robbie's rectum to become more sensitive, reactive, and sexually inflamed than a vagina could ever hope to be.

Robbie experienced a brief moment of panic, thinking that it was just TOO much pleasure for him to cope with.

"Kid, are you alright?" someone standing nearby asked, misinter- preting Robbie's wide-eyed expression as raw terror.

Robbie grinned and nodded his head up and down emphatically, unable to answer the concerned man any other way.

"Guile?" Robbie suddenly blurted telepathically.

"Yes, Robbie," Guile automatically confirmed without Robbie having to ask, "I am recording this. No matter where life takes you, and no matter how old you get, you will always be able to get down on all fours and become a thirteen year old boy again, reliving this moment in perfect detail, exactly as you are experiencing it now."

"Or you could just watch it to remind yourself that you once had zero self-respect, and you were willing to spread your ass and let any homophobic, white trash scum put their dick in you."

"Cool!" Robbie agreed. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"I FUCKING HATE FAGGOTS!" Pete Mendelson screamed as he and Robbie felt the tingles of Pete's approaching orgasm, almost as if Pete were try- ing to fight off the pleasure because of how disgusted he was at what he'd done to earn it.

Robbie and Pete shared an incredibly powerful supernatural climax together, making Robbie extremely happy.....that Pete Mendelson would now have to live with the fact that a "fag" had given him the best orgasm he would ever receive. It was a realization that made the pleasure pulses Robbie experienced during Pete's ejaculation even sweeter.

Robbie was wrong, though. Robbie HADN'T given Pete Mendelson the most intense orgasm he would ever receive. But in a few weeks, after Mister Harris kept up his side of the bargain......Robbie the Cum Vampire would!

The Top of the Rise Overlooking the I-147 Bottleneck, Above the Pit Fog ***************************************************************************

"Master...uh....I mean SIR, we have a problem!" Steve-Guile transmitted via the suit.

"So do I! The compound's SURROUNDED!" Coach Morgan replied.

"Surrounded, Sir?" Steve-Guile gasped, taken totally surprised. "By who or what?"

"ENTANGLEDS!" Max snarled, "Loads of 'em! And more are arriving by the minute!"

"Are you...safe, Sir?" Steve-Guile stammered, having no idea WHAT to say.

"If a Tethered's FINGERNAIL can't penetrate my defenses, and a NUKE can't do it EITHER, I doubt a FLASH MOB is gonna have a lot of luck!" Max responded. "What are you doing right now?"

"I tricked Steve into surrendering control to Lecher and me," Steve-Guile confessed. "I'm negotiating with the military to get them to stay out of the forest and allow US to handle this situation, but I've already failed. They're going to attack and attempt to capture us."

"Then why are you still THERE???"

"We're running low on S.C.E. after healing those afflicted by the Pilot Fish scream, so we're taking advantage of the military's generosity. They're feeding us soldiers," Steve-Guile explained.

"TOO RISKY!" Coach Morgan snapped. "Teleport away...NOW!"

"THAT MIGHT KILL US!" Guile blurted, cutting STRAIGHT to the heart of the matter to avoid another unpleasant conversation, like the one they'd had on the night Ryan was Enthralled.

"HOW?!?!?!" Max Morgan raged, with just the slightest tinge of scientific curiosity to his voice.

Guile wanted to die. Giving his Master news THIS bad was the kind of challenge that even a Guile didn't want to rise to.

"The renegade Guile terrorized a female police officer and told her that the Reality Itself phenomenon incapacitated his Lure," Steve-Guile babbled, just to get through it faster. "The Guile went on to say that the phenomenon is now acting in an organized and intelligent fashion."

"......................................"

"Uh...," Steve-Guile started up again when his Master didn't use Steve-Guile's pause to jump in and ask questions...or scream in rage...or ...anything, "and apparently the Reality Itself phenomenon caused the Thrall to run amok by activating some sort of biological Thrall subsystem. I can see it, but I cannot access it. It is called 'Emergency Survival Protocols'."

"......................................"

"I'm....concerned that Reality Itself may have infected US as well, and if we attempt to teleport, we might end up partially inside of a tree," Guile went on, really WISHING that his Master would say SOMETHING. "Oh, one more thing: the female police officer has been launching an off-the-books investigation into Malawny Hollow and Dugan's Vroom Room. She knows that Ryan is a Thrall, and she called Steve by name...and she knows you are our Master."

"......................................"

"Master, I'm done giving you bad news," Steve-Guile announced when the moment dragged. "Please say...anything."

"Guile?" Max Morgan finally replied.

"Yes, Master?"

"If you, your Lecher, your brother, or HIS Lecher take advantage of what I am about to do, I absolutely VOW to terminate you," Max Morgan stated bluntly. "Do you understand what I've just said to you?"

"I understand, Sir," Guile acknowledged, hiding his sudden, inappropriate giddiness at what he KNEW Coach Morgan was about to do.

//////////////////////////////////////

IMMEDIATE SUSPENSION OF ALL THRALL RESTRICTIONS /////////////////////////////////////\

"Thank you, Sir," Guile said, unable to completely muffle his excitement, ".....for seeing to our safety, I mean."

"Mess it up, and you won't be 'safe' from ME!" Coach Morgan grumbled before switching gears. "Get the Ryan-Thrall to your location! I'll allow you to feed and fuck with the military until they arrive, but then I want you to take that woman police officer somewhere secure and CALL ME. You Thralls won't be interrogating her, I will!"

"Yes, Master," Steve-Guile acknowledged, his Master's intensity making it IMPOSSIBLE for Steve-Guile to simply call him 'Sir' or 'Coach'.

"Steve-Guile," Ryan-Guile called telepathically, as if on cue, "my monitors have been deactivated. Do you know anything about that?"

"We've got problems!" Steve-Guile said bluntly. "Send a viewpoint to my location and teleport Ryan here as fast as possible."

The ghost of the emaciated boy in a tanktop and athletic shorts appeared, alongside the ghost of a massively muscled, naked teen.

"WHAT THE FUCK'S GOING ON???" Ryan-Lecher marveled at the sight of the Creeping Vine, flanked by police officers and facing off against the military.

"I've brought several extra points of view that have identified multiple female snipers at the edges of the forest along both sides of the gas line area," Ryan-Guile announced.

"Really?" Steve-Guile stated sarcastically with mock indifference. "I hadn't noticed."

"Did you fucking 'notice' my QUESTION?!" Ryan-Lecher snarled.

"About an hour ago, my Thrall....and the entirety of Timbersburg... heard a loud noise," Ryan-Guile explained. "I didn't recognize it, due to Earth's natural forces attacking the wave, weakening the blast and distort- ing the sound in the process. Coach Morgan contacted us to let us know that it was, in fact, a Pilot Fish scream. He ordered us to come here, to the epicenter, to investigate. When we arrived, we discovered the female police officer standing to Steve's left, choking to death on her own vomit. She'd been attacked by someone who called himself 'Guile'."

"WE didn't hear it in Johnsport," Ryan-Lecher noted.

"Distance, topography, forest density, the angle of the Pilot Fish's mouth at the time of vocal discharge, the fact that Earth's natural defenses against extradimensional energy incursions always travel north to south, the unusual atmospheric characteristics of this heat wave, the geo- logical make-up of-"

"I GET IT!" Ryan-Lecher snapped.

"Are you certain?" Steve-Guile offered. "Because I've got TEN more reasons WE heard it, but YOU didn't....all of them equally inconsequential at this moment of SUPREME CRISIS. Neverthess, I'd be happy to waste time-"

"So Kaschak sent a Thrall here to stir up trouble and lure Coach Morgan away from the compound's defenses?" Ryan-Guile deduced.

"Steve-Lecher, I know you want to be the one to tell them....," Steve-Guile offered to one of Steve-Lecher's other remote points of view, who'd joined the conversation.

"Kaschak didn't make the Thrall go nuts....REALITY ITSELF DID!" Steve-Lecher proclaimed, basking in the horrified look on Ryan-Guile and Ryan-Lecher's faces.

"Our monitors were disabled to prevent Reality Itself from pulling the same stunt on us," Steve-Guile added, "something involving an out- dated contingency that is ironically named 'Emergency Survival Protocols'."

"This is BAD!" Ryan-Guile observed, adding, "Resist the urge to make nasty remarks about the obviousness of my statement."

"Then to avoid making it worse, I'll skip the part about the female police officer, Tracy Rogers, figuring out that Coach Morgan is our Master, as well as the part about her belief that the out-of-control Thrall is a high school football quarterback named Ryan Klein. And I CERTAINLY won't mention that the compromised Thrall has taken hostages."

"You know, we WERE having a really successful hunt tonight!" Ryan- Lecher snarled. "Anything ELSE you want to tell us to ruin our evening?"

"Sure," Steve-Guile obliged. "This lovely January hunting weather was created by Reality Itself, which adds credence to Kaschak's Guile's assertion that Reality Itself is now intelligent, thus vastly more danger- ous....oh, and Coach Morgan's compound is PRESENTLY SURROUNDED BY A GROWING ARMY OF ENTANGLEDS."

Ryan-Lecher didn't ask for any more bad news, because he was afraid there might BE some.

The Feeding Area. Robbie Byrne's Christmas Make-up Party ***************************************************************************

Robbie was on his way to his father when a noise caught his attention.

"BAAAAAAAAAA!"

Amused laughter followed.

"I'll let him suck me off, but I ain't goin' FIRST!" someone laughed. "C'mon! Someone else!"

Robbie elbowed through a ring of observers to find Joe Prender, unordained preacher of un-Christian, Republican beliefs, down on all fours and behaving like a sheep, so completely that he was even periodically licking and milking the air, as if desiring a nipple.

"We'll do it, if none a' y'all wanna step up!" announced Johnny Piper, a cocky, heavily tattooed, twenty-something punk with a bowl cut, and an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. "Ain't like it's the first time me and my brother ever fucked a sheep before."

"Or a horse...or a cow...or each other, it would seem," Guile mused.

"Really?!" Robbie asked mentally, his gratification at Officer Joe Prender's fate completely overshadowed by his sudden fascination at the forbidden sex lives of the two brothers.

"Yes," Guile confirmed. "The boys' drug-addicted mother abandoned them with her parents when they were roughly your age. One day, the boys snuck into their grandparents' barn and caught their grandfather screwing a cow. He wanted 'kompromat' on the boys, to keep them quiet, so he asked them if they wanted to 'be men' by taking their clothes off and joining Granddad in some 'manly' nudity. Once they were naked, the old man asked the boys if they'd started 'playing with themselves' yet. Johnny 'sheep- ishly' confessed, but Jimmy lied and said that he hadn't...since he was secretly gay, and didn't want to be questioned about his masturbation habits, as it might've lead to someone discovering his gay porn stash.

The grandfather then worked the boys up by showing them the porn on his phone, which he liked to watch while 'tending to' the animals. Once the boys were proudly sporting stiffies and acting all silly due to their sexual arousal, their granddad enacted his plan by asking the boys if THEY wanted to try fucking the cow. Johnny, the loud-mouthed one with the cigar- ette and unfortunate haircut, was an easy sell. Once he was hard, Grandpa got him up on the stool, guided his cock into the cow, and let nature take its course.

When it was Jimmy's turn to fuck the cow, however, things didn't go so well, until Granddad...who probably knew that Jimmy was gay...took Johnny aside and told him that he and his grandmother figured out that Johnny was smoking. He offered to let Johnny smoke openly, even buy him cigarettes, if he helped his brother 'get the job done', whatever it took. Properly incentivized, Johnny enthusiastically gave his brother a 'hands on' demonstration on how to use stroking to stay hard -which Jimmy didn't need, but 'gamely' allowed his brother to demonstrate for him, and ON him- and stood directly behind Jimmy, hands on Jimmy's hips, pulling and pushing his brother in and out of the cow until Jimmy ejaculated...for reasons that had little to do with the cow."

"How did they start fucking each other?" Robbie desperately wanted to know.

"Jimmy has a good job and a pot supplier...Johnny has a bad job and a big mouth, therefore no pot supplier," Guile explained. "Jimmy gets his brother high in exchange for Johnny topping him. Johnny also lets Jimmy do sexual things to him, as long as Jimmy obeys the 'nothing above the neck' rule, and doesn't try to penetrate Johnny's anus with anything other than his tongue."

"Why does Jimmy have an eyepatch?" Robbie questioned.

"Jimmy's eye issue has nothing do with his sexuality, so I do not know," Guile replied. "The only reason I am aware of their names and family situation is because two men in the 'audience' know the boys, and are thinking about them."

"I want to know MORE about the things they do!" Robbie demanded.

"Tonight ain't about making new friends, it's about fucking," Lecher snarled. "You're in a candy store. You don't just walk in, buy the Swedish Fish, and go home without looking at EVERYTHING ELSE! In a few days or weeks, go over to their farm and introduce them to Pit Fog, Ball Vapor, and all of your monsters. They'll give you their bodies, their secrets, their dignity, and most important of all....their CUM! Now MOVE ON!"

"I wanna see the pretend-Christian suck and fuck like a pretend- sheep!" Robbie protested. "Fucker tried to fucking MURDER ME!"

"Hmmm.....that's not good," Guile pondered. "Lecher, allow him a few minutes to bask in Officer Prender's degradation. Then I will take charge of dealing with Robbie's growing trauma. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

While Johnny was casually fluffing himself and having animated conversations with people in the crowd, making his cigarette bounce up and down like crazy, Jimmy stepped up and wiggled his dick in front of Joe's lips, making the man-sheep eagerly kiss the air and try to get at it with his tongue. After a moment, Joe was able to latch on and suck it like there was no tomorrow, causing Jimmy to smile and lean his head back in enjoy- ment.

The air filled with vulgar encouragement and drunken, brainless critiques, all of it blending into an incomprehensible, auditory blur.

"HOW'S IT FEEL?" Robbie called out to Officer Joe Prender, only to have Jimmy think that Robbie was talking to him.

"Feels GOOD!" Jimmy responded while trying to pull his dick from Joe's mouth to show how hard he was.

Joe wasn't have THAT! He crawled forward to keep frantically lick- ing and nursing Jimmy's cock, but before Joe managed to reclaim it, Robbie saw that the base of Jimmy's hard-on was colored magenta...just as Robbie had hoped.

"I knew I should'a worn my boots," Johnny announced to the audience while walking up behind Joe and preparing to 'do the deed'.

A telling amount of laughter erupted from the onlookers, confusing Robbie and revealing just how fucked up the region really was.

"You stuff a sheep's back legs into your boots so they can't run away when you're fucking them," Lecher's voice said in Robbie's head.

"I knew that!" Robbie griped, in spite of the fact that he hadn't known it.

"Don't worry, I don't think this'uns a runner!" Jimmy opined, both slurring and drawling to the point of being incomprehensible.

"BAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!" Joe the homophobe squealed excitedly after Johnny squatted down and slid his slender 7.5-incher right into him and started butt-fucking, giving Jimmy the opportunity to withdraw his cock for a second and point out to Robbie that it was hard.

Apparently, no one except Robbie could see that in addition to Jimmy's dick and Joe's mouth being colored magenta, there was also a dark, snake-like tube coming out of Joe's mouth that was connected to the tip of Jimmy's dick.

Robbie smiled and nodded his approval at Jimmy, since it was now impossible to be heard over the raucous cheering for Johnny's impressive, high-speed fucking.

"BAAAAAAAAAAAAAA???????" Joe yelped in confusion as he felt the combined intensity of Jimmy's and Johnny's approaching orgasms.

"Robbie, I want you to think back to when Officer Joe Prender told you he was going to kill you," Guile instructed.

"BAAAAAA!!!! BAAAAAAA!!!!! BAAAAAA!!!!!! BAAAAAAA!!!" Joe screamed with absolutely no grace while he was subjected to an alarming amount of sinful, sexual pleasure.

"I AM," Robbie grinned as Jimmy and Johnny double high-fived while they both ejaculated into Joe at the same time, but with differently timed pulses, BOTH of which were synched up with Joe, causing not only a pleasure overload, but also making him ejaculate all over the tongue mat beneath him, putting out an impossible amount of cum at double the force and double the pulse rate, turning Joe into a human pressure washer.

"I order you to forget that incident," Guile ordered. "and forget about Officer Joe Prender entirely."

Robbie joined everyone in a round of laughter and applause, cheer- ing Jimmy and Johnny's performance, as well as that of the "sheep", who was dazzling the crowd by STILL shooting cum, but now at a reduced rate.

Although the "sheep" didn't appear quite old enough, Robbie wondered if the man was the boys' grandfather.

Robbie walked away from Johnny and Jimmy, vowing that he WOULD do as Lecher suggested....maybe even get them to let him fuck animals with them.

Robbie would meet the Piper brothers again, but his interest in animals would be non-existent by then.

Robbie the Cum Vampire would help Jimmy regrow his missing eye.

The Top of the Rise Overlooking the I-147 Bottleneck, Above the Pit Fog ***************************************************************************

"EVERYONE!" Harry Patrell suddenly barked. "Head back the station! Tracy, call me when you're done here, okay?"

"Yes sir," Tracy acknowledged, feeling a bit like a scared puppy whose owners were leaving her behind.

Harry turned to the Creeping Vine.

"I have your WORD that you'll see to her safety?" Harry asked point blank, staring directly into the Creeping Vine's cloudy pink eye holes.

"You do," Steve confirmed, "and I'm the kind of guy who values his word."

The eye-contact lingered a little too long before Captain Harry Patrell turned on his heel and yelled: "Let's GO!"

"We'll be in contact about-" Veronica called after him, still maintaining pretenses.

"Yeah, yeah," Harry interrupted with a dismissive wave over his shoulder as he departed.

"Well that was certainly rude!" Steve-Guile opined after the cops were a safe distance away. "Although I must say that it IS in keeping with the reputation of the nationally-infamous Timbersburg Police Depart- ment. I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that he didn't fling his feces at us."

"Their problems are mostly caused by their uniformed officers," Lt. Preston stated while looking at Officer Rogers.

"Do you know how many times within the last year I've been to your base to carry out an arrest?" Tracy snapped. "I know you SUCK AT INVESTIGA- TIONS, but compare the crime statistics between Timbersburg and Mawklynd City, MOSTLY due to the PUNKS AT YOUR BASE! People in Timbersburg have LESS to fear from off-duty uniformed police officers than people in Mawklynd City have to fear from off-duty, low ranking service members! If it weren't for those nukes, your NUISANCE BASE would've been decommissioned years ago.

"UUUUUUUUGH!!!!!!" another private groaned as orgasm hit him at the worst time, giving Lt. Veronica Preston an unwanted 'life moment'.

"Yes," Veronica hissed, "such a shame it would be if the base were closed and I were reassigned someplace else."

"Considering all the trouble one of my 'KIND' went through tonight to make this region the most militarily important place on Earth," Guile remarked, hinting at his knowledge of the military's true intentions for the Steve-Thrall, "I find it peculiar that you yearn for reassignment, Lieutenant."

"Sorry, I'm going to have to get naked," Steve suddenly informed Tracy.

Tracy looked down at Steve's exposed penis and visibly sweaty, hairless scrotum.

"I guess I meant to say 'MORE naked'," Steve corrected.

All of a sudden, Steve's black body stocking exploded into a cloudy, crackling, pink mist, identical to the energy swirling around in Steve's mouth, in the eye holes of his metal mask, and around his exposed genitals, leaving him wearing just his armor pieces.

Steve walked up behind Tracy and wrapped his arms around her. The pink mist surrounding his mostly-naked body flowed over Tracy as well.

"Force field?" Tracy guessed.

"Force field," Steve confirmed.

"Bullet proof?" Tracy hoped.

"Easily."

"It doesn't look like Lt. Frog sees what you're doing," Tracy noticed.

"Actually, she's completely blind, but since she can still see, she doesn't know it."

"Why don't you just teleport us away?" Tracy wanted to know.

"Because if the other Thrall and I start mixing it up, I don't want the army getting in my way," Steve explained. "Once Captain Patrell and the others are clear, we're going to slow the military down, maybe take them off the board entirely."

Tracy looked around at all the manpower and equipment being brought to bear. As far as military operations went, it wasn't HUGE, but it was impressive nevertheless.

"I'll be honest, Steve," Tracy remarked. "I don't see you slicing the triggers off of ALL the ordnance around here with your speedy, little, silver string."

"We've got something a lot more impressive in mind," the Creeping Vine said with a smirk.

The Feeding Area. Robbie Byrne's Christmas Make-up Party ***************************************************************************

"Jushhht relax, Todd," Ed Seevers slurred to his son. "Pee for daddy."

Robbie watched from a distance, fascinated by the innocent father/ son scene....made perverse and exciting by the fact that the son appeared to be in his mid-teens, and the father was clearly stimulating his child sexually, under the pretense of helping him to urinate.

"Dad? Whudder....what're you," Todd muttered, looking around in confusion at his surroundings while making no effort to stop his father, who was standing behind him with his arms under Todd's, giving him a double reach-around.

"Shhhhhh, it's okay," Ed pretended to soothe, when what his inebri- ated mind actually wanted was for his son to shut-up and let Ed get him boned up.

Ed and Todd had regained their horniness just a few minutes after fucking Jayce, but Todd had gone to the edge of the clearing to urinate, stepping into the fog for privacy. When he came back, Todd's bladder was still full, and he was more fucked up than ever.

Ed was vexxed. The Pit Fog was affecting him strangely, twisting his paternal instincts and causing him to develop an unhealthy fixation on watching his child fuck.....and having his child watch HIM fuck. To satisfy this new obsession, Ed wanted Todd and him to go over and take turns on the muscular red-headed man, but Ed's and Todd's needs were in opposition.

"I'm trying...but I can't get it....get it to start," Todd babbled while reaching back and scratching his ass, which had been made itchy by his father's pubes, "not with you...with you messin' with it."

Robbie started to compulsively skin and unskin himself, which quickly brought him to full erection...something that thousands of people would witness, since Burt Veribton was now at the feeding area...along with Lecher and Tyler Whitlock.

"What's goin' on here?" Tyler called out to the father and son, slipping into 'cop mode'.

"My boy'z havin' some trouble pissin'....Officer?" Ed replied, having no idea if the cop hat that Tyler was wearing was real. "We're good. I...I gawt this."

"Here, a couple of puffs always helps me relax," Tyler joked, hold- ing the butt end of his cigarette up to Todd's mouth.

Todd leaned forward and took a deep drag.

"Thanks," Todd responded while exhaling smoothly, so trashed that he didn't realize that he'd just accidentally confessed to his father that he'd taken up smoking.

But given the circumstances, what the fuck could Ed say?

"Robbie, c'mon over," Lecher called out. "I wanna show you some- thing neat! C'mon, Guile will HATE it!"

"Guile knows what he wants to show you," Guile said in Robbie's mind, "and Lecher is correct. I do hate it."

"Hey, didn't see you there, buddy!" Tyler greeted, giving Robbie a warm hug.

Robbie used the hug to feel Tyler's back and ass muscles. When they separated, Robbie swiped the cigarette and took a puff.

"I put your clothes over by your dad's Glock," Tyler informed Robbie, sounding eager to please. "Lecher said that nobody will notice it, so your money's safe."

"Thanks. I was-" Robbie started to say before Lecher interrupted him.

"Yeah, yeah, we've got a police emergency to handle, the kind that ONLY Timbersburg cops should ever be assigned to," Lecher announced. "Robbie, tell Officer Whitlock to get on his knees and suck the piss out of that boy's wiener!"

"Uh...I'll do it if you want me to, but I don't like drinking piss," Tyler whined. "A girl got me to do it once. I got sick, all gagging and puking."

"No worries," Guile dismssied. "Officer Whitlock, I order you to LOVE the taste of piss."

For a moment, Tyler looked confused. It gradually morphed into a smile.

"Yeah, sure. I'll do it," Tyler agreed, as if he'd actually had a choice.

Tyler took off his hat, knelt down in front of Todd, and opened his mouth...fully prepared to act as a human urinal.

"I'm not gonna...gonna be able to-" Todd complained as his father pushed his boner downward so that Tyler could wrap his lips around it.

"I'm adjusting the Pit Fog in his system...turning some of it into a powerful muscle relaxer that will target his pee muscles," Guile informed Robbie, who wasn't listening, as the explanation was taking longer than the effect.

"Glug.......glug........glug.......glug........glug.......," Tyler chugged throatily and enthusiastically as Todd's firmness and bladder control dwindled away, causing Tyler's mouth to fill with an irresistible flavored water.

Robbie's penis rose while Tyler sucked and drank Todd's piss, some- thing that would gross out a lot of Burt Veribton's viewers....and excite more than a few.

"I've seen porn where guys drink piss," Robbie confided privately to Guile, "It's really hot...until I cum. Then it's disgusting...until I get horny again."

"I could make you love it as much as Officer Whitlock seems to," Guile offered.

"I dunno. I'm getting sick just watching Tyler do it, and I don't like the idea of goin' around with a stomach full of piss.

"Kid, we got a creature who will pop into your belly, drink it all up, and take it to get purified," Lecher explained. "AND AREN'T YOU THE KID WHO WANTS TO SHIT HOTDOGS INTO YOUR DAD'S MOUTH?!?!?"

"I never said that I wanted him to shit hotdogs in my mouth," Robbie replied, missing the point entirely and defending himself with Gen Alpha logic.

Guile privately exchanged a telepathic eye roll with Lecher.

"Well, it looks like Timbersburg's Finest has saved the day," Guile pointed out as Tyler eagerly helped Todd to 'tap' by squeezing out the last few drops....into his mouth. "We're wasting time. We should-"

"Guile!" Robbie blurted. "Do it! Do it before I change my mind!"

"The absolute BEST way to make a difficult decision," Lecher noted.

"Robbie Byrne, you love the taste of urine," Guile commanded. "It tastes fabulous to you."

"And he wants his dad and the cops to shit hotdogs into his mouth," Lecher added.

"And you want your dad, Mark, Tyler, and George to shit hotdogs into your mouth," Guile readily agreed......SO readily that Lecher took a moment to think about it.

"WAIT A SECOND!" Lecher protested. "If they shove hotdogs up their asses, Caboose's creatures will swarm over and gobble them all up!"

"Huh, I hadn't realized that," Guile lied.

The Top of the Rise Overlooking the I-147 Bottleneck, Above the Pit Fog ***************************************************************************

".....guide you and an all-female unit through the forest and dispel any illusions the Thrall's Guile throws our way, before the ladies even encounter them," Guile suggested to Lieutenant Preston. "My Lecher has extensive training in tendril combat, and should be able to prevent anyone from being melted, python-crushed, burned alive, electrocuted, etc. This will doubtless lead to a Lure vs Lure scenario, in which our Lure could not possibly be defeated. However, Officer Rogers recently informed me that the Guile said his Lure had been incapacitated. We don't know how that occurred, but it couldn't have been an easy task. Lures are incred- ibly resilient. Any force sufficient enough to take one down should be enough to keep it down for quite a while, which means that the Thrall is operating at a tremendous disadvantage."

"Two things," Tracy spoke up. "First of all, I watched it feed on several officers. I believe feeding speeds up your healing processes, right?"

"Yes," Guile confirmed readily and casually to avoid giving the military the impression that Guile was hiding something, like the fact that the S.C.E. gained from feeding was ESSENTIAL for a Thrall to heal AT ALL!!

"So maybe the Lure has...uh...rebooted?" Tracy stumbled, unable to figure out why some Thrall terminology made them sound like humans, and others made them sound like computers. Not surprisingly, Timbersburg police officers weren't all that well-versed on extradimensional, biological machine technology.

"It takes time to harvest energy from semen, and more time for that energy to heal significant injuries," Steve-Guile refuted. "If the Thrall was attacked out here, in the middle of nowhere, and the assault was brutal enough to incapacitate a Lure...and Jayce Harris, the Thrall's first sub- sequent victim, was only drained about two hours ago..... No, absolutely not. That Lure is definitely still either unconscious or severely debili- tated."

Guile turned towards Veronica, who'd been fiddling with her phone off and on for the last few minutes.

"If you agree with my plan, we should probably get going soon," Steve-Guile suggested. "The longer we wait, the greater the possibility that the other Guile might reach out and sense my Thrall, robbing us of the element of surprise."

"Uh...Officer Rogers said that there were two points she wanted to make," Veronica stammered, typing something into her phone.

"Oh, I apologize, Officer," Guile offered, turning around and offering Tracy a smug smile and a transparent lie. "I forgot...you DID say that, didn't you? Please continue."

"How do we know we're not dealing with TWO Thralls?" Tracy specu- lated. "The Guile I dealt with was using a tube to possess people, but I heard Miss Keim say that the perp who held her hostage sounded like...him."

"What?" Lecher snarked, turning away from watching the latest private's privates being milked by Baby Blue. "My name too hard for you to remember? NOT DESCRIPTIVE ENOUGH FOR YOU??"

"Guiles are telepathic beings who cannot control bodies," Steve- Guile explained. "The only way we can 'pilot' a body is by using our plum- colored tendril to take over a male and force HIM to pilot his OWN body. Only Lechers, however, can take over a Lure's body, under certain circum- stances, and talk using their mouth. That accounts for why Miss Keim dealt with a Lecher, but you faced off against a Guile. That Guile never mention- ed any other Thralls, so I assume there ARE no more here. However, if I sense any more, my Thrall will have to withdraw, since that would mean that all of this is a set-up."

"But why did Guile use the...plum tendril...instead of feeding from my colleagues face-to-face?"

"They probably wanted their body to stay with the hostages in case anyone tried to escape," the Creeping Vine offered.

"I suppose, but that really wouldn't be necessary, considering how fast our tendrils are.......as well as the fact that a Guile has hundreds of....well....let's call them 'phantom forms', that can monitor EVERYTHING going on within a very large area. How could a hostage POSSIBLY escape?"

"I'm sorry, WHAT did you just say?" Veronica interrupted, looking up from her phone and suddenly suspecting that there was a damned good reason why she couldn't reach her superiors in the nearby tent via texts, and why they hadn't sent a female messenger to relay commands and informa- tion.

"I said that Guiles can multiply ourselves and canvas large areas, like the one we're presently standing in," Guile repeated. "If there were a patron saint of reconnaissance and surveillance, he would simply HAVE to be a Guile.

"Using female snipers was smart, but there was no WAY to keep EVERY SINGLE MAN out of the loop," the Creeping Vine chuckled. "Guile doesn't just broadcast to large groups of men...he mind-links...he 'Entwines'... with ALL OF THEM! There was no WAY you were going to get the drop on us. NONE!"

"Lieutenant Veronica Preston, you tried to dupe a GUILE," Steve- Guile sneered. "If you had the slightest idea of how RIDICULOUS and INSULTING it is for a human to even TRY that with me, I would be MORALLY OBLIGATED to stick OUR plum-tendril up a random male's nose just so I could force him to BITCH SLAP YOU ACROSS YOUR PIG-UGLY FACE!"

"As a woman, I should be offended by that sexist remark," Tracy Rogers said to the ghost of a boy in a wheelchair, "but since I fucking HATE HER, I think I'll let it slide this time."

"Thank you," Steve-Guile expressed with instant serenity.

Veronica gasped audibly as the world around her changed. Officer Rogers and the Creeping Vine were no longer standing side-by-side. Instead, The Vine was behind Tracy, and they were both surrounded by a crackling pink cloud. There was a black tendril coming out from behind the Vine, and its tip had expanded into a 6' diameter shield, which had apparently been whipping around and catching the many tranq darts that Veronica had given the order to be shot at Steve. Veronica turned to her men, only to find that they were all gone. Lecher had been "feeding" on holograms for the last three minutes to trick her. Cynthia Keim was gone as well.

"BY ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES MMMMFFFFFF*" Veronica tried to scream, only to be cut off by Steve's ribboned violet tendril, which wrapped around her mouth.

"Great," Steve-Lecher grumbled. "It's bad enough we gotta take on the Army and the Air Force, but now we have to fight off the United States MMMMMFFFFFF, too???"

Tracy looked at all the soldiers, who were just standing around and acting as if Lt. Preston hadn't been attacked. A few of the men and women were looking at their phones with concerned looks on their faces. Others were just waiting for orders that would never come.

"Creeping Vine, I've activated and adjusted the intensity of our E.M.P. beam," Guile instructed while looking up at the concerned, yet hate- ful, eyes of Lt. Preston. "Please sweep the helicopters and anything you see with a holographic 'X' in front of it."

Steve reached behind him and aimed at all the helicopters. The ones with lights and spinning blades soon became indistinguishable from the ones without them. Steve then shot all the X's.

"Whatever's going on with the other Guile, it didn't affect his intelligence," Steve-Guile noted to everyone, including Veronica Preston. "He knew that disabling the police's communications was vital to slow down any organized search, rescue, and engagement. But HE could only do it via illusions. WE, on the other hand, have an armored suit that can jam the signals coming and going from a vast number of specific communication devices. It took me a while to isolate every single military cell phone, computer, radio, and whatnot in the area, but I really had no better use for those thirty-seven seconds anyway."

"Now that we've disabled the military's communications and trans- portation, it's time to.......SHIT!" Steve said, noticing a man running out of the tent where the Veronica's 'superior' officers were apparently still convinced that a Faraday cage could protect their thoughts from Guile.

"You CAN'T shit, Steve, and we don't have time for you to TRY!" Lecher snarked. "We're doing okay against the military, but the United States MMMMMMMFFFFFFF could BE HERE ANY SECOND!!!!"

Armed soldiers ran for the tent.

"What's happening over there?" Tracy yelled.

"A cum vampire materialized inside a few minutes ago and started feeding," Guile explained. "One of the chickens seems to have managed to squeeze through the chicken wire and flee the coop, though."

"Ryan must've gotten hungry from dropping trees on people and set- ting engines on fire," Lecher smirked at Tracy. "Sic 'im, Tracy! Before he gets away!"

"I'll conduct the arrest after he's had time to douche and gargle, Granny Ghost," Tracy shot back.

Lecher gave Tracy a dirty look....and the finger. He hated it when people mocked his hair style...almost as much as he hated people making fun of the Creeping Vine.

"Guile, we've got incoming, but I don't want to leave Tracy unprotected!" Steve yelled as Ryan's activity in the tent caused absolute choas amongst the soldiers, many of whom had decided to ignore what they were seeing and advance on the Creeping Vine with their weapons at the ready.

"Lt. Preston, you might want to watch this," Guile suggested to Veronica, who'd stopped trying to pull the violet tendril away from her mouth in favor of using her hands to issue instructions to the approaching troops....instructions that Guile used illusion to change to: stay back and lower your weapons. "I guarantee you've never seen anything like it."

The ghost of a boy in a wheelchair pointed north and downward, towards the fog-filled basin....then he extended all of his ghostly fingers, twisted his hand palm-up, and raised his arm to the sky.

Veronica felt a sudden chill as a wall of white rose up, filling the northern sky.

"The fog is responsive to telepathy, no matter which Thrall creates it," Steve-Guile lectured. "Once everyone starts breathing it, I will make it act on the men like a powerful paralyzing agent. Women will get drunk on it. Please keep in mind that if ALL Thralls were bad, I would flip-flop the two effects, leading to -and I'm sure that Officer Rogers has the incident reports to back me up on this- a mass rape scenario."

"Would you like me to CITE some of those incidences?" Tracy spat at Lieutenant Veronica Preston. "When were you first stationed at Mawklynd? I can limit them to JUST the ones that have occurred during your watch!"

"Perhaps another time," Steve-Guile sighed. "I believe that the military has wasted enough of our time this evening."

Guile dropped his arm, and the wall became a wave, washing over the gas line area and plunging the world into white.

Tracy felt Steve back away....followed by a tendril wrapping around her waist, and the now-familiar sensation of her being instantly transport- ed to somewhere else.

"WHAT'S HAPPENING???" Cynthia screamed, finding herself suddenly back at the fallen tree, a few feet away from where the paramedics lifted her unconscious boyfriend off of the road and took him away. "WHAT'S GOING ON???"

"CALM DOWN!!!" Tracy ordered, going face to face with Cynthia. "YOU'RE ALL RIGHT! We were teleported here by Guile, who doesn't know that you DON'T bring a trauma victim back to the scene of her assault!"

"Sorry, I'm not used to dealing with human fragility," Guile pleasantly mocked as he and Lecher appeared, along with a ghostly version of a 'recostumed' Creeping Vine.

As Cynthia dug around in her purse, Tracy noticed that the three ghosts formed a triangle. She wondered if it was deliberate or accidental. It was actually a programmed instinct, intended to promote a sense of unity amongst the three parts of a Thrall.

"For CHRIST'S sake, DON'T offer to light it for her," Tracy ordered Steve as Cynthia's trembling hands brought a cigarette to her lips. "Where is your body?"

"Still up there with the military," Steve answered. "Guile and Lecher are using it to help someone I'd rather you NOT mention by name, for the sake of his family!"

"So you two....er....SIX....are sexually assaulting helpless and unwilling men?" Tracy interrogated.

"We're not 'sexually assaulting' them...we're just giving them head!" Lecher smart-assed. "And if they wanted us to leave them alone, they shouldn't have dressed that way! Military uniforms turn me ON!"

"And there aren't SIX of us up there, there are FIVE," Guile corrected. "A Lure cannot divide his consciousness, and Steve's essence is being projected HERE, so......"

"Steve?" Cynthia questioned, relieving Tracy by demonstrating that she was both thinking and aware of what was going on around her...meaning that she probably wasn't going into shock.

"Yeah, ABOUT THAT!" Lecher snapped, turning to the ghost in a superhero costume. "Why'd you tell Tracy that your name is STEVE?! What's the point of having a cool code name if you're going to tell everyone your name is STEVE?!?!"

"Just so you know, I only gave STEVE permission to call me Tracy," Tracy pointed out, saying Steve's name with conspicous volume to piss Lecher off further, "and the Creeping Vine is NOT a 'cool code name', although it's better than calling yourself a cum vampire."

"We never CALLED ourselves a fucking CUM VAMPIRE!" Lecher screamed. "YOU keep calling us that. WHY?!?!?"

"You and the other one...the one who has my boyfriend's brother.... you attack people and take a bodily fluid from them without their permis- sion," Cynthia pointed out. "And you....you laugh about it....like it's funny or something......like......like every vampire I've ever seen in movies and television. Why SHOULDN'T people call you a cum vampire?"

"The other Guile called HIMSELF a cum vampire," Tracy established to deescalate the unhelpful growing tension within the group.

"WHY?!?!?" Lecher screamed in Tracy's face.

"Do you...actually expect me to have the answer to that?" Tracy asked with a dumbfounded sneer, designed to make Lecher look stupid. "I guess I could've asked while he was screaming for information about Malawny Hollow, while I had my own gun under my chin so I could commit suicide before all the different tendrils in front of my face could-"

"GREAT! Just GREAT!" Lecher interrupted. "There's a rogue Guile goin' around telling people we're CUM VAMPIRES, and I have a Lure who wants to drop our code name in favor of our FIRST name. I can just hear it NOW... 'Look, up in the sky...it's a bird....it's a plane....it's.....STEVE!!"

"Don't worry, Buddy," Steve jokingly consoled. "You'll NEVER have to hear anyone say that.......since I can't fly!"

Guile and Lecher exchanged a knowing look.

"What?" Steve asked, irritated that once again, his Guile and Lecher were keeping things from him.

"Why can't you fly?" Cynthia muttered while exhaling a plume of smoke. "The other one could."

Steve did what he always did when he was confused: He turned his baffled face towards Guile for insight.

"In case you're wondering why I brought Miss Keim with us," Guile revealed. "she's the gift I spoke of earlier. She witnessed the other Thrall...flying."

If Steve weren't a ghost at that moment, superhuman balance notwithstanding, he would've fallen on his ass.

Inside the Mind of Caleb Crandal ***************************************************************************

"Are you doing okay, Craig?" Ruby Nash asked the constantly grinning oarsman, whose grunts from rowing the boat were getting hard to distinguish from his groans of enjoyment, caused by the men running a train on him out in the real world.

"Feeeels niiiiice," Craig drawled, fighting his body's desire for him to relax and fully submit to the endless parade of dicks...dicks of varying lengths and thicknesses...that were rubbing his chemically-treated insides and giving the drug-addicted bodybuilder more pleasure than he'd ever known.

"Can't he row any FASTER," the grouchy old man seated at the prow of the boat griped, flinging away another fishing rod that had materialized in his hand. "And watch out for all those fucking party boats!"

Craig looked around at the boat traffic before suddenly slapping himself in the face, startling Ruby, who was immediately DOUBLE startled by Andrew transforming into Robbie. After a few seconds, though, Robbie turned back into Andrew.

"Sorry, I can't concentrate," Craig slurred, slapping himself again. "I'm fuckin' crazy high, and all these cocks up my ass are making me feel weak. And I won't stop fuckin' cumming! I feel THEM cumming, I feel MYSELF cumming. FUCK! I even cum when they're shooting their loads in me! I can't stop it!"

"I wish I could stop it from happening," Ruby consoled, seeing how distressed Craig seemed about it.

"Why?" Craig asked with a dizzy smile before suddenly gritting his teeth at the approach of yet another high-intensity Entangleds orgasm.

After an enviable duration, Craig's penis fired off yet another series of ropes of cum that shot Ruby in the chest...again...only to pass through his intangible body...again...and land in the water a few week away .............again.

"My," Ruby commented as the inhuman spectacle continued. "Watching that makes my prostate ache almost as much as my phantom erection."

"Just switch him to Alternate Personality Two when he stops spray- ing like a goddamned SKUNK!" Nature's Protector of Life hissed.

Guile stood alone at the end of the dock, watching the rowboat approach. He'd been speaking to his future self and the Overseer when the memory fragment ended and was replaced by another, leaving Guile all alone. Fortunately, everything that needed to be said...had been said.

"Back again, I see," Guile greeted the memory of his Master, who once again landed on the dock and proceeded towards the house to add to Caleb Crandal's misery and create two even MORE miserable beings. "Back to Enthrall Caleb and play your part as one of Reality Itself's pawns! That's what the Overseer told me you ARE, Master, just a pawn in someone else's schemes. How ANGRY you will be when I think up a safe and polite way to inform you that while YOU puppet that avatar, REALITY ITSELF IS PUPPETING YOU, YOU STUPID, FUCKING ROCK!"

Guile turned back to the boat, having no desire to watch Ladislav Kaschak force his way into the lake house again.

"This will go well," Guile stated with optimistic certainty. "This will go well, and my life will finally become bearable."

Guile frowned. That didn't feel right.

"This will fail horribly, and Lecher and I will be no better off than we were before," Guile stated with genuine certainty. "We will die tomorrow morning at the hands of our Master."

Guile frowned deeper. That felt much more likely.

"Only pessimists can accurately predict the future," Guile mused, reciting his second favorite saying, a saying that Guile promised to never utter again if his meeting with Reality Itself went smoothly.

KSHHHHHH!

Guile spun around, looking for the source of the sound, and caught the moment that Caleb Crandal opened the door and screamed.

"Something's wrong!" Guile panicked. "That noise...it was the sound of-"

KSHHHHHH!

"...the sound of Alicia Crandal's figurines being smashed, but much LOUDER! This isn't the memory of the Fourth of July party, though, so where is that noise coming-"

KSHHHHHH!

Guile looked up. There were yellow cracks forming across the night sky, looking like frozen lightning bolts.

"Only pessimists can accurately predict the future," Guile whimpered, watching all of his hopes and dreams begin to collapse once more.

"YEAH!" Craig shouted to motivate himself while straining his muscles to propel the rowboat much faster.

By momentarily transforming into Robbie, Reality Itself had been able to consult the boy's 'owner's manual' for his father. Alternate Personality Two was designed by Guile to give Robbie the ability to fill his father with testosterone, masculinity, and an obsessive need for physical activity. Entanglement would alter Craig's habits and change his daily routine, so Guile wanted Robbie to have a way to urge his father to stick to his work-out schedule, to maintain the muscles that Robbie was so infatuated with. Also, a lot of Robbie's incest fantasies involved his dad being sweaty and/or exhausted. Craig was fated to spend hours doing naked push-ups and planks, just so Robbie could lie under him and enjoy the sensation of his father's sweat raining down onto his body...or take Craig to his bedroom, command him to become sexually aroused, and make his daddy grunt and groan, straining his agonized, tightening muscles to keep plowing Robbie's insatiable ass until Craig emptied his nuts and collapsed, cover- ing his boy with his hot, slippery flesh.

As it turned out, Alternate Personality #2 was also handy for get- ting Craig to row a boat with gusto, in spite of being gang-banged in the real world while under the influence of multiple intense drugs effects.

"Talk to me," Craig told Ruby while muscling the oars. "I'm having trouble focusing."

"I can imagine," Ruby chuckled. "What shall we talk about?"

"Will any of this make sense once the shit I took wears off?" Craig questioned. "I have no idea how I wound up at Manjinankton Lake, and I've got no CLUE why we're going to Raymond Crandal's house."

"ONE of his houses," Ruby contradicted. "He has a large home off in the wilderness somewhere, close enough to Timbersburg to shop and have access to emergency services, but far enough away from Timbersburg to be far enough away from Timbersburg."

"I have a coworker, Tina Hart, who HATES the Crandals," Craig laughed, finding some balance between pleasure and strain. "She knows ALL their dirty little secrets, and keeps a scrapbook of all the rumors and scandals."

"She and I should do lunch sometime," Ruby mused. "I think I know more than she does. I'd make the binding of her scrapbook BURST! Hearing MY gossip would probably get me added to Ms. Hart's Christmas card list for life, even if I can't tell her that Raymond's eldest boy got turned into a semen vampire."

A moment of silence followed, which was unceremoniously broken by an exploding firework, making Ruby shriek and quickly cover his mouth.

"Tina says she wants to know how....how many shipping containers went into building that house," Craig grunted.

"All of them, plus a few dumpsters," Ruby joked back. "Its construction led to a nation-wide acetylene shortage."

"You're not funny, Rudolph Nash," Andrew sniped. "Be quiet!"

"But if you think the outside looks bad, you should've seen what the inside looked like before last July 4th," Ruby continued, undaunted, as he always did when he encountered unpleasant people...or entities. "I used to joke that because of all those huge windows, anytime I passed by in my boat, I ran the risk of being exposed to indecency! Naturally, I was referring to Caleb's mother's interior decor. Poor Alicia had no taste at all, especially with regards to picking a husband. I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, however, since she was a far better mother than mine."

"Why did Caleb turn out so bad, then?" Craig asked, forcing him- self to stay engaged with the conversation, and not allow the most recent dick up his ass to cause him to lapse back into stupified bliss.

"Because his father was pouring all of his love into another son that neither Alicia nor Caleb knew about," Ruby sighed sadly. "Caleb is worthless garbage, but his father helped him get that way, while always claiming the opposite."

"And now, Caleb's worse than garbage," Craig noted. "Now he's a real-life monster."

"No, he isn't," Ruby disputed. "He's a boy in pain. The monster, the one who REALLY turned Caleb Crandal into a vengeful, murderous terror, is sitting right behind you."

"Careful, Rudolph," Reality Itself cautioned.

"Alicia Crandal may have traveled the globe, bringing the worst of it back to Timbersburg to decorate her home, but at least she brought her child and showed him the world while doing it, and at least Caleb had lots of trinkets to remind him that someone once loved him," Rudy continued. "But all of those things are gone now, the most precious having been destroyed by an army of teenaged hooligans, who were guests at Caleb's Fourth of July party. Guests whose worst instincts were brought out by a being who dares to call himself Nature's Guardian of-"

"ENOUGH!" Reality Itself threatened.

"I agree, Reality Itself," Ruby said solemnly. "Caleb Crandal has suffered enough, and all you're doing is endangering the world you claim to protect. END this!"

The old man leaned forward and scrunched the crepy skin of his face to an impossible degree.

"NO!" the Earth's bastard protector snarled.

"You just reminded me of something I forgot to ask you," Ruby announced, his happy tone betrayed by the darkness of his eyes.

"Whatever it is, Rudolph, don't bother," Andrew grumbled, flinging a guitar into the lake.

"It's actually more of a favor."

"Then you definitely shouldn't ask," Andrew grumbled.

"It's not for me.....it's for Kenny Miller," Ruby declared.

"What?"

"I know you murdered his grandfather, as part of your plot," Ruby revealed, "but that loud-mouthed, fame-seeking forensic pathologist on the news INSISTS that Andrew Miller was tortured to death. Was he?"

Silenced reigned.

"Look, you don't have to tell ME, since I'm just a memory phantom who will cease to exist shortly," Ruby reasoned. "But if you could tell either Craig or Guile, I'm sure that-"

"I didn't know how to create a human body for myself," Reality Itself interrupted, "so I entered Andrew Miller and experimented. He screamed constantly, but I honestly thought he would survive. He did not. Kenneth can take solace, however, in the fact that his grandfather's and my time together caused certain memories and personality traits to infect me. It's been an inconvenience."

"An 'inconvenience'?" Ruby gasped, open-mouthed.

"YES! A FUCKING INCONVENIENCE, YOU MELODRAMATIC FAGGOT! DON'T HIT YOUR HEAD ON THE STERN AFTER YOU RAISE THE BACK OF YOUR HAND TO YOUR FORE- HEAD AND PRETEND TO PASS OUT FOR MAXIMUM THEATRICAL EFFECT!!!"

Silence reigned again. THIS time, Ruby made no effort to break it.

Reality Itself did.

"Since I arrived here, my ability to foresee potential future events has been curtailed. I would ask if either you or the Overseer KNOWS anything about that, Rudolph, but you would only lie to me. And worse, I'd have to hear your squeaky, lisp-filled, girly voice, which irritates Andrew Miller's personality TO NO END! But although I cannot see futures in this place, I can still see the past. I've been reviewing your life, Rudolph. Care to hear my critique of it?"

"No," Ruby Nash stated simply, with no indication of emotion.

"I ruined your life by making you gay, and I feel absolutely no guilt about it," Reality Itself admitted. "When your parents and grand- parents found out about you, their 'unconditional love' evaporated, retro- actively nullifying it. None of your friends loved you either, choosing instead to keep you at a distance. So many times you've witnessed them doing something fun with all their REAL friends, inviting you over to their table merely out of guilt and pity. And then there was your beloved Jeff, a man who only approached you because of your lottery winnings, and fell out of love with you long before your mother, as you mistakenly claim, sabotaged your marriage. You don't need to throw a wooden shoe or a monkey wrench into a machine that has never worked, Rudolph.

Because of your homosexuality, you were kicked out at sixteen, robbing you of the college experience, and forcing you to work various 'no- experience-necessary' jobs just to survive, working alongside the lower classes, who never missed an opportunity to make your life a living hell for being gay, since the only way YOU could've hidden it would've been to conceal your flamboyant mannerisms and keep your mouth shut, two things that have always been IMPOSSIBLE for you to do!

So now, thanks to your only achievement, which consisted of filling in ovals with a penil, you now live alone in a house that you HATE, full of broken dreams and painful memories, and surrounded by two-faced bastards who use you for housesitting, but work together with the homeowners association to find ways to pressure you to move. I hope you will be crush- ed when I tell you that in spite of all the negative attention and bad press that the Crandals have brought to Manjinankton Lake, INCLUDING Caleb's ill-fated Fourth of July party-"

" YOUR PARTY, YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Ruby screamed, completely losing it. "IT WAS YOUR FUCKING PARTY, NOT CALEB'S!"

"...including MY wildly successful Fourth of July party," Reality Itself corrected for the sake of reaching his point, "all of the residents of this oasis in a desert of SCUM would rather be rid of YOU than the CRANDALS and all of their ENDLESS SCANDALS AND ASSORTED BULLSHIT!"

Ruby turned away from Reality Itself to see just how much longer he would be trapped in a rowboat with Nature's Ruinous Demon. He looked over at Guile, as he had done a couple of times, to bask in the beautifully macabre, gothic, paperback cover-worthy vision of an ominous creature in a black robe, standing beneath the insufficient illumination of the yellow- ish, overhead dock lights.

"Something's wrong!" Ruby yelped at the sight of Guile staring open-mouthed at the sky while clutching his face and trembling in...pain? horror? confusion?

"What's happening to the sky?" Craig warned, following Guile's upward gaze and seeing glowing, yellow cracks etched in the air.

"WHAT DID THE OVERSEER DO TO TIME???" Andrew shrieked at Ruby, experiencing the exact same despair as Guile, for the exact same reason: All of his plans were being undone. "WHAT DID HE DO TO CREATE TEMPORAL UNCERTAINTY?!?!"

Ruby almost screamed: "What the HELL is 'temporal uncertainty', but Ruby had read hundreds of science fiction novels, and could easily figure out that the Overseer's desired future result was no longer 'certain', and now, multiple outcomes were possible, and time was having some sort of difficulty figuring out which one.

"My future-self!" Guile wailed internally after coming to the same conclusion as Ruby. "The Screen Code introduced an x-factor into the Thrall Overseer's plan."

"I thought you were a GOD!" Ruby spat at Andrew, too confused and worried to bother with Reality Itself and his goddamned sanctimony. "Shouldn't you KNOW what's happening? I'm just one of meaningless pissants you torture for FUN, you awful IIIIIIIII-EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"

Ruby grabbed the edges of the rowboat and held on for dear life as his memory of everything destined to happen between that moment and the conclusion of The Battle of Faggot Forest was rewritten...then rewritten again...then altered slightly...then completely rewritten yet again...then rewritten...*"

The sky shattered, creating a hole. Blood rained down, along with body parts, streamers of plummeting viscera, and God knew what else.

"NO!!!!" Guile screamed, raising his arms and unleashing as much power and influence as he could over the psychic environment, in order to deflect the falling matter away from the rowboat.

Being a memory phantom, Ruby was safe, but Guile had no idea what would happen if the heavier chunks of gore were to slam into Craig's head.

"GUILE!!!" Ruby suddenly screamed, standing up and pointing at the sky hole. "CATCH HIM!!!"

Guile looked up and saw a naked, flailing figure. Carnage showered Andrew and Craig as Guile redirected his efforts towards saving the falling human. While doing so, something hit Guile's ankle and rolled off the dock, into the lake.

It was a human head. A human head with a cauliflowered ear and a nose that had obviously been broken several times, long before its impact with the dock.

"How is this POSSIBLE?!" Guile raged, looking up from Kenny Miller's floating, severed head and seeing that the human he was trying to save was ALSO Kenny Miller. "REALITY ITSELF....ARE YOU DOING THIS!?"

Reality Itself twisted and glared at Guile, his eyes and teeth being the only parts of him that weren't covered in blood.

"I'm being pelted by pieces of multiversal variants of Kenneth Miller, a murder victim WHO HASN'T BEEN MURDERED YET, YOU GUILELESS IDIOT!" Andrew shouted with the kind of nasty bitterness that only old men are capable of expressing. "Beyond normally SEEING it, I have NO power over the FUTURE, and if I did...I'D KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THE FUCK I WAS DOING, AND NOT USING IT RECKLESSLY!"

If Ruby hadn't been so worried about the sole living Kenny Miller, he would've laughed at Reality Itself's utter lack of self-aware- ness. Since achieving sentience, EVERYTHING Reality Itself had done had been RECKLESS.

"But tell me, DEFECTIVE GUILE, have you recently been in contact with anyone who was messing with time who DIDN'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY WERE DOING?!"

Guile slowly lowered the naked, blood-streaked body of Kenny Miller, keeping him over the water, in case something ELSE went wrong.

Something ELSE went wrong.

A frozen Kenny-torso landed on Guile's head, startling him and breaking his concentration.

Kenny Miller fell from a horrifying height, screaming up until he smashed through the surface tension of the lake, feet-first, and plunged down into the depths of Manjinankton Lake.

"SHIT!" Craig roared, diving into the bloody water, little more than a second after impact.

"Craig, NO!" Ruby screamed, but it was too late. Craig was under- water, furiously trying to reach Kenny.

"Guile!" Ruby screamed over at the dock. "Craig is seriously impaired, and half of his consciousness is back in the real world! He's not going to be able to reach Kenny, and after what happened with Jayce, I don't think Craig will let himself surface without him! You HAVE to eject ALL of Craig's mind from Caleb's-"

"NO!" Reality Itself bellowed, wishing he could dole out Rudy's FIFTH gay bashing. "Craig's my anchor to this place. Without him, I can't REMAIN here...AND YOU AND I HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO TALK ABOUT, GUILE!"

"Guile!" Ruby pleaded. "In this place, minds are bodies! If Craig drowns, his mind will deteriorate. He'll be brain dead!"

Guile used his enhanced sight to watch Craig miraculously manage to reach Kenny and grab his ankle. But as soon as Craig started swimming up towards the surface, there was an explosion of bubbles from Craig's mouth, and a series of white, cloudy puffs out of his dick.

Craig's latest sex partner had reached orgasm, forcing Craig to experience it along with him.

Craig was out of air, and his trembling, rubbery legs would not be able to save him and Kenny.

"My life.....or the life of Robbie's father," Guile pondered as the intangible future memory phantom of Ruby Nash screamed at Guile to act. "Which do I choose?" ___________________________________________________________________________

"I will now do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING -no matter how extreme, immoral, or CRUEL- that is required for me to not only survive, but THRIVE!" Guile had vowed. (chapter 5) ___________________________________________________________________________

Ruby's screaming continued....

End of Chapter 11

Correction: Ryan's mother is named "Kendra". I accidentally called her "Ruth" in chapter 9.

Correction: I accidentally gave the impression that Steve and Coach Morgan were present in Timbersburg during the decades when the murders at Faggot Forest occurred. From 1970 until 2015, Steve and Maximus traveled a lot, enabling Steve to find teachers and pick up the many skills he uses as the Creeping Vine. Even without his weaponized armor and teleportation powers, Steve would NOT have sat idle while gays were being murdered locally. He would've made Faggot Forest his 'feeding grounds', and had his Guile Entwine with everyone in the park to make sure no one was being attacked.

Elaboration: Not only are the Caleb-Guile and Caleb-Lecher far weaker (in ALL categories) than a typical Thrall, they don't know just HOW infer- ior they are, thanks to their nearly-empty archives. So when Guile claims that Guiles can't do this, and Lecher's can't do that, he's almost always wrong.